Blue Lonesome (3 page)

“Boy or girl?”

“Couldn’t be sure. Sex or age.”

“What about her effects? What happened to them?”

“Building manager still has them, with instructions to keep everything until further notice. No place left in the property room here for a Jane Doe suicide’s stuff. But like I said, there’s nothing there to help us. No driver’s license, no Social Security card, no credit cards—no ID of any kind.”

“Fingerprints?”

“We filed them with the Department of Justice’s CID computer, along with X rays and as much other physical data as her body could give us. No record of her anywhere. No match with any missing persons report. We also ran the name Janet Mitchell through various local agencies; that got us another zero. Doesn’t seem to be much doubt that it was an assumed name.”

“What about money? Didn’t she have a bank account?”

“No,” Del Carlo said. “What she did have was a safe deposit box at the Wells Fargo branch on Taraval. Stuffed full of cash—better than fourteen thousand in hundred-dollar bills.”

“My God, that much?”

“That much. Bank keeps those little slips they make box holders sign when they come in. She dipped into her box once a week, on Friday afternoons, regular as clockwork.”

“Which means she paid all her expenses in cash.”

“Looks that way.”

“You need to provide a Social Security number to rent a safe deposit box,” Messenger said. “I suppose she put a phony one on her application.”

“Right. And nobody at the bank bothered to check it. Ditto all the other information she supplied.”

“She sounds like a criminal of some kind. But I can’t believe she was. Not her.”

“Well, you could be right,” Del Carlo said. “People adopt aliases for a lot of reasons, legal as well as illegal. Same goes for hiding out, squirreling away a large amount of cash and living off of it.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any question that her death really was a suicide.”

“Not as far as I’m concerned. Wasn’t a shred of evidence to suggest foul play.”

“Then it’s a closed case.”

“Except as far as the money is concerned. That went into an escrow account in case a relative shows up and puts in a claim. Minus whatever it costs to bury or cremate her remains.”

Messenger said, “And if nobody claims the balance after seven years, it goes to the state.”

“How did you—Oh, right, you’re a CPA.”

“If it really was her money, it should go to her family.”

“Sure, assuming she had a family. But the way it looks now, we’ll never know.”

“I guess you’re right. The way it looks now we never will.”

H
E WAS AN
hour late getting back to work. Not that it mattered; no one said anything to him about it. After fourteen years with Sitwell & Cobb, he had a certain amount of leeway where his time was concerned. It didn’t make any difference to Harvey Sitwell where the work got done, office or home, or how much time it took to do it as long as an employee kept his billable hours up. In that respect, and in terms of base loyalty to his people, Sitwell was a good man to work for. The problem was that he was tightfisted and inflexible in his opinions. Prying an annual raise out of him was always a chore; and once he’d made up his mind where you fitted in the office pecking order, that was where you stayed. It had taken Messenger five struggling years to find out that his slot was somewhere in the middle, and that no matter how hard he worked, no matter what he did, he’d still be in that same slot in ten, twenty, thirty years.

More than once, early on, he’d thought about leaving the firm and hooking up with another that offered a better chance for advancement. But he’d never quite gotten around to doing it, and now he no longer even considered the idea. Apathy, sure, but it was apathy motivated by complacency. The job here was secure; he got along well with Sitwell and with his fellow wage slaves; his salary was more than adequate for his modest needs; and his annual vacation time was three weeks, plus odd days here and there whenever he finished an account ahead of schedule. It was only once in a great while—like today—that he chafed at the job, that his little slot seemed too tight, too confining, and he yearned for something more. Or at least for something different.

He found that he was having trouble concentrating. His mind kept shifting gears, replaying his conversations with the coroner’s clerk and Inspector Del Carlo. The fourteen thousand dollars bothered him the most. Whether it was legally Ms. Lonesome’s or not, and where she’d gotten it. If there was somebody somewhere who was entitled to it, who needed it far more than the state of California, and soon.

At four-fifteen he quit trying to work and packed the Sanderson tax account into his briefcase. He’d get his head into the figures at home later, with the aid of Kenton and Dizzy Gillespie.

“Leaving early, Jimmy?”

