A Killing in Swords

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER IIThe r**e of Lucrece

They took Liselotte’s Rover, Timuroff remarking that it served her right for threatening to get drunk and eat the lobster, and turned left on Van Ness.

“Corner of Broadway and Kemble,” Cominazzo told him. “Way out by the Presidio. He’s got some kind of queer old mansion there; Harrell says he got it during the Depression, from the widow of a patient.”

“You make him sound a little grisly,” said Timuroff. “As I heard it, she left it to him out of gratitude. He did an operation no one else would try, and won her husband a few extra years.”

“Could be, Tim. You’ve been out there?”

“No, but everybody else has. I’ve had a few of those catch-all invitations—you know, come and bring a friend, where I was supposed to be the friend. Young Coulter asked me several times—the doctor has some pretty decent armor—but always when something else was on.”

“Harrell was there right after that nasty butcher business in the Haight. Old Grimwood likes to spice his parties up with somebody sensational; I guess getting Jake was next best to getting Mr. Murderer himself. Anyhow, Jake sat around drinking up his bourbon, which didn’t hurt a bit, and answering gruesome questions, which in this racket can get pretty boring, as you know. Also, he had to watch himself, because Hemmet and Baltesar were there that time too. Anyhow, he got to meet the ticktock girls, plus a real live one who’s Grimwood’s secretary or something.” Timuroff turned west, up Pacific Avenue. “Those two—Hemmet and Baltesar. Did you know that Baltesar is married to Munrooney’s sister? And of course he’s also on the board of supervisors. You knew that they’re both customers of mine?”

“Olivia’s mentioned them, and I think you have too. The boys in the Department don’t have much use for them. They helped Munrooney with the dirty work when he cut Pat Samson’s throat and put his own lad in as chief.”

“Chiefy?” asked Timuroff.

“Yeah, Chiefy. Can you believe a chief of police whose wife calls him Chiefy, and who calls her Wifey, out before God and everyone? The bastard ought still to be opening limousine doors for the high and mighty down at the opera house, like when he was lieutenant. Believe me, it’s really going to be a mess. He’s playing he’s personally in charge, and he’ll keep it up till the publicity fades down.”

“It could get pretty complicated, Pete. Do you realize it’s only about three weeks to election day—and that Munrooney would’ve been a sure winner?”

“It’s bad enough without that. A murder on the second floor, and forty people, more or less, around the place. How’re you ever going to sort them out? Especially with legal sharks like Baltesar and Hemmet on the premises.”

“Did Jake mention anybody else?”

“Only one or two by name. Socrates Voukos—remember, with all those millions in rundown real estate, who raised such hell when digit dialing took away his Hemlock phone number? And Wade Kalloch, and Amos Ledenthal. That’s all I know about.”

“Here we go again,” murmured Timuroff.

“How’s that?”

“Socrates and Kalloch are also customers of mine—you must’ve heard Olivia speak of them—and so, of course, is Amos, besides being a friend.”

“That last I don’t get,” Pete said. “Ledenthal collects Japanese swords just like you do. Seems like you’d naturally be rivals.”

Timuroff smiled. “He buys almost all of his from me, and naturally he loves me because I give him such good deals. Well”—his smile disappeared—“let’s hope it’s just one big coincidence. Things could get downright sticky where you’re dealing with His Honor and His Honor’s crew. You’ll have fun enough without my being involved.”

Cominazzo groaned. “I’ll have problems finding out anything, and problems if I don’t find out anything, and worse problems if I find out the wrong things—which chances are I will.”

“I will pray for you,” said Timuroff sanctimoniously. “Would you prefer Church of England or Russian Orthodox? I am equally well versed in each.”

“Look, Expert Witness, either one will help. But first give Jake the lowdown on the dagger—that’s what they’re going to pay your fee for.”

They drove past mansions converted into guest houses, new and insulating high-rise massifs, and still-moneyed mansions bravely pretending that McKinley was not dead and that there was no servant problem. They passed the gray Hotel El Drisco, full of retired naval captains, ancient ladies, and antique Episcopalian clergymen. They turned down Baker Street to Broadway, turned left for half a block, and slowed where Kemble starts its short, steep plunge down the hillside. A cold wind from the Golden Gate, bringing with it a breath of colder rain, had blown the smog away; one could smell the sea and, like the mansions, pretend that San Francisco had not changed since Ambrose Bierce’s day.

