The Color of Fear

by Marcia Muller

  I checked in with the few staff members who were there. Julia was planning a surveillance on a jewelry store in the Mission that had twice been broken into; her strategy was to leave open the window they’d previously entered by, turn off the newly installed alarm, and wait for the would-be thieves to return. “I know the Mission punks,” she told me. “They’ll be back. And the cops aren’t going to be any help; crime in the Mission isn’t a priority.”

  Sad but true. All too often, manpower and muscle follow the money.

  Patrick, whom we’d jokingly named the head of our deadbeat dad division, was chasing down one in Pacifica, south of the city. He hated deadbeat dads with a passion because he was raising his two sons alone after their mother abandoned the family. I left him a note asking that he get in touch with me.

  When I came out of Patrick’s office I noticed that there was a strange person at our reception desk. Strange in that I didn’t know him—not strange meaning bizarre. He saw me, rose, and extended his hand.

  “Ms. McCone,” he said, “I’m Jason Lieberman, from ProTemp Services. Mr. Smalley asked that they send someone to help out here during the staff shifts.”

  What staff shifts?

  I extended my hand. His grasp was firm, his fingers stained with what looked to be ink from a black cartridge.

  He saw me looking at it and said, “It won’t come off on you. I know, because I’ve been scrubbing at it for two days.” His eyes twinkled and he added, “They’re out to get us, you know.”

  “Who?”

  “The ink cartridge companies. They want to damage our appearances so we won’t rise on the corporate ladder.”

  Maybe Jason was bizarre, or maybe…?

  “You’re a friend of Ted’s, right?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Well, that explains it. Carry on.”

  I skirted the desk and went down the hall to Mick’s office. “What’s the deal with Jason?”

  “Kendra quit, so at Ted’s suggestion I called ProTemp and asked for him.”

  “Kendra quit? Why?”

  “She wouldn’t say, but I think it’s that she’s having trouble coping with both the job and that family of hers.” He shook his head.

  Kendra Williams had a large family at home, none of whom seemed capable of managing anything alone. Their parents were both dead, and they demanded her services as chief cook, cleaner, and caregiver. Yet she always tried to pick up the slack here, staying late while issuing familial orders by phone: The dryer is not busted; try cleaning the lint trap…Use Resolve, not Windex, on the carpet…Three hundred and fifty degrees is what you cook the casserole at…Give the cat her hairball medicine…Don’t give Missy the red pills! They could kill her. Hers are the blue ones.

  All of this delivered in a pleasant modulated tone—well, except when someone was about to administer a potentially lethal overdose.

  Her calm, steady hand was one of the many reasons I didn’t want to lose Kendra. And her family’s financial needs couldn’t be met without us. Something needed to be done. But what? And how? Kendra was proud; she’d never accept charity.

  I said, “Let’s all of us try to think of a creative solution to this problem. Kendra badly needs her salary and benefits, and it’d be nearly impossible to replace her.”

  “I’ll spread the word around,” Mick agreed.

  “Good. Do you have those files on the hate crimes yet?”

  “They’re on your desk. I know you don’t like to read off the computer for long periods, so I printed them out. Grim stuff. The file only reveals a small part of what’s going on with the hate groups, here and nationwide. Makes me never want to leave this high-security building again.”

  “Ugly stuff, huh?”

  “Some of the ugliest.”

  “I can hardly wait. Have you or Derek gotten any information on the Jersey person?”

  “Nothing on Jersey.”

  “What about Rolle Ferguson and his family?”

  “His mother and father used to be pillars of Atherton society, lived on a big estate down there. They’re both dead now—an aviation accident in Europe.”

  “And Rolle?”

  “He’s the black sheep. He angered his parents with his stances on racial discrimination and abortion issues. According to friends, they were about to cut him out of their will when their small plane went down in the Swiss Alps. Rolle inherited the whole shebang.”

  “Consisting of?”

  “The Atherton property, a summer home at Lake Tahoe, and a condo in Pacific Heights.”

