Huckleberry Fiend (21 page)

“Terrific.”

“I guess I didn’t tell it right.”

“I guess not. That ‘cheaper the crook’ line was good, though.”

“You don’t know that one? From
The Maltese Falcon
? See, the line before it, you know, that evokes it—”

“Never mind, Mcdonald, okay?”

* * *

Hearing me come in, Sardis popped down instantly. “You look like—”

“Don’t say it. You should have seen the other guy. Come on and I’ll tell you about it while I’m in the shower.”

“I’ve got a better idea. It’s kind of the wrong season for it, but I have the feeling you could use a hot brandy.”

“Wrong season, hell. You know what Mark Twain didn’t say.”

“You mean, ‘The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco’? But everybody knows he did say it.”

“Greatly exaggerated. Like reports of his death.”

She had the drinks waiting when I came out of the bathroom, and we sipped them while I ran down the evening’s activities for her. She was broody about it. “This thing is getting scary.”

“You’re telling me. Those guys were
big
mothers.”

“It sounds as if the woman was in charge.”

“That’s what it looked like. But she was very young— twenty-fiveish, probably. And I never saw her before.”

“She was the only one who didn’t wear a stocking mask?”

“Yes.”

“That’s odd, don’t you think?”

“The whole damn thing’s odd.”

“Well, who do you think they were?”

“Hired thugs, I guess. The question is, who hired them?”

“Kittrell?”

“It could have been. Your call certainly tipped him that something was up. But how did he know we’d burgle his house the second he went out?”

“When you put it that way, he looks like the least likely suspect.”

“Who do you see as the others?”

“Wolf, of course. He could have had somebody waiting at the airport to follow us when we got back to town. Temby could have had us watched. Or Tom Sawyer— he may not have as much money as the others, but if he can afford Mark Twain letters, he can probably scrape up the shekels for a few hired thugs. Then there’s Rick Debay.” She swirled her brandy. “Or maybe Linda McCormick.”

“Linda!”

“Look, she knew about Edwin Lemon, and she’s been in contact with Herb Wolf and also with you. She knows a whole lot of the story. Maybe she didn’t kill Beverly, but she might damn well have taken it into her head to go after the manuscript.”

“But where would Linda get thugs?”

“You don’t know anything about her— maybe she’s a motorcycle mama in her private life.”

“Oh, God. I can’t take it. I need oblivion.”

Instead I got a knock at the door. If I’d thought I couldn’t take it before, I didn’t know the half of it: it was Blick.

He said, “Hello, Asshole. Sorry, Miss Kincannon, I didn’t see you.”

“Come in, scumbag. What’s on your mind? If you’ll forgive my taking liberties with the language.”

“I got kind of an interesting call tonight, Mcdonald. Mind if I sit down?”

Sardis and I had been lounging on the bed. Obviously a more formal arrangement was called for. I got chairs from the dining room for all three of us. So there we were, sitting in three stiff chairs, in a kind of triangle, up close because the bed took up most of the room, Sardis and me in robes, Blick in a rumpled suit. A revoltingly cozy little scene.

“This young dick answers the phone tonight and it’s some crazy guy, says he’s from Mississippi. Says there’s been a murder involving a manuscript of some sort. A woman’s been killed for it, he says he heard— doesn’t know where, only knows the area code— 415— so he calls San Francisco because the phone company says that’s what ‘415’ is. ’Course it’s also Oakland, and also Marin and the Peninsula, but the guy calls us first. Can’t blame him, can you?”

I didn’t dignify it with an answer.

“Well, the dick thinks it’s a nut call, but then the guy mentions a name he knew I knew, and he turns the call over to me. Guess whose name it was, douchebag?”

I was about to say “Pudd’nhead Wilson,” but suddenly I was just too damn tired to spar with the ape. Somehow, I had to get him out of my house so I could go to sleep. But how?

“Mine,” I said for openers, hoping to convey the spirit of cooperation and good citizenship.

“Bingo. And as it happens, you just happen to be involved in the murder of a San Francisco woman.”

“Okay, listen, Howard. I’ll come clean. I’m working for the
Chronicle
.”

“Yeah, right. Beverly Alexander was going to give you a story.”

“Actually, I may have told a teeny little fib about that. This guy called the
Chronicle
first— the one who called you. Said Beverly had something of his— some crazy story about a manuscript.”

