And there it was: the green blanket. As I approached, I heard the gurgle of an infant, and saw the blanket move.
I drew a long, deep, shaky breath, kneeling down on the gravelled rooftop, then gently lifting the small green bundle.
EIGHT
KREIGER’S BUZZER SOUNDED. HE mumbled an apology, lifted the phone and listened. We were sitting crowded in Kreiger’s office—Hickman from Narco, Lieutenant Friedman, Markham and myself, all from Homicide. I yawned, stretched, and settled back in the hard, uncomfortable chair. Friedman and Markham were complete opposites, physically and psychologically. Friedman, in his middle forties, stood five foot ten and weighed about two hundred fifty pounds. He moved with a fat man’s waddling roll, and he never stood when he could sit. His clothing was usually rumpled and smudged with tobacco ash; his collar was always wilted, his necktie never quite tight. He sometimes wheezed when he talked or laughed, and his heavy-lidded eyes gave the impression of a bullfrog on a rock. Friedman was a slow, deliberate talker, and he seemed to think as slowly as he talked. But when Lieutenant Friedman talked, everyone listened. He’d spent more than twenty years on the force; he’d seen every kind of criminal commit every kind of crime. And, when you knew him, Friedman had a wry, ironic sense of humour unusual for a cop.
Markham, not yet thirty, was slim and tall. He moved with a wiry, restless energy: his eyes were quick. He dressed well, and often wore French cuffs, much to Friedman’s barbed amusement.
“Sorry,” Kreiger said, replacing the phone. “I told them to hold calls until we’ve finished. Besides—” He smiled ruefully. “That was my wife, reminding me that we’re having company tonight. Now, where were we?”
“Well, I was saying,” Hickman said, “that personally I don’t think there’s much to this theory that the Outfit killed Karen Forest and Robertson to put pressure on Walters. And, as far as that’s concerned, I don’t see much evidence that organised crime’s moving into Haight Ashbury. These hippies just don’t operate like the rest of us. For instance, they give LSD and pot to each other. Free. Out of love, or something. Therefore, there’s no profit on the turnover, and that’s something the Outfit just can’t stand. So the rumour is that the Outfit is washing its hands of the hippies, just like the rest of us.”
Kreiger turned to Friedman. “What about the Forest murder, Pete? Have you got anything more on it?”
Friedman sighed and shifted his bulk. “Negative, Carl. These hippies are so far out of it that there’s just no doing business with them.”
“Who’d you question? Who were your suspects?”
Friedman grunted, leaned forward, and picked up the folder he’d placed on the corner of Kreiger’s desk. “Well, Walters was our number one boy, I guess. But, thinking of it, I’ve about decided that everyone was so steamed up about him sleeping with a white woman that nobody really stopped to figure that he didn’t have much of a motive.”
“What about the money?” Markham asked. “That’s a motive.”
“What money?”
“The money that was taken from Karen Forest when she was murdered.”
Friedman shrugged. “As far as I could see, Walters would’ve got the money anyhow, plus some more. So why should he kill the golden goose?”
Kreiger turned to me. “You talked to Walters today, Frank. How’d he strike you?”
“He was so stoned it’s hard to say. But he’s intelligent; there’s no doubt about that.”
“What was he doing Tuesday night?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I was just getting around to asking when we got that code fourteen. But I—”
“Walters went out Tuesday night about five P.M. Markham interrupted, “and didn’t get home ’till after midnight according to his next door neighbour.”
I looked over at Markham. He’d done that to me once before: kept his information to himself until it suited him best.
“Where’d he go?” Kreiger asked Markham.
“The movies, he told someone. I haven’t had a chance to check.” Markham’s eyes flickered towards me, then quickly away.
“Walters didn’t have a motive for the Robertson murder,” I said. “Any more than he apparently had one for the Forest murder.”
“Maybe Robertson knew something that Walters didn’t want him to tell,” Friedman said. “For instance, to contradict my own point, Walters could’ve killed Karen Forest, and Robertson could’ve been a witness.”
“Why would Walters have let him go to New York, then?”
“To get rid of him. Then Robertson could’ve come back, maybe to blackmail Walters. Thus getting himself killed.”
