Pennines on a Dead Woman's Eyes Page 22

  “Yes, I understand you owned it from—”

  “‘Fifty-two to ‘sixty-six when, regrettably, declining interest forced me to close.”

  “This was a Beat hangout?”

  “In its latter stages. Early on, we catered to a more political clientele—socialists, anarchists, Communists. The repressive climate of the times either sent them underground or forced them to mend their ways, so to speak, and then we attracted a livelier crowd. I preferred them, as you can see.” He gestured around at Allen, Jack and Lawrence.

  “A wonderful era,” he added. “I suppose you’re too young to remember it.”

  “What I remember of the fifties is more along the lines of Hula Hoops and cars with big tall fins.”

  Mooney snorted. “Yes, that’s what the fifties are usually remembered for. And the sixties—everyone identifies them with the hippie, not his more intelligent predecessor. The brief Beat era” –his eyes glistened in the candlelight—”what a joyous time!”

  “I thought Beat meant down-and-out.”

  Mooney looked sternly down his rather long nose at me. “Young woman, you’re sadly misinformed. As Kerouac once said, ‘Beat means beatitude, not beat up.’” He moved his gaze reverently to the writer’s photograph; if he’d been standing he would have genuflected. “The Beats felt everything, dug everything. They were religious, they looked everywhere for God.”

  He was right: I had been misinformed about that short but historic movement, and I would have liked to learn more, but my time was limited. “Actually, Mr. Mooney,” I said, “it’s our earlier clientele I’d like to talk about. Specifically, a woman named Melissa Cardinal and her stepbrother, Roger Woods. They may have frequented your coffeehouse in the early fifties, before ‘fifty-six, anyway.”

  Mooney pursed his lips; after a moment he nodded. “I remember them. Roger Woods was an interesting man. He had a good deal of training in political science, had worked toward the Ph.D. somewhere. Then he became disillusioned, dropped out. I believe something had happened to his father, and it made him bitter and angry toward society.”

  “And Melissa?”

  “She was less interesting. An airline stewardess. It was said she did a little courier work on the side—documents, that sort of thing. But in hindsight—we were all very romantic then, Melissa may have started the rumors herself to avoid being typed as a mere waitress-in-the-sky.”

  “Are you saying that she and her brother were Communist party members?”

  “Roger was, had been for years. I’m not sure about Melissa. And Roger was not a member in good standing. The Party kept a low profile, especially after the conviction of eleven of their leaders in forty-nine on charges of violating the Smith Act. Roger was too angry, too vocal. He openly advocated the violent overthrow of the government. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Party members who killed him.”

  “Killed him?”

  “That’s what we heard. Summer of ‘fifty-six, I believe. In Seattle. They said he was shot to death on the docks. Some claimed he was attempting to recruit longshoremen for the Party; others claimed he was trying to escape to Russia.”

  “Did Melissa confirm any of this?”

  “She wouldn’t discuss Roger. Finally, about a year later, she stopped coming around.”

  “What about a young woman names Cordy McKittridge? Did she ever come to the Unspeakable with Melissa?”

  Mooney’s eye widened. “So that’s what this is about—the murdered debutante. Yes, she was a friend of the Cardinal girl, and for a while she came often. But that stopped in the spring of ‘fifty-five, long before she was killed.

  “Did she always come with Melissa, or with a man?”

  “Wherever those two girls went, there also went a crowd of men.”

  “But you don’t remember anyone in particular?”

  “There was a friend of Roger Woods, but he struck me as a dabbler, a hanger-on.” He paused, “Sorry, I don’t recall his name.”

  “Can you describe him.”

  “No, I can’t. When a man stood next to Cordy McKittride, you scarcely noticed him, except perhaps to envy him. She was beautiful and warm. Fresh as a spring rainstorm, soft as the down . . .” He broke off, smiling ruefully. “As you can see, Ms. McCone, I’m a poet—and an exceedingly bad one.”

  “You remember Cordy so vividly,” I said, ignoring the invitation to comment on his similes.

