Long Way Down (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  “Six, seven months. I forget.”

  “Where did you live before you came to San Francisco?”

  “I lived in Chicago.”

  “Were you ever arrested in Chicago?”

  Her glance glittered with quick malevolence. “I never had any trouble with the law in my whole life until I came here.”

  “Have you ever lived anywhere but San Francisco and Chicago?”

  “No. And I wish I’d stayed in Chicago, too.”

  “How long have you known Thomas King, Miss Farley?”

  For a moment she didn’t reply. Her face was averted. As she continued to pick at the table edge, her thumb was whitening with strain. “What about that lawyer? What the hell happened to my lawyer, anyhow?”

  “The court will appoint one. That’s a legal matter. It’s got nothing to do with us.”

  “Then I don’t have to answer. Not without a lawyer.”

  “That’s right, you don’t,” I said readily. “However, if you’ve got nothing to hide from us, there’s no point in not answering my last question. It’s a simple request for information. I want to find out how long you knew Thomas King. I could ask the same question of his wife.”

  “That’s assuming I know him.”

  I nodded. “That’s true, Miss Farley. That’s the assumption I’m making—that you knew Thomas King. Am I wrong?”

  The muscles in her neck were corded now. She was swallowing rapidly. The fingers of her left hand, flat on the table, were beginning to tremble. Quickly she snatched the hand into her lap. Her voice was a ragged whisper. “No, you’re not wrong. I knew him.”

  I decided to ease her along slowly, past the point where a lawyer could help her. I’d mix up my questions, pretending a friendly concern. Then I’d begin applying pressure. “How long have you known him?” I pitched my voice to a low, confidential note.

  “Ab—” She swallowed. “About six months, I guess. Maybe longer.”

  “You said you’ve lived at 436 Hoffman for six or seven months. Did you know Thomas King before you moved to your present address?”

  “For a little while. Not long.”

  “Where did you live before, Miss Farley?”

  “Before when?”

  “Before you moved to Hoffman Street.”

  Her sidelong glance was furtive. “I, ah, lived different places. I moved a lot.”

  “You didn’t have any permanent address?”

  She shrugged, then nodded.

  “You lived with men.” It was a casual, offhand statement—not a question.

  Again she shrugged, then said, “Maybe I’ll have a cigarette after all. I mean, I don’t really smoke. But …” She let it go unfinished. Canelli gave her a cigarette and held a match for her. She inhaled deeply, then blew out a ragged, tremulous smoke-plume.

  Silently I watched her smoke half the cigarette. She smoked ravenously, drawing the smoke into her lungs in short, sharp gasps. She kept her eyes averted. I gestured to the file folder, lying closed on the table. “I’m not trying to hang you for a few tricks you’ve turned, Diane,” I said quietly. “This isn’t a vice roust. It’s not any kind of a roust. I’m just interested in the death of Thomas King. Do you understand?”

  She snorted. “I understand what you’re saying. But I don’t have to believe you.”

  “No, you don’t. But you’d be a fool not to believe me.” I gestured again to the folder. “That’s your file—your jacket, we call it. I know all about the beef you had fourteen months ago. But that beef’s got nothing to do with me—with this investigation. Not unless you’re uncooperative.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” She savagely twisted out her cigarette.

  I sighed. “It’s supposed to mean that if you’ll go along with me, I’ll go along with you. We can do it the easy way or the hard way.”

  “Well, what’s so important about me—about where I lived before, and everything?”

  “I like to know who I’m talking to, Miss Farley. It’s as simple as that. For instance, I’d like to know why you decided to get your own place, after just—living around.”

  I’d struck an unsuspected nerve.

  “I decided to get my own place,” she flared, “because I got tired of—of getting thrown out on my ass, every time I didn’t feel like doing tricks in bed. It—it’s as simple as that. It—” She stared balefully down at the jacket, her mouth working. Finally, in a low, harsh whisper, she said, “It’s not always like it says in your goddamn reports, you know. I mean, just because you write it down and then get some poor bastard to sign it, that don’t”—she suddenly gulped—“that don’t make it so. That don’t make it so at all.” Her voice was ragged, close to cracking. She was slumping in her chair, deadly tired. Fatigue was loosening her tongue. Fatigue, and a suddenly overwhelming sense of self-pity.

