AT 12:30 A.M. I SAT in front of the typewriter off the squad room pondering Griffon’s lie. A sin of commission, or more likely omission. Everyone’s got something he or she doesn’t want us to know. Mostly the desperate silence is more a sign of self-centeredness than unrevealed clues. Griffon was well enough endowed in the ego department to assume that I’d not only want to know his secrets but would broadcast them to the waiting world. He was also sly enough to withhold a valuable lead, and shifty enough to be involved.
I swayed to the siren song of Ott’s asking the purpose of Bryant Hemming’s trips to Mexico, Bryant Hemming going there to score contraband for a big Berkeley sale and Ott hot on the trail. But what would Ott expect to find in Mexico beyond the fact that he couldn’t speak Spanish? Ott’s kryptonite was his knowledge of Berkeley. Outside the city he was no Superman. If he needed information from Mexico, he’d step into a phone booth and call a Mexican counterpart. And if we suspected Bryant Hemming had tanned himself in Acapulco waiting for contraband, we’d go through our own channels.
I took my pasty white face to the typewriter and started on my reports from the day. I was desperate enough to plunk coins into the wretched coffee machine and drink the brown water without white powder and hope that it had, this once, more caffeine than a No-Doz.
“My office, Smith,” Inspector Doyle snapped.
I picked up my little stack of reports and headed through the half-lit records room with its empty desks and brown metal files that screamed “fiscal restraint.” In Berkeley not funding the police is seen as keeping the playing field level.
I rounded the corner and headed into the inspector’s outer office. Jackson and Eggs were in the inner sanctum, behind the rhinoceroses grazing along the interior windowsill. They were settled in chairs, Homicide detectives as I had once been, sitting in the Homicide inspector’s office waiting to deal with the outsider. I wasn’t quite that, but I could tell from the polite nods they offered that I wasn’t one of them anymore either.
Doyle braced himself beside his chair. “Smith, Griffon breaks into Ott’s office and goes straight for the gun and you leave him on the street?”
“It was a judgment call.” I claimed the doorway.
Jackson whistled. Eggs said nothing. I had worked homicides with each of them. I’d taught Clayton Jackson’s son to dive in the pool, and Jackson had brought me cups of Peet’s coffee to get me through Detectives’ Too-Early-in-the-Morning Meetings. He’d given me the black man’s view, and I’d swapped him the woman’s take. He and Eggs—Al Eggenburger—were the perfect partners. With the exception of sex they were in every way opposites. Jackson was burly, Eggs pencil thin. I’d virtually never seen the top of Jackson’s desk under the papers; Eggs’s was waxed. Jackson’s wall was covered in family pictures; Eggs went home to a fish tank. Yet they’d come to know and trust each other in a way that’s hard when your subconscious assumptions are so different. For a decade Eggs had ribbed Jackson as Clay mourned his football Raiders lost to L.A. In his hands Jackson’s prayers for the miracle of his team’s return to Oakland had become a department standard. “Right, Friedman,” Eggs would say, “you’ll close that case. And Jackson’s Raiders will come home to Oakland.” Eventually any dead-end case was classified as a JR.
And when, after negotiations had piqued hopes, then failed year after year, suddenly the beloved Raiders did come back to Oakland, Jackson said not a thing. He waited.
Eggs filled their office with silver and black balloons.
Jackson said nothing.
Eggs sent singing caterers to Jackson’s tailgate party.
Jackson said nothing.
Jackson was waiting.
Like Jackson, who had mourned in frustration over the years, Eggs realized there was nothing he could do.
Eggs was waiting too. He knew Jackson would choose the perfect moment to— So Eggs was watching his tail. And the rest of us were watching, waiting, eagerly. Warily.
Occasionally Eggs had pushed Jackson too hard in spots he never expected to be tender. Once or twice Jackson had pierced Eggs, mistaken his icy restraint for indifference and weeks later wondered why he was being cold-shouldered. Then they’d been glad to have me in Homicide to tell them where their knives had stuck and how to pull them out without cutting deeper. They watched out for me, translating Inspector Doyle’s grumbles, warning me when he was waving his shillelagh.
That was why Jackson’s critical whistle now sent a cold wind down my spine. Was he keeping his distance because of his disdain for Ott? Or had something happened in this case I didn’t know about?
“The judgment call I made,” I said, “was that Griffon is of more use to us while he’s afraid of being arrested. The guy really doesn’t want to go to jail.”
“Why? A tattooer like him, jail’d be like hitting a trade fair.” Jackson laughed.
I shook my head. “Don’t know his secret. But he might as well have affixed a pump handle to his mouth. We can go back to the well again and again, as long as he’s on the street. Here’s the tasty drop pumped out tonight: He says Ott asked him whether Bryant Hemming’s trips to Mexico were just vacations.”
