Muller, Marcia - [11] Trophies and Dead Things(v1.0)(html) (52 page)

"Give me a time when you'll be
back at Market Street."

"Five? Five-thirty?"

"Good. I'll see you then." I hung
up before he could reply and called Ted at All Souls. "What's Hank's
schedule today?"

"Let me—dammit, get down!"

"Ted?"

"I was talking to Alice. She just
walked across my keyboard and screwed up the computer. Back, you
beast!" There was a thump and a tiny, indignant yowl. "Now— what?" he
asked. "Hank's schedule?"

"If it won't interrupt your
parenting too drastically."

"Don't be sarcastic. You could
have taken them off my hands, you know."

"The schedule . . . ?"

"In court this morning. Back
around two. Says he's going to clear up a few things and then go home
early for a change."

"Okay, will you give him this
message, please, and tell him it's urgent? I want him to meet me at
Willie's Market Street store between five and five-thirty. Emphasize
the urgent."

"Willie's, Market Street,
four-thirty. That's so he'll get there on time; Hank, as you know, runs
late. Will do, and I'll see that he follows through on it."

There are times when I thank
whatever powers-that-be for Ted's calm efficiency. "Great," I said.
"One more thing— is Rae in her office yet?"

"I think I heard her stumble in
there about five minutes ago. Hold on."

When Rae picked up her extension,
she sounded none too cheerful. "I just read about Tom Grant in the
paper," she said. "Did you get involved in that?"

"I arrived right after the
secretary found his body."

"They didn't mention you."

"Good. I'm notorious enough as
is. Listen, I'll fill you in on it later. Do you have time to check
into something for me this morning?"

"If it's not too complicated. My
brain seems to be on hold. Okay, go ahead."

"I need to know about a Forth
Worth, Texas, firm— American Consolidated Services. Specifically, what
services they provide, and where. If you can get personnel to
cooperate, ask about a Bob Smith who worked for them from nineteen
sixty-seven to seventy-three."

"What's my reason for wanting to
know about him?"

"Tell them employee background
check. No, that won't work—they've been contacted by the police and
whoever you talk with might remember he's
dead. Well, think of something."

"Sure," she said, a shade glumly.

I scribbled a note to Greg,
telling him I had a possible lead on the sniper and would be in touch
later. Then I set off for the town that plays host to my alma mater.

I seldom visited Berkeley
anymore—not because I didn't like the town, but because long ago all my
old friends had moved away and I had no real reason to go there. As I
drove up University Avenue toward campus that morning I found myself
experiencing a keen attack of nostalgia. That dark-haired young woman
in jeans who moved past me in the crosswalk could easily have been me,
walking reluctantly to my nine o'clock soc class and wondering how I
could get through it without a third cup of coffee. That sandwich shop
on the corner was where I'd often grabbed a hasty lunch, and I was
willing to bet their bread was just as stale and dry as ever. When I
crossed the Milvia intersection, I felt a swift wrenching; some two
blocks away down a little side street was the apartment building where
I had enacted the happy, then disillusioned, and finally painful scenes
of my one and only long-term live-in relationship. All about me—and
inside me, too— things had changed, and yet they hadn't.

It was odd, I reflected, that
part of me didn't feel any older than on the day I'd left here with my
diploma. Since then I'd entered a profession I'd never
given a prior thought to; I'd dealt with people and situations that
would have made that graduate's flesh creep; I'd often been in extreme
danger, had coped as best I could with violence and death, had even
been forced to kill a man. I was more cynical, more judgmental, more
prone to anger. But deep inside there was a wistful, yearning part that
still felt twenty-three years old.

The changes in Berkeley were
contradictory, too. The old landmarks remained, but interspersed among
them were new buildings and a fair number of trendy shops and
restaurants. The quiet, somewhat funky town of my memory has become
chic these days: home of the Gourmet Ghetto, pioneering frontier of the
New California Cuisine. The university, while still a major player, is
no longer the only game in town. On the streets where you once mainly
saw students on bicycles or in beat-up basic-transportation vehicles,
you're now just as likely to spot well-heeled executive types in BMWs.
Of course, the direction of progress has not been totally upscale: as I
reached the edge of campus and went to turn left on Shattuck, I was
momentarily taken aback by an enormous McDonald's. Not everyone in
Berkeley, apparently, is a gourmet.

Luke Widdows had told me his
house was on a section of Walnut Street a block from a shopping complex
called Walnut Square. I found it—two-storied, white clapboard, wrapped
by a wide porch—and parked in the driveway as directed. His office,
he'd said, was in the carriage house out back. I followed a meandering
dirt path through a vegetable garden to the smaller structure—shabbier
than the main house, with a steeply canting roof. When I knocked on the
screen door, Widdows answered immediately.

He was a slender man with curly
brown hair and a fluffy beard, dressed in khakis and a blue T-shirt.
There was an openness in his manner that I liked, and he seemed so glad
to see me that I guessed my arrival had saved him from some distasteful
task. He ushered me into a room with a paperstrewn desk and a pair of
comfortable old armchairs, offered coffee, and went to fetch it.

"The nice thing about working out
here," he called from the next room, "is that there's a small kitchen.
I don't need to go to the main house if I don't want to. Which is a
blessing, because I rent a couple of rooms to students who like loud
music. Do you take anything in your coffee?"

"Just black."

"Me, too."

Widdows returned and handed me a
large mug, then sank into the opposite armchair, eyeing me with frank
interest. "Private detective, huh?" he said. "How'd you get into that
line of work?"

"I got a degree in sociology from
Cal."

He laughed knowingly. "Mine was
in journalism."

