Berkeley Noir

by Jerry Thompson

  "Here's my number," Detective James told me. He pointed to a yellowed stack of business cards on the corner of his desk and I took one. "Call me if you see those Scandinavians again."

  Sarah stood up and swung her bag around her shoulder.

  "Wait," I said, "don't you need us to, I don't know, help out?"

  "Help out?" Detective James chortled a little. "No, son. We'll take it from here."

  "But how—"

  "Like I said, we'll take it from here. The case is in good hands."

  * * *

  "So that's it?" I asked, standing in the parking lot with Sarah.

  She didn't say anything for a few moments. When we got to the sidewalk, she took out her phone and scrolled to the text she had gotten while we were in Detective James's office.

  Safeway. Tice Valley Road. WC. We have Balz. No Police.

  "Who's that from?"

  "I don't know," she said. "But I know where that Safeway is. My grandma used to live in the old folks' home across the street."

  Back in the car, Sarah opened the glove compartment, found a Dead Kennedys tape, and popped it into the stereo. I wanted to ask what the plan was, whether we should call for some help, like maybe the police. I wanted to tell her to slow down, or at least to signal when she was changing lanes. But the music was too loud to think. All I could do was hold onto the armrest, watch the green hills of Orinda flash past, and let the lyrics drill into my skull.

  It's time to taste what you most fear

  Right Guard will not help you here

  Brace yourself, my dear

  Brace yourself, my dear . . .

  "So what's the plan?" Sarah asked as we pulled into the parking lot.

  "Ride the wave," I said, a lame attempt at sarcasm.

  "Yes," she said, patting my knee. "Now you're getting it."

  She put the car in park and scanned the lot. "Over there." She pointed at a woman standing next to a pile of watermelons by the front entrance. Then she jumped out of the car and walked straight toward her, paying no regard to cars or shopping carts.

  "Mrs. Eliason!" she called out.

  And there she was, my old biology teacher, the new principal of our school. Mrs. Eliason was just about the last person I was expecting to see in that parking lot. But neither she nor Sarah seemed very surprised.

  "So nice to see you here," Mrs. Eliason said, scanning the parking lot behind us. "You kids wouldn't mind helping me with these bags, would you?" She pointed to the shopping cart next to her.

  "Sure," I said.

  We each took a bag and followed her to her car.

  "I hear you two have had quite the morning."

  Before we could respond, Mrs. Eliason opened up her new BMW. Sitting in the passenger seat was none other than Mr. Balz.

  "Hey, guys," he said with a weak little wave.

  He seemed good, as good as anyone could be after being thrown in the trunk of a car and whatever else he had endured.

  "If you don't mind," Mrs. Eliason said, motioning to the backseat, "I think we've had a little misunderstanding."

  I glanced at Sarah and she looked at Mr. Balz, who nodded.

  "All right," Sarah said, "this ought to be good."

  While Mrs. Eliason loaded her groceries into the trunk, Sarah pressed a few buttons on her phone. I thought she might be calling the police. In fact, she was turning on her phone's voice recorder.

  You can find a transcript of the whole conversation on page 4. For those who don't want to read the whole thing, I'll give you the overview.

  It was all a big misunderstanding, Mrs. Eliason told us. What I had seen the night before was just a prank, a little thing that teachers do for fun. And the guys at Mr. Balz's house, they were just trying to find his toothbrush. Mr. Balz nodded, but you could tell that he was just trying to make Mrs. Eliason happy. When we asked about the documents in Mr. Balz's safe, Mrs. Eliason's tone changed. She told us that no one would believe us, that she knew Detective James personally and that it would be easy to convince him that nothing untoward had happened, except for our false accusations and the documents we had faked. And, of course, something like that would most certainly reflect poorly on our academic standing, which would obviously put our college admissions in jeopardy.

  She could ruin our futures with a few keystrokes. Or, she said, we could call Detective James right now and make it all go away.

