As a Favor (12 page)

Yvonne McIvor’s apartment was the sole dwelling over a cluster of small shops set apart from rundown stucco houses half a mile west of Telegraph.

As I climbed the steep, dark stairs between two shops I wondered what kind of woman would brave such an isolated apartment. I must have been expecting an Amazon, for when she opened the door I was surprised to find Yvonne McIvor no taller than myself.

She was light-skinned for a black woman. As if to refute that lightness she wore a wide Afro and bright dashiki. And her apartment picked up the theme. It was a statement of racial pride, with African batiks on the walls, carved native figures on tables, and record covers featuring black artists displayed from three racks on a floor-to-ceiling pole. An old record player stood next to a battered television set, but it was from a portable radio that the soul music blared forth.

“You the cop?” the woman asked, turning down the radio.

I offered her my shield, but the uniform seemed to satisfy her. She motioned me to an old couch covered totally with a fringed rectangle of cloth.

“So what you want? These welfare dudes, they’re always checkin’ up on each other. They’re so busy watchin’ for rip-offs they got no time for nothin’ else, you see what I mean? But you go ’head, honey, you tell me what you want now. See, ’cause I ain’t gonna fuss. I’m just playin’ the game, you understand?”

I nodded. “Ms. McIvor, where did you live before you moved here?” In contrast to McIvor, I sounded like a parody of “The Man.”

“To here? Well, see, I just come here to Berkeley, so I stayed at this hotel. I don’t have people to stay with, so I just stay there till I could find me a nice place.” She lifted her chin, indicating the apartment.

“When did you move here?”

“Right on pay day.”

“You mean as soon as you got your welfare check? The first?”

“Right.” She leaned back, shoulders moving to the hard beat of the music.

“And your eligibility worker was Anne Spaulding?”

“Yeah. I hear she’s gone,” she said, elongating the last word. “That was one tight woman. Honey, she wouldn’t give her own mother a break. If you didn’t have everything, and I mean every little scrap of paper, in at the hour, you was gone. Off. Out in the cold with just your bare ass.”

“When did you tell her you moved?”

“The first. I sent in the rent receipt.”

The first had been Saturday, two days before Anne Spaulding disappeared. “How soon would she have recorded the change?”

Yvonne McIvor’s brown eyes widened. She shrugged. “I don’t know what
she
did. I only know
I
had to let her know right away. Like I say, Miz Spaulding don’t take nothin’ on trust.”

“Your case file was separate from the others. Why?”

She shrugged again. “Dunno. Maybe ’cause I moved.”

I took out the list of clients and read off the other eleven names. “Tell me about these women.”

“I don’t know them. A couple names I heard.”

“Which ones?”

“Linda Faye, I heard that, and Janis Ul…um…Ul-something.”

“Ulrick. Where do you know them from?”

“Honey, I don’t know them. I just heard the names. I don’t recall where from.”

“At the hotel?”

“Maybe. See, I keeps to myself. I don’t put my business on the street, and when I see someone else’s there, I cross over.”

I sat a moment, staring at the African batik behind Yvonne. I put the list away. “Anne Spaulding was taking bribes.”

Yvonne stared, as if waiting for me to continue, then her eyebrows rose. “Listen, honey, you’re not saving
I
paid her off? Shit What’d I use to pay off with? You see? The welfare don’t give me but two hundred dollars a month. This place here costs a hundred-eighty. Where you think this payoff is gonna come from?”

I waited. The beat from the radio sounded louder.

“Why should I pay her? What for? She wasn’t doin’ nothing for me, you hear?”

“But you know about the bribes, don’t you?”

“No!” Her fist hit her thigh. “Like I said, I don’t go stickin’ my nose around. Look, when you come up in the ghetto and you stay in dives like that hotel, you learn to be deaf.”

“Other people, other welfare clients, know. Does it surprise you?”

She sat forward. “Miz Spaulding, she could. Why not? She sure don’t care about folks. Only thing is, you see, it’s so small time. Miz Spaulding, she’s a high flyer, and the little bit she could get off us—she wouldn’t stoop down to pick it up.”

“What about her other clients? What did they think of her?”

