Victims

by Collin Wilcox

  “You’re right, it was a bitter divorce. And, yes, I was furious. It—” He sighed, a ragged exhalation that caught painfully in his throat. “It was brutal. When Guest finished with me, I didn’t have a thing. I mean, nothing. Overnight, my business dried up. One week I had more clients than I could handle. The next week I had nothing. Zip. Guest had seen to that. No one returned my calls. Clients reneged on contracts, and dared me to sue them. There was only one thing I could do, and that was leave town. Which is what I did. I went back to New York, and started to pick up the pieces. That was the deal Guest offered me, you see. As long as I stayed away from San Francisco, away from his daughter, and John, he wouldn’t interfere. He’d even help me, in New York. Which he did, I’ll give him that. He helped me start again, and in a year I was back in business. Then I got remarried. Her name is—was—Diane Fischer. It’s been two years since we were married. We—” Suddenly he shook his head, and waved a wan, protesting hand, signifying that he’d momentarily run out of words.

  “And that’s when you started to think about getting your son back,” I prompted. “When you got remarried.”

  He looked at me. “Are you divorced?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “Then you know.”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded in return, then dropped his eyes. He’d come to a pause—an agonizing pause. I decided it was time to try and fill in the details, the background: “You married your first wife—Marie—in New York,” I said, remembering Alexander Guest’s testimony. “You lived there when John was born. You were apparently doing quite well, in your business. Why’d you decide to come to San Francisco?”

  “We came to San Francisco,” Kramer answered, “because Guest wouldn’t have it any other way. He promised me the moon, if I agreed to come here. And he delivered, too. That’s the way he operates, you see. As long as you go along with him, the sky’s the limit. He’ll promise you anything—and make good on the promise, too. Then, when it’s too late, you realize that you’ve been bought and paid for. He owns you. And you can’t forget it. Not for a minute.”

  “When you were first married,” I asked, “did you and Guest get along?”

  “Until John was born, he had no interest in me—or in Marie, either. He ignored us. Totally. But then John came along. And he wanted John. From the first, he considered John his property, his possession.”

  “From what you’re saying,” Friedman observed, “it’s pretty obvious that Guest would’ve done anything—anything at all—to keep you from getting John.” He let a beat pass, then said, “So it should’nt’ve surprised you that he hired bodyguards for John—bodyguards who would be guarding him around the clock, wherever he was.”

  “Except that I didn’t think he knew my plans,” Kramer contended. He shook his head. “I still don’t understand how he knew my plans.”

  “Let’s get back to last night,” I said. “You waited until one o’clock. Then what’d you do?”

  “I got out of the car,” he said, “and I walked to Guest’s house, around the corner. I went down the driveway to the garage, and from there I went into the house through the rear hallway. I got John up, and got him dressed. I’d brought some of his clothes with me.”

  “Did you know that John’s room is wired for sound?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “Were you armed?” Friedman asked.

  “No. I’ve already said I wasn’t armed. I don’t own a gun.”

  “All right—” Friedman waved a placating hand. “Go ahead.”

  “I got John dressed, and we left by the door that leads out to the driveway. And we—”

  “Excuse me,” I said, “but how long were you in the house, would you say?”

  “It’s hard to know. I’ve never been much good at judging time. I’d say two or three minutes, at least. It seemed like forever, though.”

  “Did you jimmy a door, to get in?” Friedman asked. “Did you force an entry?”

  “No. There was a key, hidden. I knew about it. That’s what I used.”

  “Did you hear anything inside the house?” I asked. “Did you hear anybody moving?”

  “I heard the sound of someone snoring,” he said. “I realized that it must’ve been coming from the room next to John’s.”

  “Who did you think was there, in the next room?”

  “I thought it might be one of the servants. Guest’s driver, maybe.”

  “Did you know Guest’s driver by sight?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “Then you must’ve known that the driver and his wife live over the garage,” I said.

