Death in North Beach (19 page)

‘What was Frank Wiley working on? We know he was putting together an exhibition.'

‘We hadn't talked in a long time. I don't know. And I don't know what Warfield would have to say about me that would warrant my wanting to kill him. I was a wild kid. I did what rebels did then. Got lost in drugs and sex. Marched against the government. Vietnam. Threw rocks. Probably hung out with criminals of various sorts, certainly political enemies of the state. But I'm not ashamed of any of it. I was on the right side. If I knew how to put words together, I'd include all of it in my memoirs.'

‘Who were Wiley's closest friends?'

Sumaoang thought a moment. ‘He worked with Malone on his first book. Maybe Wiley had a book deal going with his exhibition. He would have gone to Warfield or Malone for an introduction or narrative.'

‘Anybody else?'

‘No.'

‘Anybody he didn't like?' Lang recited the list that Blake had provided.

‘Hawkes, probably. Wiley didn't like Hawkes and the feeling was mutual.'

‘Why?'

‘I don't know. Hawkes could be a little prissy. He never fit in with the gang. Hawkes and Warfield were close. I don't know if they liked each other, but there was some sort of understanding. That it? I've got work to do.'

‘Thanks.'

‘You can go out the side.'

Eighteen

Lang stopped for another cup of coffee and called Carly. He wanted to let her know he was anxious to talk with Malone about Frank Wiley's death. He also wanted an excuse to check in on her.

‘Sure,' she said, ‘but this is boring. I'm up. I'm walking around. Why can't I be working?'

Lang didn't have an answer, but apparently Carly did.

‘I think I've just answered my own question. Let me go along with you to see Malone. But am I missing something? Why Malone?'

‘Malone, Warfield and Hawkes all knew each other from New York. And he worked closely with Wiley on the first book. Maybe he knows something about what Wiley was up to before his death.'

‘Good, yes,' Carly said, but she sounded a little unfocused.

‘Tomorrow,' Lang said.

‘What?'

‘Tomorrow,' Lang repeated. ‘Tomorrow morning we'll visit with Malone. Could you set that up? I'll revisit Hawkes this afternoon. I'll give you a call later to find out what's going on with Malone.'

‘You're checking up on me. You're trying to make sure I'm all right.'

‘Business is business, Carly.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘I don't know. If you wanted a partner who made sense . . . well . . .'

‘OK, OK.'

Lang constantly surprised her. He seemed so irresponsible. It was part of his demeanor. Yet he wasn't. It was just that he went at reliability from an odd angle. It was somehow connected to his failure to apologize for being himself. Ever, she thought. But she rethought, as she – still in her oversized cotton pajamas – lazily climbed out from beneath the thick comforter, and out of bed. ‘Ever' was too long a time. She had only known him for a few months. She wanted to say he wasn't normal, but that wasn't right either. He wasn't average. He wasn't predictable.

Why was she going on so much about him? She went to the kitchen to see if the coffee she made earlier was still drinkable. Inside the thermal pot, the coffee was not hot, but warm. She would make a sandwich. She would try to get her thoughts together. After all, she had a client and she owed it to Mr Blake to devote significant time to his case.

A peanut butter and jelly sandwich and bean soup. She smiled. She was nine again.

Maybe she was the one who wasn't being responsible. Was she pulling her own weight? Lang had taken on more of the case. He was taking the lead, it seemed. She sat in the living room, on the sofa, sipping her coffee and relishing her sandwich in between waves of insecurity. If she were to diagnose herself, she would conclude that she was getting a little too emotional. Maybe from the concussion. She'd have to admit she was feeling a little sorry for herself at the moment. Frightened, possibly.

She took a deep breath. ‘Buck up, you old broad,' she said out loud. She could shake it off. She'd have to shake it off.

Her cellphone called out. It was Gratelli. He asked the question she knew he would ask.

‘I'm guilty,' Carly told him. ‘I didn't mean to be a source close to the investigation. I guess I'm a little naïve when it comes to journalists.'

