Death in North Beach (35 page)

There was quiet in the room, but Lang knew he had, in fact, only thrown suspicion at the wall, as the man said. Chiu was practiced in the art of keeping a significant distance between deed doer and himself. The connection between Markham and Chiu was tenuous at best. Even the notion that a traditional Tong member engaged in questionable activities would use a white guy as an enforcer stretched credulity.

Gratelli cut across the back of the room to talk with Rose and Stern. Lang could see them nodding their understanding.

‘Mr McFarland,' Carly said, stepping in. ‘You have anything to say about your business partner, Mr Chiu?'

McFarland simmered.

Carly picked up on his anger. ‘So, the publisher of the
Fog City Voice
is here, ready to do an investigative piece on Mr Chiu and the murders and the girls and the hotel and your involvement in the hotel, not to mention that you joined a conspiracy to steal a manuscript that was, in fact, involved in another murder – Whitney Warfield's. You're all right with all this?'

‘Chiu is going to walk,' Lang whispered to Carly.

‘What can we do? We signed on to prove William Blake didn't kill Whitney Warfield.' As she said it, Stern was asking Malone to stand up.

‘The rest of you,' Rose said, ‘will need to stop down to your friendly Thomas J. Cahill Justice Center on Bryant Street. Your taxpayer money paid for it, it's time you paid it a visit. All of you.'

Carly went to Gratelli.

‘We need for Marshall Hawkes to stay behind,' Carly said.

Gratelli gave her a puzzled look.

‘We have a photograph to unveil.'

Under the direction of Rose and Stern and with the help of uniformed policemen, the participants were guided to waiting vans. It wasn't easy. There were protests, threats and demands. Cellphones clicked open and there were shouts of ‘I can't hear you', presumably to some too soft-talking attorneys. Lang figured Lili D. Young and Elena Warfield would be questioned and released. Those that paid might be asked to appear before a judge on a date yet to be determined. That would be Bart Brozynski, Agnes DeWitt, Marlene Berensen and the outraged Supervisor McFarland. Ralph Chiu might have a tougher time, but beyond the contribution to the conspiracy to commit theft, evidence was thin. Nathan Malone and possibly Richard Sumaoang could be held and arraigned the next day. Whether Sumaoang was part of the murder was something the police and the DA would have to figure out.

Carly talked briefly with Anselmo and William Blake before they slipped out the back door. When the crowd was gone and the back room again closed off, it was only the four of them. They were seated at a table.

Lang and Gratelli sat on one side, their backs against the row of photographs, particularly the one that had yet to be uncovered. Carly and Marshall Hawkes sat on the other side. The place seemed hollow and haunted. A little barroom noise crept in through the cracks in the door.

‘Marshall,' Carly said. ‘We know you replaced the photograph of you that Frank Wiley had intended to show and put in the book.'

Hawkes looked beyond Lang and Gratelli.

‘You found the original?' he asked. He stood, as stiff-backed as before.

‘We know,' Carly continued, without directly answering his question. ‘Why?'

He closed his eyes, kept them that way. His hand remained folded on the table. Finally his eyes opened and he spoke slowly.

‘How could I, after all these years of being who I am? I am not that person. That person, the woman he photographed all those years ago, is someone else. She didn't paint these paintings. She didn't write those articles. She had nothing to do with my work being in the finest private collections or in the best museums. She had nothing to do with any of that.'

‘So, you couldn't allow the world to see that you are a woman, so you killed him.'

Hawkes emitted a short, sad laugh.

‘I was confused then. I had just arrived in San Francisco. I had cross-dressed most of my adolescent years and people just assumed I was a boy – a slightly effeminate boy, yes, but in New York, San Francisco, this wasn't a problem. Anselmo knew. I used to pose for him in New York, as a young woman, then later as the boy I wanted to become and eventually had to become. I continued to pose for Anselmo because the way he painted, my identity would not be exposed. And one day Wiley came in unannounced. He saw. It was a crisis for me. The three of us talked. We did some drugs. Wiley wanted to photograph me. There was money and ego and perhaps a little blackmail, along with promises that I would be the one to determine when or if the photograph was ever to be released. He was reneging on his agreement.'