"I'd say that's a bit more
practical."

"Not much. In journalism, there's
no teacher like hands-on experience."

"Well, obviously you've acquired
that."

"All of it the hard way." He
spoke without bitterness or self-pity; whatever his trials had been,
they seemed to amuse him. As he slouched in the chair, one leg thrown
over its arm, bare foot dangling, I glanced at the chaotic desk and
computer setup—reminders of the work I was probably interrupting.

I said, "I don't want to keep you
from anything pressing."

"You are—and I'm delighted. This
morning I couldn't get any of the Jumble—that word scramble in the
paper—so I know this is going to be one of those days when I won't be
able to string the parts of a sentence together. You wanted to know
about Perry Hilderly?"

"Yes. I understand he worked for
you at
New Liberty."

"If you could say that any of us
really worked. Perry was a reporter. Investigative, I guess you could
loosely term it. He couldn't write worth a lick—I had to rewrite most
of what he turned in—but he was a Movement figure, had contacts with
people who might
not otherwise have talked with reporters."

"How long was he at the magazine?"

"He started in sixty-eight, after
he left Berkeley."

"And he lived in San Francisco
then?"

"Somewhere in the lower Fillmore
district, I think. A lot of Movement people did back then—it was cheap,
and they could get in touch with the 'real people,' as we were fond of
calling minorities."

"And he went to Vietnam in
sixty-nine?"

"Spring, it was. He came to me,
said he was burned out and disillusioned with the Movement. He wanted
to see firsthand what the war was all about. We didn't have the funds
to pay him, but we struck a deal that if he paid his way, we'd supply
press credentials. So off he went."

"And what did he report on?"

"He hadn't so much as delivered a
line of copy by the time the magazine folded." Momentarily Widdows
looked regretful. "That was my fault, I'm afraid. My draft board was
after me—this happened about a month after Perry left for 'Nam—so I
took what I thought was the easy way out and split for Vancouver. The
magazine never had strong management after I left."

Now I eyed him with interest.
Strangely enough, I'd never met anyone who had moved to Canada to avoid
the draft. "From the way you phrase it, I take it the 'easy way out'
wasn't?"

"Not really. Draft resisters
weren't all that welcome up there. There were simply too many of us,
and not enough jobs. Not enough commitment to the country for the
Canadians to accept us. And a lot of us got homesick—I know I did. I
came back here under the amnesty program. Wrote a book about my
experiences that did well enough that I could buy this house. I'm
pretty apolitical these days; mainly what I write is gardening books
and articles. You saw my vegetables?"
 

I nodded, thinking that Luke
Widdows was as much of a victim of the turmoil of the war days as those
who had gone to Asia and fought.

"Where did you first meet Perry?"
I asked.

"Here in Berkeley. I interviewed
him for a couple of articles in the
Daily Cal."

"Can you tell me something about
the people he was close to?"

"You mean like the other leaders
of the FSM?"

"Let me give you some names, see
if they were friends of his. Thomas Y. Grant?"

"Where have I—isn't he the
attorney who was murdered in the city last night?"

"Yes."

Widdows's eyes widened. "You're
working on that?"

"A related matter."

"I see." He seemed intrigued by
my reticence. "Well, as near as I recall, the first time I ever heard
of Grant was when I unfolded the paper this morning."

"What about David Arlen Taylor—D.
A. Taylor?"

"Oh, sure. He was a close friend
of Perry's, probably his closest."

"And Libby Heikkinen?"

"Taylor's girlfriend."

"What about Jenny Ruhl?"

"Ruhl. Ruhl. Yes, I remember her.
Tiny girl, long black hair."

"And chance she was romantically
linked with Perry?"

"Oh, I don't think so. Perry
liked women, but he was basically shy around them. He wouldn't have
taken up with someone like Jenny."

"Why not?"

"How can I put this without—Jenny
liked men, in quantity. For a while, around sixty-four or five, she
was living with a guy, a real sleazebag hanger-on. One of those guys
who was just in Berkeley for the sex and drugs and rock and roll, as
they used to put it.
Then he disappeared from the scene about the time she turned up
pregnant. She had the baby, and I guess she put it up for adoption.
After that she just drifted from guy to guy, never staying with anyone
very long."

"What was her connection to
Hilderly, then?"

"Just as one of a group that hung
out together. Very involved with the protests."

"This . . . sleazebag Ruhl was
living with—what was his name?"

"I don't think I ever knew."

"Can you describe him?"

"Other than as a typical drifter,
no. You remember the type—long unkempt beard, the same with the hair,
generally grimy-looking, a little older than most students."

"Nothing at all memorable about
him?"

"Not that I remember. Those
people were all of a kind, and not too many of us trusted them. Their
motives weren't pure, you see." Widdows laughed—both amused and
self-mocking. "We had a long list of people who weren't to be trusted.
Anyone over thirty, of course. The university administration and most
of the faculty. Politicians, if they were of a major party. The
military-industrial complex, including scared second lieutenants in the
National Guard. There were spies lurking behind every tree: the
Berkeley cops, narcs, the FBI, the campus police, and—when bombing
became the thing—the ATF, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms."

"A hotbed of paranoia?"

"Right. And not totally
drug-induced. But one thing about the spies: not too many of them
worked out, no matter what agency they were from. Button-down collars
and cordovan shoes did
not
go down too well at SDS meetings.
And the ones who did manage to worm their way into the counterculture
usually went over to the other side—got hung up on drugs or women. The
FBI, I've heard, had to periodically call them in from the field for a
sort of deprogramming. It was a bizarre time, all right."