Good to the Last Kiss (11 page)

They went back to Julia’s apartment. Gratelli noticed the curtain across the alley shift again.

McClellan followed Gratelli back down the stairs, then out through the first floor garage and on to Ivy Street. Gratelli looked up at the back of the apartment house where he’d seen the drapery move, trying to make sure he could get the right place once he was inside. There was no way through though. The two cops went to Franklin, then to the front of the apartment.

A woman was leaving as they hit the front door, allowing them entry without having to talk to the super. It was a frame building. The hallways were dark, narrow and musty.

‘Who is it?’ came a voice after McClellan pounded his big fist against the door.

‘Police.’

‘Just a minute.’

‘Now!’ McClellan bellowed.

There was a click. The door opened, caught itself on a chain. A relatively young black face peered through the narrow divide.

‘What is it?’

‘We’d like to talk to you,’ Gratelli said.

‘What about?’ the face replied.

‘May we come in?’

‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ the voice said.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Anthony.’

‘Anthony, I suppose you got a last name,’ McClellan said.

‘Jones.’

‘Jones?’

‘Jones,’ Anthony responded.

‘Mr Jones, Inspector Gratelli and I would like to talk to you and we’d like to talk to you inside.’

‘Why can’t we talk like this. What’s this about?’

‘It’s about somebody across the alley over there who nearly died,’ McClellan said.

‘We’d like to talk to you about that,’ Gratelli said, keeping his voice calm. ‘We’d like to be able to see what you can see from your window. You know what I mean?’

‘Can you come back please?’

‘All this just makes us want to come in and talk with you all the more.’

The face backed away. The two cops could hear the kid take a deep breath. The chain dropped and the door opened.

The guy was maybe twenty, wiry and wearing a towel around his waist. The shine on his body suggested it had been oiled. In the small bay window, there was a chair facing out – though the draperies had been pulled and the room dark, there was a strange sacredness about it. Perhaps a dark and evil one. On the floor by the chair was a pool of clothing. On the table beside the chair were a pair of binoculars and a bottle of almond oil.

McClellan went to the window, peeked through the part. In a few moments, he turned back. Shrugged. ‘Come take a look . . . second floor, to the left.’

Gratelli looked. There was a man lying naked on a bed and a woman dressed in leather doing the deed.

Gratelli looked back. Anthony Jones stared at the floor.

‘So fucking early in the morning,’ McClellan said. ‘And we got ourselves a little peeping Anthony.’

‘Am I under arrest?’

‘Who the fuck knows?’ McClellan said, shaking his head. ‘She could pull the goddamn blinds.’

Gratelli laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Yeah nothing. Hey, Jones, you shouldn’t be looking at that crap.’

‘They look back. They watch me,’ he said defensively.

‘I didn’t want to know that,’ McClellan said.

‘They want me to look,’ Jones pleaded.

‘OK, OK,’ McClellan said. ‘Give it a break. You’re only issued one of those. You wear it out, you go without.’

Gratelli pulled McClellan into the kitchen. ‘Go run our Mr Jones. I’ll ask a few questions.’

Back in the car, heading toward the hospital, they rode in their usual silence. Gratelli was surprised that McClellan hadn’t gotten a little physical with the peeping Tom. He usually liked to push these guys around, scare them and vent some of his own anger. Instead, McClellan went a little soft.

The information on Jones wasn’t much. There had been some previous complaints about him exposing himself in the window of a previous residence, but nothing else. What Gratelli discovered was that the Jones boy had plane ticket stubs that showed he’d been in East Chicago during several of the murders. They’d verify it, of course. They’d put him on the list. It almost wasn’t worth it. But he did have a view of Julia Bateman’s studio apartment, though not much of one. If they put everybody who had some sort of sex kink on their list, they might as well just substitute the San Francisco phone book, the lieutenant told them. Still, who knows what a quiet little guy like the Jones kid would do in the middle of the night?

Just as they pulled into park, McClellan said. ‘You know you never think of homosexual slants you know? I mean, I know there is. I seen ’em. Used to be a place called the Rendezvous downtown some years ago. But it don’t seem natural. None of it seems natural. Gay Vietnamese. Gay Mexicans. Isn’t there one fuckin’ country that don’t have homos? You think there’s gotta be. Yet there’s a whole fuckin’ city full of homos, all sizes, all colors speaking ninety-seven different languages.’ He shook his head. ‘How you suppose it happens? What turns a guy?’

