The McCone Files (7 page)

I drove up the blacktop road to where it was blocked by a row of posts and got out of the car. The air was chill; I could see my breath. Somewhere in the distance a lone bird called, and there was a faint, monotonous whine that must have had something to do with the security lights that topped the chain link fence, but the overall silence was heavy, oppressive. I stuffed my hands into the pockets of my too-light suede jacket and started toward the main entrance next to the box office.

As I reached the fence, a stocky, dark-haired man stepped out of the adjacent security shack and began unlocking the gate. Roy Canfield, night supervisor for the pavilion. He'd been dubious about what I'd suggested when I'd called him from San Francisco three quarters of an hour ago, but had said he'd be glad to cooperate if I came back out here. Canfield swung the gate open and motioned me through one of the turnstiles that had admitted thousands to the Diablo Valley Clown Festival the night before.

He said, “You made good time from the city.”

“There's no traffic at five a.m. I could set my own speed limit.”

The security man's eyes moved over me appraisingly, reminding me of how rumpled and tired I must look. Canfield himself seemed as fresh and alert as when I met him before last night's performance. But then,
he
hadn't been chasing over half the Bay Area all night, hunting for a missing client.

“Of course,” I added, “I was anxious to get here and see if Gary Fitzgerald might be somewhere on the premises. Shall we take a look around?”

Canfield looked as dubious as he'd sounded on the phone. He shrugged and said, “Sure we can, but I don't think you'll find him. We check every inch of the place after the crowd leaves. No way anybody could still be inside when we lock up.”

There had been a note of reproach in his words, as if he thought I was questioning his ability to do his job. Quickly I said, “It's not that I don't believe you, Mr. Canfield. I just don't have any place else left to look.”

He merely grunted and motioned for me to proceed up the wide concrete steps. They led uphill from the entrance to a promenade whose arms curved out in opposite directions around the edge of the amphitheater. As I recalled from the night before, from the promenade the lawn sloped gently down to the starkly modernistic concert shell. Its stage was wide—roughly ninety degrees of the circle—with wings and dressing rooms built back in the hill behind it. The concrete roof, held aloft by two giant pillars, was a curving slab shaped like a warped arrowhead, its tip pointing to the northeast, slightly off center. Formal seating was limited to a few dozen rows in a semi-circle in front of the stage; the pavilion had been designed mainly for the casual type of concert-goer who prefers to lounge on a blanket on the lawn.

I reached the top of the steps and crossed the promenade to the edge of the bowl, then stopped in surprise.

The formerly pristine lawn was now mounded with trash. Paper bags, cups and plates, beer cans and wine bottles, wrappers and crumpled programs and other indefinable debris were scattered in a crazy-quilt pattern. Trash receptacles placed at strategic intervals along the promenade had overflowed, their contents cascading to the ground. On the low wall between the formal seating and the lawn stood a monumental pyramid of Budweiser cans. In some places the debris was only thinly scattered, but in others it lay deep, like dirty drifted snow.

Canfield came up behind me, breathing heavily from the climb. “A mess, isn't it?” he said.

“Yes. Is it always like this after a performance?”

“Depends. Shows like last night, where you get a lot of young people, families, picnickers, it gets pretty bad. A symphony concert, that's different.”

“And your maintenance crew doesn't come on until morning?” I tried not to sound disapproving, but allowing such debris to lie there all night was faintly scandalous to a person like me, who had been raised to believe that not washing the supper dishes before going to bed might just constitute a cardinal sin.

“Cheaper that way—we'd have to pay overtime otherwise. And the job's easier when it's light anyhow.”

As if in response to Canfield's words, daylight—more gold than pink now—spilled over the hills in the distance, slightly to the left of the stage. It disturbed the shadows on the lawn below us, making them assume distorted forms. Black became gray, gray became white; short shapes elongated, others were truncated; fuzzy lines came into sharp focus. And with the light a cold wind came gusting across the promenade.

