Trophies and Dead Things Read online

  TROPHIES AND DEAD THINGS

  A Sharon McCone Mystery

  By

  Marcia Muller

  Copyright 1990 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

  Ebook Copyright 2011 by AudioGO. All rights reserved

  ISBN 978-1-60998-616-2

  42 Whitecap Drive

  North Kingstown, RI 02852

  Visit us online at www.audiogo.com

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  CHAPTER ONE

  On summer mornings San Francisco is often shrouded by a heavy fog. It billows through the Golden Gate and moves insidiously about the city, transforming familiar places and ordinary objects into things of beauty, mystery, or – in certain cases – evil. It hangs thick outside windows, slips under doors, and permeates the consciousness of those on the raw edge of waking. An untroubled rest will then degenerate into tossing and turning; pleasant dreams grow nightmarish. When the fog’s victims open their eyes, they are already aware of a curious deadening of spirit, even before they face the gray day.

  I was one of those victims on a Saturday morning in July. Long before my alarm was due to go off at the unholy hour of seven I woke and lay contemplating the shadows that gathered in the corners of my bedroom. Finally I reached for the rod that controlled the mini-blinds on the window above my head and turned it. The light that entered was murky; I sat up, saw mist decorating the branches of my backyard pine trees like angel’s hair.

  I sighed, turned off the alarm before it could ring, and flopped back against the pillows. The flat, dull feeing I’d awakened with deepened. There had been a dream . . . of what? I couldn’t remember, but its aura persisted—distinctive, depressing.

  I focused on the day ahead, but its prospects weren’t too cheerful, either. Hank Zahn, senior partner at All Souls Legal Cooperative, where I am staff investigator, had asked a favor: that I help him clear out the flat of a client who had been killed in one of a recent rash of random street shootings. Although it was not the way I cared to spend my Saturday, I’d agreed because I sensed that Hank—one of my oldest and closest friends—needed my presence. And there was one bright spot: He’d bribed me with the promise of lunch; that plus Hank’s good company was a winning combination.

  Lord knew I could use some good company. This morning’s low-grade depression might be mostly fog-induced, but the last month had been lonely and bleak, the five before it not much better. I had to find some way out of these doldrums—

  The doorbell rang.

  Uneasiness stole over me, the way it does when doorbells or phones ring at times when they’re typically not supposed to. I got up, grabbed my robe, belted it securely as I went down the hall. When I got to the door, I peered through its peephole.

  Jim Addison, the man I’d been seeing up until a month ago, stood on the steps—and he was drunk. At a little after seven in the morning, he was obviously drunk.

  I opened the door and stared. Jim listed against the porch railing, a foxy little gleam in his blue eyes. His sandy hair was tousled, his clothing was rumpled, and he reeked of cigarette smoke.

  He said, “All-night jam session.” Jim was a jazz pianist who played on weekends with a group at a small club near the beach. “Can I come in?”

  I hesitate, wondering how quickly and easily I could get rid of him, then decided humoring him was the best approach. (Get rid of him . . . humor him . . . What had once been a pleasant relationship had come down to that.)

  “For a few minutes.” I let him in and led him down the hall to the kitchen, where I went directly to the coffeemaker and filled it with water. He went directly to the refrigerator and looked inside.

  “Got any wine?”

  ‘There’s half a bottle of Riesling on the shelf on the door.” While I whirled beans in the coffee grinder with one hand, I reached into the cupboard with the other and passed him a glass. I’d become use to Jim winding down his day while I was just beginning mine, although he didn’t often unwind to such excess.

  When I got the coffee going and turned, I saw he was just standing there, holding the empty wineglass and frowning. “You hate me, don’t you?” he said.

  I sighed. “Of course not.” It was the same question he’d asked when I told him I didn’t want to see him anymore—and in each of his numerous and persistent phone calls since then. My answer was true, although I’d long ago wearied of reassuring him. Jim was a nice man with a good sense of humor, a talented and dedicated musician, and I liked him a great deal. In fact, it was liking him so much that had made me decide to end the relationship. It’s unkind to use someone you care for to get over someone else whom you think you love.

  He regarded me for a moment and then his lips twisted disgustedly. “Sensible and rational as ever, aren’t you?”

  “What’s that supposed to—”

  ‘You’re always right, you always know what’s best for me, for you, for the whole fucking world!”

  “That’s not true.” If I were so sensible and rational, would I allow myself to go on missing a man whom I hadn’t heard from for over six months? Would I have allowed myself to fall in love with that particular man in the first place?

  Jim slammed the wineglass down on the counter so hard that it shattered. My gaze jumped to the gleaming shards and then to his face, mottled with rage. It was the first time I’d ever seen him angry.

  “What do I have to say to get through to you?” he demanded.

  “We’ve said it all before.”

  “No, I don’t think so. Not yet, we haven’t!” Abruptly he turned and went down the hall; the front door opened and slammed behind him.

