Muller, Marcia - [11] Trophies and Dead Things(v1.0)(html) (19 page)

"And Libby Heikkinen?"

"Taylor's girlfriend."

"What about Jenny Ruhl?"

"Ruhl. Ruhl. Yes, I remember her.
Tiny girl, long black hair."

"And chance she was romantically
linked with Perry?"

"Oh, I don't think so. Perry
liked women, but he was basically shy around them. He wouldn't have
taken up with someone like Jenny."

"Why not?"

"How can I put this without—Jenny
liked men, in quantity. For a while, around sixty-four or five, she
was living with a guy, a real sleazebag hanger-on. One of those guys
who was just in Berkeley for the sex and drugs and rock and roll, as
they used to put it.
Then he disappeared from the scene about the time she turned up
pregnant. She had the baby, and I guess she put it up for adoption.
After that she just drifted from guy to guy, never staying with anyone
very long."

"What was her connection to
Hilderly, then?"

"Just as one of a group that hung
out together. Very involved with the protests."

"This . . . sleazebag Ruhl was
living with—what was his name?"

"I don't think I ever knew."

"Can you describe him?"

"Other than as a typical drifter,
no. You remember the type—long unkempt beard, the same with the hair,
generally grimy-looking, a little older than most students."

"Nothing at all memorable about
him?"

"Not that I remember. Those
people were all of a kind, and not too many of us trusted them. Their
motives weren't pure, you see." Widdows laughed—both amused and
self-mocking. "We had a long list of people who weren't to be trusted.
Anyone over thirty, of course. The university administration and most
of the faculty. Politicians, if they were of a major party. The
military-industrial complex, including scared second lieutenants in the
National Guard. There were spies lurking behind every tree: the
Berkeley cops, narcs, the FBI, the campus police, and—when bombing
became the thing—the ATF, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms."

"A hotbed of paranoia?"

"Right. And not totally
drug-induced. But one thing about the spies: not too many of them
worked out, no matter what agency they were from. Button-down collars
and cordovan shoes did
not
go down too well at SDS meetings.
And the ones who did manage to worm their way into the counterculture
usually went over to the other side—got hung up on drugs or women. The
FBI, I've heard, had to periodically call them in from the field for a
sort of deprogramming. It was a bizarre time, all right."

"What happened to Perry's group
of friends, do you know?"

"Either got kicked out or dropped
out of school.
I
think
he told me that a bunch of them had
moved to the city, set up as a commune. Political action shifted around
sixty-eight or -nine—to S.F. State. Perry was in contact with them,
that much I know. Once he said they might make a good story for us, but
nothing came of it."

"What kind of story?"

"Who knows? Perry was very
independent-minded; I never knew what he was going to turn in until it
was on my desk. But by then communes were a dime a dozen, and when he
thought it over, he probably decided it was a story whose time had
gone."

I was silent, reviewing what
Widdows had told me. Finally he asked, "Have I helped?"

"Yes, you have. I didn't come to
Berkeley until years later, and you've given me a feel for those times.
And now I won't keep you from your work any longer."

"I'm not sure you're doing me a
kindness."

Widdows walked me to my car,
pointing out the prize tomato plant of his vegetable garden. I
confessed to having a black thumb even when it came to houseplants, and
he smiled and suggested that it helped if one watered them. After I got
into the MG, he leaned on its doorframe, looking down at me through the
open window.

"Would you like to go out
sometime?" he asked.

I hesitated, thinking I preferred
men who lived more in the real world than he seemed to. Then I thought,
what the hell. "Yes, I would."

"Great. I'll call you soon, or
you call me. We could see a play or take in a concert. Go on a picnic,
whatever. Or," he added, "I could always pay a house call on your
plants."

When I left Berkeley, I didn't
feel like going back to the office; only routine chores awaited me
there, and I was primed for more active pursuits. So I decided to drive
over the Richmond Bridge to Marin County and pay a call on Mia Taylor.