  “Where in Pacific Heights?”

  “Divisidero Street. Down near Cow Hollow.”

  That address was only a few blocks across Lombard Street from the Marina—an indication that Rolle Ferguson might have been involved in the attacks on Elwood, Muniz, and Killdeer.

  Mick went on, “Rolle also inherited cash accounts, an art collection, a small yacht, and a couple of expensive cars.”

  “No corporations?”

  “Ferguson Senior divested himself of his business interests a few years before he died. Probably didn’t trust Rolle to run them properly. He’s been in and out of rehab. Cocaine addiction, one person told me. Alcoholism, another said. Severe personality disorder. Anger management problems.”

  “With all that going on inside him, he could be a viable suspect in Elwood’s assault. So where is he now?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. I haven’t been able to pin him down, but I’m working on it. The Atherton house isn’t staffed right now, but I have the names and numbers of the housekeeper and maid who used to work there. It’s not too likely I can track him down through one of them, but you never know till you try.”

  “Right. And keep trying to find out who Jersey is.”

  “I will.” Mick added wryly, “As if I don’t have anything else to do with my time.”

  5:41 p.m.

  The printouts Mick had put on my desk contained the ugliest collection of data I’d ever read. Some of the groups I’d heard of before—Counter-Currents Publishing and the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan—but there were also a few surprises.

  The Society of Men; the Sisterhood; Women for Equality; Invalids and Others; Equalizers Anonymous. Simple names, sounding as if the groups were the do-good variety. But the profilers’ summaries of their activities showed their true dark sides.

  The members of the Society of Men were misogynists, devoted to smearing the reputations of women in positions of power—in either business or politics. The Sisterhood were the same, their targets male. Women for Equality didn’t seek equality for the male gender. Invalids and Others seemed composed of individuals enraged enough to maim whole populations. The information on Equalizers Anonymous was jumbled and unclear, sounding like a rejected movie script.

  The membership lists of some hate groups contained the names of people I had heard of, whom I never would have suspected of being bigoted. Worse were the names of individuals I knew or had thought I knew fairly well: a friend from college; a police officer whom I trusted; a neighbor of Rae and Ricky; a member of the board of supervisors; several people I’d read about in the newspapers; a neighbor of mine who was eighty years old and confined to a wheelchair. And then there were the anonymous others who were letting their rage run free.

  Who or what was to blame for this?

  The more I read, the more angry I felt—but it was an odd anger, infused with vulnerability. For the most part, I’d walked the streets of this city unafraid. And on those occasions when I had felt afraid, it was because of my profession, and I was usually armed against a known predator. Now the specter of hundreds of people who hated me for the color of my hair and skin, for my Shoshone features, haunted me. The thought that a blow to my head or a well-placed bullet could put me in the hospital—or worse—was unsettling.

  Stop it, McCone. It’s happened before.

  Yes, it had. But racism hadn’t been responsible that time.

  I’d had to walk
to Pier 24½, where we then had our offices, after my venerable MGB had run out of gas—faulty gauge, and I hadn’t paid attention to it. It was July, the late night cold and misty, with few other people on the sidewalk; beyond the Golden Gate, foghorns moaned and bellowed. I let myself into the pier; it was silent, not even the tech companies that usually worked 24-7 showing lights. I climbed the stairs to our second-story loft, intending to retrieve the cell phone I’d mistakenly left on my desk when I’d gone out to dinner with Julia Rafael. Triple A was just a button push away.

  But when I entered my office someone grabbed me, shoved me around. There was a flash of light and then a roar.

  Gunshot. Close by.

  Pain.

  And then nothing.

  I was extremely lucky the bullet hadn’t killed me when it lodged in my brain. Many months of surgery, a long stay in the hospital and another in rehab, plus exhausting physical therapy had restored me to my former self. But still my level of awareness was raised every time I walked alone on dark streets.

  7:17 p.m.