  “I—I did know. But—” He shook his head. “But I probably wasn’t thinking clearly. I was—” He licked his lips. “I was nervous. Naturally. I’m not used to housebreaking, after all.”

  “What’d you do, when you heard the snoring?” Friedman asked.

  He shrugged. “Nothing, except try to be as quiet as I could.”

  “Did you think it might be Guest, in the next room?”

  Frowning uncertainly, he finally shook his head. “I—I can’t remember. I don’t think so, though. I guess—” He frowned. “I guess I always associate Guest with his own bedroom, the master bedroom. I wouldn’t ever think he’d sleep in the back of the house. Never.”

  “Did you know that Guest had a gun—that he’s a good shot, apparently?”

  He nodded, “I knew he was in the Marines.” Then, bitterly, he added, “I’ve heard his war stories, and seen his snapshots. He loved it, you know—killing Japs. That’s what he calls them. Japs.”

  “So you got out of the house without being seen,” Friedman prodded. “What happened then?”

  “We were walking down the driveway toward the sidewalk, John and I, when we heard shots. I’ve already told you that.”

  “Describe the shots,” I said. I remembered what Guest had said: one shot, followed a few seconds later by three shots in quick succession.

  He frowned. “I don’t understand what you—?”

  “How many shots? How close together?”

  “There were three shots,” he said. “One shot, and two more. In the space of just a few seconds.”

  “Three shots? Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  I exchanged a look with Friedman. Guest had been very specific: Four shots were fired. Had Friedman caught the discrepancy? Should I mention it?

  I decided that, for now, silence was safer. There would be plenty of time later for us to confront the suspect with conflicting testimony.

  “What’d you do then?” Friedman asked. “After you heard the shots?”

  “I kept on going—fast. We got in the car, and drove to Oakland, to the airport.”

  “Why Oakland? Why not San Francisco International? Oakland is farther away than San Francisco. Ten miles farther, anyhow.”

  “When I heard the shots,” he answered, “I realized that there could be trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I—I didn’t stop to analyze it. I remember thinking, though, that someone might be coming after us. You—the police. So I thought Oakland might be safer.”

  To myself, I nodded, secretly feeling smug. He’d done exactly what I’d told Guest he might do. After Quade had appeared, and they’d exchanged shots, Kramer realized that San Francisco International would be covered.

  “You were going to New York,” Friedman said.

  He shook his head. “Not directly. I was going down to Los Angeles. Then I was going to take an early flight to New York.”

  “Why’d you want to go to Los Angeles?” Friedman asked.

  “For the same reason I went to Oakland. To keep from getting caught.”

  “Did you have reservations?” I asked.

  “No. I didn’t need them, to Los Angeles. That’s a shuttle. When I got to L.A., I intended to make reservations to New York.”

  “You were running, then,” Friedm
an said. “You were running hard.”

  Kramer made no response.

  Glancing at his notes, Friedman asked, “Where did you stay in San Francisco? What hotel?”

  “The Clift.”

  “Did you register under your own name?”

  “Yes.”

  “How about car rental?”

  “Hertz. Under my own name.”

  “Did you turn in the car at the Oakland airport?”

  “Yes.”

  Friedman nodded, then looked at me, signifying that he’d heard enough for now. I nodded in return. As Friedman folded his notebook and slipped it into his pocket, he said, “The way it seems to me, Mr. Kramer, you came to San Francisco intending to take your son and leave town with as little fuss as possible. But you made a mistake. A very common mistake, I’m afraid.”

  Kramer didn’t reply. He sat silently, lifting his head as Friedman rose to his feet, his eyes on Friedman’s face. Behind the fashionable glasses, Kramer’s eyes were hollow, smudged by fatigue, haunted by sudden hopelessness, and fear.

  “You bought a gun,” Friedman said softly. “That was your mistake. You bought a gun. And you used it.”

