“Very good, Jamal. But I think you know more than that.”
“Like what, man?”
“Like where a little Chinese girl is stashed.”
“I don’t know nuthin’ about no chink.”
A hook to Jamal’s ear made him squeal in pain. The stakes were high and the light was fading, so I followed up by smashing his nose. He started to reach up to his face, then stepped back with rage in his eyes and took a wild swing at me. I ducked and his punch glanced off my head. I put an end to that nonsense with a shot to his solar plexus. As he writhed on the ground trying to take a breath, I knelt beside him.
“Jamal,” I whispered into his intact ear, “I’m tired of you jacking me around. There’s a kid who’s going to die without her medicine. Your pissant pals have her and you know where.”
“Fuck you, pig,” he wheezed.
“You want to do this the hard way, eh?” I grabbed him by the front of his dashiki, which was now splattered with blood from his nose, lifted him to his feet, and slammed him into the brick wall. I was faring much better than Jamal, but I wasn’t enjoying myself. It wasn’t a fair fight given my training. And I had no doubt that Jamal had been dealt a crummy hand by life, but how he played his cards was his call. There was a black kid from the Potrero projects who my father hired to clean up the warehouse in the afternoons. Willy worked hard and had a shot at making something of himself, a long shot maybe, but there’re no guarantees. Jamal had made his own decisions and now he had to account for them.
A car drove by the end of the alley, and I turned to see if it meant trouble. I figured Jamal’s friends might have screwed up their courage in the form of a zip gun. In the fading light, I was relieved to see that the car was a newer-model Caddie. Probably just a lost tourist, but the passing car reminded me that I needed to get the information out of Jamal, and my ass out of the alley, before my luck ran out.
“Jamal, I don’t have all night. And I think you know where she is.” My shot to his midriff would’ve put him back on the ground, but I held him up.
“You can’t do this,” he moaned. “I have my rights.” Another blow to the same spot made it clear that his rights were not at issue. He moaned and I let him crumple.
“Tell me where she is, Jamal. Or so help me, you’ll be ALF’s first martyr.” His gaze seemed to lock on a pile of empty liquor bottles across the alley. I guessed he was thinking about his chances of making it to one of them and converting it into a weapon, versus dying in this filthy place. Death won out. Gritting his teeth against the pain and rage, he spat, “Hunters Point. Fitch Street warehouse.”
I told him he’d done the right thing, maybe the only one in his pitiful life. In any case, it was the last right thing, because Jamal Watson was found dead in the alley the next morning. By then, a little girl was back with her family. An hour after I radioed in the location, federal agents along with San Francisco’s finest had surrounded the warehouse. The ALF soldiers had less guts than Jamal and surrendered without a shot being fired. My regret about how I’d extracted the information from Jamal was balanced by knowing that the police had not betrayed Mr. Wang’s trust. But my luck had come to an end.
At first, nobody asked too much about how I came by the information. However, the car that had driven by during my interrogation had been occupied not by a lost tourist but by one of the city’s Board of Supervisors inspecting the projects with a professional do-gooder from one of the bleeding-heart organizations who feel a need to save the poor, redwoods, seals, and other victims of “the system.” They’d seen me working over Jamal and written down my license plate. When IAD interrogated me, I tried the “resisting arrest” ploy. But since I hadn’t gotten around to arresting him, my story didn’t hold water. I suggested that maybe somebody else had killed Jamal for cooperating with me, but the coroner concluded he’d bled to death from a ruptured spleen. And the witnesses recounted my punching him in the abdomen.
When the commissioner came to see me, I knew the jig was up. I told him I hadn’t meant to kill Jamal, but I could live with trading the life of a street punk for that of an innocent kid. Besides, kidnapping is a capital offense, so I had just moved along justice a bit faster than the courts might have. We both knew that Jamal would probably never have seen the inside of a gas chamber, but I thought it was a valid point anyway. I’d traded my career for a little girl’s life, and I told him I’d do it again. He said that just between us, he’d make the same deal. Then he sighed, looked me in the eye, and said that he couldn’t provide me with cover on this one. I was a lost cause beyond even the powers of St. Jude.
