Paper Phoenix: A Mystery of San Francisco in the '70s (A Classic Cozy--with Romance!) (4 page)

“I don’t know,” the man said again, and they fell silent.

When I returned to the outer office, Susanna’s sobs had reached the gasping, hiccuping stage. Betsy was still sitting beside her, patting her back, and when she saw me she said “Thanks,” and took the cup.

Susanna’s face was more composed now, and I saw for the first time how lovely she was. Even brimming with tears, her eyes were a stunning violet blue, and her flushed skin seemed almost translucent. She didn’t look older than twenty-three or twenty-four, at least ten years younger than Larry had been. She watched me over the rim of the cup, and when she had drunk she said, “Who are you?”

“This is Maggie Wilson,” Betsy said. “She’s a journalism student. She’s going to write a story about Larry.”

The eyes I had been admiring animated instantly with dislike. “Oh, fabulous,” Susanna said. “Fantastic. I’ve made my entrance in full view of a reporter. I can’t believe it.”

“I’m not really a reporter—” I began, but she cut me off.

“I
said
people have to get off my back,” she snapped fretfully. “Can’t I even walk in here without a thousand hassles?”

Betsy made a protesting gesture. “Susanna, Maggie isn’t—”

“Look.” Susanna got up and began to pace. “I went to the coroner’s office, all right? And I got a million stupid questions, and sign this and sign that before they’ll give me Larry’s things. And then— then downstairs I get accosted by this
idiot,
this pimply-faced kid who said he
worshipped
Larry and wants to write some kind of memorial.”

I was obviously in the wrong place. Susanna Hawkins was in no mood to put up with prying journalists, and that’s what she thought I was. I edged toward the door.

“He wanted to know all this stuff,” Susanna rushed on. “Why did I think Mr. Hawkins did it? Didn’t I think he was a martyr, some kind of
saint?”
She giggled breathlessly. “And do you know what he wanted then?” She was looking at me, talking to me. “He wanted to see the note Larry left. Can you believe it? He said he’d consider it a privilege. You know what I should have done?” Her voice was rising. She went to the couch and fumbled in her handbag, pulling out a small piece of white paper. “I should have said, ‘Sure, kid. Take it.
Read
it. It’s
yours!’”

She flung the paper in my direction and turned around, sobbing once again, Betsy at her side. The paper made a couple of lazy loops and settled on the floor. I should leave it there, I told myself. I glanced at it. The writing was facing up. I heard inquiring voices. Susanna’s hysterics had aroused the newsroom. I picked up the paper. The note was short, written with a black felt-tipped pen. There was no salutation, and the writing was angular and positive: “Sorry to do this to you and the kids, but believe me, there’s no other way. Forgive me, baby.” The signature, a flourishing “Larry,” took up half the sheet.

As I placed the note on the couch next to Susanna’s handbag, the newsroom’s inhabitants crowded in, asking what was going on. I walked out the door, down the hall, and leaned gratefully on the elevator button.

Outside, I sat in the car trying to catch my breath. My visit to the
Times
had proved considerably more exciting than a two-Campari-and-soda lunch and a charity fashion show. I must be exhausted, ready to go home and catch a nap.

Reluctantly, I started the car. Sure. Mission accomplished for one day. Got to rest up for my encounter with Andrew Baffrey tomorrow. As I drove slowly out of the vacant lot, I realized that I was hungry. Although it was still a bit early, it could be reasonably construed as lunchtime, and of course it made no sense at all to go home until after I’d had some lunch.

I wasn’t in the mood, though, to go to any of my former haunts, where I might be pitied and patronized, either by headwaiters or acquaintances who would gossip about Richard or urge me to take up Japanese flower arranging or primal scream therapy.

I drove aimlessly around the neighborhood until I spotted a diner advertising
CHINESE AMERICAN CUISINE
and
BREAKFAST ALL DAY
. Sitting at the counter, I ordered pancakes, sausages, and coffee and eavesdropped on three khaki-clad men sitting a few stools down who were drinking coffee and arguing about what should be done to improve Candlestick Park. By the time they agreed that the goddamn thing should be bulldozed, I had devoured my food and was feeling surprisingly content.