“Mediation, ACC investing, and now smuggling? Our Bryant was a diversified lad,” Eggs said. “While we’re talking Hemming and money, here’s Macalester’s droplet. He thinks maybe—he’s not sure—he doesn’t want to be quoted—”
“Say he hemmed and hawed enough to be a Hemming himself?” Jackson asked.
“Yeah, Clay. But I’m a patient man. And patience got me this: He thinks Hemming was paying off none other than Brother Cyril.”
“Whew! And proof?”
“Not a whit, Smith. Nothing in the ACC books, or so he says. But you don’t document your bribes for any accountant to see.”
Doyle leaned back in his chair, eyes half closed, looking for the thread that wove through this case. His loose skin was gray, and every hour of the long night seemed to have made its mark. To come up with the base thread, he’d have to have been in better shape than I was by now. Ott was investigating Bryant. Bryant was paying off Cyril.
I picked up an amber rhino and held it out in front of me like a talisman. Or a guard. I’d have given a lot to avoid saying, “I saw Ott Sunday afternoon.”
“So that’s where you went off to.” Emotions battled in Jackson’s voice. I’d left him—my guest—I’d left the Raiders game, in favor of Ott. He sounded appalled at my lack of taste rather than hurt the way Howard had been.
Eggs’s expression didn’t change. He was a master of the mask, but I could read the taut tendons in his neck required to hold his mask in place and the shock, disgust, even suspicion beneath it. Doyle didn’t bother with masks.
I hurried on. “Ott shucked me. He insisted he had to see me then, at the Claremont, for something vital, and when I got there, he’d changed his mind. But a little cross fell out of Ott’s pocket. It could have nothing to do with Brother Cyril, of course, but—”
“Shorter than an inch?” Jackson demanded. “Did it come to the point at the bottom, like a sword?”
“Uh-huh. Why?”
“That’s Brother Cyril’s all right. Gives them to the holy.”
“That lets out Ott,” Eggs put in automatically, but his eager expression discounted his own witticism.
“What you’re saying is either Ott’s fooled Cyril into awarding him the cross, or he swiped it.”
My throat tightened as I recalled Griffon’s assessment of Ott smugly striding into the lion’s den.
“What’d Ott say about it?”
“What do you think, Jackson?”
Jackson shut his mouth against that thought.
“I gave him till five to get back to me. He didn’t.” I didn’t recount that as an offering, but as I glanced at Eggs and Jackson and Doyle, I knew it wouldn’t have been enough. My meeting with Ott was on my own time. But I hadn’t mentioned it to them; I had separated it, and myself, from them. Now their faces said they didn’t know if they considered me one of them.
I had one of those flashes then, when the insight comes too fast and deep and it’s only later that you translate it into words so you can remember it. I knew two things: that I could have reinstated myself by regaling them with a ribald account of Herman Ott hanging his valuables out the window over the alley for safekeeping and that I couldn’t do it. Not because of them, my friends and colleagues, but because of Ott or maybe me. When I did mention it, matter-of-factly, offering no camaraderie, the only response was a groan from Jackson and a formal question from Doyle on whether I believed Griffon.
I replaced the amber rhino on the desk, away from the herd. Protecting me was beyond its ability now.
“Griffon’s holding back; I just don’t know what. But I’m beginning to view that alley not as a dead end but as a thoroughfare to eye Ott’s window.”
Doyle shook his head. Out the corner of my vision I spotted Jackson eyeing Eggs. Doyle cleared his throat. “We got zilch from the neighbors.”
“Company Ott keeps, no right-minded person would open the door if he was squeaking ‘Help!’ in the hallway either,” Eggs said.
Jackson nodded in agreement. “Way I hear it, only the blind were on the Avenue last night.”
I glanced from Jackson to Eggs, waiting for another line of banter, but they offered nothing more, nothing they wouldn’t want repeated outside the room.
“What about Kidd?” Doyle asked.
“He could know more than he let on, but what, I can’t guess,” I said. “Still, he’s smart enough not to kill Hemming in Ott’s office, then dream about it in Ott’s car. I’m buying his story of Ott getting into a dark car on the Avenue Sunday night.”
Doyle gave a snort. “Eggenburger, what’d you get from Hemming’s assistant, Macalester?”
“He had no idea why his boss would be in Ott’s office. He appeared appalled. He said he was baffled, although he did want me to understand that Hemming mediated for all segments of society. The implication seemed to be that Ott was a step beneath all those segments.”
“What about Brother Cyril? Anything on him?”
“Cyril Bernauer. Two assaults. Felonies. Three and five years ago. Nothing since. He’s known to Monterey, but only for helping out society by hiring ex-cons.”
“Local address?” Doyle asked.
“Zip. We know he’s got a place big enough for two dozen guys somewhere around here. Where is the big Q.”
Doyle nodded at Jackson to keep on it. “Eggs, you’re still backgrounding Hemming and ACC?”
“Right.”
Doyle nodded. Neither of them looked at me.
