Death Tax !
A Picasso Smith Adventure
By Hugh Lessig
Prologue
City Hall. Tuesday 7:30 a.m. Caffiene-cocked and ready. I replayed my editor's marching orders from yesterday.
"A faulty tax bill story?" His pencil-thin eyebrow arched on a fat, red face.
"Five thousand faulty tax bills," I repeated.
He thought for a moment as I studied the pattern of burst capillaries in his nose. Then he said: "OK, basic math: Sloth plus stupidity divided by bureaucracy equals some ying-yang's too dumb for his own good. No legs to Page One, though. I'm reading this on E-6, next to the crossword puzzle. Do you wish to live by the crossword puzzle, Smith?"
"I was going to have fun with it, boss."
He nodded around a bite from a cheese danish that came from the bilingual newsstand downstairs. "OK. OK. Maybe it's fun. Go play with it. Stroke it. Yank its earlobes. Throw some bourbon on it and set it on fire. Maybe someone will toss a bomb and people in Finland will care."
"I was with you until Finland, boss."
He tossed the danish in the wastebasket. "That Pollack downstairs is slowly poisoning me with his pastry. You mark my words."
"He's Croat," I said.
"I don't care what disease he has. He's got no right poisoning people."
The turntable in my head raced to 78 rpms as I approached City Hall. San Franciscans had 10 days to straighten out the mess which their city government had foisted upon them. This was the first day they could show up. I figured to meet the few kooks who had robbed themselves of a good night's sleep to stand first in line on the first day.
Record their sob stories. Let them bleeeeed.
I rounded the corner and stopped. The line had already formed. It had been forming. I saw 300 people, maybe more. They had brought lawn chairs and thermoses and whiskey flasks and The Daily Racing Form. Cigarette smoke hung in a palpable cloud above them. One guy had a grill. It was 7:32 a.m. and the place didn't open until eight o'clock.
I sauntered to the front of the line. Angry eyes burned holes in my back. I waited and prayed for a familiar voice and I had to get nearly to the front before it happened.
"Picasso Smith! Joo-hoo!"
The answer to my prayer was a plumpish woman on stout legs, half-Hispanic and half something else, perhaps Portugese, perhaps Cherokee. She wore gold on most of her fingers and clutched a tax bill in her right hand. She handed me a business card with her left.
"Brand new," she said. "Hot off the presses, like The Frisco Foil, si?"
It was blood red with gold letters.
Armandina's Escort Service 
Open to the pubic -- 24 hours
Serving the Bay Area since 1896
Armandina Flores, prop.
"That's real nice, Armandina. Tell me, my sweet pumpkin, when did this line start to form?"
She turned her head and spat. "I got here at 2 a.m. and a couple dozen hombres had already squatted ahead of me. Now it's gonna rain and there goes my makeup, hah? Bad for business." She wobbled slightly. I grabbed her elbow.
"You seem to be plastered," I said, not unpleasantly.
She smiled back, and her eyes focused a bit. "What else do you do when the city sends out 5,000 erogenous tax bills, then says everyone gotta show up at City Hall in person to get themselves fixed? El stupido. Everyone's pissed. I hear these things. They should take each bill and ram them up their councilmanic asses."
That last part came from our editorial. I gave her credit for the rest. I was about to make a joke when someone chimed in over my shoulder.
"Hey Foiler, why don't you interview someone who knows Eeen-gleesh?"
The man who spoke was roughly 25 years old. He had a wet, sneering mouth and a sunken chest. He stood with his thumbs hooked in his pockets and he jumped from one foot to another. I knew this without turning around, because that voice could only belong to one person.
"Sausage McPhoon," I said without facing him.
"You got eyes in the back of your head?" Fingernails on a blackboard, that voice.
"No, the aftershave gives you away," I said. "Old Spice Lime, like your daddy -- who is where, by the way?"
McPhoon pointed to the massive double doors of City Hall. "Somewhere in there, trying to save his ass, I suspect."
Sammy "Sausage" McPhoon was the son of Vito "Vitalis" McPhoon, the San Francisco City Councilman and head of the Budget and Finance Committee, the man who bore the responsibility for issuing the tax bills with wildly inflated numbers that were so wrong it was almost laughable. The Foil generally, and me personally, broke the story three days ago. I hadn't spoken to Vitalis since.
