Chapter Seventeen

Since Eddy wouldn’t return until Friday, the week dragged on with more jail calls echoing in my earbuds while I scoured the police reports, looking for a break in the case. Thursday morning found me in the master calendar department for a scheduled pretrial conference. Theoretically, it was an opportunity for the defense to negotiate a plea bargain. But for the Moore case, it was a date to let the judge know that there would be no settlement.

It was the reason why murder cases went to trial more often than other cases. Didery knew he had a strong case, so he had made clear that his best offer would be fifteen years to life in prison on a plea to second degree murder. Since Darnell had made clear on several occasions that he “wasn’t feeling that”, there was nothing to talk about.

“Hey, Joe,” Jittery said, “I left some discovery at the front counter of our office for you.”

“Okay, thanks.” I wondered why he hadn’t just brought it to court. “Is it particularly voluminous or…I was just wondering why you didn’t bring it.”

“Oh, uh, well, I prefer that you get it from the office. That way, you can sign for it and we can file stamp your signature. More of a, you know, reliable system, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yeah, and while you’re at it,” I wanted to tell him, “maybe have the front desk get a urine sample and a DNA swab just in case someone has stolen my identity.” But I dutifully signed for the reports at the D.A.’s Office. They turned out to fill a banker’s box. I lugged it back to the office, inhaling a hotdog on the way.

At my desk, I opened the discovery box. The gunshot residue report was there, documenting the tests performed on the victim for the tiny particles that are deposited on the hands of someone who fires a firearm. I flipped to the conclusion: “There were no findings on either specimen.” Both of Barlow’s hands tested negative for gunshot residue.

Barlow may have been armed. If so, one of his fellow gang members would have likely taken his gun after the shooting. Still, the fact that he hadn’t gotten off a shot made his murder all the more cowardly.

The remaining contents of the box consisted of hundreds of pages of police reports, all documenting shootings by the Cashtown and the Iceboyz gangs in the past year. I put it aside to read later, assuming the shootings would be used by Didery to solidify the gang-related motive for the murder.

My phone rattled on my desk.

—Hi there. I’m flying back tomorrow. You free Saturday?—

—Yes! Safe flight—

The phone was still in my hand when Chuck called.

“Hey, Chuck, what’s new?”

“We got a break. An old friend from the Probation Department recognized our witness. He’s a two-bit mook named William Wendell. Mainly into drugs and petty theft offenses. Hangs out at Bushrod, but he’s due for a check-in with his probation officer today at two o’clock.”

“Look at you, Chuck, getting all sleuthy on me.”

“Yeah, well, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while.”

“Well done! Pick me up whenever you’re free?”

“See you in fifteen.”

Chuck and I sat inside his bucket of bolts eating hotdogs, idling in front of the probation department, waiting for Wendell’s arrival. Our plan was to catch him on his way out afterward. The fact that he wasn’t in custody meant he had not been busted for driving the stolen car, so we had some leverage if we needed it.

At two-ten p.m., our guy was hustling inside the front door of the building, wearing the same St. Mark’s T-shirt he had worn in the video. He emerged twenty minutes later, walking quickly away from the building, shoulders hunched, his hands jammed deep in the pockets of his jeans.

As he moved down the sidewalk toward Chuck’s car, he looked this way and that, as if scanning for danger. As he neared, Chuck got out of his car. I crumpled my wrapper and did the same, regretting the second hotdog.

“Hey, can I bum a light?” Wendell asked Chuck in a raspy voice, holding a cigarette between his fingers.

“Sure. You’re Wendell, right?” The young man peered over his cupped hand with startling green eyes, eyeing Chuck silently as he returned the lighter and frowned into a long drag. He appeared to be in his early twenties. His shabby clothing hung from a thin frame. Up close, his freckled face was lined and weathered from too much time in the sun.

“Who wants to know?”

“We’re defending someone accused of murder and think you may be a witness.”

He looked at Chuck, then me, digesting Chuck’s answer, then pushed past us on the sidewalk, walking away.

“You’re on Jennings’ caseload, right?” Chuck called after him, referencing his probation officer.

Wendell stopped in his tracks five yards away. His head sunk to his chest, and he continued to face away from us for several seconds, rubbing his closely cropped blond hair with one hand. Finally, he turned and sauntered back to us, looking around, furtively. “Look, I don’t need any trouble,” he said, his face grimacing as he puffed his cigarette. “Meet me at Slim’s,” he said, gesturing to the hamburger spot down the block.

“Okay,” said Chuck. “And we know about the car, so you need to be there.”

“I’ll be there,” he said, tossing his cigarette on the sidewalk and walking away.

