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  “Police work has made you cynical.”

  “Doesn’t have to do with police work; has to do with you.”

  “I’m a taxpayer. I have a right to keep current with city business. I pay your salary, for God’s sake.”

  “You pay shit,” Charley said around the final mouthful of linguini. “What do you want?”

  “M.E. report on a guy named Crandall.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Friend of mine. Found in the Tenderloin on Tuesday.”

  “Homicide?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out. The Chronicle was talking suicide or natural causes.”

  “The Chronicle talks out of its ass.”

  Charley thinks the paper is too hard on the police force. I don’t think it’s hard enough.

  “Crandall,” he mused. “Wait a minute. I think I know the guy. An EMT, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Caught the call on a couple of my people. Good guy.”

  Charley calls the victims of the crimes he’s assigned to “my people.” “Yeah. Tom was a good guy.”

  “A little on the sober side, like he had piles or something. ’Course, EMS work will do that to you.”

  So will police work; so will privately detecting.

  Charley wolfed a hunk of bread. “How’d you know him?”

  “Guido’s.”

  “Yeah? I didn’t peg him for a boozer.”

  “He wasn’t a boozer; he was a philosopher. A lonely one.”

  “I thought he was married.”

  “He was.”

  Charley shook his head in puzzlement—Charley hadn’t known a lonely instant until his wife had died and hadn’t known anything else since—and mopped the dregs of his plate with another hunk of bread. I followed suit as well as I could—no one eats as fast as Charley—then drained the rest of the jug into our glasses.

  “How was the linguini?”

  “Just the way I like it.”

  “What way is that?”

  “The way it was the last time. What you want from the post?”

  “Cause of death. Mysterious circumstances. Evidence of foul play.”

  “You suspect something?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “But maybe?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Who?”

  I hesitated, more from embarrassment than uncertainty. “What do you know about a guy named Sands?”

  Charley licked his lips. “The limo and jet and like that? The building by the bay looks like a cigar box?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “You’re going to try to tag Sands with a homicide? In this town? Jesus, Tanner. Next you’ll be after me to roust the archbishop.”

  NINE

  I got home a little after six. Made myself a drink. Turned on CNN for the latest from the front, even though the latest was the same PR pitch as last time. Heated something that had been frozen for at least a year. Opened a bag of Oreos. Fixed another drink. Cut into the frozen stuff and discovered it was still frozen in the middle. Put it back in the oven. Looked through the paper for an ad for a sale on microwaves. Made a resolution to get one. Made another resolution to locate someone who knew what to do with it.

  Switched from CNN to ABC. Learned the Supreme Court had just decided to allow coerced confessions to be used against criminal defendants. Fixed another drink. Thought about the demise of the once-proud court, reduced to a gang of nerds with a rubber stamp—no, no, no, it stamped, no you don’t have to fix it even though it’s awful, no you don’t have to make allowances for two hundred years of apartheid, no you don’t have to rein in the excesses of the police, no you don’t have to jail the pirates who have plundered the country and are putting its future in their pockets. In this brave new world, everyone’s on his own and the Constitution is less a bill of rights than a bill of lading and the Court is as oblivious to misery as God. Except that God can be oblivious and still be God, but humans can’t and still be human.

  Thought about going to Guido’s to ease the pain, but decided I was drunk enough already. Thought about Tom Crandall, then about Tom’s wife. Realized I didn’t even know where they lived, so what kind of friend did that make me? Looked them up in the book, learned they lived less than three blocks from my apartment. Felt bad that I had never been there. Wondered why I hadn’t. Decided to go calling even though the only one who might be home was a woman who regarded me as an enemy.

  By the time I reached Tom’s apartment at the dead end of a little street named Price Row, I’d sobered up a little, which was fortunate for all concerned but it didn’t make the trip productive—no one responded to my rings or my knocks or my loitering in the alley far past the likelihood of raising anyone but a nosy neighbor. After further sobering in the form of a double espresso at the Caffè Trieste, I went home and called Clarissa and got another jolt in the person of Tom’s voice asking for my message. I reminded him that I’d already given at the grave.

