by Susan Dunlap
“A cab, Jill,” Howard exclaimed. “Earth Man’s called a cab!” Howard laughed. “You think you had problems before. Wait till Doyle hears you authorized two hundred dollars for Earth Man’s cab fare!”
“Damn, damn, damn!” I smashed my fist into the seat, pushed myself up, and whacked the steering wheel. It quivered, and for a moment I thought it was going to crack and allow me to add a broken steering wheel to the rest of the night’s misspent expenses.
“He’s turning south at Sacramento, Jill.”
I started the engine. Yankowski’s wool cap was tan. It had bleach spots. There couldn’t be two like that.
“Due south, Jill. He’s passing the BART station. Too flush to take rapid transit, huh? Made the light at Hearst. He’s turning on University. Okay, he could be headed to the freeway,” Howard said, getting into the spirit of the chase.
I stopped wondering about Earth Man. I had seen a tan wool cap this afternoon, one with the bleach spots.
“Jill, the cab’s slowing. It’s making a U. Ah, shit. You know where he’s going?”
I was still on Sacramento, but I knew. “La Maison. Earth Man’s riding home in style. I’ll pass the word to the guy on surveillance, not that they’d miss a sight like that. I doubt Earth Man’s going out again tonight.”
“Damn. There he is climbing out of the cab, and Jill, every one of those snouts and beaks is laughing at us.”
“It’s okay,” I said, recalling just where I had seen that wool cap. “Betcha that five and five more I know where Yankowski is.”
CHAPTER 24
ADRIENNE JENKS HAD FILLED her flat with splashy hot pinks and purples, South Seas blues and greens. Her clothes echoed the theme. A plain tan wool cap was something she wouldn’t use to clean her car, much less put on her head. With her thick mane of curly hair, she’d need outside help to pull it on.
But Frank Yankowski’s head was a different matter. He had a thin fringe of blond hair around his sizable bald pate. His was a head in danger of sunburn in spring, windburn in summer, and being damned cold any night of the year. His head needed a cap. He had had one in his pocket when I interviewed him, a tan wool cap marked with bleach spots. How could I have missed that? I was looking all over Berkeley for the guy and there he had been, probably hiding in the bathroom while I interrogated Adrienne on the sofa.
It was not Laura Biekma but Adrienne Jenks who was Frank Yankowski’s friend or lover. That explained why Adrienne wouldn’t allow Mitch in the kitchen for the last three months—to keep him away from Yankowski. It explained why Mitch hadn’t fired him. And while it told me where Yankowski might well be hiding, it did nothing to shed light on why he had fled.
Whatever the reason, he wasn’t going to get a chance to try it again. I turned onto Spruce, flipped on the pulsers, and hit the gas.
I turned off the pulsers a block before Adrienne’s flat, and stopped the car on the side street. Howard arrived less than a minute later. He had a wary half smile—the smile for the prospect of a collar, the wariness for me. “You got your Ramey warrant?”
“I haven’t been without it all day. This asshole is not going to run out on me again.”
“Let him try,” Howard said.
“Yeah.” I hoped he would try. We were ready for him. I could almost feel my knees in his back, and the victory of yanking his arms behind him and snapping on the cuffs.
“We’ll get him,” Howard said. “See what Doyle says about this one.”
“Ready?” I asked. He followed me through the break in the hedge, across the tree-shaded backyard, and up the six steps to Adrienne’s door. The flat was dark, but I had the feeling that Adrienne and Yankowski were awake. Standing to one side of the door, I knocked. “Police!”
I was just about to knock again when Adrienne called, “It’s the middle of the night. What do you want now?”
“Yankowski.”
“He’s not here.”
“Open the door.”
From inside I could hear cloth rubbing cloth, then bare feet slapping against the hardwood floor. The feet stopped, then moved quickly back the way they had come. Did I hear whispers or was I imagining the scene I hoped was being played out in there? “Do you have a warrant?” Adrienne called, her voice defiant, but not controlled enough subdue a noticeable quiver.
“You bet!” I called. “Now get this door open!”
