'No, wait a minute. What did he say?'
'Melanie, he always does stuff like this. Says I've got the wrong number, then hangs up.' He started pushing buttons again. She was up from her seat, threw herself over him on the bed, grabbing for the telephone. Landing across his ribs.
'Ahh!'
'Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Kevin, I didn't mean…'
He, also naked, was on his side, half-rolled into a fetal position, moaning. She took the phone from him and placed it in its receiver. 'Are you all right?'
He shook his head, trying to catch his breath, struggling with it. 'You want to call him so bad, okay, you call.'
'I don't want to call him. Tell me what he said.'
Rolling over, flat onto his back, Kevin gingerly pushed at his ribs. 'He said, this is a direct quote, get ready. He said, "Sorry, wrong number." '
'Somebody was there. He was followed home. We were right to get out of there. It's true. You know it's true.'
He poked gingerly at his ribs as she sat beside him on the bed. After a minute she lifted the receiver. 'What's his number?'
Closing his eyes, he leaned back again and mumbled it to her. She pushed the buttons. 'This is your mother, Wes. Say, "Oh, hi Mom." Now, if the police are there, say "I don't know. I might be busy that night." '
She nodded. 'We'll call you later. Do you think they'll be gone within an hour?'
A small pause. 'All right, now say "Okay, sorry. 'Bye, Mom." '
She hung up and put a hand on Kevin's belly, shaking her head.
He covered her hand with his. 'Now what?'
Dressed now, hair as neatly combed as Melanie could get it – she thought it might make a difference – Kevin sat rigidly in an easy chair in the living room surrounded by plants, the blinds drawn at the window behind him. They had all the lights turned on, some dragged in from the bedroom, all the lamp shades stripped from them. Ersatz klieg.
Melanie had moved Ann's tripod and video camera around – it was loaded with tape and ready to go – and pointed it at Kevin. She pushed the button, the red light came on, and Kevin tried to smile at the camera, though it came out forced.
'I'm Kevin Shea,' he began, 'and I did not…'
They stood embracing by the inside of the apartment's front door. 'There's no other way to do it. I've got to go. I'll be back in less than an hour, then we'll call Wes again.'
'Maybe you could go by his apartment. He could deliver it.'
She shook her head. 'I'm not going by there. They've probably got the National Guard surrounding the place.' She kissed him. 'Look, Kevin, I'm not the one in danger, I'm the only one who can do this. I changed the plates on the car. We got over here, didn't we?'
'Barely.'
'Barely counts,' she said, kissed him and was out the door.
He thought it odd that he didn't want a beer. Ann had four perfectly good Rolling Rocks in the refrigerator and instead he poured himself a glass of orange juice from the large pitcher. Drank it all down and poured another one.
Back in the living room he tried to estimate the time it would take – Melanie was bringing the tape down to KQED, the public television station, the closest one to the apartment. Assuming she wasn't arrested and didn't get in a wreck, it shouldn't take her an hour. But there was always traffic, and, the last couple of days, the curfew areas she'd have to avoid.
His stomach was cramping. What if something happened to her? Now, when…
When what?
He realized he was more worried about what might happen to her than he was about himself. He should never have let her go alone. He should have gone with her…
Wes Farrell was answering Kevin's question about the police presence. "They're gone. What are you doing?'
'I've been counting seconds for the last seven minutes. There were four hundred and twenty of them I think. It got a little boring so I thought I'd call you. How's Bart?'
'Bart's fine.'
'So your meeting downtown…?'
'I thought it all went along perfectly until the cops showed up here.'
'How did that happen?'
'I should have known. Gets to be a lot at stake, they lie.'
'Who?'
'The cops. In this case, Lieutenant Glitsky. Said he'd keep it to himself but he obviously assigned somebody to follow me home, figuring you were staying at my place, although I said you weren't. He probably figured it was worth a try. If you'd been here he could claim the arrest, maybe even get the reward. Anyway, imagine my surprise and relief when it turned out I was inadvertently telling the truth about you not being here. It also probably kept me out of jail. So what are you counting seconds for?'