"What brings you down here, kid? I can't believe your daddy sent one of those nasty bills your way."
"He didn't." He laughed nervously. "I got a regular bill. But who's to say I shouldn't get a break anyway? I got rights to appeal my property assessment just like anyone else."
"I bet they always lower it, too."
"Funny how that happens." Sausage laughed and slapped me on the shoulder. "I figure they'll be so busy with daddy's mistake I can pretty much name my price." He looked over this shoulder. "I'm kinda surprised, though."
"Oh? How's that?"
"The city gave everyone until the end of the week to get down here. This is the first day. He must've struck a nerve."
"So I see. Please allow me to pry myself away from you."
I eased back through the line deciding who to interview. In just
a few minutes, the line had grown to 400 people, each

one holding a piece of paper in a clenched fist. They had
come here on their way to work. Now they were realizing
it would take all day just to get attention. The line undulated
like a snake about to strike. Tension coiled it. Anger fed it.
I had to work it. We had almost underestimated our own 
story. The air crackled with bad karma.
"Funny what a slip of paper can do, eh?"
A tired smile appeared between the stone faces. It was the Rev.
Fudgeball Roberts. We shook hands warmly. Several homeless 
people stood behind him. The padre looked a little rugged.
"You OK?" I asked him.
He jerked his chin toward the homeless. "Most of the people at
the boarding house got these bad property tax bills. They've never 
owned property, so go figure. Now I guess they're a little upset. I 
certainly didn't get any sleep last night." He held up a sheaf of papers.
"I came down to straighten it out, maybe give them a little support.
I'm still delivering papers, it seems."
The padre used to be the Frisco Foil's circulation manger before the
news business got the better of him. Or maybe he got the better of us.
We were about to catch up on old times when someone threw 
the bomb.

Chapter 1
It came from behind us. A lead pipe roughly 12 inches long, plugged and capped at both ends with a fuse that hissed I Got Page One Legssssss. It cartwheeled in slow motion toward the double doors of City Hall.
"Drop, padre!"
He was already down. The ground shuddered and took out my feet. I hit the pavement and stretched out. White smoke, clouds of it, all around me. The sidewalk felt cold and rough against my cheek. I blinked and the smoke disappeared.
A voice whispered gently in my ear: "Picasso. Get up. You're bleeding on my pantleg. There's a good fellow."
Pain now. Jackhammer heavy. A mixed-alcohol hangover on top of a bad fall down the stairs with a touch of the Asian flu. The bomb had gone off inside my head.
I propped myself up on hands and knees, then slowly rose on two feet. The padre steadied me. He held a white handkerchief stained red-black. I asked him if he was all right.
"I'm fine." he said. "This is your blood. You've been out for 15 minutes."
The bomber had a wild fastball. His pipe had sailed high and wide of the double doors and took out a gargoyle. Straight to first base for him. Later, I would be told that a chunk of concrete broke away from the wall, arced high in the sky, and glanced off the back of my head as it tumbled down.
The padre looked strangely nervous. "Do you know your name? Your job?"
"Fatty Arbuckle," I snarled. "I run an all-girl revue. Get a grip there, buckaroo."
I thanked him and started toward the front of the line. I stopped after five steps. A pool of blood had formed near me, but it wasn't mine. Red drag marks led off to the left. They disappeared into the damp darkness of an alley. A tax bill fluttered against the pavement. It was stuck fast by blood. I picked it up.
It belonged to Sausage McPhoon. He was nowhere to be found.
Sausage McPhoon, son of Vitalis McPhoon, who was the architect of this line, the councilman who people loved to hate on general principle, and who had at least 5,000 personal enemies today.
Someone stole his son.
I turned around and caught the padre's eye. "Make a call," I said tightly. "Tell my boss there's a possible kidnapping-murder in the city tax line, possibly politically related, and tell them to get a photographer down here. Keep the crossword puzzle on E-6 and fill the rest with Ann Frigging Landers. This is big, big, big, and I'm crashing on it."
"Sure. You OK?"
I found my hat.
Yeah," I said. "For a Tuesday."

