Death in North Beach

by Ronald Tierney

  Nadia did. Lili Young was a huge black woman who did watercolors of flowers. They were wonderful and in demand internationally. Her clients, Nadia explained with a touch of disdain, were interior designers not gallery owners. But she did well. She had no idea what Warfield might have had on her.

  ‘I hear she is a tough, passionate woman,’ Nadia said. ‘She scares some folks.’

  ‘OK, Richard Sumaoang,’ Carly said.

  ‘No, can’t picture him. There are many folks out there putting oil on a canvas and hanging on.’

  ‘Marshall Hawkes.’

  Nadia raised her eyebrows. She grinned, then took a sip of the Multipulciano.

  ‘A hateful little man,’ Nadia said. ‘But he is one of the most respected artists on the West Coast. His work isn’t in the hundred thousand dollar bracket, but it’s getting there. He is respected. Worshipped by those who favor his approach and his paintings are in all the right collections.’

  ‘His secret?’

  ‘He’s a flaming queen,’ Nadia said.

  ‘Come on. That’s nothing anymore. Certainly not in this town and I can’t imagine it making any difference at all in the art world.’

  ‘Exactly. But he tries to convince people he’s straight and he’s sued at least two publications for suggesting otherwise.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Carly said.

  ‘Neither does anyone else.’

  ‘Why would Warfield dislike him?’

  ‘I didn’t follow Warfield. I mean, I knew he was some sort of legend in his own mind, but his life didn’t in any way intersect mine.’

  ‘OK, last one. Frank Wiley.’

  She nodded. ‘Now we’re notching back down again. I only know about him because he belongs to some photographers’ group. His work is, as far as I’m concerned, archival. Not that it’s bad. He’s very, very competent. But aside from a few portraits that found their way into Time and Newsweek back when North Beach was the center of the universe, he’s pretty much of a nobody.’

  Nadia continued to talk about other San Francisco artists, not realizing Carly had drifted off a bit.

  ‘Are you seeing anyone?’ Carly asked to change the subject.

  ‘I’m seeing everyone,’ Nadia said. ‘And you, my little precious?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Peter hasn’t called again?’

  ‘No.’

  The rest of lunch was light gossip centering around Nadia and her young artists and about a planned trip to a hill town in Mexico where she would hook up with the best artists designing silver jewelry.

  At home, Carly dodged the sprinklers Mr Nakamura had on a timer for the dry summer. It hadn’t rained since February. Not really. In less than two months though, the rains would begin, and they would seem never to stop. That’s how it was in San Francisco most years.

  Eight

  As Carly left Delfina’s in the Mission, Lang was across town, waiting at a table just inside the broad opening at the front of Enrico’s in North Beach. He was waiting for Whitney Warfield’s mistress. The restaurant was one of Lang’s favorites and for a short time was doomed to the dustbin. Some said the assaults and killings in the neighborhood – most of them late at night on the same stretch of bawdy Broadway as Enrico’s – might have dampened the enthusiasm of the restaurant’s clientele.

  But it was back, a little whitewash on the walls, some great jazz, and good food. Marlene Berensen was only twenty minutes late. She didn’t apologize. Noah Lang could have forgiven her several more sins. She stepped out of a forties movie, a standard mistress. She might have been fifty. Then again, if she was, she was a pretty spectacular fifty. She and her clothes had attitude, a kind of casual attitude, the knowing, ready-for-anything look on her face complemented by something expensive she slipped on without thinking too much about it.

  ‘Mr Lang?’

  ‘Noah. And you are Marlene Berensen.’

  ‘If not I’ve been living a lie,’ she said, her smoky voice sounding like the crunch of dry leaves.

  ‘You know Humphrey Bogart?’ he asked.

  She sat down. She got it. She didn’t like it. The waiter came over immediately.

  ‘Should I bring you a Scotch?’

  She nodded.

  Not a big surprise. It was her idea to meet there. But it was all playing too cool. In the real world and considering the number of years they were together, Lang thought, Warfield’s mistress should look like Aunt Bee. She didn’t.

