Paper Phoenix: A Mystery of San Francisco in the '70s (A Classic Cozy--with Romance!) (10 page)

The girl drifted along listlessly beside me, her eyes half closed. She had a soft, teddy-bear look, and I hoped that someone, somewhere, was wondering where she was. When she got into the car she surprised me by saying, “What’s your name?”

“Maggie Longstreet. What’s yours?”

“September. September Apple. Look. Here’s my trademark.” She held up her hand for my inspection.

I looked at the apple tattoo. “Very pretty.” September Apple? Surely Betsy had mentioned September Apple, saying September and Larry had a terrible fight the day Larry died. I started the car. “Are you a writer?”

She was looking out the window. “I wrote something once. It was for Larry. Just for Larry. But he hated it. He hated it and he died. Just like that.”

“You mean you wrote a story for the
Times?”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “It was about the poetry scene in San Francisco. There’s a ton of poets here, you know?”

“I’m not sure I realized—”

“A ton. Some of them write one way, and some write another way. Some of them hate each other, and some love each other. They have readings, and put out magazines, and publish little booklets of their stuff, and nobody else in the whole world knows it’s even going on. It’s— a scene. A poetry scene.”

“Sounds like an interesting article.”

“Larry couldn’t have cared less about poetry himself, but Andrew Baffrey convinced him it was a good idea.” September was becoming more animated and coherent. “Man, I worked on that sucker for
months.
I trekked all the way to Marin for a reading once. I really busted my ass. Turn right at the next corner.”

I turned. “So how did it come out?”

She hesitated. “That’s the thing.” She gave her body a little restless toss. “While I worked on the story, I got an idea.”

“What was that?”

“I thought, if this article is going to be
about
poetry, maybe it should be written
in
poetry.” She looked at me sideways, obviously expecting a comment.

“Original concept.” The reason for her altercation with Larry was becoming clearer all the time.

“Go left up here, and it’s the second house. Yeah, I thought it was original too, so I wrote it that way. And he hated it.” She began to sniffle.

I searched for some inane reassurance. “You can’t take these things to heart.” Quelling my private doubts, I went on, “Other editors might feel differently.”

We were in the Haight, near the Golden Gate Park Panhandle. I pulled up in front of the house, a rambling, tumbledown Victorian which had evidently been divided into flats. September made no move to get out of the car. Tears were rolling down her cheeks now. Her innocent-looking face again reminded me of a child’s. “It wasn’t the story so much,” she gasped. “It was that Larry said he didn’t want to fuck me anymore.”

An innocent child. All I could manage in response to this revelation was to search my purse for a Kleenex, hand it to her, and say, “He didn’t?”

She blew her nose copiously. “I knew it wouldn’t last. I had heard it never did with him. But I still couldn’t stop myself from— from—”

“This type of— um— affair was a regular thing with Larry?” I interjected before she could break down again.

“Oh sure,” she said, wiping her nose. “Having a lot of women was a big macho thing for him. He was such a creep, such an awful creep. How could I have gotten mixed up with such a creep?”

That, I reflected, was a question women had been asking themselves down the centuries. Women including me. “What about Larry’s wife?” I asked.

September looked confused, as if I’d suddenly changed the subject to the latest Watergate revelation or the new season at the opera. “What about her?”

“Did she know what he was doing?”

“Could be. Most everybody did.” Her indifference was obvious.

“What about Andrew Baffrey? Did he know?”

“Andrew? Probably. Although who knows? When Larry and I were together, Larry used to laugh at Andrew and call him Brother Andrew the Puritan, because Andrew was such a straight arrow. I guess now Andrew’s having the last laugh, huh?”

I was upset and irritated at the thought of Andrew being ridiculed. “I don’t think he’s laughing,” I said stiffly.

“I didn’t mean laughing, exactly,” September said. “But look where Larry is and look where Andrew is. Do you see what I mean?”

Look where Larry is and look where Andrew is. She opened the door, thanking me for the ride. I watched her climb the steps and go into the house. Her bare feet looked bluish white.

Back at the
Times
, I found a comfortable buzz of late-afternoon activity. Betsy’s desk was messier than before because a coffee can filled with wilting red and pink carnations was sitting on top of the regular clutter. “Aren’t they great?” she said. “There’s a guy who comes by selling old flowers. We bought them all.”

