Death in North Beach (11 page)

‘Young is relative,' Lang said, taking a bite of chicken and Brie downsized baguette. ‘This is why the rest of the country hates us.'

‘Chicken or Brie or tiny sandwiches?'

‘Brie mostly. I didn't eat Brie until I was thirty-five.'

‘You eat it often now?' Carly asked.

‘Usually with beef jerky, some pork rinds and a PBR. You?'

She repressed a grin. ‘I do. I began eating Brie shortly after I was born.'

‘Mmmmh, I hadn't thought about that. You don't need teeth. We should bring some back for Brinkman.'

‘That's cruel.'

‘Have you listened to his graphic lectures on the horrors of growing old? That's cruel. It's heartless. It's best to make that journey in blissful ignorance . . .'

She laughed, but caught herself.

‘They came to see
you
,' she said, trying to introduce the business at hand.

‘That means it's someone on my half of the list.'

‘Somehow. Directly or indirectly.'

‘Somehow,' he agreed. ‘I talked with Richard Sumaoang, Marshall Hawkes and Marlene Berensen. So these two Mensa candidates were bought by someone who knew how to find them. I don't see it.'

‘People talk,' Carly said. ‘One of your guys talked to someone who talked to someone who became worried.'

‘Doesn't give us much.'

‘Thanh is following them,' Lang said. ‘He'll find out something, maybe only where they live or work. We can go from there.'

‘What do you think of the people you talked to?'

‘As I told you earlier, Marlene is well preserved, doesn't seem too broken up. Richard gave me nothing. He's in great shape. Physically he'd have no problem killing his prey. Marshall Hawkes doesn't seem like a physical kind of guy, but using the pen as a weapon has a certain bit of poetry about it and Marshall seems to appreciate that sort of thing. What about your people?'

‘The publisher. I'm not sure he's agile enough to catch Warfield. Frank Wiley seemed so content to be on the outside looking in, I'm not sure what he'd have to lose if some secret came out, unless it could get him arrested.'

‘That could be enough. Pedophile kind of taboo.'

She sipped her lemonade from the bottle and looked at her watch.

‘I have Nathan Malone at one thirty and Lili D. Young at four,' she said.

Behind Carly, a teen girl with a bare midriff twirled a hula hoop, entertaining a small audience, the most avid of which was a golden retriever. The park served its purpose, providing a brief respite to office workers on lunch break and a soft landing for a couple of homeless people who parked their shopping carts for a little while.

‘Mr Chiu is always unavailable, Mrs Warfield is still grieving,' Lang said. ‘But I'll try to get in to see ancient Agnes. Maybe she knows somebody who knows somebody.'

They talked about movies, finished their lunches and went their separate ways. On the way to Lang's beat-up Mercedes, Thanh called. He had some information.

Ten

Carly thought about Lang's comments on Hayes Valley – how it had changed from derelict and dangerous to stylish and expensive. Where else would you find a liquor store that sold only sake? San Francisco had changed. She'd heard the complaint many times. With each passing generation, the older one bemoans the changes brought about by the younger ones. The Castro area she was driving through was a prime example. At one point it was an Irish neighborhood, then it became the most famous or infamous gay neighborhood in the world. Young guys with mustaches wore Levi's jeans and plaid shirts and posed as Marlboro men not that many decades ago. Today, young heterosexual couples with their baby strollers were coming over the hill from Noe Valley to mix with the gay couples and their baby strollers. Just as there were no more pirates on the Barbary Coast and the Chinese were finally permitted to leave Chinatown, the entire city was both better and worse for changing times. Prejudice had indeed gone down. The cost of living had indeed gone up. San Francisco had one of the highest median incomes of any city in the country.

She turned left on Hill Street and entered a quiet little hilltop neighborhood with handsome, well-kept homes; many, she guessed, with remarkable views. To the north one was likely to look down a long way as homes stretched out to the Bay. Nathan Malone lived on the other side of the street.

