The Love-Haight Case Files (13 page)

“Tom, you told me to play the judge. You know I’m gonna find in their favor. I need Evey and Pete to win,” Zaxil said. “I ain’t letting Arnold get this building. Not even play-acting; it ain’t happening. You should’ve talked Dagger McKenzie up here if you wanted somebody impartial to role-play hizzonor. I’d say Gretchen, but her creaky bones wouldn’t make it up the stairs.” He crossed his arms and glared at the ghost.

Arnold had purchased the building next door months ago and had recently increased his offer to Zaxil, intending to tear down both buildings and to replace them with fashionable condos. Haight-Ashbury, once a low-income neighborhood and forever remembered as a hippie hangout in the 1960s, was becoming a desirable and trendy place to live.

“And if you’d make more money—”

“We’re paid ahead to the first of March,” Thomas cut in.

“Well, if you’d make more money, I could raise the rent, and then I wouldn’t worry. Arnold wouldn’t have a shot in hell at this place, Pete would be safe, and we wouldn’t be messing with no mock trial on my roof … which is leaking over there by the way. I got a roofer coming out tomorrow to fix it before there’s serious structural damage.” Zaxil drained the rest of the beer and crumpled the can. “And if you’d make more money I could buy me some of that Gubna’s Oskar Blues once in a while instead of this cheap stuff.”

Thomas knew that Zaxil owned the place outright, but still had to pay property taxes and all the other fees that came along with owning real estate in San Francisco. Zaxil had blown through his inheritance paying for upgrades required because of codes in order to improve the property. Now the rent Thomas and Evelyn paid kept the building—and thereby Pete who was physically part of it—going. If the building were demolished, Pete, like the gargoyle Evelyn had visited earlier today, would die.

Zaxil was a full-time student and his part-time night job only covered his books and part of his tuition. Thomas knew the young man didn’t have any more money to sink into the place. He was staring down the final semester of his undergraduate business degree, and Thomas had been encouraging him to consider law school … which would take a serious amount of cash.

“All right, look, let’s call it for today,” Thomas conceded. “We’re all kind of frustrated. Evelyn and I can hit the books again.” He planned to hold another mock trial, tomorrow maybe, but this time down in the law office, without Pete and Zaxil, and he’d have his legal secretary Gretchen Cain be the judge. He knew Gretchen liked Pete, but she wouldn’t take it easy on Evelyn.

And Evelyn needed some so-called tough love.

“Good. ’Cause I gotta study for my test tomorrow morning,” Zaxil said. His textbooks—Zaxil had purchased real books, not electronic files, were serving as a footstool. “Pete is gonna help me.”

Pete had stayed oddly quiet through all of this … participating, and yet not. Sitting like a green-gray granite lump and watching the birds perched on the edge of the building across the street.

“Want me to study with you, Z-man?” Finally Pete said something, his voice sounding like gravel being spread on a roadbed. “Sure, if I can have one of those beers.”

“I bought them for you anyway.” Zaxil took the folding chair Evelyn vacated and handed the gargoyle a can.

Pete held it up to his face. “Stag. Hmmm. I did not know they still brewed this swill.” Nevertheless, the gargoyle opened the can and started drinking.

Thomas floated down into the law office, waiting for Evelyn to climb down the fire escape. He thought she looked especially nice today, short red hair curled, spray of freckles dusting her face like sprinkles on a sugar cookie, and wearing linen pants and a forest green cable knit sweater. He knew she hadn’t dressed nicely for the mock trial … it had been for the gargoyle she’d visited this morning. Evelyn had told Thomas that green was Thurman’s favorite color.

Thomas used to put effort into his own appearance. In life he’d been six-two with the broad shoulders of a swimmer, cornflower blue eyes, mud-brown hair, and a nose that was slightly crooked. As a ghost, he could fold in on himself, but he couldn’t really change his features, nor appear in anything other than the suit he’d been bludgeoned to death in. What you’d looked like in life, you were stuck with in death it seemed.

Evelyn breezed in the front door. “I’m back, Gretchen!”

“Did you win, sweetie?” Gretchen was at her roost—the big oak desk at the front of the office. Thomas realized Gretchen hadn’t seen him materialize at the back of the long room. “Your mock trial? Did you win?”

