The Most Dangerous Animal of All (8 page)

The door opened, and a young woman directed Van down the hallway, into a sitting room. Van’s gaze was immediately drawn to two bookcases that stood against deep purple walls. He walked toward them, then stopped, noticing a sign that threatened amputation if the books were disturbed. Van laughed.

He understood.

His eyes scanned the titles housed on the shelves.

“Not bad,” he said aloud.

“Glad you approve,” LaVey said, walking into the room.

Van turned to find the organist again dressed in black.

“I enjoyed your show,” he said.

“Care to sit in with me sometime?” LaVey offered.

“Yes,” Van replied, pleased.

That afternoon, the two men discussed music, literature, even criminal behavior when LaVey learned that Van was studying forensics. At the time, LaVey’s philosophy was still developing, but Van appreciated his rebellious attitude toward societal and religious norms. LaVey enjoyed the fact that Van’s father was a preacher, and Van liked that everything about this charismatic man was the antithesis of his father’s ideology. Each was attracted to the other’s mind and talent. While Van never really became a member of the Magic Circle—a group of LaVey’s core followers who would later form the Church of Satan—he came to understand the man’s teachings better than most and would often sit in with him at the Lost Weekend. Van would relate these conversations to William, who would caution my father to be wary of such unorthodox thought.

9

While he was attending college, Van decided to pursue a new interest. His experience in the library at Hinchingbrooke had fueled his appetite for old books, and he made a trip to Mexico to see if he could find anything of historical value from book dealers there. The bookstores he visited, many located in outdoor markets in Mexico City, were filled with precolonial documents and books dating back centuries, and Van reverently ran his fingers across their thick, yellowed pages. He chose several that he could afford and returned to San Francisco eager to discover what kind of profit he could make from his purchases.

He contacted a man named Henry von Morpurgo, who, being an alumnus of Lowell High School, promised to help Van sell his books.

Van called William to tell him about Morpurgo.

“This guy is hiding from the law,” he told William. “He was indicted for embezzling funds from the Sister Kenny Foundation and charged with federal mail fraud. He has assured me he can sell some of my books and wants me to meet him in Los Angeles. Do you want to come along?”

“Sure,” William said. “I’m not real comfortable with you dealing with this guy by yourself. He sounds like a shyster.”

Van and William drove to Los Angeles a few days later and checked into a room Morpurgo had booked for them at the Roosevelt Hotel, where many celebrities of that era stayed. When they met with Morpurgo that evening, he informed Van that he had been unable to generate interest in the books.

“Let me make it up to you,” Morpurgo said, handing Van a piece of paper. “She’ll take care of you.”

William went back to his room, and Van went to another room in the Roosevelt, listed on the paper Morpurgo had given him. A high-priced call girl, paid for by Morpurgo, awaited him.

The next morning, noting his friend’s disheveled appearance, William asked Van what had happened.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Van said, obviously upset.

William, taken aback by Van’s demeanor, did not dare broach the subject again.

The following year, 1956, Gertrude, desperate to rid herself of her son, decided it was time for Van to get married. She enlisted the help of her best friend, Ruth Williamson, whose daughter, Mary Annette Player, was beautiful, meek, and impressionable. Ruth agreed that Van and Annette would be a perfect match.

Ruth and her husband had divorced when Annette was a young child, and Annette had spent her life being shuttled back and forth from her mother’s home, in San Francisco, to her father’s home, in Stockton. Her parents fought constantly, and Annette was often caught in the middle of their disagreements. She wanted to live with her father, but Ruth was a domineering woman who refused to turn over control of her daughter to her ex-husband. As a result, seventeen-year-old Annette suffered from bouts of melancholy brought on by the disharmony in her life. By the time Ruth and Gertrude decided to introduce her to Van, Annette was ripe for the picking.

Gertrude and Ruth arranged the first meeting carefully. Gertrude knew that if she told Van she was bringing home a girl for him to meet, Van would refuse to be there. Instead she waited for the right moment, finally deciding that she would invite Ruth and Annette over on a night Van had to play at the Lost Weekend. She wanted him to look his best, and Van always dressed sharply when he had a gig.