Jackson pushed himself up. He had seemed as worn out as Doyle, but now there was no sag in his dark brown cheeks. “I am prepared for the good brother when I track him down. Ain’t no passage or verse I can’t answer.”
“So you can go head to head with Cyril and his Scripture on Jesus in the temple obliterating the money changers and their pigeons.”
Jackson shook his head. “We’re not talking Kentucky Fried here. Smith, where did you spend your Sabbath mornings?” He glanced at Doyle and Eggs, but clearly whatever I had missed had passed them too. “Mark eleven: fifteen: ‘and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves.’ ”
“Doves?”
“Doves, pigeons, same bird, different translations. Point is, Smith, Jesus was after the people, not their birds.”
“But Cyril said—”
“Right, and he’s not the first preacher to rewrite the Scripture in his own image.”
I felt a cold stab of fear. “So killing the birds is his own idea?” Was Ott in Cyril’s cage? Was he, as Howard said, a bird held for sacrifice?
“That and who knows how much more. I’ve seen more phony men of the cloth than this boy’s got years. Hauling his ass out of bed’s going to be like a good cup of coffee.” He nodded to Inspector Doyle and headed for the hall.
I followed him into the hallway.
He was a big guy, but his gait was closer to a glide than a walk. Now the slide had been preempted by the heavy steps of finality. He stopped and for the first time tonight stared me in the eye. “I’m keeping my mind open, and my eyes.” He didn’t ask, “What about you?” He took a step back toward me and lowered his voice. “The system can set you up and send you up. No one knows that better than a black man. Yet and still, you got a guy dead in his office, killed by a nine-millimeter like Ott’s got out his window, and Ott on the lam. We don’t look for him number one, we might as well boogie on home and pull up the covers.”
I stared him back. “Hemming controlled people’s money. He’s got an ex-wife he screwed. There could be girlfriends he was leaving behind and disgruntled mediation clients all over town. We know squat about the man, and you’re writing off everyone but Ott!” I wasn’t shouting, but I had to choke back the urge.
“Smith, the dude sidled into a car and drove off into the sunset. The same night as Hemming was shot in his office.”
“Right, he left, Jackson. Ott was gone. But we go charging after him because he’s the outsider.”
“Smith—”
“Don’t big-brother me.”
He stared, clearly as shocked by my fury as I was, then shook his head and left.
I stood watching till he disappeared behind the reception door, till my shaking stopped and I’d tightened my face into a mask worthy of Eggs. Then I turned back to the office. Doyle was examining a yellow jade rhino with the care of a trophy hunter redecorating his den. I didn’t know how much Doyle had heard, probably all of it. Didn’t matter. Nothing I could do.
Doyle replaced the animal and leaned forward over the pile of papers on his desk. “Smith, I never thought I’d have to say this to one of my officers.” He inhaled, swallowed. I watched his Adam’s apple flutter and descend. “Maybe I should take you off this case.”
“No!” burst out through my tightly pressed lips. But that was just my first reaction. I forced myself to stop, think. Doyle was giving me a way to maintain my bond with Ott and not undercut the investigation and my career. Taken off the case, I could go back to Ott later, if he was found innocent enough to be on the street again, and still be his least undesirable cop. Among the sworn officers there would be questions, gossip about my reassignment, but that would die down; I’d go on riding patrol; nothing would change much. Doyle was offering me an out; all I had to do was take it. I looked at Doyle, leaning back in his too fine desk chair, eyes half closed, giving the illusion he was resting behind the lids instead of watching between the lashes. Again I wondered: Is there something more going on here? I said, “I don’t think Ott is a killer.”
“Smith—”
I held up my palm. “But if he is, Inspector, he’ll have duped me and duped me good, and you can believe I will be pissed enough to make him crawl in here.”
Doyle fingered the rhino. Slowly, equivocally he said, “All right.”
I stood up. “You’ve got an APB out on Ott, right? You’ve got everyone on patrol hunting for moving yellow. They’re not going to find him. Ott’s got a thousand places he could go to ground in this city. Don’t hope for a snitch. Ott’s too savvy to stay put long enough to be turned in. Odds are a hundred to one we’ll never find him. But, Inspector, if you care about that ‘one,’ you’re going to have to go with me. And trust me.”
The yellow rhino was in his hand, belly up. “I’m trusting you, Smith,” he said in a skeptical tone. “I’ve already talked to half the media in the Bay Area and had two calls from L.A. I’ve got a press conference scheduled in the morning. By noon we’ll be news in D.C. We’re under the microscope, Smith, and the rest of the country’s going to be looking through the other end. Looking to see how ridiculous Berkeley can make itself.” He laid the rhino on its side, as if it had been gored. “Man shot. Office tenant disappears. Tattooed vulture breaks in; cop lets him walk. The loonies are running the institution, they’ll be saying. And, Smith, they’ll be right.”