  I retreated to the TV. After considering the situation through a Sixty Minutes chat with their military and Middle East experts, who brought to mind the definition of an expert as anyone who’s twenty miles from home, I made more coffee, then took a shower and put on my other good suit, the one I hadn’t wrinkled at the funeral. Ten minutes later, I was in my car.

  The Velvet Room occupies the top floor of a Nob Hill hotel that is more elegant but less renowned than its neighbors, the Fairmont and the Mark Hopkins, which is the way both its reclusive clientele and its European proprietors want it. Since the Fairmont closed down the Venetian Room several months back, if you’re looking for quality cabaret in San Francisco, the Velvet Room is the only place you’ll find it on a reliable basis. The place is small as showrooms go, but the atmosphere is intimate and sumptuous, the view stunning after dark, the house band always in top form, the food the stuff of legend in terms of both price and preparation. I’d never been there, of course, so my information was only scuttlebut. Although I was hoping to do my waiting on a stool, the bar was closed for the dinner show, so I had to opt for a table.

  People who dine alone are inherently suspect, and people with the temerity to don the kind of clothing I was wearing, which was the threadbare and subfashionable kind, were regarded as crazed or criminal in places like the Velvet Room. After expressing his disapproval succinctly and nonverbally, the maître d’ led me to my trough. Because I hadn’t crossed his palm with silver or dropped a name out of Herb Caen, I had a better view of the kitchen than the stage.

  The room was decorated in swaths of pastels, art deco but not excessively so, with cutesy bas-relief on the ceiling, sculpted lighting fixtures climbing the walls, cut flowers on the tables. The flatware was baroque and superb, the service attentive to the point of idolatry, the wine list thicker than the phone book. The candles in their cut-glass bases gave off a scent of lavender, and the menu was a sheet of heavy parchment. I tried to stay sober enough not to set it on fire.

  The first of what turned out to be a gaggle of waiters appeared to cater cruelly to my every need. Although I decided to keep my needs to a minimum—a salad and a highball—I wasn’t going to get out of the place for less than fifty bucks. The waiter recovered from my parsimony long enough to direct another waiter to bring me my drink, which I dawdled over as long as I could.

  The salad came and went, the vinaigrette lingering in a dusty aftertaste. The scotch did the same, as did a basket of bread and a goblet of water. By the time ten o’clock rolled around, I was a little drunk and a lot tired and an object of speculation at more than one of the nearby tables. When one particularly starched young couple laughed at what I suspected were my manners, I gave them my evil grin, whereupon they turned their attention to the ceiling, which was a nest of tiny cupids that were laughing at me, too.

  Despite my investment in the evening, I was close to giving it up as a bad idea. All I had was a feeling that Tom Crandall was not a suicide or a mugging victim, that he was one of those
men who don’t die without a reason, and the reason is that someone feels threatened by that most dangerous of combinations—knowledge and integrity. At the moment, that seemed to be enough. Or maybe I just wanted to see Clarissa strut her stuff. I ordered another drink and made music with the butter knife and the water glass. Tintinnabulation, Poe would have called it.

  A few minutes later, the curtain across the stage began to ripple, and sounds of scraping and sliding, and even a brief curse, seeped from behind its drape. Yet another waiter made a pass, offering a tray of desserts that would have put me in a ward for the terminally hypoglycemic. I was still waving him away when the houselights went down and a single spot made a perfect golden circle on the thick blue velvet of the curtain that defined the proscenium stage.

  A man with a bright white tux and teeth the size of playing cards trotted from its umbra into its center, smiled too broadly, waved at the scattered applause as though it were the dregs of an ovation, told a harmless joke about the weather and a not-so-harmless one about the mayor, then puffed with self-importance.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he intoned. “At this time, it is my pleasure to present to you the pride of the Velvet Room, the biggest and best big band on the entire West Coast, the toast of San Francisco—Mickey Stringer and His Orchestra, ladies and gentlemen, featuring the sultry stylings of the Temptress of Torch, the delightful and delectable Ms. Clarissa Cran … er, Duncan. Clarissa Duncan, ladies and gentlemen.”

