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Brautigan wanted to read her a new piece of his writing and asked her to call back in five minutes. When she did, he didn’t answer. After that, she tried calling several times but was unable to reach him. Marcia Clay said that during her last conversation with Richard he “seemed to be saying his goodbyes.”
    Tuesday, October 30, 1984, was the final day Sgt. Russo spent interviewing friends of the late Richard Brautigan. He made only two calls, the first at “1440 hours” to William Brown, a novelist who operated a landscape gardening business from his home on Brighton Avenue in Bolinas. Bill Brown had known Brautigan since the fifties but had not seen him recently. Pressed for particulars, Brown said as far as he could remember he thought he might have encountered Brautigan in Bolinas four or five weeks ago, just before his death.
    Bill Brown stated that Brautigan was given to intense depression, especially when drinking. He referred to Richard as “a heavy drinker,” adding that his personality “seemed to go downhill when he was drinking.” He’d been particularly depressed during the last few months. Money was possibly at the root of the problem. Brown also mentioned Brautigan’s admiration for Ernest Hemingway, saying they had talked some about Hemingway’s suicide, although the subject of Brautigan actually taking his own life had never come up.
    At 3:00 PM, Sgt. Russo made his last call, to Andy Cole, who refused to give his address. Living at the time in Bolinas, Cole said that he first met Brautigan in San Francisco approximately twenty years before. In his opinion, the author appeared industrious recently and happy with his current work. His only problem was that “because Bolinas had a small-town atmosphere, he was not able to cut loose as he could in the big city.”
    Cole rambled on to Sgt. Russo, relating a secondhand story of a recent unexpected and unpleasant meeting in San Francisco between Brautigan and his ex-wife Akiko. However, he got his dates badly jumbled, talking about both April and October. Cole said Brautigan told him he planned on
returning to Montana soon to sell his “ranch,” indicating that he was no longer interested in the place. When Cole didn’t see him around, he assumed he had gone.
    Andy Cole telephoned Richard Brautigan on Sunday, September 16, but only got the answering machine. He said he called three days in a row and became upset on the fourth because he knew that Richard had a beeper and could access his messages even when away from home. Confined to a wheelchair, Cole asked a friend to go over to the house on Terrace Avenue. He claimed his friend knocked on Brautigan’s door and got no answer. Cole stated that Brautigan “never used drugs,” and “was not constantly drunk as some others portrayed him.”
    That night, an impromptu wake for Richard Brautigan was held at Enrico’s on Broadway in San Francisco. Established in 1959 by Enrico Banducci, a prominent figure in North Beach since the days when he took over the hungry i from its founder, Eric “Big Daddy” Nord, the sidewalk café had been a watering hole for the city’s literary scene from the moment it opened. In his newspaper column, Herb Caen compared the place to the Algonquin Round Table. When Ted Koppel, in town earlier in July to cover the Democratic National Convention for ABC News, asked in an interview, “What kind of place are you running?” Enrico replied, “It’s where sables and sandals meet.” Brautigan had been hanging out there for two decades. Whenever he was in town, he came in every day.
    No formal invitations were issued. By word of mouth, news of the event spread over the telephone, one old friend calling another. Curt Gentry was there along with Michael McClure, Don Carpenter, Tony Dingman, Donald Allen, Keith Abbott, David Fechheimer, Jeremy Larner, Judge Richard Hodge, and