Bones of the Barbary Coast (25 page)

27

F
ROM HIS PHONE voice, Cree had expected Gerald Payson to be stuffy, an older man with an academic's manner. But he looked to be in his midtwenties, with a long sallow face beneath a sort of pompadour of pale blond hair. The suit he wore was far too big for him: a retro-punk look.

"Thank you for letting me come, especially on such short notice," Cree said. "Really, I'm very grateful. I won't get in your way, I promise."

It had been a minor ordeal to make the appointment. When they'd talked on the phone, Payson had informed her that they were in the process of reorganizing the materials, and with the collection in disarray they would not be admitting researchers for another month. Cree's hopes plummeted, but she decided a little arm-twisting was worth trying, and when he asked what the focus of her inquiry was, she figured she'd got him.

Bert wouldn't want her to say she was helping the San Francisco Police or mention the wolfman. So she offered a harmless fiction: that her grandmother was the illegitimate child of a man who had worked as a musician in San Francisco from around 1865 until his death in the quake. They had already tried the usual genealogy routes with no success, but everyone said the famous Payson Collection would probably have posters or handbills . . . A little more pleading and flattery, and Payson had relented.

This house was better preserved in its original state than the one in Pacific Heights, but it had far less charm. Down here on the flat of Franklin Street, with other buildings close by, there was no terrace, no big view or abundant sky. In fact, Payson kept the drapes mostly drawn, so that almost no natural light came inside. The varnish on woodwork and floors had aged to a deep dull brown, the wallpaper was busy and dark, and there was far too much ornate, overstuffed furniture.

Payson led her to a desk in the front parlor, sat behind it, and appraised her briefly. The room was truly packed with furniture: chairs, love seats, lamps with ornate shades, buffets, end tables, sculpture. Awful music was playing upstairs, muffled techno-punk with brain-death bass.

"As you can see," he said, "the building itself constitutes an important part of the collection. It has been preserved just as it was built in 1874. All of the furnishings and details are period, and most are original to this actual house."

"So the fire didn't get this place?"

"Stopped at Van Ness. One block over." He had a ticcish habit of rapidly rubbing his thumb against his forefinger, and everything he said seemed to amuse him in some secret way. "The collection was started by my great-grand-uncle, based on his father's acquisitions, and has been added to by each generation since. I assumed proprietorship upon my mother's death last year. As you know, our specialty is historical ephemera, with a focus upon San Francisco's cultural and recreational life. Because my ancestor was an avid gentleman about town, we have by far the largest and best collection of Barbary Coast ephemera in the world, dating from the 1850s."

"So I understand, yes. I'm looking forward to seeing it."

"Including an outstanding selection of materials on erotic entertainments and sexual recreations of the Victorian era." Payson kept his eyes on her as if waiting to see how she'd react. As he paused, a heavy thump came from upstairs, followed by swearing and muffled laughter. He was evidently entertaining guests.

He had her sign a thick register and let her donate fifty dollars to the foundation. Then he crossed the room and slid apart the doors to the rear parlor.

Cree was appalled. Scattered electric lamps cast circles of dreary yellow light over a jumble of piled furniture, cardboard boxes full of papers and objets d'art, file cabinets, stacks of books. Stacks of canvasses and framed photos leaned against the walls along with antique signs and nautical equipment.

"The collection was originally housed on both floors. However, as I
tried
to warn you, we recently began consolidating the materials in just the eight downstairs rooms. The disorder is only temporary."

Cree put it together: Payson had moved in upstairs when he'd inherited the place, and to make room for himself and his buddies had dumped everything down here.

"Can you give me a rough idea of how it's organized? I mean, what's in which room? Where a given time period might be found?"

He handed her a slim leather-bound book. "There's the master catalogue, and the boxes all have the correct index numbers on them. But they're not sorted at the moment."

"Right."

"Of course, I would be glad to stay and help you locate what you need."

His proximity made her skin crawl. Cree turned to give him a chilly smile. "Thank you, but I wouldn't want to take your time. I don't even know exactly what I'm looking for—this could take days. You go on upstairs. It sounds like your friends are waiting for you."

