Gratelli was awakened early by the phone. Soon after he shook some semblance of morning into his head and plugged in the electric percolator. He retrieved his morning Chronicle from the hallway, then called McClellan. After that, he called Albert Sendak in the medical examiner’s office. Not one, but two bodies had been found, both linked to each other and to the rest of them.
One body was decomposing south of San Francisco on Highway One near San Gregorio. Not SFPD territory but the local police were sure the body would be of special interest to them. The local police wouldn’t touch anything if someone could start down immediately. The medical examiner would oblige them.
The other body was a fresh kill up on Twin Peaks. A jogger found the body just as dawn broke. That’s where the two San Francisco inspectors would go first – where the trail was the freshest – before heading south down Highway One. If the two slayings were connected, Gratelli thought even in his groggy state of consciousness, then the killer was getting anxious. The deaths were coming closer and closer together.
Gratelli rummaged through the stacks of operas – works by Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi and Puccini. He was searching for something comedic. He picked a Donizetti to listen to while he sat at the small table in his tiny kitchen. He sipped his coffee and unfolded the newspaper. He’d been in Homicide enough years not to let a few dead bodies disturb his routine.
His thoughts were on the opera – the one playing and the one he would see this week. Because of a duty roster switch, he thought it wise to switch his tickets. It was some German composer – and not even Mozart – which lowered the priority. He could even miss it if he had to. He did not enjoy the Germans, or the French for that matter. But the Germans were the worst. He endured, rather than enjoyed, the endless and pompous Ring Cycle. He remembered the season when the opera house was infested with fleas and even that was more enjoyable than Wagner.
After the sports section, he got up, refilled his cup and sat again. He sighed as everyone does when faced with something unpleasant and inevitable.
The morning paper had three separate stories on the killings – and the media didn’t know about this new one. He and McClellan would likely spend as much time with the news guys as with the investigation.
Julia Bateman and Paul Chang split the day’s watch. A video camera nearby if they should suddenly see their suspect doing cartwheels on the street. So far, they hadn’t seen Samuel Baskins at all. He hadn’t even ventured out to limp and stumble to the corner grocer.
So she started the watch at six a.m. She would observe Samuel from the entrance to Mr Baskins’ building. Baskins, whose earnings probably placed him near the poverty level, was now a potential millionaire several times over – that is if he lived long enough to collect it – because his employer failed to have the machinery checked on schedule. A few hundred pounds dropped on Sam’s shoulder. X-rays revealed nothing. Exams revealed nothing except deep and what ought to be temporary bruises.
That he didn’t have something vital smashed or broken was miraculous. The insurance company claimed the miracle for their own. Sam contended that there were no miracles only the sad fact that medical science failed to explain why he couldn’t walk without a great deal of pain. He claimed to have neck and back pain so horrendous that he could not work, that he could just barely get through the day attending to his pain. Before Baskins found a lawyer, he had injudiciously sent several, hysterical, violence-threatening letters to the company and after that to the insurance company.
Julia sipped from a cup of coffee she got at McDonald’s on Van Ness and watched the building near Leavenworth and Turk.
What made her look up as the dark Camaro cruised by in the gloom, Julia Bateman didn’t know. All she knew was that in the darkened, smoked glass window, penetrated only briefly by the morning light coming through the buildings, there was an eerie stare; enough to make her shiver and encourage her to grab another sip of coffee to offset the sudden cold.
It was below the back half of a Victorian on Stanyan – a basement really, a cave – where the driver of the Camaro lived. Once inside it could still be night. Soon he would be asleep. He would miss a day of working out. And a day of work. That happened on the days following the nights of the kill.
He felt as he usually did. His mind was nearly blank. His eyes were tired. Very tired. But his body was still alive, feeling everything that touched it – the tee shirt against his chest, against his nipples. The denim against his thighs, his buttocks, his sex. He lit the candles. The CD he had just picked up at Tower Records was in place. He pushed the button.
He undressed.
