by Susan Dunlap
We’d reached the end of the wooded area, close to the park panhandle bordered on its long sides by fast roads to and from the freeway.
‘I’ll watch my back,’ he said, as if reading my mind.
SIXTEEN
Stay here, I’ll get the car meant, Stay here, I’m going to do something I don’t want you to see, to be involved in, or be endangered by. I knew Mike.
I could have followed him and maybe escaped his notice, but it was a toss-up as to whether that would create more danger than what he planned. I assumed he was headed to check out the gun in the drawer of the apartment where he was, in theory, staying. I couldn’t stop him. I could only impede him, or draw attention to him. With our dark red curly hair, Mike and I both get our share of stares, but when we’re together we almost always draw attention.
So I waited, watched cars shoot out of the park, onto Oak Street. I checked messages. Zip. Two trucks ran the red light. A driver on Stanyan leaned on his horn and then shot through the intersection to make up for the three seconds lost.
Behind me leaves rustled. Branches rubbed and crackled. I turned in time to see a man emerge.
‘Hey, what about my fifty?’
I laughed.
‘Hey! No laughing matter, lady. Deal’s a deal. You oughta know that.’
I nodded, but he wasn’t ready to wind down. ‘You gotta job, right? You work, you get your money. You know that.’
‘You’re right, you’re right,’ I repeated to stretch out my comment long enough to interrupt him. ‘But it was twenty-five.’ I pulled off my pack and dug for my wallet.
Two twenties. Nothing else.
‘Hey, lady, I don’t have all night.’
This side of sarcasm, there was nothing to say. I checked my watch. Fifteen minutes Mike had been gone. Five minutes max to the apartment. Another five if there was a problem – people in the hall, people in the apartment itself, something else. Two to check the gun. What’s to see in a Glock? Five to get the car, make a square around the blocks – all right turns, no traffic light till this corner.
I said, ‘Hang on a couple minutes. I’m waiting for a ride. I’ll get a five from him.’
‘You sure he’ll come?’
‘You saw us together, right?’
He shrugged. Translation: saw and eavesdropped.
A patrol car shot around the corner onto Oak Street, flashers ablaze.
The guy shrank back.
It cut right. Up Mike’s street.
Just one car. Could be anything.
A second followed, Code Three. Its siren sliced the night noise.
Cops always call back-up.
The street guy swayed between the urge to disappear and my unpaid debt.
No way could I stand here and wait.
If Mike pulled up and I wasn’t here, then what?
I said to the guy. ‘I’ll make you a deal. Forty bucks. You wait here for ten minutes. If an old white Honda with big black rubber bumpers slows down like the driver’s looking for me, wave him over and tell him to call me. His sister.’
‘If he doesn’t show?’
‘Ten minutes, that’s all I’m asking.’
I could be out of here in a minute. If you’re gone how’re you going to know? he had to be thinking.
‘If my brother comes and doesn’t see you, I’ll hear about it.’
‘I wasn’t—’
An EMT van switched on its sirens.
I held out the two twenties. ‘Your name?’
I thought he’d fuss, but he pocketed the bills and said, ‘Ventano.’
‘Ventano?’
‘Ventano Schwartz.’
‘You got a phone?’
‘Sure.’
‘Give me your number? I’ll call you.’
He hesitated.
‘Ventano, this is business. If I were a cop you’d’ve been in cuffs the first time I spotted you.’
He gave. I keyed it in, let one more wave of cars flow after the light changed, hoping to see the Honda, but knowing it was futile. And then I shot across Stanyan, up Oak and on to Mike’s block.
Patrol cars littered the street like toys abandoned at snack time. Flashers battled each other, turning the houses pinks and mauves, the street blood brown. Mike’s white Honda shone red.
Across the street from Mike’s window a woman leaned around her door. ‘Was that a shot?’
‘Sounded like it,’ the man in the next house called back.
They might have been talking spinach prices. Or abalone. They stood, tableau-like, then shrugged as one and slipped back into their dwellings.
