Paper Phoenix: A Mystery of San Francisco in the '70s (A Classic Cozy--with Romance!) Read Online Free Page A

His hair, a razor cut grown too long, looked greasy. His belly hung over the pants of his ghastly brushed denim leisure suit. He rested his knuckles on the desk and leaned toward her.
    “Well.” He managed to convey hostility in the single syllable.
    “Hi, Ken,” said Betsy calmly.
    “So Hawkins has gone to his reward.” The man had a resonant, theatrical voice. I almost thought I had heard it before. His face, with its straight, fleshy nose and prominent chin, looked familiar too. Was he an actor? I flashed through the productions I’d seen by the local repertory company, but couldn’t fit him into any role.
    “That’s right.”
    “Who’s in charge now?” His belligerence was deepening.
    “Andrew Baffrey.”
    “He in?”
    Betsy shook her head. “Sorry. He’s gone out for a while.”
    The man leaned heavily across the desk and gripped Betsy’s shoulder. Her expression didn’t change. “You sure he’s not around?”
    “Absolutely.” Betsy slid away from his grasp.
    The man staggered, righted himself, and gazed blearily around. He wandered toward me and sank down on the other end of the couch. I could smell the liquor now. His eyes slid over me without interest, and I was again positive I knew him. “Baffrey, huh?” he said.
    “Right. But he isn’t in.”
    “Is he as big a son of a bitch as Hawkins? Or is he a human being?”
    “Andrew’s OK.”
    He leaned forward in a parody of earnestness. “Look, hon. Now that Larry’s gone, don’t you think this rag could print a retraction? I mean, enough’s enough.”
    Betsy shook her head. “You won’t get anywhere with that, Ken. The story was true and we could prove it. Like Larry told you, the subject is closed.”
    “The subject is closed,” he mimicked. “Shit. Larry Hawkins thinks it’s all right to take away a man’s job for the sake of a story? What kind of screwed-up values are those?”
    Now I knew who he was. Kenneth MacDonald, Channel Eight’s local news attempt to duplicate Eric Sevareid. He had been the picture of rock-solid propriety, narrating three-alarm fires, murders in the Tenderloin, drug busts in Berkeley, the new gorilla at the zoo, and the mayor’s birthday party all with the same sonorous pomposity. He’d had an editorial segment— “The View from Here,” or something like that— in which he’d strung together platitudes on subjects of local interest.
    I stared at him. He’d been ruggedly handsome, with features worthy of Mount Rushmore. Now, his face was puffy, bloated, his eyes insignificant in the surrounding flesh. I remembered that I hadn’t seen him on Channel Eight lately.
    “I’ll tell you again,” Ken was saying. “I told Larry, and I’ll tell you, and I’ll tell this Andrew character that I didn’t know who owned that place. It was just a two-bedroom cabin at Tahoe, not a palace, for Chrissakes.”
    “I think Larry’s point was that people in your position have to be careful,” Betsy said.
    “You do? Well, I think Larry’s point was to sell a few more copies of his miserable paper, and he didn’t care whose ass he had to trample to do it.” Ken got laboriously to his feet. “It’s no wonder the little rat bastard killed himself. He probably realized what a creep he really was.” He shoved his chest forward, fists clenched at his sides.
    Betsy didn’t respond. Under her steady gaze, his stance gradually lost its antagonism. When he next spoke, it was with more bravado than conviction. “I’ll be back. I’m going to talk to Baffrey about that retraction. You haven’t seen the last of me.”
    “Sure,” Betsy said. “Just give us a couple of days to get on our feet, OK?”
    “Right,” he said, apparently mollified. For the first time, it came to his attention that I was in the room. He looked at me with an inquiring stare.
    “That’s Maggie Wilson,” Betsy said.
    The change in him was instantaneous. Meeting a member of the public, he was the superstar television commentator once