There was silence inside the flat. Across from me, Howard bent into a slight crouch, ready.
“We can kick this door in!” I shouted. “You want that? You’ve got five seconds to decide, Yankowski.” I crouched down, ready for him. “One … two … three … four ...”
The door opened and Yankowski walked out, hands raised. I pushed the door shut after him, banging it against the moldings with all my unspent anger. Howard moved down two steps. “Okay, Yankowski,” I shouted, “turn around, hands high on the door!” I patted him down, crisply. Then I yanked his hands back and slammed on the cuffs.
“Hey, not so tight. You’re going to cut off the circulation.”
“You’ll live. Turn around, down the stairs.” I knew what I was doing, taking out my revenge in petty bullying. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Howard, looking straight ahead; he knew too. Leaving him to deal with Adrienne Jenks, I followed Yankowski down the steps and gave him a shove, a restrained shove, because I was already feeling like a jerk, and because Yankowski was so much bigger than me.
The process of booking him took less time than the usual half hour. I had run him through files last night. I knew we had nothing. Still, when it came time to take his prints, he yanked his hand back.
“Worried about the prints, huh?” I said. “You’re not Frank Yankowski. Who are you?”
“You’re disgusting,” he said. The hiss accompanied his words. “Look at my wrists; they’ve still got marks.”
“You want to see a doctor?” I said, controlling my sarcasm. “It’s your right to file charges, say I roughed you up.”
“Yeah sure.” His pale eyes narrowed, leaving his sharply twisted nose the only marker on his big, pale round face. “I’m still not answering your questions,” he said.
“Look,” I snapped, “you can make every step of this more difficult, but that’s not going to change the outcome. You’re in jail. You’re going to stay there till we find out who you are. You’re going to stay till we know why you killed Mitch Biekma.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“You ran.”
“I didn’t poison Mitch.”
“You’re guilty, Yankowski.”
“I knew you’d think that. As soon as I saw you there in Paradise, I knew you’d come after me.”
“You were just a witness, like any of the others, until you ran. You made yourself stand out.”
He shrugged.
“So explain. But first the prints.”
With a sigh, he held out his fingers and allowed them to be pressed into the ink pad. Then I took him to one of the interview booths, sat him down across the table, and started the tape. “Detective Jill Smith, interviewing Caucasian male calling himself Frank Yankowski.”
“Okay, it’s Martin Goodpastor.”
“And where did you get the name Yankowski?”
“From a cemetery. A dead child in a cemetery.”
“Very considerate. His parents could have been in for a nasty surprise if Mitch Biekma had mentioned your name on television.”
“I thought of that,” he said, the hiss more pronounced than before.
“And, of course, the parents would have tracked you down and exposed you eventually.”
“Maybe not. It’s not that uncommon a name.”
“Why did you run, Martin?”
His hazel eyes opened wide; he almost smiled. “You mean you don’t know? You really don’t know?”
“Tell me.”
“The bombing at the Seattle Induction Center.”
“During Vietnam?” I asked, echoing his amazement.
&
nbsp; He nodded, his eyes saying that any literate should know that.
The Vietnam protests were twenty years ago. By now he’d be lucky to find anyone who could name the Chicago Seven, much less remember someone connected with the Seattle Induction Center.
“So you bombed the induction center—”
“I didn’t.”
“Okay, we’ll deal with that later. What I want to know is why you killed Mitchell Biekma.”
“I didn’t.”
I leaned back in the chair. “You hated Biekma. You told me that.”
“But I didn’t kill him. The world’s jammed with assholes. But you don’t kill them. Look, I was in the peace movement in Seattle. I didn’t set that bomb. I didn’t even know there was a bomb there to go off. I wasn’t into violence. I was there to stop the killing. I could have given myself up and gone to jail. I’m a big guy, an ugly big guy. I’m not the type who gets raped in prison. I would have survived, but I would have had to bash heads to do it. I chose not to. Chose. Do you think it’s been easy living on the run all these years. If I’d stood trial, I could be clear by now. But I would have lost my principles.” He stared at me, demanding a sign of belief.
