“Do you know why Dr. Shea was in the Tenderloin?”
Artie shook his head. “No—he was supposed to meet us at the restaurant. He was the speaker for the night.” Schuler looked curious and Artie explained what the Suicide Club had turned into.
“Any idea what he was going to talk about?”
“He’d phoned Susan—my wife—earlier in the afternoon and sounded excited about the meeting, but he didn’t mention the topic.” Schuler looked thoughtful and Artie asked, “Do you have any idea who did it?”
Schuler surprised him. “We have them in custody right now.”
Them.
“I still don’t understand why Dr. Shea was wandering around the Tenderloin. Your club doesn’t have some kind of oddball ritual …” Schuler looked embarrassed for even suggesting it.
Artie stiffened. “We’re a little old for that, Lieutenant.”
“My apologies for asking. It’s just that I suspect there are no straight answers to any of this.”
“You said ybu have somebody in custody?” Artie tried to sound strictly professional. He was a long way from being a kid and he wanted to remind Schuler of that.
“Do you know where Shea’s wife might have gone?” Schuler suddenly asked. “She was scheduled to come in last night to identify him. She didn’t and when we called this morning, she didn’t answer. We had the Oakland police check and she’d left, along with their two boys. Any idea where they went?”
“None at all,” Artie said slowly. “You think she’s …” His voice dribbled off.
Schuler shrugged. “The husband is dead and the wife has disappeared. It’s impossible not to think there’s a connection, but at the moment I don’t know what it could be.” He turned to McNeal. “Okay, bring ’em in, Mac.”
Artie moved his arms slightly so his sweaty shirt wouldn’t stick to him. He wondered how he would react to seeing the murderers of a good friend. Dispassionate? Or filled with rage and a desire to commit murder himself?
McNeal came back leading three dogs on leashes: two pit bulls and what looked like a collie-retriever mix. Artie stared. The three of them would be enough to take a man down, but it was still difficult to believe. They trotted behind McNeal, glancing curiously around the room and wagging their tails.
“You serious?”
Schuler lit his pipe and leaned back in his chair. “Ordinarily if dogs attack somebody, they’re destroyed almost immediately. These we’re saving for evidence until we locate the owners.” He looked disapproving. “People turn dogs loose in the city when they don’t want them anymore. Pit bulls are always bad news if they’ve been trained to fight and then are abandoned by their owners. Back in the good old days, we used to have dogcatchers who took care of them. The city doesn’t have that kind of money now, and neither does Animal Care and Control. So we wind up with packs of feral dogs on our hands. The small ones die, get run over, get killed by bigger dogs. Some of the larger ones acquire street smarts—they avoid busy streets, they learn to keep away from traps and poison. They attack people’s pets, sometimes young kids. This is the first instance we know of where they’ve attacked an adult male—and killed him.” He shook his head. “Dr. Shea was apparently hiding in the packing crate. He would have been on his hands and knees—an invitation for feral dogs.”
Schuler glanced down at a report in front of him and read it aloud.
“‘Officers called to the scene found three bloodstained dogs at 15 Olive Street’—they call it a street but it’s really an alley—‘nosing around a packing crate. They apparently attacked Dr. Shea in the crate and were responsible for his death.’” He looked up. “We still don’t have a clue as to what Dr. Shea was doing in the Tenderloin or why he was hiding in the crate.”
Artie stared down at the dogs sniffing around his shoes and the leg of the table. He had a sudden desire to reach out and scratch the nearest one behind the ears.
Then he noticed the matted hair and the rich dark stains around its muzzle.
Outside, Artie had just
flicked open his umbrella and stepped to the curb to hail a cab when somebody called, “Hey, Artie, over here!”
The group was huddled under an overhang, and he hurried over. Schuler must have interviewed them one by one and afterward they had waited to see who had been next and to compare notes.
Artie furled his umbrella and squeezed under the overhang with them. “What do we do, wait for Jenny and Lyle?”
Mary Robards looked impatient. “I’m getting soaked. If we’re going to talk about it, let’s go someplace.”
Charlie Allen turned and started to waddle down the street. “Coffee shop’s this way; spotted it driving over.”
At the tiny restaurant with its faded beer signs and grease-stained walls, Artie ordered coffee, black, then hesitated and added a pastrami sandwich.
He glanced around the table. Hail, hail, the Suicide Club was now in session. Mary Robards, one of the few original women members who had stayed in the Club, now thirty pounds heavier and abrasively cynical. Schuler must have been surprised. The last time he’d seen her, Mary was a sweet-tempered eighteen with a bad complexion and a figure that wouldn’t stop. Both had given her an attitude, one that had changed a lot when her sexy walk became a middle-aged waddle. She was an attorney now and considerably more self-assured; she also seemed more comfortable than the others with growing older.
Pudgy Charlie Allen looked sweaty and nervous and obviously guilty of something, but then he usually did. Charlie had been the bravest of them all; he’d always figured they were going to get caught anyway so what the hell. He now had two kids and was assistant city librarian for San Francisco Public—he was the only one Artie really envied, purely because he seemed the happiest.
Then there was Mitch Levin, his best friend and a regular racquetball partner he could always beat—the best kind. Tall, wiry, with a sharp nose and thin face that made you think of the old
Strand
drawings of Sherlock Holmes. A professional bachelor and man-about-town whom they all claimed to envy but whom nobody did. As always, Mitch was dressed to the nines but still managed to look at home in a south-of-Market grungy coffee shop, even with his steel-framed granny glasses. Mitch had a sharp mind and was somebody Artie always felt he could depend on. His only fault was that he had been a captain in ’Nam when Artie had been a sergeant, and Mitch had never quite forgotten it.
