Paper Phoenix: A Mystery of San Francisco in the '70s (A Classic Cozy--with Romance!) (3 page)

As she listened, she picked up a letter, squinted at it, tossed it aside. Then she rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. “No, I think Andrew will do a great job, and I expect he’ll still want to use the story you sent us, but we’re in a little bit of a mess right now. Could you maybe call back next week? Thanks a lot.”

Putting down the phone, she looked at me and said, “Writers are incredible. What can I do for you?”

Sweat from my palms had made my notebook feel slippery. “I’m Maggie Wilson,” I said. It was my maiden name. I’d decided to leave “Longstreet” out of it.

The girl offered a hand that was even more freckled than her face. “Betsy O’Shea.”

Larry Hawkins’s death didn’t seem to have fazed Betsy O’Shea, but apparently she was a type it would take a lot to faze. Of all the attitudes I had imagined I might find at the
People’s Times,
this brisk friendliness was probably the last I had expected. Encouraged, I launched into my cover story. “I’m a journalism student at State. I’m in the reentry program there, you know, training older women for the job market…”

Betsy looked interested. “My landlady went through that about a year ago. She said it was great.” She shrugged. “We don’t have any jobs now, though. See, you may not have heard, but our editor—”

“I know, I know,” I interrupted. “I’m not here about a job. It’s for a class assignment. I want to do a story on Larry Hawkins.”

The blue eyes glazed. “You and a dozen other people.”

Oh God. I was losing her good will already. I stumbled on, “I guess it isn’t a very original idea, but I thought I might be able to give it a new slant.”

“How many times have I heard that one? No offense.” She rubbed her temples. “Reentry program, huh? Did your old man run out on you? If you don’t mind my asking.”

My face burned. What a fool I was, coming here to expose myself to this strange girl’s casual curiosity instead of staying up on Lake Street where I belonged. “I guess that’s right.”

I caught a shade of pity on her face. “That’s what happened to my landlady.” She waved a hand at the couch. “Sit down for a minute, why don’t you?”

As I crossed to the couch, the phone rang again and she yelled, “Kit, catch the phones for a while, OK?” I moved some newspapers and sat down.

“What kind of story did you have in mind?” she asked.

My plan was to start slowly and back into the big question. “I’d like to do an account of his last day, interspersed with history about the
Times
, stories he covered, things like that. Sort of a montage.” Actually, I thought, the idea wasn’t half bad.

“His last day, huh?” Betsy leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “That would be two days ago. It was a fairly typical day around here.”

“It was?” I opened my notebook.

“Yeah. Which means it was frantic from beginning to end. Let’s see. Larry came in around noon and was his normal self, ranting at everybody. That afternoon was the thing with September Apple.”

“September Apple?”

“September Apple is a person. She was really into ecology at one point, so she took that name. Her real name is something like Mary.”

“She came in that afternoon?”

“She was always coming in. Larry gave her an assignment. Like everybody else in this town, she wants to be a writer. He finally told her to do something about poetry. Andrew Baffrey had been pushing him to use artsy stuff occasionally. So she worked and worked, and she was around here a lot. This place is the biggest outpatient clinic in San Francisco.” Betsy glanced around as if she wouldn’t be surprised to see outpatients emerging from the walls.

“Did the story get published?”

“Are you kidding? That’s what all the shrieking was about. She came in that afternoon, the day after she’d turned it in, and God, what a fight she and Larry had. I mean, the door of his office was closed, but I could hear their voices all the way out here. Finally, she came flying out of there just about hysterical and took off and I haven’t seen her since. You have to understand that wasn’t particularly unusual, though. Larry had that effect on writers.”

I was scratching away in the notebook, getting it all down. I didn’t want to blow my cover by not looking interested. “They were fighting about the story?”

“Probably. See”— Betsy leaned forward— “don’t put this in your article, but constructive criticism wasn’t in Larry’s vocabulary. You either wrote it his way or screw you. He was always sure he was one hundred percent right.”

“Did anything happen after that?”

“Not much. Larry spent a long time in his office with Andrew Baffrey, the managing editor, that afternoon. They must have been in there three hours, and then Andrew left, and
man.”
Betsy was silent for a moment, thoughtful. “I tell you, Larry came out to get a cup of coffee, and he was shaking like a leaf. It was strange, you know?” The sadness I had missed earlier washed over her face. Her fingers twisted a frizzy tendril of hair.

