“What the hell kind of bar is this,” muttered Taylor.
Casting the most cursory of glances at a large room unusually bright for a bar, Kate did not reply. The greater imperative was to gather her wits, to assess the ten women clustered along the curved dark wood bar. Taylor’s presence only added to her tension.
Where does my integrity begin and end? What if someone asks point-blank if I’m a lesbian?
They won’t ask. She was looking into the faces of the women at the bar. They don’t need to.
She felt stripped of her gray gabardine pants and jacket, her conservative cloak of invisibility in the conventional world. In here she was fully exposed against her natural background.
She recognized aspects of herself in each of the women staring back at her. In the assertiveness of one woman’s posture, in the stocky build of another, in the untouched gray of a short hairstyle, in the practical clothing and unmadeup faces and serviceably pared nails…
With ingrained habit she noted that two women were black, two Hispanic. Three wore baseball pants and shirts similar to Dory Quillin’s except these were in colors. Others wore pants or shorts, with shirts and T-shirts. A fat woman in a paisley skirt and peasant blouse sat with legs crossed, the skirt hiked above dimpled knees.
Their direct, perceptive glances penetrated her like an X-ray. A plump woman in white shorts and a blousy pink T-shirt, hoops of gold dangling from her earlobes, leaned over to whisper to her companion, a black woman with hair so short it could not have been more than half an inch long. The black woman grinned and nodded.
“Which of you,” Kate said in the most commanding tone she could muster, “is Magda Schaeffer?” She was braced and ready, expecting the murmuring wave of amusement at the low tones of her voice.
The burly woman who got up from a bar stool was perhaps fifty-five, with a whitening thatch of hair that looked self-cropped. Her lavender T-shirt was tucked into knee-length shorts with more pockets than Kate believed possible on an article of clothing: zippers covered the entire front and sides, with loops of fabric at each side, presumably to hold a flashlight or hammer. The woman crossed heavily tanned arms and studied Kate with deepset, hooded dark eyes.
“You’re Magda Schaeffer?”
The woman nodded expressionlessly.
“I’m Detective Delafield. This is my partner, Detective Taylor.”
Again the woman nodded.
Would anyone in this room ever speak? Would they never stop their staring?
“I’ve already answered every conceivable question,” Magda Schaeffer said. The voice was soft; Kate had expected masculine gruffness.
“We need to go over details again, perhaps a number of times.” Kate raised her voice to take in the room, launching into her explanation of procedure with a sense of relief at this familiar ground. “One of you might have a piece of information more important than anyone can see right now—”
“Bullshit.”
The speaker lounged on a stool at the end of the bar. A navy blue yacht cap was pulled down over her sharp, hawklike features, cutoff jeans exposed thin but muscled thighs, the sleeves of a blue-checked shirt were rolled to the elbows.
She jabbed a finger at Kate but directed her words at Taylor: “You think bringing a sister in here makes some kind of difference to us?” she barked. “She’s sold out to her own oppressors.”
Taylor cast an astonished glance at Kate.
The woman glared at Kate. “Enjoy being one of the boys? Kicking your own sisters around?”
Kate said evenly, “I don’t kick anyone around.” She knew she must use diversionary tactics, break up this group, separate them before they solidified in their hostility.
“Patton,” Magda Schaeffer said, walking toward the woman, her hands on her hips, “you cool it. You lay off all your political shit for just these few hours out of your life so these people can do their jobs and get out of here. The sooner they finish the sooner they’ll be gone.”
“Dory’s a dyke,” Patton said bitterly. “Whoever killed her—he’ll end up getting a nothing sentence in a cushy cell just like Dan White.”
Magda Schaeffer shook a finger at her. “Patton, I’m warning you—”
“Cops never catch anybody anyway,” said the fat woman in the paisley skirt. “Took three million of ’em to find the Hillside Strangler. Every cop in the whole country couldn’t find Patty Hearst.”
Taylor strolled over to Patton. “We’ll be more than happy to listen to anything you have to say,” he said, standing close to her. Kate was well acquainted with the tactic; Taylor often used his beefy bulk to dwarf, intimidate a witness, all the while speaking in what he called his jest-folks voice. He continued, “If you’d kindly wait till we talk to you, Miss Patton—”
The room erupted in guffaws. Patton pushed her yacht cap back and leaned against the railing of the bar looking up at Taylor, shaking her head, her smiling gaze drifting over him as if any conversation was clearly a waste of time.