Chapter 2
The cops came, and they brought the rain, and the rain became my friend. It swept down in sheets. Everyone put up their collars and ducked their heads and ignored me. I followed the blood-drag into the alley.
The trail stopped at an open manhole cover. Behind me, the rain had started to erase the drag marks. The cops had bunched themselves at the front of the line, where the bomb blast occurred. They hadn't seen the pool of blood.
My pulsed thrummed on a clean switch from caffiene to adrenaline. They don't know where to look.
Then a voice rung out like an alarm behind me. "Mr. Smith? Is that you down there? Are you working a murder?"
Through the rain, from the opposite end of the alley, came the unmistakeable form of our chief photographer, Bulbs Moore. She trotted toward me with her black bag and a pale yellow rain slicker that stuck to her like plastic wrap. Thankfully.
"Bulbs," I hissed. "Get over here."
She sauntered up to me. "You mean the murder? I was told there was a murder, and make no mistake, if there's no murder, someone will hear about this."
"Shut. Up. About. The. Murder."
"I see we haven't had our coffee this morning."
Bulbs Moore was 30 years old. She had bachelor's degrees in philosphy and marine science from Princeton, and a master's degree in American studies from the University of San Francisco. She was working on a five-act play that, I'm told, smacked of Henrik Ibsen. She began work on the play 10 years ago when she joined The Foil as a temporary photographer. She still considered herself in-between jobs and somewhat above the rest of us, which wasn't too hard to be.
I explained about McPhoon and the blood trail and how the rain had covered our tracks. "I think our story scooted down that manhole," I said. "The sewage mains are large enough to walk through. Let's go."
"A Foiler in the sewer. Isn't that redundant?"
"Very droll, Bulbs-ish. You scared?"
"I operate in the wide gulf between dramatic fantasy and people holding unusually large vegetables," she said. "But this will be one step closer to hell."
We descended the ladder. I pulled the manhole cover over us. We flicked on our cigarette lighters.
They built the sewer mains from bricks and mortar back in the 1850s. Heating conduits ran along the sidewalls, hissing fitfully, dispelling sulphur-flavored clouds. Above us, water condensed and dripped onto our shoes. I held my lighter closer to the floor.
The blood trail was narrow. It shined artery red. I suddenly realized what we had gotten ourselves into. We were alone in the dark looking for a bomb-tossing radical who had at least a shiv. Bulbs set her mouth in a straight line and screwed a flash into her camera.
"I'll lead the way," she said soberly. "If we come across a body, you shan't be in the picture."
I nodded. That was the right call, but I wasn't going to make it. Bulbs was OK.
We followed a clear trail of red, waving away gouts of steam. Walking underground, it became impossible to estimate distance or direction. We walked for maybe 15 minutes, maybe an hour. For all I knew, we could have been going in circles.
As we walked, the water began to rise. It sloshed over our shoes and threatened to wipe away the blood.
"Explain something to me," Bulbs said. "My tax dollars pay for this pipe to carry raw sewage. I note it is filling up with fresh rainwater."
"The city has two systems to handle water," I said patiently. "A sewage system and a stormwater system. We're in the sewage system. The stormwater system is above us. It has smaller pipes. One system leaks into the other. That means the sewage system will get overflow from the stormwater system in a heavy rain, such as the one that's going on right now. It's a constant problem. In fact, it's why your taxes went up last year."
Bulbs nodded. "Very impressive. And why is there infiltration from one system to another? Is that because of poor worksmanship? I have yet to see this phenomenon explained in any of your diatribes against City Hall."
"Honey, that's all I know. I avoid doing sewer stories, but sometimes you just pick up stuff."
We turned a corner. Suddenly, Bulbs stopped and fired her camera. She popped out the flash and screwed in another.
"What is it?"
"Up ahead. My God, Smith."
I shouldered her aside. The flash went off and temporarily blinded me. The blood trail widened through spots in my vision. Then I saw it, too.
It was maybe 10 inches long.
It was the source of the blood.
And quite clearly, it was why they called him "Sausage" McPhoon.

Chapter 3
Bulbs took three more pictures before I made her stop. Her face had taken on an unearthly glow.
"The shape," she whispered. "The curves . . . It belongs in the Louvre."
"Will you settle down?"
