Hastings rose, exhaled, stepped back. “These witnesses—are they cooperative? Reliable?”
Collier nodded decisively. “Absolutely reliable, I’d say. They’re in their late twenties, very bright, very conscientious, very well spoken—yuppies, I guess. College grads, no question.”
“You’ve got their addresses, phone numbers?”
“Of course.” The reply came stiffly.
Ignoring her muted indignation, he said, “How’d they describe the assailant?”
“Tall and slim, moved like a young man, they thought. Dressed casually. They thought he might be black, but that’s just a guess, I think. He was probably wearing a stocking cap. But the light here—just two streetlights for the whole block …” She gestured, shrugged.
“So what else? Anything?”
“That lady I was talking to …” She pointed to the overweight gray-haired woman wearing a coat over her nightgown, then pointed to a nearby small one-story Victorian house, authentically restored. “She came out of her house about eleven thirty, after the area was secure. She recognized the victim. Not by name, but by looks. She says he lived in the next block, about halfway up the hill. She says—”
“Lieutenant.” It was Serrano, hesitantly interrupting. The sergeant was standing beside a man of medium height, medium weight, medium age. Meticulously barbered and groomed, he was wearing the after-dark clothing indigenous to the culture of the Castro: tight blue jeans, a working man’s jacket, running shoes. A subtle mix of mannerisms suggested that the man standing beside Serrano was gay. The man was badly shaken, repeatedly swallowing, licking his lips, then swallowing again. His complexion was pallid. His eyes were hunted; he couldn’t quite stand still.
Hastings moved expectantly toward Serrano, who spoke guardedly across the yellow tape: “This is Graham Blair, Lieutenant. He knows the victim.”
Hastings stepped back over the tape, drew Serrano and Graham Blair to the rear of a parked police cruiser. Hastings took out his notebook and flipped to a clear page, ready to copy down Blair’s address and phone numbers. Blair lived on Russian Hill, across the city. Having taken down the information, Hastings turned to a fresh notebook page. Saying: “And the victim? What’s his name?”
“It’s Charles.”
Hastings wrote “Charles,” then looked expectantly at the other man. “Last name?”
“Sorry.” Blair’s uncertain smile was apologetic. “I don’t know his last name. I just see him once in a while.”
As the witness was speaking, Hastings had motioned for Janet to join them. “Where’d you see him?” she asked. “How often?”
“Well …” Blair shrugged, frowned, licked his lips, blinked, swallowed spasmodically. “Well, maybe once a month, I’d say, something like that. Mostly at Toby’s.”
“Toby’s?” Hastings asked.
But Janet had the answer: “The bar,” she said, addressing Blair. “On Castro.”
Visibly reassured, plainly yearning to make contact with someone sympathetic, Blair nodded. “Right. Just off Eighteenth.”
“Were you at Toby’s tonight?” Hastings asked.
“Yes, I was.”
“And was Charles there, too?”
Blair nodded. “Yes, he was.”
“Did you speak to him?”
“No, I didn’t. I’d gone to a movie, and I just stopped by Toby’s for a drink. I saw Charles in the crowd, that’s all.”
“But you’ve talked to him in the past. You know him.”
Blair considered carefully. “I’ve said a few things to him. But we weren’t friends, or even acquaintances. I just knew him by sight, that’s all.”
“Considering that you didn’t really know the victim,” Collier said, “you’re pretty upset. Why’s that, Mr. Blair?”
As if he were trying to assess the real significance of the question, he studied her face for a moment. Then he spoke hesitantly, but with obvious determination: “I’m a gay man, Miss—?”
“Collier. Inspector Janet Collier.”
Staring down at the body, his manner projecting the most abject despair, Blair spoke heavily: “It’s hard, you know. Being gay, I mean. Even in San Francisco—even in the Castro—it’s hard.”
Hastings exchanged a glance with Janet, who shrugged. She had no more questions. Hastings spoke to the witness. “I guess that’ll do it for now, Mr. Blair. You aren’t planning to leave town, are you?”
“N—no. Not really.”
