Authors: Linda Lee Peterson
Edited to Death (22 page)
“Perhaps we can discuss my transgressions another time,” I said. “Go on.”
“So the long and short of it was that all of us misbehaved to one degree or another.
If I were ranking the villains, I guess I’d have to say that Jack, Quentin, and I
were most to blame.”
“Were you?”
“Having it off with the vicar’s boy?” He smiled bitterly. “Not him, but others. I
was… confused. But I was close to Jack and I could have kept him in tighter rein.”
“So then what happened?”
“Well, that’s another story. Jack got sent down and finished up at some redbrick college,
then came to the States, made some money, then moved back to London. Quentin and Douglas
finished up. I came close, but then decided I had a vocation and returned to Ireland
to the seminary.”
“And Douglas stayed on in Oxford and Quentin came to the States. And none of you met
again?”
“Oh, no. Quentin and Douglas have seen each other from time to time over the years,
although things were always a bit frosty because Douglas thought Quentin hadn’t stood
up for Jack. I’d see Quent occasionally when he came to Ireland. As I think you know,
he helped me and Corinne and the kids immensely when we came here.”
We both fell silent, the sounds of the Mission faint outside the kitchen windows—city
buses, kids shouting. I remembered Glen’s remarks at Quentin’s funeral. Okay, I thought,
it’s now or never. Get the rest of the story and get out.
“But then Jack Rowland, a.k.a. John Orlando, surfaced in the States again? In San
Francisco?”
“Well, he’d been here before, as I said. Knocking around. Doing this and that.”
“Such as?”
Glen reached across the table and captured my hands in his.
“Listen to me, Maggie. I’ll finish this story—or what I choose to tell you of it.
And then I want you to be done with it.”
I nodded. I knew I had virtually no intention of honoring what Glen was asking, and
somehow, my old kid’s-eye view of following the letter—not the spirit—of the law,
meant that if I didn’t speak, if I didn’t say “I promise” aloud, I could do what I
wanted. I nodded again and thought to myself; geez, Maggie, first adultery, then promises
I had no intention of keeping. No ethics, no ethics whatsoever.
“All right, then. I landed here a few years ago, as you know. Jack Rowland came to
town shortly after that. He’d always been an arty fellow, and now, he had this portfolio
under his arm. He’d turned himself into a Bohemian. He’d taken up illustration. Quentin
and I saw him, liked his work.”
I wrinkled my nose.
“Yes, well, Maggie, now you’re in charge, you’re free not to like his stuff. But Quent
and I did. And I suppose we both felt a little guilt over the old days. We’d gotten
away with most of our hijinks—and Jack had paid.”
“So he blackmailed you into hiring him?”
“No, no, not at all. We liked his stuff. We’ve been using him. Besides,” Glen picked
up my tea mug and his and carried them to the sink and began rinsing them. “I hardly
think Jack was depending on us to keep body and soul together. He’s got that fancy
new restaurant of his.”
“Exactly! And where did he get the money for that?”
Glen shrugged. “Who knows? Those ritzy Hong Kong friends of his, I guess. And what
business is it of yours, miss, I’d like to know?”
“Well, I think when there’s been a murder, it’s everybody’s business.”
Glen raised his hand. “Stop. That’s where you’re wrong. It’s Quentin’s business—and
he’s dead. So now it’s police business.”
I regarded Glen. None of this seemed so terrible. Why hadn’t he told me before? He
looked back at me, his face impassive. It reminded me of a playground stand-off.
“Maggie, you know who Charles Parnell was?”
“Irish hero, right?”
“In a way. There are some who think his strategies, his indiscreet love affair with
the wife of an MP, well, they led to his ruination. And you, my girl, you remind me
of Charles Stewart Parnell. You’ve got a good head. You’ve got prospects. But you
can’t leave well enough alone. Do it. That’s my advice to you.”
“How did he end up?”
“Parnell? He died a very young man, fiftyish or so. Worn out, rejected by his party.”
“But in love.”
“Ah, yes. In love, he finally married his ‘Queenie’. Not many years of happiness they
had, I’m afraid.”