He positioned his shaved, oiled naked body on the bed so he could glimpse at his flickering, golden reflection in the mirror beside him. He would relive every moment of the evening. It would arouse him. He would satisfy himself. He would be calm for a few days. He would be sad, but it was the only time he felt anything other than anger.
He fell back into the bed. His head was slightly raised on the pillow so he could look down at the body he had so carefully constructed. He admired its firmness, its smoothness, now letting his palm glide over his chest, down his flat, firm belly, sliding over and inside his thighs.
He closed his eyes, the vision of the young woman, her pale flesh lit by the moon on the dark grass. At once he felt her flesh and his own. He could feel himself drift into the place. A secret place. All the time in the world to caress her soft and pliant body.
Instead of falling further back into the vision, he was oddly and disagreeably startled by the image suddenly, seemingly projected on the inside of his cranium. It was the woman in the Miata – a convertible with the top up, bright blue and shining in the morning fog, the car on Leavenworth and Turk he saw as he returned from the kill. The car demanded to be seen. The face in the window drew him to it. It startled him then. Startled him now. The stare she gave him had flashed in his mind without warning. It jerked him rudely from his sexual reverie.
He remained in bed trying to recreate the mood. He closed his eyes, ran his palms over his smooth, firm flesh, trying to recreate the moment on the hill. When he couldn’t urge it into the dark frame, he tried recreating others. Another night. The San Gregorio beach. The ocean. The sand. The sound of the waves. The salt breeze. Nothing would come to him, or if it did, not for long. Instead of sweet, sad melancholy he felt a rising anger. It was that woman in the car. Why had she done this to him?
He climbed out of bed, stood under water as hot as he could bear. He would go work out. He would go to the gym. It was the only way he could work it off. All this meant he would be sucked up again into the cycle. Sooner because of her. He would have to do it again in just a few days.
The full-length mirror in the bathroom was all steamed. Usually he’d wipe it clear first so that he could inspect his body. He wasn’t in the mood. He was pissed. He dried quickly.
The door to Julia Bateman’s Miata opened with such suddenness that it jolted her. But it was merely an interruption of bland thought by a smiling, always energetic, teasing Paul Chang.
‘Hi toots,’ he said to his boss.
‘Go toots yourself!’ she said. ‘You scared the hell out of me. What are you doing here?’
‘I couldn’t sleep. Bradley stayed over. I don’t know. By morning, I was ready to throw him out of bed, out of my apartment and out of my life. But I left instead.’
‘Why?’
‘Who knows? You know how blonds are.’ He smiled.
‘No I don’t know how blonds are or how anyone is. He must have something. Good in bed?’
‘Yes,’ Paul smiled. ‘You want the details?’
‘Absolutely not.’ She paused. ‘Not all of them.’
They both laughed.
‘How was last night?’ Paul asked.
‘Boring. Sort of.’
‘What wasn’t boring?’
‘It felt a little like Hard Copy meets PBS.’
‘Who?’
‘The usual San Francisco celebrities – those with talent and those with money.’
‘Who was at your table?’
‘I don’t remember most of them.’
‘Jules! What good are you?’
‘Some writer. A plastic surgeon… oh, Maldeaux.’
‘You met him? Christ.’
‘It’s no big hairy deal,’ Julia said.
‘Oh right. “Oh”, she says casually, “Maldeaux”. And the way you said it. One word. Maldeaux. God. Maybe Picasso. Or Brad Pitt, when he’s blond.’
‘Brad Pitt is two words.’
‘Yes, but you can’t just say “Pitt”. “Maldeaux” you said. Sort of like, what? He’s an institution or something. A Lincoln. A Getty, a Rockefeller, a Rothschild. A Maldeaux. Thaddeus Maldeaux. Just the sound of it.’
‘David calls him Teddy.’
‘Is he as dangerously exciting as we are led to believe or is he four-foot-eight with a toupée?’
‘Definitely bigger than life.’
‘Mmmmn,’ Paul said, trying to figure out what she was thinking.
‘Is he gay?’ he asked then thought for a moment. ‘Could he be bisexual?’