‘Maybe we can fix that. What was your take on Bart Brozynski?'

‘Seems too shameless to worry about any exposure. I think he'd relish being in someone's tell-all book.'

‘OK,' Gratelli said. ‘I'll handle the pugnacious publisher. Anything else.'

‘McFarland was out of the country. Lang doesn't believe the wife could have killed her husband, based on her physicality. It's the heaving bosom defense.' She waited for Gratelli to laugh. He didn't. She wanted to move on quickly. She thought about telling him that both Warfields, father and son, had links to the mistress, but decided to hold that back for now. ‘I don't think Lilli D. Young could have done it,' she said, trying to give him something. ‘She doesn't move that quickly. If both murders were committed by the same person – and that's an “if”, I know – I don't think she could have done them.'

‘We've tracked down Mickey Warfield. He has an alibi for the night his father died. A girlfriend. Girlfriends are girlfriends, but it is an alibi.'

‘I'll pass that along to Noah. What about a will? Insurance?'

There was a pause. ‘You won't be calling up the
Fog City Voice
when I tell you what I know?' Gratelli asked. If there was humor intended here, Carly didn't hear it.

‘No.'

‘You promise?'

‘I promise.'

‘We're still wrangling with the lawyer on the will, but there were two insurance policies. Both substantial. Elena Warfield was the beneficiary on one. Marlene Berensen was the beneficiary on the other.'

‘The son, Mickey?'

‘Not so good for Mickey.'

‘Thanks.'

‘Don't forget me,' Gratelli said and hung up.

Carly felt better. She felt involved. Didn't take much, did it? She answered the phone and a little progress fell in her lap.

Hawkes was not happy. But Lang thought that was probably the artist's natural state.

‘Do you just drop in on the CEO of GE?'

‘I don't have reason to,' Lang said, seeing Hawkes's narrow face through the twelve-inch gap between door and door jamb. ‘I thought you might have some insight into the death of Frank Wiley.'

‘I don't,' Hawkes said.

‘He was going to have an exhibition of his photography. Do you have any idea what it was going to be?'

‘Why would I?'

‘He was a kind of historian, as I understand it. He chronicled the characters who hung out in North Beach . . . their lives. And you were part of that.'

‘Not really. It was a scruffy bunch and in the scheme of things I was never really part of the hangers-on.'

‘He didn't photograph you?' Lang asked, not sure why, except that would be a connection.

‘No, not me.' Was his answer even more abrupt than usual? Hawkes recanted a little. ‘Maybe, but it would have to be when I was young and foolish.'

‘You knew all the players, right?' Lang asked. ‘Your past, Mr Hawkes . . . we can't seem to find out much before you moved out here.'

‘I didn't ask you to look.'

‘Of course. Just curious. I'm told you're from New York.'

‘Mr Detective, I'm sorry someone found it necessary to kill two people of my acquaintance and your concern. But it is not my problem. I have no reason to talk to you at all, much less open up my life so you can peck at it.'

‘Just trying to find the truth,' Lang said. It was a weak, silly-sounding statement and he wished he could pull the words back before they reached Hawkes's ear.

‘We're through here,' Hawkes said. No anger, just a sneering statement of the obvious.

The door shut.

Lang stopped by his place, supplemented Buddha's bowl of dry food, engaged in a monologue with the patiently attentive feline and would have liked to go for a swim. Too long between any kind of workout. Instead, he stopped by Namu, several blocks west on Balboa, where he talked them into fixing him the fish sandwich with kimchee tartar sauce. He had a beer and watched the young men doing happy hour with sake at the bar.

After the service he'd come back and watch an Asian movie. Korean, perhaps. And he'd have a few bottles of Asahi Dry. Extra dry. That should finish his attempt to get the bad taste out of his mouth and banish the prissy Hawkes and what was likely to be a stuffy church service from his thoughts.

Lang was a little buzzed. He couldn't remember another day when he went on a coffee-drinking binge as he had all this morning and afternoon, stopping several times to refill his sad little paper cup. Usually he was a take-it-easy kind of guy. Not today. He was getting through a marathon day. Thing was, he was rarely this motivated.

