Good to the Last Kiss (4 page)

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.’

THREE

‘
W
hat are the disadvantages of extreme wealth?’ Julia asked Thaddeus Maldeaux inside the bright little Italian restaurant on Gough Street.

‘We get kidnapped a lot.’

She smiled. ‘Patty Hearst.’

‘Yes. The Getty kid, remember. The kidnappers sent back the boy’s ear. These were my peers. Nearly. There were others who didn’t make the papers.’

‘OK, being rich is dangerous.’

‘People are always hitting us up for money – and if we don’t cough it up then we’re selfish. People are starving all over and we don’t care.’

‘Bad press.’

‘And speaking of press, no privacy,’ he said.

‘The evidence is mounting up. You have terrible lives.’

‘But most of all we don’t know if people who seem to love us, or even profess to like us, actually do. They may be interested in what we can do for them. Money, fame . . .’

‘And power.’

‘And power.’

‘And glamour.’

‘And glamour sometimes. That’s why I like you.’

‘Because I don’t like you.’

‘There’s not a chance you could put that in the past tense?’

‘Maybe.’

‘I thought my charming . . .’

‘And humble,’ she said.

‘. . . and humble nature would have . . .’

‘This is delicious,’ she said.

‘The food, you mean.’

‘Yes. The food.’ It was more than the food, more than the candle-lit decor, more than the smells of garlic and olive oil and the scent of the handsome waiter. No question it was Thaddeus. He was irresistible. What it was about him remained a puzzle. The waiter was as handsome as Thaddeus. The garlic and olive oil that permeated the air was more appealing than any cologne. She looked back into the eyes of Thaddeus. Not sad. Not bright or deep. No sign that behind his eyes, there was extraordinary wisdom or unique understanding. Not the eyes of a saint. What was it? Chemical? Energy maybe from a being . . .

‘The worst thing about being rich and spoiled is that nothing means a whole lot.’

. . . not like anything she’d seen. Control, sureness, knowing itself.

‘It’s so drab climbing all those mountains, zipping off to Paris for lunch and Morocco for dinner,’ Julia said, wondering how she could be so foolish, but wondering also how she could keep herself from tumbling into the . . .

‘Mmmmn, yes.’

‘. . . force field. ‘Well, you’ve certainly straightened me out. The next time I see some guy on the street begging for a quarter so he can put a down payment on some cheap wine to warm him up and send him back into oblivion, I’ll reconsider where I put my sympathies. I’ll ask him if he truly understands how badly the Maldeaux family has it.’

‘Oh Julia,’ Thaddeus said as if he were exhausted. ‘David said you are a challenge.’

‘You two have some sort of wager or something?’

‘No. And to be completely honest, he doesn’t know I’m here.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘What?’

‘Your having the consideration to tell me when you’re being honest.’

‘Truce? Just through dinner. Incidentally, I’m not looking for sympathy. Just understanding. I know I am a spoiled rich kid. I know how lucky I am. I know that one, highly motivated famous man’s sperm made it to that one receptive rich woman’s egg. And here I am, not only did my little tadpole beat out thousands of other little tadpoles but it found the golden egg. If it had been a couple of Somalians doing it, I’d be counting grains of rice, but it wasn’t. I’ve done what most spoiled rich kids have done plus some. Let me give you the stuff that impresses most people.’

‘Sure.’

‘I’ve sailed the Cape – not Cod – trekked the mountains near Tibet, witnessed camels like beads on the horizon of the Sahara and attended the brothels of Bangkok satisfying urges I never knew I had . . .’

‘I get the point.’

Thaddeus shook his head. ‘No you don’t. It impresses people for the wrong reason.’ He leaned across the table. ‘Do you think this is bragging, me telling you this?’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘On Kilimanjaro, there are places – part of the way up – if you stay there for twenty-four hours you will experience deep, deadly winter and lush, heavy summer every day. Every day, for as long as you stood there – the rest of your life perhaps – it won’t change. All four seasons in twenty-four hours. The plants have adapted to both arctic and the tropics. Do you understand?’

‘I understand what you say. It makes sense. I’m not sure I understand it in the way you’d like me to understand it.’

‘Precisely. You need to experience it. It’s like nothing you know or can imagine. Everyone delights in a sunset.’ He shook his head again, this time at his own inability to convey his thoughts. ‘This isn’t sunsets, Hallmark’s version of Mother Nature’s charming palette of colors. To go to Africa and see it for what it is, or Peru, or Tibet, do you understand is not to say you’ve been, but it is to have your existence transformed. To live. Do you understand?’

‘Let me tell you something,’ she said. She took another sip of the wine to clear her throat. It certainly wasn’t clearing her brain. ‘When I was a child, back in Iowa, seven or eight maybe, in the winter I used to put my wool nightgown over the heat duct. Then I’d undress in the dark and stand there cold in my cold upstairs room. When the nightgown was really warm, I’d pull it on and climb in bed as quickly as I could, cover myself up and try to go to sleep while it was still warm. Those first warm moments were as close to heaven as I could get. I looked forward to them every winter’s night. Do you understand?’

‘I do,’ he said. ‘That was a long time ago.’

‘Not so long. And there are other things that mean something to me.’

‘What?’

‘A good book. Looking at the fog come in. I’m glad to be alive,’ Julia said. ‘Don’t try to make my small life seem worthless.’

‘Believe me, I’m not. You are very worthwhile.’

It had been light when they entered the restaurant. Now, as they departed, it was dark and cool and damp. At the corner of Hayes and Gough they went left instead of right and walked into a neighborhood of galleries, restaurants and cafes. They agreed on another cup of coffee but didn’t know which to choose. Arbitrarily, they chose Mad Magna’s.

Oddly, to Julia’s mind, Thaddeus Maldeaux seemed to fit into the strange collection of San Franciscans who patronized the place. It was loud, boisterous, filled with folks you wouldn’t find in the audience of the 700 Club.

‘The Hindus have a phrase,’ Maldeaux said, as they sat at the little table near the bar. ‘I think it’s
neti, neti
. It means “not this, not that.”’

‘I know I’m being egotistical here, but what does all of this have to do with me?’

‘That’s what I want to know. I’ve never spent much time with a middle class girl from the Middle West, especially one who doesn’t appear to have an axe to grind. I’m tired and bored with everyone I know and seem destined to meet. For some unexplainable reason, you are different.’ He waited for her response. She gave none. He shrugged, gave her a hopeless smile.

‘I’m just opposite fashion, opposite fame, opposite . . . I don’t know. I’m not making much sense. I’m just me. I don’t need to have a make over. I’m not looking to be someone else. I don’t like all of these questions.’

‘What was life like, what were you like when you were growing up?’

‘Usual growing up,’ she said, blushing. She hadn’t been prepared for the change in focus.

‘What is that?’

‘I don’t know. I was a tomboy. A tough little girl.’

‘What did you do. For fun, I mean?’

‘I don’t want to talk about me. It’s boring.’

‘So let’s talk about me,’ he said, grinning.

‘OK, you’re right. Let’s talk about me. I used to go to the river. Get a ride out to the Cedar River. A bunch of us. Mostly boys.’ She laughed. ‘All boys, but me. We’d do make believe, pretend we were lost in a jungle or something. We’d make our own bow and arrows, swing from vines. Dare each other.’

‘You and a bunch of guys?’

‘Yeah,’ she smiled. ‘Donnie Patton . . . mmmnn and the others.

‘So who was this Donnie Patton. You liked him?’

‘I did then,’ she said. He was like Thaddeus in some ways. Handsome, curious, unrelenting. Staring straight into her eyes. Wanting something. Determined to get it.