Gratelli shrugged.

‘I mean, fuck, you ever think about that shit?’

‘I don’t know,’ Gratelli said. ‘You being a good Irish Catholic boy, you probably messed around . . .’

‘You’re ass, Gratelli.’ McClellan pulled into the hospital lot, and pulled into the space in front of the fire hydrant.

‘When I was a kid, maybe thirteen, me and my cousin Joey sat in back of Uncle Frank’s black Buick looking at magazines . . .’

‘I don’t want to hear it,’ McClellan said.

Gratelli shrugged, repressed a smile that would have been rare in any event and got out of the car and followed McClellan into the big old building.

The humor of McClellan’s sudden priggishness slipped away quickly as he thought about Julia Bateman. Few people besides other cops would understand how he felt about questioning a rape victim – especially one as brutalized as Bateman. He would have rather have spent an afternoon on a bed of nails than cause her the agony of reliving any part of that experience.

Julia saw the two men come in. She didn’t recognize either of them until Gratelli spoke.

‘Ms Bateman, I’m Inspector Gratelli, San Francisco police.’

Her father got up from the edge of the bed.

‘I’m Royal Bateman.’

‘Her father?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘This is Inspector McClellan.’

‘Nice to meet you both. Is there any news?’

‘No,’ Gratelli said. ‘Too early. We need to get some information from your daughter. You might want to grab a cup of coffee or something, stretch your legs. We might be a while.’

‘I’d like to stay.’

Royal Bateman said it in a way that wasn’t a request.

Gratelli looked at Julia. She nodded.

‘All right. As long as you understand we might be getting pretty graphic here.’

The senior Bateman stepped aside, moving toward the window as Gratelli pulled a chair beside Julia’s bed. McClellan hung back by the door.

‘Ms Bateman, I’m going to try to ask questions in such a way that you can answer yes or no. Don’t try to speak, OK?’

She nodded.

‘Did you know your assailant?’

She shook her head no.

Early in the questioning, Julia Bateman didn’t feel the strain. Perhaps, she thought, she had vented everything crying in her father’s arms. She felt little emotion. The events seemed so distant, so unconnected to her, she felt as if she were remembering some movie she had seen or book she had read.

But eventually the darkness seemed to be creeping back. As she nodded to one question and shook her head at another, her thoughts became more vivid.

‘Were his hands coarse, rough?’

She shook her head ‘no,’ but could feel them now, wet, slippery hands. Julia could smell him.

‘Did he say anything . . .?’

She shook her head ‘no.’ But she could hear him breathing as if he were next to her. Now.

She could no longer understand the questions.

‘Ms Bateman?’ It was the gravelly voice.

She put her hands over her eyes, but it did no good. What she saw was inside her head. There was a sweaty body over her.

‘You got any ideas about lunch?’ McClellan asked as the red Taurus pulled out of the hospital parking lot.

‘I’m not hungry.’ Gratelli was exhausted and his stomach churned like he’d just gulped down a cup or two of sulfuric acid.

‘You’ll be hungry. You need to eat.’

‘Why is it I always need to eat when you’re hungry?’

McClellan laughed. ‘You’re skinny.’

‘I’m healthy.’

‘You look dead.’

Gratelli knew he did. He looked like his father, dark hair, pale skin, bony features. Couldn’t gain weight if he tried. His brother Marcello got the mother’s genes. Those were the fat genes. Marcello looked more alive than Vincente for the entire forty-eight years of his life, before he died of a heart attack.

‘My brother looked very healthy when he died,’ Gratelli said. ‘Better just to look dead than be dead.’

‘I’m not so sure about that,’ McClellan said. ‘You upset about what we talked about earlier?’

‘What?’

‘About messin’ ’round in the back seat of your Uncle Frank’s Buick?’

‘Mickey, listen . . .’