‘Don’t know. And it’s not my world anyway. I’m sounding pouty, aren’t I? What I mean is trying to become genuinely a part of that world would be like my trying to become a Hasidic Jew. I sprang from another culture altogether.’
‘Who says? People change their worlds all the time. Look at Whoopi. Look at the guy who married Martha Raye. Look at me, by all appearances you’d think I was Chinese or something.’
‘You are Chinese,’ she grinned.
‘Ah, but I’m not, I’m a Christian Reformed kid from Grand Rapids and that is the state of mind, far removed from China. I’m John Boy trapped in Charlie Chan’s body.’
‘Not really Chinese?’
‘Well, I’m not particularly reformed, but Bradley says I’m about as Chinese as potato salad. It’s true. Now tell me you don’t want to be famous, have the world buzzing about Julia Bateman? Your picture in Vanity Fair like Madonna or Sharon Stone or Heidi Fleiss?’
‘No, I’m afraid I’m not going to be your brush with fame.’
‘You never, never know. So have you seen our guy?’
‘What guy?’ Julia asked.
‘Why are you here? You enjoy staring at dilapidated brick buildings while the poor and indigent crawl from their Maytag box homes and greet the day with all the gusto of a slug? The reason you are here is one Samuel Baskins, victim or malingerer. Any sign of him?’
‘No.’
‘You want me to take over?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You were up late last night, I can tell.’
‘Do I look horrible?’
‘A little. I’ve brought a pad and I plan to do some sketches.’
‘A little romantic poverty?’
Thaddeus Maldeaux had breakfast with his mother. The grand old house was dusty and unkempt. The furniture was worn, frayed. The oils in their thick, ornate gold frames were dark from decades of neglect. Mother and son talked about the decline and death of afternoon papers. She also fretted about the Internet and how it was destroying journalism in general and newspapers in particular. Thaddeus tried to soothe her. Their company was prepared for the changes.
‘We’ll do fine,’ he said.
‘That’s not the point,’ she said. ‘Where will people get the truth? Now, just anybody with a computer can say whatever they like. Where will the truth be when this plague has completely swept over the world?’
Mrs Maldeaux was not a pretty woman. The thought had crossed Thaddeus’ mind that she was not even a handsome woman. She was short, stout and bosomless. The wattle under her chin seemed to match the waddle under her arms. Her rear end looked as if it had been flattened by the backside of a coal shovel.
Her husband, Andre Maldeaux, on the other hand, had killer looks and empty bank accounts. He wouldn’t have left Helen of his own accord. She was as devoted and possessive of him as she was of their son, Thaddeus. Andre was killed in an auto race in Europe. Fortunately, he didn’t injure his handsome face. He did, as the old line goes, make a great looking corpse. Thaddeus was terrified he’d have a daughter who favored his mother. Then again, he would rather have a daughter or a son who had her intelligence, her resolve, her ethics. She was truly a good woman despite what he said about her and often to her. He wished he were half as good. Like all true beauty, her kind of beauty only surfaces when people can see below the surface.
He showered, shaved. Living with his mother at his age! He smiled at the thought. He wiped a bit of steam from the mirror. There were things to do today – legal matters on Sansome, a board of directors meeting at the Transamerica building and property inspection south of Market. He would lunch there. Great little places, he thought, though he had only sampled a few.
Thaddeus looked in the mirror closely, examining the wrinkles around his eyes. He’d look twenty-eight if it weren’t for those little buggers, the spider webs around the eyes. The wind and weather he thought, then forgot about the wrinkles as he tried to determine which cologne he would use. The Prospera? The Romeo Gigli? Or his own, the plain bottle with his name and assigned number – the scent created for him in Paris. He chose the latter.
Other things to do? Perhaps the club. If he had time, he’d do some handball or tennis, get a rub down. There were times he played hard and long just to get the massage. Then, of course, there was Julia Bateman. He wasn’t sure what the attraction was. Was it simply because she was with David? No, he thought. He’d never found David’s choices in anything appealing before. He would see her again. Today, perhaps. He’d find a way.