  “We’re saying the same thing, Miss Farley.” I gestured negligently toward the folder. “I already told you, I’m not interested in what’s there. I just want your story.”

  The twisted curve of her lips shaped a silent obscenity. “My story is really very simple, Lieutenant. Very goddamn simple. I never knew my father, as the saying goes. And my mother, so called, didn’t give a goddamn what happened to me, just so long as I stayed out of her bedroom at night. I don’t mean that she was a hooker. She wasn’t. She just liked men more than she liked me, is all. So I got married when I was seventeen—the same age as my mother always said she got married, except she really didn’t. I had that on her, anyhow. I actually got married, but she never did. And I think it maybe bugged her. I really do. So then, the next thing, I got pregnant. So my husband, naturally, took off—just like my father did. Or anyway, the way my mother said he did. There’s a difference, I find out. There’s a big goddamn difference. So then”—she paused, drawing a deep, unsteady breath—“so then I had an abortion. And abortions, you know, don’t come cheap. So—” Again she paused. She was frowning, staring fixedly down at the file folder. Her voice had slipped to a lower, more distant note.

  “So you took money from men.” I spoke very softly—suggesting, not accusing.

  She nodded slowly. “Right. Like you say, I took money from men. I didn’t have any choice. I mean, abortionists don’t take IOU’s, you know.”

  “So then you came out here, to San Francisco.”

  “Yeah,” she answered bitterly. “I came out here. And what a mistake that was. I mean, I’d always heard that San Francisco was the place to come, especially if you don’t mind taking your clothes off once in a while. And, for a while, that’s what I did. I mean, I was a go-go girl. But then I found out that it’s just another hustle, being a go-go girl. That money, at first, seems pretty good. But you never see any of it. So then—” She raised one hand from the table in a small gesture of exhausted resignation. “So then I moved in with a guy. And then another guy. And, between times, I started modeling for a couple of—you know—photographers.”

  “I saw some of the pictures.” She looked up sharply, surprised. “In your apartment.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Yeah. Well, if you saw them, you know that I don’t model for any hard-core stuff. I mean, I don’t mind taking my clothes off, like I said. There’s nothing wrong with that. Especially not now—not in the past few years. But that’s it. Period. I mean, I had lots of chances to—you know—pose with men. But I never did. Those pictures you saw in my place, that’s it, as far as I’m concerned. Period. No fun and games.”

  I nodded somberly, pandering to her outraged hooker’s virtue. Then, to ease off momentarily, I said, “Your apartment puzzled me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It looks—” I hesitated. “It looks like it belongs to a hippie, almost. And that doesn’t seem to be your bag.”

  “Yeah. Well, you’re right. I rented it furnished, see? I got all that furniture for two hundred dollars. Not that I like it But I took it.” She shrugged. “One of these days I’ll move.”

  “So you’ve lived there for
six months.”

  She nodded. Her head bobbed loosely. She was surrendering to fatigue.

  “And, during the past six months, you’ve been doing what you did before. Modeling.”

  Again she nodded loosely.

  “And once in a while you—have a man in.”

  She didn’t reply, didn’t stir. But she didn’t deny it. She was coming around, answering more readily.

  “How’d you happen to meet Thomas King? Did you pose for him? Is that how you met him?”

  “No. I—” She hesitated, glancing first at me, then at Canelli. It was her final moment of decision. When she finally sighed, one last time, I knew that I had her. “I posed for a friend of Tom’s,” she said.

  I picked up a pencil. “Who was that, Miss Farley?”

  “His name is Roger Sobel.”

  “So you worked for Sobel, and met Thomas King through him.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And so King started—coming around.”

  She smiled bitterly. “Yeah. Right. He started ‘coming around’ pretty often, as a matter of fact.”