I walked past the appendage and almost ran into a ladder. Several rungs were spattered with blood. The ladder led up to the street, which was just as well, considering the sewer pipe was filling up fast with rain.
"We go up from here," I said.
"Wait," Bulbs said. She pulled out a film bag and acted like she was about to grasp the Holy Grail.
"You're taking it with you?"
"It's evidence for the authorities," she said. "And the rainwater might wash it away, considering the stormwater infiltration factor."
"I hate it when I explain too much."
I ascended the ladder and pushed aside the manhole cover. We found ourselves on a narrow street that ran behind City Hall. A door read "Private Entrance. City Employees Only." We had walked in a neat half-circle to the back of City Hall. The rain had ebbed. The street glistened black. The air might have smelled fresh, but given our clothes, we had no way of knowing. The jackhammer in my head faded to background noise. Bulbs clutched her camera bag with both hands.
"Our play is through there," I said, pointing at the door. "He might have gone anywhere on the street, but if I was him, I'd make for the first unlocked door."
The door opened to a storage room full of janitorial supplies. Toilet paper. Paper towels. The green powder your high school janitor threw on the floor whenever someone vomited. Another door led further into the building.
"No blood on the floor," I said. "But look."
Someone had broken into a box and taken out several rolls of toilet paper. We found a wastebasket full of it, stained with bright blood. Our quarry had bandaged himself and was on the move, minus his manhood.
We exited the supply room and found ourselves in a hallway. Arguing noises came from the left.
"I know where we are," I said. "The City Council Chambers are to the left. From there, we can reach the main Rotunda."
We went down the hall and opened the door. It brought us out near the council dias. To our left, six of the seven council members sat at the U-shaped table. Councilman McPhoon's chair was empty. To the right, where the public usually sat, I recognized a number of City Hall types from Accounting and Finance, mostly older women who used too much blue rinse. Not a good news source among them.
"Picasso Smith? Damn your eyes, man! This is a closed meeting!"
It was Mayor Tripp Wells. He was a short, wirey man who bounced like a terrier when he talked and was rumored to have undergone shock therapy. He held the gavel like a weapon, and you had to wonder about that, too. I tipped my hat and switched on my altar-boy smile. We had a history, me and him.
"Morning, mayor. Just checking up on the public's business. I note for the record that the tips of your ears are turning red. Tell me, are your little feet able to touch the floor when you sit in the big chair?"
The mayor's hand went self-consciously to his ears, then he pulled back. "This meeting is not open to the general public and certainly not to The Frisco Foil. It's an executive session -- "
"Authorized by?"
" -- authorized by me to deal with emergencies, such as angry, bomb-tossing mob that, as we speak, is threatening to bang down the front door of City Halll. I believe that's enough of an emergency, and I can't imagine what you would bring to such a discussion."
Bulbs stepped forward and held held high her trophy, now distended and stiff from lying in cold water.
"Your honor," she intoned. "We have brought you the penis of Sausage McPhoon."
Gasps gave way to swearing and an old biddy got sick on her shoes. Several women bolted from the room. Several more elbowed each other for a closer look. The council stenographer mouthed the word "penis" as if unsure how to spell it. From the back row, a mousy accoutant applauded with gusto. He wore a straight black tie and smiled hard enough for his face to break.
Bulbs turned toward the applause and curtsied, tastefully holding the penis off to one side. I wondered if they taught her that at Princeton.
The mayor banged his gavel until it cracked, which happened about once every fifth meeting. Splinters flew high in the air. Blindsided by headline inspiration, I took out my notebook and wrote :"Hizzonor Breaks Gavel, Could be Schlong Song."
Councilman Vitalis McPhoon chose that moment to enter the council chambers.

Chapter 4
McPhoon filled the front doorway in grand style. He weighed perhaps 350 pounds and stood 6 feet, 5 inches tall. He wore a three-piece suit and a diamond-studded tie-tack. He was eating a handful of beige jellybeans about the same color as his hair.
"What's all this noise?" He asked jovially. "Ah, good. The press is here."
I kept my notepad open. McPhoon had that I-Can-Explain-Everything look so often captured by the camera just as he was about to be indicted. He hooked his thumbs in his vest and smiled at the assemblage. After a few moments, the room quieted down.
"On this pesky tax bill problem," he boomed. "I can explain everything."