The fog had remained in abeyance,
and although the wind still gusted across the West Marin headlands, the
sky's clear blue was reflected brilliantly on the rippling water of
Tomales Bay. The sun made the cypress and eucalyptus groves a deeper
green, the summer-burnt hills a warmer shade of tan. As I drove I made
absent note of the natural beauty— not without appreciation, but with
only a small part of my attention. My mind was on the past, and the
possible ramifications of its events on the present.

When I arrived at Taylor's
Oysters, there were a couple more operational-looking vehicles in the
parking lot than on my past visit, but the restaurant was again devoid
of customers. A slender, blue-jeans-clad young woman with waist-length
black hair was scrubbing with a rag at one of the oilcloth-covered
tables. She turned when she heard the door close behind me, her hair
swaying. Her face was bronze, with prominent handsome features.

I asked, "Are you Mia Taylor?"

She nodded, studying me and
frowning slightly. For a moment the intensity of her gaze puzzled me;
then I realized she was probably trying to place me on some remote
branch of the family tree. As I'd told Libby Ross the other day, I only
have one-eighth Shoshone blood, but it shows in my hair color and high
cheekbones. I seldom think of myself in terms of either my Indian
heritage or the Scotch-Irish blood that makes up the remainder of my
genetic composition. My attitude is a symptom of what's happened to
ethnic groups in America, and I suppose in some ways the blurring of
differences is a good thing. But on the other hand, there's an inherent
sadness in the loss of consciousness of our roots, the loss of touch
with the history and traditions that make us who we are.

To spare Mrs. Taylor further
confusion, I said, "I'm Sharon McCone, the investigator with All Souls
Legal Cooperative. Is your husband available—"

"No," she said quickly. "D.A.'s
sick." Her nostrils flared in disgust. "Passed out, if you really want
to know." She went behind the bar, flung the rag into the sink. Her
body was rigid with tension; she grasped the edge of the counter,
fighting for control. After a moment she spoke in less harsh tones.
"Look, you want some coffee?"

"That sounds good. Thank you."

She shrugged and poured two cups
from a pot on a warmer. "Black?"

"Please."

She carried the coffee over to
the table she'd been cleaning and motioned for me to take a chair. When
she sat across from me, her face was impassive, all emotion reined in.

I asked, "D.A.'s been drinking
heavily?"

"Yeah. He's been awful upset for
a couple of days now. Yesterday he took Jake's truck"—she motioned out
the window at the antiquated red
pickup I'd seen on my previous visit—"and went running off to see Libby
Ross. When he came back he got into the beer. It always starts with
beer. Jake took the truck keys away from him, but he must of had
another set made sometime, because next thing we knew he was gone
again."

"Where?"

"Joyriding, like always.
Barhopping. By the time we caught up with.him, it was after one in the
morning, and he was in Wiley's Tavern out Two Rock way. Shit-faced.
He'd been in a bar fight, had lost his jacket, was acting meaner than a
snake. Took the three of us to drag him home."

"Does he do that often?"

"Often enough. He's not supposed
to be driving. Hasn't had a license in years. There's been a lot of
trouble with the sheriff. I'm scared to death that someday some
deputy's gonna take a shot at him, and that'll be the end of D.A." Her
fingers clutched her coffee cup, their nails going white.

"Isn't there something you can do
for him?"

"You're thinking maybe of a
psychiatrist or a drug rehab clinic?"

"Those are possibilities."

She laughed bitterly. "And how am
I gonna pay for that? Look at this place." She gestured around the
room. "You see any customers? We don't even have a phone anymore. They
took it out last month because we couldn't pay the bill."

"But after D.A. gets his
inheritance—"

"Jake and Harley've got plans for
that money, and none of them have got anything to do with D.A.'s
welfare." Her voice had risen. She glanced over her shoulder toward the
door and modulated it. "Besides, ain't nothing can help D.A. Something
inside that man is broken. Happened when he was in prison. You know
about him being in prison?"

