Suicide King (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series) (4 page)

The two patrolmen did what they’re supposed to do with a crime scene— they kept it safe for the bigger guns and did all the preliminary roping off, tucking away, and checking out.

They hustled Pam and me into separate rooms. I got the kitchen, with a view of the hanging tree. I gave my cop what he asked for— personal information and everything I knew about what had happened to Joe Richmond. I didn’t say anything about my conversation with Pam just before they got there. They were handling it all very seriously, treating it like a homicide. But that’s the form. I was a cop once, for a while, back in the late sixties in Chicago. Long enough to have gotten a couple of calls like the one these guys had gotten. There was a jumper, took a dive off a high rise on the North Side. I roped off everything I could think of— the sidewalk with corpse, the roof, the stairs, the elevator. We kept all the witnesses and residents nailed down for homicide. Much to my disappointment, it turned out the guy had really jumped.

I wasn’t with the force more than another year or so after that. I left the cops, and Chicago, right after the ‘68 Democratic Convention. Right after the big cops-and-yippies riots. After I’d watched everyone go crazy and bust heads. Including me.

Anyway, I confessed that I had dragged the bench across the yard to peek into Richmond’s eyes, and that Pam had used the phone in the room closest to the corpse to call them. I didn’t know what phone she’d used to call me.

The homicide guys arrived, and the coroner’s man, and the lab people. Richmond was cut down carefully, with the noose still intact around his neck, and hauled away. The homicide detective who talked to me— Sergeant Cotter, his name was— picked up where the uniform had left off and went over some of the same ground, as well. Yes, I had “touched things” at the scene. No, I had neither touched nor seen a suicide note. I said I didn’t think they’d find one. Cotter, a large, pale blond man, just looked sleepy-eyed when I volunteered my opinion. Then they hauled Pam and me off to the station to give our formal statements.

Again, we were stuck in separate rooms. Again, my inquisitor was Sergeant Cotter.

“So, Mr. Samson. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

Cotter was being a nice guy, trying to get me to relax. I have to admit I was wound up pretty tight. I didn’t think coffee would help but I accepted some anyway. It was something to fiddle with. Smoking may kill you, but it gives you something to do when you feel like you need something to do.

The coffee was terrible, whitened with that artificial stuff they make out of pure cholesterol. It didn’t do much to make me feel better.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened, from the beginning?” Cotter lit a cigarette. “Okay if I smoke?”

I nodded.

“Want one?”

Of course I wanted one, but it had been several years since I’d had one and I wasn’t going to lose it now. I shook my head and told him that Pam had come home and found her candidate hanging from an acacia. That she had called me. That I had rushed right over and checked to make sure the man was dead. That Pam had called the police.

“Nice synopsis,” Cotter said. “Why did she call you before she called the police?”

“You’ll have to ask her that, but I guess it’s because she was upset. We’re friends.” That was true in a way, and I sure couldn’t tell him she’d called me because I was an unlicensed private detective and she’d gotten scared.

“Uh huh. Friends. And this guy Richmond? What was he doing at her house?”

I explained, as well as I could, about Richmond’s campaign, about her part in it.

“And how do you feel about the fact that he was running around her house naked?”

I looked at him, my face as blank as I could make it. “I guess he was taking a hot tub.”

“And where was Ms. Sutherland at the time?”

“You’ll have to ask her that.”

“But she was at home when she called you.”

“That’s where she found the body.”

“And where were you?”

“At home.”

We rested, each sipping coffee. “How do you feel about the fact that he was at her house?”

“Fine.”

“And how does his wife feel about it? He does have a wife?”

“I have no idea.”

“Where were you this morning? Until Ms. Sutherland called you?”

“I was having brunch with a friend until a little before she called. She called about fifteen minutes after I got home.” All true. Rosie was the friend.

He poked around in my brain some more, and I told him what I could about Richmond and about the Vivo party. He asked me if I knew anything that might have caused the man to kill himself.

That was a tough question, since Pam and I seemed to be suspects. Still, we both had alibis, and I decided to say what I thought. Maybe that would make me less suspect.