“Glen,” I said impatiently. “This is a little cryptic for me. Maybe I’m not Joycean
enough to figure out what your story is about. So why don’t you say what’s on your
mind?”
He laughed. “That’s not very Irish. All right then, I’ll be direct, just like you
Americans. Think about this: you’ve got a good life, you’ve got a good job—at least
for the moment—don’t be overstirring the pot. The coppers have it in hand.”
I considered my options. “Oh, Glen, you’re right, I suppose. I’m just so unsettled.
I’m sure I feel a little guilty—well, a lot guilty about some of the choices I made.
And I worry that my relationship with Quentin had something to do with this. Then,
you know, the police were questioning Michael, and I felt so terrible.”
“Yes, indeed, I understand,” Glen said. “And if I might suggest something to you.
You felt terrible because you’d done something you shouldn’t. You’re not Catholic,
so there’s no confessional for you, my friend. I’d simply recommend that you leave
off doing things you oughtn’t.”
“The voice of experience?” I asked.
He laughed again, shortly. “Yes, the voice of experience. We pay, one way or another,
for all our sins, I assure you.”
“Quentin certainly did,” I said. “Whatever those sins were. Knowing Quentin, I assume
they were legion.”
“Safe assumption,” said Glen. “I always worried Quentin would turn up HIV-positive.
He was so free with his favors.”
We both let that statement sit there for a bit.
“And you’re certain he wasn’t?” I ventured.
Glen looked at me for a moment. “No, he wasn’t. He was quite careful, even with all
his adventures. And he got himself tested regularly. He was a lucky man.”
“Until the end,” I said.
Glen looked up at the kitchen clock.
“Well, now, where does the time fly? Let’s have a look at those invoices and I’ll
send you on your way.” I pushed the envelope in his direction and let Glen riffle
through. He scanned the pages, one by one, muttering under his breath, circling a
few items, initialing other pages.
“Sorry,” he said, “just be a moment.”
“Take your time,” I said as I stood and wandered over to the Fox family bulletin board.
School pictures of the Fox brood, a soccer phone tree, Mass schedule from St. Peter
and Paul’s, a chore chart, adorned with many check marks and the occasional stick-on
gold star, and a patchwork of other family photos.
“St. Peter and Paul’s?” I called. “Isn’t that far to troop everyone for Mass?”
Glen looked up. “Oh, yes, a little. Corinne and the kids go here in the neighborhood,
but I like the North Beach scene, so I ramble over there from time to time. You know,
have an espresso afterward with friends.”
“Mm-hmm.” I leaned against the refrigerator and surveyed the kitchen.
How settled Glen and Corinne seemed here, how American. I wondered if they felt that
way. It was hard to know what was okay to ask. I’d just pried into Glen’s past, and
had been made to feel even nosier than I already considered myself, but, oh well,
might as well be hung for a sheep as a goat.
“Glen,” I ventured, “do you feel like you’re raising an American family?”
He looked up. “American, Maggie? As opposed to what? Bosnian?”
“No, Irish.”
He snorted. “Hardly. Do you have the slightest idea how pervasive you Yanks are? You
wander through Trinity College in Dublin and you’d swear you were at UC Berkeley.
The kids wear the same T-shirts, pierce the same body parts, listen to the same music,
tell the same jokes. Even Irish culture gets co-opted. You know who’s on the cover
of Rolling Stone this month?”
I shook my head. Only Puck could tell me. “The Cranberries. There’s that sweet-faced
Dolores O’Riordan, looking like an American girl and singin’ her heart out. I mean,
you know she’s Irish, but I’ll tell you, we’re all of us, everywhere in the world
these days, just a little bit American.” He gestured around the kitchen.
“I’m raisin’ American kids, and I say that’s just fine. There’s not many other places
in the world a man can start over.”
“Like the song in
West Side Story
?”
Glen looked up, puzzled.
“
I want to be in America. Okay by me in America,”
I sang.
“Don’t quit your day job, Maggie,” he said and went back to the invoices.
“Wait,” I protested. “You started over. In the seminary in Ireland, after Oxford.”