“He wasn’t usually the nervous type?” Pretty soon, the intrepid reentry reporter was going to slip in the jackpot question.

Betsy chuckled mournfully. “How could he run a paper like the
Times
and be nervous, with people threatening to sue him all the time? I feel bad about it now. I saw he was upset. Maybe if I’d said something, it would’ve made a difference, and he wouldn’t…” She sighed. “So. He went back into his office, closed the door, and nobody saw him until his body was found by the garbage men. Is that all you need?”

The moment had come. “Just one more thing. I was wondering—” I began, just as a flabby blond man appeared in the doorway.

I heard Betsy mutter “Oh, no” as he walked unsteadily toward her. His hair, a razor cut grown too long, looked greasy. His belly hung over the pants of his ghastly brushed denim leisure suit. He rested his knuckles on the desk and leaned toward her.

“Well.” He managed to convey hostility in the single syllable.

“Hi, Ken,” said Betsy calmly.

“So Hawkins has gone to his reward.” The man had a resonant, theatrical voice. I almost thought I had heard it before. His face, with its straight, fleshy nose and prominent chin, looked familiar too. Was he an actor? I flashed through the productions I’d seen by the local repertory company, but couldn’t fit him into any role.

“That’s right.”

“Who’s in charge now?” His belligerence was deepening.

“Andrew Baffrey.”

“He in?”

Betsy shook her head. “Sorry. He’s gone out for a while.”

The man leaned heavily across the desk and gripped Betsy’s shoulder. Her expression didn’t change. “You sure he’s not around?”

“Absolutely.” Betsy slid away from his grasp.

The man staggered, righted himself, and gazed blearily around. He wandered toward me and sank down on the other end of the couch. I could smell the liquor now. His eyes slid over me without interest, and I was again positive I knew him. “Baffrey, huh?” he said.

“Right. But he isn’t in.”

“Is he as big a son of a bitch as Hawkins? Or is he a human being?”

“Andrew’s OK.”

He leaned forward in a parody of earnestness. “Look, hon. Now that Larry’s gone, don’t you think this rag could print a retraction? I mean, enough’s enough.”

Betsy shook her head. “You won’t get anywhere with that, Ken. The story was true and we could prove it. Like Larry told you, the subject is closed.”

“The subject is closed,” he mimicked. “Shit. Larry Hawkins thinks it’s all right to take away a man’s job for the sake of a story? What kind of screwed-up values are those?”

Now I knew who he was. Kenneth MacDonald, Channel Eight’s local news attempt to duplicate Eric Sevareid. He had been the picture of rock-solid propriety, narrating three-alarm fires, murders in the Tenderloin, drug busts in Berkeley, the new gorilla at the zoo, and the mayor’s birthday party all with the same sonorous pomposity. He’d had an editorial segment— “The View from Here,” or something like that— in which he’d strung together platitudes on subjects of local interest.

I stared at him. He’d been ruggedly handsome, with features worthy of Mount Rushmore. Now, his face was puffy, bloated, his eyes insignificant in the surrounding flesh. I remembered that I hadn’t seen him on Channel Eight lately.

“I’ll tell you again,” Ken was saying. “I told Larry, and I’ll tell you, and I’ll tell this Andrew character that I didn’t know who owned that place. It was just a two-bedroom cabin at Tahoe, not a palace, for Chrissakes.”

“I think Larry’s point was that people in your position have to be careful,” Betsy said.

“You do? Well, I think Larry’s point was to sell a few more copies of his miserable paper, and he didn’t care whose ass he had to trample to do it.” Ken got laboriously to his feet. “It’s no wonder the little rat bastard killed himself. He probably realized what a creep he really was.” He shoved his chest forward, fists clenched at his sides.

Betsy didn’t respond. Under her steady gaze, his stance gradually lost its antagonism. When he next spoke, it was with more bravado than conviction. “I’ll be back. I’m going to talk to Baffrey about that retraction. You haven’t seen the last of me.”

“Sure,” Betsy said. “Just give us a couple of days to get on our feet, OK?”

“Right,” he said, apparently mollified. For the first time, it came to his attention that I was in the room. He looked at me with an inquiring stare.

