The Bohemian Connection (21 page)

But the noise increased.

“Please folks, let me…”

The hoots grew louder.

“Folks, listen…”

They didn’t. The mayor’s words only fueled their protest. Some raised beer cans as they yelled, others clapped rhythmically. The seated audience joined in with glee. For three or four minutes the mayor tried to regain control.

“In Henderson,” Vida said, “you don’t keep a man from driving his truck and get away with it.” Even she was smiling. Only Congressman Tisson and the mayor looked disturbed.

The deputy moved in front of the stand.

Had Michelle foreseen all this? Was this the moment she planned to approach Tisson? Maybe. It was the last chance I would get. In another minute or two he’d either gain control of the crowd or he’d decide there was no point in staying and giving the television crews more footage of his humiliation. I walked quickly around back. “Congressman Tisson,” I called.

He didn’t move.

“Congressman Tisson!”

He glanced around.

“Congressman Tisson, you can help one of your constituents—right now. You can help with a big problem.”

He looked at the crowd in disgust, then back to me.

I stepped on a support beam and hoisted myself onto the stand. “It has to do with finding a murderer.”

His brow wrinkled. I recalled his reputation for quick saves.

At the front of the stand, the mayor was still trying to quiet the crowd.

Feeling a pang of guilt about Vida’s plea for no more publicity, I shifted closer to Tisson. I knew what he’d do with the tale of Michelle’s complaint. “I’m asking your help for a local woman, a twenty-five-year-old mother of two, who lived here in town. She was murdered this weekend. You were her representative. She planned to ask your help. She was murdered before she could do that.”

Tisson glanced at the mayor, then at the crowd, assessing them, and back to me. When he nodded, I could tell he’d made his decision. “What did she want to ask me?”

The crowd was quieter. Quickly I explained about Michelle’s death and her attempts to get action on her mosquito larvae and her neighbor’s cesspool.

When I finished he asked, “What was her name?”

“Michelle Davidson.”

The crowd was almost silent now. Congressman Tisson strode forward and took the microphone with an air of one who, rather than having caused the commotion, has been called in to rescue the day. “Ladies and Gentlemen, I just heard that one of your neighbors, right here in Henderson, was killed Thursday night. A young mother with two small children. Her body was tossed, like garbage, into a sewer construction hole.”

I turned away from where Vida was standing. I didn’t want to see her reaction to this.

“And the thing Michelle Davidson was going to do, ladies and gentlemen, was to ask my help in dealing with a bureaucracy. You’ve all had problems with bureaucracies, haven’t you?”

Where there had been screams of protest minutes ago, now there were wary nods of agreement. I could see where Tisson got his reputation for thinking on his feet.

“Like poor Michelle Davidson, you’ve followed the rules and the bureaucrats have ignored you. Am I right?”

“Right!” someone yelled.

“Michelle Davidson made a complaint to the Environmental Health Department once a month, every month since last Christmas, and still, in July, nothing has been done. Nothing. I say that is too long!”

“Right!” The response came from voices on both sides of the crowd.

“It’s six months too long!”

“Right!”

“I say, the time to have action is now! Right now!”

The crowd broke into applause. The cameras were all on Tisson now. He turned to me at the back of the stand. “Who owns the cesspool?”

“Ward McElvey.”

“Is he here?”

I hesitated, not wanting to be so visible on the stand. The congressman pulled me forward. “Look for him,” he demanded.

It didn’t take long. “He’s over there, in the blue shirt and slacks.”

“Ward McElvey, come on up here. We can handle this right away. Come right on up.”

Ward looked around furtively, as if considering the possibility of escape, then shrugged and stepped forward and up onto the stand. As he moved to the microphone, Ward glared at me, then shook his head to flick his hair in place, and smiled tentatively at Tisson.

“I’m sure, Mr. McElvey, that you are as saddened as everyone in town is at Michelle Davidson’s death.”

Ward nodded.

No wonder Vida hadn’t wanted to mention Michelle’s death to the congressman. Even I hadn’t expected him to play it for this maudlin a show.

The crowd was silent. Tisson asked Ward about the mosquito larvae, then poked the microphone toward him. “Why haven’t you cleared up your cesspool problems, Mr. McElvey?” he demanded.