Being the only one of the fourteen San Francisco homicide cops to actually live in the city, Gratelli easily got to the Twin Peaks hillside before McClellan. He had to pass a gaggle of joggers held fifty feet away from another crowd of cops and medics.
‘Anything?’ he asked the cop from General Works, the guy who called in.
‘Murder,’ the cop said. ‘That’s why we called you – thought you needed the overtime. And what do we have…’ He glanced at his notebook. ‘Neck broken. Sometime last night probably. So far, seems to fit with the others. No I.D. Pretty girl, looks a little rough around the edges. Not likely a society bimbo. But who knows? That’s why we have experts like you. You wanna see?’
The cop didn’t wait. He pulled the fabric down to reveal the entirety of the bluish, slender body, including the odd angle of the neck and head.
‘M.E. and Photo on their way.’
There was a little shuffling in the crowd and some cursing that Gratelli recognized as McClellan’s.
‘Cover the fucking thing up,’ McClellan said. ‘Jesus fucking Christ, I haven’t even had breakfast yet.’
‘Looks like she’s another pearl on your string,’ the cop said as he covered the face. ‘How many now?’
‘Who’s counting?’
‘They found another down on Highway One, San Gregorio,’ Gratelli told his partner McClellan.
‘Let’s see what we can get here,’ McClellan said. ‘Then let’s go to the beach.’ He looked around at the people. ‘What in the hell are we all doing walking on the fucking grass?’ He raised his hands to the sky as if only God could understand his frustration with mortals. ‘No fucking wonder we can’t cage this slime ball. We got people walking all over the fucking evidence.’
‘Watch your mouth,’ came a voice from the back. It was Lieutenant Broderick from General Works. ‘There are kids over there.’
‘Get the fucking kids outta here,’ McClellan said very quietly. ‘Then they won’t hear me say “fucking” all the time.’ He looked around. ‘What the hell are they doing here anyway? This isn’t the fucking Donna Reed Show, you know.’
‘And the press. Come on, McClellan. You’re a natural asshole, you don’t need to work so hard at it.’
‘I put a hundred percent into everything I do,’ McClellan said.
‘Eating, drinking…’ said the cop from General Works.
‘My belt size is my fucking business.’ McClellan grinned evilly. ‘Hell you check out homicide sometime. Not a belt under thirty-eight inches except for Gratelli and that fruit, Bushman.’
The cop shook his head, looked at Gratelli. ‘One of these days, they’re gonna change the rules and homicide cops won’t have lifetime appointments. You’d think you were the fucking Supreme Court or something.’
‘Watch your mouth,’ McClellan said. ‘There are children here. Gratelli’s only fourteen.’
‘Yeah, he looks fourteen.’
‘Drinks a lot. Women, you know.’
Gratelli said nothing to the lieutenant. ‘Leave your car here,’ he told McClellan. ‘We’ll pick it up on the way back in.’
The medical examiner had sent an investigator. They had their own uniform, one that looked halfway between Navy officer and doorman. He was heading toward the body, when McClellan and Gratelli broke from the crowd.
‘Fresh kill, they better get something this time,’ McClellan said. ‘But a smart guy wouldn’t lay down any bets.’
McClellan was silent all the way down to San Gregorio. Gratelli played his opera and Mickey didn’t utter one nasty remark about opera fairies or make some remark about how it might make much more sense if it were in English.
The smell of death is sweet, but not pleasant. Fortunately there is often something unreal about the sight of a corpse. When whatever it is that gives life – a soul, an electrical impulse, a chord of celestial music – is gone, the corpse seems less human. Perhaps not human at all. Seeing murder victims usually pissed off McClellan, made him especially ugly and difficult. Something about this body for McClellan was different. The body had been ravaged. The face hadn’t. The face held something much too human and much too innocent to look at. McClellan didn’t get angry this time.
His lower lip quivered. He shook his head. ‘Oh shit,’ he said, low and quiet.
‘What?’ Gratelli asked.
‘I used to see her in the streets. We talked.’
McClellan walked up the side of the gully. The tall grasses bent under the wind. He stared out at the ocean. He didn’t move again until they were ready to leave.
