As a Favor

by Susan Dunlap

  “Ermentine Brown 20” became clearer now. “So you decided to bribe Anne Spaulding?”

  “What? You foolin’ with me? You see those kids in there. You think I got extra money to give away? You think they don’t eat, huh?”

  I waited for a moment before I said, “We’ve got a note in her writing. It was twenty dollars, wasn’t it?”

  “No way.” Ermentine Brown grabbed a piece of paper and put down a big zero. “Now you got my note, see.”

  “You’re forcing me to take you in and show you the proof.” When she didn’t reply I continued, “Look, Ms. Brown, I’m not interested in going after you for twenty dollars. I will if necessary, but what I really want is information. I think we can work something out.”

  “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

  A pigtail poked around the corner. I watched as the rest of the head inched after it. “We won’t be long,” I said to the child.

  Ermentine Brown spun in her chair, ready to let her tension out, but the child darted back into the living room.

  When the woman turned back to me, I said, “What made you think you could bribe Anne Spaulding?”

  She hesitated. “The word’s out on the Avenue. She’s on the take.”

  “Who else was she taking from?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know names.”

  I pulled out my pad, flipping to the page on which I had listed the seventeen case names. I read them. “Any of these women?”

  “No. I never heard of them.”

  “They live right off Telegraph. They go to the same branch welfare office. And you’re telling me you’ve never heard of them?”

  Ermentine stood up. “Look, woman, I lived up there for a month, in a hotel full of winos and whores. If I knew any of those names I’d tell you and let you go hang all over them.”

  “Well, then, who else was bribing Anne Spaulding? Only you? Anne Spaulding is missing and I need to know what she was doing.”

  “If there’s any way that bitch could get her ass kicked there’s no one would like to see it more than me. I told her the day she cut me off, my kids needed that money, I couldn’t put food in their mouths without it. And you think she cared? Shit.”

  “The names.”

  “I know some people who used to be into it, but not now. Look, why don’t you talk to Quentin Delehanty up on the Avenue? He’s a wise dude when he’s off the sauce.”

  “When’s that?”

  For the second time Ermentine Brown smiled.

  “ ’Tween the time his eyes open and his hand reaches out.”

  I laughed. “One more thing. Where were you last Monday from six o’clock on?”

  I expected her to protest, but she didn’t. Instead she went to the living room and returned with a large plastic purse. Sitting down, she began rooting through the purse, pulling out envelopes stuffed with papers and stacking them in a line on the formica table. “I fed the kids and then I took them to see the Marx Brothers. I’m finding the stubs so you can be sure.”

  “You saved the stubs!”

  “Listen, once you been on the welfare, you save everything. You don’t never know what they’re going to ask for.” She looked up and caught me staring at the purse. “I call this my file cabinet. When you been on the welfare you keep your papers handy. You never know when you’re going to be in the office and they’ll have to have something right now! You learn to keep everything in it.” She patted the purse. “You check with anyone on the welfare. They all do it.”

  She turned her attention back to the purse and in a minute came up with an envelope that contained the theater stubs. “Here, you can still see the date.”

  I glanced at them and returned them to the envelope, which Ermentine Brown returned promptly to her purse. “Ms. Brown, can you think of anyone who would want to harm Anne Spaulding?”

  Her eyes widened, her mouth opened, and she laughed. “Anyone she met, honey. Ain’t no one gonna be crying over her.”

  Chapter 9

  I GOT TO THE station at twenty to three. In the past I’d been late for or even missed squad meetings and Lt. Davis, a stickler for time and accuracy, had wasted none of the former letting me know that no investigation excuses a patrol officer from basic responsibilities. I was going to have a hard enough time explaining this case to the lieutenant without adding lateness to my irregularities.

  Pereira’s report was in. Spaulding’s neighbors had noticed nothing unusual or helpful. They could remember neither friends nor visitors. Mostly they used the opportunity to complain about the traffic and the noise from Sri Fallon’s apartment. Anne they classified as a nice quiet neighbor who kept to herself.