  FIVE

  FRIEDMAN AND I SPENT the next hour eating pre-packaged lunch from a tray in the Hall of Justice basement cafeteria while we discussed the Quade homicide. We decided that, as usual, Friedman would work “inside,” coordinating information from the crime lab, and the coroner’s office and, later, from the FBI, in Washington. I would do the leg work. We agreed that I should interrogate Marie Kramer and Lester Bennett, the private investigator hired by Gordon Kramer to steal the boy. If I could manage it, I’d try to interrogate John Kramer, too. At age six, his testimony might not be admissible in court. But he could have the answers to some questions that might mean life or death for his father.

  After we’d eaten I went home, took off my shoes, lay down on the living room couch, and tried to sleep. Ann and her two sons were out, and I had the flat to myself. But I’d been asleep for only twenty minutes when Billy, Ann’s younger son, came home—chortling. He’d been surf fishing off Ocean Beach, and had caught a twelve-pound striper. First, he apologized for awakening me. Then he asked me to clean the striper, since he was late for a karate lesson.

  As I was cleaning the fish, I realized that I was wondering how I’d come to be in that particular kitchen, in that particular flat, cleaning that particular striper. More than a year ago, after a spaced-out cultist had fractured my skull with a ceremonial Mayan spear, I’d moved into Ann’s place to recuperate after my release from the “police wing” of the county hospital. I’d returned to duty after only two weeks of recuperation, as good as new. But somehow the time never came for me to pack my bags and return to my own apartment.

  Before I’d gotten injured, Ann and I had been lovers for months—lovers, and friends. Often, pillow talking, we spoke of the pleasures and the problems of living together, and wondered whether it would work for us. We could never quite decide, never quite summon the courage to make the commitment, take the chance. We’d talked about marriage, too—but always tentatively. Both of us had been badly scarred by divorce. Without ever having spoken about it in so many words, we’d come to realize that neither of us could quite find the strength to propose marriage. We’d tried to find the strength. Separately, both of us had tried. Once I’d actually started to propose. But Ann had stopped me. Then she’d started to cry—hard. It was the only time I’d seen her cry. As I’d held her in my arms, comforting her, I realized that we simply weren’t ready for marriage. Later—years later—marriage might work for us. But not now.

  Besides, marriage would mean financial problems. Ann had once said, ruefully, that she was an alimony junkie—like millions of other women. Victor Haywood, the society psychiatrist, paid her both alimony and child support. Adding her ex-husband’s payments to her teacher’s salary, Ann had been able to raise her two boys and still put aside enough money to pay half their college expenses, as stipulated in her divorce decree. But if she remarried, she lost the alimony. It was income I couldn’t replace. I had children, too—a son and a daughter, both teenagers, living with their mother in Michigan. Claudia, my daughter, was beginning college, and I was paying the bills. Darrell, my son, would be starting college in two more years.

  So, thanks to a blind-side blow from a Mayan spear, Ann and I had backed into a commitment that we probably wouldn’t otherwise have made. For more than a year, Ann and Billy and Dan and I had been living together. We’d had problems, most of them caused by Victor Haywood. But there’d been pleasures, too. Billy, age fourteen, was still young enough to think policemen were romantic figures. And Dan, three years older, was mature enough to realize that his mother was fulfilled when she was in love.

  By four o’clock, I’d finished cleaning the striper. I put it in the refrigerator, cleaned up the fish scales and got dressed. An hour later, I was ringing Marie Kramer’s doorbell.

  She lived on Telegraph Hill, in a townhouse worth more than a million dollars. The house was a soaring marvel of cast concrete, plate glass, redwood beams, and natural rock. It was built in three tiers that clung to the side of the hill, each tier with a balcony cantilevered out over the hill’s steep, rocky slope. The house was built on the east side of Telegraph Hill, where homeowners were rewarded with world-famous views of the city skyline, San Francisco Bay, the city’s two bridges, and the green hills of Berkeley and Marin County. To the north, midway out in the bay, Alcatraz provided a note of grim, ugly reality, accenting the picture-postcard beauty that surrounded it.