  ‘Great,” I said. “Just great. What else can go wrong today?”

  I expelled a long breath and leaned back against the counter; behind me the coffeemaker wheezed and burbled. For a moment I considered whether Jim—this new angry Jim whom I didn’t know—had a potential for violence. Well, I decided, we all did, didn’t we? I’d have to wait and see what he did next. And on that less than encouraging note, I went to turn on the shower.

  While washing my hair, the dream I’d had came back to me. I’d been driving to meet Hank at his client’s flat in the Inner Richmond district, but after I crested Buena Vista Heights and descended into the Haight-Ashbury, I found that Stanyan, the northbound street on the edge of Golden Gate Park, had disappeared. In my confusion I made a series of turns that led me deep into unfamiliar territory, then suddenly I arrived at the top of the hill again. Over and over I’d driven down to Haight. Over and over I’d found no trace of Stanyan Street.

  Such frustration dreams—repeatedly dialing a phone and hitting the wrong buttons, missing a plane because I couldn’t get packed in time—were nothing new to me. I’d recently read a paperback on the subject and learned that they’re an indication that the dreamer is of two minds about reaching the destination, completing the call, or making the plane trip. But in this case, despite the depressing n
ature of the task ahead, I couldn’t understand why I should feel such strong ambivalence—or why the dream had left such an unpleasant, lingering aura.

  Superstitiously I crossed my shampoo-slick fingers against the possibility of the dream being a bad omen.

  By nine o’clock I’d had three cups of coffee and done the Chronicle crossword, and my spirits had risen somewhat. By nine-thirty, when I arrived in the Inner Richmond (Stanyan Street still being there after all), I felt reasonably cheerful.

  The Richmond is a solidly middle-class district on the northwest side of Golden Gate Park, consisting mainly of single-family homes and multi-flat buildings set close together on small lots. Once it was heavily populated by members of the city’s Russian and Irish communities, but in the past couple of decades it has become the neighborhood of choice for upwardly mobile Asians. While the Catholic churches and Irish pubs and Russian Orthodox cathedral on Geary Boulevard remain, everywhere there are signs of new residents.

  As I drove along Clement Street, the district’s busy shopping area, I noted eight Asian restaurants within two blocks: one Thai, one Japanese, one Burmese, two Vietnamese, and three different types of Chinese. Produce stands with outdoor bins full of bok coy and daikon radish, groceries with smoked ducks and barbequed pork ribs hanging in their windows, banks and insurance agencies with signs in both English and various Asian characters—all these stood side by side with such longtime institutions as Green Apple Books, Churchill’s Pub, Woolworth’s, and Busvan Bargain Furniture. Eight out of ten faces that I spotted were Asian—reflecting the same ethnic mix as the restaurants, and ranging from stooped old people pulling shopping carts to young couples emerging from Japanese-model sport cars. Clement Street, I thought, was the perfect embodiment of the changing cultural patterns of San Francisco.

  Unfortunately, it is also one of the worst examples of the city’s congested parking and traffic. The area was built up at a time when no one envisioned today’s large population of both people and cars, and consequently there are too few parking lots and garages. Even at that relatively early hour, all the metered spaces were taken and trucks double-parked while making deliveries. Cars moved slowly, their drivers looking for vacancies at the curbs; other irate drivers made U-turns, slid through stop signs, and endangered pedestrians in the crosswalks. I waited behind an exhaust-belching Muni bus as it unloaded passengers, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel of my MG and giving mental thanks to Hank for remembering to tell me it was okay to park in the driveway of the house on Third Avenue—should I ever reach it.

  After five more minutes of creeping along Clement, I rounded the corner onto Third and found the address Hank had given me: one of those two-flat buildings with a garage and illegal in-law apartment on the ground floor. Its facade was bastardized Victorian, mint green with mauve and tangerine trim—a combination that would cause even a person of minimal taste to cringe. Hank’s Honda stood in the driveway, blocking the sidewalk. I looked around, saw that most of the residents had left their cars in a similar fashion, except for one enterprising soul who had pulled up parallel to the curb on the sidewalk itself. So much for parking regulations, I thought as I pulled in beside the Honda.

  As soon as Hank came to the door of the downstairs flat, I was glad I’d agreed to help him. There were lines of strain around his mouth, and when he took his horn-rimmed glasses off to polish their thick lenses on the tail of his maroon corduroy work shirt, I saw that his eyes were clouded. Hank is a man who cares deeply for his clients—too deeply, perhaps, to maintain the distance needed when dealing with their problems. It’s not that it renders him ineffectual; it just causes him more pain than he deserves.