Mrs Malone, as she introduced herself, was a silver-haired, spirited woman in a yellow pantsuit, who was carrying what appeared to be a drink. There was a twist of lime, an inch of clear liquid and some ice. She was in her late sixties or early seventies, Carly guessed as the woman guided her to the back of the house. They went through an arch and into a room where a wall of windows looked out over a deck and an expanse of homes that climbed up another distant hill. The walls on either side of the window were lined with bookcases. Malone was at the computer and hadn't looked up, perhaps finishing a sentence before engaging the visitor.

Carly noticed that the top row of the bookcase behind his desk contained books Malone had authored. Non-fiction mostly. Some biographies. Some seemed to reference history. But there were a couple, she recognized from her background check, that were novels.

Nathan Malone got up from his desk. He was as striking and as energetic-looking as his wife and probably very nearly the same age. His hair, and it appeared he had all of it, was a mix of silver and blond in tousled curls. He came from around the desk to shake hands.

‘Can I get you anything?' Mrs Malone asked.

‘No, thank you. Just had lunch.'

Malone answered his wife with a subtle shake of his head and a frown. His gaze was directed at his wife's drink. She didn't notice. He raised his eyebrows. His expression seemed to be one of total submission to the forces around him. As his wife retreated, he nodded toward a big, high-backed chair upholstered in brown leather, he sat in a matching chair separated by a small table. On the table were two magazines –
The New Yorker
and
Publishers Weekly
.

‘You're from New York, right?' Carly asked.

‘I am. In terms of career, moving out here may have been a major mistake. In those days and for many years thereafter, serious writers were supposed to live in New York.' He paused, shook his head. ‘But you wouldn't necessarily be interested in all that. You wanted to inquire about Whitney Warfield, you said on the phone.'

‘Yes, thank you for taking the time. We believe he was writing a major tell-all book that might have caused his death. Your name was given to us by someone who said that some of what he had to say would embarrass you.'

Malone smiled. ‘I'm sure he could embarrass me. We had quite a few moments together, especially in our youth, that wouldn't be flattering, but not worth killing over.'

Malone seemed in general good humor.

‘I'm very sorry he's dead,' he went on. ‘I think we had a few wonderfully embarrassing moments ahead of us.'

‘Maybe you could just tell me a little about the man.'

‘Whitney always considered himself a major writer. If he had been a politician he wouldn't have been satisfied until his countenance was on Mount Rushmore. So he felt slighted that the world hadn't acknowledged that he was the voice of his generation at least. No Nobels, no Pulitzers, no National Book Awards.'

‘Were you too much competition, perhaps?' Carly asked.

Malone laughed. ‘Of course. He loved the competition and often regarded his competitors as noble opponents. As life dealt him serious blows to his ego, his competitors seemed to lose their nobility.'

‘You haven't had contact with him?'

‘No. But I doubt if his character has changed much. He was really, at heart, a noble warrior. He believed in truth and honor and loyalty.'

‘This is a man who cheated on his wife and was about to tell on his friends,' Carly said.

‘If you have the scent of the killer, it could hardly have led you here, but for those of us who know and love Whitney, this is not in any way contradictory. What you have to understand is that when you are Whitney you are God, judge and jury. He is allowed his foibles because of how much he suffers . . . suffered for his art. It's an ego not uncommon with writers. They create their own universes. And most, foolishly, mirror this one.'

‘You liked him?'

‘Sure. We were very close friends.'

‘You wrote a book together.'

‘Not really. We both contributed to a photography book. Frank Wiley's. It was Wiley's book, really.'

‘What happened to you two?'

‘I don't know what you mean. We stopped hanging out with each other primarily because I settled down. I no longer wanted to engage in drinking contests. I wanted to be with one woman. I wanted to go to bed early. I'm afraid I dwindled in Whitney's esteem, but he didn't hate me. And I didn't hate him.'