“Do you live in some kind of time warp?” Magda Schaeffer snapped at Taylor. “Does Patton look like she wants to be called Miss Patton?”
“Procedure,” Kate said succinctly. “No offense intended to anyone. What would you like to be called?”
“Maggie,” the bartender answered with an almost imperceptible smile that was like a friendly clue. Kate felt suddenly warmed by her.
“We’d like to look over the bar,” Kate said. “To orient ourselves.” At this moment it seemed more judicious to remove herself and Taylor than to break up this group. Afterward they would interview the women separately.
“Anything you want,” Maggie said with a vague gesture toward the wall behind the bar. “Business permits are over there.”
The bar counter was an elongated curve, stools along its entire length. At the end sat a coin-filled glass bowl with a neatly inked sign: AIDS PROJECT L.A. Behind the bar, next to a blank television screen high against the wall, a long banner read: ALIVE WITH PRIDE IN ’85. A large kidney-shaped mirror was surrounded by lavender lights, The Nightwood Bar written across it in script letters similar to the lettering Kate had seen in the window, but in painted ceramic.
“You run a strange place, Maggie,” Taylor said.
Kate was irked, both by his comment and his tone, which seemed to her offensively familiar and condescending.
“I guarantee you,” Taylor said, “this is the only bar in the world with a bookcase.”
Kate walked across the room, looking around her in increasing amazement.
The bookcase was large—four crowded shelves perhaps ten feet long, toward the rear of the bar beside a pool table overhung by a Tiffany-style lampshade. Behind the pool table were three tables, each with a different game set up: checkers, chess, a Scrabble board. Another table contained stacks of magazines and crossword puzzle books; and beside it, another held several decks of cards and a pink box; Kate made out its lettering: Gay Trivia.
Across a dance floor not more than twelve feet square, two other tables were set up for backgammon. Against the far wall of the dance floor a high narrow counter was fronted by two stools, a video game at each. The jukebox, alongside a cigarette machine, was dark. The entire room was decorated with leafy plants flourishing under generous track lights.
Incredible, Kate thought. If only there’d been a place like this when I was coming out…
“It’s the kind of place I’ve always wanted,” Maggie said. “It’s not a pickup joint—plenty of places in town for that.” She was addressing Kate, the angle of her body shutting out Taylor. “Any woman who comes in here, she’s not locked into just drinking or dancing or playing pool. She can sit by herself and read a magazine or a book or play cards with somebody or whatever.”
Maggie’s tone was low-pitched and earnest. “Hell, I’m just as happy to serve coffee or soft drinks as booze. We’re busy Friday and Saturday nights, but my crowd is mostly an older crowd and mostly regulars. They come in for one thing—” She spread her hands and finished with quiet emphasis, “To relax and be themselves.”
“Was Dory Quillin a regular?” Taylor asked.
Kate was pleased that Taylor had refocused this interview; it was too perilously easy in these circumstances to have her own concentration fragmented. Gesturing to Taylor and Maggie, Kate pulled out a chair from a nearby table. The three of them sat down.
“A semi-regular,” Maggie answered Taylor’s question, propping a Puma shoe on the unused chair. She lit an unfiltered Pall Mall. “She hit most of the bars, like a lot of the youngsters do.”
Taylor was trying to fit his bulk into the small wooden chair. “How long did she park on your lot?”
“Nine, ten months. You detectives must want some coffee. Roz,” she called without waiting for an answer, “bring us three coffees, would you?”
“Thanks,” Kate said. “Then you must have known her quite well.”
“Actually, no.”
“She parked on your lot.” Taylor’s skepticism was evident. “She use the john in here too?” As Maggie nodded, Taylor stated, “Anybody’d think you were pretty tight with her.”
Again Kate was irked, reading the insinuation of sexuality into his words. Maggie shrugged and drew smoke deeply into her lungs. “No, I just felt sorry for her. Did you look at her out there?”
“Yes,” Kate answered for Taylor, “we did.”
The coffee arrived, Roz serving the three mugs from a tray, moving briskly away when the detectives declined the offer of cream or sugar.