'Until Mel comes back.'
'Where is she?'
Kevin explained. 'We figure we get me on the air, the media picks it up, maybe we get a swing in public opinion. Something changes. At least the truth gets out there.'
'I've got one for you, Kev. Why do you persist in thinking that anybody's going to believe anything you have to say?'
Kevin took that in, waited a beat before answering. 'I am telling the truth here, Wes.'
'I'm not arguing with you. We've been through that. But I told Glitsky your truth – at least as I understood it. He even seemed open to it. And yet there's something about this Grand Jury indictment… that's a formal document, Kevin. You are charged with this crime. I don't think a videotape of you saying you didn't do it is going to win many hearts and minds. People are going to be cynical about your motives. Trust me. It's going to take a jury now, unless we can get to the DA, get him to drop it, which even Glitsky thought was unlikely. And, incidentally, so do I.'
'I'm not going to trial for this-'
'I'd take a reality check on that one, Kevin.'
'There's no way, I'm going to-'
'Then why are you staying in the city? I thought you wanted to tell your story, get the truth out.'
'Yeah, but not at a damn trial, Wes. I go to trial I'm a dead man, you know that. Hell, that's what you told me. It can't get to that. That's why I came to you. Get it straightened out behind the scenes.'
Farrell couldn't say anything.
'Wes?'
'Barring an act of God, Kevin, a trial is what's going to happen. We'll have to arrange your arrest, then get you out on bail.'
'I thought there wasn't bail on a murder charge.'
'A capital murder charge – that's something we'd have to negotiate.'
There was a long silence, then Kevin's voice, noticeably weaker. 'Wes, it just can't have come to this.'
'That's what I'm trying to tell you, Kevin. It's already come to this. It's going to have to play itself out at trial… unless they kill you first.'
Another long pause. 'Gosh, you cheer a guy right up.'
'You asked.'
'Do me a favor, would you, next time I ask?'
'What?'
'Lie.'
50
Allicey Tobain was in the storefront's inner office with Philip Mohandas. N'doum was outside standing guard. In spite of the insistent hum of the voices – some of them raised – of the other people in the front, N'doum could clearly hear Allicey through the door…
She was pacing in the small room. 'You are losin' sight of the reality here, Philip. You are being manipulated by that, that politician.' She spat out the word, stopped pacing, faced Mohandas. 'You tell me this – what we got out of all this? We got one of her people in the DA's job. We do that for her, in exchange for something… right? But where's the exchange? Where's the something? We get a promise, that's all, but I'm not seeing any something. And in the meanwhile we're losing sight-'
'You keep saying that, Allicey, but what of? What am I losing sight of? And we will get the something. We get a million dollars a month.' He spoke quietly, gestured to the door. 'That buys a lot of pamphlets, girl, a lot of advertising time, a lot of everything – you hear what I'm saying?'
She wasn't buying. Bringing her face up to his, she said 'I ain't running no day-care center. This isn't
about no underprivileged youth. This is about our people, Philip, about how we're really treated. We got a man lynched here three days ago and so far not one person has been arrested. Far as I can tell, nobody's even lookin' anymore. You call that justice? You call that progress? That what you want?'
He was silent.
She crossed back to Philip's sleeping couch, stopped, turned to him again. Her tone softened. 'She's playin' you, Philip. She takin' your teeth out. Don't you see that. It's a game for her. You get caught up in the game, you forget what you're about, who you are, who you can trust.'
'I don't forget that. But she's offering something important we can use, something-'
'Goddamn, man, listen to yourself. You talkin' about her offer, you playin' her game…' Coming back to him, she put her hands on his arms, holding them. 'Let me ask you this – is Jerohm Reese out of jail? Is that man Drysdale still working? If you remember, that's what we wanted this morning – those two things – when Senator Wager gives us the call. You remember that? We got either of them?'