“We’ll be talking to you, then. And thanks for coming forward.” Hastings gestured to Collier, and they recrossed the yellow tapes together. At the corner of Eighteenth, he saw the white coroner’s van making the turn into Collingwood. Hastings stepped to the body, used one rubber-clad forefinger to expose the front pockets of the rough woolen lumberjack shirt the victim was wearing, shirttail out. As he’d hoped, he found a wallet. Gingerly, he extracted the wallet as Collier produced a small high-intensity flashlight. An examination of the victim’s driver’s license yielded everything they needed: First name, Charles. Last name, Hardaway. Age, thirty-five. Residence, 234 Collingwood.
Hastings checked the wallet, which contained twenty-three dollars. He handed the wallet to Collier, who was ready with a clear plastic evidence bag and a ballpoint pen to identify the evidence.
“I’ll go ring his bell,” Hastings said, “see what happens. You stay here, make sure everything gets done right. Wait for me. I’ll sign the releases. If anything comes up”—from an inside pocket he produced a miniature surveillance radio—“we’ll use channel three.” As he spoke, he switched on the radio, clicked the channel selector to 3.
Collier was doing the same. The radio check was normal.
“Any questions?” he asked.
“No questions.”
“Remember,” Hastings said, “be picky. Picky is what Homicide is all about. Take your time, do it right. Never forget about the chain of evidence. That’s all the DAs care about, a good chain of evidence.” He ventured a smile.
“Picky.” Spontaneously, she returned the smile. “Gotcha.”
5
THE IMAGES TUMBLED AND tossed and whirled in the darkness of the void: himself as a child. His mother, holding him close. His father, glowering. Fritz, his dog, whining and barking. All of it smothering him, then leaving him alone, crying. And the clangor—the sharp, piercing mechanical warble:
The door buzzer. Someone was at the door.
Eyes open now, he realized that his gaze was fixed on the TV screen. It was an old movie, black and white. Warner Baxter, dressed in top hat and tails.
The buzzer sounded again, more insistently.
Confused, he dropped his gaze to his hand. Yes, he still held the TV wand. In the dimly lit living room he blinked, focused on the wand, then touched the power button.
The time
God, the time
Ten minutes after one o’clock, his watch read. Two hours after Charles had promised to come home. And now, drunk, having lost his key, Charles was at the front door, demanding admittance.
How had Charles lost his keys? His jeans—he’d met someone at Toby’s, and they’d gone home, and when he’d slipped off his jeans, the keys had fallen to the floor. Brian—at Toby’s, Charles had met Brian, gone home with him. They’d—
Once more, the buzzer sounded, a remorseless peal. Half a minute. A full minute, and more.
He placed the wand on a lamp table, braced both hands on the arms of his easy chair, levered himself laboriously to his feet. How humiliating, that he must wrestle with his own body, the contest that, day by day, week by week, he was losing. As a child, he had run in the park with his dog. All day long, he ran.
He was making his way to the door. He realized that his eyes were stinging. Tears of self-pity were almost blinding him. He turned the knob, let the door come open—and faced a stranger on the landing. A big, trim, heavily muscled man wearing casual khakis, a dark green nylon windbreaker, and loafers. Mid-forties, calm brown eyes, unremarkab
le features, dark brown hair, a quiet voice, somehow compelling:
“Is this Charles Hardaway’s residence?” As he spoke, the stranger produced a leather folder, open in his palm.
A gold badge …
Police.
At ten minutes after one o’clock, the police had come.
The policeman was waiting for a reply, patiently—but watchfully, implacably.
“Charles,” he faltered. “It’s Charles.” Suddenly he slumped against the entryway wall, for support.
“Did he live here?”
“Oh, God, you say ‘did’? Is that what you said? You’re saying that—” His throat closed. Palpably, he could feel his strength draining away, leaving him helpless, still slumped against the wall, head lowered. It was, he knew, shock. He’d once done volunteer work for the Red Cross. He’d learned to recognize shock in others. Now, in the wee hours, it was his turn.
“May I have your name, sir?”
“Yes. It—it’s—” He swallowed. “It’s Carpenter. Randall Carpenter. Randy.”
“Do you live here, Mr. Carpenter?”
“Y—yes. I—we—” He broke off, began shaking his head. His legs were beginning to tremble.
