NASH’S SENSE THAT he was falling grew stronger. It wasn’t dizziness. He felt like he’d become unmoored from the world around him.
Maybe the weather had something to do with it.
The day had turned cloudy and gray. At Fisherman’s Wharf, tourists priced bric-a-brac while squirrely children waved plastic pirate swords at each other. Further along Jefferson Street, two dozen teenage girls were staging a go-go dancing marathon on the sidewalk. A countermeasure, aimed at the anti-Beatles picketers congregating on the next block.
Meanwhile, toward the east end of Jefferson, students from the San Francisco College of Art had erected scaffolding and were busy painting a mural on a long brick wall. One hundred years of wharf history rendered in stick figures, or so it looked to Nash when he and Crandall drove past.
Nash parked in the fire lane outside of Corsetti’s. As he and Crandall got out of the car Nash glanced in the direction of the go-go dancing girls. He wondered if a permit was needed to dance, en masse, on public sidewalks. What would the newspapers say, SFPD carting off a truckload of frugging high school girls in cheerleader skirts to the hoosegow? Pointed questions would be asked, and pointed editorials written, without a doubt.
Some things exist beyond the reach of the law.
“I’ve never eaten here,” Crandall said, as they entered the restaurant. “My wife doesn’t like seafood. She says it tastes fishy. There isn’t an answer to that.”
Conch cells attached to faux fishing nets hung on the walls of the softly lit bar that adjoined the restaurant’s main dining room. The bar area also had dining tables, small and round. Light chatter wafted through the bar like chiffon curtains in a gentle breeze.
Crandall and Nash spotted Max Pinkrose sitting at a table across the room. A polystyrene seagull suspended from the ceiling above Pinkrose’s head seemed to point him out. Pinkrose, plastic bib tied around his neck, looking speculatively at the bowl of cioppino in front of him. Across the table sat Stan Hotchkiss, the independent talent scout that Nash talked to on Friday. Hotchkiss’ dinner was a Bloody Mary in a large Polynesian-themed goblet.
Pinkrose dropped the crab claw he was trying to break open with a nutcracker when he saw Nash and Crandall approach. Several more crab claws littered the surface of the cold red stew, making a break for freedom.
“Sorry to interrupt your date,” Crandall said. He took hold of Pinkrose’s shoulder, dug his fingers in hard. “We need to talk.”
“I’m eating,” Pinkrose said.
“I’m not,” Crandall said.
“Hello, officers,” Hotchkiss said. The smile on Hotchkiss’ face was elastic. His eyes seemed to move in competing directions. Hotchkiss was soused. Nash stood beside Hotchkiss’ chair while Crandall studied the contents of Pinkrose’s bowl of cioppino like it was something Pinkrose had just coughed up.
The tomato-based stew was splattered down Pinkrose’s front and across his face and all over the sleeves of his shirt.
Pinkrose said, “I’m not going to be pushed around.”
“Think again,” Crandall said.
Nash said, “We found Frank Barcelona.”
“Tell him I said ‘hello,’” Pinkrose said.
“He’s dead,” Crandall said. “Your name pops up. Go figure.”
Pinkrose raised his hand, catching the attention of a passing waiter. Crandall raised his SFPD joy buzzer, motioned for the waiter to get lost. The waiter made a bee line for the swinging doors leading into the kitchen, no doubt to tell his boss about the two cops who were killing his tip.
“His throat was cut,” Nash said. “A good-sized knife, serrated edge. Maybe a fish knife. His body was discovered in Golden Gate Park. His neck looks like what you’ve got in that bowl, except for the claws.”
“What do you want from me?”
“People saw you with Barcelona at the Panhandle the other day,” Crandall said. “There are photographs. We’re wondering what you two beauties talked about.”
So far it was mostly a fabrication, about the witnesses. But Nash and Crandall could thank the Chronicle newspaper for the photos. From the same negatives as the stack of photos Tina Gone had in her apartment, the night Nash first interviewed her.