In that day, the residence of Dr. Hector Grimwood would have been thought a rather modest mansion. Its architect had labored to minimize its size, and behind iron gates and a small formal garden, its Georgian facade displayed two perfectly proportioned stories. Timuroff recalled that a tycoon of the later nineties had built it for the bride whom he had seduced away from two careers, one as the wife of a Parisian postman, the other as the pampered darling of a successful wine merchant. She had developed into a grande dame of unusual splendor, whose romantic story was still slobbered over regularly by the city’s columnists; and it was she who had made the doctor the beneficiary of her gratitude. He sketched this background briefly for Pete’s benefit; then, finding no parking available on Broadway, turned downhill on Kemble.

He parked at right angles to the curb, the car at that San Francisco angle which forces passengers to climb out against the full weight of the door while the driver is literally decanted.

“I’ll bet the old lady still haunts the place,” Pete said. “Can’t you just see her spooking around the doctor and his automated girl friends, chasing off socially inferior ectoplasms?”

“If she does, Mr. Munrooney must have had a very rude reception when he popped out on her astral plane.”

From Kemble Street the house was more imposing. A driveway led through another pair of frilled iron gates into a paved courtyard containing a converted stable—an area now crammed with silent police cars—above which the house soared, all alight. Now it was possible to see another story below the ground floor, and under that a stone retaining wall with a blank door and two high, barred windows hinting at mysterious chambers half underground.

“Shall we use the service entrance,” asked Timuroff, “or go around to the front door pretending we’re gentry?”

“The front door,” Pete declared. “We must be impressive. Our mere appearance must plunge the unknown malefactor into a state of helpless terror.”

“I’ll make my Ivan the Terrible face,” promised Timuroff.

The door was opened instantly by a big, bald plain-clothesman who started to tell them that he was sorry but Dr. Grimwood was not available, and then, recognizing Cominazzo, smiled sheepishly and stepped aside. “Come in, Inspector. Hi, Mr. Timuroff. I guess I make a pretty good butler, huh?”

The hall was high-ceilinged, Persian-carpeted, paneled in a light warm golden wood. A staircase, strong and delicate, flowed to the second floor; and beyond it Timuroff saw a gilded birdcage elevator, obviously dating to a time when such devices were new and wonderful. In the corner next to him, by a narrow Sheraton side table, a suit of Maximilian tilting armor stood silent guard.

“Where is everybody, Jeff?” Pete asked.

The plainclothesman gestured at a closed door to the right. “The chiefs in there, in the library. Lieutenant Kielty’s with him, and his secretary, and he’s questioning everybody. I guess it’s pretty much for looks, and we’ll get down to doing the real work later on. Anyhow, the lab guys are upstairs, with the medics. Captain Harrell said for both of you to go on up.”

“What about all the guests?”

“The chief corraled ’em in the living room—all except Mr. Hemmet and what’s-his-name Baltesar. They’re helping him.”

“They’re what?”

“Helping him ask questions, I guess. He’s got a guy named Ledenthal in there right now, mad as a hornet.”

“That should be interesting,” Timuroff remarked. Amos Ledenthal was known for his terrible temper, and he had nothing but contempt for Judson Hemmet “What about the doctor?” Pete asked.

“Grimwood? See that door opposite the stairs? It’s sort of a My Lady’s Sitting Room, fixed up way back when. He’s in there holding his girl friend’s hand—his live girl, not the windup kind. She was with them when they found the corpse—him and Baltesar and Sergeant Wallton. Wallton was doing the body-guarding bit; he got anxious when the mayor said he was going to the john and told him to stay put, and then was still gone after a half hour.”

“Well, I guess we’d better get along upstairs, Jeff. Thanks for the rundown. Come on, Tim.”

In the little lift, snail-slow but surprisingly quiet for its age, Timuroff said, “You look worried, Pete.”