‘Shut your fuckin’ trap a minute, will ya? I’m trying’ to tell you something. Kids do it. Curiosity. OK?’ McClellan took a deep breath, let it out. What he was about to say wasn’t easy. ‘Once. I was fuckin’ twelve years old, ragin’ hormones, and all that, you know,’ McClellan said, gritting his teeth and staring straight ahead. ‘We went skinny dippin’ and were just laying there dryin’ out and hell the sun and the hormones and talking about things . . . hell we were just showing each other what we had, you know, and how big it could get. And well things got outta hand.’

‘You played with his . . .’

‘Don’t make a federal case out of it, all right? I just figured to set the record straight. We’re even now. You messed around. I messed around. Once. End of story.’

‘I never messed around,’ Gratelli said.

‘What do you mean?’ McClellan blurted, turning toward Gratelli.

‘I mean I never messed around.’

‘No, no, no. You and what’s his name with the magazines in the back seat of the Buick, right?’

‘Joey. My cousin. We didn’t mess around.’

‘You said . . .’

‘I said the two of us were in the back seat of my Uncle Frank’s black Buick looking through some magazines. You didn’t let me finish. He was telling me about looking in the window of this apartment house and seeing two guys going at it. That’s all. First I knew about that sort of thing.’

‘You never . . .’

‘Not me,’ Gratelli said. ‘I don’t mind you like guys, though.’

‘That was thirty fuckin’ years ago!’

‘All right, I don’t mind that you used to like guys. Listen, this is San Francisco. We got gays on the force.’

‘Cut it out, Gratelli.’

‘You’re right. It’s none of my business. But you brought it up, remember. And I think that’s great, healthy, you know. Developing a little sensitivity.’

NINE

T
he best part of having McClellan as a partner was that Gratelli wasn’t obligated to be the cop’s friend off-duty. Gratelli had never met his partner’s wife and McClellan had never set foot in Gratelli’s apartment. Both of them, unlike most police officers, clocked off the force and off each other at the end of their shift.

No bowling, no shared drinks before heading home, no weekend barbecues. Gratelli had no idea how McClellan spent his off hours except for the rumors that he was a boozer. For all Gratelli knew, McClellan made birdhouses on Saturday mornings or coached little league. He did know that McClellan had a wife and a couple of kids who had to have some expensive dental work and now were going the college route; and he knew now that the marriage was in trouble.

The lack of a deep, personal friendship didn’t seem to bother either one of them.

The worst part of the partnership was lunch. McClellan’s palate was accustomed to Denny’s. Even preferred it. Or maybe one of the tasteless noodle joints in Chinatown. McClellan liked his food cheap and filling.

Food for Gratelli was, like opera, one of life’s few celebrations. He could wear cheap suits, get by with a barber rather than a hair stylist, could even endure an inexpensive but decent Chianti; but he was willing to lay out real money for his opera seats, a fine old LP recording and a really good meal. Food for McClellan wasn’t a celebration, it was like pulling up to a gas station and pushing the hose in the hole and pumping it in until the tank couldn’t take any more.

Even so, he’d given up the lunch fight years ago. He’d rather chew on a cheap hamburger than listen to McClellan complain for three hours that he’d spent seven dollars for lunch. Of course, Gratelli knew McClellan would complain about something anyway. That way Gratelli wouldn’t have to bear the guilt.

McClellan made one exception – once a week at Original Joe’s. The neighborhood wasn’t great, but the restaurant was. But that was only once a week. Fridays, usually. The stew was the best. Both Gratelli and McClellan said it was just like the stew their mothers made. Gratelli’s mother was Italian. McClellan’s Irish. Stew had somehow crossed ethnic lines.

This time, they sat in the McDonald’s at the end of Haight Street on Stanyan across from the entrance to Golden Gate Park. Gratelli had managed to get through his fish sandwich and about half his fries. McClellan was on his second Big Mac.

‘You remember the fight they had trying to get a McDonald’s in here?’

Gratelli nodded. The neighbors fought it. He was sorry they’d lost. He hated seeing the chains invade his city.

‘You remember what this neighborhood was at the time, practically burnt out? Still ain’t much. Shit,’ McClellan said. ‘City’s out of fuckin’ control. The Castro was an Irish neighborhood, Gratelli. Now the queers own it. Look at your neighborhood, for Chrissakes. Hell, you Italians used to run this city. Now look at you. The Chinese are runnin’ you out. The Japs and Chinks have all the money. The queers run City Hall.’