Nash had remembered the photos when he and Crandall stopped by the Chronicle newsroom earlier, to inquire about Tina Gone. The one photograph Nash found useful depicted the same scene the record store clerk had described to Nash and Belcher on Thursday—the older Pinkrose talking to the younger Barcelona. Barcelona wearing his leather jacket, a goatskin wine bag hanging on a strap from his shoulder. The two men stood in the background, at the edge of the Panhandle crowd, partly obscured but identifiable.
Pinkrose studied a crab claw with a level of deliberation the claw didn’t deserve. Pinkrose didn’t appear concerned about photographs, or witnesses. He cracked the crab claw into pieces, taking his time. Extracting the meat and chewing it. Then, “I told you myself, I saw Barcelona at the park that day. What are you trying to pull, Inspector?”
Nash didn’t recall Pinkrose making such a statement. “Let’s go talk about what you told us. And some other things.”
“Are you arresting me?”
“Don’t get your hackles up,” Crandall said to Pinkrose.
“Or what?” Pinkrose said.
“I’ll muzzle you,” Crandall said.
Crandall was aching for a fight. Ready to jump in the middle of Pinkrose’s chest, tap dance on his ribs. The older couple at the next table gaped at the two police inspectors. Crandall stared them down. Hotchkiss stirred what was left of his drink with a dinner fork. Maybe he was listening to the conversation or maybe he was just imagining a better cocktail lounge, with no static from policemen to disrupt his imbibing.
Nash had a number of questions for Pinkrose when they reached the Hall.
There was one subject Nash wanted to broach right now, couldn’t help himself.
“Barcelona didn’t steal anything from you,” Nash said. “It was Gomez. Gomez told you he’d gotten his draft notice. When he stole the tapes of his recordings, you knew what the score was. You wouldn’t give them back, so he broke in and took them. Then you asked Tina Gone to get the tapes back from Gomez. They were the only recordings of some of those songs, and you thought they belonged to you. But Gomez was out of his gourd that night. Miss Gone got spooked. Then, when I called her because her name was written on a note we found in Gomez’s pocket, she got scared. She wondered how I knew she’d been there, and what I might accuse her of. It was you who dragged her into this mess, and she called you and asked for help. That’s when you grabbed a rifle and drove across town. I don’t think you meant to shoot me, Pinkrose. You just wanted to point me in the wrong direction.”
Nash studied Pinkrose’s face as the older man looked up at him. Pinkrose’s glare was sharp and narrow, a razor blade.
For a moment Nash thought the entire room had fallen into a bottomless silence. Crandall massaged the back of his hand, limbering up knuckles.
A curious momentum had taken hold of the discussion. Nash couldn’t reign it in. “You want to know what’s funnier?” Nash said. “The name on the note we found in Gone’s pocket wasn’t ‘Tina Gone.’ It was ‘Tim Gone.’ Tina and her brother used the same answering service, and the two names look similar, scribbled on a note. I misread the note but it put me on the right track anyway. Except I didn’t know it. But I know it now.
“A real scream, right?”
Nash had only just found out that curious fact. He’d called Tina Gone’s service that morning, and the woman who took the call asked him if he meant Timothy Gone. The woman’s comment had opened up an entirely new area of speculation.
Now Crandall raised a pudgy finger. He pointed it at Pinkrose. Before Crandall could speak, Pinkrose ripped the plastic bib from around his neck and threw it aside. He pushed his chair back, shot to his feet.
Crandall stepped in close, keeping Pinkrose from throwing a swing. Pinkrose was three or four inches taller than Crandall, but the two men stood nose to nose. Crandall looking up, chin raised.
Nash leaned in. “Where’s Tina Gone, Pinkrose? Her brother is dead. She’s disappeared.”
Pinkrose’s voice sounded like water gurgling in a drain. “I don’t have a crystal ball.”
The diners in the room had stopped eating. The bartender paused behind the bar, watching the confrontation. His hands flat on the bar, his head cocked to one side. Two waiters and a bow-tied busboy watched from the swinging kitchen doors. Crandall raised his hands, punched the palm of one hand with the fist of the other. The point of impact occurred an inch from Pinkrose’s chin. Crandall wanted to make sure he had the taller man’s undivided attention.
