Hildegarde Withers Makes the Scene Read online

  Onofre: I was pacing the docks with a heavy heart and a troubled mind. I had walked in the bitterness of my trial all the way along the Embarcadero to the vicinity of the old Barbary Coast and back again. I suppose, at nine o’clock, I was again approaching this vessel, but still some distance away.

  Kelso: What was troubling you?

  Onofre: I was troubled by the character and true nature of the man I had taken in good faith to be my captain on this pilgrimage.

  Kelso: Captain Westering? What about him?

  Onofre: He was a libertine, a monstrous fraud, a godless wretch.

  Kelso: What made you think so?

  Onofre: I am attuned to evil by the spirit of good. I was filled with fury and despair by the things that happened aboard this vessel.

  Kelso: What things?

  Onofre: I will speak no further of evil. Already I have spoken too much. Where it grows, I will root it out.

  Kelso: As the citizens around Haight-Ashbury would say, rooting out evil seems to be your thing.

  Onofre: It is my mission. Evil is insidious. It infiltrates the society of innocents in the guise of good. Even my poor flower children are tempted on all sides by the devils of evil. I have been called to destroy them.

  Kelso: Brother, you’ve got a job! But you’re talking now like an Old Testament eye-and-toother. What happened to love and light? Where’s your other cheek?

  Onofre: I have been given special dispensation. I am under holy orders to root out evil by any method, wherever it appears.

  Kelso: Are you, now! Did you have holy orders, for instance, to root out Captain Westering? The term’s appropriate, come to think of it. Did you come across some water hemlock somewhere when you were living, maybe, on roots and berries in the wilderness?

  Onofre: I know nothing of hemlock. I did not kill Captain Westering.

  Kelso: You didn’t bleed a few hemlock roots and slip the juice in the captain’s sherry?

  Onofre: I did no harm to Captain Westering. I did not lift my hand against him. I returned to remonstrate with him, that’s all, and found him dead. Let the woman speak! (Pointing at Miss Withers with dramatic sternness, very much as Uncle Sam pointed from posters at shoe clerks during the Kaiser’s war in Miss Withers’ youth.) She was bending over his body when I came! (Not quite true, inasmuch as Miss Withers had been, in fact, standing a pace or two away from the body with her back to it.)

  Kelso (rubbing his bald scalp with his wad of handkerchief): You could have poisoned the sherry any time before. That’s the hell of this mess. But let it go for now. That’s all, Sylvester. You can go back to detention.

  Captain Kelso stopped rubbing his scalp and stowed the wad in a pocket of his limp jacket. “I’ve got to step this up,” he said glumly, “or we’ll be here from now on. What did you think of Sylvester as a starter?”

  “He is,” said Miss Withers, “as mad as the Hatter or the most consummate fraud since Cagliostro. Possibly he is some of both.”

  “With maybe a little Borgia thrown in for good measure. What do you think of him as a suspect?”

  “Fanatics who follow the dictates of God are dangerous. They are always right, always justified in any atrocity, and they always have, besides, someone to pass the buck to if they are caught.”

  Captain Kelso, who was secretly a modest and uncertain man, never quite sure of anything, let alone right and wrong, stared at the floor with a sour expression that was far from an accurate reflection of his true feeling. The more he was around this old sister, the more he liked her. No wonder she had been able to gull the whole damn Homicide Bureau of the New York Police Department. He tried to think of a left-handed amenity that wouldn’t reveal too much of what he was thinking, but before he could come up with anything, the door opened again, and the ex-policeman was ushered in. He stood quietly in front of Captain Kelso, who was seated at a small table with his notebook spread open before him, and Miss Withers was suddenly aware of deadly tension in the cabin. It was as if, she thought, the air was suddenly saturated with an odorless and sensitive gas that would explode in a blinding flash at the slightest disturbance—a raised voice, an abrupt gesture, a heated word.

  Kelso (his voice flat, almost a monotone, clearly under rigid control): Nathan Silversmith, spy, pervert, sadist, turncoat.

  Silversmith: I see that you remember me, Captain.

  Kelso: How could I forget you? But never mind that. What are you doing on this tub? You a flower child these days?

  Silversmith: I’ve seen the light, Captain. I’ve been touched by grace. The Prophet Onofre has shown me the error of my ways.