  I tried to attend to routine business work, but kept coming back to the information on hate crimes. Finally I gave up and turned my full attention to what the Internet had to say.

  A Chronicle reporter had divided local hate groups into five categories: White Nationalist; General Hate; Black Separatist; Anti-Muslim; Neo-Nazi. Their headquarters were scattered throughout the Bay Area, from San Francisco and Oakland to the supposedly quiet suburbs like Mountain View and Walnut Creek. Book clubs had been formed to read Nazi publications. One old man living in the Marina was responsible for most of the Ku Klux Klan’s agenda in the city. No addresses, phone numbers, or website information for any of them was provided in the article.

  The phone rang. The operative assigned to patrol the Marina district was checking in. So far tonight there’d been no sign of Jersey or the others I’d mentally started calling his gang of bar thugs. I’d been pretty sure they wouldn’t return to the site of their assault on Elwood, but you never knew. I asked the op to keep patrolling until his relief came on.

  8:49 p.m.

  I’d been sitting for a long time looking out at the lights of the city, the Bay Bridge, the East Bay. A container ship moved slowly past Alcatraz toward the Golden Gate. I watched until it gained the open sea.

  I tried to call Hy. Nothing, not even voice mail. What was the sense of having these handy phones when nobody was ever there to answer them? What was the point—?

  Okay, stop that, McCone. No fretting tonight. Go home; the cats will be hungry.

  Of course they were. Ravenous, in fact.

  And so was I.

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23

  8:07 a.m

  To my surprise almost everybody was at work, even on this Saturday before Christmas. We’re a 24-7 operation, but there’s no guarantee as to whom you’ll find at the agency or what they’ll be working on. A greater surprise was that Kendra was back at her desk, Jason Lieberman watching as she pointed out various items on her computer screen. I bypassed them and went directly to Mick’s office to see if he’d come in early too.

  He had. Still nothing on Jersey or Rolle Ferguson.

  “You check the apartment building Rolle owns in lower Pacific Heights?”

  “Nobody there at all. But I did turn up something that confirms that Rolle has racist tendencies. He was arrested for disrupting a Black Lives Matter rally in Oakland last summer. Was abusive to the police and almost everyone in the crowd, and it took three officers to subdue him. The case is still pending.”

  “So he went from picketing a high-school prom to a violent protest against blacks,” I said, then asked rhetorically, “How the hell does that happen?”

  Mick shrugged. “Why don’t you ask Hy? He knows more about that kind of thing than I do.”

  After Hy’s first wife had died, he’d set off on a reckless path of protesting antienvironmental causes. When I’d met him, but before we were a couple, I would often hear on the TV news that “Hy Ripinsky, premier agitator, has done it again.” I’d rolled my eyes and watched him being hauled off to jail.

  But then he’d mellowed—I liked to think because he knew I would’ve killed him had he gone on that way, but probably because he had the good sense to see what little progress he was making. Now he sat on the boards of various state and national ecological organizations. My crazy husband had turned into their voice of reason.

  “Maybe I will,” I said. “And you keep digging into Rolle’s background, his circle of friends.”

  “Right. You thinking he could be involved with this Jersey and his crowd?”

  “If he is a racist, it’s possible. The bar owner, Willingham, described them as being well dressed and Jersey as wearing an expensive watch. A rich kid like Rolle Ferguson would fit right in with a pack like that.”

  Mick agreed. “Anything else on your mind?” he asked then.

  “Yes—what’s with Jason and Kendra?”

  “Oh, he was having trouble with the flowcharts, so I asked her to come in and help him.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It’s a serious matter, Shar. Might take weeks to resolve.”

  “I suppose we’re paying well for her support.”

  “Yep.”

  “And extending all her employee benefits.”

  “Right.”

  “And at the end of this educational period, we’ll keep Jason on as assistant to Kendra, whose salary will be increased because she will then be in a supervisory capacity.”

