Death in North Beach (12 page)

Lang found the two-story brick building on Polk Street. Retail below, offices above. The door to the office space was unlocked. Lang went in. The stairway was carpeted, clean but a little musty. Upstairs was a hallway, two doors on each side. Two accountants, an attorney, and a door with a plastic sign on it that said:

SCOTTY MARKHAM

Personal Security

Confidential Investigations

Given the earlier clumsiness Lang was doubtful the guy had many cases that involved any real discretion – more likely bail skips and repos. Not that Lang could turn up his nose at those kinds of jobs without insulting himself. Markham probably specialized as a bodyguard when it required more muscle than brains and had colleagues of equal intelligence – the feral guy for example – he could pick up for a couple of bucks.

Scotty Markham was eating out of the white to-go container he held in one hand while diving in with a plastic fork with the other. A newspaper was open, sprawled out on top of the desk. At the edges were half a dozen fortune cookies, a stack of napkins and a can of Coke.

‘You should have read your fortune before you showed up today,' Lang said.

Markham looked up. He wasn't surprised. He wasn't happy.

Lang came over, scooped up a couple of cookies.

‘I see, you don't like one fortune you keep breaking them open until you find one you like.'

‘Not lookin' to be entertained and you're not gettin' the name of my client, which is why you're here.'

‘Pretty dumb, what you did,' Lang said. It wasn't meant to antagonize and it didn't.

‘Yep.'

‘You didn't think that a couple of guys making threats would change anything?'

‘Nope.'

Lang stood, waiting for an explanation. He looked down at the floor. Black and green asphalt tiles. The walls were hardware versions of wood paneling, once shiny, now not so much. There were two metal chairs with green vinyl cushions. The guy was living in a parallel universe to Lang.

Markham looked up again. ‘You still here?'

‘Just trying to make sense of it all,' Lang said.

‘Look, a guy hires me. Tells me what to do. I tell him it is foolish. He says, do I want the money? His dime, Lang. That's how I make a living. Tell me how you do it.'

‘Not that far off.'

‘I didn't think so. Listen, I'm not lookin' for buddies. You got something else to say?'

‘No. I'll let the guy know he should have listened to you,' Lang said.

Markham made eye contact, smiled, nodded. ‘You do that.'

Eleven

Carly found herself on another hilltop, this one Potrero Hill. From its main street one had a dramatic view of the city's skyline. Quaint restaurants, a coffee shop, a grocer or two lined what could be the business street of any small town. She thought the place should have its own mayor and its own sheriff. But it was just another San Francisco neighborhood. She found her street, turned right and finding her address she discovered a parking spot not too far away.

No one answered the door. Carly looked around and found a narrow brick walkway between the artist's home and her neighbor's. There was sun at the other end. In the sun was a large and attractive black woman in a big straw hat and a leafy print dress seated beside a pond, one foot in the water. Around her were small glass dishes, each with a different colored mixture of paint and water. And near her was a sheet of thick paper on which she painted exotic flowers.

‘Lili?' Carly asked.

The woman turned around, gave Carly a warm, welcoming smile.

‘Come sit by me while I finish this,' she said.

‘Sorry to interrupt your work,' Carly said.

‘Have to if you want to talk with me. All I do is work. I put the brush down, I go to bed. I get up, I pick up the brush.' She smiled broadly and, it appeared to Carly, with honest joy. ‘It is my life.'

‘Pretty tough schedule.'

She grinned again.

‘Of course, I do put in some time eating, as you can guess, so don't go feeling too sorry for me.'

According to the various stories on the web about Lili D. Young, the artist had become more of an illustrator than painter. Her watercolors could be found on greeting cards and on menus and signs. She was successful enough to have a nice house, probably bought years ago when Potrero Hill was considered a less desirable neighborhood.

Carly sat on the ground, giving Lili the space she needed for her work. It was pleasant. Carp cruised and darted around Lili's submerged foot and beneath half a dozen lily pads.

‘You come to talk to me about Whitney?'

‘Yes. You knew him?'

‘A long, long time ago. He used to come down to this big old building where all the artists hung out. He had artist friends and he was welcome. I was young and skinny and sexy and I had the agility of a gymnast. And I think old Whitney – he seemed old even then though he couldn't have been – picked me out of the herd.'

She smiled.

‘I know what I'm saying. That's the way he was. Of course, I have to say, that's the way a lot of them were. And I didn't always dislike being picked out. Different days then . . . um . . . what's your name again?'

‘Carly.'

‘Those days were so different, Carly, I can't tell you. Seems like human beings figured out that sex was . . . well, you remember . . . no, you don't remember all that much, but people said “whatever gets you through the night”. And people slept with each other because there was no damn good reason not to. It wasn't about making a family. It was about love. Love with a small “l”. The other love would come later if it came.'

‘Did it come for you?' Carly asked, instantly regretting she did.

‘You don't want to go there, sweetheart. You don't have the time and I don't have the inclination.'

The face was kind but the eyes weren't.

Lili continued to apply color to the paper, dipping her brush in the pond water to dilute a color. Carly noticed that Lili, unless she had help, and judging by the lush growth of ferns and palms and exotic flowers, had to have done a fair amount of digging, pruning, fertilizing, watering and whatever else was necessary to have a little Eden on the hill.

‘You live here by yourself?'

‘Just me and the ghosts,' Lili said.

‘The ghosts?'

Lili smiled broadly.

‘All of us have ghosts,' she said.

‘You and Mr Warfield have ghosts in common?'

‘This is about him getting killed,' Lili said.

‘Yes, and about a book that allegedly reveals secrets about some people.'

‘And I'm one of them?'

‘That's what we hear.'

She put the brush down. Her face lost its sense of joy.

‘Are you OK?' Carly asked.