But I wasn’t about to give that. “Go on.”
“You think I’m lying. Dammit. I knew it. You gave me no choice but to run.”
“Go on!”
“Okay, but if you’ve decided I’m a killer, it won’t make much sense. I didn’t murder Mitch. Sure, I wanted him to keep quiet about me. But I didn’t have to kill him. I’m a lot bigger than he was; I’m in a lot better shape. I just pointed that out to him.”
“And?”
“He backed off. He wasn’t out to blow my cover. He didn’t care that much. It’s just that I made a good story. And he was the kind of asshole who lived for that moment of glory. When he was on—working the customers in the dining room, or on a talk show—that’s when it was the worst. He’d do anything for a laugh. And if that meant telling the world he had a crooked-nosed giant doing dishes because he was hiding out from a crazed ex-wife, that was fine. Then he could carry on: ‘The guy’s six four, he weighs two fifty, how big is this woman he’s afraid of? Is she an Amazon?’ And on and on. He did it in the dining room once. He had them in stitches. Half the house was peeking around the door into the kitchen before they left. That’s what Adrienne told me. I was gone.” The hiss almost drowned out his last word. “The next day I made things clear to him. And he never mentioned me again.”
“But he could have.”
“I wasn’t kidding. He knew that.”
“But you weren’t worried about an ex-wife. There was no ex-wife. That was just a cover story. You weren’t worried about some sheriff from the Midwest coming across you, you were afraid of the FBI finding you. Even after twenty years a description of your face could ring a bell.” I didn’t have to wait for a reply. Yankowski’s tortured breath told me I was right. “You had a lot to lose, if Mitch got carried away. …”
It was a moment before he controlled his breath enough to say, “Yeah, I did. But with Mitch it was out of sight out of mind. And Adrienne kept him out of the kitchen. He probably forgot I was there.”
“I don’t believe that and neither did you.”
“I still don’t know how Mitch found out about the induction center. Maybe someone here recognized me. Maybe Adrienne let something slip. She denies it, but who knows? Maybe I slipped by telling even her.” He shrugged. “I did what I could to keep Mitch quiet. And even taking Mitch as a factor in the equation, it was safer for me here in Berkeley than it would have been anywhere else. Turning me in would not have been a popular move for Mitch. He didn’t give a shit about me, but he was shrewd enough to know what would hurt him.”
That made sense. If he had betrayed Yankowski, liberals would have derided him. If, somehow, he had managed to picture himself as Yankowski’s protector, he would have courted the wrath of conservatives in the wider TV market. Still, for publicity-seeking Mitch Biekma, the temptation to find a middle ground and still expose Yankowski must have been nearly overwhelming. And Yankowski was too bright not to have figured that out. I said, “Mitch was poisoned with aconite. Customers got sick from it. Someone put it in their food, eight different times. The only people who were there all those times were Mitch and Adrienne. But you were there seven.”
He stared at me. “Why would I poison people? I told you I wasn’t into violence. Besides, something like that, it would just bring the cops out, and reporters. Listen, that’s the last thing I’d want.”
“Then who was the poisoner?”
“It wasn’t me and it wasn’t Adrienne.”
“Then who?”
“I don’t know who killed Mitch. But if you want the guy who dosed the food those other times, you’ve got him. In the morgue.”
CHAPTER 25
I STARED AT FRANK Yankowski–Martin Goodpastor. “Do you really expect me to believe that Mitch Biekma was poisoning his own customers?”
“Believe it or not. It’s true.”
“Martin, you are in far too much trouble to play around here.”
He shook his head. “I knew there was no point in telling you the truth. I knew you’d never believe it.”
Ignoring that, I said, “How could Mitch poison the food? He wasn’t even allowed in the kitchen.”
“He came in far as the warm table. That’s where the food was waiting. All he had to do was pour on a drop of poison.”
“What makes you think he did?”
“I saw him.”