"Those assholes?" His lips twisted in contempt and he made no move to leave.

"I'll call you if I need you," she stated firmly. She turned to face the chaos.

She toured the ground floor with her pad, drawing a map, one room to a page. When she had given all eight rooms a quick once over, she went through again, sketching in the general contents of the piles of boxes and file cabinets according to the index numbers she saw on them.

The catalog didn't specify individual documents, but rather provided reference numbers for subject categories listed in alphabetical order, such as Advertising, Asian, Arts and Crafts Movement, Baths (Public), Boxing, Circus, Civil War, Crime, Dogfighting. The list went on and on, through Literary, Occult, Opera, Maritime, Medical, Mechanical, Murder, Musical, Oddities, Pedophilia, Prostitution, Saloons, Spiritualism, Sports, Tong Wars, Wardrobe.

Over two hundred categories, but not one for "werewolf," "wolfman," or even "freaks."

She jotted the numbers for the most promising topics: Animals, Circus, Medical, Miscellany, Occult, Oddities. If she didn't find anything there, she'd follow up with Crime, on the chance that the wolfman had gotten in trouble, and then Entertainment Saloons, in case he'd been used that way.

The library seemed a promising starting place, heaped with stacks of framed handbills and posters and scores of file boxes. Several boxes bore the index numbers for Oddities, but she couldn't reach them. Blocking her was a barrier of glass-topped counters with boxes stored on and under them, all bearing sex-industry reference numbers. Not a priority category, but she thought she might as well look into one to get an idea how the materials were organized. She pulled a glassine envelope from the nearest box and found a display of business cards.

Mary Monroe Washington
350 lbs. of ebony-skinned passion.
Jasmine Jones' Establishment, Pacific St.
All hours. 50C each, three for one dollar.

Livia Spencer
Secret French techniques will
guarantee your complete satisfaction!
All hours. 75
per each.

Nelly O'Hara
A clean Irish virgin every time.
Rate: One dollar.
Money refunded if not perfectly satisfied.

The cards, with their flowing type and flowery borders, struck Cree as both pathetic and tragic. The women who'd had them printed were long dead, the legs they'd spread for thousands of men turned to bone or burned to ash. She could easily imagine the taste or tenor of their lives: the desperate enterprise, the uncertainty, the violence and degradation. In the history books, she'd read the awful facts camouflaged by those flowers and the curling script. Life for these women was a one-way, downward arc, making their best money in their youth and then commanding ever lower prices as they aged and weakened from disease. In Chinatown, there were "hospitals" for used-up prostitutes: basement rooms with rows of pallets on which women terminally sickened with STDs were sent to die, out of view. One church mission report determined that their average age at death was twenty-three.

She tucked the cards back and pulled another envelope from further back. This one held a sign printed on crumbling newsprint stock:

AN AUCTION
BY
MADAME JOHANNA
OF SIX VERY YOUNG GIRLS
AGED II TO 14 GUARANTEED. COME EARLY AS BIDDING FOR FIRST SERVICES WILL BE BRISK.
8 O'CLOCK, JULY 19, SACRAMENTO ST.

Cree put it away, starting to feel distinctly dragged down. Chalk it up to the sour light, she thought, the musty dusty smell here. Was this kind of sex really related in any way with what she felt when she'd made love with Mike, or with Paul? On the same continuum? It appalled her that desire could turn so predatory, could willingly use people and use them up entirely if that's what its satisfaction required. The question was whether this form of it was something perverted, skewed, or was just another feature of the basic urge, always pulsing in secret beneath the veneer of the proper, tender traditions of love and marriage and fidelity and family. The next file she pulled contained a larger folded page, a poster with crudely typeset block letters and a hideous engraving for illustration.

SCANDALOUS FUN FOR THE ADULT MALE!
NOT FOR LADIES! NOT FOR CHILDREN!
A NEW SHOW FEATURING
BERTHA AND HER BEASTLY SWAIN.
THRICE NIGHTLY FROM NINE O'CLOCK. 25 C ADMISSION

That's it,
Cree thought,
I'm out of here. That's it for today.
She'd have to return another time and make a point of skipping this category.