Gunshot! It was as if I’d already known. And yet I was desperate for it to be something else. A gas explosion, a fire. Something that had been set in motion while Mike was still in the park with me. That happened before he could have gotten here. Could have run into the house.
Could have scooped up the gun.
Could have come upon the person who would shoot the gun. Who would kill him.
‘Gunshot. Gunshot.’ A loose knot of people was forming, muttering, questioning, the flasher lights turning them into a ghostly chorus. A man spoke above the engine noises. ‘Gunshot. No question about it. I stayed in a hotel in the tenderloin a couple nights when I first got here. Trust me, I know gunshots.’
I stopped, tried to listen the way I’d learned in the zendo. Bare awareness. Hear sounds, don’t name them. Don’t block anything out.
But I was naming like mad, looking for sounds to name, categorize, to give me explanations. Was that footsteps on stairs inside? Was that a voice? A cry? Upstairs? Downstairs in Mike’s apartment?
Mike’s windows were dark. Upstairs light shone through but not bright.
Two uniformed cops emerged from the walkway between houses. They mounted the outside stairs, banged on the door.
No answer.
‘Police! Open the door!’
Nothing.
I dredged Mike’s key out of my pocket and shoved it into the lock. ‘Was it a gunshot?’ I asked the cops.
‘We’ll find out.’ The door swung open, slammed into the wall. I followed them in.
‘Hey, lady, get back. You don’t know what’s up there.’
‘I—’
‘Out!’
Up there! Upstairs. Not Mike’s apartment. I was so relieved I was embarrassed.
Not Mike. Mike was OK.
Hardly. He knew how to climb stairs.
I stumbled down to the sidewalk. In those couple minutes the crowd had doubled. An EMT van skidded around the corner. Back doors sprang open, spitting out paramedics, the light inside dazzling against the dark night. The intimate faux boudoir view almost obscene. Gurney out. Doors shut, paramedics racing to carry bed to the stairs.
I turned to two men behind me. ‘Did you see anyone go in before? Anyone come out?’
‘Nah. I was up on the street, heading home after a—’ he glanced around at the police vehicles – ‘an event. I figured why not stop and see what’s happening, you know?’
‘You?’ I asked his companion.
He just shrugged.
I eyed the crowd, frantically looking for anyone familiar, anyone who’d been on the street when I got here. Red lights flashed on them erratically, each to its own beat, turning them into Photoshop images. No one looked real. None familiar.
A trio rounded the corner from Haight. Woman in long flowered skirt, spaghetti-strap top despite the damp cold of the night. Long frizzy mahogany hair. Phone in hand.
‘Who’re you got? What’s he say?’ A bearded guy with a rat-tail asked her.
‘Skybo. Hold on a minute. Sky, like what’s up here? Oh, you’re here. Yeah, I see you.’
Tall, bone thin, and still wearing T-shirt and yoga pants from fatter days, Skybo scarecrowed over to us. ‘Code Three stuff.’
‘And?’ I prodded.
‘Hey, who’re you?’
One of the group eyed me. ‘You’ve been here. What’d you see?’
‘Co
ps. Medics. Headed to the upper unit.’
‘Where those techies are.’
Omigod, Tom, Boots, Heather! Could it be—
‘Airbnb!’ someone behind them grumbled.
‘What’re they paying for a single fucking night?’
‘More than you are for a week, sweetie.’
‘Yeah, till my lease is up and my landlord can cash in, too.’
I swallowed, stared up at the suddenly over-bright second-floor windows, at the blue-uniformed bodies shifting at top speed.
Two more cars, a black and white, and an unmarked. Drivers abandoned the cars at angles, blocking the street. Squad leader and driver, a man in a suit. Detective. Their flashers were still turning the street from dark to fireplace red, mixing with the beat of the other official vehicles. Pause to black and repeat. Across the street, shades were drawn tight but doors were open. No one was sleeping through this.
Scenes like this reminded me of Gone With the Wind. Of Dante.