  ‘You wanted to talk about Whitney?’

  She looked like she wanted a cigarette.

  ‘I do. I’m trying to locate a manuscript he was writing,’ Lang said.

  ‘And if he was writing something, how do you figure you are entitled to it?’

  ‘We think it might lead to his murderer,’ Lang said, giving up the ruse since it didn’t make a whole lot of sense after Marlene’s question.

  ‘And who is we?’ she asked.

  Here we go again, Lang thought.

  ‘I’ve got this problem. I keep losing control of the interrogation. You’ll help me out, won’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you kill him?’ Lang asked. If subtle conversation failed, maybe sudden rudeness would work.

  She laughed. ‘Where’s my Scotch?’ she asked the universe. The universe answered.

  ‘Here, Ms Berensen,’ the waiter said.

  ‘You don’t look devastated by his death.’

  ‘I’m sorry. But I’m not devastated. Every night we slept together, I prepared myself to wake up to a corpse in the morning. He was overweight, ate and drank too much, never exercised, and had high blood pressure. Type A personality, full of anger and frustration. I’m surprised he lived as long as he did.’

  ‘With all those qualities, no wonder you were attracted to him,’ Lang said.

  ‘He was also sweet, generous, frightened, creative and he loved me unconditionally.’

  ‘Qualities he was careful to hide.’

  ‘All men are babies,’ she said. ‘These silverback apes yell and beat their chests, but when they’re alone at night, all by themselves, they need someone to help them through their nightmares.’

  Just as he’d seen her before in countless movies, he’d heard the ‘big baby’ line before. Was that because it was true? Or was it that she was playing a role?

  ‘I always thought that we are the people we were in the third grade,’ Lang said. ‘That’s my theory anyway. If you remember who you were and how you acted in the third grade, that’s you.’

  She didn’t respond.

  ‘What kind of girl were you?’

  ‘The kind of girl who stayed away from class clowns.’

  Ouch. She wasn’t far off.

  ‘You weren’t after the money, were you?’ Noah sipped his beer.

  ‘He didn’t have that much. So where are we going here, Mr Lang?’

  ‘The person who killed Whitney Warfield is likely someone who didn’t want the book published. I’m told he was planning a tell-all and you were on the list of people who might object to that.’

  ‘The theory is that the other woman is supposed to be a secret and that as that other woman I would be upset that our affair would become public. Everyone in Whitney’s life knows about me – including his wife. I like Elena. We get along. We are polite to each other and the only consideration we do for the public is that we aren’t in the same place at the same time with Whitney. I have no other shame. And Whitney would never do anything to hurt me.’

  ‘You have any idea who wanted to kill him?’

  ‘I came to meet you out of curiosity,’ she said, getting up, grabbing her coat and bag. ‘I’m leaving you out of boredom.’

  ‘Who gets his royalties?’ Lang asked.

  She stopped. ‘His family.’

  ‘Don’t you want his killer found?’

  She didn’t look back.

  Musicians were setting up inside. He was either going to commit to a night of jazz and alcohol – and maybe, jus
t maybe meet a beautiful girl – or head home to spend some quality time with Buddha.

  ‘Boring?’ he asked, as he stood and put enough dollars on the table to cover the drinks and a tip. ‘Me?’

  Frank Wiley’s place wasn’t all that far from Anselmo’s. Nor was it all that different on the outside. Unremarkable exteriors on unremarkable streets. She found Wiley’s dilapidated stairway halfway down the half block that dead-ended at another wooden structure.

  She had to feel for each step as she climbed up to his door. The light that came from a naked bulb above his door did little more than cast indistinct shadows on the steps. Most of the light was absorbed by the blanket of night.

  There was light inside. She knocked, waited, and knocked again. If he was there, she was determined to get him to the door.

  She heard some muffled grumbling before the door opened.

  Frank Wiley stood there, all bones and pale flesh. He had a skinny mustache and wisps of hair combed as if he had a full head of it. He wore a sleeveless white shirt and gray work pants and sandals with white socks. He also wore big, horn-rimmed glasses. Carly thought he looked like a bug. A nice bug. A harmless bug. His initial smile gave way to a look of befuddlement.