His ponderous footsteps echoed like the ticks of a grandfather clock as he walked to the front of the chamber. He passed up his regular seat and stood before the council dias. He bowed regally.
"Mayor, may I have the floor?"
Mayor Wells appeared to have blown a fuse. His eyes remained frozen on some far away place where women wore pearls to the dinner table and kids sold lemonade and men without penises mowed their lawn every Thursday night.
McPhoon harrumphed.
"I'll take that as a yes," he said. "First of all, let me formally apologize to the good people of San Francisco who received faulty tax bills. I can assure you, the error was not mine. I have spent all night in the basement of City Hall, following a paper trail of falsities and misinformation that have tied me to this embarassing situation. But I have found what I needed to find. The person responsible for this incident is none other than Samuel "Sausage" McPhoon."
Members of council gasped. The mousy accountant applauded again.
"If that's true," I said, "what about the situation outside City Hall?"
"I've been in the basement all night, Mr. Smith. I have no idea what is going on outside City Hall. Ask me something I don't know."
"Who threw the bomb?"
"There was a bomb?"
"And what about the penis?"
"There was a penis?"
Bulbs waved it at him. She wanted to make another speech, but I cut her off. "Your son has disappeared, McPhoon. He was in the tax line and found himself the victim of a Grab-and-Stab. We found his equipage in a sewer pipe and that led us here. Now tell us the whole story. You had him killed, didn't you?"
The council clerk scribbled furiously. When she asked aloud how to spell "equipage," Mayor Wells threw what remained of his gavel at her. The terrified clerk scooted under her desk.
"Stop writing this down! None of this is taking place! There are no minutes! There are no penises! There are no penile matters before us! No one was ever here! This meeting is officially adjourned and eradicated! I am declaring a General Omnibus Alert as granted to me under the War Powers Act! Get shotguns and fire hoses and Irish lawyers with suits! Someone put me on a big truck!"
He slumped to his chair. A vein pulsed dangerously in his forehead. McPhoon tsked-tsked and walked over to Bulbs and I.
"Never mind him." He jerked his thumb at the mayor. "Let me give you the rest of the story, Smith." He turned to Bulbs. "You may sheath that appendage, ma'am. It has nothing to do with taxes, although I suspect Mr. Smith could transform it into one of his famous earthy metaphors, given enough time."
Bulbs said, "You don't care about your son?"
"That's what I want to tell you," Vitalis said. "Sausage McPhoon, the author of this disaster, is not my son."

Chapter 5
I pulled up a chair and opened my notepad. I gave McPhoon a look that said he might have half a story.
"Almost 23 years ago, my wife gave birth to a son," he said. "She died at childbirth. I was told the baby died, too, although I never saw the body. I-I couldn't. After a year of mourning, I decided to adopt a baby. I needed to fill the hole in my life. I needed to forget what happened. I thought it was the way to go."
My pencil moved like a hot knife through butter.
"I adopted a baby boy and named him Samuel McPhoon. I treated him as my own. But I should have known better, Smith. Without a woman's influence, he grew up in my world. He learned the ways of politics and finance, and shall we say, my own methods of creative accounting. I tried to sway him towards athletics, science, even the priesthood. But it just caused friction between us. We are not father and son. He is merely a pale reflection of my blackest self."
"That's why he plays the stock market so well"
"Correct. It is also how he can manipulate city records to embarass me in front of the public. He's become a spoiled, vindictive man who comes close to being able to forge my signature, but not quite. I have all the necessary information here that will exonerate me. It is time to come clean about my family history."
He handed me a sheaf of papers.
"It's a sale, McPhoon," I said. "You've gotten us over the hump. But that doesn't explain who hauled off Sausage from that tax line, and who threw that bomb. And it doesn't explain his lost manhood."
"That," McPhoon said, "is a mystery."
We locked gazes. "You didn't try to have Sausage killed for implicating you?"
The councilman smiled easily enough. "Smith, I'm a cheat and a gambler. My sexual proclivities often defy description. I also wear day-old socks after turning them inside out. But I am no killer. If you're looking for Who Took the Sauce out of Sausage McPhoon, look not to me. But feel free to quote. I damn well like that."
