Beyond Blame

by Stephen Greenleaf

  Hillside Lane went sharply uphill, doglegged to the right and ended almost as soon as it began in front of a matched pair of oddly proportioned stucco buildings that looked like a couple of two-story Mexican cantinas that had been airlifted across the Rio Grande, dropped in the middle of Berkeley and painted turquoise as an aesthetic afterthought. The Usser house was across from the cantinas on the uphill side, a three-story, sternly handsome brown-shingle residence, designed by Maybeck or one of his better imitators, surrounded by lush vegetation that screened most of its facade from outside eyes.

  The windows were dark and leaded, the roof was shake, the front yard was a delicately landscaped ramp that rose from the street to the house in tiers of bright blooms and gleaming leaves that were sophisticated beyond the limits of my botany. The steep stone steps that led to the porch were more a ladder than a staircase. I turned around at the dead end, parked facing the way I’d come and surveyed the scene while feeling shrunken and a bit indecent in the shadow of the patrician home. When I looked for signs that it had sheltered both a murderer and his victim, I didn’t find a one.

  I was remembering again the abandoned, haunted look of Lawrence Usser, was trying to match him with his crime, when I heard a sound and looked behind me. A woman who must have come out of one of the turquoise cantinas was strolling down the center of the street.

  She was spry and stately, her gray hair rolled into a tight braid at the base of her skull, her torso encased in a formless brown sweater, her legs in wide tweed slacks, her feet in shoes that were as sensible as shoes can get. The slim volume that she cradled before her eyes could only have been poetry or scripture.

  I got out of my car. Her brown eyes flicked at me, then returned to her verse. “Excuse me,” I said. “Could I ask you a question?”

  She stopped and lowered her book and looked at me with a gaze that had doubtlessly cowed many a pupil in its day and many a man as well. “Yes?” Somehow, the word was trilled.

  “Could you tell me if a woman named Phyllis lives on this street? I believe she has a young daughter.”

  The woman frowned. “Phyllis what?”

  I tried a rueful grin. “I forget her last name. That’s the problem, you see. I—”

  “What is the purpose of your question, sir? I’m not in the habit of giving such information to strangers.”

  I squirmed beneath her rectitudinous gaze, and this time didn’t have to fake disquiet. “It’s real embarrassing,” I began. “Phyllis and my wife are on this committee, you see—ACORN, it’s called. Action to Conserve Our Resplendent Nature? And there was a meeting at our place last night—we live over on Arch Street. I’m with the library, the city library, and anyway, this woman Phyllis forgot her glasses and since I had to be over here this morning, I said I’d drop them off but I didn’t write the address down so I forgot the number and—”

  “I don’t remember ever seeing you at the library.”

  “I work in the basement. Bindery.”

  “Really.”

  “Now about this Phyllis, I just need to—”

  The woman gestured at the second blue cantina, the one that caused the street to stop. “The woman who lives there is named Phyllis Misteen. I know because her mail is frequently misdelivered to me. She is 10. I am 8. I am frequently persuaded that mail carriers are no longer required to know the language. Now, if you will excuse me? You may have made me miss my bus. I intend to visit your office one day, by the way. To discuss certain library policies that I find particularly reprehensible. What was your name again?”

  I made one up, apologized for detaining her, thanked her for her help, and watched as she stuffed the little chapbook into the elastic pocket of her sweater and strode off down the street with a doughty, dauntless gait. I resisted the temptation to ask the poet’s name.

  In the next minute nothing near me moved that wasn’t blown by the breeze off the bay. I leaned on the fender and sensed the street, feeling very much alone.

  The houses flanking Usser’s were screened from me by hedges. The slope directly behind the Usser house was undeveloped, a whistling glade of cypress and eucalyptus. The house across the way was curtained and draped. My chances of getting in and out unseen seemed about as good as they ever get in their natural state, so I trotted up Usser’s steps, not for the first time wishing I looked like a vacuum salesman or a Witness.