“I am worried. Munrooney was a clown, but he was the mayor, and a lot of people thought he was the man with the brass balls politically. I sure wouldn’t want to be in Denny Wallton’s shoes. He’s black, and tomorrow the militants and half the press are going to crucify him as a Tom for letting Lover Boy get stabbed. And Godalmighty—Hemmet and Baltesar helping at a police interrogation! I’d hoped Jake could talk you-know-who into leaving the job to us working artists, but it looks like he’s dead set on hanging on to it. Meaning he’ll take the credit if I solve the case, and I’ll be the fall guy if I fail.”

The elevator jerked and halted. As Pete slid the door open, the sound of voices down the hall told them where murder had been done; then a solemn uniformed policeman took them in tow and, quite unnecessarily, escorted them twenty feet to the open door.

The floor of Lucrece’s room was tiled; so was the miniature pool, displaying Neptune and his nereids, that graced its center. The walls were frescoed with classic temples set in pastoral scenes where prancing nymphs and satyrs pursued each other. Members of the San Francisco Police Department were everywhere; their equipment cluttered the three stiff Roman chairs, the one low table, and the lion skin, which some returning conqueror had tossed down carelessly. In an alcove behind all this, on a couch of silver, silk, and ivory, Lucrece reclined. A blonde with the features of Pallas Athena, her glorious hair heaped high to fall again in cascading ringlets, she regarded them with serene gray eyes, quite undisturbed by murder or its noisy aftermath. Her exquisite left hand hung down, utterly relaxed; her right was out of sight behind her back. One knee was drawn up. One graceful foot in a gold sandal peeped from beneath a white-and-golden toga so diaphanous that it revealed not just the beauty of her body but its astonishing completeness. On the floor in front of her, on a plastic sheet, lay the late mayor of San Francisco; and even the thread of blood from the corner of his mouth could not conceal the fact that his expression, instead of betraying pain or horror, was one of pleased surprise, as though someone at a political convention had just mistaken him for Teddy Kennedy.

Once, Errol Vasquez Munrooney had been a very handsome man. More recently, showmanship and charisma had combined with what was left to charm not only a succession of impressionable women but much of the general electorate as well. Now the flamboyant personality was gone; the vulgar magic had run out.

“Well,” said Timuroff, considering the remains, “he may have rated a few imps, perhaps even one or two noncommissioned demons—but a stone Commendatore? Never! Still, don’t underrate the dead. His Honor can make more trouble for you now than when he was alive and kicking.”

“You know,” Pete remarked thoughtfully, “he looks sort of like an overblown Richard Burton run to mod. Look at that outfit—right out of Esquire’s fashion section, shaggy curls and all. He must really have been sucking for the teenage vote.”

Abruptly, before Timuroff could suggest that the mayor had probably had more carnal reasons for trying to bridge the generation gap, Jake Harrell bulled his way out of a busy knot of criminalists. “Pete!” he boomed. “Boy, am I glad you’re here! We’re almost through. After Tim tells us all about the dagger, I’ll fill you in. Then—thank God!—the detective bureau can go hit the sack. You want to look around awhile before we wrap things up?”

“No need. Your boys know their job.”

“Okay, they’ll bring you everything they have tomorrow.”

He gestured at the body. “How about him? Any fond farewells?”

Pete shook his head. “Just tell me, did he die there at her feet, or what?”

“He was half on, half off. Looked like he’d grabbed her, then she’d stabbed him, then he’d reared up and fallen back again. See how her nightie’s torn around her breasts? When he was found, his head and shoulders were hanging over on the floor, her right hand was above his wound, and the dagger was still sticking in him.”

“Did you turn her on again? Maybe she’d want to make a statement.”

“Funny man! Sure we turned her on, but not until we’d questioned Grimwood to find out how she works, and then we videotaped the whole procedure to make sure we’d fouled nothing up. All she did was start her recitation over again right from the start.”

“Well, that’s it, I guess,” Pete said. “At least for now.”

“Fine. The Chronicle just phoned, and they’re on their way. The Trib and everybody’ll be right on their tail. I want all this cleaned up before they get here.” He turned aside. “All right, Doc, you can have him now. Jimmy, bring the dagger over here for Mr. Timuroff. Bring both of ’em.”

“Both of them?” asked Timuroff.