I pulled my jacket closer, shivering. The wind rattled the fall-dry leaves of the young poplar trees—little more than saplings—planted along the edge of the promenade. It stirred the trash heaped around the receptacles, then swept down the lawn, scattering debris in its wake. Plastic bags and wads of paper rose in an eerie dance, settling again as the breeze passed. I watched the undulation—a paper wave upon a paper sea—as it rolled toward the windbreak of cypress trees to the east.

Somewhere in the roiling refuse down by the barrier between the lawn and the formal setting I spotted a splash of yellow. I leaned forward, peering toward it. Again I saw the yellow, then a blur of blue and than a flicker of white. The colors were there, then gone as the trash settled.

Had my eyes been playing tricks on me in the half-light? I didn't think so, because while I couldn't be sure of the colors, I was distinctly aware of a shape that the wind's passage had uncovered—long, angular, solid-looking. The debris had fallen in a way that didn't completely obscure it.

The dread that I had held in check all night spread through me. After a frozen moment, I began to scramble down the slope toward the spot I'd been staring at. Behind me, Canfield called out, but I ignored him.

The trash was deep down by the barrier, almost to my knees. I waded through the bottles, cans, and papers, pushing their insubstantial mass aside, shoveling with my hands to clear a path. Shoveled until my fingers encountered something more solid….

I dropped to my knees and scooped up the last few layers of debris, hurling it over my shoulder.

He lay on his back, wrapped in his bright yellow cape, his baggy blue plaid pants and black patent leather shoes sticking out from underneath it. His black beret was pulled halfway down over his white clown's face, hiding his eyes. I couldn't see the red vest that made up the rest of the costume because the cape covered it, but there were faint red stains on the iridescent fabric that draped across his chest.

I yanked the cape aside and touched the vest. It felt sticky, and when I pulled my hand away it was red too. I stared at it, wiped it off on a scrap of newspaper. Then I felt for a pulse in his carotid artery, knowing all the time what a futile exercise it was.

“Oh, Jesus!” I said. For a moment my vision blurred and there was a faint buzzing in my ears.

Roy Canfield came thrashing up behind me, puffing with exertion. “What… Oh my God!”

I continued staring down at the clown; he looked broken, an object that had been used up and tossed on a trash heap. After a moment, I touched my thumb to his cold cheek, brushed at the white makeup. I pushed the beret back, looked at the theatrically blackened eyes. Then I tugged off the flaxen wig. Finally I pulled the fake bulbous nose away.

“Gary Fitzgerald?” Canfield asked.

I looked up at him. His moonlike face creased in concern. Apparently the shock and bewilderment I was experiencing showed.

“Mr. Canfield,” I said, “this man is wearing Gary's costume, but it's not him. I've never seen him before in my life.”

The man I was looking for was half of an internationally famous clown act, Fitzgerald and Tilby. The world of clowning, like any other artistic realm, has its various levels—from the lowly rodeo clown whose chief function is to keep bull riders from being stomped on, to circus clowns such as Emmett Kelly and universally acclaimed mimes like Marcel Marceau. Fitzgerald and Tilby were not far below Kelly and Marceau in the hierarchy and gaining on them every day. Instead of merely employing the mute body language of the typical clown, the two Britishers combined it with a subtle and sophisticated verbal comedy routine. Their fame had spread beyond aficionados of clowning in the late seventies when they had made a series of artful and entertaining television commercials for one of the Japanese auto makers, and subsequent ads for, among others, a major U.S. airline, one of the big insurance companies, and a computer firm had assured them of a place in the hearts of humor-loving Americans.

My involvement with Fitzgerald and Tilby came about when they agreed to perform at the Diablo Valley Clown Festival, a charity benefit co-sponsored by the Contra Costa County Chamber of Commerce and KSUN, the radio station where my friend Don Del Boccio works as a disc jockey. The team's manager, Wayne Kabalka, had stipulated only two conditions to their performing for free; that they be given star billing, and that they be provided with a bodyguard. Since Don was to be emcee of the show, he was in on all the planning, and when he heard of Kabalka's second stipulation, he suggested me for the job.