  “Some individuals have that effect. My memories of Cordy are especially strong. For me she’ll forever be caught in candlelight—young, beautiful, and perfect.”

  Lis Benedict had said something like that in her suicide note, about Cordy being forever frozen in Vincent’s emotions. “You sound as if you cared for her.”

  He turned the full force of his melancholy smile on me. “Very much, but she never knew. Cordelia McKittridge would never have returned the feeling—not to a man like me. She was special and I, alas, am not.”

  I sensed he had enough wistful self-knowledge to see through any comforting platitude I might offer, so I asked a question instead. “The coffeehouse—why did you call it the Unspeakable?”

  Again a smile came, trembled, and extinguished itself. He said, “I thought it would negate the unspeakable—my loneliness. It didn’t. Nothing ever has.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Jed Mooney insisted on giving me coffee—a bitter Turkish blend that would eat at my stomach lining all evening—and I didn’t have the heart to refuse. For twenty minutes he spoke of the days when the Unspeakable was a mecca for the hipster; of poetry readings, improvisational jazz; of drugs, sex and absurdity. I listened distractedly, my thoughts fixed half a decade earlier than that, toying with the interrelationships among a debutante, an airline hostess, a faceless man, and a Communist who advocated the violent overthrow of a government. By the time I was able to take my leave of Mooney, it was well after eight, and the fog wrapped the city in a smothering embrace.

  I was missing Jack’s strategy session; by now he’d be furious with me. But I had nothing new to offer—yet. Perhaps tomorrow, after I’d read the original police file on the murder. That would mean another late night, but given the way I felt, I wasn’t going to sleep much in any case.

  What now? I could call Adah Josyln, see if she’d heard form either NCIC or CJIS about Roger Woods. But it was much too soon for that, and a call would prompt her to ask about my day’s activities—something I didn’t care to rehash at the moment. I supposed I could run by Enrique Chavez’s house again, stake it out until he returned, but that didn’t feel right either. I was restless, primed for action. My earlier exhaustion was now pushed far below my level of awareness.

  I stood next to my car, blinded by the mist, feeling the pull. Tried to resist, but couldn’t. Gave in to it.

  Seacliff was only a dozen or so blocks away. I got into the MG and headed west.

  The driveway of the Institute’s former home curled away from me under its overhanging cypresses. Clotted mist hung heavy and oddly still in their branches. Foghorns groaned and howled up by the Gate, and the cold air smelled of the wild open sea. I stood at the foot of the drive, wondering about the security here.

  The property seemed as deserted as it had on the night Wingfield and I came out. If the owners were having it patrolled, the guard’s rounds would probably be cursory and very intermittent; police patrols were frequent in Seacliff and besides, the location of the house—on a street with no immediate outlet, dead up against the National Recreation Area—made the prospect of vandalism a slim one.

  I started stealthily up the drive, walking to one side of the gravel, my footsteps scarcely audible. The dry leaves of a nearby stand of eucalyptus rattled overhead. As I rounded the curve, I saw the house—tall, massive, black as the grave beyond the security lights. Nothing moved here, not even birds in the ivy.

  So this was how it had been that June night thirty-six years before. In the dark, through the mist, a killer had waited as I did now.

  I skirt
ed the house, glancing briefly at its third-story dormer windows, wondering at which one Judy had stood in fear of the thing that moved in the dark below. I believed her fragmented memories—no exaggeration there. She’d heard someone, seen something. Perhaps witnessed an act so terrible that she’d unconsciously willed herself to forget it.

  Beyond the house was a slate-floored terrace, walled at the cliff’s edge. I crossed it, leaned over the wall, bracing myself on the palms of my hands. Surf roiled against jagged rocks below; to my right, where the crescent of China Beach and the towers of the Golden Gate were, I saw only mist. I turned away and started waling toward the dovecote.