  “How often?”

  She shrugged. “Once a week, maybe.”

  “Did you ever go out anywhere together? For dinner, or drinks?”

  “No. He just—came around.”

  “Would he phone first?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Did he phone Tuesday?”

  “No.”

  “What time did King usually arrive at your place?”

  “Nine or ten. Sometime in there.”

  “And how long would he stay?”

  She shrugged. “Until one o’clock, maybe. Sometimes later.”

  “Did he ever stay overnight?”

  “Once or twice, when he was supposed to be—you know—out of town. Can I have another cigarette?”

  As Canelli stepped quickly forward, lighting her cigarette, I decided to shift my ground. “You and Jack Winship went out about six Tuesday evening. Is that right?”

  She looked up sharply, surprised. “Did—did I say anything about Jack?”

  I shook my head, staring at her silently. Then: “You and Winship did go out about six, though, didn’t you?”

  She dropped her eyes, frowning down at the cigarette. Finally she nodded. “Yeah, I guess it was about six. Maybe a little later.”

  “Were you going to eat dinner?”

  “Well, we started out to eat dinner. We went down to The Shed.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Down on Twenty-fourth Street. Just ten blocks or so from where I live.”

  “All right. Then what?”

  “Well, we—we started drinking. Wine. There were some people there. Friends of Jack’s—people he’d known up in Portland, or somewhere. So we all started drinking, like I said. Then we had something to eat. And then more wine. So finally”—she drew sharply on the cigarette—“so finally it got to be eleven o’clock, and we were all gassed. So I said I wanted to go. And Jack, he didn’t want to leave.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged sullenly. “He just wanted to stay, that’s all. And I wanted to leave.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I started walking. I mean, I told that son of a bitch where he could shove it, and I started walking. Like I said, it’s only ten or twelve blocks. It’s no big deal.”

  “What time did you get home?”

  “Eleven, I guess. Maybe later. I was—well, I’d been drinking, like I said. And I—”

  “Did you expect to find Thomas King at your place?”

  “No. I already told you, I—”

  “Did you expect to find anyone? Any—friend? Any John?”

  “No,” she answered plaintively. “I already told you. I just—”

  “Were you drunk when you arrived home?”

  She finished her cigarette and ground out the butt in the ashtray. She began to shake her head in a dull, dogged arc. “I wasn’t drunk. Not really drunk. I was—you know—just high, that’s all.”

  “All right. Now, what happened when you got to your place? I want you to tell me exactly what happened.”

  “Yeah. Well, there—” She licked at her lips. “There isn’t much to tell. I mean, I—I just went inside, and I—I found him dead.”

  “Was the outside door locked when you entered your apartment?”

  “Well, I—I suppose so. Yeah.”

  “Do you always carry a key?”

  “Sure I do. I mean, around this city, you’d goddamn better lock your doors. This is the goddamnedest—”

  “Did Thomas King have a key, too?”

  She sighed. “Yeah, he had one.”

  “All right. So you went inside. Where was the body?”

  “In—in my bedroom. Between the bed and the wall.”

  “Was he facing the bed or the wall?”

  “The—the wall, I think.” She nodded, frowning. “Yeah, the wall.”

  “All right. What happened then?”

  “Well, I—Christ, I don’t remember. Not really. I mean, about the first thing I remember, I was throwing up.”

  “Where did you throw up?”

  “In the toilet.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Well, then I—I had to go to the toilet.”

  “Yes. Then what?”

  “Well, then I guess I just—just kind of wandered around. I remember that, first, I didn’t think he was dead. I mean, I didn’t see how he could be dead. Not there. Not in my—my apartment So I—I think I put my hand on him. And he felt—” She shuddered. “He felt clammy. Real—real clammy. Like a—a wet rock, or something. So then I—I remember that I got real—real scared. Terrified. I—I suddenly felt like whoever killed him, they were still there, and they’d kill me. So then I—” She paused, blinking dull, unfocused eyes. Her voice had fallen to a low, dazed monotone. Reliving the experience, already narcotized by fatigue, she was slipping into mild shock.