John, my cop-brother, used to grumble that the biggest threat to securing a scene was other officers rolling up to check it out, stepping over the crime-scene tape, planting their footprints over any residue of perpetrators’. Cops snarking to each other, overheard by witnesses who wouldn’t even realize their perceptions had been colored before they could be interviewed. ‘Tweeting, fer gawd’s sake.’
I moved closer into the detective’s path. I needed a quick make on him before he noticed me. I’ve crossed paths with SFPD often enough to have a reputation – good or bad, depending on the eyes of the beholder. This beholder wasn’t familiar. So far, so good. What about Mike, who had had his own spotty past with the police before he disappeared, one I knew only by the tip of the iceberg?
Mike! I shot a look up at the second-story window. Was he there? He’d had plenty of time after he left me. After I’d told him about the gun.
Before witnesses heard it fire.
If he was up there … But I couldn’t let myself think the worst. Things as it is. Things as it is!
I had to get in there and find out.
SEVENTEEN
Was Mike in the house? Were the EMTs working on him?
Or worse, no longer working on him?
A woman in uniform strode out. Cops don’t walk, they only stride. I could have asked her for an update, but it’s a harder go with a woman. A guy will give a girl leeway, more if she’s young and pretty. Try those moves with a woman and she’ll snort in your face. Especially a woman in a macho job. Trust me. I’ve snorted at wannabe stunt doubles.
So I waited, listening to watchers speculate, flip those maybes and stroll down the other side, me staring up at the window for a glimpse of the victim, hoping against hope for sight of blond hair, brown, black, gray, anything but red. The idea that had started as a long shot was solidifying in my mind. Don’t assume! But I’d assumed it into granite.
Were the cops going to let me in? Answer my questions? Not likely. But there was an outside staircase to Wally’s apartment. He probably used it to take out the garbage. I could creep up, stand on the edge of the landing, peer in. If the back door had been left open, I could slip in.
The next cop out the door gets my question. No answer and it’s around back and up.
Nothing had changed but I felt better.
A minute later a patrolman clomped down the front steps. Young, olive-complected, shaved bald, with a garlic bulb nose. Not a perfect choice. But I couldn’t stand here in the street forever. ‘Excuse me.’
‘Yes?’
‘The victim, is it Tom, the guy from Pennsylvania? He might not have any ID. And the conference—’
The cop – Santadomingo – pulled out a pad. ‘Describe him.’
‘Young, white, sandy hair, thin. Geek-pale.’
He started to shake his head and caught himself. ‘Your name?’
Shit. The last thing I wanted was to be on record here. If Mike … whatever. My name – bad. ‘Darcy. This is … uh.’ I looked at the nearest man in the clutch of people behind me.
The man scowled at me, but said to the cop, ‘Desmond Drayer.’
By the time the rest of them had given their names, I was desperate. But Santadomingo was between the door and me.
‘She—’ a woman named Chloe was pointing to me – ‘saw a dude scoping out the place.’
‘Go on, Ms … uh … Judd.’
Damn! She was going to land me in an interview booth at the station till dawn. Or worse she’d start talking about the lower apartment where Mike had stayed. Full of his fingerprints.
And the gun. Even if it wasn’t his, had he picked it up?
How long would it take SFPD to run fingerprints?
If he wasn’t lying dead in the apartment above.
Despite the wind, the cold, sweat coated my back. I checked the door again, then eyed the alleyway.
Santadomingo’s walkie-talkie buzzed on his chest. He turned to shield it from us with his body and shifted his chin to it.
I moved behind him, whipped up the few stairs into the first-floor lobby. Mike’s apartment was dark, but the lobby clattered like the inside of a drum. Feet in leather, feet in boots, voices calling over each other. Something – a gurney? – being pushed across the floor, banging something else. Outside a horn started to beep and kept beeping.
‘No entry, miss,’ the patrolman said.
‘I’m ID-ing the victim.’ I chin-pointed to the street. ‘Santadomingo …’
‘What?’
‘Officer Santadomingo, right down there!’ I sounded annoyed. Good. ‘You want me to get him back here?’
He shrugged.