  Didn’t matter that it was no longer there. Didn’t matter that I wasn’t sure of the exact location. I kept going. The ground sloped gradually at first, then leveled off. Some fifty feet beyond that, it dropped steeply—a rocky tumble covered with tenacious Monterey pines—all the way to the sea. Somewhere on this flat expanse had been—

  My foot slammed up against stone, pain shooting through the toes in spite of the protection of my athletic shoe. I cursed, hopped a little, the squatted and felt around with my hands. A curving brick foundation. I’d found the place where Cordy had died.

  For a moment I stood, my eyes closed. Listened to the crash of waves, sough of branches, lament of foghorns. Images intruded, the nightmare pictures of my dreams. I opened my eyes again, shook my head. What was I doing here?

  Ignoring my own question, I knelt beside the foundation. Touched it again, gently. Thought of Cordy. Thought of them all: Lis and Vincent Benedict, their young daughter, Judy. Louise Wingfield, Russell and Leonard Eyestone, Melissa Cardinal, Joseph Stameroff. And Roger Woods, even though he had probably never come here. And Roger’s father, Larry, who had defied the forces of conservatism and breathed his last in an L.A. charity ward. . .

  And again I thought of Cordy.

  So much blood. So much pain. What would drive a person to inflict that much pain? The usual—fear, rage, even hatred—weren’t enough to explain it. Insanity? Sheer random acting out of psychosis? That might be so today, but in the fifties? Well, maybe; there have always been monsters. But what kind of monster would inflict such pain, commit such desecration, and then gently lay the victim out, closing either eye with a penny?

  I could not reconcile the violent act with the ritualistic one.

  And the finger. Good God, the finger . . .

  I knelt there on the cold ground for a long time, my hand resting on the overgrown foundation. Kept thinking of them all, each a victim in his or her own way. Each a predator, too.

  Even though I’d found no real reason here, somehow I felt as if I’d gotten what I’d come for. Finally I stood, wiped the dirt of the dovecote’s foundation form my hands. Turned and walked away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Lights shone in the windows of the Chavez cottage. I parked directly in front, mounted the rickety porch steps, and knocked. A plump woman in jeans and a Hawaiian shirt opened the door. No, she said, Enrique wasn’t home.

  “When do you expect him?”

  She smiled as if I’d made a joke. “Friday night—who knows? My boys, they come and they go like they want. Mostly go.”

  I thanked her and started to turn away. A motorcycle rounded the corner. Mrs. Chavez said, “There he is now.”

  The motorcycle pulled up to the curb in front of my car. Its rider got off and gave the MG a curious look, as if he’d seen it before and was trying to place it, then glanced up at where I stood on the steps. He was tall and slender, with an acne-scarred face and a thick name that fell nearly to his shoulders.

  It was the young man who had come to the door of Louise Wingfield’s cubicle at Project Helping Hands the first time I’d talked with her.

  What had she called him? Rick. She’d anglicized his name.

  Chavez looked back at the MG, putting it together, too. Then he got back on his bike.

  “Rick, stay right where you are!”

  I raced down the steps. Rick gunned the cycle. I lunged for it, but it moved away from the curb, its exhaust hot through the legs of my jeans. I watched as it careened west up the Clipper Street hill.

  Mrs. Chavez stood on the porch, her mouth open. I called to her, “Where would he go?”

  She shook her head.

  “A friend’s? A girlfriend’s?”

  “You the police or something, lady?”

  “I’m not the police.”

  “Huh.” She went into the house and slammed the door.

  That was all right, I thought. I didn’t need to talk with Rick Chavez now. The person I needed to talk with was Louise Wingfield.

  On the night of our pilgrimage to North Beach and Seacliff, Wingfield’s car had been in the shop and I’d dropped her off at her condominium on Chestnut Street on Russian Hill. I found the sprawling brown-shingled building easily; it was on the north side of the street, and great expanses of glass and cantilevered decks took advantage of the bay view. No view tonight, however; even here the fog held the city in its grip.

  I went to the entrance of the building and checked the mailboxes. Wingfield’s condo appeared to take up the entire third floor. I rang the bell. Got no reply. Stepped back onto the sidewalk and looked up. All the windows were dark. No Wingfield. No answers.