  ‘I’m Carly Paladino. I’m an investigator looking into the affairs of Whitney Warfield.’ Nice and succinct, she thought

  His eyes, already magnified, widened. His face went dark.

  ‘That’s no affair of mine,’ Wiley said. His tone was dismissive. He didn’t quite close the door, but he had narrowed the gap.

  ‘I’d really like to talk to you,’ Carly said. ‘I’d appreciate it very much. We’re just trying to make sense of his death.’

  ‘Why does that include me?’

  ‘I’m afraid there is an indication that you and he had a falling out.’

  ‘And you are not police,’ he said. Though it was not a question, it seemed to demand confirmation.

  ‘No.

  ‘And if we talk?’

  ‘I’m just trying to track down some nasty rumors,’ Carly said.

  ‘Involving me?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Come in,’ he said, stepping aside.

  The room she stepped into was, in fact, set up as a small gallery. Aside from the sixteen large, flat cartons leaning against the far wall, the place was neat and clean, ready for visitors. Even the cartons were neat, stacked in groups of four, probably containing frames for large photographs or the photographs themselves. Black and white photographs were on the wall. She recognized a photograph of the old hungry i, an old hardware on Grant she remembered from her childhood, the Condor Club when Carol Doda was its headliner, and a place called the Black Cat.

  ‘Where is the Black Cat?’

  ‘Nowhere now,’ he said. ‘Closed in the early sixties. One of my first shots. Queer place, but everybody went there. It was over on Montgomery near Columbus.’

  She noticed photographs of places she knew – Caffe Trieste, City Lights Bookstore, Vesuvio, Tosca, the Savoy Tivoli, Caffe Roma long before it was refurbished. There were photographs of restaurants, many of them still there. But she was reminded how many had gone. She looked around for a photograph of her parents’ place. Didn’t see it.

  ‘Did you ever photograph Paladino’s?’ she asked.

  ‘You that girl who used to fill up the water glasses?’

  She nodded.

  He seemed to soften. ‘I’ll find that photograph for you when we’re done. Have a seat.’

  There were three mismatched chairs. She chose one.

  ‘What would you like to know?’ he asked.

  ‘Who hated him so much?’

  ‘He was not a likable guy,’ Wiley said. ‘It’s kind of a cliché, but he was a complex person. I think he hated individual people but loved mankind. He was constantly disappointed with every cause he ever pursued and in every person he came to trust. They couldn’t help but betray him in some way. Yet, he had this ability to attract people at the same time. The one thing he never lost was his passion for telling the truth.’

  ‘As he saw it,’ Carly said.

  Wiley nodded. ‘Of course.’

  ‘What was your relationship with him?’

  ‘We remained friends, I think, mostly because I didn’t talk much. I listened. I took “pictures”, as he used to say. He’d love it when I photographed him. He used to tell me that I was the only one who told the truth.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘I let the camera talk.’

  ‘No portraits up there. I read you photographed some of the greats from the Beat era.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘You don’t have any up on the walls.’

  ‘I don’t have a lot up on the walls.’

  ‘I understand you have a big show coming up.’

  For a moment, his stare was cold. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘The people at Reed Fine Arts.’

  ‘Yeah, well. I do, I guess.’

  ‘New work?’

  ‘Never before seen,’ he said. He was uncomfortable.

  ‘Are those for the show?’ she asked, pointing to the sixteen cartons against the wall.

  Wiley looked nervous. ‘What is it you want?’ he asked.

  ‘Can I get a sneak preview?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mrs Wiley, who might be either angry enough to kill him or so ashamed of something they’d kill him to keep him quiet?’

  ‘I don’t like the question.’

  ‘You’re not going to answer it?’

  ‘Not my business,’ he said.

  ‘Police may want to talk to you,’ she said. It was not so veiled a threat, but Wiley had thought through it.

  ‘Can’t do anything about that, I guess.’