“Yeah. She’s programmed for a fake one, a stage dagger. When you turn her on she starts reciting this long piece about some Roman r**e case way back in B.C. Then, if anybody makes a pass at her, whammo! She screams and lets him have it in the back. All nice, clean fun—only this time the dagger was for real, and the fake one was stashed in that vase up there. Thanks, Jimmy—” He took the daggers, wrapped in Pliofilm and neatly ticketed, and held them out to Timuroff. “You want me to undo them, Tim?”

“It won’t be necessary,” Timuroff said slowly, stroking his moustache. “I had a feeling the weapon would be something special when you asked for me.” He handed back the rubber dummy dagger. “And it is special. I can tell you when it last was sold, and where, and for how much, and to whom.” He turned the weapon over. The blade was about ten inches long, slightly curved, double edged. “It is a khanjar, Indo-Persian, and there are lots of them around—but not like this. It’s said to have belonged to Nadir Shah, and it was sold at Sotheby’s in London roughly six or seven weeks ago for seventeen thousand, seven hundred pounds.”

“You mean,” exclaimed Harrell, “that some nut paid that kind of money for a sticker just so he—so he could—?”

“Kill our Heroic Leader?” Timuroff smiled. “I doubt it very much. But the man who bought it was an agent named Strickland, acting for our friend Socrates Voukos.”

Grimly, police glances were exchanged.

Timuroff shook his head. “Somehow, I can’t believe Socrates is involved. He’d have too much respect for it. He actually threw a party for it when it arrived; I was invited, but I was down south. See how delicately the hilt is carved from spinach jade, inlaid and overlaid with gold and precious stones. Look at that splendid fretwork! And even though the blade is bloodied, you can still see that its damask and carving and inlay are unmatched. Master craftsmen created it.” He handed the dagger back regretfully. “I hope you’ll wipe that blood off before too long—just in case Socrates decides to sell it to some honest local dealer when this is over. You didn’t find the scabbard, by the way?”

“No,” Harrell answered. “Ought there to be one?”

“There was. It matched the rest, gold and more jewels, with velvet carefully chosen to complement the jade, though that of course had faded quite a bit over the years.”

Harrell signaled, and the man who had been taping Timuroff’s remarks hustled his gear away and disappeared. Suddenly the room was empty; everything—cameras, extension cords, hand vacuum cleaners, chemicals—had been removed. Moments before, everyone had been packing frantically; now the only sign of activity was the slow march to the. door of the ambulance crew carrying the discreetly packaged mayor.

“What about Exhibit A?” Pete pointed at Lucrece.

“Leave her here,” said Harrell. “You can’t subpoena her, and trying to pry her out could wreck the evidence. I’ve ordered a lockup on the room until the picture clears. You just explain it to the chief in case he starts to throw his weight around, ha-ha!” He slapped Pete reassuringly on the back. “And now I’ll brief you on what we’ve learned so far, which won’t take more than about two minutes. Tim, do you want to sit in on this?”

“I’d rather prowl around a little, Jake. This is a fine old place; I’d like to look it over. Pete, is that okay with you?”

“Sure. Just don’t let Kielty give you a bad time. And leave word with someone if you go anywhere you’d be hard to find.”

Timuroff shut the door silently behind him, and strolled toward the staircase. Here the walls were paneled in a glowing hardwood much darker than those downstairs. The high ceiling was of modeled plaster, the sort of work once done for the great houses of Horace Walpole’s England. The only pictures, incongruously, were half a dozen modern Japanese prints, all of them wonderfully dramatic cats by Tomoo Inagaki. Timuroff regarded them approvingly, recognizing that they had been chosen by someone who didn’t give a damn for the opinions of interior decorators, and his estimate of Dr. Grimwood went up accordingly. At the head of the stairs, in an alcove, he spied what appeared to be a first-rate suit of Renaissance half armor, possibly from Nuremburg, but he remembered that the press was on its way and hastened on. Downstairs, he walked politely around a livid Amos Ledenthal, who, just released from questioning, was furiously shaking his grizzled mane and enormous fists, and telling the imperturbable plainclothesman at the door how he was going to bring about the downfall of Judson Hemmet, Mario Baltesar, and the chief of police, in that order. Ledenthal didn’t even notice him, but his partner in the heavy-construction business, Reese Guthrie, was waiting for him in the background, so Timuroff said hello to him instead. “Amos seems upset,” he said. “I can’t say I really blame him.”