I turned to Bulbs. "It's up to us, hon. That blood trail led us to a back room at City Hall. I suspect the answer is still roaming around in this building. This tax line thing and the stab-and-grab could still be related. Then again, it could be that two very different stories have converged on the same day."
I waved goodbye to Mayor Wells. He drooled and smiled. Deep down, which wasn't very far, I suspect he was happier than the rest of us.

Chapter 6
Bulbs and I went into the Rotunda. The cops had cleaned up the debris from the bomb and opened the main doors. The line had spilled into the building, wound around a corner, and presumeably stopped at the Treasurer's office. Bulbs snapped a picture. Several people turned and smiled.
"The line is clicking pretty good," I said. "These people weren't among the first to arrive. The front group must have come and gone already. We got to work fast, Bulbs. The cops will know about Sausage McPhoon soon enough, now that the council does."
As I spoke, one of the council clerks was jabbering to a sergeant who stood watch at the main entrance. She held her arms three feet apart. The cop's jaw dropped.
"Fish story," I said.
Then the clerk pointed to us. The sergeant -- I recognized him from past encounters -- pushed up his hat and nodded knowingly. I took Bulbs by the arm.
"C'mon," I said. "We need to disappear for a while."
We backtracked and made for the nearest deserted hallway. We started to run, then decided against it. We started to walk, then decided against it. We shot the difference with a brisk pace, chin up and shoulders back, making a series of turns. After the fourth or fifth corner, we found ourselves in the south wing of City Hall, which is where I wanted to be.
"There's a cloakroom here," I said. "An out-of-the-way place where I used to meet sources. It's down a dog-legged hallway. Ah ..... here." We ducked in and waited for the sergeant to pass. He trotted down the hall like a bulldog who couldn't find the scent.
"Thank God," Bulbs said.
"Amen," came a voice behind us.
We turned to face three people huddled in a far corner of the cloakroom: the padre, Armandina Flores and a third man whom I had never seen. It was the padre who had spoken. He supported Armandina with one arm. Her hangover had clearly set in.
The third man stood in the corner. He looked like one of the padre's homeless gents. His shiny, black eyes rippled over Bulbs from head to toe. She drew back as I tipped my hat. "Good morning, padre, Miss Flores, and to you, sir. I see someone knows this hiding place as well as I do."
The padre smiled nervously. "I remember you talking about it during my days when I walked through the newsroom. It's a good place."
"Si," Armandina mumbled.
The silence stretched to 10 seconds. Fifteen. The homeless gent wheezed. He looked maybe 45, but considering what street life does to a man, he could have been 18. His blue jeans shined with dirt. He wore a ragged blue shirt and a dark vest. He had bluish whiskers and a shock of healthy, black hair. Cleaned up, he could look all right.
"Care to introduce us to your guest?" I finally asked.
The man elbowed Armandina aside. She backed away and leaned miserably against the wall. The padre backed off, too, but he spoke: "Picasso Smith, Frisco Foil, meet Vincente McPhoon."
"Excuse me? There is no Vincente McPhoon. The councilman is Vincent "Vitalis" McPhoon."
"This is Vincente McPhoon," the padre said patiently.
"A relative?"
"Joo might say that," Armandina whined. "He is the son of the councilman. The real son."
I shrugged and reached out to shake his hand. That's when I saw the bomb.

Chapter 7
It was a lead pipe plugged at both ends with an unlit 6-inch fuse. He held a cigarette lighter in the other hand.
"Maybe I should just toss this in here." His voice stretched tightly over thin nerves.You'd like that, Smith?" I took out my notebook and began flipping pages.
"Why don't you toss me a story first? Unlike that thing, a story won't kill you. And while you're at it, show me some ID. If I had a nickel for every bomb-wielding homeless guy who claimed to be the son of someone famous, I'd be retired in Tijauana and working an honest job, like selling fake patents."
The man laughed like someone not used to laughing. "You Frisco Foilers think you know it all, don't you? Well you don't know me. Do they, Miss Flores?" He spat out the last words, and Armandina winced as if it hurt to hear her own name.
"What about it, pumpkin?"
"Picasso, I can't . . . "
"Look, we're hiding out in a cloakroom at City Hall with the cops looking for us. I spent the morning getting conked on the head and walking through a sewer. The City Council's holding secret meetings and the mayor just par-boiled his brain. None of which begins to address what our photographer has in her camera bag. I'd like to make some sense of this before deadline. Now, if you please?"