But the commissioner was a good man and cut a deal with those who wanted me tried for murder. If I’d resign from the force and plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter, they’d figure that justice had been done. The district attorney wasn’t keen on prosecuting a cop who’d saved a kid from a bunch of militants, and the do-gooders didn’t figure that Jamal would emerge during a trial as a poster child for downtrodden blacks. When I was given a suspended sentence, the Chronicle ran the headline “Killer of Black Youth Set Free.” A few protesters marched on City Hall, just four blocks from where the luck of the Irish had delivered Li’l Sly a month earlier.
I did my best to maintain a low profile, and the righteous activists were soon busy chasing after new affronts by the Man. I picked up work with Packard & Thomas Investigative Agency. Cy and Al had been first-rate cooperators when I’d been on the force, so we had a good working relationship. With my record, I couldn’t qualify for a private investigator’s license, so they mostly used me for surveillance. I put away a tank car’s worth of cold coffee sitting outside apartments, houses, and businesses waiting for husbands, wives, and partners to arrive or leave. I put on twenty pounds watching my fellow humans cheating on each other. But it paid the bills, and I managed to hang on to my house. That, along with my record collection and insect boxes, kept me happy enough for a couple of years.
After my father died, I quit the detective agency and took over the family business. I liked the surveillance work that Cy and Al had given me. Some days it almost felt like I was a cop again. But my mother and brother needed help, and I could make a lot more money exterminating pests than watching people.
CHAPTER 11
The drive over to Berkeley at the end of the day was soothing, despite the snarled traffic on the Bay Bridge. I’d spent a hectic afternoon meeting with customers and drumming up business. So listening to a bit of Vivaldi on KDFC—even with the old truck’s tinny speakers—put me at ease. Finding Laurie Odum’s house wasn’t difficult. Spruce Street climbs the hills east of the UC Berkeley campus, the prices going up with the elevation. Her house was about halfway to the top. College professors were doing better than I thought.
The house was a Spanish-style number, complete with red tile roof, stucco walls, and a courtyard plastered with those colorful tiles that Mexicans produce for about a penny each and decorators sell for a buck a pop. I went through the wrought-iron gate and, not seeing a doorbell, I used the ornate knocker. I heard voices from inside and waited. A cute kid pulled open the massive door. She looked up at me with jet-black eyes as if I were to introduce myself. So I did. The girl was polite, but I could see an impish spark in her. Our pleasant exchange was interrupted by the arrival of a heavyset woman with a beautiful olive complexion.
“Meester Riley, please come in,” she said while gently moving the little girl aside. “Marissa, go downstairs and start the next load of laundry.”
“Sí, Mama,” the child answered and headed off with the half-skipping of a kid who didn’t know how crappy it was to be poor.
“Meesus Odum is on the deck. Come with me, pleeze.” She’d come up from Mexico not long ago—or so I figured from her thick accent. We walked through the tiled living room, which had Navajo rugs hanging from the walls and geometrically patterned pottery lining the shelf over an enormous fireplace. I can’t understand why people put carpets on their walls and buy pots that j
ust sit uselessly on shelves.
“Mr. Riley, so good of you to come out to see me on such short notice.” A petite woman with an intense manner got up from the dark wooden table, on which there was a glass of red wine and a scattering of papers and file folders. “Thank you, Maria. Now please take care of the laundry first and then attend to the upstairs cleaning.” The maid nodded obediently and went back into the house.
“It’s no problem, Mrs. Odum,” I answered, shaking her hand, which was thin and soft. She wasn’t exactly attractive, but there was an engaging intensity in her narrow face, hazel eyes, and shoulder-length mousy brown hair. And, although I could just hear Carol scolding me, it didn’t hurt the whole package that Mrs. Odum filled out her turquoise blouse nicely.