A much younger man—young enough to have been a captain in Vietnam—Guthrie had impressed him favorably on the few occasions when they’d met. He was a southerner, from one of the Carolinas, strong and courteous and soft-spoken—and under all of it, taut and battle-hardened. Now he returned the greeting, and glanced over his shoulder at the altercation. “I just got here,” he answered. “They tell me Munrooney’s been killed. Too bad it had to happen here at Grimwood’s. Otherwise, I don’t think the country’s suffered a great loss. I hope they don’t think Amos had anything to do with it.”

Timuroff said he didn’t think so, then told him about Lucrece, the locked door, the strong suggestion that the mayor’s intentions had not been of the noblest, and the khanjar.

Guthrie laughed aloud. “Well, that dagger puts Amos in the clear. He would’ve used a big katana or—what’s the other one?—a tachi.”

“Like any sensible man.” Timuroff smiled. “Though it’d be a shame to risk a blade in perfect polish on someone like our Tarquin.” Seeing that Ledenthal wasn’t even beginning to run down, he decided to resume his tour. He said good-night to Guthrie, asked him to say hello to Amos for him, and wandered down the hall until it merged, through two stately doors standing open, into the living room. There he stopped to chat with Pascoe, another of Harrell’s men, and to survey the guests.

The room extended more than forty feet across the rear of the house. Its paneling was of Circassian walnut, framing the windows and the mirrored mantels, one at either end, and setting in relief the precious First Empire paper on the walls. Fires in both fireplaces blazed cheerfully; and on the right, another door through which a caterer’s waitress was carrying a tray of empty glasses betrayed the existence of a bar and butler’s pantry.

Most of the guests looked apprehensive. Like livestock in a blizzard, they had huddled into more or less homogeneous knots. Before one fireplace, rebelliously sitting on the floor, were six or seven male and female hippies, probably chosen for relative cleanliness from the fringes of the English Department at U.C. They were paying court to an epicene but hairy person in a once-white swami suit, whom Timuroff recognized as a poet who had achieved public notoriety by publishing amatory verse involving a large section of the animal kingdom.

To counterbalance these, before the other fireplace were gathered those with pretensions to prestige, position, money, and high fashion: pretty people, vain people, inheritors of new money and onetime possessors of old fortunes—people who kept the gossip columnists alive.

Between them and the hippies, scattered by twos and threes, were the most valid people in the room. Socrates Voukos, squat and bristle-bearded, was talking seriously and softly with Wade Kalloch, a speculator and subdivider whose smooth, plump face and rimless glasses concealed the social conscience of a wolverine. Miranda Morphy Gardner, gaunt and diamonded and sheathed in silver, a power in the shadow world of ruthless moneylending, sat with one hand on the thigh of her effete male secretary, watching a well-known architect swiftly sketch imaginary designs on a burnished tabletop. Rear Admiral Houston Melmoth, retired, towered above them silently, grim-faced, turning his highball glass slowly in his hand.

Timuroff knew them all. They were all customers of his. But now he realized that he had never really looked at them before. From the beginning, the murder of the mayor, like the man himself, had had something so far-out about it that he had thought about it only as good theater: a farce, a travesty of the believable. Suddenly this had changed. Indefinably, on the edge of consciousness, a breath of cold and deadly purpose had reached out and touched him. It came and it was gone, leaving the world transmuted.

Timuroff had experienced it before in more than one of his several strange careers, and he had learned that it was not to be ignored. He surveyed the room again. There were a dozen others there whom he recognized, but they were unimportant, uninteresting. He looked again at Voukos and Kalloch and the looming admiral. He looked again at Miranda Gardner. He smiled at Pascoe. “Quite a party, isn’t it?” he said.

“Weird, real weird.” Pascoe shook his head. “Can’t see why the chief keeps ’em here. Hell, we can haul ’em back for questioning anytime.” He broke off, c****d an ear to listen. “Doorbell,” he said. “That’ll be the media. Boy, is this place going to be a nuthouse for a while!”

“It’s certainly going to be confused,” Timuroff agreed. “I think I’ll wander down and get a drink.”

“I wish I could,” sighed Pascoe.