Looking up from his computer, on which he had been playing solitaire, he said, “I’m one. Inspector Harry Yu. There something you’d like to report about a homicide, ma’am? Most people just call us.” Although his remarks could have been taken as sarcastic, both his voice and his countenance were expressionless. Asian inscrutability? A stereotype, but perhaps accurate.
“Actually, I was here this morning, visiting my mother-in-law—”
“She a cop?”
“No, a prisoner.”
“Complaints about the jail go to the Sheriff’s Department. City Hall.”
“Well, she didn’t make it sound luxurious, but I’m not here to complain about that. Is one of the detectives investigating the murder of Denise Faulk here today? I just got back from lunch at Citizen Cake with my mother-in-law’s lawyer and thought perhaps I should talk to—”
“Sit down. Your name would be?” He took out a notebook.
“Carolyn Blue.”
“You live here in town?”
“El Paso, Texas.”
He looked up. “I got a nephew-in-law teaching at a university out there in West Texas. Millard Fillmore Fong. Ph.D. in psychology. You know him?”
“No, but he certainly has an interesting name.”
“Yeah, my wife and her sister are into presidents and first ladies. I got a daughter named Dolly Madison Yu. She’s not real happy about that.”
“Well, you could point out that it’s better than Millard Fillmore. Dolly Madison was a heroine first lady, whereas Millard Fillmore—well,
I
don’t know anything about him.”
“I’ll tell her that. So you got something that would exonerate your mother-in-law? That is one tough lady. Reminds me of my grandmother.”
“Well, really what I wanted to say is that she’s a professor at the University of Chicago—”
“So she told us.”
“And a famous feminist scholar.”
“She mentioned that, too.”
“And she wouldn’t kill anyone. Especially not another woman.”
“Mrs. Blue, I was at the scene, and I questioned her, and I’ve seen the evidence. It’s my opinion that she did kill the accountant.”
“But have you looked at other suspects?”
“We asked around. She was the only person besides the corpse at the scene, bending over the victim, covered with blood, and the only one who had a loud fight with the woman that same afternoon. Not only did she have the victim’s blood all over her, but her bloody fingerprints were here and there in the office.”
“Did you search for other fingerprints?”
“Sure. Only the professor’s were bloody.”
“Well, did you find the murder weapon?”
“Nope, but we will. She must have put it somewhere around the center. It’s one of those old Victorians that rambles all over the place. Unless someone else got rid of it for her. But we’ve turned up no evidence of an accomplice. When they’re not taking flack from the ladies about obstructing business, we’ve got a team turning the place upside down looking for the knife.”
“But, detective, you owe it to your own sense of justice to look further than my mother-in-law. She’s just not the killer type. Women seldom—”
“Mrs. Blue, in San Francisco, women are as weird as men, although I’ll admit they don’t commit as many crimes, but your mother-in-law is more aggressive than most. And she’s got a record.”
“What?”
“Bunch of disturbing the peace charges, one inciting to riot, and an assault with a deadly weapon. She attacked a minister.”
“With a phone book,” I replied defensively. “He’d been making threats to women’s clinics, and then he made some to her. She had caller I.D. and confronted him at the next demonstration.”
“She still whacked him on the head with the Chicago phone book. Detective in Chicago says she sprained his neck.”
“The charges were dropped.”
“Yeah, and she had to drop the telephone harassment charges against him. It was a standoff.”
“Detective, she’s almost seventy.”
“Seventy-two.”
“Really? She never has said.”
“I’ll grant you that the women at that Union Street Center are a wild lot—lesbians, witches, counselors, blacks, whites, Asians, kids, old ladies. They’ve even got a woman that I’ll swear used to be a man. My grandmother thinks San Francisco is an urban nut house.”
“From what I read on the Internet, she may be right.”
“Grandmother Yu is always right. Look at city government. If I wanted to be a woman, the city health plan would pay for it.”
“Do you?” I asked, surprised at the idea. Inspector Yu did not look at all feminine. He had a broad, middle-aged body, a wide nose, and black hair that stood up in bristly clumps. On the other hand, I’d changed my mind about his being inscrutable. He was much too talkative for that.
“No, ma’am. I do not want to change sexes. It upsets friends and relatives, my fellow inspectors wouldn’t take it well, even the women, and after all that aggravation, I’d end up being a woman. No offense intended, but who’d want to be a woman?” His phone rang and he answered, “Inspector Yu. . . . You’re pulling my leg! . . . Well, tell the guy for me that murderers are supposed to take Sunday off. . . . Yeah, sure. I’m on my way.