'You were with me, Allicey – '
'I got sucked in a minute, too. I thought we were getting something. But ask yourself, what do we got now? Alan Reston? Who's he? We got the mayor upping the reward on Kevin Shea, but I don't see no Kevin Shea. You see him? You see anything really happening?'
She let go of his arms, smoothed the fabric of his shirt. 'We got brothers and sisters fighting out there, Philip. Losin' the streets. Ain't nothin' make them feeling any better until a little simple justice comes down here. That's what we gotta be calling for – some simple justice. And I think in the heat of all this… this negotiating with the senator… we losin' track of who we are, what we all about. That's all I'm sayin'.'
Philip Mohandas kept his face impassive. He backed up a couple of steps, came up against one of the folding chairs and lowered himself into it, his back straight.
Flanked by Allicey and Jonas, Philip Mohandas was out in the front of the store surrounded by perhaps forty of his followers. Even at this time of night, there were a half-dozen microphones, a representative (with telecam) from one of the cable TV stations, a female reporter from the Bay Guardian who'd been hanging at his headquarters all day. Mohandas, aware that he was being taped, was orating:
'… most emphatically are not satisfied with what you're calling the progress of the city, the situation as it stands today. All that we have seen, and continue to see, is lip service, that is all.'
The Guardian reporter spoke up. Behind Mohandas, Allicey and Jonas frowned. 'But what about Alan Reston? Wasn't he your candidate? He's black, doesn't that show some kind of-'
Mohandas let his voice out a bit. He partially raised his fist. 'Whoever it was, the new DA had to be an African-American. The mayor realized he had no other option. Any other choice would have been… gratuitously inflammatory. Mr Reston himself was acceptable under that minimum criteria, but we remain adamant that Jerohm Reese is an innocent victim as well as a continuing example of white oppression, that Mr Art Drysdale is a racist who must be retired from any public position. So no, to answer your question, we are not satisfied.'
'What about the increased reward? Doesn't that-'
Mohandas pointed at the stringer for the cable network. 'Now I'm glad you raised that question because it's more of the lip service I've been talking about. It's an empty gesture, designed to lull my community – my outraged brothers and sisters – into a belief that the power structure, that people of non-color are concerned. Concerned. But we don't want concern. Concern isn't enough. We want results. What good is a reward – be it fifty dollars or five million dollars – if it does nothing to produce the man?' He pointed to The Picture taped to the wall. 'We got to have the man.'
He turned to the camera, focused and intense. 'Let's not get lost in rhetoric, in so-called good intentions. Let us not forget what has happened here in San Francisco, what continues to happen. Arthur Wade has died and nothing has changed. Jerohm Reese is in jail and Kevin Shea walks the streets, and until that gets corrected, until these facts get turned around, we cannot rest. We will not rest.'
His voice had hoarsened somewhat, and Jonas N'doum handed him a glass of water, from which he drank. 'That is why I am calling for a solidarity march – a peaceful solidarity march – on Saturday morning, presenting these demands to the city once and for all: that there is action on Jerohm Reese, that there is action on Mr Art Drysdale, that the city employ all its resources, all its power to find Kevin Shea and begin the righteous task of bringing him to justice.'
The room exploded in a chorus of 'right ons' and 'amens' and Mohandas half turned, received an approving nod from Allicey Tobain, then faced the camera with an expression of fixed resolve.
51
They were walking on the cold sand of the beach below the Cliff House, Loretta barefoot with her shoes in her hand and wearing Glitsky's flight jacket against the slight chill. There was no wind. He was holding her other hand, pretending to be immune to the weather. They had gotten out here to the ocean, Loretta still driving, along the northern edge of the city, through the Presidio and the Seacliff neighborhood, bypassing anything resembling a curfew area.
'So when are you going back to Washington?'
'I don't know exactly. I'd like to see this… this whole thing resolved, at least stay until that. If it's not too long, which I gather it won't be.'
The night had been all personal – both Abe and Loretta were under the impression that Kevin Shea would be in custody by sometime the next day. The madness would be dissipating. They didn't have to discuss it – it was moving toward its conclusion.