Artie lingered a moment at Dave Chandler, the leading man and director of Theater DuPre, making a production of ladling sugar into his coffee and stirring it with a plastic spoon. Whatever Dave did, he did it as if an audience were watching. Boyishly handsome, so the reviewers said, even in his midforties. What irritated Artie was that the reviewers were right; for Chandler, time seemed to have stood still. In real life, he had been cast against type: a man who was universally well liked and would give you the shirt off his back if only he had one. Scratch him behind his left ear and his right foot would twitch. Dave was an inoffensive guy but always on stage. To the best of Artie’s knowledge, the real David Chandler had never stood up.
“Schuler’s just as big a bastard as always,” Mary said, grimacing at a trace of lipstick on her cup. “He didn’t need all of us down here.” She looked like everybody’s mother, Artie thought—a great asset when she was trying to convince a jury. “Goddamned cold in there. At least they could have told us to keep our coats … .”
Her voice faded and they were all quiet for a moment, remembering the stainless-steel table and what Larry had looked like.
“Anybody talk to Larry yesterday?” As usual, Mitch had elected himself to chair the meeting.
“I had an appointment two days ago.” Charlie Allen looked uncertain. “He talked about the meeting but he didn’t say much.” They all stared at him expectantly, and he shrugged. “Just a general physical—prostate exam, that sort of thing. Pretty embarrassing when a friend does it.”
“Thanks for sharing,” Mitch said dryly. “Anybody know of any enemies Larry might have had?”
Artie certainly didn’t; neither did the others. There was a long silence. Then Chandler said; “What about drugs?”
Mary stared at him. “Drugs?”
“Don’t doctors have access?” Chandler said defensively. “Maybe somebody wanted him to write a prescription, badly. You call it—you know more about drug cases than I do.”
“I doubt it,” Mary sniffed.
Their food came and they fell silent again. Artie’s pastrami-on-rye was better than he expected.
Mitch took several bites of his sandwich, then pushed it away. “Anybody have any ideas why Larry was in the Tenderloin?”
It sounded too much like McNeal, and Artie muttered, “He sure wasn’t looking for a peep show.”
Schuler had put his finger on something during their meeting, something that Mark had mentioned at home. Charlie Allen said it for him.
“Anybody know what Larry was going to talk about?”
Mary frowned. “Medicine’s a big field; it could have been anything, I doubt that it would have been world-shaking. Last time it was his turn, he talked about the importance of aspirin in Western civ.”
“I thought that one was pretty good,” Chandler murmured. He concentrated on his hamburger, not meeting her eyes. Jesus, Artie thought, some antagonisms die hard. Twenty years ago, Chandler had been the only one in the Club whom Mary had turned down and he’d never forgiven her.
He teetered back in his chair. “Cathy talked to Susan a few days ago; said Larry was looking forward to their Christmas get-together.”
Mary turned sarcastic. “Not exactly of crushing importance in a homicide, Artie.”
There was another long silence, then Chandler offered, “I had lunch with him last week. He said he was working on an article for
Science
—sounded pretty enthusiastic.”
Even Charlie Allen looked serious at that one, but it was too easy to draw a connection, Artie thought. The
Science
article and his talk, both about the same thing? Maybe.
“You tell Schuler?”
“I didn’t think it was important.” Chandler caught the expressions of the others and looked embarrassed. “Hell, I didn’t know. Maybe it was. I’m not a cop.”
Charlie Allen smothered a belch and pushed back from the table. “None of us are,” he said regretfully. The undertone of sadness in his voice reminded Artie of Larry Shea and the body in the morgue and his own difficulties in making a connection between the two. Charlie had probably been Larry’s best friend; the two had been a lot alike.
“Anybody think the dogs did it?” Chandler asked.
They looked at one another in sudden silence. Larry had been a palpable presence at the table, but they had gone out of their way to keep the conversation technical. Now Larry was upfront in their minds, the contrast between the memories of a laughing, very-much-alive Larry Shea and the ruin in the morgue stark and tragic.
Mary was the first to offer a professional opinion. “I think the wounds on Larry’s face and throat would be consistent with an animal attack. But I don’t think the dogs went after him out of the blue. I think … somebody was responsible.”
Chandler nodded at Mary, taking advantage of a chance to make peace. “You’re probably right.”
Another moment of silence, then Mitch dabbed at his mouth with a paper napkin. “If Schuler comes up with more information and lets any of us know—”
“Not likely,” Mary muttered. “I don’t think he trusts any of us.”
Artie signaled the waiter for the check and fished around in his pocket for his wallet. The only new information had been offered by Chandler, and it didn’t seem like much on the face of it. But it was a shame they all hadn’t been there. Jenny Morrison—quiet, beautiful, reserved—a dean’s assistant at San Francisco State and Mary Robards’ significant other, which nobody ever talked about. And Lyle Pace, a former star athlete never able to forget the one time he’d almost made the Olympics. Artie hadn’t been close to either of them when they had joined. He still wasn’t. But they might have had something to offer.
“The services,” Charlie Allen said at the door. “What about the services for Larry?”
Mitch shrugged into his coat. “Cathy will probably make the arrangements.” Then he added vaguely, “Or relatives. I’m sure Schuler’s notified them.”
Which meant that Schuler had told Mitch they hadn’t been able to locate Cathy, but he hadn’t told the others. Artie paid at the cash register, pulled his collar up around his neck, and stepped outside into the drizzle. These were sad circumstances but it was always good to see his friends—despite the fact that they had pretty much drifted apart over the years and it was only the Club meetings that kept most of them together.
He smiled to himself. It was tragic, but it was almost like it was the old Club again. Somebody had attacked one of their own, and suddenly it seemed like it was all for one and one for all, even with the backbiting. Unconditional loyalty was probably a tradition in every club.
Except something hadn’t been right.
But he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.