‘Sure, sweetheart. I'm fine. Just thinking about secrets. We were talking about ghosts, weren't we? You want to forget so bad and you can for periods of time. But they sneak back from the basement to the front room of your mind like a sly child. And they make you take notice and make you feel what you felt then all over again.'

Lili pulled her leg from the water and stood up. She left her brushes and the little dishes of paint. She picked up her unfinished painting and started toward the house.

‘Hope you won't mind too much, Carly, but I'm exhausted.'

Carly got to her feet.

‘Maybe . . .' Carly managed to get out.

‘Maybe we can, sweetheart,' Lili said, turning back briefly. ‘Some other time. Maybe there's more to talk about. Maybe there isn't.'

It took a little longer than it should have, Carly thought as she walked the narrow walk back to the street, for her to realize she had become the ghost bearer. She would have felt better if she'd left her interviewees angry, but she was making them dredge up old feelings they wanted to keep buried. Except for Bart Brozynski, who seemed amused, Carly was bringing only pain, no cure.

Maybe one of these people killed Whitney Warfield, she thought. If that was the case, it might mean eleven of them didn't. But they'd have to suffer some anyway.

Agnes DeWitt was a pale, delicate woman, tiny spider web cracks in her porcelain face, Lang thought. Research put her at ninety, not eighty. She met him at the door of her apartment just off Van Ness near the Civic Center.

‘I don't know what I can tell you,' she said after cordially inviting him in. She wore jeans, a white blouse and a sweater, though it had to be about eighty degrees in her apartment. ‘May I get you some tea or a glass of water?'

Her living room was not one of an elderly spinster. It was full of books, art and bright colors. Lang was sure that the huge painting over the sofa was done by the same artist as the painting Carly just brought into the office.

Agnes DeWitt saw him stare at it.

‘Anselmo Ruiz,' she said. ‘An old friend.'

He did want a glass of water and followed her to the kitchen, all the while trying to imagine this slow-walking brittle woman chasing down Whitney Warfield at three in the morning and stabbing him with a pen.

‘We can sit here, if you like,' she said. ‘It's cheerier than the living room.'

‘I appreciate your taking the time to speak to me,' Lang said, sitting down.

She laughed. It was a little girl's laugh. She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a pitcher of water that had a filter system. She poured into a clear, unadorned glass. Her hand and arm shook slightly.

‘I'm going to put some tea on for myself,' she said, turning on the fire underneath an ancient tea kettle. ‘Are you sure you wouldn't like to have some tea as well?'

‘This is perfect,' Lang said. ‘Are you working on anything these days?'

‘I have thoughts. Mostly, that is what I have. Thoughts.'

He watched as she prepared the tea. She brought a napkin, a teacup and saucer to the table. She moved with precision. Was that her nature? Or was it a necessity?

‘Did you know Ginsberg and Kerouac and the other North Beach legends?'

‘Oh, yes. Poor Jack. He was such a sloppy writer. I wanted to take him under my wing and teach him it was not a crime to edit one's own words. They are not sacred.'

‘Were you a prim and proper young lady?' Lang dared to ask.

She turned to look at him. Her eyes came to life.

‘Whatever made you think that?' She was amused at the question.

‘There's a lovely formality about you.'

‘I think that is very nice of you to say. The use of the word “formal” is probably apt. I believe that is the person I seem to project. But we are not always who we appear to be. We're not being dishonest. Sometimes the outside betrays the inside.'

‘Did you know Whitney Warfield?'

The tea kettle hissed. She poured a little hot water into a small teapot – “hotting the pot”, she explained – then poured it out. She put some tea in the pot and followed it with more hot water. She brought the pot to the table and sat.

‘Yes. I knew him quite well. I was one of the older ones in a loose-knit group. It wasn't official, you see. People who had similar philosophies and similar goals seemed to find the same bar or coffee shop. Whitney was part of the second wave of these people, the first being Allen and Jack and a dozen or so others. Whitney really wasn't in the same league.'

‘He wasn't a good writer?'

‘On the contrary, he was an excellent writer; a little too blustery for my taste, but others could have learned from him. What I mean to suggest is that real genius creates new ways of thinking and creating. Allen's
Howl
and Jack's
On the Road
launched a movement and those who were around at the time were taking similar risks. They weren't always completely successful, but they were legends, not necessarily because of their talent, but because they were first.'

‘That bothered Warfield?'

‘He refused to accept his station in literary history. I wrote about that in one of my books and Whitney was livid.'

‘You know he was writing a book. I gather it is a book of revenge, revealing secrets about people who may have done him wrong.'

‘That wouldn't surprise me, Mr Lang.'

‘You have secrets, Ms DeWitt?'

‘Would life have been worth living if we hadn't done something we wish to hide? And I suspect the world is allowed only so many saints.'

She poured tea into her cup, barely able to hold the pot steady. Even as she raised her cup to her lips to delicately blow on the surface, her hand trembled slightly.

Lang wondered if he'd get to that point where he found lifting a cup of tea a strenuous task.

‘What do you think of his death?' Lang asked. He wanted to get more from her, some perspective that may have escaped his own, uninformed analysis.

‘He was a man who started many wars, personal wars. He was, in his way, a violent man. His words were full of violence. His death fits into the context of his life.'

‘You have any idea who might have killed him?'

‘It seems evident, doesn't it? Not who – I don't know – but why,' she said. ‘One doesn't kill over general dislike or disapproval. It has to be more personal.'

‘Yes, to prevent the publication of a deep, dark secret.'

She smiled.

‘Did you want to kill him?' Lang asked.

‘Do you want to know my whereabouts at the time of his death?'

She gave ‘whereabouts' a special emphasis, smiling as she said it. ‘Whitney never gave up, never gave in. He never knew when the party was over.'