I stared at him, but he had neither the agitated look of an unaccustomed liar nor the defensive mien of one whose normal reaction is to lie. He looked nearly relaxed. And, for once, his breath was almost silent. “Okay, Martin, give me the whole story. From the beginning. How did you come to suspect him?”
“Then you believe me?”
“I didn’t say that. I’m just giving you a chance to convince me.”
He nodded. Outside in the hallway a high-pitched male voice was insisting he was not a burglar, but had been hired by an absent friend to help a guy move.
“Moving out his TV at two A.M., eh?” an officer demanded.
“Yeah, man, he wanted it in his new place for the morning news.”
A door slammed. To Yankowski I said, “So convince me Mitch poisoned the food.”
He took a breath. The hiss was back. “Look, I told you what Mitch was like. Well, you can imagine the big stink he made about the supposed poisoner. He was slamming around ‘investigating,’ making a big to-do, firing everybody in sight. So no one there could help but be aware of the poisonings.”
“Go on.”
“Well, a couple of months ago he had one of his colds. We were short-staffed because he’d fired the salad chef. Adrienne was in a temper. And about ten o’clock Mitch came in fussing for his horseradish. Suddenly he had to have a cup of soup with the horseradish. The sous-chef’s got to drop everything and run for his horseradish jar. Mitch makes this big production about how he needs his horseradish and he can’t even get in his own kitchen for it. Then he stands over the warm table, pours the horseradish in his soup, and stands there and eats it. Of course, he set Adrienne off, which was what he intended. By the time the last meal was out, everyone was snapping at everyone else. It wasn’t a night you’d forget. And then the next day I got there early and I heard Mitch on the phone with a customer saying he was sorry the customer had gotten sick last night.”
“Are you saying the poison was in his horseradish jar then?” I asked, amazed.
“Of course not. He poured the horseradish into his own soup and he didn’t get sick. He could have had the poison in any small container. It wouldn’t have taken much, would it?”
“No.” Even diluted, a drop or two could have been ample.
“He was just using the fuss about the horseradish for a reason to hang around the warm table.”
“Did you see him pouring poison?”
“Not then.
Then, I just coupled the events in my mind. But the next time Mitch had a cold, he was in the kitchen mixing up his horseradish and putting it in his jar before Adrienne started to work. And the jar reminded me of that awful night. I told Adrienne not to let him get to her, that he’d be at his worst that night because he had a cold. I told her to watch out.”
“And was Mitch at his worst?”
“Oh yeah. He kept coming in to the warm table making comments. This wasn’t done enough. That sauce was too thick. I made a bet with Adrienne on the number of times he’d be in, you know, to try to make a joke of it as much as I could. Adrienne has a pretty short fuse. But you probably know that by now, right?”
I didn’t respond.
He straightened up. “The thing was,” he said, the hiss becoming louder, “that we were watching for him. I was watching more than she; my work doesn’t take much thought. I saw him pour a drop of something white on one of the dinners. The sauce was white. I almost said something to him, but I just caught myself in time. I was thinking if Adrienne knew he’d put horseradish in her sauce all hell would break loose.”
“But he didn’t have the horseradish then, did he?”
“No. That’s my point. He poured something else. I was thinking about the horseradish because of the last time he’d been in a temper. So my reaction was to think it was horseradish he had poured. But, of course, it wasn’t. The horseradish was still in the pantry, where it always was when he had a cold. Whatever he poured just looked like horseradish.”
“Then what?”
“When I heard that a customer had been poisoned that night, I put two and two together.”
“And you just planned to let him go on poisoning people? You didn’t report him?”
“Come on, would you have believed me?” The hiss almost drowned his words.
“No more than I believe you now! What about Rue Driscoll, how could he have poisoned her?”
“Easy, he carried her food to the table.”
“And Earth Man?”
“Easy again, if dumb. Laura wasn’t there. Adrienne can’t be bothered with Earth Man. She was doing a chicken dish that night and she had a few pieces too scrappy to serve the customers, so she plunked them on the warm table and plopped some soup on them as a sauce. The dish must have sat there an hour. It was probably too big a temptation for Mitch to resist.”