Gretchen was seventy-three, and had a stately Katherine Hepburn mien. She was small though, not quite five feet, her frame shrunken from the years. As usual, her cane was propped against the desk, and her overlarge purse, which could pass for a suitcase, was next to it.

“Yep, I won, Gretchen.” Evelyn gave her a lopsided grin. “But it was rigged. Z-man was the judge, and he was going to find in my favor no matter what.”

Gretchen made a tsk-tsking sound. “Then maybe you ought to have another trial down here. I’ll be the judge. I won’t go so easy on you. I’ll make you work for it.”

Thomas smiled at the comment and waited for the women to finish their exchange. Several minutes later, Evelyn joined him at the conference table at the back of the long room.

“So that was a waste of time up there, wasn’t it?” She sat and tipped her face up to look at his misty visage. Thomas hovered halfway in the table. “I’m not ready to go to court and defend Zaxil and this building. If come March we don’t have more money to funnel his way, this place … Z-man … well, he might have to file bankruptcy. That’ll make it easy for that … that …
Arnold.”

“It wasn’t a total waste of time.” Thomas had gotten to watch the breeze teasing her curls, and when the sun showed through gaps in the smog, he’d seen her eyes sparkle. “I’ve been thinking of ways to protect this place in the event Zaxil faces bankruptcy—and that’s a worst-case scenario. We’ll only face court in a worst-case scenario.”

“We have to look at the worst case. I couldn’t bear to watch Pete broken into pieces. Not after what I saw this morning.”

“Look, if we can get this building listed on the National Register of Historic Places, we’ll stand a better chance of protecting it. Not guaranteed, but it will certainly help, and it will put Arnold off for quite a while.”

Evelyn shook her head, her curls shining like liquid copper under the fluorescent lights. “Yeah, that’s worth trying. But Arnold has gotten around the National Register before. The building this morning? That had been on the Register.”

“But it took him a solid year to work past that,” Thomas countered.

“And in that time, sweetie,” Gretchen said, “this law firm will be thriving, you’ll have your degree and license, and you’ll be able to throw enough money Z-man’s way that Pete will be safe.” She had tottered back to join them. “Still and all, Evey, Tom is right. You better prepare yourself for the worst-case scenario. That nasty Franklin Arnold just smacks of worst case.”

Thomas floated toward the file cabinet, watching as Evelyn’s pretty face took on a sad, distant expression. He heard her whisper something about a useless life.

Chapter 2.3

Pete helped Zaxil study until nearly sunset, the light failing to the point reading was becoming onerous. Zaxil was a lot like his grandfather, Pete thought—kind and industrious. The gargoyle had been best friends with Ezekiel, Zaxil’s grandfather.

Ezekiel’s daughter took off for an adventure in Mexico one day and left baby Zaxil behind. No one knew who Zaxil’s father was. She never returned, though to this day she sent the occasional postcard. After a few years, Ezekiel had stopped trying to coax her back.

Pete often babysat Zaxil while Ezekiel worked. The old man ran a printing shop in this very building, produced wedding invitations, brochures, and business cards. The advent of the Internet and all the e-publications cut into his business, but Ezekiel kept the building because of Pete, and eventually embraced e-design and found enough success to keep going. A fatal heart attack almost three years ago ruined things, though. Zaxil sold the computers, photocopiers, and laser printers, and put the building up for rent.

Thomas Brock finally bit and opened the law office downstairs.

Pete still looked after Zaxil.

“I saw a big Clapper Rail this morning, Z-man. She was pretty, wet with dew and perched over there, staring straight at me.” He folded the chair and laid it under the tarp, holding up the edge of the vinyl so Zaxil could slip his chair under too. “They’re endangered, you know, Clapper Rails.”

“Sea bird, isn’t it?”

“You’re learning. Yeah, rails are sea birds. They like the marshes. But sometimes they come into the city. I don’t know what about this neighborhood attracts them. Maybe all the colors on the Victorians. Maybe just curious.”

Zaxil stood at the edge of the roof and looked across the street. Buildings in this block were three and four stories, a mix of businesses and vividly painted old Victorians, some of which had been turned into quaint shops—boutiques, resale, one a cold-process soap-maker.

“Thinking about her?” Pete knew Zaxil liked to visit the soap-maker because she had a nineteen-year-old daughter. He also knew Zaxil hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask her out.

“I like the neighborhood this time of day, Pete-my-friend.”

“Not as busy.”

