Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons (8 page)

As it turned out, Barry was watching a baseball game he just couldn’t miss and agreed to see us only if he could take time out when something important happened. We went for it.

Rob gave him the spiel about who we were, and he nodded, not even looking our way. “Oh, man, oh, man, I could just kill Jason for this— he had a hell of a nerve dying on me.” It sounded weird coming from a man I could see only in profile. “Know how we met? Playing softball about a million years ago, in Golden Gate Park. We were both on some bar’s team. We had a league, bars that played other bars. I’d just gone to Sanborn-Permenter then. ” That meant he was an architect. “Oh, man, I loved Jase like a brother.”

I said, “It must have upset you the way he didn’t take care of himself.”

“What?” Now he did look. It was written all over his face:
Who is this broad, and what the hell is she talking about?

“I mean his apartment. It was just so depressing.”

He stared. “His apartment was depressing?”

“You know, the black walls. No furniture. And the mess— I guess he wouldn’t even get a cleaning lady.”

His cheeks grew slightly pink. “It’s a funny thing. I don’t even know if I was ever in it. We used to meet in restaurants, or at the theater sometimes. And of course he came over here— about once a month, I guess. I guess we dropped him off there— a million times maybe— but I never thought about it. In all the years I’ve known him it just never came up.” The announcer said, “There’s a play at the plate,” and his head turned like a robot’s.

“And of course there was that terrible old car.”

The side of his face said, “Jason loved that car. Everybody teased him about it.” His mouth drew down at the memory.

“Did you know his assistant was living with him?”

“Adrienne. Sure. That was Jason’s one bad quality. Boy, he treated that kid bad.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, it’s no secret— he had a million women. Clarice and I tried to talk to him, but”— briefly, he turned toward us, then back to the screen— “I guess there’s a piece of Jason that just never grew up.”

Then, as if he’d had an electric shock, he swiveled to face us. “Omigod. You don’t think Adrienne finally…”

Rob shrugged. “She says she wasn’t his girlfriend. That he was just letting her stay there for a while.”

“Oh, no way. The two of ’em tooled around all the time. After she moved in, we started having ’em both over to dinner.” His face took on the look of someone reaching back into the past. “They kidded around. They were involved. Believe it.”

“Why the other women then?”

His shoulders went up. “Jason was like that— a big kid. Liked to have a pretty woman on his arm, but I guess he was more comfortable with someone like Adrienne. Young, not real smart…”

“Malleable.”

“Yeah.”

“Did he ever get involved with the others, or was all that just for show— so no one would know he was living with his assistant?”

“You bet he got involved. He was crazy about that doctor— Felicity something. You should talk to her.”

“We did. She says she hardly knew him.”

“Oh, come on. He was nuts about her.” He sighed. “Of course, he was nuts about some disc jockey a few months ago, and before that…I forget.”

“Did you know them?”

“Funny thing was, sometimes we met them— we’d run into Jase at the theater or something— but he never brought them over. He talked about them, though. He and I’d go out and shoot a few baskets, something like that, he always had some new lady friend.”

“But he always dumped them.”

“I don’t know. He didn’t keep them long; that’s all I know.”

I said, “What we were wondering was, did any of them go off the deep end when he dumped her? Did he ever talk about one of them acting strange?”

“Well, one used to call him a lot at work. But Adrienne mentioned that, not him. I know what you’re getting at, but if he had any enemies, I don’t know about them. I still can’t believe somebody murdered him. Those witnesses were probably wrong, you know what I mean? You know how people can think they saw something they didn’t?” Suddenly a tear popped out of his eye, and he turned quickly away, not wiping it, which would have drawn attention to it.

Neither of the other men friends were home, so we took a desperately needed lunch break and called on a couple, Nick and Susie Rodenbom. They had known him as long as anyone, Adrienne had said, Nick having been his mentor years ago when he’d first come to the
Chronicle
. Rob could remember him— a white-haired editor who’d left to teach college journalism; a kindly sort who had taken the raw material of a brash young man with a brand-new diploma and a ton of ambition and made him the extraordinary writer Jason had been when he died.