  "You have a choice," she said. "Either you're part of the solution or you're part of the problem."

  Well, Mrs. Eliason, we've made our choice.

  My fellow graduates, esteemed family members, after reading this article I hope you will be somewhat closer to the truth and can decide for yourself what you think.

  Thank you for your time and congratulations again. This is your day. Enjoy it!

  FREDERICK DOUGLASS ELEMENTARY

  by Aya de León

  West Berkeley Flats

  Keisha waited until everyone else left the office. It was Friday night and nobody seemed to be working late. Still, she shoved her sweatshirt up against the bottom of the door, in case any light could be seen. Only then did she turn on the fluorescent light in the windowless copy room.

  A few weeks before, she had swiped a contract on letterhead from a real estate agency. Earlier that day, she had borrowed a coworker's computer to write the fake lease for a rental apartment. She had copied the language off the Internet, but was anxious about any spelling or grammatical errors. Especially because she couldn't save a forged document on a company computer. She had sat at her data-entry cubicle during lunch, reading the words over and over until they blurred, proofreading it to the best of her ability.

  That night in the copy room, she cut and pasted and made copies of copies, until she had a reasonable-looking forgery on fine linen paper. She squinted at it in the glaring fluorescent. It looked legit. It "proved" that she rented a two-bedroom apartment in Berkeley.

  Keisha and her seven-year-old son Marchand lived in Holloway, a few towns north of Berkeley, just past Richmond at the end of the BART line. Holloway's student population was nearly all black and Latino, but the teachers were predominantly white. All of the schools were performing far below the national average, and the district was on the verge of bankruptcy. Her son had been bullied by bigger boys, and one of the teachers had been fired for hitting a student. Apparently, the administration had tolerated it for years, but one of the staff had caught it on video, and it had gone viral on social media.

  That was the last straw. Keisha wasn't going to allow her son to be in a school where white teachers were physically abusive. But she couldn't afford private school. Even a partial scholarship was out of the question. Bay Area rents were exorbitant.

  When she first got pregnant with Marchand, she and her boyfriend had a great one-and-a-half-bedroom apartment in Richmond. She was working at the law office doing data entry. Her boyfriend was working as a security guard at the mall. They had enough income to save for the baby. But one night, her boyfriend got stopped by the cops for no apparent reason. Ultimately, he was hauled off for resisting arrest and battery on an officer. The dashboard cams, however, had been turned off. They beat him badly enough that he was in the hospital for a week. Then he was locked up.

  Keisha gave up the apartment and moved in with her mom in Holloway. She was numb with grief for the first couple weeks, then she cried for another month.

  "Girl," her mother had told her two weeks before her due date, "you need to stop all that crying and get ready to have this baby."

  Her ex-boyfriend's mom called after the video went viral of the teacher hitting the student. "One of my friends from church called me," said the woman who would have been her mother-in-law. "She asked me, Isn't that your grandson's school in Holloway?"

  The two of them talked, and Marchand's grandmother offered Keisha the use of her address to get Marchand into the Berkeley public schools. They had much better test scores, and Berkeley was the first district in the US to voluntarily
desegregate in the 1960s. They wouldn't have crazy racist white teachers hitting the kids.

  The mother-in-law put Keisha's name on her energy bill to document her residency, and Keisha breathed a sigh of relief.

  But when she went in to the district office to figure out how to register her son for school, there was much more documentation required.

  All proofs must be current originals (issued within the last 2 months) imprinted with the name and current Berkeley residential address of the parent/legal guardian. A student can have only one residency for purposes of establishing residency.

  Only personal accounts will be accepted (No care of, DBA, or business accounts).