Maggie crushed out her cigarette and looked up at Kate. “If you saw Dory then you know. A lost child. Out on her own, just her and that van—”
“Think she was really twenty-one?” Taylor asked casually.
“She had proof.”
Taylor nodded.
Maggie sighed. “Hell, I don’t know. I don’t think so. God, she looked about twelve. But a lot of them do. The older I get, the younger everybody looks. Letting her park here was a little thing to do for her. And it was reciprocal anyway. Even though we close at two, I need some kind of protection after hours, the place is too far out of the way. My last watchdog gnawed through his leash and took off, Dory offered to stay for a while. She’s been here ever since, not every night but enough…”
Maggie’s wide mouth twisted down at the corners. She ran a hand through her coarse white hair. “I thought she’d be safer here than…” She made a dismissing motion, a gesture of futility.
“You put a hell of a lot of trust in someone you hardly knew.” Taylor did not look up from his notes. “Giving her a key to this place—all this booze.”
Maggie gripped her coffee mug in strong, rough-skinned hands. “You make judgments, you trust people. How else can you live? I’d have known if she ever did anything, took anything. She never did drink much…”
“When was the last time you saw her alive?”
“When we left the ballpark.” Maggie’s voice was terse.
“Which one?”
“Plummer Park.” Maggie turned to Kate. “The rest of us agreed to meet here, have a few beers. Dory said no, she had things to take care of. I heard her pull in back, but she didn’t come in. Around six o’clock I walked out there to toss some trash—” The firm voice faltered.
Catching Taylor’s eye, Kate signaled with an inclination of her head to give Maggie some moments to compose herself. She caught up on her own notes, intrigued by the idea that perhaps Maggie’s manner might be a deliberate camouflage of depth and intelligence.
Kate asked, “What time did you hear the van pull in, do you remember?”
“About five thirty, maybe a little after.”
“When did the rest of the group arrive?”
“Within a few minutes of each other, we were in different cars.”
“Right, of course,” Kate said with a nod. Maggie smiled at her then, the harsh features softening into a wreathing of fine lines around her mouth and eyes. Resisting an affinity for her, Kate continued soberly, “The women here now, were they all here when you discovered the body?”
Maggie nodded, and Kate asked, “The bar opens at five?”
“At four, Sundays.”
“Then someone was here before you arrived, tending bar.”
“Roz. She’s my relief bartender. Only five of us were at the ballpark, you see. Ash was here and so was—”
“We’ll get those names from you in a moment,” Kate interrupted, making rapid notes. “We need to know about the circumstances after you arrived. Did anyone leave?”
“No. And that’s definite. Even when the place is packed I keep close tabs on what goes on in my bar.”
Taylor said, “Are you telling us none of these women could’ve stepped outside for a moment without you knowing it?
“Sure they could.” Abruptly, Maggie rose. “Come on.” She led the way to the back of the bar, around a corner into a narrow tiled corridor. A door marked WOMEN was directly across from the back door of the Nightwood Bar.
“Anybody who went to the john could’ve gone out there. I know you aren’t going to ask me who went to the john.”
Kate smiled; she had been about to ask.
Maggie lit another Pall Mall, unzipping one of her innumerable pockets and stuffing the match into it. She gestured toward the door. “She’s still out there, isn’t she? Dory.”
“It takes time,” Kate said softly. “We mean no disrespect, believe me when I tell you that. We have to be extremely careful because if we make mistakes now, we can never recover from them. We’ll be calling the deputy coroner soon to come for her.”
“I understand,” Maggie said, walking back toward their table. “It’s just that… The poor kid…”
Kate sat down and picked up her coffee mug, thinking that lying out in the cool night air was the least of the indignities yet to be suffered by the body of Dory Quillin. She asked, “What can you tell us about her? How did she support herself and her van?”
Maggie shrugged and flicked ash from her cigarette with a scarred thumbnail. “I make it a point not to know what my customers do for a living. After twenty years in this business you learn to listen to what customers want to tell you, you learn to be careful about asking questions—even in the areas they talk about.”
“But you know she has parents,” Kate pressed, sensing evasion. “They live here locally, right? How did you know that?”
“She talked about them. Nothing in any detail, just bitter remarks.”
“Like what? What did she say?”
“I don’t really remember. What you’d expect in her circumstances—that they weren’t into what she was about…I honestly don’t remember.”