  I smiled reassuringly at him and stepped inside. The flat was chilly; Hank probably didn’t want to waste the estate’s money by turning up the heat. A narrow hallway ran the length of the building; at its end was a door through which I could see a kitchen table and refrigerator. To my left was a small living room with a bay window overlooking the street. I went in there and started to take off my suede jacket. Then I stopped; I might soil it while hefting cartons and furniture, but I’d be too cold without it.

  Hank sensed my predicament. “I’ve got coffee on,” he said, “and you can wear one of Perry’s sweaters.”

  “Thanks.” I followed him down the hall and into a bedroom that was even smaller than the living room. He rummaged through a pile of clothing that lay on the double bed, then tossed me a heavy green cardigan with a hole in one elbow and a raveled right cuff. When I put it on, it came down to my knees; I rolled up the sleeves to wrist length. Perry Hilderly, the deceased client, had been a big man.

  Hank was already on his way to the kitchen. By the time I got there he’d poured coffee and was holding out a mug. I took it, then peered through a door to the left. It led to a dining room with a fireplace and built-in leaded-glass cabinets—standard for this type and vintage of flat. The room contained no furniture, nothing but cardboard boxes with the name BEKINS stenciled on them.

  I looked at Hank, eyebrows raised inquiringly.

  “It’s the stuff Perry moved here years ago, after his divorce,” he said. “He wasn’t much of a homebody. Accountants never are, I guess.”

  It was one of those blanket statements Hank sometimes makes—bald assumptions with little or no basis in fact. They always startle me, considering the variety of individuals with full complements of quirks that he’s seen wander through the door of All Souls year after year. Such typecasting of his fellow man is a product of his early environment—his mother is quite adamant in her pronouncements about others—and since he never allows it to cloud his judgment, I can put up with it without comment.

  I went over to the refrigerator to look at a color snapshot that was held up by a magnet. It showed a tall, lanky man with curly blond hair and granny glasses; he wore a Giants sweatshirt and was flanked by two similarly attired blond boys who were only tall enough to reach to his waist. “This is Hilderly, right?”

  ‘Uh-huh. It’s an old photo; his boys are in their teens now.”

  I examined it more closely. “He doesn’t look all that different from the way he did in the nineteen sixty-five picture that they ran in the Chron this morning after he was shot. Of course, his hair was long and wild back then.”

  Perry Hilderly had been one of the founders of the Free Speech Movement at U.C. Berkeley in the 1960s. Although I’d still been in high school then, I’d take a great interest in the changing mood on the campuses—probably because I was the white sheep in a family of rebels and envied both my siblings’ and the students’ ability to blatantly challenge authority. My impressions of Hilderly were somewhat vague, but I recalled television coverage of the protests in which he could be seen clowning around on the periphery.

  Hank said, “Do you remember him?”

  “Some.”

  “I’m surprised.”

  I sat down at the kitchen table with him. “Why?”

  “Well, you were just a baby then.”

  I smiled. Hank is only six years older than I, but he has always taken a paternalistic stance toward me. Partly this is because when we met at Berkeley—years after Hilderly had passed from that scene—he was a world-weary law student with the horrors of Vietnam behind him, while I was an undergrad whose toughest battles had been fought in the trenches of the department store where I’d worked in security before deciding to go to college. Over the years the balance of world-weariness has shifted more to my side, but Hank persists in the notion that he must watch out for and guide me. I know, although we’ve never discussed it, that this persistence is fueled by the fact that our friendship has never been endangered by romantic entanglement. Hanks’ paternalism is designed to preserve the status quo.

  “Still, I remember him,” I said, “even if he never received as much media attention as Mario Savio.”

  “Well, few people had Mario’s charisma. Perry’s comedic style was a bit like Abbie Hoffman’s, but not nearly as outrageo
us. And there were a lot of lesser luminaries hogging the limelight.” Hank’s smile was reminiscently wry.

  I knew what he was thinking; as a friend of mine once put it, not many of the sixties people have “held up.” Few went on to achieve the heights that those on the sidelines expected of them. But for a time such visionaries as Mario Savio had captured the imagination of a generation. Mario, who one fall day in 1964 respectfully removed his shoes before climbing atop a police car that had been entrapped by some three thousand students protesting the arrest of a civil-rights worker on the Cal campus. Mario, who seized a microphone and involved others in the crowd in a thirty-hour spontaneous public dialog that forever changed the university, the youth of America, the nation itself. No, Perry Hilderly hadn’t held a safety match to Mario Savio’s incandescence, but he had brought humor to a basically humorless movement, had defused potentially dangerous situations with his wit.

  As I recalled, in the late sixties Hilderly had vanished from the Berkeley scene. By the time I arrived there, most of his compatriots had disappeared, too. I’d once listened to a new analyst on KPFA discussing how many of the former leaders of the FSM had become frustrated by their lack of tangible progress and gone underground with the Weathermen. Now it seemed that Hilderly, at least, had become an accountant—and died many years later in a senseless street shooting on Geary Boulevard, two blocks from his apartment.