  Group A:

  __ Utility bill. (Must provide entire bill)

  __ PG&E

  __ Landline phone (non-cellular)

  __ EBMUD

  __ Internet

  __ Cable

  Group B:

  __ Current bank statement (checking or savings only)

  __ Action letter from Social Services or government agency (cannot be property or business)

  __ Recent paycheck stub or letter from employer on official company letterhead confirming residency address

  __ Valid automobile registration in combination with valid automobile insurance

  __ Voter registration for the most recent past election or the most recent upcoming election

  Group C:

  __ Rental property contract or lease, with payment receipt (dated within 45 days)

  __ Renter's insurance or homeowner's insurance policy for the current year

  __ Current property tax statement or property deed

  Keisha was bewildered by the list. She wouldn't even be able to document her actual address in Holloway, let alone her baby daddy's mother's address in Berkeley.

  As she stood there in the empty entryway for the Berkeley Unified School District, a mother and daughter walked in, a matching pair of strawberry blondes. The mother was talking on the phone, pulling the girl behind her. ". . . Which is exactly what I told him," the woman was saying. "The rest of the PTA needs to get involved, because this is absolutely unacceptable. Hold on—" The woman stopped in her tracks and the girl, who was looking off into space, nearly collided with her. The woman turned to Keisha. "Where's the Excellence Program office?" she demanded.

  Keisha blinked, confused. "I don't work here," she said.

  The woman stared at her for a moment, taking in Keisha's multicolored extensions, tight jeans, and low-cut top. Then she turned away without a word, and put the phone back to her ear. "Where did you say the office was?" she asked whoever was on the other end, and headed down the corridor, dragging the girl behind her.

  The strawberry-blond woman was the only parent Keisha saw that day. Obviously, this white lady wasn't going to let her daughter get smacked by a teacher. Or go to an underperforming school. Keisha was determined to beat the list.

  * * *

  At work, she cancelled her direct deposit, and started having her paychecks sent to her mother-in-law's house. It was incredibly inconvenient to have to take public transportation across three cities twice a month to get her check two days later than usual. Yet she and Marchand managed it, and his grandmother was delighted to see more of him.

  But the rental agreement? That had proven to be the most difficult to fake.

  * * *

  "Number seventy-two?" The full-figured woman behind the counter at the Berkeley Unified School District office had large brown eyes, a neat bob hairstyle, and a weary smile.

  Keisha stepped forward with her paperwork. After the look the strawberry-blond mom had given her last time, she'd had her braids done without colors and dressed in her interview suit. She wanted to look like she worked in San Francisco's financial district or Silicon Valley. Like someone who could afford a two-bedroom apartment.

  But now it was registration. The district office was full of Berkeley parents wearing jeans and T-shirts, cotton separates, and ethnic fabrics. Keisha felt overdressed. Still, she filled out the various forms to enroll Marchand in second grade.

  When the woman called Keisha up to the counter, she pulled out her paperwork with what she hoped looked like confidence. Marchand's birth certificate, her driver's license, and each of the required documents from the list. Two were real, but the third one was the forgery.

  The woman inspected each of them carefully. Keisha's heart beat hard as the administrator's sharp eyes got to the rental contract. As the seconds ticked by, Keisha grew increasingly certain the woman would call her a fake, or worse yet, call the police. Could she be arrested for this? But just as she began to brace for the worst, the woman smiled and said she would make copies for the file.

  Keisha smiled back, relief washing over her.

  The woman brought back the originals, stamped her copy of the registration form, and stapled it to a packet of papers. They were in.

  Two months later, she got a letter at Marchand's grandma's house that the boy had been assigned to Frederick Douglass Elementary.

  * * *

  The first day of school dawned overcast and chilly, like so many Bay Area August mornings. Keisha and Marchand rode a BART train and a bus to Frederick Douglass. It took longer than expected, and they arrived twenty minutes after the start of school. Keisha found Marchand's name on a list and hurried him down the hall to room 126.

  The hallway was wide and bright, with daylight streaming in through the windows. At their old school in Holloway, there were always late families rushing in, parents hissing at their kids about what they should have done to be on time. But this school's corridors were quiet and orderly. Keisha vowed to catch a much earlier train. She would get Marchand to school on time from now on.