Taylor asked, “Why did they kick her out? How could they let a girl like her go live in a van?”
What a perfectly stupid question, Kate thought, waiting for Maggie to answer it.
“Why did they kick her out,” Maggie repeated. Her hooded dark eyes were cold. “Detective Taylor, take a survey in any gay bar. One hell of a lot of us were kicked out by our families. My own parents decided that nothing could be worse than having a gay daughter.”
“Well, I know that goes on,” Taylor blustered, “we see all kinds of kids in the street—but, God, to look at her it’s still hard to figure…I don’t see how anybody could just…”
My own parents, Kate thought, how would they have reacted? She had never risked telling them—and now death had taken them beyond her reach.
“What about romantic liaisons?” Kate asked, interrupting Taylor’s floundering. “Was she involved with anybody here?”
Maggie rolled her eyes. “You can’t expect me to answer a question like that. I don’t know what goes on with all these women—you might as well ask me to keep track of what’s happening in a rabbit hutch.”
Kate and Taylor chuckled. Kate said, “Then to your knowledge there was no one in particular, is that correct?”
Maggie shifted in her chair. “Well…I think maybe there was somebody a while back.” She shrugged. “Dory went for older women, she never seemed interested in the younger ones, and a lot of young women were after her. I think she’d have even made a play for these ancient bones if I’d given her any indication.”
“And you didn’t?” Taylor said, looking at her intently.
Maggie stared back at him. “If I wanted children, I’d be a heterosexual.”
Taylor chuckled uncertainly and went back to his notes.
“The baseball game today,” Kate said. “Did Dory play?”
“Second base. Batted lead off.”
“Did you play too?”
“Are you kidding? I show up once in a while, it’s fun to watch the kids. Pickup teams from the other bars get together, we have a game every now and again.”
“These women from the other bars,” Taylor interjected, “did you notice Dory talking with anybody? Maybe leave with someone?”
Maggie shook her head. “Too young for her, all of them. As I remember, I don’t think she even knew that many to talk to. And they were all gone before we left the park.”
Kate asked, “Did she act…different in any way? Say anything unusual?”
Maggie leaned her chin on a hand, her eyes almost closing as she reflected. “Well…she always was a little hyper…and she was like that today too, maybe a little more so. She’d just come back from a day or so out of town—”
“Where?” Kate and Taylor asked simultaneously.
Maggie looked startled. “Central California somewhere—I don’t remember where. Hell, I wasn’t paying any attention. I mean, I didn’t care—you think it might be important?”
Kate said, “Right now we have to assume everything’s important.”
“What can you tell us about the women here?” Taylor asked.
Maggie stubbed out her cigarette. “About as much as I could tell you about Dory.”
Kate heard the wariness and took an indirect approach.
“Would you identify everyone for us? Which ones were at the park?”
“Patton was there.” Maggie smiled at Kate. “Of course, you know who Patton is.”
Kate grinned back. “The one with the extreme opinions.”
“Extreme, you say. She thinks I’m corrupting the bodily temples of my sisters by serving them alcohol. She has lots of other free advice and opinions too—like I should share with my sisters any money I make beyond what it costs me to subsist.” Maggie’s chuckle was humorless. “No problem there—I make just enough to get by.”
Taylor glanced over at Patton who was leaning across the bar gesturing with both hands as she talked to Roz. “If this was my bar,” he said, “she wouldn’t get one foot in the door.”
“A distinct temptation,” Maggie admitted. “She’s a distinct pain. But I always remember that firebrand women like her are the ones who’ve made everything happen in women’s rights.”
“So who else was at the park,” Taylor said uninterestedly, returning to his notes.
“The Latina in the red baseball shirt—she’s Tora. The other Latina sitting next to Patton is Ash—Ash was here at the bar. Kendall was at the park, she’s the one in chino pants and the white polo shirt. And so was Raney, she’s the black woman with the Grace Jones haircut. The other black woman was here, her name is Audie.”
“Where do they get such names,” Kate grumbled, writing rapidly.
“What’s your first name?”
“Kate.”
“Ever wanted to change it?”
“It never occurred to me.” She was writing brief descriptions of the women at the bar to go with each name.
“Let’s say you’ve broken away from a religion you absolutely despise,” Maggie said. “And let’s say your parents have named you Bernadette Theresa after their two favorite saints.”