‘So you killed him,' Gratelli said.

‘No. Yes. It wasn't murder. I didn't intend for him to die. I just wanted my photograph back. We argued. We . . . struggled. He held on to the frame. The only thing close was this big, old camera and I grabbed it and swung it at him. It hit him in the head and I left, thinking I had just knocked him out. Apparently,' Hawkes said, head held high, eyebrows arching, a deep frown on his thin lips, ‘I killed him and in my haste to exit unencumbered I struck you, Ms Paladino. I am sorry.'

‘We're going to have to go now,' Gratelli said, standing.

‘With all the inequities in the world, all the lies, especially those we know so little of, how much does this little bit of truth matter?' Hawkes asks. ‘How does it look for me?' Hawkes's haughtiness remained, but it was drenched in weariness.

‘In the end, that's up to the DA. The problem is that Frank Wiley's death occurred during and as a result of another crime. Instead of involuntary murder, this becomes felony murder.'

‘Oh, God,' Hawkes said, emitting a strange laugh. ‘I was stealing my own image.' He shook his head and stood slowly. The ordeal made him weak. ‘The world is such a strange place.'

As they approached the door, Hawkes seemed to lose what little strength he had. He swooned. Lang caught him.

‘Pepe,' Hawkes said.

‘Pepe?' Carly asked.

‘His dog,' Lang said.

‘I have no one to care for him.'

Thirty-Six

‘I really don't care for God,' Brinkman said to Lang when the younger man came into the office the morning after the arrests.

‘Why is that?' Lang asked absently.

‘He tries to be all things to all people.'

Lang looked up at Brinkman, whose face would do well in a poker game.

‘Very droll. I'll remember that in any future dealings with him.'

‘Who's that?' Brinkman asked, looking down at the slender, doe-eyed greyhound.

‘Pepe. New guard dog for the office.'

Seeing Brinkman, the fawn-colored dog with a white face and chest backed up behind Lang.

‘Trying to replace me? Won't work. I'm tougher than the dog.'

‘You are scarier. I'll give you that.'

‘What happened last night?'

‘A number of them will be arrested for conspiracy to commit theft or whatever the police call it. Sumaoang may be in worse trouble. But it looks like Malone did the dirty deed on Warfield.'

‘The others?'

‘Related to Mr Chiu probably. The police will be investigating that for years. It wasn't exactly “. . . Chinatown, Jake”, but the same rules may apply. Things tend to go unsolved there. We didn't help by eliminating Scotty Markham. He was the connection to Chiu.'

‘Why did they do in Wiley?' Brinkman asked, reaching down to pet the shy dog.

‘Looks as if poor Marshall Hawkes killed Frank Wiley. That's a sad case. In the end though, Carly's client is cleared. That's what we were hired to do.'

Lang went to the window to gather some light to read his watch. It was ten. He looked out to see Thanh parking his motorcycle, taking off his helmet and crossing the street to the office, shaking out his dark hair as he went. For Hawkes, hiding the secret was his undoing, Lang thought. For Thanh it was different. He wore his secret on the outside, reveled in it. He was comfortable with whatever gender he felt he was whenever he felt it.

Carly came to the office, but didn't stay long. She wanted to talk with Gratelli about various aspects of the cases. She also wanted to tell him that, for what it was worth, she wasn't going to press charges against Hawkes. She wanted to tie up what loose ends she could and take a week or so off, go up to Sonoma County. Relax.

‘Hawkes's dog?' Carly asked Lang when she saw the greyhound.

‘Pepe. His only friend, I think. Probably for both of them.'

‘Where's he going to stay?'

‘Haven't worked that out yet. Maybe we could keep him here. Rename our agency. Greyhound Investigations.'

‘Sounds like we're bus inspectors.'

‘OK, I'm working on it,' Lang said, smiling. ‘I'd take him home but since he was trained to chase small furry creatures for a living, I'm a little concerned about Buddha.'

‘You are looking at me with some expectation on your face.'

