I PARKED A HALF-BLOCK from 436 Hoffman, and as I walked to the scene I assessed the neighborhood. Most of the houses were solid and substantial, built before 1920 and carefully maintained. Hoffman Street was in San Francisco’s Noe Valley—traditionally a blue-collar district, more recently adopted by a scattering of longhaired young people and mod, with-it professional types, all of whom liked Noe Valley’s solid, post-Victorian architecture and its views from the lower slopes of Twin Peaks. Noe Valley was acquiring an ethnic, nostalgic aura. As a consequence, property values were beginning to climb.
The building at 436 Hoffman had originally been a small corner store. Now its two plate-glass show windows were three-quarter frosted. Bright, psychedelic fabric showed above the frosting. The building’s other windows, originally lighting upstairs living quarters, were curtained in a colorful hodgepodge of burlap, paisley prints and slatted bamboo. The building needed a coat of paint and numerous minor repairs. From outside appearances, the place could be a warren of hippie-style crash pads.
Recognizing me, the patrolman guarding the storefront apartment’s front door came to attention. As he opened the door for me, I glanced briefly at the small knot of onlookers, mostly neighborhood children. It was a classic childhood tableau: kids of assorted sizes and shapes, dogs and wagons, bats and balls.
Inside, Culligan and John Tharp, the medical examiner, were seated together on a low, lumpy mattress that had been covered with bright orange corduroy and placed directly on the floor, to serve as a couch. As Tharp rose to his feet, he pointedly glanced at his watch. He was a small, humorless man with a perpetual frown and a pursed, petulant mouth.
“We were about to give you up,” Tharp said acidly.
“I got delayed.”
“Well, as far as I’m concerned, they can move the body.” He picked up his satchel and hat, then stood squarely before me in a posture of brusque, peremptory expectation. He was required to wait until the officer in charge released him. His permission, plus mine, was necessary before the body could be moved.
Ignoring Tharp’s fidgeting, I turned to Culligan. “Are the lab boys through?”
“Yes. Everything’s dusted, everything’s photographed and everything’s outlined. So I let them all go. I mean—” As he hesitated, I nodded approval. There was no point in his detaining the technicians even though, by the book, I should have been the one to dismiss them.
“Where is it?” I asked.
Culligan pointed through a bead-bangled archway, leading into what had originally been a storeroom. Unconsciously holding my breath against the sickening, excremental stench of death, I parted the strings of beads and stepped through the archway.
It was a bedroom, wrecked. The body was tumbled into a two-foot space between the double bed and the wall. He lay on his right side, with his face jammed flat against the wall. His right arm was bent behind his back at an odd, shoulder-broken angle. His left arm lay along his side. His legs were extended full length, ankles peacefully crossed. A sizable smear of blood streaked the white-painted wall beside the bed. The front of his jacket was blood-caked, matching the smear on the wall. He’d probably struck the wall with his chest, then slid to the floor. Glancing around the room, I saw blood everywhere: puddled on the floor, spattered on the walls, smeared on the furniture. By the look of it, he’d been stabbed in the heart.
I stepped through the bead strings, reentering the living room. Tharp was impatiently snapping and unsnapping the lock on his gleaming black satchel.
“What about it?” I asked Tharp.
“Well, of course, there isn’t much I can say,” he began defensively. “I mean, about all I could do was check the limb flexion. But just eyeballing it, I’d say he was stabbed repeatedly with a reasonably thin-bladed knife. I’d also say that he’s been dead for twelve hours, at least. Beyond that, I can’t really tell you much.”
“Were there any bruises?”
“None that are visible. Aside from the multiple stab wounds concentrated in the abdomen, the only other injuries I can see are lacerations of the palms.”
“As if he fought for the knife, you mean.”
“Or was fending it off.”
I nodded, and turned inquiringly to Culligan. “Anything else?”
Culligan shook his head. He was a tall, gaunt, thin-chested man with hollow cheeks and haggard, fatigue-smudged eyes. Culligan had a slatternly, abusive wife, a delinquent daughter and a duodenal ulcer. He was prematurely bald and prematurely stooped. Culligan said very little, but he was a shrewd, skillful detective, however taciturn. He knew that my question was perfunctory—that I was about to dismiss Tharp so that we could get down to business. Therefore, Culligan merely shook his head.
“Okay,” I said to Tharp. “But get the autopsy to us as soon as possible, huh?” I glanced at the time. It was 2:45 P.M. “How about, say, ten o’clock tomorrow morning?”
Tharp shrugged peevishly. “I’ll see what I can do.” He turned toward the door. “Shall I send in the gurney?”
“Yes.”
I followed the ambulance stewards into the bedroom, and watched them load the body on the gurney.
“I didn’t check the right-hand pockets,” Culligan said, “because of the way he was lying.”
“Do it now. Go through everything. I’m your witness.”
Culligan stepped forward impassively and began methodically going through the pockets, deftly turning the body from side to side. The feel of a corpse didn’t seem to disturb him. Wryly, I wondered whether others thought the same of me.
When Culligan had finished, he took two Polaroid pictures of the victim’s face, one picture for each of us. I stepped to the body, silently staring down into the dead face. Imagining the lolling mouth closed and the lusterless eyes animated, I figured he must have been good-looking. His face was lean and handsome—the face of a lady’s man. His medium-brown hair was modishly razor-cut, his sideburns carefully trimmed to complement the with-it hair style. He was clean-shaven. His clothes were expensive. He wore an elaborately saddle-stitched leather jacket, flared slacks and eighty-dollar Wellington boots. His turtleneck shirt was rib-knit. Culligan was right He didn’t belong where he’d died.
“Got everything?” I asked Culligan.
Again he nodded. From the pinched look on Culligan’s face, I knew that his ulcer was bothering him.