Kate smiled. “I see what you mean.”
“That’s only one reason some of these women choose their own names.”
“The woman at the end of the bar,” Kate said. “You didn’t mention her.”
“Don’t know her. She was here, not at the park. She’s been coming in a lot, but too recently to call her a regular.”
“When did she start coming in?”
“Maybe two weeks ago.”
Kate looked at the woman with interest. “These other women—they’re regulars?”
Maggie nodded. “Some come in more than others, but I see all of them at least a couple of times a week.”
Taylor said, “You’re certain you never saw this woman before two weeks ago?”
“Positive. I’d remember. Who wouldn’t?”
The woman, wearing earth-toned pants and a huge, shapeless tan shirt, was in three-quarter profile to Kate, listening to Patton. Her large eyes were almond-shaped, her forehead high; her dark hair was pulled up under a close-fitting beige cap of metallic-threaded fabric. The small lips were full, the cheekbones fully fleshed; her skin had the high orange duskiness of a complex racial mixture. She reminded Kate of statues depicting queens of ancient Egypt.
“Exotic,” Taylor commented to Maggie. “Know anything about her?”
“Second week she came in, Audie approached her. Audie’s the most kind-hearted soul… Anyway, all Audie said was, cheer up, honey, nothing’s that bad—something like that. For her trouble she got stared right into the floor. Miss Deep Freeze, that’s what I call her.”
Amused, Kate studied Miss Deep Freeze, who sat one stool over from Kendall, looking weary and bored.
“Lover trouble,” Maggie said. “No other reason a woman like her starts coming in here. If you’re with somebody, or if you’re by yourself and you feel okay about it, you don’t have to be in a women’s bar for hours every single night of the week.”
Taylor said, “Your neighbors—the motel, the businesses down the hill, how do they feel about you being here? Any trouble with them?”
Good question, Kate thought. A neighborhood canvass just might furnish some good leads.
Maggie shook her head. “At first. They’re still not exactly overjoyed to have us. But the place isn’t that noisy, even on Saturday nights. Sure we have a jukebox, but I won’t have loud music or loud women.” She looked sharply at Kate. “You think somebody did this because… You think some gang maybe wandered up here and did this…for kicks?”
“Maggie, we don’t know,” Kate said earnestly. “We haven’t even formed a theory yet. We solve most homicides because most people are killed by people they know. But random violence is a possibility—it’s an increasing problem everywhere.”
Maggie’s dark eyes were fixed on hers. “I’ve been here four good years. I wanted this bar to be a good quiet place, I’ve never advertised, just depended on word of mouth. I’ve never made waves, never had to call the cops, never once had trouble. Well,” she amended, “no trouble we couldn’t handle ourselves. Everybody who comes here wants to keep this place something special, without any cops involved. We never let anything get out of hand…” Maggie drained her coffee. “Publicity,” she hissed. “Now the nuts’ll know we’re here.”
Publicity, Kate knew, would be a few lines in the Times, perhaps a paragraph in the Herald Examiner—the life snuffed out here deemed insufficiently important for more. “We’ll do everything we can—you have my word on that. Would you give my partner and me a few minutes? Then we’ll talk to Patton.”
“Sure.” Maggie rose, tucking in the tail of her T-shirt. “Take care of the tough one first, right?”
“Right,” Kate answered with a smile.
Kate had made the judgment that because of Patton’s belligerence, the best strategy was to interview her first; if she could not be turned into a cooperative witness then they would dismiss her, get her off the premises. The stack of F1’s compiled by Hansen and his men contained driver’s license numbers and the legal names of these women, no matter what they preferred to call themselves—and also their addresses. If she and Taylor developed information requiring a follow-up interview, they would be able to find Patton.
As Maggie returned to the bar, Kate’s measuring gaze followed her. Taylor asked, “How do you peg her?”
“Cautious, close-mouthed, too careful about what she said to us. I think we’ll have to move inch by inch with her, maybe with all these women. What do you think?”
“Me? I think this bar, this whole scene is weird, Kate. Up here out of the way… You come to a bar to drink and socialize, for chrissakes, not to play chess or read Playboy.”
Kate chuckled, knowing Taylor expected appreciation of his wit, knowing he could never understand that to her this bar felt right and natural and good in every respect. He could never imagine the relief of escaping the claustrophobic heterosexual world into a secluded, private place where there were only other lesbians.