The illustration featured a deep-chested boar mounting a naked woman. The boar had a humped back and a bristling face made all the more horrible by the artless rendering. Its stubby back legs strained against the floor while its front hooves hung down limp over the woman's shoulders. Bertha herself was fairly obese. She held herself on all fours but also appeared to have a small table or pedestal supporting her from beneath. Cree couldn't doubt that the image was drawn from life.

"Oh, yes. I have a special affection for that one myself."

Cree leapt upright and spun around to see Gerald Payson, right behind her.

"Awesome, isn't it?" he said. "There's more along those lines."

"Oh?" Cree panted. "Anything with a wolf? A monkey?"

Payson gave her an insinuating grin. "Hmm. Well, a donkey . . . Sure, dogs, but no, I can't recall any wolves or monkeys. If you had told me your interest—"

"Not just sex acts. Circuses? Freak shows? Skits? Anything with a wolf or wolfman or apeman? A wildman?"

"Wildman, that was a perennial favorite among hucksters." He shrugged. "But nothing I can point you to. There are over sixteen thousand items in the collection. It was mainly my mother's gig. I've only looked at a fraction of it."

Cree put the poster away and turned back to face Payson.

"I'm leaving now," she said, "but I'll need to come back tomorrow or the next day. I'm sure it's an imposition, but I'll pay you well for your trouble. In the meantime, I have a list of topics I'd like you to look for, and I want you to pull out the boxes so I can get at them. Arrange them at the front of each room. Understood?"

She shoved her list of index numbers and topics at him. Payson took it, grinning again as he clicked his heels and saluted crisply. His hand had made contact with hers as he took the paper, and she couldn't help wiping her fingers on her skirt as she left.

28

S
HE MADE IT to the Life Sciences Building by four thirty. It was nice to arrive when it was still light outside, for once, and to see Horace puttering around the lab when she came to the door. No shadows in the bushes outside, no tense waiting in the abandoned basement, no wondering what was going on in the meat suite.

Skobold pulled a shade on the outer door and locked it behind her. Indirect daylight came from the light well and through the windows, taking the chill off the blue-white ceiling tubes. After her session at the Payson Collection, Cree took comfort in the sight of Skobold's benign face and the order and rationality of the lab.

"I am increasingly thinking that our wolfman might just provide us with a window into some very exciting discoveries. We have some interesting work ahead of us."

She took the smock Skobold offered her. "What's on the agenda?"

"We're nearing my favorite phase of reconstruction." He continued talking as he arranged tools and materials on the counter, looking unusually eager in his melancholy way "In this case, my pleasurable anticipation is amplified by some new information I received from our friend Cameron. In fact, I was so . . . motivated . . . that I made some extra time this noon and was able to do some preparatory work on the cranium. Soon we can begin making the molds for the skull casts and begin sculpting. If you'd like, we can also create a parallel reconstruction on the computer, although I vastly prefer the old-fashioned method."

"I'm game. Just show me what to do." She had a lot to discuss with him, but thought she'd wait until they were working.

They went to the back room and Cree wheeled out the wolfman's pallet as Skobold carried several boxes of supplies to the counter. When she pulled back the shroud, Cree was startled to see the wolfman's head transformed. The upper curve of bone was intact, the hole bridged with meticulously rejoined pieces and chips, and the surface of the skull glistened.

Skobold explained. Earlier, he had degreased the skull, glued the broken pieces back into place, and varnished the intact cranium and mandible with a coat of polyvinyl acetate. It was all part of the preparation for making plaster skull casts.

He set Cree up at the counter with a can of ordinary satin varnish and had her seal the rest of the bones as he continued preparing the skull. She spread newspapers, then arranged several dozen plastic blocks to support the bones as the varnish dried. She put on rubber gloves and began brushing on varnish, following Horace's instructions to cover every bone feature without leaving drips or bare spots.