“No. Slowing down, like it’s taking a rest, pulling in a deep breath, regaining some energy before the bars crank up the music and lure them in across the way. Before the neon twinkles against the dark, all the pink and green electric snakes dancing to advertise the treasures to be found inside, and the lonely folks go out to party.” He lengthened the last word: paaaaar-tay. “Looking for spicy food and good times and loose men and women, looking for an approximation of love, and looking for an excuse to spend their hard-earned money on things that don’t last and that don’t matter and that they don’t have the sense God gave them to know they don’t need. Looking to listen to one more replay of Wynton Marsalis’s ‘Deep in the South.’”

“Should be a poet, Z-man. Some sort of writer in any event. You can paint with words.”

“Not like Marsalis can paint with notes.” Zaxil shrugged and pointed to a cornice where birds had gathered. “What’s that?”

“The little blue one? Western Scrub Jay. Dainty fellow. I figure he’s got a nest somewhere around here. He looks a bit like a Stellar’s Jay. But the Stellar has a light blue belly and black on the sides of its head. The Western Scrub does not. You see both kinds around here.”

“You envy them?”

The gargoyle shrugged. “Maybe a little. Their wings can take them anywhere above the city and over the bay. My wings don’t work, and even if they did, they couldn’t carry me anywhere. I’m part of this building, have to be in contact with it to survive. A rotten thing, huh? To have wings you can’t use.”

“Are they endangered, those jays?”

Pete shook his head. It sounded like stone grating on stone. “Not like the Clapper Rails. The jays are pretty common. Not like my kin. My Norwegian brothers are endangered.”

“Norwegian? You Norwegian, Pete?”

“The Norwegian version of Pete is Peder. It means stone.”

“Then what’s Permythius?”

“That’s what the sculptor called me. He named me after his cat. I prefer something closer to my roots. Pete.”

“You really are Norwegian? All this time I’ve known you and you never told me that.”

The gargoyle shrugged. “Carved from a hunk of rock dug up in Rogaland. But that was a long time ago. I’m Americanized.”

A car backfired out on the street and Pete noticed that Zaxil jumped. It sounded like a gun going off. But the motor revved and that seemed to relax him. This section of Haight was considered safe, had little violence, with only a few minor incidents reported from time to time—pickpockets, a touch of vandalism, but certainly not often. Murders? There hadn’t been one for a long time … until Thomas was killed in the office, torn to pieces by a dark fey that was in turn killed in jail before he could go to court and testify about who pulled his strings.

“I heard Thurman die this morning. Right after I spotted the Clapper Rail.”

“Thurman?”

“Gargoyle on Market Street. The one Evelyn visited to record his last words.”

“You
heard
him die.” Zaxil raised his eyebrows, but it hadn’t come out as a question.

“Sound travels through stone,” Pete answered. “If you listen for it. Carefully. You have to know how to listen. Down through the buildings, through the bedrock, through the concrete sidewalks. Up to my ears. You have to read the vibrations, like you read words on a page. Me and him, and some of the others in this city? We were carved from the same granite mountain. Brothers can hear each other, you know.” A pause: “I heard him scream, a stone-rattling scream. Being busted up like that, it had to have hurt like hell. Took him a long time to die.”

Zaxil pointed to another bird.

“Mourning Dove.”

Then another.

“Black Phoebe.” Pete scratched at his chin. “I rather like her, nice song, small bird but considered a medium-sized flycatcher. Southwestern bird primarily, but they come around here, seem to like being near people.”

“You know a lot about birds.”

“I know a lot about a lot of things. Listen, I worry that Evelyn could be an endangered species, too.” The gargoyle crawled over the edge of the building and took his spot on the corner. “I heard Dagger talking to her. I can hear through the walls, you know. He said the man that ordered the hit on Thomas had wanted her dead too, maybe even Gretchen.”

“They’ll be okay.” Zaxil’s brow knitted. “And so will you. Tom and Evey, they’re going to keep you safe, Pete. I ain’t letting this building go. Tom and Evey will come up with something … maybe just as simple as ramping up their business, getting more clients, and paying more rent.”

“Maybe.” Pete was watching the Black Phoebe.

Zaxil sat the rest of the six-pack on the ledge. “For you to drink at your leisure,” he said. Then he walked backward, toward the fire escape, picking up the empty cooler as he went.