“A Mark Twain manuscript.”

“Well, how likely is it some guy in Mississippi’s really lost a Mark Twain manuscript? See, Joey Bernstein’s like your young dick— he thinks the guy’s a nut case— only he’s having lunch with me that day and he tells me the story and I tell him Mark Twain’s a lifelong interest of mine. Well, Joey feels sorry for me, see.” Here I tried to look sheepish— the idea being that I was so hard-up that my ex-city editor was trying to find a way to throw me a crumb. “So he asks me to check it out. And that’s what I was doing at Beverly’s that day. I figured it was probably just coincidence she was killed by a burglar, but you never know. So I’ve been trying to find some connection between her and this guy.”

“Clarence Jones.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you find it?”

“Do you know if she ever used the name Sarah Williams?”

“What for? She wasn’t a criminal— she was a flight attendant. What’s this about an a.k.a.?”

“I don’t know. Clarence said she did, that’s all. Said she was using that name to sell his property.”

“To whom?”

“He didn’t know.”

“So how’d he know what name she was using?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t think it made sense, either.”

Blick looked as if he smelled a slaughterhouse. “Why didn’t you tell me about it, asshole?”

Now for the
coup de grace
. “Give me a chance, okay, dicknose? I told
him
to tell you. He called me again tonight before he called your office, I guess. I told him we weren’t doing a story— frankly, I think he
is
a nut case— and if he had any information about Beverly’s murder, he’d better tell you. I was going to call you in the morning to see if he got you. By the way, he wouldn’t leave a phone number. I don’t even know how to call the guy.”

“You should have told me about him, dammit!”

“Yeah, I know— I’m sorry about that, I really am. But when she was killed, I smelled a story. Only it didn’t pan out. I didn’t have a story, you didn’t have a lead— what was the point?”

“I’m a cop and you ain’t, dildo. Jeez. You must think I’m as stupid as you are.”

“Listen, I’m really sorry, Howard. I honestly thought there wasn’t anything there.”

Throwing me one last look of utter disgust, he got up, knocking over his chair in the process, stomped to the door, and slammed it on his way out.

“I guess,” said Sardis, “he forgot to bring an arrest warrant.”

“You think that’s it, do you? You don’t think it was that ironclad story I told him? You don’t know him— he’s stupid enough to believe it. I better call Joey and get him to cover for me.

I did and he said he would, hardly using the word “asshole” many more times than Blick had. Then there was the question of what to do about Clarence Jones. Nothing, I figured, would do nicely. If he was going to get a few embarrassing inquiries, so be it. Obviously he wouldn’t believe a word I told him— he hadn’t before— and, in truth, the less he knew the safer he was from harassment, anyway. Besides, he already had God on his side. He’d probably be fine.

Now for the oblivion I craved. Sardis had already made us more drinks and turned on the TV. The eleven o’clock news was nearly over and soon we’d be getting a “Taxi” rerun. It must have been a slow news day. Or maybe it wasn’t that— Rebecca Thaxton, the reporter who’d been murdered the day Sardis and I moved, had been an employee of the station, after all. At any rate, they were doing a belated follow-up story on her murder, saying the police hadn’t any leads and asking for information. They were really doing it up nicely, adding on a little obituary tribute, talking about all her past triumphs and previous stories, showing film clips. Suddenly, I was looking at Virginia City. I’d have known it anywhere, perched in the middle of nowhere like it is. A pan down C Street so you could see all the schlocky stores and bars, then Rebecca in front of the
Territorial Enterprise
building, talking to the new owners. She’d done that story— the one about the paper’s controversial return to frontier journalism.

“Omigod,” said Sardis, “what do you bet she had a nickname?”

Becky
. Becky Thaxton. How close could you get to Becky Thatcher? Had she been Tom Sawyer’s Becky? She had to have been. Her name was Becky, she’d been to Virginia City, and she was unaccountably dead. Of course, I didn’t really know that Tom’s Becky had actually been named Becky, but there were too many coincidences to overlook.

Sardis must have thought so too. “I’ll go with you,” she said. “I want to see that museum.”

“He might be dangerous. She’s dead, after all.”

“Four hands are better than two.”

“Not up against a gun, they aren’t. She was shot, remember. Repeatedly.”