  Kelso: Like hell. Who are you spying for now? Who planted you in this flock of doves?

  Silversmith: Captain, you hurt me. I seem to smell the faint odor of prejudice.

  Kelso: Before we’re through with this business you may be smelling cyanide.

  Silversmith: For killing the good captain? I hate to disappoint you, but you’re down the wrong road. Why should I kill him?

  Kelso: Why not? Just a bad habit, maybe. You killed your wife, didn’t you?

  Silversmith (quietly venomous): Cool it, Captain. That’s criminal slander.

  Kelso: Sue me. Before you do, though, you can answer a few questions. Where were you when Captain Westering died?

  Silversmith: When did he die?

  Kelso: Nine. Thereabouts.

  Silversmith: I was ashore, smelling the oyster pots.

  Kelso: Where ashore?

  Silversmith: At Fisherman’s Wharf. In a bar on the Embarcadero.

  Kelso: What time did you get back?

  Silversmith: Early. Must have been shortly after the good captain’s passing. You and your heat hadn’t made the scene yet.

  Kelso: Did you see anyone on the dock as you approached?

  Silversmith: There was someone standing there, like he was waiting for someone or snooping. The fog was heavy. I couldn’t see him very well.

  Kelso: I know about him. Anyone else? Someone moving away?

  Silversmith: No one else.

  Kelso: A hippie? Long hair, dark glasses, in a hurry.

  Silversmith: You’re bugging me, Captain. I told you no. No one.

  Kelso: What did you do when you came aboard?

  Silversmith: There were three chicks and a couple of cats in the stateroom at the fore end of the passage. Just having a quiet ball to pass the time. Listening to that long Texas cat sing folk songs. I invited myself in. Crashed the pad, as they say in the Hashberry.

  Kelso: Did you see or hear anything unusual while you were there?

  Silversmith (looking at Miss Withers): Not until this old chick suddenly materialized in the doorway and told us that murder had been done and the cops called.

  Kelso: You were a cop once. A rogue cop, maybe, but still a cop. You’ve been living here in a litter of kooks long enough to have a notion or two. Who do you think poisoned Captain Westering?

  Silversmith: Sorry, Captain. Get your own notions.

  Kelso: I’ve already told you who my favorite suspect is. Or didn’t you get the point? You. Nathan Silversmith. Now tell me yours.

  Silversmith: You wouldn’t try to frame me, would you, Captain?

  Kelso: Frame? Who said anything about frame? It’s possible, of course, that I might be fooled by circumstantial evidence or something like that. Anybody can make an honest mistake.

  Silversmith: Are you sure Westering was murdered at all? Maybe he died of botulism. God knows we’ve been eating enough garbage out of cans. After all, this is supposed to be a gathering, as you said, of doves. Sweetness and light. Peace, brother, peace. Ho Chi Minh, here we come, bearing the olive branch. Who here would do violence to his brother? Even a brother with the faults of a Westering? At least, without leaving a flower on his chest?

  Kelso: I think I may puke. Get out of here, Silversmith. And don’t go off smelling any more oyster pots until I say you can.

  Silversmith got. Captain Kelso pushed away from the table, heav
ed to his feet and lumbered across to a porthole, where he inhaled a chestful of wet air scented with sea-salt and oyster pots and all the other enchanting smells of San Francisco at the shag end of a long night.

  “When you’ve had enough,” said Miss Withers, “I’d like a turn.”

  Captain Kelso, pulling his nose out of the porthole, turned and tried a sympathetic grin, but it didn’t come off. His face and scalp were the greenish color of bile, and the bitter taste of bile was plainly in his mouth. He looked sick. Returning to the table, he sat down again.

  “I know Mr. Silversmith from time past,” he said. “Maybe you drew that conclusion.”

  “And until you see into his eyes,” Miss Withers said, “he looks such an ordinary, pleasant young man.”

  “He’s neither ordinary nor pleasant nor very young. How old would you say? Thirty? He’s nearer forty.”

  “You accused him of killing his wife. Why?”

  “Because he killed her, that’s why.”

  “Then why is he free?”