“Paul’s clothes were delivered this morning by a courier service from the hotel. I don’t know why I want them washed so badly. Maybe I’m trying to cleanse the sense of death from his things.” She looked away from me and toward a sunset that was growing redder by the minute. The deck was perched on the hillside with a stunning view of the Bay across to downtown San Francisco, where the lights were just starting to come on in the buildings.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said as we sat down at the table.
“Yes, of course,” she answered almost dismissively, snapping back into the moment. Her intensity returned and she took control of the conversation. “Paul and I were soul mates. I know, people say that all the time, but our relationship was not merely about romance and bliss. It was based on a shared passion for justice.”
“Justice?” I asked, knowing that not-quite-legal Mexican maids make a buck an hour and child labor is illegal.
“We both saw that the earth is dying. Our love of the planet fueled our love for one another. And our love was natural, as humans were meant to be. Without claiming to own the other person or control their body.” I must’ve looked confused, so she was more explicit. “We had an open marriage in accord with natural love.”
“I see,” I said, but I didn’t. Infidelity and righteousness seemed a strange foundation for a marriage. But whatever turns your crank.
“I chaired the ‘Save the Redwoods’ coalition. These trees have so much wisdom. I’ve heard their cries, and I would do anything to protect these magnificent beings.”
“They sure are something,” I offered, not quite knowing how to respond to a woman who could hear plants. She glared at me. “Really, I understand what you’re saying,” I tried. “I collect insects and most people don’t know how fantastic they are.”
“You kill creatures as a hobby, Mr. Riley? I don’t see how this could allow you to connect with the spirituality of a redwood grove.”
“I wouldn’t put it quite that way.” I wasn’t off to a good start, so getting back on track with why the hell I was there seemed a wise move. “And what about your husband? Was he protecting the redwoods, too?”
“Paul took a similar path in his defense of Mother Nature.” She took a sip of her wine and gathered up the papers on the table, mostly legal documents and insurance forms having to do with Odum’s death. Dying in this country is no simple matter.
“Through his work at the university?”
“Yes. His research concerned developing new methods for restoring forests. He was replanting the lungs of our planet. He abhorred the forest industry, but his activism was directed at those who are trying to poison the earth.”
“So, he was figuring out how to grow trees in his day job and battling polluters after work?”
“That’s a rather flippant description, Mr. Riley. But perhaps that’s what I might expect from a man who impales sentient creatures as a pastime.” It was clear that we weren’t going to be pals, but it was also evident that she needed me for something.
“Sorry, just trying to put things into terms I can understand. Please go on.”
“Shortly after he was hired at Berkeley as an ecologist, Paul was studying the effects of insecticides on bird populations. A farmer failed to warn him that a field had been sprayed with chlordane. Do you know what that is?”
“Not really,” I lied. I had a couple drums of the stuff in the warehouse for termite control, but I saw no need to add “planet-killer” to my dossier. She must’ve known I ran an extermination business already, so there was no point in aggravating her.
“It’s a synthetic insecticide. These compounds kill anything with a nervous system.”
“Sounds bad,” I agreed. Of course, water kills creatures that need to breathe. Anything is deadly in sufficient quantity, and a lot more people drown than die of poisoning.
“It nearly killed Paul. He was on a ventilator in the hospital for weeks. Ever since then, he was hypersensitive to all man-made chemicals. Cleansers, soaps, perfumes, and every sort of fertilizer and pesticide. We ate only organically grown fruits and vegetables. We even installed a distillation unit in the house to purify the water.”
“That must’ve been tough on you two.” A water-and-salad diet would be a miserable life. But apparently toxins made by yeast were safe, as she was evidently enjoying her glass of wine. Perhaps alcohol passed muster, or maybe she’d lapsed with her husband gone. I might be able to make it for quite a while on my mother’s oatcakes, potato farl, and cabbage soup if I could wash it down with a glass of single malt.