  The front door was polished walnut, its glass center panel smoked and etched. The fine lines outlined a cheery sprig of wildflowers that contrasted dismally with the official notice tacked beside the door:

  CRIME SCENE. CONTENTS UNDER SEAL.

  ENTRY PROHIBITED. VIOLATION PUNISHABLE BY LAW.

  The notice sobered me. Even though they’d had a month to probe the place, and even though they had already arrested the guy who’d done it, I respected physical evidence enough to be leery of polluting the interior with whatever microscopic leavings I might unwittingly deposit if I ignored the warning and went inside. I thought for a minute, then backed down off the porch, turned and started toward my car, my retreat in large part a reaction to being on foreign soil. If I was in San Francisco, I would have already been inside.

  The sound that stopped me was a muffled bump that was quickly stifled. It came from somewhere behind the house. A cat or dog. Garbage man. Meter reader. Felon.

  Alert and nervous, I followed the narrow flagstone path along the laurel hedge that flanked the house, brushing branches away from my face. My shoe scraped noisily across a stone, making me stumble, turning my heart into a flipping fish. But nothing stopped me before I reached the yard in back.

  The patio at the rear of the house was trimmed in poppies and petunias and furnished in white metal. An ornamental olive tree supported a finch feeder and a paper lantern. Somewhere a wind chime tinkled in random tones that seemed to travel to my ears through cotton. The little fish pond beside the patio seemed empty of everything but a fibrous, chartreuse scum. By the back door steps a plastic garbage can was on its side, spilling refuse. I stood where I was and looked for what had dumped it.

  The sun was overhead and I was in its light. Sweat tumbled down my temples and my ribs. My wool jacket seemed suddenly an armored breastplate, stiff and weighted. I stayed where I was, though, because there was someone back there with me. I didn’t know who or where he was, but he was somewhere near. It’s a sense that serves the animals, a sense that evolution has blessedly left us with. I surveyed the yard again, this time alert for only movement. Nothing challenged me but a jay, typically brash and brazen.

  There were only a few places he could be hiding. Behind the potting shed at the back of the lot. Or in it. Behind the back stairs. Behind a tree. Behind the hedge that surrounded the yard. Inside the house. I flipped a mental coin and crossed the patio on my way to the little shed. When I was halfway there, I heard a noise that made me turn.

  He’d been crouched behind the stairs and he was running for the front. To get there he had to swerve toward me, to avoid an antique lamp post. When he did so, I took two steps and dove at him, an arm outstretched, grasping for a leg. I missed the leg but his foot caught under my wrist and he tripped. With a quick cry he sprawled across the flagstones and skidded face first for several yards, his feet flying high behind him. His speed was such that I was on my feet and standing over him by the time he slid to a stop and gathered his skinned legs and scattered wits.

  He was just a kid, but he had chosen his clothes to be a constant clamor. His Levi’s were slashed into tattered strips from the knee to the ankle. A chrome chain angled across his waist like a gun belt. One ear was pierced. From the lobe dangled a slender silver chain that was wound into a noose. A Japanese ideograph danced on the front of his black T-shirt like a spider’s bloody web. On the shirt was a button that read WEIRD.

  A blond streak divided his long black scalp like a roadway warning not to pass. He sat cross-legged and shook his head and brushed the dirt off his shirt with hands made lumps by finger-less leather gloves
. I moved into the path of the sun, so when he looked up he could see me.

  “I didn’t do nothing,” he muttered as I loomed over him like a thundercloud. His lip was bleeding and his wrist was scraped. He rubbed the latter across the former and made a scarlet smear on both.

  “Why are you back here?” I asked him. “To steal something?”

  He looked up at me and swore. “You creeps, you think everyone’s a crook. I been back here a hundred times.”

  He seemed to think I was a cop. “Back here doing what?” I asked.

  “None of your fucking business, swine. Why don’t you just arrest me, huh? Then see what happens. My old man will have your ass.” His lips curled into a bloody sneer.

  “Are you a friend of the Ussers? Of Lisa?”