‘Couldn't you use a room-mate?'

She shrugged. She hadn't thought about it. And it wasn't like her to make sudden, rash decisions, except when it came to such things as careers and relationships.

‘Unless, of course, you are already sharing your apartment with someone.'

Her smile said, ‘You're getting absolutely nothing out of me.'

‘Carly and Pepe. Has a nice sound to it. You could go running together. I'm sure he knows how to run.'

‘Give it up, Noah.'

‘Just thinking out loud.'

‘Believe me, you don't want to do that,' Carly said.

‘What's going on in here?' Thanh asked. He was in an androgynous mood, judging by the V-neck cashmere sweater, tight jeans and a diamond in each ear.

‘Carly may take Pepe.'

‘That's wonderful,' Thanh said before he saw the expression on Carly's face. ‘Then again, one person's wonderful is . . .'

‘We'll figure something out,' she said.

And Lang knew this was the first step into giving in entirely.

‘Who's Pepe?' Thanh asked. The dog peeked around the corner. ‘Oh.'

Carly had mixed feelings about meeting William Blake again. This time, though, it was in a public place and Anselmo Ruiz was going to be with him. They met at Café Puccini on Columbus. The day was at the turning point. The sun was nearly gone, but the night hadn't arrived. The neon, the lights inside the stores, the flashing lights of automobiles and buses were faint, without contrast to the dusky evening. There was no hurry.

They sat outside at a table on the sidewalk as pedestrians paraded by with dogs and bags. Some were natives and some of those were local characters. Some were merely on their way home after a day in the financial district, picking up something at Molinari's for dinner. Others, and they were easily identified, were taking in the sights of ‘Little Italy', as some visitors erroneously called the Italian enclave of North Beach.

Carly and Anselmo had glasses of the house wine. Blake had an espresso.

‘This was Anselmo's idea,' William Blake said, grinning.

‘It was,' said the large bearded old painter. ‘I wanted to thank you for going soft on Marshall. Troubled soul. There's only so much of the universe you can control.' He looked out over the streets. ‘We want to keep this the same, the way we remember it, or perhaps the way we want to remember it, but it changes. We can only slow it down.'

‘Why was Marshall so intent on being male?'

‘When Marshall started out, males had it made, didn't they? Women didn't go on the road and write about it. They didn't write challenging poems society thought were obscene or create images that shocked the public. Men were the heroes, not just in comic books, but also in literature, in public figures. Marshall wanted to be one of the boys and yet this troubled soul could not relate to anyone or anything. The more you have to control, the smaller your world becomes. No other way to manage it.'

‘So sad.'

‘Just for you to know,' Anselmo said, ‘Mickey was Hawkes's kid too. The lovely Whitney Warfield – in New York – raped her. He regretted it. She refused an abortion, but wanted nothing to do with the child. Whitney brought her out here. I think she decided she'd never be vulnerable again.'

For Carly, it seemed as if the world went silent. In a moment she felt a hand on hers.

‘Thank you for helping me out of my predicament,' William said.

‘Look at Sweet William,' Anselmo said. ‘He grows old, but oh so slowly.'

‘It's speeding up. Every minute passes more quickly than the last.'

‘It does, it does.' Anselmo laughed. His body shook and Carly wondered if he might not start an earthquake. ‘You have it, William. You know. But you are free again.'

‘Shame about the deaths.'

‘I know. I feel bad we couldn't have brought this thing to a close earlier.' Carly said.

‘Being the self-centered Narcissus that I am, at least I have my life back and I won't forget you for that.'

‘Perhaps you'll settle down before too much longer,' Anselmo said, looking from William to Carly. Neither returned his glances. ‘And perhaps, Carly, you will sit for a painting sometime soon?'

McKinney's was one of those places that offered escape to workingmen wanting to escape domesticity without much risk. No strippers, no gambling. Just listen to some rock 'n' roll and drift back to your youth when the world held some promise. Some would call the place shoddy, some merely unpretentious. What light there was came from a bulb over the pool table, the television at the end of the bar, and the beer signs. There were hundreds of these bars around town – all pretty much the same.