The neck had been broken and the body had been placed, not thrown in a ditch. It was probably at night, probably very late at night or early in the morning, when the back roads were unlikely to have many travelers.
Coming back to the city, McClellan was quiet. Sullen. Finally as the skyline appeared before them, he broke: ‘So, we gonna have a whole season of baseball this year or are we all gonna switch to football?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t know why I ask you. Damn Italians. All you guys ever do is sing. Not one of you could ever swing a stick.’
‘DiMaggio,’ Gratelli said.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Sells coffee pots, marries Monroe. Somebody told me he played baseball.’ Gratelli turned to look out of the window.
‘Up yours!’
After a long period of silence, McClellan started again.
‘What kind of guy would break a girl’s neck, get her naked and dump her in a ditch? Nothing else, not even rape as far as we can tell.’
McClellan had worked himself up. He was breathing heavily, irregularly.
‘In a zoo,’ he continued, ‘you can tell what the animals are and what they’re likely to do. Here, no way. We got guys blowin’ off their kids for the insurance money. Somebody else dumping body parts in dumpsters in an alley. This guy decides to pick up chicks, break their necks and leave ’em around the city, seems about par for the fucking course.’
McClellan dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief as the afternoon sun pounded his side of the car.
Julia had relieved Paul at noon and Paul returned the favor at five, allowing Julia to meet Sammie at the gym. For the most part, they were just gym buddies. Their worlds didn’t overlap much – save an occasional dinner after the workout. But for Julia, Sammie was great at the gym. She encouraged and challenged Julia to put her heart into the routines, not letting her give up or glide through the three-times-a-week workout. And, perhaps sadly, Julia thought, aside from Paul, Sammie was her only other friend.
‘How did you know where I live?’ Julia asked Thaddeus Maldeaux. She wanted to be indignant. She wanted to be angry. Instead it was difficult to hide a smile. But she did.
He stood just behind the driver’s door of the two-year-old black Toyota Camry parked at the curb. The unpretentious auto was blocking a lane of one-way evening rush hour traffic heading west on Hayes Street. And Thaddeus himself was in danger of being side swiped by drivers anxious to get home.
‘You’re in the phone book. Page one of the private detective’s primer.’ He smiled. ‘But you know all about that, being a detective and all.’
‘An insurance investigator. Though I like the sound of detective. It makes me more interesting.’
He noticed her staring at the car. ‘My mother’s. I don’t own one.’ He smiled again. ‘What’s a spoiled rich boy doing driving such a mundane car?’
‘I didn’t…’
‘My mother’s truly rich, Julia. And whether you believe it or not, this was an extravagance. I think she really wanted a Chevy Cavalier. She was going to splurge and get the four-door. She used to try to beat the paperboy out of a week’s delivery. The truly rich are truly tight.’
Julia found herself grinning. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’
‘She wouldn’t really cheat the paperboy. I made that up. She is frugal, but she’s a wonderful woman. A wonderful mother. And I don’t deserve her. I don’t deserve you either, but I’ve come to take you to dinner.’
‘I have plans.’
‘You do?’
‘Don’t I?’
‘David is tied up tonight.’
‘Oh. He sent you in as a replacement.’
‘I’m the understudy. When he’s unable to fulfill his obligations, I get my big chance.’
‘Not a chance.’
‘Now, now. It won’t be bad. I promise. We can go across the street. Caffe Delle Stelle. Delle Stelle,’ he said relishing the sound. ‘Love it.’
‘Thanks, but…’
‘You don’t have plans. You have to eat. I’ll park, check out the galleries and ring your buzzer about seven thirty, then we’ll eat. I’ll walk you back. I won’t come up. I’ll be very, very good.’
‘Why are you doing this?’
‘I feel it’s my moral obligation to eliminate prejudice when I can.’
‘Prejudice?’
‘I know. You think you don’t have any. But you do. Toward the deprivation deprived you have deep-seated animosity.’
‘I see,’ Julia said. In addition to money and looks, he also had a sense of humor.
‘You will. You will.’