As always, working with the bones calmed her, gave her a sense of progress. One step at a time, one bone at a time, building slowly toward understanding. There was a method here, it wasn't all chaotic. Bones could be cryptic, but they couldn't lie. The brush floated over the smooth ivory surfaces, and the varnish revealed tiny pits and seams and stains.

Farther down the counter, Skobold had laid the skull on a rubber mat and was plugging the natural holes and cavities with putty. The external auditory meatus, the nasal aperture, the foramen magnum and other indented features needed to be filled and smoothed to make sure he could separate the mirror image molds after casting in plaster.

"So what was the new information?" Cree asked. "Something to do with the age indicators, I hope. Because I really need some specificity regarding his age."

Skobold's eyes lit up. "Precisely. Our fundamental conundrum. I asked Ray for additional work on the palatine sutures and the cementum annulation, and he was kind enough to do the work this morning and messenger the materials to me. The results are intriguing. No—exciting, precedent setting. Perhaps you had better take a look."

Cree put down her brush, wiped her gloved hands on a rag, then moved over next to Skobold.

"From studying his epiphyseal fusion sites, the pubic symphysis, the sternal rib ends, and the osteon count, I get an age range of thirty-six to forty-two. Ordinarily, I would consider this a safe estimate. But two other indicators create a problem for us. Let me give you some context. As I'm sure you know, the skull of the infant is composed of several pieces which gradually grow together over a period of years. In the adult, we can still see them as ragged fissures in the surface of the cranium." Skobold's gloved finger traced the lines, wandering traceries like the edges of a preposterously intricate jigsaw puzzle.

"Right."

He turned over the skull and put his finger inside the jagged U-curve of teeth. "The palate is the section of cranium on the top of your mouth, and the palatine sutures are the fissures where over the years the bone has joined together. I use a four-phase assessment to age skull sutures, the Meindl-Lovejoy scale. One assigns a score to degree of closure, then multiplies by a numerical factor determined from statistical standards. Are you following me thus far?"

"I think so."

Skobold used a clay-sculpting tool to trace the hairline groove in the wolfman's palate. "Ray's enlargements allow us to measure the fissures with great precision, confirming what I had suspected. This would appear to be the palate of a much younger person. The bones of the palate are much more recently developed."

"Which implies—?"

"Sutures exist to allow the head to compress to fit through the birth canal and to accommodate rapid brain growth in infancy. In adulthood, with growth completed, the sutures naturally close. Those in the top and back of the wolfman's skull are consistent with the other age indicators I've cited, but sutures like these in the palate and maxillary region suggest more recent growth. Consistent with an individual in his late teens."

Cree nodded, dismayed. Confusion on dates was not going to help her.

"One other point." Skobold turned the skull upright again and placed the point of his tool between the eye holes. "Do you see the striations in the bone in the area from the nasion to the end of the nasals? You see it again here, in the suborbital and inferior malar areas."

Cree bent close. "Like stretch marks. Taffy being pulled."

"Exactly. It suggests that the unusual growth in the astonishingly long bridge of the nose and inner cheek bones occurred quite rapidly."

Skobold put down the skull, then picked up an envelope and took out several eight-by-ten photos. The shapes were incomprehensible to Cree, a pattern of parallel lines resembling a tree's growth rings.

"Then there is the cementum annulation, an indicator of tooth age. I have been troubled from the start by the limited degree of attrition and resorption I see in the wolfman's canines and incisors—these appear to be full-bodied teeth, healthy and showing relatively little wear, not the teeth of a forty-year-old who lived before the age of modern dentistry. Fortunately, in humans as in all mammals, a thin layer of cementum is added around the adult tooth root every year, allowing us to measure age by counting the layers. You cut a very thin section from the root of the teeth, then look at it through a microscope and count the cementum layers. I asked Ray to take a section and provide photomicrographs for us." Skobold ticked off the striations on the photo. "The cementum annulatum substantiates the observation that the wolfman's canines and the incisors are relatively young, growing teeth. Their age is precisely consistent with the palate indicators."

"So," Cree said, "you're saying his lower face and dentition developed later. In a rapid and sudden growth phase in his adult years."

"Yes."

"Horace. How . . . can that, I mean, is it possible that—" she stopped, unwilling to embarrass herself by voicing the question.