“Maybe,” I said doubtfully.
“Or,” Kreiger put in, “Robertson could’ve committed the murder. He left town immediately afterward, and he had some unexplained money. That’s more than coincidence. He’d’ve known about Karen Forest’s money. Everyone else seemed to know about it. Then, when Robertson came back to San Francisco, Walters might’ve killed him, out of revenge. For all we know, Walters could’ve been head over heels in love with Karen Forest. That’s the trouble, though,” he said, pointedly staring at Friedman. “We don’t know enough about the Forest murder. And, more and more, it’s looking like the two killings are tied in together.”
“Who were your other suspects, Lieutenant?” I asked Friedman. “And what were the particulars? Give us a run-down.” I smiled. “We’ll give you a hand. Maybe you haven’t had any first-class sleuths working on that case; No wonder you’re having trouble.”
Friedman nodded dead pan, then slowly burlesqued an indifferent shrug. “Karen Forest was murdered at approximately ten P.M. on the night of Friday, July seventh,” he intoned. It was the standard departmental Dragnet imitation. “She was shot twice with a medium calibre pistol at a range of approximately six feet. The murderer apparently came in through the unlocked basement door, proceeding up to the victim’s bedroom. The victim had a slight cold in the head, and was reading in bed. Also drinking bourbon. Three witnesses living across the street from the Forest residence all testified, separately, that they heard shots at about ten fifteen. One witness, later discovered to’ve been out of his skull on marijuana and wandering around in the alley behind the Forest house, testified that he saw a white American male, early or middle twenties, five foot ten, medium build, hippie-length blond hair, carrying a—” Friedman paused, inhaling deeply “—carrying a brown paper bag emerging from Karen Forest’s basement door, acting very strange. However, two days later, this witness, age fifteen was surrendered to the State of New York on a runaway child warrant, so we didn’t have much chance to cross check his testimony. Still, feeling that his identification of the basement door was significant, we proceeded to roust something like thirty hippies who answered to the description. And, in between times, we sweated and pounded and insulted Frank Walters who, of course, isn’t a white American male, and certainly not blond. And then—” Friedman spread his hands, dolefully shaking his head. “And then the whole investigation slowly began grinding to a halt. And that’s where it is now. At a halt.”
“Did you ever establish whether Karen Forest was actually robbed?”
“Well,” Friedman answered judiciously, “one of my boys went over her financial picture with a fine-tooth comb. It took him three solid days. But we finally decided that eleven thousand dollars was unaccounted for. See, she wasn’t quite as hair-brained as everyone thought. At least, not financially. Everything she loaned out, she got notes for, and we determined that she’d loaned money twice to Walters and once to Cecile Franks, a nice Jewish girl who owns the Crushed Chrysanthemum. We also determined that Karen Forest had withdrawn eleven thousand dollars in cash from her bank on the day she died. So—” Friedman again eloquently spread his hands.
“What about Cecile Franks?” I asked. “Did you question her?”
Friedman grinned. “Like I say, she’s a nice Jewish girl, so I naturally never considered her a murder suspect. I did talk to her, though, about Karen Fores
t, and also about a tribal gathering the hippies had at the Crushed Chrysanthemum on the night of the Forest murder. It turned out that something like seventy-five per cent of our so-called suspects spent the whole evening at the Crushed Chrysanthemum. Which at least made the investigation easier, but of course limited the results, you might say, since everyone gave everyone else an alibi. According to my information—” he glanced sidelong at Hickman—“all our potential suspects were too stoned on drugs to move, much less commit murder. And those few who weren’t, were too absorbed in the strains of Eastern music, accompanied, by a psychedelic light show.”
“Did you interview Don Robertson?” Kreiger asked.
Friedman shook his head. “As nearly as I could make out that snapshot of yours, Robertson, the dead man had dark hair. We were looking for a blond, remember.”
I glanced at my notebook. “How about John Harper? Did you talk to him?”