  The curl momentarily left his lip. “You know Lisa?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You bust her or something?”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “I ain’t seen her for a while, is all.”

  “Why do you want to see her?”

  “No reason.”

  “Come on. What’s Lisa Usser to you?”

  “She’s got some stuff of mine. I need it back.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Just stuff.”

  “You and Lisa friends?”

  “We hang out sometimes,” he said grudgingly.

  “When did you see her last?”

  He smiled his resistance. “I forget.”

  “Come on, son. You answer my questions and we’ll wrap this up real quickly. You don’t and you’ll be seeing a lot of me for a long, long time.”

  It was a bluff and not a very good one, given the rules on detaining juveniles these days, rules I was certain the young man knew more precisely than I did, but it worked this time, I think because he wanted it to. “Okay, okay. The last I saw her was the night before it happened.”

  “You mean when her mother was killed?”

  “Nah. When they picked up her old man.”

  “Were you here when it happened?”

  “Nah. I just heard it was going to.”

  “Heard from whom?”

  “I forget.”

  “Is Lisa your girlfriend?”

  The boy shrugged and rubbed a hand through his two-tone locks. “The term is weak, man. We aren’t each other’s property.”

  “What’s your name?”

  He stayed silent, sullen again now that he’d decided I didn’t know anything about Lisa. His chain belt made music with the wind chimes as he squirmed beneath my stare.

  “You want to go downtown so we can run some prints? That’ll tell me who you are.” I was pushing it, but I’d begun to suspect the boy wasn’t as streetwise as he wanted people to believe. There was too much life in his eyes, and too much warmth in his voice when he talked about Lisa Usser.

  “Cal,” he muttered finally.

  “Cal what?”

  “I trashed my surname, man. I’m just Cal.”

  “You live nearby, Cal?”

  “I live where I am. Last night I lived in a van on Fifth Street. Tonight, who knows?” He laughed. “Hell, I crashed in that shed back there for two months one time. No one knew it but me and Lisa.” Their secret made him proud enough to jut his chest.

  “How about your parents?”

  “You mean the people that fucked each other so they could fuck me over?”

  “Right. Those people.”

  “What about them?”

  “Where do they live?”

  “Oh, Berkeley, Glen Ellen, La Jolla, Maui. You name it, they’ve lived there, so long as it’s lily white.”

  “What does your father do?”

  “Makes money; spends money; eats money; shits money.”

  “How about your mother?”

  “Hits a white ball with a long stick, mostly; then rides after it in her cart and hits it again. Whatever else she does she does at Silverado; she split a year ago. The old man took it hard, losing his squeeze and his condo in the same month. What a bogus bastard he is.” Cal’s ersatz cynicism slipped away for a moment, leaving behind an earnest aura of concern. “Hey. Really. Do you know where Lisa is?”

  I evaded the question with one of my own. “You know Lisa a long time, Cal?”

  “We were in the same class at Berkeley High. Till her folks put her in that white bread school.”

  “When was that?”

  “This term. They did it because of me, too; not because of that academic crap they laid on her.” Cal thrust his narrow chest again. “They thought I was a bad influence. Hah. Lisa’s the one that’s out there in the zodiac, man. I just try to keep up.” His demeanor softened once again. “Do they really think Lisa’s old man killed Dianne?”

  “Yep. What do you think? Could he have done it?”

  Cal shrugged. “He’s a prick. Thinks he knows everything in the world but he don’t know what’s going on under his own roof.” Cal looked briefly at the big, silent house as if it were a dream that had not come true. “Old Larry is just another cog in the system, man. All this talk about civil rights and all, but he’s still living high on the hog while the people eat shit. It took a while, but Lisa finally saw him for the scum he was. I just wish it had been the other way around.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Never mind.”

  I thought I knew. What I didn’t know was what it meant, so I tried to pursue it. “Did you and Lisa’s mother get along?”

  “Dianne? She was adequate, I guess.”

  “How about Lisa?”

  “How about Lisa what?”