Armandina gathered herself.
"Twenty-three years ago, Vitalis McPhoon gave birth to a son . . . "
"Skip all that," I snapped. "I just spent a few minutes getting hizzoner's background history. Obviously, the baby didn't die at childbirth. What happened?"
Armandina's tired brain clicked ahead. "I stole the baby from the maternity ward and paid off a nurse and an assistant medical examine who would cover it up with a fake death." Her eyes went to her own faraway place. "I was in love with Vincent McPhoon, Smith. I was just a streetwalker back then. He was the newest member of the council. I wanted him to notice me for more than I was."
"What was your play with stealing the kid?"
"I planned to wait two days, maybe a week. Then I would return his son, saying I found him in a garbage can about to die." Armandina looked at the floor with swollen eyelids. "I knew his wife had just died. But I thought he would see me as a hero and, in time, learn to love me."
"What happened?"
"I returned to the Escort Agency -- I was assistant manager at the time -- and 48 hours later someone took him out with the laundry. He just disappered. I tried visiting hospitals and boarding homes, but considering who I was, no one volunteered any information."
"You never saw him again?"
"Not until two weeks ago," she said. "That's when he walked into Rev. Roberts' boarding home with this in his pocket."
She handed me a copy of a very old business card. It was gold with blood-red letters.
Juanita's Escort Service and Speakeasy Open to the public -- 24 hours. "Prohibition is over! We are no longer infected!" Juanita Juarez, proprietor.
The padre shrugged his big shoulders. "That's where I got involved. I saw this and called Miss Flores here. She came over and identified him through a birthmark just inside his left elbow. Then I took his fingerprints myself and went through City Hall birth records looking for a baby McPhoon. They match. He's the real deal."
I scribbled and without looking up, said, "What's your story, Vincente? Who raised you?" The kid coughed once. Then he seemed to settle down. "Someone dumped me at an orphange. I broke out when I was 10 years old. Since then, I've lived life on the street. I've dug through the garbage looking for a newspaper to read among the half-eaten sandwiches. Sometimes I even read yours." I could hear the mean smile that creased his face. "But when I found out who I was . . . "
"You were determined to get revenge? On whom? The councilman never did anything wrong. It's Armandina here you've got the problem with." I turned to her. "Sorry pumpkin, but I gotta call'em."
"My father was too weak to view the dead body of his son? And then he goes and adopts a 1-year-old and passes him off for the real me? It's the ultimate lie, Smith. You trust me, he'll have a different image after today. An image with his brains splattered over the wall!"
The padre stepped forward. "This was a bad catch on my part, Smith. Vincente said he wanted to come down here to make amends. He figured to do it on tax day because he'd get lost with the shuffle of people. He could slip in without making a splash."
"Yeah," the young man whispered. "I'm so publicity shy."
"So it was you who threw the bomb?"
"I threw the bomb. After the doors opened, it was mayhem in here. Armandina and the padre brought me in, and we've been hiding out here waiting for the excitement to die down." "And what about the penis?"
"There was a penis?"
Bulbs seized the moment. She unzipped her bag and tossed the appendage in the air like a juggler's bowling pin. She caught it with the business end facing away. The padre crossed himself. Armandina shrugged.
"All right, Vincente," she said, using it as a pointer. "It's time for you to tell us about this."
"W-What the hell?"
"Need an explanation, kid?" I snarled. "I'll start off and you can finish. This is the former manhood of one Sammy "Sausage" McPhoon. He was cut up and hauled off the tax line after you threw the bomb. Now, who would have a motive for being jealous of Sausage McPhoon? The man who lived the life you would have lived?"
"No! You can't frame me for this!"
"Right now, you're the prime suspect in the penis decapitation of the relative of a city official. That's a . . . what would that be, padre?"
"A felony three," the padre said. "Twenty years tops, at least 10 without parole, if there's mitigating circumstances." The padre had his hands behind his back. I knew his fingers were crossed. McPhoon looked back at me, as if seeking help.
"Do you know what they do in prison to men like you, McPhoon? How long will you last in Alcatraz before your own wee-wee ends up in the rec yard?"