Friedman frowned, and leaned forward laboriously to spend a long moment riffling through the onionskin sheets in his folder. Friedman had a reputation for keeping the most disorganised files in the entire detective division. “Yeah, here it is,” he said finally. “John Harper. He was one of the thirty we interviewed. He fitted perfectly: five foot ten, long blond hair, the whole bit. He even has a juvenile record for malicious mischief and assault. Only difficulty was, he spent the evening at the Crushed Chrysanthemum.
“How about Angie Sawyer?”
“Negative. Like I say, I decided finally to go along with my eye witness’ description, even though he was stoned. Therefore, I eliminated girls.” He hesitated, then said thoughtfully, “Come to think about it, though, the girls’ hair is getting shorter, while the boys’ is getting longer.”
“How about a boy named Sandy Tomilson?”
“Sandy Tomilson. Let’s see—” He went through the onionskins again. “Yeah, here he is.”
My own reaction surprised me—gut-empty, breath-tightened.
“I understand,” I said, asking the bogus question with a professional indifference, “that Tomilson knew Robertson.”
Friedman shrugged. “Not that I could find out.” He scanned the interrogation report. “He’s just another blond Caucasian male. He was part of the Haight Ashbury scene at the time, so we questioned him. However, like Harper, he also spent the night of the Forest murder at the Crushed Chrysanthemum.”
“Do you have a local address on him?”
“867 Elizabeth.”
I copied down the address, keeping my eyes averted.
Was Claudia there with him? Now? Were they—
“When’s the Sawyer girl going to be ready for questioning, Frank?” Kreiger was asking.
“Wh—what?”
Frowning, he repeated the question.
“Probably not before morning,” I answered. “She’s out at the County Hospital. I thought, though, that I’d have a look through her apartment after we get through here. Incidentally—” I turned to Friedman. “Incidentally, Angie Sawyer has long blonde hair.”
“Great. Let’s get a confession from her while she’s off on her trip, and wrap up the case.” Friedman glanced at his watch, then turned to Kreiger. “I’m due at the D.A.’s office in twenty minutes.”
The Captain turned to me as Friedman left the office. “From you, Frank, we need everything we can get on Robertson. You’d better keep checking ’till you get someone who saw him Tuesday night. He didn’t get off a plane and take a cab right to the Presidio, where he got himself shot. And even if he did, there’s still the cab driver. Also, we’ve got to find out about that unexplained money. That could tie the whole thing up.”
I felt a little defensive as I said, “Angie Sawyer’s our best bet, I think. But she won’t make any sense for several hours yet.”
Kreiger rose to his feet, signalling the end of the meeting. “Check me at, say, seven o’clock, after dinner. I think I’ll have the hotels and transportation terminals checked, provided I’ve still got the manpower. It looks to me like we’re going to be badly stuck for witnesses to Robertson’s movements Tuesday night, unless we really do some leg work. And, in the meantime—” he turned to Hickman, “—check with your boys for me, Dave. It sure can’t hurt.”
Markham irritably thumped his knee against the radio box. “That thing’s worse since they fixed it, I swear to God.”
“You can take it into the shop tomorrow. Why don’t you leave it all day, and I’ll get us another car. Everyone’s out with the flu; it’ll be a good chance.”
He thumped the box again, harder; the car swerved towards the centre line.
“Take it easy. That doesn’t do any good.”
“It so happens,” Markham said, “that I used to fool around with ham radios when I was kid. And sometimes, if you knock them just right, you can fix them. Inside the tubes are little fine wires, and if you rattle the tubes when they’re hot, you can actually weld those little wires back together.”
Not replying, I leaned back against the seat, closing my eyes and yawning.
“Want me to take a turn around the park?” Markham asked, “so you can catch a few winks?”
I grunted. “You’d probably tell Kreiger.” I’d been thinking about Markham’s own private information on Walters’ movements Tuesday night. And the more I thought about it, the less I liked it.
“What’s the matter?” Markham asked finally. “You hacked that I didn’t tell you first about Walters’ movements the other night?”
I opened one eye, looked at him, and closed the eye. I nodded, “That’s right. I’m hacked.”
We drove in another silence, stop and go. Markham cleared his throat, then said, “When was I supposed to tell you? While we were up on the roof today?”