“Let’s go outside,” Crandall said to Pinkrose.
Crandall nodded toward the hallway leading out to the dining room, and the street entrance beyond. He took a firm hold on Pinkrose’s arm. Pinkrose roughly pulled his arm free of Crandall’s grasp. Crandall turned fast, grabbed Pinkrose’s shirt front with both hands. “I’ll drag you out by your goddamn ear.”
Pinkrose started to reply.
He thought better of it.
Crandall had removed his set of handcuffs from the back of his belt. Pinkrose’s face turned as red as the bowl of cioppino. Hotchkiss became deeply engaged in inspecting his fingernails. Nash watched a manager in a rumpled gray suit approach the table. He asked Nash in a stage whisper if SFPD could please handle this elsewhere.
Crandall nodded, handcuffs dangling from his hand.
“Outside,” Crandall said to Pinkrose.
Crandall gave Pinkrose a push to get him moving. Pinkrose didn’t fight. He strode purposefully through the bar room, out into the hallway, Crandall marching right behind him. School kids going to the alley, a tussle in the dirt.
Nash stayed behind for a moment.
“Hotchkiss, you knew Danny Gomez better than you said.” It was an open-ended remark. Nash wasn’t sure what he’d get out of it.
Hotchkiss blinked elaborately, as though he’d just stepped into the sunlight from the basement. “I didn’t know him. But I know Pinkrose. I know about his songs.” Hotchkiss shook his head to deny whatever it was he thought Nash had just accused him of.
“I didn’t know Pinkrose wrote songs.”
“He doesn’t.”
“He steals them.”
“Songs belong to the world, Inspector. When all is said and done.”
“Sounds like theft to me.”
“It’s the practical view.”
“It’s a view.”
Hotchkiss shrugged.
“Tell me, Hotchkiss, what was your cut?”
Hotchkiss studied his now empty glass, then looked around once again for a waiter. Nash noticed the careful part in Hotchkiss’ hair, the dandruff on the shoulders of Hotchkiss’ yacht club sport coat. Confetti for mice, or rats.
When it became clear that Hotchkiss didn’t intend to answer the last question, Nash let it go, walked out of the bar room.
He’d said too much as it was.
Nash walked through the main dining room, toward the front doors. The dining room stank of fried fish. Maybe Mrs. Crandall was right. When fish tastes fishy that’s all there is to say.
Like a lot of things.
The maitre’d at his podium pointedly looked elsewhere as Nash walked past. Nash was in the short entrance hallway when he heard the sharp report of a pistol, close by.
Nash pulled the .38 revolver out of the holster under his jacket. He pushed through the front doors of the restaurant.
Raced down the steps.
Nash saw pedestrians running along the sidewalk, away from the restaurant. Others had ducked behind a tourist bus parked across the street. A man in a workman’s shirt and dungarees kneeled beside a man on the ground, near the front steps.
The man on the ground was Crandall.
He’d been shot.
Nash pushed the workman aside.
He knelt beside Crandall. Crandall’s hand clutched his chest but it didn’t hide the flowing blood, or the froth from the air bubbles the blood contained. The bright red blood slipping out of Crandall’s mouth was also full of air bubbles. Crandall’s unfocused eyes looked adrift in the paleness of Crandall’s face. He lay entirely still. A low moan that came from someplace deeper than pain passed Crandall’s lips.
Crandall’s waistband holster was empty.
Pinkrose had somehow taken Crandall’s weapon from him. Then he’d shot Crandall with it, point-blank.
A patrolman who’d been monitoring the go-go dancing exhibition down the street came running. Nash shouted to the patrolman to radio for an ambulance. Nash tossed his car keys to the patrolman, pointed to the unmarked Ford he and Crandall had arrived in.
When Nash looked in the other direction, he thought he spotted Pinkrose, running beside the line of parked cars on the south side of the street. Moving east, in the direction of Pier 43.
Nash turned back to Crandall.
Time had slowed. Blood continued to rise from between Crandall’s fingers. A thin trail of blood led across Crandall’s cheek from the corner of his mouth. Nash stood frozen. He knew he couldn’t help Crandall. He also knew that he needed to, more than anything. Nash struggled to recall how to apply pressure to an open chest wound, without endangering the victim further.
