South of Broad (30 page)

“You’re forgiven, Toad,” she says, smiling. “Just this once.”

That evening I pick up the phone in the small office off the kitchen and dial for information in Stuart, Nebraska, where I ask for the number of Olin Satterfield. With the compassionate telepathy that made her famous among her friends, Molly Rutledge enters the room behind me carrying tumblers with two fingers of Jack Daniel’s on the rocks.

The phone rings twice and the father answers.

“Mr. Satterfield,” I say. “This is Leo King calling from San Francisco. I’m calling with news of your son.”

“There must be some mistake,” he says. “I have no son.”

“Aaron Satterfield is not your son?”

“Do you speak English? I just told you that I don’t have a son.”

“Do you have a wife named Clea Satterfield?” I ask, studying the name on the second letter I hold in my hand.

“I may and I may not,” he replies.

With some effort I control my temper, and say, “If Clea Satterfield has a son, sir, I would like to talk to her.”

“Clea Satterfield is my wife.” The man’s voice is glacial. “And I assure you that neither of us has a son.”

A brief but furious argument breaks out on the plains of Nebraska, in a state where I have never set foot, and it is muffled yet hard-fought. Then I hear the voice of a woman, clearly agitated and at the end of whatever short rope she is tethered to in the small acreage of her life.

“This is Clea Satterfield,” she says. “I’m Aaron’s mother.”

“I’m afraid I’ve got some terrible news for you, ma’am,” I say. “Aaron died today in a hotel in San Francisco.”

I would have continued, but I hear a scream of purest sorrow, and for several seconds, her voice is something primal and ancient and inhuman. “There must be some mistake,” she says between terrible sobs. “Aaron’s always been a healthy boy.”

“Aaron died of AIDS, Mrs. Satterfield,” I say. “He was probably too embarrassed to tell anyone.”

“You mean cancer,” she corrects me. “Aaron died of cancer, you say?”

“They say it was AIDS. I’m no doctor, but he was diagnosed with AIDS.”

“Cancer is such a killer,” she says. “I don’t know a family in our com munity it hasn’t touched. It’s such a scourge. Did Aaron say anything before he died? I didn’t get your name.”

“Leo King,” I answer. “Yes, he said to tell his parents that he loved both of you very much. Both of you. His mama and his daddy.”

“Such a sweet boy,” she says. “Always thinking of others. Where is he now? His remains, I mean.”

“In the city morgue. Here’s the name of a funeral home that you can call and they’ll prepare the body to ship home for burial.”

I give her the name and number of a funeral home that specializes in the preparation of corpses who died of AIDS.

“Wasn’t my boy beautiful?” Mrs. Satterfield asks.

“One of the best-looking men I ever saw,” I say.

“Even the cancer couldn’t touch that.”

I hear something strange in the background and ask, “What’s that?”

“That’s my husband, Olin. Aaron’s father. He’s crying, so I have to go. You sure Aaron told you he loved me and his father very much, Mr. King?”

“Those were his last words,” I lie. “Good-bye, Mrs. Satterfield. I’m Roman Catholic and I’ll have a Mass said in memory of your son.”

“We’re Pentecostal. Please, no Masses for us,” she says. “Let us do the praying. Let us do the burying. We’ll do it the old way, and the right way. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Mrs. Satterfield.” Again, my blood is up. “That should’ve been you and your husband with Aaron when he died. Not me. That’s the old way. That’s the right way.”

She hangs up on me and I put my face in my hands. “I had no right to say that to that poor woman,” I tell Molly.

“The hell you didn’t,” Molly says. “She’s lucky it wasn’t me who called her. I’d’ve told her exactly what I thought of her and her god-awful husband.”

“He was pretty torn up.”

“It’s easy to be torn up in Nebraska,” Molly says. “It’s harder in room 487 in the Hotel Devonshire. Let’s go feed the troops.”

•   •   •

J
ust past midnight, my bedroom door opens. I reach up to turn on the lamp by my bed. Molly Rutledge enters, trailing her beauty like something that can damage a man or change his life forever. She is carrying two glasses, and I smell the Grand Marnier as she sets them on the table. She removes her robe to reveal a silken, diaphanous gown that makes me praise God for the shape of women. I do not like that Molly is putting us in such an awkward situation, but I don’t hate her for it, either. Even so, our friendship holds a richness and a power and a completeness that I do not wish to risk because her misguided husband has developed a taste for long-legged Brazilians half his age.

While Molly’s prettiness is classic, imperturbable, natural, I sport a face that has no business coming anywhere in the vicinity of hers. She is one of the great beauties of her Charleston generation, and I am just a foot soldier in society who knows his place in the order of things.

Molly looks at me, and takes a sip of her drink. “Well?”

“I can think of a thousand reasons not to do this, Molly.”