  She got very little else. Wiley only had nice and very general comments about the folks on the list, except for two, and he chose to say nothing about them. Marlene Berensen and Mickey Warfield.

  Inspector Vincente Gratelli requests the honor of your presence at the Thomas J. Cahill Hall of Justice, San Francisco Police Department, Homicide Detail, 850 Bryant Street, Room 563, at 9 a.m. tomorrow.

  Your loving and devoted inspectors,

  Rose & Stern

  The note was tacked to Lang’s door.

  Room 563 had maybe a dozen desks. Along one wall was a row of smaller rooms with windows that opened to the larger room. Gratelli, in a gray, slightly wrinkled suit, was talking with Noah Lang when Carly arrived.

  ‘You got the invitation,’ Lang said to her.

  She looked puzzled.

  ‘I got a call last night at home,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I got a formal invitation. Not quite engraved, but the intention was noble.’

  The two of them followed Gratelli into one of the interrogation rooms.

  ‘This is pretty scary,’ Lang said, grinning. ‘Should we call a lawyer?’

  ‘We’re short of conference rooms,’ Gratelli said. The two private investigators sat on the far side, where suspects usually sat. Gratelli sat across from them, hands folded on the table, a look of troubled patience on his woeful, ageing face. ‘We have two ways of doing this,’ he said without menace. His tone was almost always sane and drama-free. ‘One, we can make your lives miserable because you are interfering in a police investigation . . .’ He waited.

  ‘Or?’ Lang said.

  ‘Or we can work together. One problem we always have as civil servants is that we are understaffed. Now, officially, we aren’t sanctioning private investigation, but we can all go about our business in a friendly way by including the others in what we find out.’

  Carly looked at Lang. Lang nodded.

  ‘We can do that,’ she said.

  ‘All right, let’s start with this: Who is your client?’

  Both Lang and Carly smiled and in the same not-on-your-life way.

  ‘We’ll give you a list of names,’ Carly said. Lang winced. ‘These are people we are told who have at least one major rea
son to keep Warfield from publishing his book.’

  Gratelli nodded.

  ‘What can you give us?’ Carly asked.

  ‘I can tell you what the medical examiners said.’

  ‘What was that?’ Lang asked.

  ‘He was killed by a Mont Blanc fountain pen.’ Gratelli gave them a long look. ‘I’m telling you this, but I’m not releasing that information to the media or to the public in any way. You understand?’

  Lang nodded.

  ‘And what did you find at the crime scene that would be helpful?’ Carly leaned forward.

  ‘Nothing. No fingerprints. Nothing left behind in the crime scene. No footprints. Nothing.’

  ‘Insurance? Wills?’ Carly asked.

  ‘Too early.’

  ‘Well, you’re coming up short,’ Lang said. ‘Not exactly a fair trade.’

  Gratelli unfolded and refolded his hands.

  ‘One of the most important things we can do in a murder investigation is to understand what we don’t know.’

  ‘This is a known unknown or is that an unknown known?’ Lang asked and then responded to Gratelli’s raised eyebrows. ‘The great poet Rumsfeld. Rummy as he is often called with very little affection.’

  ‘Known unknown,’ Gratelli said. ‘You see, you’re catching on.’

  ‘Thing is, you have nothing,’ Carly said.

  ‘We have a body. Actually we do know what he had for dinner, that he was on high blood pressure medicine, that his liver would have done him in pretty soon. We also know you’ve talked with Richard Sumaoang and Mrs Berensen and that Ms Paladino raised the ire of Mr Reed and Reed Fine Arts and amused the publisher of the Fog City Voice who wanted to send out a reporter to interview me for a story. Your investigation hasn’t been particularly subtle.’

  ‘It wasn’t meant to be,’ Lang said, defensively. ‘And we’re just looking for a book, remember?’

  ‘You might be surprised to know there is some validity to your claim,’ Gratelli said. ‘Warfield’s hard drive was stolen and if he had downloaded any material on disks or thumb drives, they’re gone too.’

  ‘Broke into his house?’ Carly said.