  “No proof. Just the knowledge that he did. He’s a clever lad, our Nathan Silversmith. A smooth operator. After the Korean War he turned up in San Francisco with a ruptured duck. Or were ruptured ducks only after World War II? I don’t remember. Anyhow, an honorable discharge. He’d been in the Military Police, and he had a very bright idea in his head. He conned someone into putting him on the force as an undercover cop. The beats were infesting North Beach then. What he’d do, he’d disguise himself with a wig and dark glasses and appropriate rags and crash their pads. He even learned to fake a blast. Pretend to get high, I mean, on pot or some drug. Ostensibly, the idea was to get leads on the mainliners and the pushers of the hard stuff, heroin and such, but actually nothing ever came of it except the arrest of a lot of relatively harmless characters whose real crime was not liking the rest of us and showing their dislike by dressing different and living different.

  “Well, most of the time I don’t like the rest of us much, either. But let that go. Silversmith was an undercover cop. An informer. Trouble with him was, he was never quite sure which side he was on. If he’d been in international espionage, he’d have been what’s known as a double agent. What’s more, he was a sweet little sadist. He had the moral convictions of an alley cat. None at all. He didn’t really care a damn what the beats did, but he got his kicks from seeing them raided and harassed and knocked around by the more enthusiastic boys on the raiding squads. As a matter of fact, he found some of their habits so satisfying that he began to adopt them. For example, he discovered that it was a lot easier to have a blast than to fake one. There were other things, but let them go too. He didn’t last long. He was dropped from the force. No formal charges. Just dropped.

  “Meanwhile, somewhere along the way, he’d picked up a girl. He married her. She was a pretty kid, about twenty when he married her, with nice eyes and long brown hair that she let hang free. You know the kind. They’re all over the place. Holding love-ins in the Panhandle and sit-ins at Berkeley. Bucking the Establishment, whatever that is, however they can. There wasn’t any harm in her, and what’s more important to me, as a member of the so-called Establishment, no harm had come to her. Not until she married Nathan Silversmith, that is. I don’t know what he taught her. I’d rather not. Anyhow, she got onto acid. LSD. You know how LSD affects you? Sister, it sets you free. It makes you a swinging, soaring cat, ten feet tall. It makes you want to fly. That’s what it did, one night, to young Mrs. Silversmith. So he says. Mr. Silversmith says. They were standing on a little balcony outside their pad, three floors above the pavement, and all of a sudden she said, he says, “Nathan, I’m going to fly,” and over she went like a swinging bird. A little later we scraped her off the pavement and carried her away in a basket.

  “Well, you get bruised, taking a header three floors onto the pavement. Bruises and abrasions. But you don’t get them in all the places she had hers. She’d been beat up, I know that. She could have been tossed off that balcony, and she was. I know that, too. But how could I prove it from a few extra bruises? Besides, she was only a disinherited kid peddling flowers in a psychedelic dream. No great loss.”

  All this while, for the duration of Captain Kelso’s bitter monologue, Miss Withers, like a good therapist, had sat quietly and listened. Now that it was over, catharsis complete, she was quiet a few moments longer before she spoke.

  “I wonder,” she said, “what’s he’s doing here? Surely a man like that has no interest in oriental philosophy or world peace or anything of the sort.”

  “Who knows? God and the devil and Nathan Silversmith. Maybe, like I said, he was planted, though I doubt it. Maybe he’s just sick of San Francisco, and just wanted to take a long ride to anywhere. He’s that kind of crumb. He doesn’t give a damn which side of anything he’s on, the law or anything else, just so long as he gets out of it the kind of kicks he needs. A long voyage like this was supposed to be, thousands of miles on an old tub in what showed promise of being a sort of marathon love-in, must have offered a lot of pleasant prospects to sweet Nathan.”

  11.

  THE LONG HOURS OF inquiry diminished slowly in a fantasy of distortions brewed in minds made erratic by corrosive fatigue. Captain Kelso made methodical notes in a limp-backed book that threatened near the end to run out of clean pages. Miss Withers, who had nothing at hand to write with or in, watched and listened and tried to give in her retentive memory some kind of sane order to a welter of testimony. In her effort to accomplish this almost impossible task, a couple of things became clear as the parade of witnesses passed in and out of the late captain’s stateroom. In the first place, this incredible crew had been assembled inside the Golden Gate by the simple, seductive method of advertisements, written by Captain Westering and by him placed in selected metropolitan newspapers across the country. The remarkably effective grapevine of an active underworld had done the rest. In the second place, after a period of stagnation and frustration, prolonged by lingering hope and sustained by canned beans, the good yacht Karma had become a pustule of festered relationships. And the pathogen was Captain Westering himself.