“That all you got?”

“Your sister-in-law is upstairs sleeping with my brother-in-law. It seems tacky to have a romp in the basement under those circumstances.”

“Seems natural to me,” she says. “What does a nice girl have to do to get laid around here?”

“We’re both married. I’m the godfather of your daughter. I was a groomsman in your wedding.”

“Tell me that you don’t love me, and I’ll leave.”

“I’m not in love with you, Molly. I’ve always had a thing for Trevor Poe.”

“I knew you’d make one of your stupid jokes. I was expecting it. Now I’m going to lie down beside you.”

“I’m afraid for you to,” I say.

“Why? I’m up on my rabies shots.”

“I’m afraid the world won’t ever be the same.”

“I don’t want the world to be the same.” She walks over to the bed, and turns out the light.

On this night I rediscover why all the great religions condemn the sweet, enchanted crime of lust. When I am inside Molly’s body, when the cells of my flesh light up in ecstasy with the fiery truth of her flesh, I feel the creation of a whole new world as we move together, purr together, moan together. My tongue becomes her tongue, our lips burn in congruence, our breasts lock into each other’s heartbeats. When I come in a burst of fire and flood, she roars in behind me. Words pour out of me that I had thought for twenty years but had never believed I would whisper in the ears of this woman, and she accepts them with forbidden words of her own. With a cry, I fall off her. Then, she kisses me a final time. In darkness she gathers garments that are feathery, and in nakedness she leaves me. What began in mere sin ended in sacrament, and as I lie there alone, I know that she was right: my world will never be the same.

CHAPTER 16
The Patel Connection

W
hen we finish our work for Open Hand on Tuesday, a police car is waiting for us, parked in front of the Vallejo Street house. Ike and Betty go over to flash their badges and speak with a detective. Rather than the break we are hoping for, it turns out to be a surprise: the police want to interrogate me about a murder for which I am a prime suspect. That’s when I see Anna Cole walking toward me.

The homicide detective is named Thomas Stearns McGraw, the son of two poetry-loving parents. His father teaches American literature at Berkeley and his mother’s father is a third cousin twice removed of the author of
The Waste Land
. Since it is a new experience for me to be a suspect in a murder case, I do not learn this fascinating autobiographical detail at our first encounter, but later, since Tom McGraw is a gifted conversationalist and a man with a curious nature.

I introduce Anna Cole to everybody and explain who she is. Anna is obviously deeply shaken by the recent turn of events, and her hands tremble visibly. She turns to me in a sudden white fury and says, “I knew I shouldn’t have opened the door for you.”

“Let’s go inside to discuss this, Detective McGraw,” Ike says. Tom McGraw’s unexpected arrival breaks up the rhythm of habit that has sustained us in our search. Everyone wants to be present when the detective questions me. But Ike assumes control and sends the others to the phone bank in the dining room, ordering them to remember the hundreds of leads that need to be followed up.

Sheba kisses me on the cheek. “If Leo King committed murder, Detective, I’ll jump off the Golden Gate Bridge and let you film my suicide. You’ll have worldwide rights to my death.”

“How can you joke about something so horrible?” Anna Cole asks, then breaks down crying.

“Because none of us knows what this is about,” I tell her. “I’ve never murdered anyone, so at this moment I am fairly relaxed.”

“Shouldn’t we get Leo a lawyer?” Sheba asks Ike.

“He doesn’t need a lawyer,” Ike says. “He’s never even gotten a parking ticket.”

Anna Cole is completely unstrung, and we have to wait for her hysteria to ease before the interrogation can begin. “Ma’am, could I get you a glass of water?” Ike asks softly. “We could get this done a lot faster if you could get control of yourself.”

Anna says, through tears, “All I did was send the cops a photocopy of the man who was stalking me like you told me to do, Leo.”

“He was from San Rafael, right?” I ask. “I forget his name.”

Detective McGraw helps me out. “His name was John Summey. He lived at 25710 Vendola Drive in San Rafael. He worked as a physical therapist at a retirement center here in the city.”

“And he had picked up a bad habit of stalking young women from Minnesota,” I add.

“That’s what Miss Cole said,” the detective says. “But a problem came up.”

“What’s the problem?” Ike asks.

“John Summey turned up dead in the trunk of his car in a city parking lot, day before yesterday. The back of his head was caved in by a blunt instrument. There was some noticeable decomposition of the body—in other words, a bad odor led to someone making a complaint. It took us a day to run the tag number. We interviewed the distraught Mrs. Summey, who filed a missing-person report last week. Then, voilà, Anna Cole’s complaint comes up. We visit and she gives us your name, Leo King, as the last person who saw Mr. Summey alive.”