Lang wasn't sure what he'd gain by going to the service for Whitney Warfield. It was an inappropriate time to talk with people about the murder.

Saints Peter and Paul was a San Francisco landmark. Grand and historic, it presided over North Beach as if it were castle to the kingdom. Nearby St Francis of Assisi didn't hold a candle, Lang thought sadly. Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe had posed on the church's front steps and the baseball great's final services were held inside. They would do no less for Whitney Warfield, who would have loved the drama though he railed against all organized religions – and everything organized, for that matter.

Inside Lang looked around. The interior was tastefully ornate for the most part. The only high drama was Christ on the Cross. But even that, sanguine as it was, was less lurid than he remembered from his own brief and now seemingly ancient experiences with religion.

The interior was at least three stories high. Grand chapels and other sacred nooks and crannies were off to the side. The choir loft was high and perched over the entrance. He went up the steps to the loft and using a little spyglass he gazed down on the hundreds of folks below. People were talking but in low tones and there was a low-grade buzz emanating up. Then it was as if someone had turned the volume down slowly. The chatter diminished. There was the sound of wood creaking as people settled into the pews.

Someone in robes stepped up and began to speak. Because of the cavernous space, each electronically enhanced word echoed slightly, giving it special authority. However profound, spiritual or mundane, the reverberation also made the words impossible to understand. Lang didn't try.

He remembered his own early Latin, which he spoke in sing-song fashion:

Myfathercanplaydominoesbetterthanyourfathercan
.

Lang spotted Marlene, who had regained her attitude. She was three rows behind Elena who was in the front pew. Hawkes stood on the side in the back near the confessionals. Sumaoang, his mourning attire put together as best he could, was there with his girlfriend. Chiu was there with two other men, younger, who were obviously no slaves to fashion. He didn't know some of the players by sight – McFarland, Malone, Lilli D. Young. Agnes DeWitt even showed up, looking frail and elegant.

Of those on the list he could recognize, all were in attendance – except the newspaper publisher and Warfield the Younger.

Nineteen

At home, he called Carly one last time in the evening. His excuse was to check on the proposed meeting with the writer, Malone. Carly had set it for ten. He'd pick her up at nine forty-five.

‘You seem in control of your faculties,' he said in a way that Hawkes might have put it.

Damn, he thought, the man continued to haunt him.

‘That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,' she said, a Southern Belle drawl creeping into her voice.

Gratelli, at his desk nursing a cold cup of coffee, called the
Fog City Voice
publisher to request he come to the Hall of Justice for a little chat. Bart Brozynski asked politely if Gratelli could come to him.

‘I smashed three vertebrae in a fall,' Brozynski said. ‘It's painful for me to move and a car is hell. You mind?'

‘When did that happen?' Gratelli asked.

‘Three weeks ago.'

‘Tell you what,' Gratelli said, ‘you give me the name of your doctor, maybe we won't have to talk after all.'

‘That's disappointing,' Brozynski said. ‘I'd like to know a little more about the deaths of Warfield and Wiley.'

‘So would I.'

‘Does that mean the police have no suspects . . . a dead end, maybe?'

‘You're putting words in my mouth,' Gratelli said. ‘I know how that works. Right now we're talking about you.'

‘I didn't kill them. I try not to create news. There's so much existing news that isn't reported. You like the story?'

‘The difference between what you do and what I do is that I have to back up what I say with facts. Innuendo rarely works in the courtroom.'

‘I beg to differ with you, Inspector. If the glove doesn't fit . . .'

‘I think that proves my point,' Gratelli said.

‘Then we're both happy,' Brozynski said.

‘Let's not tempt fate,' Gratelli said, ‘and call it a day.'

Gratelli would check with the physician and the hospital. He could get conditions and dates and that would either put Brozynski in the skillet or out of it. He'd bet that the cantankerous old publisher, for whom he held a begrudging respect, wasn't lying.