Despite the hair, he didn’t look old— probably about fifty or thereabouts, but he had an avuncular presence, and I could see why Adrienne had put the Rodenboms on the list of “couple” friends and Barry (though obviously part of a couple) on the men’s list. Barry was a basket-shooting kind of pal and clearly these were parent figures. Susie was also white-haired, and plump, very pretty, I thought, but not someone whose appearance mattered a great deal to her. And from what I was learning of Jason, perhaps the only kind of woman he could relate to as a friend.

“Bullshit!” said Rob later. “You heard Barry. He and Adrienne were friends, if nothing else.”

“All he said was they kidded around— not that he confided in her.”

“Well, guys don’t do that much.”

“Tell me about it.”

The Rodenboms seated us in their living room, a place of smart sofas and halogen lamps, the most conventional room we’d seen that day. But Susie was an artist, and there were odd pictures on the walls— of cats bringing gifts, not of mice, but of swimming pools, espresso makers, burglar alarms, even a Barbie doll. They were very funny, and I was entranced.

“Susie’s pussy period,” said Nick. “Last year she did dragons.”

I must have looked puzzled.

“Of course, they were all wearing darling designer outfits, fully accessorized.”

I thought I could like Susie. A lot. She had blue eyes and a warm, round face. I wished that sometime, somehow, I could achieve the self-confidence to look the way she did, but it just isn’t in the genes. My mom has standing appointments with so many waxers, cutters, filers, and peelers I don’t know how she works in shopping for her state-of-the-art wardrobe. She despairs of her two politically correct daughters (not that she isn’t p.c. as well, just a very well-groomed feminist), but, still, I’d like to see the day I let my hair go gray.

Susie turned to me. “We miss Jason so, so much— already. Did you know him well, my dear?”

“I didn’t, really. Rob was his friend.”

“Oh? Are you new at the
Chronicle
?”

It was the first time I’d been challenged. I took a deep breath— I wasn’t after anything I could use in court, but you never knew, and lying’s never a good idea. I said, “I have another interest in this, to tell you the truth. The police are investigating my law partner in connection with Jason’s death.” I liked Susie a lot, and Nick seemed like a fine man whom Rob knew— these people were known quantities, I told myself. And took a chance. “They found her name in Jason’s pocket, but she didn’t know him. Rob is a friend of hers, too, so one of the things we’re trying to find out is why it was there.”

Nick, true to the professorial image, pulled a pipe from his pocket and began fiddling with it. “If she’s an attractive young woman, that could go a long way toward explaining it.”

I said, “He seemed to like a lot of very different types of women.”

“Oh?” said Nick. “They seemed all of a piece to me. Beautiful, intelligent, successful— thoroughly acceptable in every way.”

“Acceptable seems a funny word to use. I mean, wouldn’t ‘desirable’ be more to the point?”

Nick said to Rob: “Quick study, this lady.” Rob looked confused, and Nick turned back to me. “You got it, all right. He had women, but there was something passionless about it— like they were just so many appendages to his image.”

“So you think he was an image-oriented man.”

“Either that,” said Susie, “or he had something to hide— if only from himself.”

“You thought he was gay?”

“I’ve wondered. I can’t say I haven’t wondered. It’s funny— when he came to dinner here, he never brought anyone.”

“Not even Adrienne?”

“Adrienne? Who on earth is that?”

Rob said, “His assistant. About twenty-two, looks like a punk rocker.”

Nick exhaled a cloud of pungent smoke. “Come on! He wouldn’t be caught dead with someone like that.”

“Well, she might have been the thing he had to hide. She was living with him, but she says they were just roomies. On the other hand, his friend Barry Dettman swears they were lovers.”

“We never even heard of her!” Susie sounded put out.

I said, “Jason was a man with secrets.”

Nick took a few puffs. “When we first met he didn’t even want to say where he was from. Then later, I met his sister, who’d moved here from wherever it was— I’m still not sure— and found out coincidentally that that’s who she was. Jason had never even mentioned her.”

“But here’s the question,” I said, “was he just a secretive kind of guy? Or did he really have something to hide?”

“I got inklings of that,” said Nick. “That’s why I brought all this up. But they were only that. You know, some people really are just that way. It’s their nature.”