I took the stairs two at a time. All I needed was a second and a clear shot at the victim. To see his hair. Even just his hand, that hand I’d held as a kid. I pictured the patrol woman who’d strode out minutes ago, squared my shoulders, looked through her eyes as they teach in acting class. Body language is half the battle. In stunt doubling it’s closer to ninety percent. I strode in.
The upstairs living room was train station full. Men talking into body mikes. Women measuring, noting. Everyone talking over everyone. The windows were open but there’s no way to clear the smell of chemicals and death. I could have retched but Lotts don’t upchuck. Involuntarily I squeezed my eyes shut against the smell, as if they would burn.
I snapped them open.
There was no victim.
He – or could it be she? – had to be in the bedroom.
In the doorway blocking entry to the bedroom was the last person I wanted to encounter.
Detective Higgins. Maybe I had once known her first name and blocked it out. Or more likely I’d ignored it to begin with. She’d been merely ‘Officer’ Higgins at our first encounter, and ‘Officer’ seemed more appropriate than Clarice or Dawn.
Higgins had reason to resent John, reason to despise me. She had been attached to a departmental clique under the protection of an inspector who was arrested for graft. By John. The guy nearly did time; only his connections saved him. His underlings just did more time in their ranks before promotion. But money had been lost, power lost, big-time expectations blown, and replaced by the bureaucratic equivalent of walking a beat. And no one in the department ever forgot. ‘Higgins, who could have been …’ ‘Bare ass on the wrong horse.’ Big laughs behind her back.
That thanks to John. Then there was me.
Higgins was about my age, near forty. White, not short but still squat, hair too blonde and cut in a place where people take their kids. Army tan jacket and slacks, spanning her overlarge butt. My opinion, of course, but I’d failed to hide it. And worse, I’d done so in front of a detective she had the hots for, who had the warms for me.
If she could have tossed me to the floor and stomped on my face, she would have. And no decent person would have blamed her.
Now she was huddled with a gray-haired man in a brown suit. Too old to be a cop; too soon to be from the medical examiner’s office. But from her deferential stance, importa
nt.
Behind her, in the bedroom, a door slammed. A great wave of death smell washed up my nose. I gagged. Saw her gag.
I clamped my hand over my nose. As if that would make any difference. Then I shot past her, shoved aside the uniform at the bedroom door and pushed in.
‘Hey, who the hell are you?’
‘The scene!’ Don’t let her compromise the scene. ‘Get her out of here!’
‘You want me to identify the victim or not?’
Everything stopped. The cop in front of me moved aside. A tech squatting next to the body pushed himself up. Talk ceased. Time stopped, and the moment before I would see my brother lying on the floor or know he was OK stretched to infinity. Scenes from all the years he’d been missing scrolled before me: the deadened Thanksgiving dinners with us all sitting slightly farther apart because his chair was gone, the leads from detectives or research or luck coming up empty one after another, the gnawing ache none of us could ever bring ourselves to put into words lest that make it permanent.
I squeezed my eyes shut, took as much of a breath as I could tolerate and looked down at the body.
‘Not him!’ I said.
‘Excuse me?’ one of the cops said. ‘Not who?’
‘Not Tom,’ I salvaged. ‘Tom, a tech guy from Pennsylvania. I thought it might be him. He’s short-terming with a couple other techies. Renting from—’
‘Miss?’
I swallowed, gagged at the smell, stared down at the blood around the cavern in his neck, at the huge black hole in his forehead, the sloppy red circle around his hair like a halo on the floor, at the smashed bone that turned one eye socket into a place where an eyeball hung precariously at the edge.
At the body of Wally, the landlord.
EIGHTEEN
‘Wally?’ A man I took to be the scene supervisor prodded.
‘Wally … the landlord. The curmudgeon.’ I shrugged. ‘I don’t really know him. The short-term tenants may be better. His name’ll be on their rental agreements.’
‘So how can you be sure about him?’
‘I’ve seen him, spoke, heard the techies refer to him. The woman downstairs mentioned his name.’