  “Lisa and her mother. How’d they get along?”

  Cal shrugged.

  “I heard they fought a lot.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Who the hell doesn’t get freaky with their mom? Lucky for me mine wrote me off a long time ago. Berkeley’s my old lady now, man. And I can suck her tit just fine.”

  Cal worked at making me believe it, but he was still too young, still too clean, still too eager to learn about Lisa to make me buy what he was selling. “Is Lisa at the Youth Authority, man?” he asked, his purpose still intact. “I called there but they wouldn’t tell me shit. Fucking Nazis. Can I get up now?” he added, still alternating between bravado and a kittenish immaturity.

  I gave him a hand and helped him to his feet. In the process I looked for needle marks on his arm, listened for sniffles in his nose, checked for dead space in his eyes. I didn’t find any of those things, which was surprisingly heartening.

  “You aren’t a cop, are you?” Cal said when he was standing beside me.

  “Nope.”

  “What’re you doing here?”

  “Looking.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m not sure. Were you inside the house?”

  Cal shrugged his head. “I was about to bust in when I heard you come up the walk. I figured you for a cop, so …” He shrugged his way to silence.

  “What were you after?”

  Cal looked past me, to make certain we were alone. “I scored Dianne some righteous grass a while back, and I figure it’s still in there. What do you think? You think the pigs found it? I could sure use some bud.”

  I shrugged. “They search pretty well when it’s a homicide. You say you got it for Lisa’s mom, not Lisa?”

  “Right.”

  “You get any other drugs for her?”

  “Blow. But only once. Said she wanted to check it out, to see what all the fuss was about.”

  “Lisa know about this?”

  “Nope. Just between me and Dianne. She was a clean lady, man. Too bad she had to beam up.”

  Cal said it as though her fate had been ordained. I looked at him and decided it was just an expression, as empty as most speculations about death. “You have any idea why Usser would kill her, Cal?”

  I had tried to sneak the question in, but it’s import didn’t seem to register. Cal only shrugged, his interest clearly elsewhere.

  “Did Li
sa ever say anything about her parents having problems? Fights or anything?”

  “Hell, they fought all the time. He was always giving orders like someone died and they appointed him the Dalai Lama. Dianne got bummed out by it, man. I could tell.”

  “Did she do anything about it? Like threaten divorce?”

  “Naw. But Lisa thought she was getting it on with someone.”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t know. Lisa didn’t either. We were thinking about tailing her, you know, about the time it happened. I … I kind of miss Dianne, you know? If she was getting it on it was only fair. I mean, old Larry dicked everything that moved, just like my old man.”

  “You know any names?”

  “Nah. Chicks at the law school mostly, I guess. They were always over here, hanging out, like Larry-babe was giving out free brain candy. Where is Lisa, anyway, buddy? Huh? She needs me, I know she does.”

  “Why?”

  “She gets all agitated sometimes. I’m the only one can calm her down.”

  “She on dope? An addict of some kind?”

  “Nah. Grass, that’s all me and Lisa do. Bud and brandy, man, makes it mellow out.”

  Cal paused, fidgeted, was bothered by his answer. “What else?” I asked him.

  “Ah, since she went away to that school she started hanging around with some real psychotics. The fucking Maniac and the rest.”

  “What maniac?”

  “That’s the guy she runs with now. Calls himself the Maniac. He’s got this bunch of airheads he leads, calls them the Psychotics. A fucking jailbird, is what he is. I heard he offed a guy but I don’t know if it’s true. He’s got Lisa taking some heavy shit, is the problem. Crank. Crystal. Then ’ludes to slide down off it. She gets real strung out now, like her brain keeps pumping about a million megabytes into her day and night, and sometimes she can’t process it.” Cal glanced up at the Usser house, then spoke in tones thick with admiration. “Lisa’s something else, man. When she’s on line she really computes, but sometimes she totally zones out. If it happens on the street it can get her in trouble. There’s some real assholes out there, you know? I need to be there with her. Know what I mean?”