I hadn’t found out what I wanted to know at the
Times,
true. Still, I couldn’t help thinking the visit had been, in some sense, a success. Despite Susanna Hawkins’s frenzy, despite the unpleasantness of Ken MacDonald— or perhaps even because of those things— it had been a fascinating window into something new.

On the other hand, I told myself, I can’t get distracted by side issues. If I don’t find out what Richard’s connection with Larry was, the whole thing will be meaningless. Don’t lose sight of the main question.

As I paid the bill, it occurred to me that Richard had hardly entered my consciousness at all while I’d been at the
Times
. He had receded to a mathematical abstraction, a term I wanted to try in an equation. But now here he was, fully fleshed in my mind, where he had been awaiting his chance to grasp me again. As I walked down the gusty sidewalk, grit blowing in my eyes, I realized that I should have known he’d still be lurking there, that he wouldn’t go away and leave me in peace.

Behind the wheel, I found myself still unwilling to go home. Now that I was out, it was almost as difficult to return as it had been to emerge. I drove, looking at the drab buildings, the trucks unloading, the newspapers blowing across the street, until it occurred to me that I was only a few blocks from the Civic Center, and the main branch of the public library. I could read some back issues of the
Times
. Richard had changed his subscription to his love nest on Russian Hill, and I hadn’t been particularly interested in city politics lately, my ignorance of Ken MacDonald’s problems proof of my inattention. Relieved to have a destination once again, I drove to the Civic Center and parked in the underground garage.

In fifteen minutes, I was sinking into the somnolent atmosphere of the library’s newspaper reading room, the past six months’ issues of the
Times
in a stack in front of me. The only sounds were the crackling of newsprint, the occasional clicking of a microfilm machine, and the soft, purring snore of the grizzled old man sitting at the end of my table, the
Christian Science Monitor
open in front of him and his hands folded on his chest.

I looked at the stack of papers
.
Twenty-five cents a copy. An untidy, dog-eared heap of newsprint representing Larry Hawkins’s life’s work. Larry hadn’t had much talent for design. The paper was the size of an advertising throwaway. The headline of the top issue trumpeted,
MAYOR FUDGES ON DRUG REHAB PROGRAM
. I picked it up and began to read.

After an hour, I was almost numb from the barrage of accusatory prose. Larry’s sources had been numerous, his fund of anger apparently inexhaustible. His own byline appeared most frequently, but there were also stories by Andrew Baffrey, managing editor, in almost every issue. Baffrey, it seemed to me, was a more balanced reporter, his prose considerably less rabble-rousing than Larry’s and occasionally even humorous, humor being a sin Larry never committed.

Turning a page, I found myself staring into the stalwart gaze of a promotional photograph of Ken MacDonald. His jawline was as square as I remembered it, his mouth as confident. The picture was captioned, “Channel Eight soothsayer Kenneth MacDonald. What was he doing at Tahoe at a developer’s expense?”

The story was brief, the facts tightly nailed down. Ken had spent two weeks in a Lake Tahoe cabin which Larry’s checking had revealed to be owned by Jane Malone, executive vice president of Basic Development Corporation. Several weeks after his return, Ken had delivered an impassioned editorial in favor of the Golden State Center, one of Basic’s key projects, a high-rise development near the waterfront that had been anathema to San Francisco’s environmentalists. When questioned, he had claimed the cabin had been offered to him by a friend, and he hadn’t known who the actual owner was.

“The citizens of San Francisco aren’t being given the news on Channel Eight, they’re hearing the gospel according to the high-rise,” Larry had written. “Now we know why. It’s the old story of one hand washing the other. We think, however, these revelations of his compromised objectivity should wash so-called ‘reporter’ Kenneth MacDonald right off the screen.” Two weeks later, in a column headed “Follow-Up,” Larry wrote, “Kudos to Channel Eight management for their prompt dumping of developers’ darling Kenneth MacDonald, who spent a vacation in a cabin owned by Basic Development and then came out foursquare behind Basic’s pet project, the Golden State Center (
Times
, Nov. 29).”

There went Ken down the tubes. I looked through the rest of the papers, but found nothing further to interest me. While the Redevelopment Agency, and Richard as its director, had come in for a fair share of knocks and snide remarks, there had been no major expose. If there had been a strong connection between Richard and Larry, no intimation of it had crept into print. Yawning, I folded the last issue and handed the stack to the librarian. At last, I was ready to go home.