Yvonne sat back. She seemed to be considering her response. “I don’t speak for other folks, you understand, but I guess everyone pretty much thought she was shit. Leastways, I never heard nothin’ else. One old dude was carryin’ on how he was goin’ right up to her house and tell her.”

“You know where she lived?”

“
I
don’t, but this dude acted like he did. Like I say, I’m not lookin’ for trouble, so if he say he knows”—she shrugged—“he knows.”

“What’s his name?”

She shrugged again. “Search me. He’s just some old dude at the welfare.”

“A client, you mean?”

“Honey, they ain’t hardly got no dudes, young or old, workin’ there.”

“Let’s get back to the old man, the client. When did you hear him threaten to go to Anne Spaulding’s house?”

“Last week? Week before? Not long ago. He said she better get her act together ’cause he knew what she was and everyone else on the welfare knew and he wasn’t going to put up with no cheat no more.”

“He said all that in the welfare office?”

She laughed. “Looks like you don’t spend much time there. Otherwise you’d know you hear people screamin’ and yellin’ and callin’ their workers plenty worse than cheat.”

“But he did call her a cheat, there?”

“Sure did.” She hesitated. “I couldn’t swear, you under stand.”

“I understand.” Flipping a page in my pad, I said, “Is there anything else you can tell me about Anne Spaulding?”

Yvonne waited, but the pretense of thought didn’t come across. “If she’s gone, I ain’t cryin’.” She leaned over and turned the radio up.

As I walked down the steep stairway, I thought what a disappointment Yvonne McIvor had been. Was she lying? Did she know nothing? Or was I on a wild goose chase with these cases of Anne’s?

I could have accused her of prostitution—could have seen what she’d say. But I’d decided to wait to hear from Sex Crimes. Yvonne McIvor would still be there.

Irritably, I got into the car and headed back toward the welfare office.

D
ONN
D
AY’S STUDIO WAS
in the arts complex that included Theater on Wheels, about a mile west of Yvonne McIvor’s apartment. I wanted to see it at a time when I wouldn’t be likely to run into Skip Weston, and if Weston was half as tired as I was, he’d still be in bed now.

I peered through the picture window that ran the width of the studio. Donn Day was present only in photographic image. Doubtless the original was rearranging the lighting at the gallery for his upcoming show.

Had he been here I might have found out what, if anything, was going on between him and Anne, and where he had been on Monday night. Now I satisfied myself with focusing on his wall, half of which held canvasses similar to the one above Fern’s desk. The other half of the wall, entitled “Donn Day at Work,” sported photos of a small man with carefully styled brown hair. His artfully disheveled clothes were splattered with paint. The photographer’s lights had been gentle, barely showing the deep squint lines around his eyes.

From what I had heard of Anne Spaulding, it was hard to imagine her with this bantam of a man. It was harder yet to picture him with Fern Day.

Pulling myself away, I checked my watch. It was after eleven. I had promised Alec Effield I would check back with him after I saw Yvonne McIvor. If I went to the office now I could catch him before lunch and I could have another go at Fern Day.

In contrast to the empty room I had seen before, the Telegraph branch welfare office was crowded. In the alcove-cum-waiting room, children clambered amongst feet; men in jeans and women in secondhand beaded blouses sat staring toward the interview booths. In spite of the signs prohibiting it, the air was heavy with smoke.

As I came around the doorway, I could hear a commotion. Inside one of the cubicles that housed half a fireplace, the low rumble of Nat’s voice interspersed with the muddled shouts of another man. The man’s outburst seemed to be centered on the word “bitch.” I moved closer, but proximity did nothing for clarity and I had just cleared the booth when the door burst open and a man in a white suit emerged, shaking his head.

“Sri Fallon,” I said. “What are you doing here? I thought you worked at the Bank of America.”

Inside the booth the argument continued, as if no one had left.

“I do. I took time off to come here with one of my followers, to try to help him contain his unfortunate temper. As you can see, or hear, I have failed.”

Thinking that it was a good thing to have Nat using up his anger in an argument with someone else, I said to Fallon, “I’m sure nothing terrible will happen.”

“Probably, but he told me he once attacked a social worker in Chicago. I don’t know. He could have been exaggerating. Who knows what goes on in the Chicago welfare department?” Sri Fallon leaned against Nat’s desk. “I guess I’ll just wait.”