Most desks in the newsroom were adorned with carnations, and the flowers added their delicate scent to the normal one of dust and humanity. Since the place looked no more disorderly than usual, I surmised that the after-effects of the break-in were minimal.

Two pink carnations drooped over Andrew’s desk. When I walked in he was staring abstractedly at them, his fingers poised on his typewriter keys. He glanced up and said, “One second,” then burst into a rattle of typing. After a minute or two he stopped, stared at the carnations again, and said, “Oh, hell. It’ll do.” Pulling the sheet from his typewriter he dropped it into a wire basket and said, “Sometimes you have to go with what you’ve got.”

“The
Times
is taking the breaking-and-entering in stride.”

“Betsy and I had the place pretty straight by the time anybody else got here, and we didn’t make an issue of it. The last thing the
Times
needs right now is a wave of hysteria. What’s with you?”

“I just had an interesting conversation downstairs.” I told him about meeting September Apple, but didn’t mention Brother Andrew the Puritan.

When I finished, he nodded. “I knew Larry screwed around a lot. I always figured it was his business, as long as it didn’t hurt the
Times.
”

“For somebody so intolerant of weakness in other people, Larry had plenty of vices of his own.”

“For Larry, it was different. It was different because Larry was Larry, and everybody else was everybody else.” He put his feet on the desk. “Learn anything from Ken MacDonald?”

“He said Nick Fulton, who works for Jane Malone at Basic Development, told him Richard was high on the Golden State Center. He also pointed out how fast the plans got approval from Redevelopment and the Board of Supervisors.”

Andrew scratched his beard. “Maggie, I’ll bet there’s something there. I feel it in my gut. The Golden State Center is the biggest project Basic’s ever gotten into. If they had Richard in there leaning on people for them—”

“Using his influence to get the Golden State Center through? In return for what?”

Andrew shrugged. “I don’t know. I wish that damn folder hadn’t disappeared.”

Since the night before, a thought had nibbled at the edge of my consciousness. While I had talked with Candace, and Ken, and September, it was there. I had been reluctant to look at it, but now I decided to bring it out. “We could try getting the folder back.”

“Great,” said Andrew in mock congratulation. “I wish you’d thought of that sooner.”

“Scoff away, but I know Richard. If he took that folder I think I know what he’d do with it.”

He was suddenly attentive. “What?”

“He’d put it in the wall safe at his office. He was always proud of having a safe. Considered it a status symbol.”

“Some status symbol. But safecracking isn’t one of my specialties. Do you have any talent in that line?”

“I’ve got better I’ve got the combination.”

Andrew’s look was extremely gratifying. As I watched his jaw drop, I remembered when Richard had given the combination to me. Five years ago, right after he became Redevelopment Director and moved into his new office, he had taken on, for a few weeks, a ponderous gravity which he must have considered commensurate with his new title. One day, with quiet pomp, he had presented me with a sheet of paper I was to keep “just in case.” On it he had written all his credit card numbers, our bank account and safe-deposit-box numbers, a list of insurance policies, and other similar information. At the bottom of the page was the safe combination. Most of it was out of date now, but surely safe combinations didn’t get changed every day of the week. And the paper, I knew, was in the top drawer of my desk underneath stacks of canceled checks, where it had lain undisturbed since Richard gave it to me.

“You’re absolutely incredible,” Andrew said.

Basking in his admiration, I grew expansive. “This is my plan,” I said, not knowing until that moment that I actually had one. “Richard usually leaves his office at four-thirty and meets some business associate or other at the Yacht Club for a drink. Tabby, Richard’s secretary, leaves at five. Pop Lewis, the doorman, is on duty till six. He doesn’t know about the divorce, and I can probably convince him to let me borrow a key to Richard’s office. What do you think?”

Andrew still looked stunned, but I could see excitement spreading over his face. “What do I think? I think it’s a goddamn stroke of genius.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s five now. Great. I’ll follow you home while you get the combination, and then I’ll drive you to the agency. I’m the wheel man, you might say.”

I looked at him blankly. “You mean now?”

“Sure. Why not?” He stood up. “We’d better get moving.”