  But, as I rang Marie Kramer’s doorbell, I was thinking that she’d chosen a house for adults, not for children. It wasn’t a house designed for family life. It was a house for party-giving, for indulging the visual senses—a house that others were meant to envy. On the east slope of Telegraph Hill there were few places for children to play.

  The black lacquered door was opened by a man who looked to be in his middle thirties. He was dressed in tight-fitting designer jeans and a tight-fitting T-shirt. The jeans displayed the considerable bulge of his genitals; the T-shirt displayed the well-developed bulges of a weight lifter’s torso. The face went with the body: self-indulgent and narcissistic, but handsomely proportioned. It was a face that belonged in the uncertain shadows of a singles’ bar, where its deficiencies would be softened. The eyes were small and unfriendly, animated only by a dull, sullen suspicion as he silently stared at me.

  “I’m Lieutenant Frank Hastings,” I said, showing him my plastic identification badge. “Mrs. Kramer is expecting me.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” Grudgingly, he stepped back, gesturing for me to precede him up a short flight of carpeted stairs that led to the second of the house’s three levels. From the small entryway I could see into a large living room where a woman sat. The room was a white-and-glass room: white walls, white rug, white sofa and chairs combined with glass tables, cut glass decorations, and plate glass windows that framed the view. Huge, colorful daub-and-drip modern paintings were displayed on two walls; bookshelves covered the third wall. The fourth wall was almost entirely glass.

  Marie Kramer was sitting in one of the white leather armchairs. As I came toward her, she rose to her feet. Her resemblance to her father was remarkable: Her body was tall and slim, her face was lean, with a wide forehead, a thin, patrician nose, a decisively sculpted mouth and jawline, the face of a willful, arrogant aristocrat. But it was flawed, somehow.

  She wore low-cut sheepskin boots, tapered trousers, and an expensive handwoven sweater. Her thick, dark hair was carelessly combed, falling in a ponytail well below her shoulders. Her makeup, too, was careless: lipstick that was smearing, eyeshadow that was smudging. Her body movements and her hand gestures were broad and exaggerated, but slightly out of sync, as if she were in the process of memorizing a character she hoped to play on the stage, but hadn’t yet learned to coordinate her mannerisms with her lines. Her voice was slightly exaggerated, too: a little too
broadly accented, like a mediocre imitation of a finishing school patois. The mannerisms and the voice conveyed a kind of faded forcefulness, and odd combination of aggression and bemusement.

  “Where’s John?” she demanded. “Did you bring him? Is he all right? Are you Lieutenant Hastings?”

  “Yes, I’m Lieutenant Hastings. And John’s fine. Your father picked him up this morning. As far as I know, he’s sleeping.”

  “Picked him up? Where?”

  “At the Youth Guidance Center,” I answered reluctantly.

  “The Youth Guidance Center?” Her voice rose indignantly. Briefly, her eyes blazed. “That’s for delinquents. Hoodlums.”

  “That’s true. But when a child comes into police custody, he’s got to go to the Youth Guidance Center until his parents can come for him. Don’t worry. He was well taken care of. He had a private room, and a counselor slept with him until this morning, when your father sent someone for him.”

  “A private room.” She snorted contemptuously and turned abruptly back to her chair, at the same time gesturing for me to sit in a facing chair. There was an outsize coffee mug on the glass-topped table beside her chair. She reached for the mug and drank from it: two long, hard gulps. From the way she did it, from the way she looked away from me while she drank, I knew that the mug contained liquor. During the last two years of my marriage, and for three years afterwards, I’d fought a long, losing battle with the bottle. I knew exactly what she was doing—and exactly why.

  She set the mug on the glass table with an awkward clatter, then sat silently for a moment, frowning as she stared out at the view. Between Alcatraz and the near shore, I saw the long, low, sinister shape of an atomic submarine slipping ominously out toward the Golden Gate.

  “So he botched it.” She spoke softly, bitterly.