“It’s all because I opened the door for you,” Anna screams. “I’ve never opened the door to a stranger in my life. And then you stalk that man down and kill him?”

“Whoa,” Ike says. “Let’s not jump too far ahead of things here.”

“Miss Cole said you threatened the man with a gun,” Detective McGraw says to me. “It was Miss Cole’s, a twenty-two revolver. You asked for it when you went over to confront Summey.”

“Anna seemed frightened by the guy,” I explain. “She had a pistol in her hand when I rang the doorbell. She told me about the man stalking her. I borrowed the gun in case I had to bluff him, which I did.”

“Miss Cole said you kicked in his window,” the detective says. “This was corroborated when we searched the car. Could you explain why?”

“He wouldn’t roll down his window, and I wanted to get his attention. I also wanted to find out who he was.”

“So you threatened him with a gun.”

“Yes, I threatened him with a gun.”

“Leo, you dumb, dumb-ass white boy.” Ike sighs.

“Then you stole his wallet? And his sunglasses?”

“I confiscated his wallet hoping that he would leave Miss Cole alone,” I say.

“You succeeded,” Mr. McGraw says. “And the last time he was seen alive, you were aiming a gun at his face.”

“Yes, I was, but Mr. Summey was seen by me and Miss Cole racing up Union Street at a high speed, very much alive.”

“Actually, we think that Mr. Summey might have been dead at that particular moment in time, Mr. King,” the detective says. “According to our time line, Mr. Summey may have already been killed and stuffed in that trunk. Could you give a description of the man driving that car?”

“White man, six feet tall. Black hair,” I say.

“Could the hair have been dyed?”

“I don’t know. I’m not a hair colorist,” I say. “It was a wig. A toupee. A cheap one.”

“Don’t be smart-mouthed, Toad,” Ike says sharply. “The man deserves serious answers.”

“I’m sorry, Detective McGraw,” I say. “I didn’t get a good look at the man.”

“How old would you say he was?”

“He looked like an older man trying to pretend he was much younger. He had deep brown eyes. Bushy eyebrows. He was a powerfully built man. But he had seen better days.”

“Mr. Summey was born in New Delhi, India. He was on a student visa when he married Isabel Summey. He changed his name legally from Patel to Summey to sound more American. He was five feet seven inches tall and weighed a hundred forty pounds.”

“Not the same guy I met,” I say emphatically.

“The driver’s license has been doctored. We think that photo is the murderer.” He passes me a copy of the license and I study the photograph I gave only a cursory glance during the incident on Union Street.

“I can’t tell if it’s the same guy or not. I just got a brief look at him, then sent him on his way.”

Detective McGraw hands me another picture, this one of a small-boned Indian man. “That’s a recent photograph of Mr. John Summey, formerly Anjit Patel.”

“Not the guy driving the car,” I say. “Not even close.”

“How long ago did you notice the man following you, Miss Cole?” asks Detective McGraw.

“Two days. He followed me to work on Thursday. I noticed him while I was waiting for the bus. Then I was shocked to see him when I got off near my office in the financial district. He was waiting when I got back home. Then, the same thing on Friday. He would leave for the night, but was there when I woke up the next morning. Just parked, waiting. I’d called the cops and reported it on Friday. Then Leo rang the doorbell the next day.”

“But he never approached you or threatened you?” the detective asks. “Am I correct in assuming he never spoke to you or accosted you? Could he have been following someone else from your neighborhood?”

“He was staring at me. I was the one he was after,” Anna says, trembling with conviction.

I tell the detective, “When I went out to take down his license plate number and tried to confront him, he lay down on the floorboards. Unless he spilled some peanuts, it sure looked like he was hiding from someone.”

“Do you have a license for the pistol you used, Mr. King?” the man asks.

“I borrowed the pistol from Miss Cole,” I say.

“It was a gift from my dad,” Anna says. “He didn’t give me a license. I don’t own any ammunition.”

“Could either of you pick this man out of a police lineup?” Detective McGraw asks.

“No,” Anna and I answer at the same time.

“If you see the man again, will you report it to me immediately?” He hands us each a card and also gives one to Ike. Before he leaves, Detective McGraw asks me, “Do you still have those sunglasses?”

“I think I do. Let me run down and check. I tossed them into a drawer on my bedside table.”

McGraw says, “Let me go with you. It may have a good set of this guy’s fingerprints.”

In my catacomb of a bedroom, I turn on the light switch and am astonished to find my room torn apart. Before I can go on to assess the damage, Detective McGraw stops me with a hand squeezing my shoulder. He pushes me back outside my room, then enters the room with caution. He takes out his notebook and writes several things, then asks me, “Is that the table where you put the sunglasses?”

