Peter Maravelis - San Francisco Noir

Watching her mother grab the bogus preacher within inches of her father’s corpse, Corella suffered a moment of clarity so searing she nearly got sick. Nothing would change, she realized. She’d be used. These two revolting people would get what they wanted then toss her aside. She was a tool. She was, again, baggage.

Raymont had brought a gun in case Robert had to be dealt with. Corella crept up behind him, reached inside his coat pocket.

Raymont tried to catch her by the arm, missed. “What you playin’ at?”

Corella gripped the weapon with both hands, waving it back and forth, at Raymont, at Lorene, at Raymont. She was crying.

Raymont held out his hand. “Put that down.” Then: “This was your idea, girl.”

Corella fired. Lorene screamed as the bullet hit Raymont in the shoulder. He howled in pain, cursed, reached for the wound, said, “I’ll kill you,” through clenched teeth, but then she fired again, this time aiming for his face. The round went through his eye. Lorene’s screams grew piercing. Raymont tottered, reached for something that wasn’t there, and slowly collapsed to the floor.

“My God, Corella, why, Lord, what-”

Corella raised the barrel till it pointed at her mother. “Quiet,” she said, barely above a whisper, then fired. The bullet ripped through Lorene’s throat. The second went straight through her heart.

Robert came back from the Philly cheese steak shop on Oakdale he liked, chewing gum to counter the smell of the greasy cheese and grilled onions on his breath. He found the door unlocked. Odd, he thought. Careless of me. Smokehounds could just waltz in.

He went straight for the bedroom, make sure all was well, and stopped in his tracks. A man he didn’t recognize sat slumped against the wall, a bloody hole where one eye had been, another in his shoulder. Lorene lay in a heap beside the bed, ugly wounds on her chest and neck. And Mr. Baxter lay in his bed, motionless as a hunk of wood, eyes and mouth gaping.

Corella sat on the floor against the wall, clutching a pillow, staring at nothing. A pistol rested on the floor, not far from her feet.

“They killed him,” she whispered. “I came in…” Her voice trailed away. She glanced up at Robert.

Robert’s eyes bounced back and forth-the gun, Corella. “You?”

“They killed him,” she said again. Practicing.

Robert studied her, then said, “It’s all right. I understand.”

He went to the bedside, checked to make sure Pilgrim was dead, then checked the other two as well. From a box beside the bed he withdrew a vinyl glove, slipped it on his hand.

“You hurt?” he asked Corella, walking over to the gun, picking it up.

She shook her head. Then, looking up into his face, she said, “He never signed those documents, you know. You get nothing.”

Robert crouched down in front of her. “Sometimes it’s not about the money.” With one hand he forced her mouth open, with the other he worked the barrel in. “Sometimes it’s just the right thing to do.”

Two days after the funerals, Marguerite Johnstone sat in her office, meeting with Pilgrim’s surviving daughter, Cynthia. She’d traveled from Hannibal, Missouri, for the services. Her mother had stayed behind.

“Your father had me draft two estate plans,” Marguerite explained, “one he executed the last time I met with him, the other he was saving.”

Cynthia tilted her head quizzically. “Saving?”

She was quite different from Corella, Marguerite thought. She had Midwestern manners, played the cello, wore Chanel. More to the point, she was Korean. Or half Korean, anyway.

“He wanted to see how his ex-wife followed through on certain promises. Obviously, that’s all moot now.”

Cynthia shuddered. “It sounds so terrible.”

The night of the murders, the police received reports of gunfire in the neighborhood but that was like saying it was dark out at the time. No one could pinpoint where the shots came from till Robert called 911. The detectives working the case had their doubts about his story but he’d held up under questioning and passed his gunshot residue test. Besides, the new mayor was lighting bonfires up their buttholes-their phrase-because of their pitiful clear rate on the dozens of drive-bys and gang hits in that neighborhood. Last thing they wanted to do was waste time on a domestic. As it sat, the case had a family angle and a murder-suicide tidiness to it, and that permitted them to close it out with a clear conscience. If justice got served in the bargain, fabulous.

“The documents your father actually executed leave everything to you. The Excelsior house has so little equity and is so heavily leveraged, I’d consider just walking away. Let the lenders fight over it. The Hunter’s Point lot-forget the house-might bring fifty thousand. That’s a guess, we’ll have it appraised. That leaves the cash payout from the annuity.”

Cynthia looked up. “And that would be?”

“In the ballpark of half a million.”

The girl’s eyes ballooned. “I had no idea. I mean, my father and I, we weren’t in touch. My mother, she’s become more and more…traditional. She felt ashamed. She and my father weren’t married and they-” Her cheeks colored. She wrung her handkerchief in her lap. “I wrote from time to time but never visited. Not even after his accident. Corella was the one-”

“It wasn’t Corella’s decision to make. It was your father’s property. That’s the way it works.”

“But-”

“From the way he talked about it, I gathered it was precisely the fact you didn’t hang around, waiting for him to die, that made him feel benevolent toward you.”

Cynthia pondered that, then shrugged. “It still feels a little like stealing, to be honest.”

“You can’t steal a gift, not under the law anyway.” Marguerite glanced at the clock, reminding herself: billable hours. “Are there any questions you’d like to ask?”

Cynthia put her chin in her hand and tapped her cheek with her forefinger. Too cute, Marguerite thought. The innocence was beginning to grate.

“I hope this doesn’t sound crass,” Cynthia said finally, “but when will I get my check?”

Marguerite bit her lip to keep from grinning. Families, death, and money, she thought. Didn’t matter your race or creed-or how far away you lived-the poison always bubbles up from somewhere, often long before the dear departed’s body grows cold.

“That depends on the insurance company administering the annuity. Why?”

Cynthia shrugged. “Nothing. I was thinking about maybe traveling.” She blushed again. “It’s my boyfriend’s idea, actually.”

Interesting, Marguerite thought. “‘Travel is a privilege of the young.’ I read that somewhere. Why didn’t your boyfriend come with you?”

“He lives here. We just met.” The color in her cheeks deepened. “It’s sudden, I realize, and he’s really not my type, but I’ve felt lonely here and he’s very kind. He introduced himself at the church service. You may know him, actually, he took care of my father.”

Russian River

There was a festival of tiny Virgin de Guadalupe statues casting nets into the water. They hopped along the edges of the flooded soccer field, whispering about uncles who used to fish there. Huge hairy homeless men huddled in the predawn drizzle: When will the sun come out again, Mothers? The men placed large eggs in front of the statues. Or not.

Gina trudged through the little park, her mouth opened in a big yawn, her heavy eyes unfocussed, her hair flattened in wet curls from the sputtering rain. Soccer field was flooded again-they built the thing on top of one of the Mission district’s old springs. Whole place used to be one big marsh, birds and fish and everything. Maybe someone should put a couple ducks there or something. Remind folks. Except the birds would probably get eaten. Would that be a good thing or not? Gina wasn’t sure. She’d figure it out over coffee.