The two women picked the date, and Ruth showed up promptly with her daughter, who had no clue that she was being set up. Gertrude and Ruth chatted with Annette in the living room, waiting for Van to emerge from his room. Finally they heard his door open.

Van stopped abruptly when he walked into the room. Sitting on the sofa was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. He stared for a moment at her thick, dark eyebrows, arching high over deep brown eyes that were slanted to perfection. He noticed the hint of red tinting the wavy brown hair that framed her sculpted face. She looked like Audrey Hepburn.

Annette fidgeted under Van’s bold inspection but smiled shyly while Gertrude made the introductions.

On August 19, 1957, Earl Van Best Jr. and Mary Annette Player were married. The plan had worked.

Ruth had insisted that Annette’s father not be told about the wedding, and he was livid when he discovered that his underage daughter had married without his consent, but he held his tongue, because his daughter seemed so happy.

Van spent the first few months courting his young bride. They rented a small one-bedroom apartment at 415 Jones Street, on Nob Hill, and set about furnishing it using money Annette had saved. Van made a little money playing the organ but did not make enough to pay all of the bills. He convinced Annette to invest the rest of her savings—$1,090—in a trip to Mexico.

“When I was in England, there were all of these old books at Hinchingbrooke that had to be worth a fortune,” he told her. “I know I can go down to Mexico, find old books and documents, buy them cheap, and bring them back here to sell for a profit. I’ve done it before. All I need is capital to get me started.”

At first Annette resisted, but eventually my father wore her down.

He went to Mexico City and found an old book dealer who would sell him precolonial documents by the pound. Van sorted through them, choosing this one and that, and bought as many as his funds allowed. When he returned to San Francisco, he walked into Holmes Book Company, on the corner of Third and Market Streets, and sold some of his books for a substantial profit. Pleased with himself, he hurried home to tell Annette.

Before long, Van began making frequent trips to Mexico, his love of old literature suddenly becoming a successful business venture. He bought everything he thought could turn a profit—British first editions, rare comic books, old scrolls. He enjoyed not only hunting for rarities, but also haggling for the best prices he could get. He was finding his marriage, however, not so rewarding.

Upset by the tension the marriage had caused with her father, Annette had become more melancholy than ever, but Van had little sympathy for her emotional state. She was ignoring him just as his mother had ignored him all of his life, and to him that was a betrayal. Instead of comforting his wife, he belittled her, screamed at her, and eventually began physically abusing her.

Over the next year, any minor infraction was rewarded with a slap, a punch, and soon beatings that would leave the young girl bruised for weeks. Fearing for her life, Annette finally told Ruth and Gertrude what was happening, but they, too, were unsympathetic and insisted that she should try harder to make her marriage work.

Annette tried to be brave. She tried to please Van. Nothing worked. Van had so much anger buried inside of him, and she was available.

Annette toughed it out for as long as she could, but after a particularly brutal fight on New Year’s night in 1959, her fear of dying became greater than her fear of disappointing her mother. Annette called her father when Van left to go play music at one of his familiar haunts.

H. S. Player was furious when he saw the bruises and cuts on his daughter’s face. He helped her pack her things and hurried her from the apartment. The next day he called the law office of Felix Lauricella and arranged for a meeting.

On January 4, Mary Annette Best filed for divorce on the grounds of extreme cruelty and inhuman treatment. Her marriage to my father had lasted one year, four months, and sixteen days. She had barely escaped with her life.

Van was enraged when he found her gone, but there was nothing he could do.

The divorce was granted April 8, 1960, and Annette was awarded the furniture and the money she had invested in Van’s business. He was ordered by the court to pay her seventy-five dollars each month until his debt was repaid.

Annette remarried in 1961.

Van moved back to his small bedroom on Noe Street.

10

Van sipped on a Zombie while he waited for William at the Tonga Room, in the Fairmont Hotel. The bar, famous for its exotic drinks as well as its unusual decor, had become one of his favorite hangouts.

