Zacharius was aware that Calvin stood to make much more money by stringing information for some of the better-known reporters, the police, or even the feds. But the informant never said no to him, and when Zacharius’s stories weren’t selling, which at the moment was most of the time, Calvin often did what he could to help.
This night Zacharius was fearful not only of exposing his resourceful snitch but of putting himself in harm’s way as well. Now after ten years, he was going to use any publicity surrounding Rosemary Thomas’s memorial to show the world that she had not killed her husband, as he had always maintained in his initial investigation and reporting. His articles had largely been dismissed by his peers and the public, but Zacharius always knew there was more to the story, and not surprisingly he’d never been able to shake this one case.
He’d known Rosemary for twenty years. He’d even known Chris. Zacharius had been to their wedding, their children’s christenings, birthday parties. Rosemary had cried on his shoulder after discovering the first of Chris’s infidelities.
Altogether, he had written four articles about the highly publicized murder. One of them had centered on the physics of the crime itself, stressing Christopher Thomas’s size and weight and the difficult logistics of getting his body into the eight-foot-tall, two-hundred-pound iron maiden. Then moving the corpse and torture device from the site of the actual murder to some sort of truck, to the Lufthansa flight that transported the body overseas. Another one traced Rosemary Thomas’s movements throughout the week prior to her husband’s murder, up to the widely heard verbal battle after Christopher had demanded a divorce. The timeline ended with her allegedly sedating him prior to killing him and laying him out in the museum’s iron maiden.
The final article was speculative, but Zacharius considered it his best. It was an in-depth investigation of Christopher Thomas’s life, focusing on his ever-changing finances, his overseas trips as gleaned from photocopies of his passport, and his relationship to an underworld thug, an art fencer, and possibly a Chinese drug lord named Roger Hong, another witness who had turned up dead.
But Zacharius was largely discredited-partly because of his friendship with the Thomases, particularly his friendship with Rosemary. It eventually got to the point where the news biggies wouldn’t even read his stuff, let alone buy it or at least check the facts.
Now after ten years, he hoped to regain his credibility among his peers and the public.
The meeting place Calvin had chosen was number six on a list of ten locations Zacharius had provided in and around the Castro, Mission, and Haight districts. Zacharius would institute a meeting by taping a small piece of paper beneath the lip of a bar on Divisadero Street at precisely 4:00 p.m. Within a few hours, a piece of paper with a number from the list and a meeting time would be taped in the same place. This evening, the number directed the reporter to a trendy, always crowded coffee shop, just a few blocks off Golden Gate Park.
“Mr. Zacharius, I presume.” They’d known one another for years, and Calvin greeted him the same way each time they met. The informant slipped into a seat directly behind him.
Zacharius turned to face him.
Calvin was a thin, African-American man in his fifties, physically unremarkable in almost every respect except for his eyes, which were dark and feral, probing one moment, scanning the room the next, always on red alert. But his averageness allowed him to maneuver in society, listening in on conversations as he passed, noting who was pausing to speak with whom.
“You look tired,” Calvin said.
“I am tired. Sometimes it’s hard-” Zacharius frowned. “I was the best, you know, the best.”
“I know. You were damn good, Hank.”
Zacharius sighed. “They tried to ruin me, Calvin. From the moment I claimed Rosemary Thomas was innocent. First they blocked the article I wrote detailing the facts of the case, and how she couldn’t have killed him. Then they set about to discredit my theories about the posse of people who each had the big three-method, motive, and opportunity-by portraying me as some whack job.”
“That’s old hat, my man. Probably true but old hat just the same.” Calvin leaned forward. “But you didn’t seek me out to whine, did you, Hank?”
Zacharius worked some of the tension from his sloping shoulders. “I’ve got a hundred and a half I can give you right now, but it’s been a little hard lately keeping the boat afloat these days.”
“When I need the money, I’ll send up a flare. What is it you want to know?”
“Thanks.” Zacharius stared down at his hands, trying to get past his embarrassment.
“So, there’ve been developments, yes?”
Zacharius motioned the waitress over, ordered a coffee light.
He then slipped the invitation out of his jacket pocket and, after scanning the coffee shop once more, handed it to Calvin. “This arrived at my place today. There’s a stamp on it, but it never was posted-just slid under the door of my apartment.”
“The Tony Olsen?” Calvin raised an eyebrow.
“Yes. He was a friend of Rosemary’s.”
Calvin whistled. “Why do you think Tony Olsen wants to open up this old wound?”
“That’s why I’m here. I was hoping you might have some theories.”
The informant shook his head. “I don’t, but it wouldn’t take me too long to come up with some. Men don’t go from obscurity to being as rich as Tony Olsen is without mucking about in a few compost heaps.”
“And?”
The waitress arrived with the coffee. Zacharius drank half of it in a single gulp
“Maybe it’s an owed favor to that cop who went nuts after the Thomas execution. Jon Nunn. Maybe this memorial is supposed to give that washout another chance-get all the principals together, see what happens.”
“What’s Olsen got with Nunn?”
“Don’t play so naïve, my man,” Calvin said “You know as well as I do what the cops are like in this city. A lot of them play both sides.”
Zacharius remained silent.
“Speaking of cops who play both sides, ever hear of Artie Ruby?” Calvin asked.
“Artie who?”
“Artie Ruby, the cop who got into trouble for walking off with evidence years ago-white, powdery evidence from what I remember-and all of a sudden, just like that, he wasn’t a cop anymore, and he was working security at the McFall Museum.”
Zacharius felt a rush of adrenaline. “Why would a museum hire a rogue cop to provide security?”
Calvin chuckled. “You know Chris Thomas was crooked… drugs, forgeries, you’ve heard the rumors.”
“And…”
“If you’re so convinced Rosemary Thomas didn’t kill her husband, you might want to talk to Ruby. I hear he’s available for pretty small money.”
“Any ideas where I can find him?”
Calvin shrugged. “Know a place named Steve’s?”
“The Bogie rip-off by the Embarcadero?”
“I would start there.”
Neon and black paint.
Zacharius felt that the attempt by the management of Steve’s to create a noir ambience had failed miserably. Still, despite or perhaps because of the stench of stale booze, body odor, and cheap perfume, the place was busy. It took a twenty, but a heavily rouged barfly on the last stool pointed him to a back room that was hazy with cigarette smoke. He spotted Artie Ruby immediately-a skeletal, Runyonesque man with serious bags under his eyes, and the stub of a cigar poking out of the corner of his mouth. The worn leather easy chair next to the former cop was vacant. An ashtray on a stand next to the chair was filled to overflowing.
“So much for California’s fearsome smoking ban,” Zacharius said, moving the ashtray a few feet away and settling down in the chair.