‘He knew no damning secret about you?' Carly smiled. She had received a thorough looking over when she arrived. He may have wanted to be with one woman as he said, she thought, but he wasn't done looking. It was also clear that he was debating something. There was a long, long pause. Carly waited it out.

Malone got up.

‘Once, when we had been drinking, which we both did to excess at the drop of a metaphor, we were talking about what it meant to be a man. And in order to be a man, one had to be willing to fight, physically, whenever it was called for. Honor, loyalty, etc. One wasn't much of a man if he never seriously considered killing himself, never spent a night in jail, never planted a tree, never fathered a child, never slept with a whore, never . . . I forget. There was quite a list. And so we were being honest with each other.'

‘Trying to out-macho the other guy.'

Malone grinned. ‘Well, yeah. Otherwise what was the point? That was part of being a man. You know, lifting more weight, throwing the ball farther, having more foul words at your command . . .'

‘You outdid him?'

‘Foolishly, I told him something. When you're drinking and the conversation and the competition escalates and the inhibitions fall by the wayside . . .'

‘And?' Carly asked, trying to drag him back from thoughts to words.

‘After tales of bar fights and injuries, I told him something.'

He walked to the glass doors and stepped out on the deck.

Carly followed. He was still debating whether to tell her. She knew it. He wasn't trying to talk himself out of saying any more.

‘It's the “something” I'm interested in,' she said.

The wind blew. There was a light arctic chill just behind the warm breeze. The sky was pure blue – no clouds, no smog.

‘Tell me.'

‘I regretted telling him. Very much. Now he's dead. It's not out there anymore.' He seemed to be talking to himself. ‘Why would I want it to be?'

‘It might be in a book.'

He turned to her. There was a smile on his face, but his eyes looked sad.

‘I killed a man.'

He said it. Now he was questioning himself. Why had he said it? She could see that on his face.

‘In war?'

‘No.'

‘Accidentally?'

‘No.'

‘Murder.'

‘A court might think so,' he said. He laughed, but it wasn't jovial. ‘I guess I had to make sure someone knew. Better a stranger now. You know I can deny it.'

‘What happened?' she asked.

‘I'm not going to tell you. I need to withhold the facts. You can see why. I don't want you looking into it.'

‘What happened when you told him?' she asked.

‘What I expected, humiliation.'

‘Jealous that he hadn't killed anyone?'

‘Partially.' Though expression on the lips had been suppressed, there was a grin behind Malone's eyes at the moment. ‘It's not just a man thing . . . it was a writer thing too – at least for those of us in that generation. We needed to understand the human race in order to tell our stories. Understanding with the added benefit of suffering, or maybe just experience of any kind, yields a broader, richer insight into the human condition.'

‘So he was going to tell the world you killed someone?'

‘Would he, if he could? I've no idea. But he knew everything. Who, when, why, how, where.'

‘And you could be brought up for murder.'

‘I could.'

‘Why did you tell me?'

‘God knows,' he said then, without looking at her.

‘Thank you,' she said.

He stared at her for a moment, though she wasn't sure he was looking at her. He swallowed hard and his eyes flickered in recognition as if he'd just come out of a coma.

‘You can find your way out. If you run into Meg, tell her to bring me a Scotch.' He turned to her and smiled. ‘If you find the book, make me a copy. I want to see if the old loony still had it in him.'

According to Thanh, the car he tailed on his bike parked on Geary and the two thugs went into a neighborhood bar called McKinney's. The big guy was in there maybe an hour and then came out. Thanh continued to follow the big guy because he was the one who appeared to be in charge and he was still moving. The man drove to Leavenworth and Post and went into an apartment building. Thanh didn't follow him inside. He waited outside, used his phone to photograph the apartment directory, and when the guy came out – ten minutes later – he drove to a parking garage on Polk Street. Thanh waited until the man emerged on foot. He went to a Chinese restaurant. In a few minutes the guy came out, pink plastic bag in hand, walked a few blocks and entered a building. That's when, at Lang's request, Thanh ended his tail.