  “The next thing I knew,” she said, “I—I was in his car. I mean, I was in it, and I didn’t know how, or why, or what I was doing, really. I just knew that I—I had to get away from there before I got killed. So then, the next thing, I was already on the freeway, heading south. And Christ, I—”

  “Why south? Why not north, or east?”

  “Well, I guess I didn’t want to—you know—go over any bridges, and pay toll, or anything.”

  “You didn’t want to be seen, in other words.”

  “Yeah, I guesso. I mean, I just didn’t know what I was doing. Not really. I didn’t even really know I was on the freeway, for Christ’s sake, until I was pulled over to the side of the road, and I was throwing up again. So then I—”

  “Don’t you remember taking King’s keys and his wallet?” I interrupted sharply. “You must remember that. You remember everything else. You remember touching him the first time. Are you telling me that you remember touching him—how he felt—but you can’t remember taking his keys?”

  She doggedly, hopelessly shook her head. “I don’t, though. I swear to Christ, I don’t.”

  “Were you still drunk?”

  “I—I guesso. I dunno.”

  I nodded as I looked her over, taking my time. Finally, pitching my voice to a casual note, I asked, “Are you wearing the same clothes you wore Tuesday night, Diane?”

  She frowned at the question, dully perplexed. Then she stared down at her wrinkled, grimy slacks. “Yeah. They’re the same. Why?”

  I glanced at Canelli. He was nodding solemnly.

  “The reason I’m asking,” I said, “is that if we can verify that you were wearing those clothes Tuesday night at The Shed, and if the lab can’t find any evidence of blood, then it’s possible that your only problem will be a rap for car theft.”

  “W—what’d you mean? What’re you saying, anyhow?”

  “I’m saying that your bedroom looked like a slaughterhouse, Diane. And if it’s true that the murderer knifed Thomas King, then he—or she—got
covered with blood. So if we test your clothes, we can—”

  “But I didn’t kill him. I already told you that. I already told you what happened. I—”

  “No one voluntarily admits to murder, Diane. Not the murderer, anyhow.” I pushed my chair back and nodded to Canelli, who stepped to the door and turned the lock.

  “Inspector Canelli will process you. We’ll take your clothes and test them. If you’re lucky, you’ll be out on bail tomorrow. For Grand Theft Auto.”

  She was still shaking her head as she stared at me with a kind of prim, wide-eyed outrage.

  “By the way,” I said, rising to my feet. “Are you sure that Jack Winship was at The Shed when you left?”

  She nodded. “I’m sure. The bastard.”

  “Where could we find him?”

  “Who? Jack?”

  “Yes.”

  “I dunno. He—a lot of the time, whenever I had someone with me, he’d be around the neighborhood. Just hanging around, sleeping in his van.”

  “So you did expect someone, Tuesday night?”

  “N-no. I didn’t. I meant that—”

  “You expected someone, Diane. You just said so.”

  “No,” she moaned. “I didn’t mean that. I just meant that we had a fight, Jack and me. So I didn’t expect Jack at my place, that night. Usually, whenever we have a fight, it takes him a while to cool down. Me, too.”

  “Where do you think Winship went on Tuesday night, Diane? Let’s assume that he didn’t leave The Shed until after midnight. Where would he have gone?”

  “Who knows? Christ, he could’ve gone anywhere. He’s got that goddamn van. He could’ve gone anywhere. Anywhere but my place.”

  “All right.” I signaled for Canelli to open the door. “I’ll be talking to you later in the day, Diane.”

  “I’ll bet you will.” As she shuffled out, she threw me a last look of weary defiance.

  Twelve

  FRIEDMAN RAISED A BROAD, beefy hand. “It’s on me. Want a doughnut, too?”

  “No, thanks.”

  I carried both coffees to a table while Friedman carried his bearclaw. As he sat down opposite me, he said, “Do you realize that you’re staring at my bearclaw?”

  “That’s because I disapprove.”