"Bones can be stimulated to later-age, rapid deformative development in response to changes in use, to injuries, and to growing tumors. A few, extremely rare genetic syndromes can result in rapid bone growth, deformation, or degeneration. Those are the only exceptions to predictable development."

"We're pretty sure about that?"

Skobold put the mandible back on the counter and turned away to fuss with his tools before replying. "Do you believe in werewolves, Ms. Black?"

Cree thought about how to answer. "I do, yes. As a way people in the old days thought of serial killers or schizophrenics, or as a way superstitious people demonized behaviors different from their own. Last year I spent some time with a Navajo shaman, talking about Skinwalkers and Navajo Wolves, evil sorcerers who are supposed to be able to change shape. I think of that tradition as a metaphorical transformation. I've never believed in the . . . other kind, but then you tell me this stuff and I have to wonder." She grinned weakly, trying to keep it light. "How about you?"

Skobold didn't smile. "I am a scientist. I have measured the wolfman's cranial volume, which accommodated a full-sized human brain. He was a human being. I believe we are dealing with a deformity of greater complexity than previously assumed. Clearly the genes responsible for skeletal growth were faulty and caused late-developing abnormalities. If so, it is an extremely rare syndrome, perhaps one never before clinically observed. Which is why it is so very important that we understand what happened—that we document this fellow with perfect precision and objectivity. What happened to our wolfman was not the result of some . . . supernatural event. It was encoded in his genes, which I very much hope we can study in the tissue residues I took samples of. His final shape was what you might call his genetic destiny. We must study him closely so that we may better understand the full diversity of the human condition. The rainbow of our many individual 'destinies.' "

Beautiful,
Cree thought. Horace Skobold was showing himself to be a remarkably thoughtful, eloquent man, a person she would enjoy comparing philosophical notes with if she were free to reveal what she did and what insights her profession had given her. She went back to her bones and brushes. Skobold turned his attention to the cranium, pressing pinches of putty into concavities, smoothing and rounding. He had lost his eager contentedness and now looked troubled.

"Speaking of Ray," Cree said, "I, um, ran into him. We had coffee together."

Skobold's eyes widened. "And?"

"He told me the details about him and Bert, what happened back then. Understandably, he doesn't care much for Bert."

"No."

"He has some, what would you call it, unusual philosophical ideas. I was hoping to ask you about him, actually."

"Ask—?"

"You were right, he sent those dog-morph e-mails—the bones got him thinking of werewolves as a metaphor. He's saying that's what Bert is. That Bert should recognize himself."

"That does sound like Ray."

"But his intensity is a little frightening to me, Horace. And I'm worried that Bert will figure out he sent the e-mails and then decide Ray is his supposed serial killer. I guess I wanted to ask if you thought Ray could really be dangerous. Do you think he could be capable of . . . that?"

Skobold brought the skull close to his eyes to inspect some detail, then continued working the putty for another long minute before answering.

"I can't say what Ray is capable of, or what Bert is capable of. But I must tell you that I believe deeply in the fundamental goodness of mankind. The pain we inflict and endure is not an inevitability of our nature but a tragic result of unintended consequences." He looked at her as if expecting a challenge. "I have spent forty years in this field, Ms. Black. I have viewed at close hand the aftermath of every imaginable kind of carnage. I spent two years doing reconstructive identification in mass graves in Bosnia and Rwanda. So I am
well
aware of the many arguments one can make to the contrary. But I still prefer to give mankind the benefit of the doubt."

Horace stopped his work to look at her penetratingly. She returned the steady gaze, seeing it all there in his eyes, the certainty and beyond that successive layers of fear, then desperation, then determination. She suspected he saw the same in hers.

"What about you, Ms. Black?" he asked, gaze unwavering.

Cree thought about it, realizing how hungry she was for reassurance on that point and how elusive it was proving.

"In general, I'd say I share your outlook. But as regards the current situation, I'm a little worried it's going to be one of those things that . . . puts our hypothesis to the test."

"Yes," Skobold agreed sadly. "I was rather afraid it might."