  I arranged for Fern Day to view the clothes. Then I checked the microfilm index on which we kept the names of all those—felons and victims—known to the Department, together with the number of the Penal Code section identifying the crime each was connected with. There was no record for any of Anne’s twelve adult welfare clients or her five family cases.

  And then I got the first good news in two days: Lt. Davis was at City Hall, meeting with the mayor.

  Staff meeting was perfunctory: a memo on expense accounts was read, the hot-car list circulated, summaries of cases left over from Morning Watch presented. But the atmosphere was not the same. We were like a school class with a substitute teacher. Howard, who normally forced himself to be serious, leaned back in his chair, arms spreading out, unconsciously forcing the men on either side to give him room. The loss of a ’62 VW without bumpers, but with one red, one green, and two merely rusted fenders gave rise to speculation that would not have been so much as suppressed thoughts if the lieutenant had been present.

  “Another day,” Howard said after the meeting. He flopped back in my desk chair, spreading his long legs across the aisle. “Thank God I don’t have to explain about my tail lights till tomorrow.”

  “So what do you have planned for the thief today?” I settled atop the desk.

  “Nothing. The pattern is no contact the day after a grab—and he had two tries yesterday. Today I’d guess he’s holed up somewhere slobbering over his latest trophy. What about your missing person?”

  “Not much; except a general opinion that Anne Spaulding knew how to look out for Number One. And Number Two, if such existed, was a long way down the list. She had some welfare clients living in that building I chased your thief through. I’m going to go out and have a crack at them.” I pushed myself up. “Could you do me a favor and check by Anne’s apartment when you’re on beat? It’d be a little humiliating to have her just walk home without my knowing.”

  “Sure. What does your husband—whoops, ex-husband—think happened?”

  I was a few feet down the aisle. “I’ll tell you about that later, okay?”

  It was not yet four o’clock. The sun still warmed Telegraph and there was no sign of fog yet. The Avenue was jammed with people; after the cold Bay Area summer, people exposed their bodies greedily to the warm October sun. In a few hours, when the fog rolled in, they’d be wrapped in sweaters or wool jackets, but now T-shirts and shorts prevailed.

  I double-parked the car outside Quentin Delehanty’s hotel and made my way past the empty lobby. The smell of marijuana hung heavy; the bald rugs and thin curtains had been saturated with it. There was no sign of the hotel manager, no manager’s office. The manager, doubtless, was someone who came by only when the rent was due.

  There were no mailboxes, though a few unclaimed letters lay on a table, and no list of tenants. No one was around to guide me. I knocked on the back door—Delehanty’s. From inside I could hear nothing. The blare of stereos from other rooms was louder than the television had been at Ermentine Brown’s.

  I knocked again. Now I could make out stirrings.

  “Open the door, Delehanty. It’s the police.”

  Grunts.

  It was several minutes and two more poundings before the door opened to reveal Delehanty in a wine-stained and very dirty white shirt and pajama
bottoms. His long gray hair was matted around his face and he smelled of wine and sweat.

  Taking a breath, I walked in. Delehanty watched me, his expression more amazed than angry.

  I took out a list of Anne Spaulding’s clients, and read the names slowly. “Do you know any of these women?”

  His head shook in a mechanical motion.

  “Four of them live right here, in this hotel.”

  “Who?” Delehanty’s voice was hoarse.

  “Linda Faye Miller, Amelia Sanders, Yvonne McIvor, and Janis Ulrick.”

  Delehanty’s head shook. “Nope.”

  “Nope what?”

  “Don’t live here. Never heard of them.”

  “They’ve never lived here?” I asked.

  “Not since I’ve been here, and that’s over a year.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. I know who’s here. Either they’re down here bitching about me, or I’m up there telling them to keep their goddamned rock music from blowing out my eardrums.”