When I arrived the next morning, the
Times
office showed signs of casting off the stagnation of the day before. Several scruffy-looking people, presumably staff members, were milling around in Betsy’s office reading mail or the morning paper, talking and drinking coffee. Betsy sat behind her desk looking the same as before, except today she was wearing a purple leotard with her overalls. When she saw me, she smiled.

“I thought you might not come back at all after yesterday,” she said. “Susanna was really overwrought.”

“She has reason to be upset.”

“Yeah, but she was pretty hard on you. Only, it wasn’t
you,
if you know what I mean.” She got up. “I’ll see if Andrew’s free.”

She was back shortly. “He only has a minute, but you can go in now. Straight through the newsroom, and it’s the door right in front of you.”

The newsroom was also more populated than yesterday, with people tapping at typewriters, dialing phones, and generally looking productive. Evidently, Andrew Baffrey had managed to rally his troops. The door that must be his was closed. A piece of paper was taped to it on which was written, in blue pencil,
Editur at work.
I knocked, and a hoarse voice beckoned me in.

The office was the size of a broom closet. The young man standing at the window looked as if he hadn’t slept in weeks. The part of his face that wasn’t obscured by a brown beard was a pale, sickly yellow. His large brown eyes were red-rimmed and blurred with grief or exhaustion, and his hair stood away from his head as if he had spent a lot of time running his hands through it. He had the raw-boned body of a high-school basketball player who hasn’t quite filled out yet. I judged him to be about twenty-five years old.

“Andrew Baffrey,” he said. I told him I was Maggie Wilson, and we shook hands. He had the knobbiest wrists I had ever seen, or perhaps that impression came from the fact that his sweater sleeves were too short. His palm was clammy, and I could feel a tremor in his fingers. He gestured to a folding chair for me and sat down behind his desk. “Betsy says you want to do a story on Larry. What for?” he asked.

Accustomed to Betsy’s friendly cooperation, I found the question brusque. Slightly off balance, I launched into my journalism-student story, hoping I sounded confident. The truth was, I had once thought about entering the program for real, so I knew a bit about it. Andrew made no comment, and I felt myself losing conviction under his noncommittal gaze. I finished, lamely, “I want to write about what Larry Hawkins did on his final day, and intersperse that with flashbacks about the history of the
Times.”

“I see.” He drummed his fingers on the desk, watching them rise and fall. Finally, he looked back at me and said, “What do you want from me?”

I was getting thoroughly unnerved. “I thought it would add to my article if I knew what stories he was working on at the time of his death. I mean, help me understand his motives and so forth.” I had never before realized how important the nods, smiles, and sympathetic sounds of normal conversation were. The silence was unbearable, so I chattered on. “The stories might provide clues to why he did it, I thought. From what I understand, suicide was very much out of character for him.”

A jolt of pain crossed Andrew’s face, gone almost before I had seen it, leaving his eyes a little redder than before. “You could say that,” he muttered. He stood up, slipping his fingers in the back pockets of his faded jeans, and wandered back to the window. “What was your name again?”

“Maggie Wilson. ‘

He rested one foot on the windowsill and leaned his elbow on his knee. He was wearing a battered-looking pair of running shoes, their faded electric blue the brightest color in the room. “Maggie, I want to know why you’re here,” he said casually.

This was it. My face was getting hot. “I told you.”

He shook his head. “I don’t believe you.” He didn’t seem angry, or even particularly interested. “For one thing, I know the guy who runs that program at State. When he sends students over, he always calls me to see if it’s OK. Should I give him a jingle to ask about you?”

Looking down at Candace’s notebook in my lap, I shook my head. I must look like a whipped puppy. I wished to God I’d never heard of Andrew Baffrey.

He crossed the room and perched on the corner of his desk in front of me. “Then I want to know what you’re doing,” he said. “Did you come here for some weird kick, or are you snooping around for somebody?”

Mustering my dignity, I stood up. My nose began to prickle, a bad sign meaning I might cry. “I’ll leave,” I said, making a tentative movement toward the door.

Without getting up, Andrew caught me by the forearm. “I want to know what you’re doing here,” he repeated, his voice level.