  The band struck up a thumping vamp, the curtain began to levitate, the MC trotted off as though he’d just brought about the Second Coming as Mickey Stringer and his trumpet replaced him in the spotlight. As Mickey bowed and scraped, the band moved into “Perdido.”

  I knew Mickey a little, had seen and heard him many times when he’d fronted a quintet at El Matador before moving up the hill. A former sideman for Buddy Rich, Mickey could swing and, based on the opener, still saw to it that his band did, too. As they made their way through “Stella by Starlight,” I stopped thinking about Tom and began to wallow in the rhythms and memories of youth. But after Mickey wrapped up a driving version of “Ciribiribin,” the drummer began a roll that built to a loud crescendo, and I was back in business.

  Mickey seconded the MC’s fulsomeness, the band fell into its vamp once more, and Clarissa Crandall … er … Duncan swept onto the stage like Cleopatra just off her barge and running. Her cocktail dress had been exchanged for a floor-length gown, velvet of course, skintight, slit to her hip, so low-cut it seemed impossible for it to do its duty if she so much as tilted. Her manipulation of the microphone was carnal; her smile was practiced and come-hither; her lips were as red as the blood that was racing madly through my heart as it hurried to my skull for a better view.

  She was a different woman from the one I’d met at Guido’s and confronted at the funeral, a woman with charms enough to have provoked infidelity in Richard Sands and deviltry enough to have driven a man like Tom Crandall crazy. I started to resent her just a little, the way I resent most beautiful women for the nonsense they inspire in men like me, but when she moved into “The Man I Love,” I chose to believe it was her tribute to Tom and I liked her a little more.

  She could sing—not as well as Sarah Vaughan or Nancy Wilson, more like June Christy or Marilyn McCoo—and I could see why she’d become a staple of the band and the city. But when she reached for the upper register, I could also see why she was afraid her voice had begun its slide.

  After her second number, I tore my eyes away from the widow Crandall long enough to survey the crowd. They were as rapt as I had been, faces like flesh-tone Frisbees in the reflected light from the stage, the men openmouthed and entranced, the women squinty and skeptical and maybe a little nervous. Although I was looking for Richard Sands, I didn’t see him or anyone else I recognized, which was fine—I’d come to the dinner show in the theory that Sands wouldn’t appear till later, which would give me a chance to waylay Clarissa between sets and talk to her about her husband.

  I glanced at my watch. The band had been at it for almost an hour, so it was time to make a move. I pushed back my chair and as unobtrusively as I could—which wasn’t hard since Clarissa was well into Porter’s saucy “Let’s Fall in Love”—slipped back to the bar area. The couple I’d chided earlier seemed relieved to see me go. No one else seemed to notice.

  When the bartender looked my way, I asked for directions to the rest room. He pointed toward an archway at the end of the room. When I went through it, I found myself in a narrow hallway, dimly lit, extending indeterminately both left and right. An arrow on the wall said the rest rooms were to the right, so I went the other way.

  The hallway dead-ended at an unmarked door—heavy, locked. I got out an expired credit card and the tools I carry for such occasions and remedied the situation before anyone was the wiser. On the other side of the door, the corridor was well maintained—carpeted and wallpapered and well lit. It took a left turn about ten yards from where I was, which would put it behind the stage, which was where I wanted to be. I listened to make sure no one was coming after me, then went to the corner and peeked.

  At the back of the building, the hallway widened into a larger area, wide and high-ceilinged, complete with flats and props and other backstage accoutrements. In the center, a set of sliding doors opened to the freight elevator, which was large enough to admit stage sets and audio speakers and the like. On either side of the big doors were several smaller rooms that I assumed to be the dressing areas. The door to one of them was open. When no one appeared either in front or in back of me, I rounded the corner in a swagger: I had business to take care of and wouldn’t brook distractions.