  I couldn’t help but think that this hotel was an unfortunate choice for someone who objected to noise. “Why don’t you move?”

  “On two hundred dollars a month? Maybe I could go to San Francisco and stay at the Fairmont?” He reached under the bed and came up with a wine bottle, an empty. He stared, then dropped it.

  “You’re only getting General Assistance—county money? Why don’t you apply for Social Security?”

  “Hey, lady, I’m not disabled.”

  I looked pointedly at the bottle, but Delehantly avoided my stare.

  “I don’t drink all the time. It’s just that, well, one of the guys here died over the weekend. O.D.’d. He was just a kid. Tad. Just twenty-one. I warned him. I told him to watch it. I—” He stared down at the streaked floor. His eyes began to unfocus.

  “Before I go,” I said, “just one more thing. Do you know Anne Spaulding?”

  “His eyes shot open. His face reddened. “Spaulding! Do I know that Spaulding bitch! The bitch at welfare? She’s the one. She made Tad do it. If she’d left him alone he’d be alive today. She did it. She killed him.” His face was red; his fists banged on the bed.

  “What did she do?”

  “Cut him off, that’s what. She cut him off. Tad got the notice last Thursday. No more money. He freaked. Just twenty-one. Jesus!”

  “Did you know Anne Spaulding yourself?”

  “What? Yeah, I know who she is. Everyone knows. You don’t do something like that and remain anon…anon… unknown.”

  “You’re still pretty angry, aren’t you?”

  Delehanty stared at me in disgust. “Don’t give me that social work crap—still pretty angry. Tad’s still pretty dead.”

  I wasn’t getting anyplace with that line of questioning. “Who lives here?”

  “You want who’s in all twenty rooms? Hell, I can’t tell you that. Look at the register, lady. And leave me alone. I’ve got some serious drinking to do.”

  “Where were you Monday night, Delehanty?”

  “What? Go away.”

  “I will when you answer me. Where were you?”

  “Here. Where do you think? You think you get this hung over by just drinking for an hour? You want to see the proof?” He didn’t wait for my reply, but pulled back the bedcovers and displayed six boxes filled with empty wine bottles under the bed.

  Obviously they were more than this week’s collection, but there seemed no point in pressing it. I asked for witnesses, but Delehanty maintained he hadn’t gone out of his room.

  Strange that all the people involved with Anne were such homebodies.

  As I left, Delehanty’s head sunk to his hands. He reached for a bottle of aspirin. And I wondered how long it would be before he joined his friend Tad.

  Making a mental note to find the hotel manager and get a list of tenants, I headed back to the car and sat there, examining what I had learned.

  There was no reason not to believe Ermentine Brown’s story that Anne was extracting bribes from street vendors. There was no reason for Delehanty to insist the women on the list never stayed at the hotel—feigning ignorance would have been easier. But if those clients did not live here, where were they and why had Anne separated out their case folders? Were they living elsewhere and bribing Anne to say they lived here? It didn’t make much sense, but there was something going on with those missing clients and it was the only lead I had—except for Nat’s pen.

  I wondered what Alec Effield, Anne’s supervisor, knew about it.

  Chapter 10

  I CHECKED BACK AT the welfare department in case Alec Effield had returned. He hadn’t, a disgruntled Fern Day told me between the ringing of two phones.

  My next stop was at the station to run a quick make on Effield. While I waited, I dialed Nat and listened to the phone ring eight times. He had asked me to start this investigation. He had said to let him know. Dammit, where was he?

  The microfilm had no listing for Alec Effield—no crimes, no complaints. I got his address and headed for a car.

  Rush hour. None of the cross-town streets was more than four lanes wide. Grove Street, with parking on both sides, was effectively two-lane, but it was still predominately residential and I could make better time on it. Even so, it took me twenty minutes to cross most of north Berkeley and turn east into the hills.