“Oh, well,” said Glen, “that’s another matter now. The Catholic Church is a world
unto itself—just like America, but without the rock and roll.”
Silence hung in the kitchen again, and I was reminded of what private lives we all
lead, more of Inspector Moon’s puzzle boxes. Opened occasionally, in some flash, some
moment, and then shuttered again, away from even those we think we trust. And I began
to think that my stupid, stubborn reluctance to let go of Quentin’s murder must have
something to do with proving my own trustworthiness to Michael again. Bring him the
solution, the way the cats bring something they’ve conquered and leave it on the mat.
See what I’ve done for you! The memory of those poor ravaged creatures—half-eaten
mice and chipmunks—brought me perilously close to remembering Quentin’s body the morning
I found him.
“Okay, that’s about it,” I said hastily. “I’ll leave you in peace, and Gertie will
be pleased to get your approvals on these.”
Glen stood and we walked together through the dark hallway to the front door. Impulsively,
I moved to give Glen a hug. He hesitated and then wrapped his arms around me and hugged
back. “Ah, Maggie,” he said, “so California. Fix anything with a hug.”
I released him. “Just being friendly,” I said. “Besides, maybe I’ll catch your flu.
I wouldn’t mind a day or two in bed with a stack of trashy novels.”
“Yes, well, what do they say about being careful what you wish for?”
I waved from the station wagon, keeping one eye on the rearview mirror to see what
suicidal driver had decided to make Liberty Street personal territory. Glen stood
in the doorway, slight, rumpled, the light catching his gingery hair.
His face was still tired and drawn.
“It’s nothing,” I said to myself, maneuvering the Volvo out onto the street. “You
wouldn’t look so perky yourself if you were coping with city life, five kids, and
the flu.”
And with that almost comforting thought, I headed toward Mission to angle across the
great divide, Market Street.
There are those who treasure the pleasures of rural life: muddy tramps on country
roads, speaking to your neighbors and home to your own wood stove.
There are those who treasure the suburbs, with their organized sports, PTAs and community
task forces, and oversized sport utility vehicles lined up after school.
And then there are those who like the drama of urban life, the theaters and cafes
and after-hours places, and dark, dimly lit bars that serve real martinis. San Francisco,
bless her diverse, beloved heart, is the country-cum-suburb-cum
-
city that cheerfully, even elegantly, integrates them all. And nowhere demonstrates
that more clearly than the south of Market, or SoMa, scene, an updated Greenwich Village
moved way out west. Just minutes away from parent-obsessed neighborhoods like Potrero
Hill, a few short miles away from the great country-scene-within-a-city that is Golden
Gate Park, there is SoMa. Bright lights, neon, shops that offer piercing in anatomical
locations never before imagined, clubs with mosh pits where Gen Xers and slackers
fling themselves onto dance floors seemingly designed by the architect of Dante’s
Inferno, hip multimedia ghettos where gearheads create cyberworlds of reality beyond
the virtual, gay bars that offer everything from down-home Texas two-step dancing
lessons to biker hangouts, converted live-work lofts where childless couples live
in art-directed gray and white, clean-lined, Bauhaus-approved splendor.
Hot Licks, despite its sexy name, is actually something of a tame player in the neighborhood.
It’s a traditional jazz club, though after hours the club’s open-mike policy welcomes
the more avant-garde—musicians, comedians, and the kind of people who cover themselves
in glue and birdseed and apply for NEA grants as performance artists. The drinks are
generous, the bar food is good but not chichi, and famous visitors love to drop by
and sit in for a set with the house band. It’s owned by a Chicago-transplanted couple
and it shows, with an honest Midwest-joint feel in a neighborhood that has more attitude
than anything else.
As I pulled up to the door on Eighth Street, I noticed that yet another auto body
shop had given way to SoMa-ization and been replaced by a billiards parlor and champagne
bar. Another place for the overpaid and overanxious younger set to wile away time
and money, I groused to myself, sounding ever more like a bourgeois housewife. I resolved
then and there to persuade Puck to take me along on one of his famous late-night SoMa
crawls, so that I could feel marginally less stuffy.