The table is smashed and the drawer is lying on the bed, which a knife has slashed clean through. In a mansion filled with Picassos, Monets, and Mirós, overstocked with silver services and candelabra and movable antiques, priceless even on the black market, it is a surprise to find the most modest room in the house vandalized.

“He came to find those sunglasses,” the detective says. “How did he know you were staying at this house?”

“I don’t have a clue. Hell, the Herb Caen article, maybe.”

“I’m going to tape this door shut. I’ll have the boys from the lab come out here tomorrow to take a look-see. I don’t like this. I’m going to look in the bathroom. Does anyone use it but you?”

“No, sir.”

“My name is Tom. No need to call me ‘sir.’” He takes out a handker chief and pushes against the half-opened bathroom door. I can see the contents of my shaving kit strewn everywhere.

“Could you come in here, Leo?” Detective McGraw asks. “Please do not touch or disturb anything. But explain this to me if you can.”

It angers me to see the contents of every vial of medicine I own spread across the floor. The intruder has emptied my shaving cream into the sink and broken my bottle of aftershave lotion and squeezed out the last worming loop of my toothpaste. The bathroom mirror covering the medicine cabinet is open wide and the fancy contents that the producer left for guests have been flung. But the disturbing nature of this visitation does not overwhelm me until McGraw shuts the mirror and I see the flyer notifying San Francisco of the disappearance of Trevor Poe. It is the drawing that freezes my cells in all the dread of memory and history, in the secret mythology that forms the grotesque substrata that lies at the center of this search that has just turned deadly.

“Can we get police protection at this house,” I ask, “starting tonight?”

“If there’s a good reason,” Detective McGraw says.

“Could we get Sheba and Ike and Niles in here,” I ask. “None of the other women, please.”

Ike and Niles arrive first. I hear Sheba protesting as she is led by the arm by Tom McGraw. “What’s up, Toad?” Niles asks.

“Who the hell did this to your room?” Ike adds.

I can hear Sheba at her most put-upon as she enters. The violation of the bedroom shocks her, but she almost falls to her knees when she sees the fluttering piece of paper with her brother’s photograph taped to the bathroom mirror.

In bright red fingernail polish, someone has drawn the image of a smiley face. Sliding out of the left eye is a tear rolling down the featureless cheek.

“Jesus Christ,” Ike says.

“Holy shit,” Niles gasps. “What does that mean?”

I say, “Sheba, your dad’s still alive. He was the guy in the car.”

T
he following day, Ike takes command of our embattled unit, now exiled and afraid. By sunrise there is a San Francisco cop patrolling the front of the house like a Praetorian guard. The intruder entered through the backyard fence, which the lifeless body of a poisoned Rottweiler proves. The police find no fingerprints, no hair follicles, and no evidence of forced entry. They discover a single footprint of a size 11 New Balance running shoe on the lower terrace. For two hours, they question Sheba and hear the details of a tumultuous family history that includes every essential piece of the puzzle we had all been trying to solve through the years. All of us had known something; none of us had known everything.

I pour Sheba a cup of black coffee when she joins us for breakfast. Tension shimmers in the sunless fog-bound air. It is cold in the city, which seems to have no real attachment to or belief in summertime. A disputatious silence grips all of us. It seems like a corporal act of mercy when Ike takes charge and draws up a plan.

“Last night changes everything, Sheba,” Ike says. “You know that better than anybody.”

“I wouldn’t put any of you in danger,” Sheba tells us. “I can only hope you believe that.”

Molly is the most visibly shaken of all of us. She has not once mentioned our evening together, nor has she made any effort to speak privately to me, or so much as touch my hand. Her cool avoidance is difficult to understand, as Molly isn’t a cold woman. She is caring, devoted, loving, and loyal, and it has only gradually dawned on me, these last few days in California, that she is also a compartmental kind of woman. She has a drawer for family, a drawer for friends, a drawer for house repairs, and a drawer for Leo, her faithful servant and devoted lover. I think her silence comes from the fact that she hasn’t yet decided what to do with the Chad drawer: Throw it out? Reorganize? The uncertainty of it all seems to have paralyzed her, and the reappearance of Mr. Poe has only added to that feeling of creeping chaos.

It is clear that her enthusiasm for the trip has considerably waned, and her voice is sharp when she tells Sheba, “Coming out here to find Trevor was a lark. It was a pleasure. It gave us all a chance to prove something to one another, to have an adventure together. You didn’t say a thing about our dying in the process.”

“I thought my old man was dead,” Sheba says.

“We’ve got kids to think about, Sheba.” Fraser states it in her most matter-of-fact manner.

“Then all of you get the fuck out of here and I’ll find my goddamn brother by myself.” Sheba seems to scream it out of a despondency that comes from some dark place inside her.

“I’d like to suggest a plan of action,” Ike says. “I think the risk is minimal. Betty and I worked this out last night.”