“Listen,” the policeman was saying as he moved a half-step closer. “Let’s go inside, sit down.”
“But I—”
“Do it,” the policeman ordered quietly. “Sit down. I’ll get you a glass of water. Then we’ll talk. Here …” He grasped Carpenter’s forearm in a firm grip, turned him, led him to a sofa, waited until he was seated. Then the policeman returned to the front door, locked it, and asked for directions to the kitchen, and the glasses.
As he gulped down half a glass of water, Carpenter watched the detective over the rim of the glass. When Carpenter set the glass aside, the policeman said, “My name is Frank Hastings. I’m a lieutenant in Homicide, co-commander of the squad. And you’re right. I’ve come about Charles Hardaway.” He spoke in a quiet, neutral voice. His gaze remained locked on Carpenter’s face, making remorseless eye contact. “Did you see Hardaway today?”
“I—I.” Carpenter frowned, an expression of desperate bafflement. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean,” Hastings said, “that I’d like to know the last time you saw him. When, and where.”
“It—it was here. It was about nine o’clock. Charles decided to—to get out. Just for an hour or two, no more. He—” Once more, his throat closed. Then, in a low, coarse whisper, begging, he said, “Tell me what happened. You’ve got to tell me what happened. Please.”
Hastings drew a deep, regretful breath, then spoke softly, gravely: “Charles apparently went to Toby’s for a few drinks. He apparently left Toby’s a little after eleven. He walked to Eighteenth Street, walked to Collingwood, and turned up the hill. He was probably coming here—coming home. He’d only come a block on Collingwood when someone attacked him. It was probably a beating, we don’t know the cause of death yet. But he—”
Carpenter spoke without conscious thought, reacting to some blind, urgent imperative: “Eleven o’clock, you say. He left Toby’s at eleven?”
Hastings nodded. “About eleven. Yes.”
“Alone, you say. He left Toby’s alone.” He spoke insistently, demanding the most precise accuracy. Because it was all that mattered, now. It was all that would remain. Charles hadn’t gone with Brian. He’d been coming home. Just as he’d promised, he was coming home.
“And he’s dead.” It was a statement, all hope surrendered. He could see the truth plain in the detective’s eyes, downcast and regretful. They’d killed Charles. Gay-bashing in the Castro, bully boys. Skinheads, getting their rocks off.
“Yes,” Hastings answered. “Yes, he’s dead. He died quickly, I think. I think he fell and hit his head on the curb.” The detective cleared his throat. Adding tentatively: “If that helps.”
Carpenter drained the glass of water. Then he drew up his feet close to the sofa, levered himself to stand erect. “I’m going to make a drink. Bourbon. Do you want one?”
“No, thanks. I don’t drink.”
Carpenter nodded, went slowly into the kitchen, opened the overhead cupboard where they kept the liquor. He poured bourbon into a short glass, closed the cupboard door. Walking carefully, he returned to the living room, lowered himself into an armchair. Holding the glass in both hands, he gulped. Once, twice. After he placed the glass on the table, he said, “The reason I get around so slowly, it’s because I have AIDS.”
“Ah …” Hastings nodded. “Yes. I see.” He let a moment pass. “You and Charles Hardaway, you’re—roommates.”
Carpenter smiled, an exhausted, defeated admission of utter despair. “You can say it, Lieutenant.”
“I—”
As if he were instructing a reluctant pupil, Carpenter spoke with exaggerated patience: “The word is lovers. We were lovers, Charles and I. For years, we’ve been lovers.”
“And you—you depended on him.”
“Yes. I depended on him.”
Hastings nodded. It was an effort to convey a policeman’s sympathy for this sad, frail, dying man. But it was a sympathy Hastings knew he would never feel. Looking for votes, the mayor had once decreed that a psychologist be hired to instruct the members of the Inspectors’ Bureau in gay awareness. Hastings had managed to miss all but one session.
With a businesslike gesture, he took out his notebook, found a fresh page. “What I’d like,” he said, “is for you to tell me everything you can about Charles Hardaway. Start with the statistics—age, occupation, previous residence, things like that.”