Ward took hold of the microphone gingerly, then moved it close to his mouth. “I’ve been waiting to see if I’ll hook onto the sewer or have to get a new cesspool.” He spoke fast, nervously, into the too-close mike, so that his words melted into the electronic rumble. I doubted anyone ten feet away could understand him. “Everyone in town has debated whether or not to hook on. It’s not cheap, you know.” Sweat covered Ward’s forehead. His skin was as red as Alison’s bikini.

“Another bureaucracy, the sewer bureaucracy, folks, that’s what we have here. One bureaucracy failed to act, and another kept neighbors from working out their problems together.”

The crowd murmured approval.

“But now, Mr. McElvey, as one of the leading citizens of Henderson, as a neighbor and friend, I’m sure you want to grant Michelle Davidson’s last request and dig up that cesspool. I’m sure you want to leave her family in peace.”

There was no sound. Tisson looked at Ward. Ward looked at the crowd. Tisson reached for the microphone he’d given Ward, but Ward kept hold.

“No,” he said.

“What?”

“No, I’m not going to dig up my cesspool. I told Michelle—”

The crowd shouted him down.

“Mr. McElvey, surely you can put aside personal concerns when your neighbor, your next-door neighbor, has been killed.” Tisson had taken the microphone. Now he held it out to Ward, but Ward didn’t take it.

“No!” He turned and jumped down from the stand.

Tisson stared after him a moment, then said into the microphone, “Is there a judge here?” He turned to the mayor. “Didn’t you tell me Judge Watson would be here?”

“He was supposed to be. Probably caught in traffic.”

“Judge Watson?” Congressman Tisson called.

People in the crowd looked around, but no judge appeared.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am not going to be stopped. Michelle Davidson’s last request will not be ignored. Sheriff! Let me see the sheriff.”

From the edge of the crowd, Wescott made his way toward the stand. I sat down on one of the chairs.

“Sheriff,” Tisson said into the microphone, “I need your help in finding Judge Watson. He’s on his way here. He should be here any moment. He’s just caught in that traffic jam.”

“Then he won’t get here till tomorrow!” someone yelled.

I looked at the crowd to see their reaction, but there was none. They had forgotten that Tisson was the cause of the traffic. They were with him in his quest.

“What kind of car does the judge drive?” Tisson demanded of the crowd.

“Buick,” a man yelled. “Maroon Buick. New.”

“Thank you. And thank you, Sheriff.”

Wescott hadn’t said a word.

It took only a few minutes for Wescott to discover which way Judge Watson would be coming and to send the deputy I had talked to along North Bank Road toward Santa Rosa to bring him here.

Ward McElvey was nowhere in sight now. Briefly I considered rushing to his house, but no matter what he did not want discovered, he couldn’t dig up a well-buried cesspool in an hour.

The crowd had doubled now. The beach was jammed. Craig and Alison stood, not right together, but not far apart, near the south end of the beach. I spotted Jenny making her way down the slope. Someone must have told her something was going on; maybe they even knew her own husband was the villain of the drama. In the middle of the crowd, I noticed Father Calloway. And with a quick glance, I checked that Vida was still where I had left her.

“Judge Watson, right up here,” Congressman Tisson called. “Make way, folks. Let the judge through.”

When the judge, a tall, thin, bald man of about sixty, arrived at the stand, Congressman Tisson reviewed Michelle’s death and her complaint in loving detail. He had the crowd with him; they nodded in response to every phrase he uttered. They murmured approval as he asked the judge to issue an order on the spot to dig up that cesspool “and even in death give Michelle Davidson justice!”

The judge assessed the political situation as quickly as had Tisson, and making a statement about the responsibility of the judiciary to the people, he ordered the cesspool opened.

“And now, folks, who will volunteer to dig? Which of you strong men?”

He didn’t need to ask twice. Enough men to excavate North Bank Road approached the stand. And then, with Tisson and the news crews in the lead, the entire crowd headed toward Ward McElvey’s cesspool.

I found myself in the middle of the crowd. It was an odd mix of people. As the marchers hurried along, propelled by the anticipation of a show and the chance of being seen on the evening news, they fell into two groups: the locals who knew Michelle and were sad, angry, or still surprised by her death; and the tourists to whom Michelle was just another body waiting to be buried. To them, her death—in a sewer—was cause for bewilderment, or for laughter.