“Gotta go.” He rose from his blue chair, put on a brown tweed sport coat, and tightened his tie.
“But what about the investigation of Denise Faulk’s death?”
“Unless the DA sends the case back in the next two days, I’d say you should get the professor a good lawyer. She’s going to trial.”
“I really don’t think that’s fair.”
“Confucius say, ‘Life not fair.’ ”
“He did not. That’s a Western saying.”
“Chinese,” he insisted. He patted his gun—to be sure it was there, I suppose—and stuck a cell phone in his pocket.
“Well, if you won’t help Vera, I’ll have to do it myself,” I said, feeling both disappointed and put upon.
“Feel free.”
He smiled at me, a very nice, twinkly smile, which gave me the courage to add, “At least you could recommend a good Chinese restaurant. I’m a food writer.”
“Eliza,” he said as he walked away.
“Eliza?” That didn’t sound very Chinese to me.
7
The Aging Tenor of Sacramento Street
Carolyn
A
s I waited
for the elevator, I decided that I didn’t really
have
to return to the hotel for the welcome mixer until 6:30. That gave me two hours, enough time to check out the apartment my mother-in-law wanted Jason and me to occupy. Although he’d already declined her offer, perhaps I could persuade him.
With that plan in mind, I bought a cup of low-fat latte at the coffee cart and caught a cab. The driver, who was drinking his own cup, didn’t mind me bringing mine into the cab. He said, “This is San Francisco, lady. Everyone drinks coffee everywhere.” Within ten minutes, moderately invigorated by the coffee, I clambered out onto an intimidating hill. After all the delightful Victorians with ornate bay windows and brightly painted, projecting roofs and woodwork, my Sacramento Street destination was rather plain and had steep stairs leading to the front door. It was locked, as Vera had said it would be.
From above my head a tenor voice was belting out an aria from Puccini’s
Turandot.
I rang the bell marked Bruno Valetti, wondering if it was Mr. Valetti singing “Nessun Dorma” above me.
Must be a record,
I decided, pressing the doorbell more insistently.
“Who’sa dere?” shouted the voice.
I looked up to see, thrust out the window, a brown face topped by curly, white hair.
“Carolyn Blue,” I called. “Who was singing Calaf ’s aria?”
“It’sa me! Bruno Valetti, besta tenor on Sacramento. What you want?”
“My mother-in-law, Professor Blue, wants my husband and me to move into her apartment while she’s—”
“Oh sure.
La Professora. Una minuto.
I let you in.”
Sunday strollers were staring at me as they passed by with wheeled grocery carts and chic bags from department stores on Union Square. I pretended an overwhelming interest in the names, some illegible, of the other tenants until Mr. Valetti swung open the blue door, grasped my hand, and kissed it. He was a little, wrinkled man with a scratchy chin that left a red mark on my hand, clothes that looked too big for him, and flopping slippers on his feet that did not keep him from bounding up two flights of stairs with me in tow. My lungs were afire and my calves aching by the time he opened the door to an apartment that was not my mother-in-law’s. It was his.
“Have a seat,
Bellissima,
” he cried, beaming at me. “I have-a gelato I make-a myself, an’ espresso.” Before I could protest, he was scurrying out of the room, calling over his shoulder, “I, Bruno Valetti, am-a lose my heart to
la Professora.
Many times I’m-a ask to marry her. You husband, her son?”
“Yes, Jason,” I replied, trying to imagine Mr. Valetti proposing to my mother-in-law. He probably didn’t even understand feminism.
“
Si, si.
Jason. Maybe him I ask for her hand. Many night, if she come home before it’s-a my time for sleep, I serenade her. Puccini, Verde, Donizetti, Bellini. I’m-a sing in the opera chorus here inna San Francisco. You like-a “Va Pensero” from
Nabucco
?”
“Very much,” I replied.
“Then I sing for you.” He was rattling utensils in his kitchen.
“Mr. Valetti, I just wanted to pick up a key and take a look at the apartment. You really shouldn’t go to so much trouble—”
“No trouble,
Bellissima.
I love-a sing for you.” And he launched into that beautiful, melancholy chorus sung by the enslaved Hebrews.