“I don’t know any reason. People worshipped the guy. He was running for governor.”

Cotter looked skeptical, and I could almost hear his cop’s mind working. Yes, he was running for governor. In a campaign that couldn’t win. A weirdo campaign. And he ran around naked at other people’s houses. Women’s houses.

He let me go, telling me he’d be in touch.

The thing was, everything pointed to suicide. The weapon, the rope, was right there at the scene, wrapped around his neck. The stool he’d kicked over was right there. It certainly looked like the guy had done it to himself. But the answers, as far as the police were concerned, would lie in the autopsy and in any information they could collect about Richmond’s state of mind.

I went back to Pam’s place with her. We huddled in the living room, away from the hanging tree, away from the police barriers. There was still a guy scraping around in the yard. Half the house had been dusted. We drank some burgundy and talked, softly, about our interrogations.

“Once they stop suspecting you and me,” Pam said, “they’re going to decide he killed himself, Jake.”

“They’ve still got a way to go before anyone can say that,” I insisted. “The coroner will be able to tell. He’s the one who says it’s suicide. Or not.”

“I don’t care what anyone says. He didn’t do it. And if they say he did, I want you and Rosie to prove otherwise.”

A few days later, Rosie and I were in business, working for Pam.

ONCE the suicide verdict came out of the coroner’s office, the police investigation was effectively over. I guess, in a way, I was surprised. I wondered if the police were satisfied, really, that they had gone deep enough. There’s such a thing as a psychological autopsy, I know, as well as the chop job they always do on the body.

The press had reacted with some hysteria to Richmond’s death, thrilled by what looked like the murder of a fringe party leader. The front-page excitement was matched, for a day or two, by their handling of letters to the editor— like the one the
Chronicle
headlined “Lynching in Berkeley?” But suicide is less sensational than murder, and pathetic as well, and the story died with the verdict.

Pam wanted to meet with Rosie and me right away to kick off the investigation. I put her off for a day. I wanted to do a little preliminary nosing around before I jumped in. Besides which, I had a date with Lee that night and it had been a long time.

Rosie was eager to get started, but she had a job to clean up first and couldn’t get involved full time yet. Between investigations I slop along on her rent and an annuity from my mother. Rosie depends on her carpentry. I would have to start the case myself.

The first thing I needed to do was get some gears turning so I could find out what the cops knew about Richmond’s death— the autopsy findings and whatever else they had that convinced them there was nothing more to learn.

I called my buddy Hal Winter, hoping I could impose on him to do a little snooping for me once again. Hal’s a Berkeley attorney with connections in the DA’s office. He doesn’t owe me a thing. But we’ve been friends for years, and he once said he was keeping books on the favors he does for me. One of these days he’ll collect. One of these days I’ll find a way to pay him back.

He was in his office, but he was on another line and could he call me right back? Sure, I said.

I popped a beer and sat on my front steps in the sun. The morning fog was breaking up and the first noontime rays were coming through. The house was chilly, the sun was warm.

I was thinking about Pam. About how she’d found the body. About their friendship or whatever it was. About her alibi, which seemed good. We’d check it out, just as a matter of form. Sure, she was the one who was insisting he hadn’t killed himself— a pretty stupid move for a murderer. But just on the off chance that she was totally nuts, which is always possible, we’d check it out.

The phone rang. It was Hal.

“Don’t tell me,” he said. “Let me guess. Why don’t you get yourself a license and admit you’re doing this stuff, Jake-o?”

“Do you have any idea what a guy has to go through to get a P.I. license?”

“No.”

“Neither do I. Look, I know I already owe you. Let me owe you one more.”

He sighed. “When I get it back, I’m going to get it back good.”

“Sure, you bet you are, anything you say. It’s about that guy named Joe Richmond. The politician.”

“Oh, yeah. The guy who bumped himself off in an ecologically sound manner. Something to do with a tree, I believe?”

“That’s the one.” I explained what I wanted— information about the coroner’s report.

“It was a suicide,” Hal said. “The guy hanged himself. Right?”