We poured onto North Bank Road, blocking both lanes of traffic and filling sidewalks on both sides. There must have been three or four hundred people, and like any procession, we were picking up people as we went.

As we passed Davidson’s Plants and started up Zeus Lane, a hand touched my shoulder. David Sugarbaker. “What is this?” he asked. He looked alert, his sandy curly hair shiny clean. Tan arms and legs extended from a T-shirt and shorts. “Someone said they’re going to dig up that cesspool I was checking.” He stared down at me in confusion and fear, as if the dig would be an indictment of his own work.

“Didn’t you hear Congressman Tisson’s speech?”

“No. I just came into town. I was going to get some breakfast. There’s this place that advertises a champagne brunch on Sundays.”

“Well, what led to this dig is a long story.”

“Tell me. We’ve got time. A cesspool isn’t six or eight inches under ground, you know. And that soil will be hard. It would never have passed the perk test. It’ll be murder to shovel up. You’ve got plenty of time to tell me the whole tale.”

“Okay,” I said. The crowd was thinning a bit as we moved up the steep street. Those unused to climbing in the midday heat were falling back, the rest of us pushing ahead. Away from the river now, any suggestion of cool was gone; the sun glared down on the macadam; the heat seemed to foam up to surround us. Wiping the sweat off my forehead, I told Sugarbaker about Ross Remson having been the Bohemian Connection, about his flamboyant activities when he lived in Henderson, and then his move away. “He lived in San Francisco then, but he came back for Bohemian Week.”

“When he made most of his money?”

“Right. That’s how it was until eight years ago. By then he was gone for all but that week. Michelle had married her husband. Ross was living in San Francisco with Alison. But he had to get out of San Francisco, away from his dangerous associates there. So the first weekend of Bohemian Week Ross brought Alison here. He had all his records here. Michelle and Craig, his closest Henderson friends, were in town. His sister Jenny and her husband, the one who owns the cesspool, were here. Alison says Ross left her and went to his family’s house. When he got there his father was digging the hole for the cesspool.”

“Geez. That’s a big job for one man, particularly an old man.”

“It was. He had a heart attack. The ambulance came. And Jenny told me that when she looked for Ross to drive her to the hospital, he had gone. The flurry of the ambulance arriving would have covered his escape.”

“What about his records? Did he take them with him?”

“I doubt it.” I recounted my reasoning to him. “So I’ve been assuming that the records are in the cesspool—”

“And they’re forcing the liquid into the leach lines!” Sugarbaker looked delighted, as if the whole Remson family crisis had been arranged to solve his leach line problem.

We turned onto Half Hill Road. The pace slowed. I looked up at Sugarbaker. He kept nodding as he considered the cesspool blockage.

I quickened my pace, moving to the front of the line. For once I was thankful for my winter of climbing steep wooden stairways and clambering up muddy driveways. Sugarbaker, with his long legs, had no trouble keeping up. The congressman was breathing heavily. The judge’s face was red. Sheriff Wescott strode beside them. And directly behind were four men with shovels they had managed to acquire one way or another as they walked. The reporters hovered, sweating, but never falling back. Most of them crowded around the congressman, but several talked to the men with shovels. Forming a wider circle around the group were the cameramen, walking crablike, looking up from their lenses only to wipe the sweat from their foreheads.

There was a brief pause by the sewer construction hole. Cameras panned from it to Michelle’s house to Ward’s and back to Congressman Tisson. Then the group made their way around the hole and up Michelle’s stairs to the deck.

The congressman looked around expectantly. “Okay, men, dig it up.”

No one moved.

Tisson stared at the shovelers.

One said, “You got to tell us where it is first.”

Tisson looked puzzled. As a former city-dweller, I knew what he was thinking—the cesspool should be under the toilet. He would have no idea that that needn’t be the case. Cesspools were where the hole could be dug and the line connected. Many people who hadn’t dug the holes themselves had no idea where their cesspools where. We meter readers, who faced the danger of falling into abandoned cesspools after the lids rotted away, knew the above-ground signs. I started to move forward, but Sugarbaker beat me to it.