Ah, well. Obviously I was going to stay for song, gelato, and espresso, all of which I like. I perched on the edge of a worn, but elegant chair, one of two separated by a small, elaborately carved table. An embroidered scarf picturing the Virgin and Child lay on the tabletop. From that viewpoint, I surveyed the room. Dusty velvet drapes hung at the wide windows on two walls, while darned lace curtains billowed inward in the late afternoon breeze. There was a slightly bald, velvet chaise longue with a box phonograph on a table beside it. Vinyl records in worn covers leaned against the table legs. Opera posters from theaters in Italy and San Francisco decorated the walls. Stretching away at my feet was a bare, but highly waxed wooden floor with a dark wooden inset lining the edges a half-foot from the walls. The only other thing in the room was a large television.
“You like-a my TV?” asked Mr. Valetti, bustling in with a silver tray, which he placed on the table before taking the chair that matched mine. “I sell my pizzeria—is called Bruno’s Napoli—an’ buy apartment house an’ TV. For my old age. Once I make-a best pizza in San Francisco. Gotta place downtown, then sell an’ move to Nort Beach, then sell an’ retire here. But no stop-a singing.”
I nodded. “I read that the first opera was sung at the Tivoli Gardens, a beer garden. Then the owners opened the Eddy Street Opera House, where you could hear a famous singer for seventy-five cents. Of course, that was in the 1890s.”
“Sure,” Mr. Valetti responded. “Tetrazzini sing-a
Lucia
there,” and he burst into a rendition of “
Tomba Degl’ avi Miei
.”
I nodded, smiled, and said, “Wonderful gelato.”
“I make everyday. Only one flavor. When I have Bruno’s Napoli—twenty-thirty flavors. Best gelato in San Francisco. Best pizza. Pizza come from Napoli. Bruno come from Napoli.
La Professora
marry me, I teach her make gelato. Pizza.
Penne all’arrabbiata.
You know it?”
“I’m afraid not,” I replied, soaking a biscotti in my espresso.
“I make-a you
penne all’ arrabbiata.
You an’ you husband an’ you husband mother when she come-a back. Ah! What a woman! Smart. Healthy. Hair is-a good as mine. Good woman for take care of Bruno in old age.”
I had to stifle a giggle at the thought of Professor Vera Blue learning to cook Italian and taking care of the ebullient Mr. Valetti while he serenaded her with opera arias. “Mr. Valetti, she asked me to look at the apartment. She wants us to move in while she’s in the—ah—”
“You no know she’s in a jail? I go yesterday. Bring flowers an’ a pizza Margherita, but they no let me in. Say only
famiglia.
I say, ‘Bringa da priest, we marry, an’ I be her
famiglia.
’ ‘Go away, Bruno,’ they say to me. So I take my pizza home an’ eat it myself. Is good. I no lose my touch. So you wanna go in
la Professora’s appartamento.
Now we gotta problem. I need-a know you really her—”
“Of course,” I said quickly and opened my purse. “My driver’s license.” I handed it to him. “Family pictures.” I produced photos of the children and of Jason and myself.
While he studied each item carefully, I sipped the last of my espresso. “That’s-a Jason. So we go downstairs.” He rose, lifted a key from a board of keys, and led me downstairs, leaving his own door open behind him.
“Shouldn’t you lock up?” I asked nervously.
“Anyone try to steal my TV or my espresso machine, I got alarms I bring home when I sell Bruno’s Napoli. Make-a noise gonna wake alla dead popes in Rome.”
I trotted down the stairs behind him and entered Vera’s sublet, which was really quite nice—ledged woodwork high on the walls, the same bordered wooden floors, but these had lovely Persian carpets. There was a center room with a fireplace, although a dining room set and china cabinet occupied it, a bedroom and living room to the right, and a bathroom, office, and kitchen to the left. The office had built-in, glass-fronted cabinets. As I peered into the kitchen, which had a ground-level door leading to a backyard with flowers, a birdbath, and a separate garage, Mr. Valetti called, “Telephone winking.
La Professora
call an’ leave message. I come down an’ call someone else she wants to call.”
I scooted back into the office in time to hear a male voice saying, “God damn it, Vera, your dog got knocked up. And don’t blame me. She howled two nights in a row, so I thought she needed a walk and took her out. How the hell was I supposed to know she was in heat? This big lout of a rottweiler knocked me over to get to her. I damn near had a heart attack. Thought he was after me until he jumped her. So what should I do? Is there a morning-after pill for dogs? Should I get her an abortion? It’s Lawrence. Call me back.”