I sighed. “Forget it.”
We drove another two blocks in a taut silence. Finally he said, “You know what your problem is, Frank?”
I didn’t reply.
“Your problem,” he continued, “is that you keep too much inside. You brood about things, instead of coming right out with them.”
“Okay. I’ll mention that to my psychiatrist.” I opened my eyes, sat up, and looked at him. “You want to know what your problem is?”
“Sure. I’m always glad to learn something about myself.” But I saw the colour rising in his neck.
“Well,” I said, “your problem is that, really you’re not glad to learn—about yourself, or anyone else. Take Vannuchi, this morning. Because you didn’t happen to like his looks, you got him sore at you. But, whether you like him or not, Vannuchi’s probably got a higher I.Q. than either one of us, and he knows the score down in Haight Ashbury, which neither one of us knows. So, when you antagonise someone like Vannuchi, you’re working against yourself. And all because, really, you aren’t willing to look past Vannuchi’s beard, and learn something about him.”
“I guess,” he said slowly, “that you can either stand these hippies, or you can’t. And maybe you can stand the idea of a spade shacking up with a white woman. Personally, I can’t stand it. I wasn’t raised that way.”
“How were you raised, that’s something else. Crooks’re still people you know. They get sore, just like the rest of us. And they like to be conned, just like the rest of us. And the sooner you figure that out, and quit getting them sore, the easier it’ll be on both of us.”
“Well,” Markham said, swinging to the kerb across from the Crushed Chrysanthemum, “I guess that’s where we differ: whether crooks’re people or not. I’ve never figured they were.”
“Maybe you’re right: maybe that’s where we differ.” I pointed across the street. “See if you can get into Angie Sawyer’s place. Find out whether anyone saw her Tuesday night, between five and midnight. Maybe—” I glanced at him. “Maybe Vannuchi can help you.”
He returned my look, nodding with a mocking obedience. “Where’ll I meet you?”
“Right here, in about an hour.” I glanced at my watch. “Six thirty, say.”
“Where�
��re you going?”
“I’m going to find John Harper. He was seen with Robertson just before Robertson left town.”
I drove around the corner, pulled over, and got out the map. 867 Elizabeth was only three blocks away.
It was a run-down apartment building, probably ten or twelve units. The windows were covered with conglomerate burlap, bamboo, bedsheets and paisley prints, or painted with psychedelic flowers.
On the sidewalk I paused, aware that I felt baffled and strangely uncertain.
Was she there? Inside?
With him?
She’d been almost ten years old, when I’d taken that plane from Detroit, seven years ago.
Now she was almost seventeen. A woman.
What was I now? I spent the days and the nights prowling through dingy streets and filthy alleyways, hunting down the human scum that collected there—the defeated, and the dangerous. Yet I was defeated, too. Not once in the past ten years had I felt the same assurance I’d heard yesterday in Carolyn’s voice. She had the looks, the intelligence, and the money—everything.
And she had the children. My son, Darrell, who looked like me—who wrote to me, three times a year.
I was in the entryway, looking over the mailboxes.
There was no Tomilson. And no Hastings.
I’d told Markham an hour. We were due downtown by seven. And I had to make the Harper interview.
Afterwards, then, I would come back. On my own time.
NINE
HARPER LIVED TWO BLOCKS up from Haight Street, in a neighbourhood dividing Haight Ashbury from Buena Vista Heights, an upper middle class district where the homes were old, large and well kept.
Harper’s apartment was on the first floor of a converted mansion that had seen better days. I automatically surveyed the hallway, noting the travel posters, the chipped paint and the worn carpeting. Yet there was no refuse, no piled newspapers, and the place didn’t smell.
On my second ring the door opened.
“Are you John Harper?”
“That’s right.” He was about five foot ten, and weighed perhaps one sixty. His blond hair grew low on his neck; his pale blue eyes were quick and wary; his face was lean and delicately moulded, too handsome, almost effete. He had the tense, neurotic, finely drawn good looks of the spoiled child, grown now into a young adult, too soon. His eyes were cynical and insolently knowing—street wise.
The Lonely Hunter (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries) Page 8