I hadn't, of course, but in a way
the revelation didn't surprise me. Prison does
terrible things to most people—but particularly to those who are
neither strong nor insensitive. By his own admission, Taylor was not a
strong man; from my observations I knew he was not shallow or
calloused. Rather than answer Mia's question directly, I said, "I'm not
clear on what he did that got him sent there."

"Me neither. It happened back
practically before I was born. D.A. don't talk about it—leastways
anything that makes sense. Jake and Harley
won't
talk about
it. All I know was it was mixed up with Vietnam, and D.A. and his
friends being against the war. The whole thing was stupid, if you ask
me. D.A. had a chance to go to college and better himself, and instead
he ruined his life." She paused. "Don't suppose it matters anymore what
happened. What matters is that he's my husband and my babies' daddy,
and I got to take care of D.A."

I was silent for a moment,
thinking of the people in this world who somehow always manage to be
taken care of. While many of them are genuinely helpless, others are
extremely clever in shifting responsibility for themselves to friends'
and loved ones' shoulders. In D.A. Taylor I sensed a curious
combination of the types, and I wondered if his young wife was aware of
it. It was not, however, my place to point it out.

I said, "Mrs. Taylor—"

"Mia. I don't like that 'Mrs.'
stuff. Makes me feel
old."

"Mia, has D.A. ever mentioned
anyone named Tom Grant to you?"

". . . Not that I recall."

"What about Jenny Ruhl?"

"Who's she?" The response was
quick and reflexive, tinged with suspicion. I supposed she was the
jealous type and that her husband might give her reason to be.

"She died a long time ago."

"Oh. No, I've never heard the
name."

I reached into the zipper
compartment of my bag and removed the medallion I'd found
in the pouch with Hilderly's gun. "Does this look familiar?"

Her face tightened. "D.A.'s got
something like that. Different letters, though."

"May I see it?"

"... I guess that would be okay."
She shivered, drawing her arms across her breasts. "It's creepy—he
hasn't worn it, not ever so far as I know, but sometimes I catch him
taking it out of the dresser drawer and looking at it like it's some
kind of ... I don't know, charm, maybe. Like it's got power over him. I
think it's got something to do with ... all that."

"All that?"

"The stuff, you know, that
happened before." She stood abruptly and moved toward the door. "I'll
get it. You best wait here."

While she was gone I went to the
window and peered through the salt-caked glass at the bay. Hog Island
was visible in sharp relief today, rocky prominences standing out among
the thick trees. I thought of the allure the island had for D.A. as he
sat at the end of his dock day after day; I remembered his stated
intention of going there when things became too much here on the shore,
and my uneasy certainty that he meant to take his own life. A life that
he'd long ago ruined for what his young wife claimed was a silly cause.

I didn't agree with Mia on that.
For one thing, the antiwar movement had not been silly; it had saved
lives, gotten our troops out of a place where they had no business
being, given us—for a time, at least—hope for the future. For another
thing, D.A.'s ruination had its roots not in his antiwar activism so
much as in his own internal weaknesses. He could just as easily have
fallen prey to those weaknesses had he completed his education and gone
on to achieve the full professorship or the partnership in the
prestigious law firm or the place
in the boardroom of a Fortune 500 company.

To me, D.A. Taylor was both a
pathetic and heroic figure. Pathetic because of his drug abuse and
inability to let go of the past, but heroic because of what that past
had been. At least the man had once cared passionately about something
besides himself, had stood up for what he believed in. Perhaps I was
allowing my view of him to be colored by the negative feelings I harbor
toward much of what is currently going on in America: the lack of
compassion, the fear of taking risks, the failure to embrace and hold
tight to unselfish ideals. But Taylor was a man who had tried to make a
difference—at whatever the personal cost.