  Now what?

  The mist hung as thick in James Alley as anywhere else in the city tonight. I walked along, sounds from the surrounding congested area oddly muted by the buildings on either side of me. The alley was very dark, and few lights showed in windows. I had difficulty located Melissa Cardinal’s door.

  There it was—the one with the iron mesh over its window. I fumbled with the bells, range the one I thought was Cardinal’s. No answer. I rang the rest, but no one came. The two times I’d come here, I’d seen no evidence of other tenants; possibly the other three apartments were unoccupied.

  I started to walk back the way I’d come, then stopped. Melissa had been cautious about answering the door the other day; possibly she was climbing down the stairs. I went back to the door, listened, but heard nothing. Finally I grasped the doorknob and pushed experimentally. The door opened a crack.

  I looked down, but couldn’t see what had prevented it from latching. I pushed harder, encountered resistance. After located my small flashlight at the bottom of my bag, I stood on tiptoe and shone it through the window mesh.

  What I saw made me put my shoulder to the door and force it opened about eighteen inches, enough so I could squeeze partway through. I shone the light downward.

  Melissa was the barrier I’d been pushing against. She lay on the floor at the foot of the stairs, head propped against the baseboard, dress hiked up to mid-thigh, veined legs splayed. And the blood . . .

  It had spurted, sprayed on the walls. The spatter patterns seemed to jump out at me as I moved the flashlight beam over them. Tacky here, still wet there, and the sickly sweet smell combined with the more pungent odors—

  My heart did a little skip, then started racing; my stomach revolted. I squeezed back through the door, used a nearby garbage can for the dregs of the Turkish coffee. Then I breathed deeply, leaning against the building’s wall. It was several minutes before I could make myself go back inside.

  She was still warm, but had no pulse. If it hadn’t been for the blood, I would have assumed she’d fallen downstairs and broken her neck. There was no wound that I could see—

  Wait, there it was. In the neck. A single puncture to the artery. No wonder the blood had sprayed. The killer—he or she—must have been covered with Melissa’s lifeblood.

  It was silent in the building—the kind of silence that told me no one else was there. Carefully I edged around Melissa’s body and went up to her apartment. Its door stood open; she’d gone done to let someone in, then.

  There was a phone on the table next to the recliner. Under the lamp’s base my card was still anchored, finger-smudged as if she’d been toying with the idea of calling me. I picked up the recei
ver and called Homicide. Wallace was in the squad room; he said he and Joslyn would be right behind the uniforms. I replaced the receiver, turned up the lamp and looked around.

  The first thing I spotted was Melissa’s big white cat cowering under the tall cabinet. I hauled the creature out, stroked it. It wriggled from my grasp and ran back under there. I decided to leave it where it felt safe.

  As I straightened, the objects on the shelves caught my eye. I looked closer. The animal figures were not cheap kitsch, as I’d previously assumed, but tasteful and expensive-looking, like the reproductions you see in the museum gift shops. And, also contrary to what I’d thought, they had not recently been dusted. A film overlay the carved stone sea lion. Mexican folk-art cat, gold snail with cut-crystal, ivory tortoises, fine china dogs, and wood-carved jungle beasts. A large lop-eared jade rabbit, nose pointed into the air, had been moved enough to make miniature footprints.

  A costly collection for a woman living on Social Security and disability payments, I thought. Of course, Melissa had probably spent very little on anything else. But even so, she must have had an additional source of income to collect in such a manner. Perhaps her recent extortion attempts were not her only ones...

  I heard the first wave of law enforcement personnel in the alley and went down to meet them. Melissa’s body seemed strangely diminished now, as if the official presence had caused any lingering vestiges of her persona to flee. I felt a tug of sorrow as I edged around her. Already it was as if she were long dead; soon all traces of her existence would be eradicated. All that would remain as a collection of stillborn animals that would find their way into the city’s antique shops, a cat that would end up in the pound.