“That’s what the cops think.”

“And somebody with money to burn thinks otherwise.”

“So do I.” At least I thought I did.

“Well, I’ll see what I can get. When do you need it?”

“It’s kind of important, but…”

“Cute. I’ll try to get back to you this afternoon. I think I can squeeze it into my overloaded workday. If not, first thing tomorrow.”

“Thanks, pal.”

“Sure, buddy.”

I was going to have to find some way to pay him back real soon.

I took my half-can of beer and strolled up to the vegetable garden.

I guess I’d better describe my lot. When I first bought it, there was a big unfenced front yard that consisted of a dirt driveway and a vegetable garden. Behind that were a couple of acacia trees and a 500-square-foot building that not even the realtor dared describe as a cottage. A previous tenant, a lover of plants but no lover of plants in pots, had let the Algerian ivy grow through the walls, roof, and floors. It was very pretty.

Behind that was the front yard of what was called, by the real-estate agent, “the house.” This was a 600-square-foot stucco box made up of four tiny rooms and a pantry.

There are some big differences now. The driveway is gravel. The front is fenced, to meet the neighbors’ fences on either side, and I put in some roses. There are two more trees and a lot more flowers— mostly geraniums, which I don’t like much but are easy to grow— back around the house. The house now has three rooms and a pantry, and a Franklin fireplace in the doubled but still small living room.

I lucked out on the cottage. Among the prospective tenants who came to look at it— most of them turned pale even though I was practically giving it away “until the roof is fixed”— was Rosie Vicente. We struck a deal. She’d rebuild the charming, tree-and-rose-draped hovel for a big reduction in rent over the time of remodeling. Then the rent would begin to move up toward market. At first I was skeptical. I had never met a woman carpenter and wondered if she was strong enough to do the work. I wondered if she knew what she was doing. Rosie dated women instead of men and was good-looking enough to disturb my equilibrium, too. Could we be friends? Could we keep our deal? It turned out she was strong enough and knew what she was doing. The deal worked just fine. The cottage is still a little lopsided, because we decided not to replace all the walls, but it’s solid and it’s pretty and the inside is paneled with real pine and the sun shines in the skylights and the Franklin stove she installed heats the place perfectly all winter.

And Rosie is one of the best friends I’ve ever had. So go figure.

Anyway, I strolled up to the vegetable garden, a good place for rumination. For a couple of years, Rosie and I tried to be farmers. Here was this big plot of great soil, right? We grew everything we could think of. The cabbages went first, because the snails loved them so much. Then we tried to stop growing potatoes, because they took up too much room and we never got enough potatoes per plant. Tried, I say, because once you’ve grown potatoes, they’re there forever. Then we gave up the beets and the rutabagas because we didn’t eat them. Then the bell peppers. Then the onions, because why not buy them?

This year, along with the potatoes, we’re down to zucchini, Italian beans, tomatoes, corn, a couple of jalapeño peppers, and brussels sprouts. Yes, brussels sprouts. If you can get them to grow, you can harvest for months. Rosie put in an apple tree and some boysenberries way back at the ambitious beginning, and those produce. So that’s the garden. One of these years one of us is going to put in a bench and a little pond full of goldfish. As soon as I figure out a way to keep Tigris and Euphrates from going fishing. Maybe ten years from now, when they’ve died of old age and I’m married and not so busy chasing women.

The thing I like about the garden is, it’s calming. When my head is spinning and I can’t figure out why I’m doing what I’m doing and where the hell I’m going next, I go up and look at the food growing. Maybe pull some weeds or water-spray some aphids or pick some snails. I don’t think about anything when I’m doing that, and sometimes not thinking about anything is the best thing you can do. So I picked some snails off the two-week-old bean plants, put them in a bag, and took them down to the landscaped austerity of the condominiums on the corner. I wished the little bastards a happy and fulfilled life and took my empty bag back home again.

Rosie’s truck was parked in the driveway. She and her standard poodle, Alice B. Toklas, were home from work and sitting on her little front deck.

“I’ve been thinking about the Richmond case,” I said.

“Come on in.”