Muller, Marcia - [09] There's Something In A Sunday [v 1.0] (htm) (32 page)

As he spoke, Goldring's words gathered momentum, as if this were a script he'd memorized and at first had forgotten. Now, with one sentence cueing the next, he seemed to find it difficult to stop.

I said, "I suppose your Cousin Meta felt it would be easier for you to look into it, since you're here in town and she's down in…?"

Goldring watched me for a few seconds, and after I let the silence lengthen, his expression became resigned. "King City," he said.

I continued to study him in silence. After a few seconds of meeting my gaze, he wet his lips and looked down at the desk. When he picked up the letter opener again, his fingers trembled slightly.

Rudy Goldring was lying to me—of that I was certain. 'Whether about King City or Cousin Meta or all of it, I couldn't tell. But at that moment I was willing to wager a week's salary that more than fifty percent of what he'd told me was outright lies.

From the way he was avoiding my eyes, I also knew he was aware I'd
realized
his deception. A flush had crept up from under his immaculate white collar and spread over his face. I sensed he wasn't a man to whom lies came easily—in fact, he probably hated telling them. The fact that he had lied meant his reasons for wanting Frank Wilkonson followed were of great consequence to him—and possibly not very honorable.

After a good half-minute of further silence he spoke, still looking down at the desk. "Will you do this for me, Miss McCone?" There was a pathetic pleading ring to his voice that I wouldn't have expected to hear from the high-spirited man who had greeted me, and it made me feel sorry for him.

I hesitated. As All Souls' employee, it wasn't really my right to turn down an assignment, not unless the client asked me to do something illegal. If I refused to take on this tail job, I would have to do a good bit of explaining—both to Jack Stuart and my boss, Hank Zahn. Besides, I liked him, which is why I said, "Yes, I will, Mr. Goldring."

He dropped the letter opener and looked up, sighing faintly. "Thank you. Thank you very much."

We concluded by going over the scanty details about Frank Wilkonson once more. Goldring barely deviated by a single word from his earlier recital. When he showed me to the door, the derelict was still on the steps. He looked up and saluted Goldring. "Hiya, Captain."

"Hello, Bob. Isn't it almost time for your supper?"

"Dunno. What time
is
it?"

"Close to five. You'd better get over to St. Anthony's, or you'll miss a place in line."

The derelict looked regretfully at the can of Colt .45 in his hand, then shook it. It sounded empty.

Goldring said, "No more beer, Bob. Not until you've eaten."

The man shrugged philosophically, set the can carefully out of sight behind one of the porch pillars, and extracted a worn, fringed, tooled leather pouch from behind the other. When he stood, he adjusted its strap on his shoulder, then ambled down the steps.

I said, "He seems to think he's your doorman."

"He is, in a way. He guards the steps and shows people in, and I provide him with beer and remind him to eat. I suppose I shouldn't be encouraging him to drink, but if I cut him off, he's not going to stop. It's harmless enough."

"He was certainly polite enough when I arrived, but isn't he off-putting to your clientele?"

"Most of them are used to Bob. He's been here five years or more. The others are forewarned."

"He's your personal charity, then?"

"I guess you could call him that." Goldring was watching the derelict walk away, his face a complex mixture of emotions. "There are so many of them, and there's nothing to be done on a grand scale. But I can't help thinking that if every business concern south of Market took an interest— Oh well, you don't want to listen to an old man's maunderings, Miss McCone. And I have a dozen shirts to pack before the late UPS pickup. You'll let me know about Frank Wilkonson on Monday?"

I said I would, and after shaking my hand, Goldring went inside.

An interesting man, Rudy Goldring, I thought as I walked back to my car. Complicated, vulnerable, curiously appealing. And in spite of his obvious lies, an honest man. Conflicted because of that honesty. Was that really why, against my better instincts, I was taking his case?

Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes I never knew exactly why I took on certain things—just as I never knew exactly where they would lead me.

At two on Monday morning I was still on the job, parked across from the Kingsway Motel in front of the coffee shop where I'd sat close to twenty-four hours before. I'd lost Wilkonson in the Wharf area, but when I'd returned to Lombard Street, his Ranchero had been parked underneath the motel. About an hour later Wilkonson appeared on foot— probably coming back from having dinner at one of the nearby coffee shops or small restaurants. He went to his room and shortly after that the lights in its window went out.