  Mick swiveled and gave me his faux-guilty look. “I only did what you would’ve done if you didn’t have all this other stuff hanging over you.”

  “I know that, and I love you for it!” I jumped into his lap, put my arms around his neck, and pressed my cheek against his.

  He held me for a moment, then pushed me off. “Jesus, Shar, the door’s open. What’ll people think?”

  Those last three words resonated, and I burst into laughter. “You are your grandma’s boy. Remember when she used to say that all the time? ‘What will people think?’”

  He stared at me, then started laughing too. Laughed until he almost fell out of his chair.

  “God,” he said between honks and snorts, “don’t let me turn out like Grandma! I love her, but please don’t let that happen!”

  A smattering of applause came from the hallway: Julia, Ted, and Hy, who had been passing by when they’d heard the ruckus. They wanted to know what had caused it. We told them we’d go into it later, and I went back to my office.

  12:37 p.m.

  I needed a quiet break, so I went to Di Cassi’s Italian Restaurant in Cow Hollow. My friend Chef D, as he called himself, installed me in an old-fashioned velvet-curtained booth and offered me a glass of what he called “the best Zinfandel in northern California.” I don’t have all that much of a palate for fine wine, but I had to admit it was splendid.

  “What’s your special for today?” I asked.

  “Ah, my latest creation,” Chef D said. “Fettuccini al Cubano. And you will be the first to taste it.”

  “I will?”

  “In about five minutes.”

  “I can hardly wait. Tell me, Chef D, do rough and rowdy groups of young men ever come here?”

  “Now and then, but my headwaiter is an excellent bouncer. Why do you ask?”

  “Personal reasons. Does this group seem familiar?” I described Jersey and his gang. And I got lucky.

  “Very familiar,” Chef D said. He motioned for his headwaiter to come over. “Parker, what can you tell us about that disruptive bunch you waited on two days ago?”

  Parker was short and medium brown, with the wide, pleasing features of a Filipino. He had served me many times before, and I recalled that he had a good memory.

  He said, “They were the usual kind of young guys we get in here after they hit the clubs—well dressed, with more money than good sense. They’ll probably be bankrupt before they’re thirty. They were loud, drinking,
but not enough to be removed from the premises. One of them made an ugly remark to me.”

  “What kind of ugly remark?” I asked.

  “A comment on my heritage. He called me a Flip.”

  “Was the one who said that wearing an expensive watch?”

  “Yes. A silver watch.”

  “Did any of the others call him by name?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Were any names used? Rolle, for instance?”

  “Rolle. An odd name. Yes, I did hear it used, but I’m not sure which one of them he was.”

  So now I had confirmation that Rolle Ferguson was mixed up with Jersey and the others. But whether they were the ones who’d attacked Elwood was still open to question.

  “Anything else you can tell me?”

  “Well, when they first came in I noticed one of them was limping.”

  “Badly?”

  “Not very. It was like maybe he’d twisted his ankle or bruised his foot.”

  “Anything else?”

  “He wore sunglasses. Seemed strange, that late at night.”

  Parker had nothing else to offer, so Chef D sent him away to the kitchen. He returned with a steaming plate, which he placed before me.

  Chef D said proudly, “Fettuccini al Cubano.”

  I stared at pasta tangled with what looked like ham, peppers, red onion, Swiss cheese, and dill pickles. A slightly pink sauce was poured over it.

  “Al Cubano,” Chef D repeated. “Modeled on the sandwich.”

  “Looks good,” I said in what I hoped was a cheerful tone.

  “And naturally, it will cost you nothing,” he added, smiling. “You are the first to taste it, as I said.”

  After the first bite, the human guinea pig found the dish delicious.

  1:45 p.m.

  The Divisidero Street condo Rolle Ferguson had inherited was one of four units in a two-story Edwardian, a single-family dwelling that had obviously been modified to accommodate two flats per floor. Its dark-brown paint was peeling and the outside staircase was littered with advertising circulars and envelopes of the sort junk mail comes in.