He looked up. Phil Engstrom. Fellow wage slave; slot or two higher than his but also not going anywhere. Thin, bald, and determinedly optimistic. His best friend in the office.

“Might as well,” he said. “I can’t seem to concentrate this afternoon.”

“Anything wrong?”

“No. Just one of those days.”

“You need a vacation, son. Still have two weeks, right?”

“Right. End of October.”

“Made up your mind yet where you’re going?”

“Not yet, no. Hawaii, maybe—if I can afford it.”

“Good choice. Plenty of eligible women in the islands. And I don’t just mean one-night stands.”

“Sure.”

“Speaking of which,” Phil said, “what’re you doing tomorrow night?”

“Friday?”

“Friday. Start of the weekend. Any plans?”

“No, no plans. Why?”

“How’d you like to go to a party with Jeanne and me?”

“Oh, hell, Phil …”

“Now don’t say no until you’ve heard the particulars. Jeanne’s brother, Tom, is an artist, remember? Well, he just sold one of his paintings through the Fenner Gallery for eight thousand bucks—his first big sale. So he’s throwing a party to celebrate. His studio in North Beach. The place is a cavern—it’ll hold more than a hundred. That’s how many he’s invited, more than a hundred.”

“He didn’t invite me,” Messenger said. “I don’t know him.”

“No problem. You’ll be Jeanne’s and my guest. It’s a good chance to meet people, Jimmy. Artists, writers. And there’s sure to be more than one unattached female.”

Phil was always trying to socialize him, fix him up with dates and opportunities to meet single women. He’d given in a few times, without enthusiasm and without much success. Had a brief fling with a divorced social worker in her twenties, but it had died of inertia: all they ever talked about were her clients. (“I had this one Latino couple, my God, what a pair
they
were! He got himself arrested one day for exposing himself to three teenage girls from Mercy High School. And you know what
her
reaction was? ‘Nobody’s supposed to see that thing but me.’ That’s what she said, I swear to God. She wasn’t outraged that he’d committed a perversion, she was outraged he’d whip it out in front of anybody but her. …”)

“I’m not much for parties, Phil,” he said, “you know that. Crowds make me uncomfortable.”

“Sure, I know. But you don’t have to stay if you’re not having a good time. Just come for an hour, have a couple of drinks, check out the action.”

“Well … maybe. See how I feel tomorrow after work.”

“No kidding, I think it’ll be worth your while.”

“Sure,” he said. “Sure, you’re probably right.”

TWO SIPS OF
the bourbon and water he made for himself convinced him that he didn’t want a drink after all. He put on a Stan Kenton CD and tried to work. That was no good either. Still couldn’t concentrate. And the apartment felt stuffy, almost oppressive.

At six-thirty he put on his topcoat and walked over to the Harmony Café. Crowded, as usual. Familiar faces—and total anonymity. When he scanned the menu, his gaze held on the “Lite Meals” listing for hamburger patty, cottage cheese, fruit cup. He ordered the meat loaf special. But when it came he found he had no appetite. He picked at the food, finally pushed the plate away. He paid the cashier and went back into the cold wind from the ocean.

MRS. FONG WAS
not pleased to see him again. She frowned over a pair of reading glasses, holding the foyer door open a scant few inches. “What you want now? More questions?”

“Not exactly, no. I came about Janet Mitchell’s belongings.”

“Belongings?”

“Clothes, personal effects. Inspector Del Carlo told me you have it all here.”

“Boxes in the basement. Not much.”

“Yes, that’s what he said.”

“No jewelry, no valuables. Cheap clothes.”

“Would you mind if I look through them?”

“What for?”

“I’d like to know more about her.”

“Nothing there to tell you. Police already looked.”

“I know. But I just … would you mind?”

“Better not,” Mrs. Fong said.

“I won’t take anything, I just want to look. You can stand by and watch—”

“Better not. Police wouldn’t like it.”

But she didn’t shut the door. She stood peering at him over the rims of her glasses—a waiting pose.

Oh, Christ, he thought. He said, “The police don’t have to know. Suppose I pay you to let me look?”

“How much?” she said immediately.

“Twenty dollars.”

“No. Not twenty.”

“You name a price, then.”

“Fifty dollars.”