When I felt certain he would stay in his room for a while, I left the MG and went into the coffee shop. I hadn't eaten anything since the sandwiches and fruit I'd downed while following him from nursery to nursery, and the emergency Hershey bars that I always carry in my purse didn't appeal to me. I took the same window booth I'd occupied earlier and ate a burger and fries while keeping an eye on Wilkonson's darkened motel room, then bought a large container of coffee. Back in the car, I whiled away the hours by listening to the radio and bolstering up my flagging energy level with chocolate and caffeine.

The fog had come in again, thick and blustery. It sheeted up Lombard Street like wind-driven snow. I huddled inside my pea jacket, unable to run the heater because it was broken, and thought about the man I'd been tailing: his visits to places having to do with plants; his questions that I hadn't been able to hear; his obvious anger.

He had to be looking for someone. A man or a woman whose vocation or avocation involved horticulture. That could mean anything from retail nursery clerk to garden club president to landscape architect. When he'd questioned the various clerks, he'd probably been describing the person; the way he'd moved his hands while talking indicated that. Because he'd had to go to such lengths in his search, he either didn't know the person's name or had reason to believe he or she was going by an assumed one. Why? Because of trouble with the law? Because of a desire to hide from Wilkonson? And if the latter—again, why?

Wilkonson was an angry man. Leashed anger, but not so tightly leashed that it couldn't be triggered, as it had been at the Wharf. A potentially violent man. Someone a person might naturally want to hide from.

Violent behavior wasn't part of the picture of Wilkonson that Rudy Goldring had painted for me. He'd described him as "peculiar," had said he could "get into trouble wandering around this city alone." I'd assumed "peculiar" meant inept, perhaps retarded. But Wilkonson had proved himself neither of those.

Did Rudy Goldring know of Wilkonson's potential for violence? If he did, he'd omitted a key factor from his description—one I'd had every right to know before undertaking to tail the man. The omission—or perhaps downright deception—made
me
angry. I'd been duped by other clients and in a few cases hadn't learned what was really going on until irreparable harm had been done. In one of those cases two people had died unnecessarily—and then I'd almost lost my own life.

It wouldn't do any good to fume over it now, though. There would be time to confront Goldring about it when I delivered my report that afternoon. To calm myself, I tuned the radio to a station that played oldies, but after a while they broke for a Sunday-night talk show about the problem of San Francisco's homeless. The participants were a welfare worker, a priest, and a sociologist; their dispassionate discussion reduced those who slept in doorways or on park benches to mere statistics. They spoke of over seven thousand homeless people in the city alone, and more than forty-five thousand in the greater Bay Area. They said that for the city's homeless there were only a little over a thousand beds available in shelters; in the entire area only one bed was available for every fifteen people. They talked about how the homeless problem destroyed the quality of life for all of us; about how the tax money allocated to homeless relief wasn't beginning to pay the bills; about establishing regional support centers and funding more studies.

Studies!
I thought incredulously.
Spend money that could go to feed people, on more useless research
!

I thought of my own college sociology major and how—had anything more come of it than a vinyl-encased diploma, whose whereabouts I couldn't even guess at now—it could have been me on the radio, analyzing and dissecting. Then I thought of Rudy Goldring and Bob, his derelict "doorman," and of Goldring's comment—naive and practical at the same time— that if every business south of Market showed an interest in a homeless person, it might make a difference. In light of that, the sociobabble on the radio began to depress me, so I switched to KSUN, "Light of the Bay."

My former lover, disc jockey Don Del Boccio, was giving a spiel about a rock concert KSUN would be hosting at the Oakland Coliseum the next week. He and the station's Wonder Bus would be there, Don said, along with Tina, the terrific traffic reporter. There would be a giveaway of KSUN T-shirts and posters to the first hundred couples. There would be a drawing for a door prize—a date with your favorite KSUN deejay. There would be—

I punched the button for a classical station. Listening to Don was almost as depressing as listening to the dehumanizing discussion of the city's indigents. Not because our parting had been a bitter one; there hadn't been enough of a connection between us by then for its severing to foster rancor. Not because I missed him; I didn't. His departure from my life had been more of a liberation. But hearing his bubbly voice and slick, superficial delivery reminded me again of all that had gone wrong between us—of how easily people can mistake sexual attraction and admiration of qualities that they themselves don't possess, for love.