“My God.” Carpenter gulped more bourbon. “Can’t it wait? This whole thing, I—I can’t handle it. I—”
“If you want us to find out who killed him, get the guy locked up, you’re going to have to cooperate, Mr. Carpenter. Now. Right now. In homicides like this the more time that elapses, the worse our chance of closing the case.”
“I know. But, Jesus, I—”
“How old was Hardaway?”
“Thirty-five, last month.” It was no more than a whisper.
“Occupation?”
“Draftsman.”
“Do you know the name of his employer?”
“Stansfield and Baker. They’re in San Mateo.”
“Do you know how long he worked for Stansfield and Baker?”
“About two years. Before that, he worked for Buchnel.”
“You said you and Charles were together for years. How many years, exactly?”
“Almost three years.”
“And before that, what do you know about Charles Hardaway?”
Carpenter shrugged. “It’s a pretty common story. He grew up in Detroit, and did the usual things—went to Michigan State, but dropped out after a couple of years. Went back to Detroit, got a drafting job, married a girl he’d known since the first grade. She had a baby—a boy. All that lasted until Charles turned thirty, when he came out. He apologized to his wife, who knew it was coming—and to his mother, who cried—and to his father, who broke his nose. He came to San Francisco and had his nose fixed. He got the job at Buchnel, and found a nice apartment, just a few blocks from here. Then, of course, Buchnel found out he was gay, and they fired him. He didn’t care. He’d saved some money, and he spent a couple of months in Europe. I met him just after he’d come back. I had this apartment, and I was looking for someone. I’d just gotten out of a relationship, and …” Carpenter’s voice trailed off, his eyes lost focus, blurred by pain. In his narrow, wasted face, the lines of despair were deeply etched.
“And so Hardaway moved in here.”
Carpenter nodded.
“About three years ago.”
“Yes.”
“Did Hardaway have any enemies, anyone who’d threatened him, carried a grudge against him?”
As if the question caused physical discomfort, Carpenter winced, then shook his head. “N—no. Everyone liked Charles. Everyone. He was so wonderful, so carefree. An
d so—” Once more, Carpenter faltered before finally saying in a whisper, “So beautiful. So very beautiful.”
Momentarily Hastings’s thoughts shifted to the amorphous body sprawled half in the gutter, only a block away. What should he do, if Carpenter wanted to see his lover’s body? What would he say?
“But someone wanted him dead,” Hastings said. “Someone hated him enough to kill him.”
“Somebody got drunk, and decided to do a little gay-bashing,” Carpenter retorted bitterly. “Every weekend in the Castro, it happens. The only difference, this time, it went too far. Usually it’s a broken nose, or a ruptured spleen. Or maybe someone loses an eye, or they get a leg broken. That’s the current fad: find a fag, punch him out, then put his leg across a curb, and jump on it. But those stories never get in the papers or on TV.”
“I know about gay-bashing.” Hastings spoke quietly, in an attempt to focus the other man’s attention on his words. “And this doesn’t fit the pattern. Gay-bashers travel in packs. Or, at least, two or three. They’re usually drunk, and they’re loud. None of that fits the information we have on this case. We’re talking about one man who did a very good, quiet job of attacking Charles Hardaway.”
Dropping his gaze, sitting slumped, head hanging, dejection personified, Carpenter made no response.
“Tomorrow,” Hastings said, “I’ll be sending someone to get the victim’s effects. Not his personal effects. Not clothing, or jewelry. We’ll want correspondence and records—things that show his financial situation, and his associations, his past life. Also—” Hastings broke off. Now came the hard part: “Also, tomorrow, we’ll need to have the, ah, victim identified.”
Without moving, or raising his head, Carpenter mumbled, “I knew that was coming.”
“If there’s anyone else—a relative …” Hastings let it go unfinished.
Numbly, Carpenter shook his head. “He’s got a sister. Helen. She lives in LA. But—” As if to order his thoughts, Carpenter broke off. Finally, with great effort, he raised his eyes to engage Hastings. “But I—I guess I’ll do it. I mean, somebody’s got to. So it should be me.”
“I’ll send someone in the morning. She’ll be examining Mr. Hardaway’s effects—his papers, as I said. Her name is Collier. Inspector Janet Collier. She’ll take you to the—ah—morgue.”
Calculated Risk (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries) Page 2