  In reality the Berkeley hills are not individual peaks but a long bulge on the eastern edge of the Hayward Fault from Contra Costa County in the north almost to San Jose in the south. The streets wind steeply upward, overhung by branches of live oak and liquid amber, and lined by four-bedroom houses clustered close together. Turning north just short of the summit, I wondered how a welfare supervisor could afford a house here.

  But Alec Effield turned out not to live in a house. He had a flat over the garage, ten feet to the left of a large, dark, Queen Anne house. The brick steps to Effield’s flat matched the curved walkway to the main house. The yard showed signs of a flower garden recently pulled up. The grass was cut, the edges trimmed.

  As I climbed Effield’s steps, I could hear the sounds of Ravel.

  I knocked and when the door opened, identified myself.

  Soft light, soft music flowed up behind the man who, in turn, identified himself as Alec Effield, giving him the aura of a celestial character from a Busby Berkeley musical. His eyes were the palest blue and his flaxen hair was barely distinguishable from his gently tanned face, his beige turtleneck, and beige slacks. But as he asked why I was there, his voice was jarring. He had the last vestige of a New York accent, and even it sounded faded. In another year or two he would blend perfectly into his beige surroundings.

  Waving me inside, he turned off the music and turned on an art deco lamp. The brighter light showed a carefully understated room; the only signs of use were two indentations close together on a toffee-colored love seat. Whoever was responsible for the second depression was not visible.

  I decided on a direct approach. “I’m afraid Anne Spaulding may be dead. We found clothing that appears to be hers by the Bay.”

  Effield gasped, a timid sound.

  I waited, giving him time to recover. “I’m sure you want to help us.”

  “Yes, of course. It’s awful. Anne?”

  “Did she have any enemies?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Kinky friends?”

  “Oh, no. Not Anne.”

  “We don’t have much to go on, but we do know she was accepting bribes from her clients.”

  Effield’s pale eyes opened wider. He looked around, as if hoping his friend would emerge suddenly and answer for him. “Surely, Officer, surely that couldn’t be true.”

  “I’m afraid it is. It’s common knowledge.”

  “But that’s not possible. I would have heard if Anne had done anything like that. Ours is a small office. Perhaps if you’d seen it—”

  “I’ve been there.”

  Effield lifted a brass letter opener from t
he end table and moved his fingers precisely back and forth along the sides of the blade, carefully avoiding the sharp edges. “You say it’s common knowledge. You have people who will swear that Anne took money from her clients?”

  “Yes.” Maybe was closer to the truth.

  Effield shook his head. “This is awful. Nothing like this has ever happened in our office. I just can’t believe it.” He put the letter opener back on the end table. “But I suppose it must be. I just wouldn’t have thought it of Anne.” He groaned. “This is terrible. I vouched for her. She used me as a reference. What will they think?”

  “You knew Anne back East, is that right?”

  “Yes. In New York.”

  “How did you come to know her there?”

  “We both worked for the welfare department. She was there briefly, only a few months. But she had completed training. She did know the job.” He seemed anxious that I see the validity of his recommendation.

  “And were you friends in New York?”

  Effield seemed to consider this. “Acquaintances. I lost track of Anne after she left the department, and then I ran into her right before I came out here. She followed, well, not followed, but she came here later and she knew I’d be at the department here and she called and asked to use me as a reference.”

  A toilet flushed. I flipped a page in my notes. There was a lot of ground I needed to cover before we were interrupted. “Then there are Anne’s clients who don’t live where they’re supposed to.”

  Effield looked up, startled.

  I was on shakier ground here. “Mr. Effield, Anne has twelve adult cases with addresses at three Telegraph Avenue hotels.”

  “Yes,” Effield said slowly, “we do have clients living in hotels.”

  “These women don’t. I’ve already checked one hotel and none of them lives there. No one remembers them. There’s nothing to say they exist.”

  Effield sat.

  Water splashed in what I supposed was the bathroom.