We watched him scurry off, head tucked between his shoulders and darting glances in all directions, as if afraid of his own shadow. “Well, we knew our witness wouldn’t be the pope,” I remarked, as we followed him across the street toward Slim’s.

He took a seat at a corner table, his back to the wall. He was already ordering when we walked in. “So, you think I saw something,” he said after we were seated, and the waitress had disappeared.

“Look, Wendell,” I spoke up, noticing the pungent funk of body odor and pot for the first time. “We’re not here to fuck around. We know you saw the shooting at Eighth and Maybeck. We need you to tell us what you saw. If not, we’ll give the video of you driving the stolen car to your probation officer.”

“Wow, the dweeb is playing hardball,” he said sarcastically. He sat back and smiled, savoring his rare position of power. He sized us up for several seconds, looking back and forth between us, wearing the seasoned smirk of a street hustler. This kid had been around, for sure, and he was considering all his options.

“Look, assholes,” he said, eyes darting around the room. “Do I look like a fucking idiot? This is Oakland. I grew up here. If I play ball and identify some gang member, my ass is dead. You think I can’t do six months in jail? That ain’t shit.” He put two bony elbows on the table and rubbed his forehead with both hands. I got the sense he was thinking about being in jail, away from his drugs.

“Tell you what,” Chuck said, “I have a photograph of our client. If you look at it and tell us he’s the shooter, you’ll never hear from us again. But if you know he wasn’t the shooter, then we’ll need you to cooperate.”

He stared at the table, rubbing a hand over his scarred knuckles. “Cooperate how?” he asked, shaking his head, his face etched in dread.

“You’ll be subpoenaed to testify about what you witnessed.”

He put his face in his hands and sighed deeply, then looked up when the restaurant door opened. I got the sense he could list its occupants from memory. “Okay, listen. I’ll look at your picture, but I ain’t eye-deeing nobody. I ain’t no snitch.”

Chuck took the booking photograph of Darnell from his shirt pocket and laid it on the table. Wendell sat up straight and looked over our heads, his green orbs scanning the room. He glanced down at the photo for less than a second before pushing it toward us. “Ain’t him.”

“Just to clarify,” I said, feeling a surge of adrenaline, “you’re saying—”

“He ain’t the shooter,” he spat between clenched teeth, looking me in the eye.

“Here we are, young man.” The waitress arrived with a double cheeseburger and a plate of home fries. “Will you gentlemen be dining with us?”

“No, thank you. We’re going to get this for him and be on our way,” I said, wanting to get away from the odor.

“Suit yourself,” she said on a shrug. “You can pay up at the cash register.”

We exchanged contact information with Wendell while he eyed his food.

“You don’t suppose you could, uh, spare any cash?” he asked tentatively as we got up to leave.

“Sorry,” I answered, wishing we could. “You’re a potential witness.”

“Well, do you think I could maybe order more food?” he asked hopefully, talking through a mouthful of cheeseburger.”

“Sure. Enjoy it.”

Back in his car, Chuck made some notes from the interview on the well-worn spiral notepad he always kept in his back pocket. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” he said, closing the pad.

“He sure didn’t take long to look at the photo.”

“I noticed that too. Seemed certain. And boy was he nervous.”

“More nervous than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockin’ chairs,” Chuck added, thickening his southern drawl as we pulled away from the curb.

“Your supply is endless, isn’t it?”

“I got more than you can shake a stick at.”

“Wendell does make Didery seem placid by comparison. Years of drug use, you think?”

“Maybe just raised on concrete. Life on the streets of Oakland will do that to you.”

After Chuck dropped me back at the office, I wrote a memo to the file about our interview with Wendell and drove home with a new outlook on the case. I knew we were a long way from Wendell providing helpful testimony in court. Just getting him to court would be a challenge. Still, things were looking up.

I worked out, made pasta for dinner, and watched a ballgame, with thoughts of tomorrow’s date with Eddy dancing in and out of my mind. Despite my declaration to the contrary, I was certain my anxiety would make a strong appearance at some point. For now, though, I sipped a glass of Pinot Noir and dozed off, thinking of her faded jeans, infectious laugh, and whiffs of jasmine and fresh linens.

With no courtroom obligations on Friday, I organized the ever-expanding Darnell Moore file and I played nine holes with Matt Eisner, my former mentor in the D.A.’s office. He had been a good friend and colleague of my father. Twenty-five years later, we were playing golf once a month, with the loser buying the pitcher of beer.

“How goes the Moore homicide?” he asked, as I lined up a putt on the last hole.

“First, you’re not going to distract me,” I said, eyeing my seven-foot putt. “This is for the win. And second, why would you refer to it as the Moore homicide? No respect for the presumption of innocence.”