“Okay, take it away,” I told the stewards. They deftly covered the body, securing the white plastic sheet with bands of black elastic. A moment later they were gone.
I turned to Culligan. “What’d you find in his pockets?”
He’d slipped everything into a large, clear-plastic evidence bag, which he silently handed to me. I saw a small stag-handled pocketknife, a handful of silver coins and a neatly folded handkerchief.
“That’s all?” I asked.
“That’s all. No billfold or keys or correspondence.”
“A goddamn John Doe.”
“Looks like it.”
“Anything else?”
He reached into his outside jacket pocket, carefully withdrawing a smaller bag. It contained an open switchblade knife. The handle and blade were caked with dried blood.
“Is that the murder weapon?”
He shrugged. “It could be.”
I suppressed a smile. If Friedman was the garrulous one, and Canelli was the innocent and Markham the heavy, then Culligan was the silent one.
“Where’d you find it?” I asked.
“In a trash can about four doors down the block. Sigler found it.”
“What’s Sigler doing now?”
“He’s checking out the neighbors. We still can’t find anyone who heard anything last night.”
“What else? Who discovered the body?”
“Nobody discovered the body,” Culligan replied. “At least, no civilian. An anonymous phone tip came in at eleven fifteen A.M. today. The voice was disguised, according to Communications. It could have been either a man or a woman. It just said, ‘Take a look inside the big apartment at 436 Hoffman.’ So a radio car responded. The front door was latched, but unlocked. They just walked in. I got the call about noon. We were up in Miraloma Park, on that Thompson thing. So we came over.”
“How about physical evidence?” As I asked the question, I began walking slowly through the apartment, to get a feel of the place. The layout was simply a living room, a small bedroom and an even smaller kitchen. The tiny bath was dark and dingy, just a toilet and a sheet-metal shower. A small door connected the kitchen to the rear service porch. The door was bolted and chained.
“There really isn’t much physical evidence,” Culligan was saying. “The back door is bolted, as you can see. There’s no way anyone could get in through the windows. The front ones are solid plate glass. That leaves the windows in the bedroom and kitchen. And they’re too small and too high. Plus they were latched, anyhow.”
“So the murderer came in through the front door.” We were back in the living room now. “Any jimmy marks?”
“No. But the murderer could already have been here, you know.”
I nodded. “Either way, though, he must’ve left by the front door.”
“Right.”
“Who’s the apartment belong to?”
“According to a girl who lives upstairs—her name is Judy Blake—the tenant is Diane Farley. Which might be a lead, because the vice squad’s got a yellow sheet on her. I haven’t seen it yet, though.”
“Did you put out an A.P.B. on her?”
“I sure did.”
“Is Diane Farley a hooker?” As I asked the question, I glanced around the apartment once more. It didn’t look like a hooker’s place.
Culligan shrugged. “I figured I’d wait till I got down to the Hall to pull her jacket, Lieutenant. The vice squad, you know, doesn’t like to give that stuff out over the phone. They’re getting harder to do business with all the time.”
“What about this Judy Blake? What’s her story?”
“She’s pretty straight, I’d say. She says she’s a graduate student at State College, and I believe her. She’s a walking encyclopedia.”
“Is she still here?”
“Yeah. I, ah, persuaded her to cut a class and stick around in case you wanted to talk to her.”
I checked the time. “I’d better not. I have to get back to the Hall. Did you hear about the governor?”
“No.”
“He got shot. A Chicano kid did it. With an M-l, if you can believe that.”
“Did he kill the governor?”
“No. In fact, no one was killed.” As I said it, I turned absently away, strolling through the apartment for a last look. In the kitchen, I noted the untidy stack of dirty dishes, the old, cheap stove and refrigerator, the stained and cracked linoleum on the floor.
The bedroom furnishings consisted only of a decrepit old-fashioned bureau with a clouded mirror, a double mattress covered with a peony-printed spread, and a rickety chair. The bed-springs were supported by four concrete blocks. The chair was laden with a woman’s clothing. A small white shag rug, soaked with blood, was spread on the floor near the bed. The bedroom walls were covered with posters, most of them either erotic or hip—or both. A cork bulletin board was nailed to the wall beside the bureau. The cork was entirely covered with photographs, most of them eight-by-ten glossies. The subject was the same in each picture: a dark-haired girl in her twenties, with a good figure and a narrow, closed face. The photos were obviously the work of a professional photographer. In about half of them, the girl was nude. All of the poses, nude or not, were provocative.
“That,” Culligan said, “is Diane Farley. Not bad, huh?”
I smiled. “If any of these pictures are missing, Culligan, I’ll know where to look.” I strode into the living room. An old-fashioned wind-up phonograph stood on a cut-down oak dining table. Two wicker chairs had been painted a gleaming white. A huge mound of pillows was piled on the mattress-cum-couch. In this room, the poster art was more restrained. In one corner a large rubber plant grew in a tarnished brass spittoon. The place had a with-it feeling, furnished for a far-out young person. I wondered whether she could be working her way through college by turning tricks. It happens.
“It looks like she’s lived here for a while,” I said thoughtfully.
“Yeah, she has.”
“How many apartments are there in the building?”
“Four, besides this one. They’re all small—just studios. There’s one on this floor, and three upstairs.”
“Where’s Judy Blake’s apartment?”
“Upstairs.”
I glanced again at my watch. “It’s after three. I’d better get downtown. You and Sigler keep at it, here. You don’t have anything else that’s hot, do you?”
He shrugged. “Not really. That Thompson thing isn’t going anywhere.”
“All right. If I have time, I’ll check Diane Farley’s rap sheet when I get to the hall. If it’s anything heavy, I’ll get back to you.”
“Okay. See you, Lieutenant.”
“Right. Good luck.”