A breeze picked up a crumpled sheet of newspaper from the nearby gutter, sent it tumbling off. Nash realized his questions were academic.
Nash checked for a pulse.
Crandall was dead.
Nash got to his feet.
Pedestrians pointed to the east end of Jefferson as Nash broke into a run. Pinkrose had a good head start but Nash was fifteen or twenty years younger. A truck turned off Jefferson Street onto Mason, and Nash darted around the back of the truck, ran on. He again caught sight of Pinkrose, a block ahead.
Moving down the sidewalk now.
Almost staggering.
Pinkrose was winded. Or injured.
Pinkrose stopped to lean against the brick wall of a building, catch his breath. He looked back. Saw Nash running toward him. Pinkrose raised the pistol in his hand. Pedestrians scattered. Citizens hid in doorways, or crouched low behind parked cars. Nash shouted “police,” just in case someone thought he was the villain and tried to tackle him.
As Nash ran closer, he shouted for Pinkrose to drop his pistol.
Pinkrose pushed himself off the wall.
He raised the gun higher, extended his arm.
Nash ducked behind a postal service mailbox as Pinkrose fired. The pistol’s report sounded too loud. It echoed against the buildings like surf against rocks.
Nash heard the sharp clang of a cable car bell in the distance. He looked around the side of the mailbox. He was sure the round Pinkrose fired hadn’t come close to him. Maybe Pinkrose hoped the wild shot would convince Nash to stay where he was.
Nash jumped out from behind the mailbox and ran on.
Later Nash would recall the tread of his feet on the concrete, the ache in his lungs, gulping air, the beads of sweat on his forehead. But the only picture in Nash’s mind as he ran on was Lou Crandall, dead on the pavement.
Ahead Pinkrose stumbled, regained his balance.
Pinkrose ducked into a shadowy doorway, then reappeared on the sidewalk. Then darted into a small parking lot, beyond a row of shops. Disappearing again.
Nash stopped at the edge of the building next to the empty, roped-off lot. He tried to catch his breath. On the far side of the lot stood the scaffolding used by the art students, who had run off at the sound of gunfire. At the back of the lot stood a chain link fence that Pinkrose was, at that moment, attempting to climb.
Nash stepped around the corner of the building.
He raised his revolver.
“Pinkrose—drop your weapon.”
It did no good. Nash hadn’t expected it to. Pinkrose turned quickly, jumped off the fence. He fired one wild shot as he ran along the base of the scaffolding, toward the street.
Nash again ordered Pinkrose to stop and drop his weapon. Pinkrose turned. Pinkrose raised Crandall’s revolver.
Nash fired.
Nash thought he’d hit Pinkrose in the shoulder. The impact spun Pinkrose around. Pinkrose grabbed one of the scaffolding supports and hung on to it. He started to fall backwards.
The scaffolding teetered.
Pinkrose clung harder to it.
Pinkrose landed flat on the asphalt surface of the parking lot. The steel supports of the scaffolding remained standing, but several planks that made up the wooden catwalk, and the paint brushes and cans of paint on the catwalk, crashed to the ground.
Pinkrose was still alive when Nash reached him.
Pinkrose lay spread-eagled. Two planks from the catwalk had landed on his chest. Nash’s shot hadn’t hit Pinkrose in the shoulder after all. The round had torn into Pinkrose’s neck. The bib that Pinkrose wore in the restaurant was gone, but the red spatters of cioppino on his clothes and face mixed rather well with the darker red of the blood soaking into the collar of Pinkrose’s shirt, and forming a halo on the ground around his head. The cans of blue and red and green and yellow paint the art students had left behind on the catwalk had spattered Pinkrose’s clothes and his face when they fell.
Pinkrose looked like a Pop Art masterpiece. The art students could hang Pinkrose on the wall, pressed between two sheets of glass. Like people with microscopes and glass slides did, with other dead things.
When the ambulance arrived, Pinkrose was just a mess that needed scraping up.