“Darling,” said Susie, “do you think we ought to tell them…” She stopped there, waiting for him to make the connection.

“About Tommy?” he said, and she nodded.

“You two know who Tommy La Barre is?”

“The guy who owns Dante’s?”

The Rodenboms nodded.

Rob whistled. “That’s big medicine.”

It was. Dante’s was a well-known, fairly new, extremely popular San Francisco restaurant. Like some of the City’s oldest restaurants, it had private dining rooms upstairs. However, it had turned out that more than dining was happening there. A high-stakes poker game—very high stakes— occurred every Friday night. That was one thing. The other was the young ladies. Like the poker game, they were available only to certain clientele— but they were most certainly available. Or so the D.A. claimed. But the case was still pending, and somehow, Tommy was keeping his restaurant open.

There had been so much publicity that whatever Tommy’s original story, if he hadn’t by now become a pimp and gambling host he was missing a great opportunity— anyone with money who wanted some action now knew where to go.

“How does he fit in?” I asked.

“He was a friend of Jason’s,” said Susie. “A close friend. Jason was fascinated with him, but then who wouldn’t be? I admit I am myself. We even begged Jase to let us take him to dinner at Dante’s, so we could meet him, but somehow he never got around to it.”

She stopped and sighed. “When I’m done with the cats, I think I might do gentlemen thugs. What do you think?”

But Rob and I were too riveted to answer.

In the car he said, “You know, he’s got to be mob. Where there’s gambling and whores, there’s mob.”

“And usually drugs. And where there’s drugs, there’s murder.”

“He might not be mob. It’s such a small operation over there— maybe he’s just a weird dude with a yen to please his rich friends.”

“And make a few bucks on the side. The exclusivity of the thing argues for that. Anyway, let’s put mob aside for a minute and just say Tommy thickens the plot pretty irresistibly. Jason had some kind of weird sex thing going, right?”

“Not necessarily— he might have been gay. Or involved with Adrienne.”

“Okay, let me rephrase. He was probably hiding something about sex.”

“Granted.”

“Well, La Barre was perfect. He could get Jason whatever he wanted— discreetly.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know— ladies who’d beat him or ladies who’d wear a dog collar and walk on a leash. Ladies who’d talk dirty or watch him beat off or let him watch them— whatever he was into.”

“It certainly opens up a world of possibilities, but still. What was the motive? And here’s a tougher one. How would a guy like Tommy La Barre know Chris?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

The response was gratifying, but he nearly wrecked the car. What happened was, he turned to stare and forgot to watch the road. After we nearly got creamed by a taxi, and I nearly blew his eardrums out with a terrified screech, and he’d straightened the car out, and said, “don’t do that to me,” I told him what I knew. “He came to see Chris a few months ago—”

“To get her to take the case!”

“No. A little twist on it— to get her to do his divorce. A well-known feminist lawyer would be ideal, wouldn’t she? For something like that. For a guy with his reputation. Anyway, she slept on it, and that was what she decided he must be thinking, and she felt used. Also, she realized he made her feel like she was covered with motor oil.”

“So she turned him down.”

“Yes, and he yelled at her and insulted her. I guess it’s the sort of thing you pretty much forget the next day— she was just glad to have him out of her life— but if he was a pretty sick guy…”

“Oh, man. This could be it.”

Chris was sure it was. Before Rob took me home, we dropped by her house and made her day. She covered her right eye with one hand, in the careless and, to me, supremely Southern gesture she made when she was overcome with amazement.

“Oh my God. He said things like, ‘You can’t do this to me. Nobody shines Tommy La Barre on.’ Then he sort of did this slow, disgusted glance around and said, ‘Look at your office. You can’t afford to turn me down. This could have made your pathetic little career.’”

“And I suppose he left, saying, ‘You’ll regret the day …’ or something like that.”

“You know something? He did. The guy was slug spit, I’m telling you. And I don’t see how Jason McKendrick could have been a decent person either, if he was friends with him.”

But I did. I had to agree with Susie Rodenbom on that one. A man like that was fascinating. The dangerous, the shady, the criminal, the other— even the evil—had a malign appeal; if kept at a distance, of course. Maybe Jason had gotten too close.