Don is a cheerful, outgoing man who sees more good than bad in the world, a minor celebrity whose fame rests easily on his shoulders. I'd envied his carefree approach to life and thought he would help me loosen up; he'd envied my sense of purpose and thought I would help him chart a more serious career.

But finally, after a couple of years, Don and I had proved to be too different. His upbeat attitude began to seem shallow to me; it grated, just as my cynicism and jealous guarding of my privacy irritated him. He found my cases too grim and didn't want to talk about them. I found even the in-depth talk show he'd persuaded the station to let him do to be superficial; I was reluctant to accompany him to glitzy KSUN promotional functions. Eventually we took refuge in our long, irregular working hours and just let things taper off.

We'd been apart for six months now. I hadn't found anyone new, wasn't really looking. Now I wondered if Don had. Who was this Tina, the terrific traffic reporter, anyway? Hadn't he said her name with more than his usual enthusiasm?

For a moment I considered tuning in to KSUN again, listening to Don to see if I could detect his feelings and circumstances over the airwaves. Then I laughed aloud. Could it be I was a tiny bit jealous? No, I decided, not really. Don was out of my life for good. But I was interested, as I would be in any former lover.

I didn't touch the radio's buttons, though. The station I had on was playing Brahms, a favorite of mine ever since Don— who had once trained to be a concert pianist at the Eastman School of Music—had educated me to the joys of the classics. Hours passed as the selection switched to Mendelssohn, and then Tchaikovsky. The fog blew dense and snowy. Around midnight I almost dozed off, so I got out of the car and walked up and down the block twice, breathing the misty air. It was warmer, the fog like a thermal blanket wrapped around the city. I walked briskly, swinging my arms, and after a while felt more alert.

Now, an hour and forty minutes later, the lights went on in room 209. I watched a tall shadow move across the drawn drapes. Shortly afterward, Wilkonson emerged carrying a small travel bag. As he went to the Ranchero I started my car. He executed a U-turn and went past me, toward downtown. I hung back so he wouldn't notice my headlights; the sparseness of traffic at that hour made him easy to spot.

Eventually he led me into the light industrial district south of Market where I'd met with Rudy Goldring on Friday. The streets were deserted and so dirty that even the fog seemed begrimed. Warehouses and semitrailers hulked darkly. My headlights washed over the latticework of chain-link fences and gleamed off railroad tracks that crisscrossed the pavement. There were no other cars in sight, and I was beginning to fear that Wilkonson would realize he was being tailed when a lighted area blazed up ahead of us. Suddenly the street was congested with cars and trucks and people. I slowed, momentarily puzzled, imagining that we had arrived at the scene of some horrible disaster. Then I saw a green and white neon sign reading CALIFORNIA FLOWER MART.

The Flower Terminal at Fifth and Brannan Streets—not far from the Hall of Justice—is as much of a San Francisco institution as Cost Plus, but not nearly as well known. Five days a week, while the rest of the city sleeps, wholesalers from all over the northern part of the state gather there to offer their wares to the area's florists and retail nurseries and sidewalk vendors. I'd never been there before—no one unassociated with the flower industry would have occasion to—but I'd once read a magazine article that had described the terminal as "an incredible hive of activity." The description could not have been more apt.

Trucks clogged the street ahead of me, double and triple parked. Men and women unloaded crates, boxes, and flats of flowers, as well as trees and shrubs, onto handcarts and forklifts at the back doors to dozens of stalls. People crossed within inches of my front bumper, heedless of the car's motion. Ahead of me Wilkonson was experiencing similar impediments to progress: he weaved around a van, slammed on his brakes to avoid a hand truck loaded with saplings, crept around a group of men who were drinking coffee in the middle of the street. It was the congestion of the Wharf area all over again, only much worse, and I began to fear another outburst of violence. Wilkonson kept his speed down, however, weaving through the obstacle course. I lost sight of the Ranchero briefly when it slid around the corner onto Brannan Street, then caught up with it as it passed a busy, brightly lighted establishment called the Flower Mart Restaurant. On the other side of Sixth Street he found a quasi-legal parking space. I kept going, spotted a space further down, but was beaten out by an old Chevy. Finally I left the MG by the loading dock of a ball-bearing company and hurried down the crowded street to the entrance to the mart.