As had been the case ever since I'd bought a house near the Glen Park district the spring before, I was short of money at the time. And All Souls Legal Cooperative, where I am staff investigator, had no qualms about me moonlighting, provided it didn't interfere with any of the co-op's cases. Since things had been slack at All Souls during September, I felt free to accept. Bodyguarding isn't my idea of challenging work, but it intrigued me. Besides, I'd be part of the festival and get paid for my time, rather than attending on the free pass Don had promised me.

So on that hot Friday afternoon in late September, I met with Wayne Kabalka in the lounge of KSUN's San Francisco studios. As radio stations go, KSUN is a casual operation, and the lounge gives full expression to this orientation. It is full of mismatched Salvation Army reject furniture, the posters on the wall are torn and tattered, and the big coffee table is always littered with rumpled newspapers, empty Coke cans and coffee cups, and overflowing ashtrays. On this particular occasion, it was also graced with someone's half-eaten Big Mac.

When Don and I came in, Wayne Kabalka was seated on the very edge of one of the lumpy chairs, looking as if he were afraid it might have fleas. He saw us and jumped as if one had just bitten him.
His
orientation was anything but casual; in spite of the heat he wore a tan three-piece suit that almost matched his mane of tawny hair, and a brown striped tie peeked over the V of his vest. Kabalka and his clients might be based in L.A., but he sported none of the usual Hollywoodish accoutrements—gold chains, diamond rings, or Adidas running shoes. Perhaps his very correct appearance was designed to be in keeping with his clients, Englishmen with rumored connections to the aristocracy.

Don introduced us and we all sat down, Kabalka again doing his balancing act on the edge of his chair. Ignoring me, he said to Don, “I didn't realize the bodyguard you promised would be female.”

Don shot me a look, his shaggy eyebrows raised a fraction of an inch.

I said, “Please don't let gender worry you, Mr. Kabalka. I've been a private investigator for nine years, and before that I worked for a security firm. I'm fully equipped for the job.”

To Don he said, “But has she done this kind of work before?”

Again Don looked at me.

I said, “Bodyguarding is only one of any number of types of assignments I've carried out. And one of the most routine.”

Kabalka put out a hand as if to stay his departure, but Don stood. “I'll be in the editing room if you need me.”

I watched him walk down the hall, his gait surprisingly graceful for such a tall, stocky man. Then I turned back to Kabalka. “To answer your question, sir, yes, I'm firearms qualified.”

He made a sound halfway between clearing his throat and a grunt. “Uh… then you have no objection to carrying a gun on this assignment?”

“Not if it's necessary. But before I can agree to that, I'll have to know why you feel your clients require an armed bodyguard.”

“I'm sorry?”

“Is there some threat to them that indicates the guard should be armed.”

“Threat. Oh…no.”

“Extraordinary circumstance, then?”

“Extraordinary circumstances. Well, they're quite famous, you know. The TV commercial—you've seen them?”

I nodded.

“Then you know what a gold mine we have here. We're due to sign for three more within the month. Bank of America, no less. General Foods is getting into the act. Mobil Oil is hedging, but they'll sign. Fitzgerald and Tilby are important properties; they must be protected.”

Properties, I thought, not people. “That still doesn't tell me what I need to know.”

Kabalka laced his well-manicured fingers together, flexing them rhythmically. Beads of perspiration stood out on his high forehead; no wonder, wearing that suit in this heat. Finally he said, “In the past couple of years we've experienced difficulty with fans when the boys have been on tour. In a few instances, the crowds got a little too rough.”

“The boys were opposed to that. In spite of their aristocratic connections, they're men of the people. They don't want to put any more distance between them and their public than necessary.”

The words rang false. I suspected the truth of the matter was that Kabalka was too cheap to hire a permanent guard. “In a place like the Diablo Valley Pavilion, the security is excellent, and I'm sure that's been explained to you. It hardly seems necessary to hire an armed guard when the pavilion personnel—”

I was silent, watching him. He shifted his gaze from mine, looking around with disproportionate interest at the tattered wall posters. Finally I said, “Mr. Kabalka, I don't feel you're being frank with me. And I'm afraid I can't take on this assignment unless you are.”