  Miss Withers, in this confusing performance of extraordinary characters, could never afterward remember the dramatis personae in order of appearance, but she could summon clearly the vision of each, neatly tagged and classified in her mind, just as she could still summon the visions of urchins, now aged or dead, who had done tedious time in her classroom in years past.

  Bernadine Toller. “My friends call me Bernie.” Cocktail waitress from Denver, Colorado. A friend had told her about Captain Westering’s call for Argonauts, and she had taken her savings of tips out of the bottom dresser drawer and headed for San Francisco. Sort of impetuous. She did things like that. Sort of impetuous. Captain Westering was cool, but cool. He was simply out of sight. She and the captain had had a thing going; it was something you could just feel, like goose pimples. But that was before Lenore Gregory made the scene. Captain Westering was hung up on the Gregory chick. She had the captain shucked. Bernadine Toller looked at Miss Withers with chilling empty eyes and smiled a terrible empty smile. Her voice was frail and brittle, with a quality of little-girl demureness that was somehow as shocking as a smirk on the face of a corpse. About her was an aura of nihilism all the more dreadful for being dressed in a pinafore.

  Delmar Faulkenstein. Folk singer. Originally from Dallas, Texas, but traveled around. Made the minor spots, the coffee shops and whatnot, where there was enough bread to hire one voice and a guitar. It wasn’t much, but it was his trip. He had been across the bridge in Sausalito when he heard about Captain Westering’s projected voyage. It sounded like a gas, and here he came. As it was, the whole thing had turned out to be a bummer. Not that it was any big surprise. The captain was a phony. The captain was born for killing. He flipped over the chicks, that was his trouble. And vice versa, to make it worse. Things got loose on a little tub like this. Everyone practically in everyone’s lap, so to speak. He wasn
’t the heat, not Delmar Faulkenstein, but he’d know where to look for the captain’s killer if he was. He shook his lank hair, shaped six feet of ample curves with his hands, and seemed to go suddenly to sleep on his feet with his eyes open.

  Corrine Leicester. The long-legged dancer from Los Angeles who had shared the stateroom next door with Miss Withers during detention. She did bits in movies, on TV. She had been on the verge of her big break, she was sure of it. She had caught the attention in certain quarters of certain people. Powerful people. But then she had heard from a certain TV writer of Captain Westering’s pilgrimage. She had to come. She simply couldn’t help herself. She felt very strongly about the war, all the killing and everything, and it was like a call she couldn’t deny, no matter what sacrifice she had to make. The TV writer had felt the same way. About war and peace and all. They had often discussed it with each other.

  Why hadn’t the TV writer, if he felt so strongly, volunteered for the pilgrimage himself? Well, he had. He was waiting with the others this very minute. They had come up together from Los Angeles. His name was Adrian Hogue. What had been the nature of the relationship between her and Mr. Hogue? They had been good friends. Intimate friends? Well, very good friends. What had been her opinion of Captain Westering? Captain Westering had been a rare man. He had something magnetic about him. He drew one irresistibly. Had he, for instance, irresistibly drawn Corrine Leicester? She had been fascinated by him. She wouldn’t deny it. What had been the reaction of Mr. Hogue to this? He hadn’t liked it, of course. In fact, he’d been quite difficult.

  Did Miss Leicester know Miss Gregory? Yes, of course. Everyone aboard knew everyone else. What did she think of Miss Gregory? To tell the truth, she hardly thought of her at all. Miss Gregory was, she supposed, attractive in a colorless sort of way. But immature. Quite naïve, really. Captain Westering had recognized this. He had tried to be kind to her. Had paid her little extra attentions, and so on. Miss Leicester, thought Miss Withers, had suddenly closed up. She was exercising control and dealing in understatement. She posed gracefully in her leotards, her long legs dominant. They were, in spite of the muscle knots in the calves, very nice legs.