“However, the man you describe is one overcome by remorse if I ever heard of one. I don’t think he wants to kill anyone else.”

I took a deep breath. “Maybe I ought to call Blick.”

“Of course you should. I had no idea you’d look at it so rationally.”

“Looking at it’s one thing. I’ll be damned if I’ll turn it over to that ape at this point. Anyway, I’ve still got the problem of protecting Booker.”

“When do we leave?”

* * *

We left the next morning, on a commercial flight to Reno— somehow, I just didn’t have the heart to involve Crusher again. We told Booker what we were doing, just in case anything happened to us. He urged me to take a gun, so I asked him if he had one I could borrow, knowing full well what the answer would be. “Are you crazy? You get one, you find an opportunity to use it. No way someone in my line has any business anywhere around one.”

We rented a car and drove straight to the Bucket of Blood. Tom was already falling-down, commode-hugging drunk, but just shy of blind drunk— right away he noticed Sardis was female. “You remin’ me of a girl,” he mumbled. “Girl I used to know.”

“Becky?”

“Rebecca. She couldn’ stand ‘Becky’.”

“We’ve come to talk to you about her.”

“Nothin’ to talk about. She’s dead.”

“Could I see the museum?” said Sardis. “I’d love to, really.”

“My car’s still not workin’.”

“It’s okay. We’ve got one.”

“You really want to see it?”

“I’d love to.”

The old yellow car was still parked in front of the place. I wondered why he didn’t get it fixed, but figured he was as broken as it was, and couldn’t even manage simple household chores.

Sardis let him give us the museum tour, asking lots of questions, behaving more or less like a kid at a carnival, and seemingly having the time of her life. As he talked, the erudite Tom came back, the one who didn’t drop final consonants, and could quote from Mark Twain like a Baptist quotes the Bible. He was starting to sober up, and also starting to warm up to Sardis, two very desirable developments, which she was effecting quite consciously. After the final “The End, Yours Truly,” he got morose again. “Tom Sawyer,” he said, “this is your life.”

“The museum, you mean?”

“That’s all there is. I haven’t even got a cat to share it with.”

Sardis said, “Can we talk now?”

“I guess there’s no putting it off.”

“I’ll make you some coffee.”

The coffee was essential. We had to get him sober enough to be coherent. But it was awkward while we waited. What do you talk about with a man you suspect of having killed someone?

In this case, his library. Sardis led him through every book and document in there while the damned water boiled. Finally, we were seated comfortably, each drinking coffee. Sardis was doing so well I kept my mouth shut, mainly.

She was gentle but straightforward. “Tom told me all about the woman you met— your ‘Becky.’ It was Rebecca Thaxton, wasn’t it?”

“You a friend of hers?”

“Just a fan.”

“Too bad. I wanted to ask you what she was really like. I realize now I didn’t even know. For all I know she was married.”

“Did she come to the museum?”

“Yes. On that crazy story about the
Enterprise
. Traipsed all through here with film crews. She was just like Tom’s Becky— ‘a lovely little blue-eyed creature with yellow hair plaited into two long tails’.”

Sardis forgot she was investigating a murder. “She had pigtails?”

“No, of course not. She looked exactly like what she was. But she could have had pigtails. It didn’t matter. I just fell for her, that’s all.”

“Because she looked like your idea of Becky?” Sardis had just entered the confusing world of male fantasies and seemed uneasy there.

“She had the right coloring, but lots of women do— anyway, I’d never particularly looked for a blonde. Or for anybody named Becky. All I wanted was someone who’d live here with me and love my hero. I guess I thought if I ever met a woman like that, we’d fall in love.”

“But what about the Fiends? Wouldn’t that have been the best place to look for a soulmate?”

He looked very sad. “It’s funny. I didn’t even think about it then— about women, or finding a wife. I just wanted to live in Virginia City and build this museum. But then when I did, it wasn’t enough. It’s so lonely here. I guess it finally got to me. Made me a little crazy. Because when I saw her, and heard her talk— she asked intelligent questions, you see— she wasn’t a real Mark Twain aficionado— didn’t know any more about him than Paul here. But she had a healthy interest, and I knew— I just knew— she could love him. So that would have made her perfect for me. I forgot she had to fall for me first.”