“Okay, what would you call it?” he asked in the middle of my backswing and watched as my putt skirted the edge of the hole.

“Your cheating knows no bounds. And of course I’d call it the Barlow homicide, out of respect for the victim.”

He lined up his own putt to win the match, grinning with one eye on me. “Don’t worry,” I said with mock indignation, “I would never stoop so low as to talk in your backswing.”

I cleared my throat instead, and we split the cost of the pitcher.

After a restful night’s sleep, my phone rattled on my nightstand.

—Drinks this evening? There’s a great dive bar near my place—

—Sounds great. Can’t wait to see you—

****

Even as I climbed the steps to her front door, I was excited but confident and serene. This was weird. Momentarily, I contemplated being nervous because I wasn’t nervous.

On each of our three previous meetings, the first sight of her beauty had caught me off-guard. As I stood there, gazing at her now in her doorway, I wondered if it would ever go away.

She was smiling at me, wearing a T-shirt knotted at her waist, linen pants with a draw string, and blue canvas sneakers.

We hugged, a long embrace before we kissed. “I really missed you, Joe.”

“Don’t act so surprised,” I joked. “I have a way of worming my way into your heart.”

“Sounds sort of disgusting, but I know what you mean.”

We held hands on the walk to Bill and Nick’s, a neighborhood bar in the heart of Rockridge. On the way, I noticed for the first of many times the looks I got when I was with her. Other guys on the street would stare at her, which was to be expected. Then they would look at me, almost certainly thinking something like, “How can I be like that guy so I can be with someone like that?” Or perhaps, more like, “Him? Are you kidding me?” I didn’t really care.

Over Dark and Stormies, we talked about her trip and our favorite parts of London. I was beginning to realize that she was rising quickly in the company, recently promoted to the grandiose title of “Vice President of the Americas.”

“The Americas. How very arcanely British. How does it feel to be the V.P. of entire continents?”

“Pretty damn good. Central America is a pain once in a while, though. Actually, the lecture in London made me miss academia. I think I’ll get a resume out to some colleges. Speaking of work, how’s Darnell’s case coming along.”

“A bit better.” I told her about the meeting with the latest witness.

“You know,” I said finishing my second drink, “given how you handled our first kiss, I was sort of surprised you didn’t decide to meet me at the door today in a nighty.”

“Don’t think it didn’t cross my mind.” She gestured at my empty glass. “You want another?”

“No, thanks. I have my, um, performance to think of.”

“I’m assuming you’re referring to the scrabble game we have planned later?”

“Of course.”

We walked back to her home arm in arm as the sun began to dip, casting a glow on our path as we turned east and uphill. She leaned back against me at her door, pressing her curves into me. I held her there, smelling her hair.

Inside, she led me into the bedroom by my belt buckle. She lit two candles on either side of her bed and closed the shades. She removed something from behind her head and shook sandy blonde curls past her shoulders to her breasts, bursting beneath the blue T-shirt. I stepped out of my shoes, prying them off with my toes so I could keep watching her.

I started to unbutton my shirt. “Wait, am I misreading this?” I asked, playfully.

“No more jokes, Turner,” she whispered, pulling her shirt over her head.

Then our bodies and lips met, kissing gently at first, then with eager tongues, breathing each other in with short breaths. Our hands were on each other now, mine moving down past the small of her back, caressing her curves over the smooth linen pants, pulling her firm body against me. Fingernails traced over my bulge as I found the drawstring, her pants falling to the floor.

She unbuckled my belt, pulling me to the bed, where she sat looking up at me with pouty blue eyes. She flipped her hair behind her shoulders. Her hands slid down my thighs, springing me free. Then I felt her soft mouth around me, a murmured groan escaping my lips. “Eddy, wait,” I gasped, feeling the first surge of ecstasy building.

She sucked hard once more before letting go, slipping out of her panties as she reclined on her bed. I lay atop her, kissing her lips, then moving down to her supple, round breasts. She was panting now as I trailed kisses down her stomach, my hands on her hips, feeling them grind against me.

“Joe,” she gasped, and I felt her fingers under my chin, gently moving my face back up toward hers. “I want you,” she whispered between pants, guiding me into her slowly. My hands pressed up from the bed, her hands on my hips as I arched into her. Her lips parted in a delicate gasp of pleasure as I began to thrust harder, her hips rocking under me to our shared rhythm.

She pulled me down to her, her nails on the back of my shoulders as I nuzzled through blonde waves, tasting her soft neck. She straightened her thighs against mine, and I pressed into her firm breasts, both desperate for total contact between our bodies. Our rhythm quickened. Our panting bodies writhed as one, finally exploding in ecstasy, then collapsing together.