Taylor continued, “I think what our bartender Maggie suggested is a good possibility. One or more thugs wandered up here and bashed her head in just for the hell of it.”
Hating such a possibility and the slender odds of finding such a killer, Kate shrugged. “It’s as likely as anything else,” she conceded. “Let’s talk with sweet, friendly Patton.”
At Taylor’s call of her name, Patton jerked around to stare at them, her body stiffening.
“What do you bet,” Taylor said to Kate, “she won’t come over here.”
“And miss a chance to sneer at us? Sure she’ll come over.”
Patton unhooked a pair of aviator sunglasses from the pocket of her shirt and put them on, picked up a cigarette from an ashtray on the bar and put it in her mouth. Stuffing her hands in the pockets of her cutoffs, she slid from her bar stool, and sauntered over. She kicked away the fourth chair at Kate’s table, and with the same foot pushed the remaining chair equidistant between Kate and Taylor. Not taking her hands from her pockets she eased herself into the chair and crossed an ankle over a knee. Smoke rising from the cigarette in the corner of her mouth, she looked at Kate through her mirrored glasses.
Kate asked flatly, “What can you tell us about the young woman lying dead out there?”
“Nothing.” Ashes spilled down the front of Patton’s blue-checked shirt. Her sunglasses glinted in the barroom light.
“How long have you known her?”
Patton looked up at the ceiling for some moments. “Maybe a year,” she said.
Kate sat back and studied her unhurriedly, examining the cropped blond hair visible under the yacht cap, the thin sharp features, the tight white line of her mouth. The Adidas jogging shoe Patton had propped on a knee began a cadenced beat, as if to a rhythm she heard in her head. Kate said, “What time did you arrive here from the park?”
“Same time as everybody else,” Patton muttered from around her cigarette, the jogging shoe increasing its beat.
“What time was that?”
Patton shrugged.
“We don’t understand shrugs,” Kate said evenly. “Are you telling us that you won’t answer or that you don’t know?”
Patton grinned, removed a hand from a pocket, took the cigarette from her mouth. “I don’t know.”
“Did you notice anything unusual, either at the park or here afterward?”
Patton shrugged. As Kate’s stare froze on her, she grinned again. “I don’t know,” she said.
Taylor spoke. “Do you have any idea what Dory Quillin did for a living?”
“She was a nuclear physicist,” Patton said.
Kate and Taylor looked at her silently.
“Maybe I should spell that for you,” Patton said. “N-u-c—”
“Patton,” Kate said, closing her notebook, “we’re making an honest effort to find out who took a very young woman’s life.” She pulled a card from the notebook and placed it in front of Patton. “When you’re finished with all this posturing, when you realize that what’s happened here tonight is just a little more important than you think you are, call us.”
Patton sat looking at Kate, her masked eyes invisible, her mouth impassive.
“Now get out of here,” Kate said.
“You have no right to order me around.”
“This bar is part of an official crime scene. And in any case it’s hardly open for business. I’ll be glad to have an officer escort you.”
“I just bet you would.” Patton rose. Ignoring Kate’s card, she turned her back on the detectives and marched back to the bar.
“Nice going,” Taylor commented. “Myself, I was considering police brutality.”
Kate smiled thinly. “Ed, I don’t see any reason not to notify the coroner.”
“Me either. Let me take care of it, Kate. Why don’t I work out there with Hansen? You might work better solo in here.”
“I doubt it but go ahead,” Kate said. “They don’t like me much either.”
“Maybe not, but this being a women’s bar…I feel some extra vibrations, myself.”
Taylor’s masculine presence in this bar, Kate thought, was a fact she resented as much as any woman here.
Taylor pulled himself to his feet and walked to the door of the Nightwood Bar. Patton followed, dragging a jogging shoe over the path Taylor took, stomping and scraping, as if to erase each of his footsteps. “A man!” she shouted. “In our bar! Yechhh!”
As Taylor stopped to look back at Kate, shaking his head, Patton leaned over and whispered to him. Adjusting his tie, again shaking his head, he exited from the Nightwood Bar.
Patton polished the doorknob with her sleeve. “Yechhh,” she uttered once again, then opened the door and vanished into the night.