“Forty.” He took two twenties from his wallet, held them up for her to see. “Cash. All right?”

She said, “All right,” and opened the door wide.

THERE WERE THREE
cardboard cartons, one large and two small, a small overnight case, and a larger suitcase. That was all. Mrs. Fong left him alone with it all, in one corner of her dusty basement; now that she’d been paid, she didn’t seem to care if he walked off with anything. Or maybe she just didn’t want to know.

He stood looking at the meager pile, feeling irritated at himself and vaguely foolish. Forty dollars to paw through a dead stranger’s belongings. What was the point? The chance of his finding anything enlightening was slim to none. Jerking himself around, that was all he was doing. Why couldn’t he simply let go of her, forget that their paths had ever crossed?

He knelt and opened the largest of the cartons.

Clothing. Underwear mostly. Two sweaters, both of which he recognized from the Harmony Café. A Western-style shirt with fake-pearl snap fasteners in place of buttons. Three blouses. A stained suede jacket.

The second carton yielded half a dozen tattered paperback books, a skimpy collection of cosmetics (but no perfume or toilet water), a street map of San Francisco, a half-full box of saltine crackers (inexplicable that Mrs. Fong would have put stale crackers into the carton), an old-fashioned, inexpensive pocket watch with a scratched cover and an imitation gold chain flecked with greenish oxidation, and a torn and dusty child’s panda bear minus one of its shoe-button eyes.

The third carton: A pair of worn and badly scuffed boots that bore a scrolled cowboy design. A pair of sandals and a pair of flat-heeled shoes. Two skirts, one pair of slacks, one pair of Levi’s jeans.

The small overnight bag was empty. The larger suitcase contained the thin cloth coat Mrs. Lonesome had worn to the Harmony most evenings, and nothing else.

Pathetic lot. Remarkably so for a woman who’d had fourteen thousand dollars in cash in a safe deposit box. Looking at it spread out on the basement floor made him feel sad, depressed. The only personal items, really, were the pocket watch and the bear.

He picked up the watch, worked the stem. The hands moved but the winding mechanism was broken. He slid a thumbnail under the dust cover and flipped it up. Words had been inexpertly etched on the casing inside, as if with a homemade engraving tool. Letters and portions of letters were worn away, but the full inscription was still distinguishable when he held the casing up to catch the light from a naked bulb overhead.

To Davey from Pop.

Davey. Husband, lover, brother, friend? There was nothing to give him a hint—to Davey’s identity or to the reason why she’d kept the watch.

Same with the panda bear. It looked old: hers, from her childhood? Or had it belonged to a child of her own? He remembered the damaged photograph Del Carlo had told him about, that she’d taken into the bathtub with her for the last few minutes of her life. Did a child have something to do with her suicide—the loss of one, maybe? A little boy named Davey? Davey’s watch, Davey’s panda?

The depression was heavier in him now. He told himself to put everything away, get the hell out of here; the toy bear’s one remaining eye seemed to be staring at him, for God’s sake. Instead, compulsively, he unfolded the San Francisco map to see if there was anything written or marked on it (there wasn’t), even poked inside the box of saltines before he dragged over the half dozen paperbacks.

One of the books was poetry—
A Treasury of American Verse.
Three were thick historical romances, all set in the South before or during the Civil War. The fifth: a Western novel with a cover even more lurid than those on the romances. The sixth: a nonfiction self-help book called
Coping with Pain and Grief
. Odd assortment. But the last might be significant, he thought. Grief and loneliness went hand in hand, especially if a child was involved. So did grief and suicide.

Messenger thumbed through the self-help volume. No dog-eared pages, no underlining, no personal annotations; and nothing tucked in among the pages. He riffled through each of the other five books, not expecting to find anything in them, either. But on the last page of the verse treasury, something caught his eye—stamped words in faded red ink.

Beulah Public Library.

Beulah. A town, or possibly a county. But in either case not in California; he’d never heard of the name before.

He went through the other books again. None bore a similar stamp. The one didn’t have to have any direct connection to Ms. Lonesome then. Books travel in different ways, sometimes go through many hands. And this edition had been published in 1977, a lot of years ago. She might have picked it up anywhere, some place far away from Beulah, wherever Beulah was.