  The numbers of the classrooms were getting higher. Room 118. Room 120. Along the hallway wall hung a big banner that read, Every Month Is Black History Month, between pictures of Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks.

  When they got to Room 126, there was a poster of Frederick Douglass on the door.

  Marchand tugged on Keisha's hand. "Mommy," he asked, "do they sometimes hit the kids here too?"

  "Oh no, baby." She kneeled so she could get down to his level, and put one hand under his chin. "Nobody gets hit here," she said, glancing up at Frederick Douglass. It was the classic unsmiling portrait in a bow tie, with his salt-and-pepper hair combed back and a dark goatee. "That's why Mommy worked so hard to get you into a good school. Now come on, sugar, we got to get you into your class."

  She opened the door with an apology in her mouth—full of late BART train and I promise to do better—but she was startled into silence. Twenty-three faces turned to her, expectantly. All of them were white.

  Keisha felt disoriented. This was the first school district in the nation to voluntarily desegregate? This was a school named after the great black abolitionist?

  Keisha looked closer. No. Not all white. That girl by the window with the blue hair was Asian. That boy on the far end might be Latino. And that girl looking up at her, with the sandy hair and the missing tooth, was definitely mixed with black. But every single kid in the class would pass the paper-bag test.

  "You must be Marchand," the teacher said warmly to her son. She was a slender young woman with a messy blond bun on her head. Miss Keller.

  Keisha watched her son walk shyly forward into the class.

  "Give Mommy a hug goodbye?" Miss Keller prompted.

  Numbly, Keisha hugged her son and stepped out into the hallway, wondering what she had forged her way into.

  RIGHTEOUS KILL

  by Owen Hill

  Gilman District

  The Gilman District, newly named by realtors, was mostly industrial a few years ago. You'd go there for Urban Ore if you needed a broke-down couch to replace your more-broke-down couch. There was a body shop and a good Mexican restaurant, perhaps too good because it brought in too many urban pioneers on the hunt for good manchamanteles. From famous red mole to the Gilman District. There goes the
neighborhood.

  I had been coming to West Berkeley since the aughts, yes, for the mole, but also for the books. SPD for the poetry, and Jeff Maser's place for used, rare modern firsts, just to browse and occasionally to sell something. I do a little book scouting, although not full time like in the old days. It just doesn't pay, and I get a little freelance work as, believe it, an unlicensed detective, something I sort of backed into that now pays the bill at Berkeley Bowl and for the rent-controlled studio southside.

  * * *

  I finished my enchiladas and the imported Coke, then went by SPD to get Marvin some Kevin Killian and for Dino The Collages of Helen Adam, because he wouldn't have heard of her but he would appreciate the way beauty recognizes itself, and he would love the captions, "remember how I warned you when you're praying too late." I don't usually show up bearing gifts but Marvin had said, "It's kind of a party," and I knew Dino would be there, Dino Centro. O Dino Centro.

  Walked a little farther, down to 10th Street where Marvin had bought that house, cheap, when nobody really lived down there. The neighborhood wasn't especially dangerous, but dark, away from stuff, desolate as a staircase. Barely six figures at the time Marvin bought the house, just back from Central America. The money came from "somewhere" but "wasn't much." Marvin, the most Marxist of my Marxist friends, moving within and without radical subsets, dropping hints like, "I was in Athens and this crazy guy I know planted a bomb in a police station. I almost didn't get through customs!" Marvin, homeowner. Lovable guy. Best friend.

  I knocked, door open, walked in the house that smelled a little like a cat box. Furniture that recalled places where you lived in your college years. It was a nice house nonetheless, forties vintage, what they call Arts and Crafts though I think that's a wider definition now than it was. Urban Ore and Ikea furnished, nice walls though, because for some reason Marvin liked to paint. This time the walls were very light with a bluish tint. I once asked Marvin what color it was and he answered, inexplicably, vanilla hots.