She was continuing. 'I do feel I'm part of that, of all of this. I'm still very worried about Elaine.' Her steps slowed and she stopped walking, turned to look up to Glitsky. 'And then there's you.'
He kept walking, step after step. His factual voice. 'Yes there is.'
'I don't suppose you get to Washington much.'
'That's a good guess.'
She stopped him, studied the sand, drew a few lines in it with her toes. 'I'm here at the recess, couple of times during the year, mostly campaigning.'
Over her head the breaking waves had a phosphorescence. Glitsky thought he saw the lights of a tanker out at the horizon. Behind him rose the faint wail of a siren.
'Okay,' he said.
Her arms were around his waist. 'Would you mind very much hugging me a minute?'
She was holding him tight, her body pressed against him. He felt a shiver pass through her. 'Are you cold?'
Her head shook. 'That's not it.' He kept holding her. 'You tell yourself you don't need this,' she whispered, almost as though it were to herself.
'I know.'
'You get good at it. You have to.'
Glitsky didn't trust himself to say much. 'Yep.'
Gradually, her arms let him go, fell to her sides. He released her and she stepped back. Even in the dim lights from the moon and the street behind him, her eyes were liquid, shining. The hint of a smile fluttered and died. 'Senators aren't allowed to cry. It's in the oath.'
He touched her cheek.
'I want to ask you to stay with me.'
He shook his head no. 'You said it yourself. You've got to give Elaine some time. She needs you. And I've got to check in. If Farrell's called… to say nothing of the fourteen messages which my trained police eye sees blinking on your answering machine. And tomorrow looks to be another long one.'
They were just inside her front door. 'Are you always this responsible?'
'Yes, ma'am. Like yourself, I'm a humble servant of the public.'
'All right,' she said, pulling him down and kissing him. She opened the door, looked out theatrically, back and forth. 'All right, it's all clear. No reporters.' She faced him. 'Come to think of it, maybe I should start getting a little worried about no reporters. Where have they been? They should be here.'
'Staking out your house…?'
She hugged him again. 'I'm teasing you, Li
eutenant. Now get out of here. As it is, I'm going to need a cold shower before I'm going to be able to get my head back into my work.'
Glitsky's scar stretched a little. 'Now you didn't say anything about a shower…'
She pushed him outside. 'Git… but tomorrow.'
He pointed a finger at her. 'Tomorrow.'
He walked to the car and stared back at her mansion, which was, he thought, far more intimidating than the woman herself.
It must have been Dana's. It was strange to think of her living here, so close to him, all these years. Of course, for most of them, he'd had Flo, he hadn't been looking, told himself he wouldn't have seen it if it had danced in front of him.
Another siren, this one not far away. He turned and looked at the orange glow of more flames somewhere in the eastern sky. Come on, Mr Farrell, he thought, let's get this over with.
It was still early enough – not yet ten. And he knew no one was home chez Glitsky. It was literally the most free that he'd been in probably fifteen years and he was going to check back in at work. Somebody might need him.
He got in the car. The seat was still jammed up under the steering wheel where Loretta had needed it. He smiled to himself and said 'one two three,' pushing it back to where he could drive. Small packages, he was thinking. What was that expression? What was it that came in them – good things? Or was it dynamite?
This late at night Glitsky's first inclination was to pull directly up to the front of the Hall on Bryant Street and park along the curb. He was aware of heavy traffic even north of Market, and by the time he got where he worked he was barely crawling. Black-and-whites were double- and triple-parked along the entire length of the block. Near the center of the street, by the entrance to the Hall, where he'd been interviewed earlier in the day, the television vans had staked their turf. There was a line of busses for transporting people. He could see the traffic backed up both coming off the Freeway at 7th and down from the lower Mission on Bryant, and he knew at least one of the other side streets was a parking lot. Finally, turning into an alley jammed with what he knew were unmarked police cars parked on the curbs and sidewalks, he crept through the one open lane to the city lot behind the Hall.
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