As the orchestra set up its instruments on a barge that floated back and forth across a seventy-five-foot lagoon in the center of the bar, Van stared at the document he had brought with him.

“Sorry I’m late,” William said, pulling out a chair. “Where’s LaVey?”

“Couldn’t make it,” Van said, flagging a waiter. “He can’t seem to get away from his flock these days.”

“So how have you been?” William asked, wondering what Van wanted to show him. He had sounded excited on the phone and insisted that they meet that day.

“Wait until you see this.” He held up the document for William to see. “Look, it’s the Spanish coat of arms. And look here,” Van said, pointing to the signature. “King Philip II.”

“Where did you get that?”

“Mexico City. There’s a run-down bookstore in La Lagunilla Market, near the old Santa Catarina Church. The owner is an old man who sits outside all day waving customers in. I walked by one day, and we started talking. He brought me into the back room of his store and let me go through everything he had. I got this for a pittance.”

“What’s its significance?” William asked.

Van put his drink on a nearby ledge and wiped the table off with his napkin before spreading the document across it. “It authorizes a young lieutenant to go to Nueva España to recruit soldiers from the native Mexican Indians in the sixteenth century. Apparently this lieutenant was of noble lineage, judging by his name and the care with which the scribe prepared this order. And look here: the king’s own coat of arms in addition to the Spanish coat of arms. You don’t come across documents like this every day. I can sell this for a tidy sum.”

William was impressed. He had thought my father was crazy when he first started foraging in Mexico. “It’s no way to support a family,” he had informed Van then. “It’s not stable income.” William had developed a lucrative business as a private investigator and had hoped Van would join him. Van had refused, preferring to traipse across Mexico searching for treasure.

“I’m happy for you,” William said.

“Thanks. I need this right now.”

William sensed something was wrong. “How’s Annette?” he said.

“Gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yes. She took off to her father’s months ago and filed for divorce. Said I was cruel to her. Can you imagine?”

William could, but he shook his head. “She was a little too young for you anyway.”

Van smiled. “That’s the way I like them.”

The two men ordered their dinner as the orchestra struck its first notes. As the evening progressed, rain poured into the lagoon, and thunder and lightning accompanied the band. It was all part of a show designed to transport guests to the South Seas. Menacing totems towered over guests, creating an ambience of mystery and excitement in the room as couples danced to the music in the orange glow of lanterns and hanging globes.

Van enjoyed the Tonga Room because of its Asian cuisine, the menu reminding him of the succulent dishes he had eaten in Japan as a child. He and William talked as they ate, catching up on what had happened while Van was in Mexico.

“Have you noticed what’s going on in North Beach?” William asked.

“What?”

“The beach is filling up with beatniks. They’re everywhere. I hear they’re coming from all over the country.”

“Oh, yes. I remember Herb Caen wrote an article about them in the
Chronicle
a few years back. He seemed to be making sport of them.”

“I think it’s interesting,” William said. “These kids are spouting poetry and quoting Kerouac like they know what they’re talking about. I can see where this is going, but at least they’re reading something. And the music there has gotten better. Lots of jazz being played in the bars.”

“We’ll have to check it out one night,” Van said.

William nodded his agreement as Van flagged their waiter again.

“I’ll get this,” Van said when the waiter brought the check.

“Big money,” William joked.

“I’ll let you know how it goes.”

Van would eventually collect a tidy sum for his document. He wasn’t as fortunate on other trips, though, and soon found himself in dire straits, his bedroom cluttered with old papers and books that had no value in San Francisco’s antiquities market.

Van decided he should branch out and began traveling up and down the California coast, stopping at libraries along the way that might be interested in purchasing his books. He was able to make a living of sorts, but it wasn’t ever enough.

Seeking an alternative way to make money, he bought some ink and a quill and set about copying the handwriting from one of the documents in his collection onto some old parchment paper he had lying around. He dated it 1629. When he got to the signature, he pulled an old book from his personal collection and flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for. He practiced for a few minutes before signing the document:
King Philip IV
.