It was one thing to speculate boastfully about searching Richard’s office and quite another to find myself being hustled out the door to do it. My knees were unsteady, I noted almost academically as we waited for the elevator. “What if I find the folder?” I asked. “What then?”

“Take it. What’s he going to do, call the cops?” Take it. Fabulous. Driving home, with Andrew’s Volkswagen trailing me, I considered trying to lose him and go somewhere for a quiet dinner. When some women get divorced they go back to school, I thought. Some do volunteer work at the hospital, or join communes and learn to birth calves. Some have affairs with inappropriate men. My new interest is burglary. Maggie Longstreet, former wife and mother, past president of the Museum Guild, now starting a career as a second-story woman.

Rain had started to spit against the windshield. The wind was high. It was perfect weather for embarking on a life of crime.

By the time I reached home, I realized it was crazy. I wasn’t about to go out and burgle Richard’s office. Certainly not. So why was I going to the bedroom and getting the safe combination from the rosewood desk? Why was I searching in the top of the closet for my large flowered straw shopping bag from Mexico, a monstrosity Candace had given me when she was ten? And, most pertinent of all, why was I coolly slipping on a pair of black kid gloves?

I checked myself in the mirror. A society matron out on a shopping spree, looking a bit grim around the eyes and mouth, as if she had discovered the perfect outfit and the store didn’t have her size. The only jarring note was the shopping bag. Not only was it ugly, it was also empty.

Searching around, I found a couple of I. Magnin bags, stuffed them with wadded-up newspaper, and dropped them into the Mexican carryall. Much more realistic. After retying the scarf around my neck to make it look more criminally jaunty, I locked the house and joined Andrew, who had been waiting in the car.

“Gloves. Wow,” he said.

“Don’t ‘gloves wow’ me. I’m scared enough as it is.”

We rolled out of the driveway. “I have one piece of advice for you if you’re picked up for this,” he said.

“Tell me.”

“Stonewall it.”

“Very funny, G. Gordon. Or was that Ehrlichman?” I really wasn’t up to jokes. Freezing cold one minute and sweaty the next, I sat semi-catatonic with fear as Andrew maneuvered us through the rush-hour traffic. It was still raining fitfully. I wondered what would happen if Richard were still there, working late for a change; if somebody came in while I was opening the safe; if the folder wasn’t in the safe, and I’d come this far for nothing. Andrew pulled the car into a loading zone half a block from Richard’s office. I stared at him in stark terror.

“Hey, Maggie, ‘ he said, touching my cheek. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

The palm of his hand felt so comforting that I wanted to collapse against it. Afraid I might do just that if I waited any longer, I opened the door and, dragging the shopping bag, plunged into the drizzle.

Pop Lewis was sitting in a folding chair next to the sign-in desk looking half asleep, but when he saw me he went into his usual thanks-for-the-fruitcake routine.

My own manner was as cloyingly sweet as I could make it, considering I had to shout to overcome his deafness. “Pop, I’m afraid I’ve done something awfully stupid,” I shrieked. “Richard and I were supposed to meet some people for drinks. I waited half an hour, and I
must
have gone to the wrong place, and I don’t know where they are. If I could go up and glance at Richard’s calendar—”

I put on a look of desperate pleading. Pop smiled and nodded. “You go right ahead, Mrs. Longstreet.”

We stood for a moment— Pop smiling, me desperate. “But I don’t have a key to Richard’s office,” I yelled. “May I borrow yours?”

Pop’s ginger eyebrows came together. “I can’t do that, Mrs. Longstreet. The building managers are very clear that those keys are never to leave my person.”

Silly, hidebound man. I wanted to shake him. Before I could ponder my next move he said, “I could take you up and let you in, though.”

What an old dear he was. Overcoming an impulse to smother him in embraces, I said,
“Could
you? That would be wonderful!”

When Pop opened the door, the office was dark. No late workers, thank God. He snapped on the light and showed every intention of following me in, but I blocked his progress by standing in front of him, putting my hand on his shoulder, and exerting a gentle pressure toward the door while I said, “Thanks, Pop. The door will lock again when I close it, won’t it? I don’t want to keep you from your post and get the building managers upset.”