  Several tables were scattered about the windowless room, along with two dozen chairs and a couch and a young black man in a white waiter’s jacket who was busy cleaning up before setting out the snack foods and setups that were waiting on a serving cart. The kid was bobbing and weaving to the rhetoric of the rap tune coming through his headset, and neither the vibes of my presence nor the beat of the band out front was sufficiently potent to penetrate it. I guessed this was where Mickey and the boys took a break. When I looked for a sign that a woman would be welcome, I didn’t see one.

  Two rooms down was a blue door with a white star in its center. Luckily it was only as locked as the other one.

  It was undoubtedly Clarissa’s dressing room, elaborately furnished, a set out of a musical about musicals where the star is always gliding about in a floor-length gown and a grandiloquent gesture, fending off admirers. The dressing-table mirror was surrounded by lights, the screen in the corner came complete with a dressing gown draped across its top, and in the ice bucket by the love seat real ice was chilling a real bottle of really good champagne. I guessed Clarissa saw herself as a throwback, a chanteuse, a thrush, a nightingale, maybe even a gangster’s moll. I also guessed that her stage-door Richard had paid for all her props.

  I sat on the love seat and took inventory. The cold-cream jars and makeup tubes and throat lozenges and perfume cruets were numerous and looked expensive. The gowns on the rack along the wall were styled like the one out front—a couple of them seemed exact copies. There were a dozen pairs of spike-heeled shoes on a shelf, a basket of mums in a corner, a silver service for tea on the coffee table. All the comforts of home, except for a sign that she’d ever had a husband. The music from the stage, piped through a pair of speakers on the wall, was as faint as the signs of matrimony. A moment later, the sounds were silent.

  I was about to give in to my baser instincts and rummage through the drawers in the chest beside the dressing table when I heard noises in the hallway. Instead of rummaging, I went behind the door and eavesdropped.

  “The tempo on the Porter sucked, Mickey,” Clarissa was saying as she opened the door a crack. “It’s not a race, for Christ’s sake; all that happens in a race is people get tired.”

  “The day I start taking tempos from a girl singer is the day I shove my trumpet up my butt
and start whistling ‘Dixie’ with my mouth shut.”

  “The Man with the Golden Asshole.’ Suits you, Mick. Maybe someone’ll write you an anthem. The monitors are fucked up, too, by the way—I can’t hear myself over that drummer boy you like so much.”

  “Fuck you, sweetheart. We start with ‘Who Can I Turn To?’ next set.”

  “Richard wants ‘Tangerine.’”

  “He wants it, he can play it. Unless he forgot his kazoo.”

  The final jibe grew faint as Mickey Stringer and his choler moved down the hall. Clarissa Crandall muttered something I didn’t catch, opened the door to the dressing room the rest of the way, flipped on the ceiling light, and closed the door behind her. “Jesus,” she exclaimed when she saw me, her hand flying to her throat, her eyes narrowing to bring me in focus. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Tanner.”

  I was hurt that she didn’t remember me, and more so when she tabbed me as a flunky. “You’re from Richard, I suppose.” Her voice grew bored, and so did her bearing. She examined the room perfunctorily. “Let me guess—you brought the champagne. Well, it’s nice, I’m sure, but I asked him not to send any more guys around with gifts. It makes the hotel people nervous. It makes me nervous. So be a doll and tell him I’ll see him after the late show, like always. We can …”

  Our eyes met in the makeup mirror. What she saw in mine made her change her tune. “You’re not from Richard,” she amended, squinting again to diminish her myopia.

  I shook my head.

  “You were at the cemetery.”

  I nodded.

  She turned toward me. “Who let you in here?”

  “No one.”

  “You broke in?”

  I looked at the door. “It’s not broken.”

  She looked at the door as though she hoped someone would come through it and then hoped he wouldn’t. “Should I be frightened? What do you want?”