In the booth Nat’s voice rose. The group in the waiting room inhaled in unison, and I had the impression they had returned their attention from the spectacle of a Sri and a woman cop back to the more volatile entertainment in the booth.

Sri Fallon glanced around the room, his face devoid of the calm confidence it had beamed forth when I’d seen him on his own ground.

“Well,” I said, I’ll just—”

“Who’s that?” Fallon was staring past at Mona Liebowitz. She sat back, feet tucked into an open desk drawer, another T-shirt displaying the ample outlines of her breasts. “Does she work here?” His eyes were wide with amazement.

“They don’t have dress codes any more. This isn’t the bank.”

“Oh, no, it’s not that. It’s that I’ve seen her before, at the bank. She was standing across from the bank just watching. I thought—well, I know this is going to sound silly—I thought she was casing the place.”

“Maybe she has an account.”

“No. I’d know. Hers is not a…a face you forget.”

I glanced over at Mona’s broad undistinguished features. Her face by itself was eminently forgettable. “Did she do anything then?”

“No. She just stood there watching. It happened twice—on the first of the month and a month after that.”

“And the bank hasn’t been robbed.”

“No, it’s just—”

A roar of indistinguishable words came from the booth. Fallon jumped up, pushed past me and grabbed the door. As he went in, I could make out a tangle of gray hair and a swath of brown jacket behind him, then his voice, loud but surprisingly calm. The other voice sounded again, but more quietly, then Fallon murmured something and Nat spoke. Now it seemed like a normal conversation.

I stood a moment, noting Fern Day’s vacant desk and the cardboard sign above it: “Ill.”

“What’s the matter with Fern?” I asked Mona.

She half-smiled. “Mental-health day.”

I wondered what had caused Fern’s need for a day off. Filing that away for future consideration, I headed to Effield’s office.

Effield looked up. “Have you seen Yvonne McIvor?”

“In the flesh.”

“And you’re satisfied?”

“I can’t deny she was there.”

“See,” he said, his lips curving up in a weak smile, “you should have trusted me.”

His smug passivity irritated me. “Police investigations can’t count much on trust, Mr. Effield. For instance, you never told me you were involved with Anne Spaulding romantically.”

His fingers rubbed against one another. He stared down at them. “Well, it wasn’t really romantic. We were both from New York, Anne and I. We knew each other. When Anne came out I spent time with her. She didn’t know other people.”

“You were more than friends.”

Effield fingered the cases, rubbing loose a gummed label. “In New York you couldn’t even say we were friends. I asked her out once. She said no. I didn’t ask again.”

“You must have had some kind of relationship, some almost-friendship, if you asked her out.”

“No. I asked her out to start a friendship. At first a lot of the men approached her. But she made it clear that the welfare department was a place she was working by necessity. It was beneath her. And she certainly wasn’t going to attach herself to any man who had to work there.”

“And then she came here…?” When Effield didn’t pick up my line of thought, I said, “But you were more than friends here, weren’t you?”

He stared down at the crumpled case label. “Yes and no. We went to bed a few times, over a year ago, but it was no great romance. It was just easy. I never had any illusions that it would go on.”

“But you would have liked it to?” I pressed.

“No. Maybe. I never considered the possibility. I still worked at the welfare department. And Anne might have changed some since New York, but not that much.”

I considered my next question.

But Effield seemed caught up in his explanation of Anne. “She wasn’t someone you’d get into a relationship with anyway. She was never satisfied with one man, or one place, or one interest. She always had things going. She liked adventure and new things. She liked being admired, flirting.” He paused, staring down at the crumpled sticker. “Anne wasn’t a person you would get into a deep relationship with, not after you knew her.”

Shoving over a manila folder, I settled on the desk. “Mr. Effield, you said Anne liked new places. Do you think instead of being killed, she just left?” As soon as the words were out I felt ridiculous. Was I asking if Anne had left nude, after cutting herself up to bloody her clothes?

But Effield responded to the question. “No.” His tone was definite. “Anne wasn’t irresponsible. She would never have left without notifying us. She would have notified me.” He paused; he seemed to be biting his cheek, holding in his emotions. “We weren’t lovers, but I am sorry Anne’s dead. No, don’t ask me how I know. I just feel it.”