Vincente flicked on the lighter and, with a shaking hand, held it close to the fuse. Bulbs approached him, using the penis like a pointer. "I'll blow us all up then," he whispered. "To hell with us."
Bulbs took another step forward. "Think of history, my boy," she said. "If you are truly innocent of this heinous deed, would you not wish to prove yourself? Do you wish to be referred to in an obituary as a "suspected penis-planker" "wang-wonker" or "manhood masher" by this newspaper? Do want to be remembered as the man with a single, 10.5 inch question mark hanging over his head? And a man who never met his father?"
I scribbled furiously. "Manhood masher. That's a keeper, Bulbs."
"Might I quote from the Book of Revelations," the padre intoned. "He who robs another Life's Gift shall have thy deed returned Ten-fold when the Rapture cometh, for the sun shall turn to sackcloth and the rivers run red with the blood of, um, the lifeless ones."
The padre was doing some serious finger-crossing.
"There you go, McPhoon," I said. "Do you want the Four Horsemen to come out of nowhere while you're squatting on the hot coals waiting for a drink? They carry swords, you know."
"Y-You people are crazy," he said.
Bulbs suddenly turned and said to me: "I've got the headline, Smith. McPhoon Son Blows Himself To Hell! Penis Soon To Follow!."
"What about me?" I asked her. "I'd be dead, too."
Bulbs closed her eyes and imagined: "Hack Reporter Also Perishes. See Page 6."
"You take that back!"
"I shan't."
"I rate Page One below the fold with a black border."
"Our Page Three Girls will go one Page One before that happens."
"A bit of jealousy there, Bulbsy? How about Failed Playwright Gets Swelled Head Blown Apart in Cloakroom Blast? Sound good?"
She threw a few multi-syllabic insults my way. A distracted McPhoon began to follow our argument. I edged closer to knock the lighter out of his hand. Just then, Armandina sprang into action. With surprising quickness, she drew out a butterfly switchblade knife and flipped it open with a skillful turn of the wrist.
The next thing I knew, the unlit bomb had dropped to the floor.
Two of McPhoon's fingers were still attached to it.

Epilog
My boss read the paper with his two massive feet propped on the desk. It was a sign of his pleasure. He hid behind a front page that screamed with glee:
Call Him Sausage No More!!
McFake hit by Tax Ax!
Cops say he's still missing-- 'or most of him is'
Inside: Vitalis explains all!
Exclusive photos you have to see!!
Mayor Wells takes sabbatical to Roswell, N.M.
He chuckled and said, "So it was Armandina who cut off the penis in the tax line then?"
"Yep. She said Sausage put the moves on her during the confusion. Tried to grope her. She's pretty good with that knife, boss."
"But she didn't drag him off? Didn't hide him in the sewer?"
"She couldn't have. Someone else did that."
He shook his fat, red head. "Sausage McPhoon will have to turn up one of these days. Maybe he can get a job as a tenor in the Bay Area Opera Company."
"Don't send me to the opera, boss. Every story has a hole, you know. We spent all day thinking our main story was a disembodied penis, but we found a larger story in the process. Sometimes you get days like that."
"They searched the entire City Hall building for him?"
I nodded. "It got confusing, though. Vitalis and Vicente had a pretty emotional reunion inside council chambers. Everyone was clapping. Someone brought in champagne."
The paper shook with another boss-chuckle. "I like the picture of Vincente stirring the champagne with his two amputated fingers," he said. "That Bulbs Moore has got some class. And the penis picture, too. She knew enough to hold a pencil against it for scale."
"She says they do that with dinosaur footprints," I said.
"Well Smith, why don't you take tomorrow off? Maybe I'll meet you over at The Chinaman's Tooth for some beers after a while."
He didn't have to ask me twice. I left his office and walked past my desk, ignoring the ringing phone. I took the freight elevator down to the first floor and walked out to the corner of Haight-Ashbury. I found my Packard and slipped in behind the wheel.
A note was taped to the dashboard.
"You got eyes in the back of your head, Foiler? I hope so."
I whirled around in the seat, but one was there. As I drove away, the unmistakable tang of Old Spice wafted through my car.
I rolled down the window to clear the air.
For the moment, at least.