“That’s Maggie Wilson,” Betsy said.

The change in him was instantaneous. Meeting a member of the public, he was the superstar television commentator once more. He flashed me a grin that had once been photogenic and held out his hand. “Kenneth MacDonald, Channel Eight. Pleased to meet you,” he said heartily. Before I could reply he dropped my hand and meandered from the room.

Once he made it out the door Betsy turned to me. “Sorry about that.”

“I see what you mean about the outpatient clinic.”

“You don’t know the half. Poor Ken. He was way too much of a lightweight to hold his own with Larry.” She folded an airplane from one of the papers on her desk and sailed it toward the window, where it crashed against the glass. “What a drag, right? Was there anything else you needed for your story?”

At last. I pretended to think for a moment. “The only other thing is, I thought it might add depth if I could say which stories Larry was working on at the time of his death. Give the feeling that his work must continue, and so on.”

Betsy shook her head. “It’s not a bad idea, but you’re talking to the wrong person. Larry played close to the chest. Totally. It could be that nobody knew, because that’s the way he was. If anybody had an idea, it would be Andrew Baffrey, and he’s gone out.”

I wilted. I had dragged myself down here, skipped my morning pill, sat through a tirade by a drunken former television commentator, only to run full tilt against failure. “Would he be willing to talk with me?” I could hear the tightness in my voice.

“I doubt it,” said Betsy slowly. “He’s taking over the paper, and he’s also very upset about Larry’s death. He’s going to have a lot on his mind.”

I told myself I had known it wasn’t going to work out, that it had been stupid ever to think it would. Ever to think anything would. I closed my notebook and stood up, leaden with disappointment. “Thanks anyway.”

Betsy looked at me. “You’ve
got
to have that one detail?”

“I just— just thought it would add the right finishing touch. I’d planned it that way, and I sort of described it to my professor…” My voice was heading into the upper registers. I prayed it wouldn’t actually crack as I gabbled through this pack of lies.

I could see the decision on Betsy’s face before she said, “Oh rats. I’ve had enough emotional trauma in the past few days to last a lifetime. Come in tomorrow morning and I’ll try to shoehorn you in to see Andrew for a few minutes.”

The rush of relief I felt almost overwhelmed me. I gushed my thanks and she accepted them nonchalantly, cautioning me only to leave my phone number so she could reach me if she had to reschedule.

I was standing in the doorway thanking her once again when a woman pushed me aside to get into the room. Her long brown hair was windblown, her face a deep pink. She wore jeans, boots, and a heavy zip-fronted sweater with a pattern of gray llamas on it. She stood in the middle of the room and said, tremulously but carefully, enunciating each word, “Betsy, I cannot stand it any longer. People have
got
to get off my back. I cannot stand it—” She broke off and bowed her head. I heard her emit a little squeak.

Betsy was beside her in a second, putting an arm around her and leading her to the couch. Before they reached it, the woman was sobbing convulsively.

Whether or not Betsy had had enough emotional trauma, she was obviously going to have more. She sat next to the woman, saying, “What happened, Susanna? Did somebody do something to you?” but the woman only wailed louder, her face clenched like a child’s, stray hair clinging to the wetness of her cheeks and lips. Betsy said, “Maggie, there’s a water cooler back in the newsroom. Bring a cup, would you?”

Susanna? Susanna Hawkins, Larry’s widow. Heading in the direction Betsy indicated, I began the search for the water cooler.

“Newsroom” seemed an extravagant term to apply to the collection of ramshackle desks, jerry-built tables, and dented filing cabinets I found down a short hall. The typewriters looked ancient enough to have been used for on-the-scene reports from the ‘06 quake. The atmosphere was subdued. A few of the desks were occupied by people reading or staring into space. Two men and a woman, all dressed in post-hippie style— much the same as hippie style, but without fringe or beads— were clustered around a filing cabinet, speaking in low tones. They glanced at me, their young, worried faces registering the fact that I looked expensively out of place, then turned back to their conversation. Here the pall left by Larry’s death was tangible.

I spotted the water cooler in a corner, and filled a paper cup. “I don’t know,” a ponytailed young man in the filing-cabinet group was saying. “The way Andrew’s freaking out there’s no telling what’s going to happen.”

“He’ll pull himself together. Give him half a chance,” the woman said, sounding unconvinced.