“No, not really. It brought us closer to the earth and one another. But even with these adjustments, Paul still suffered from terrible pain in his joints, intense headaches, and even seizures. Our herbalist helped him keep the seizures under control with valerian root and motherwort. But they’d still strike when he was stressed and didn’t take his chamomile-and-passionflower tea to calm his nervous system.”
“That’s probably what happened to him in LA, eh?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Interesting. So, what do you think happened?”
“That’s why I asked you to come here. Paul had taken a courageous and bold stand against the agrichemical companies. He was angry about what they’d done to him and so many others, including farm workers.” So their sense of justice extended to other humans and not just redwoods and robins. I was relieved. “Paul provided expert testimony in lawsuits, filed briefs with the courts on cases of pesticide poisoning, and wrote extensively about how greedy corporate giants control the government and corrupt public agencies. He had enemies.”
“You believe a chemical company had him killed?”
Before Laurie could answer, Maria came onto the deck. And she was in a panic.
CHAPTER 12
The maid wrung her hands and stammered, “I’m so sorry to interrupt, Mrs. Odum.”
“What is it, Maria?” The question dripped with annoyance.
“Mrs. Odum, Marissa is sick. She is dizzy and trembling. I’ve cleaned up after her, but I must take her home. I don’t know what is wrong.”
“It’s probably just the stomach flu, Maria. Is the laundry done or will I need to finish it?” She was clearly unhappy about the possibility of having to take on domestic chores. I guessed that the thought of a kid puking in her elegant house wasn’t helping.
“I will come back tomorrow to finish. My sister can look after Marissa if she’s still sick.”
Laurie Odum waved her hand toward the maid as if to brush her out of the house, and sent her on her way. Apparently the environmentalist’s compassion for native trees didn’t translate well to immigrant girls.
Mrs. Odum took the chance to offer me a drink, which I accepted. While she was inside, I took the opportunity to look through the papers on the table. I learned long ago that people tell you only as much of a story as fits their purposes. She returned with a surprisingly decent whiskey—a bit too sweet for my taste but quite smooth. Probably one of Bushmills’ mid-range blends.
“Now, where were we?” she asked, knowing fully that I was anxious to hear her theory of Paul Odum’s death.
“I had just asked whether you thought the corporate bosses in the pesticide indu
stry had taken out a hit on your husband.”
“You can be brutally direct, Mr. Riley.”
“I like to cut to the chase, Mrs. Odum. So if it’s not too insensitive, your husband was not well. Why do you suspect that his death was not natural—or at least a result of his unfortunate condition?”
“I’ve seen what the chemical death brokers will do. The military-industrial complex will crush anyone in its way. Paul received death threats during court cases that he’d been involved with. I have no doubt that the corporations were trying to intimidate him.” Her voice began to quiver, and I felt a pang of sympathy. Whatever her nutty ideas about the souls of trees, she’d lost her husband.
“Mrs. Odum, I don’t want to add to your grief by doubting your story. But these corporate giants seem able and willing to trounce their enemies in court. I’m not so sure they’d resort to assassination.”
“Any corporation that would slaughter a thousand-year-old tree to make picnic benches or poison a flock of doves to protect a cotton field would not hesitate to kill a human being. You’ve never dealt with them behind closed doors. They are evil, and if Paul got in their way and couldn’t be beaten through our crooked legal system, they’d do whatever it took.” She had a point. Greed had certainly been one of the most common motives in the murders I’d investigated. Most people killed for love or money, and only one of these mattered to corporate America.
“You sound like you might know something more that you’re not telling me.”
“Not really. Well, not exactly.” She took a sip and stared into the wineglass. She had a way of bouncing between righteous anger and pathetic vulnerability. “It’s just that Paul had been secretive of late. He usually told me about his projects, but he hadn’t shared what he was working on for the last few weeks. Paul would spend hours every evening in his study. I think he had something important in the works, and maybe the corporations found out.”
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