Poisoned Justice

by Jeffrey Alan Lockwood

  “Well, doll, it looks like it’s just about all over.” She stared into space, breathing deeply.

  “At least for you,” she sighed. I grabbed her shoulders gently but firmly and turned her to face me.

  “Pay attention. There’re only a couple things you need to focus on when the cops arrive. My guess is that they’ll be up here this afternoon, once the hospital reports that Morley was poisoned.”

  “Poisoned,” she repeated as if trying to affirm what had happened.

  “That’s going to be their first question. And what they’ll find is a bottle with his prints on it and traces of paraquat in his coffee cup. They might ask about why he used this chemical. You just explain that paraquat poisoning is a popular suicide method in the Third World. I got this from a presentation at the meeting in Los Angeles.”

  “That seems so long ago,” she said.

  “It was, and if you listen to me it can disappear into the past. The use of this pesticide is the sort of thing you could’ve learned about in your work with Morley in Mexico. Just shrug a bit and speculate that he probably heard the same stories and that’s where he got the idea.”

  “They’ll believe that?”

  “Sure, just don’t volunteer the information or go on too long with an explanation. Stick with answering the questions they ask. The other thing they’re going to want is a motive. Between your note in the trash and his note to you on the desk, there won’t be much of a mystery. Just tell them that you broke off an affair and that you were planning to seek a position at another university. Keep it simple. He was controlling and had become abusive and you wanted out. Based on his reputation around here, that story will have plenty of support. Don’t talk about there being another man or offer any other details because you’ll end up digging a hole. Got it?”

  “Sure. But is it all too neat? Will the police be suspicious?”

  “Of course they will. That’s their job. But the detective won’t be looking for more work. He’ll be happy to close a case if everything points in the same direction, which it does. Just don’t come across as too devastated or distant. Aim for shocked regret and you’ll be fine.”

  “The gogga had it coming,” she murmured.

  “Gogga?”

  “Yes. It’s a South African term for a disgusting insect.”

  “Like a cockroach?”

  “Exactly. That’s what he was, you know. A nasty creature leaving filth wherever he went. He got what he deserved.” I put my arm around her shoulders and walked her back into her office.

  “Maybe that’s all any of us can really expect.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, the best we should hope for is to get what we deserve.”

  “I suppose most of us get more than we deserve. Like second chances and peaceful deaths.”

  “The real question is how to live. But if our lives don’t mean something, maybe our deaths should. Like that old saying about living by the sword and dying by the sword. Or in Morley’s case, poison. There’s a kind of justice in a fitting death.”

  “Even a kind of poetry.” She looked at me with bottomless sad eyes the color of the jade carvings she had brought back from Mexico. “But I’m not sure that the last stanza has been written.”

  “Meaning?”

  “My own poetic justice. I smuggled artifacts to South Africa and dope to America, I helped Morley distribute his filth, and I have three deaths on my hands. I need to find meaning in my life or—”

  “Or?”

  “Never mind, Riley. Like you said back in my apartment, things go wrong, you fix them. What matters is what people do, not what they say.” She smiled unconvincingly.

  I took her face in my hands and leaned down to kiss her forehead. She closed her eyes. “Figure out what’s right. You don’t have to worry about Morley or me, sweetheart. We’re both out of your life.”

  As I headed out of the building, sirens wailed toward campus. On the way back to San Francisco, I turned on the radio and let Chopin’s nocturnes fill the cab. Sweet, slow, and sad—somehow the perfect complement and counterpoint to the morning. I considered heading to work and catching up on my calls, but there’d be plenty of time later this week. Instead, I went home, stashed the gun in my top dresser drawer, changed into jeans and a flannel shirt, gassed up the truck, and headed south to Pacific Grove.

  Based on monarchs I’d seen flitting through San Francisco, I figured the migration was under way. It was still a bit early for the spectacle, but that meant fewer people underfoot. Once the crowds arrive in October, I usually opt for Andrew Molera State Park near Big Sur. It adds an hour and a half to the trip, but the site is all but unknown to the gawking tourists and busloads of school kids.

  At Pacific Grove, I parked by a brick-red building and found an empty bench alongside the gravel path through the eucalyptus and pine. I sat back and pulled out the sandwich I’d brought—dark rye with spicy German mustard slathering the leftover corned beef that my mother had given me on Saturday when I picked up Tommy. The sun was pouring through the trees and the black-and-orange clumps in the branches looked like enormous masses of hanging fruit.

  A sign in the parking lot had the current number of monarchs at 10,000, although I had no idea how anyone came up with this estimate. By the end of October, that number would quadruple, according to the official butterfly counters. Coming from as far north as Canada and as far east as the spine of the Rockies, the monarchs gathered every winter in these groves. These butterflies had never seen this place. Months ago their great-grandparents had left California, and somehow these insects knew exactly how to return to the groves of their ancestors.

  That sense of tradition took me back to my parochial school days. If nothing else, the Catholics tapped into a deep and ancient sense of ritual that could make the hair on your neck stand up during High Mass. But the black-and-orange flitting through the treetops reminded me of a less profound—maybe even profane—tradition: plaid jumpers on Catholic schoolgirls. One wouldn’t think that such a uniform, designed as it was to mask individuality and sensuality, would do much for adolescent boys. But Ann Murphy proved otherwise. She tucked her skirt up into the waistband to bring the hem halfway up her thighs. This stylish refinement provoked the wrath of the nuns and the lust of the guys in my ninth-grade class. And the steadfast refusal of the top button on her intriguingly thin white blouse to stay fastened reportedly led to some very long talks with Mother Bernadette. So you couldn’t really blame me for having my hand under the back of her skirt in the cloakroom one September afternoon. Ann had an exquisite rear end, and when Sister Catherine caught me, I knew that my rear end was in for a much less gentle treatment. She hauled me off to the Mother Superior, who sentenced me to Father Mahoney’s paddle. What Ann Murphy was to temptation, Father Mahoney was to punishment.

  While I waited in the hallway outside the priest’s office, Deacon Roland walked by in his starched white robe. He’d led my confirmation class the year before, and was a young, hip, soon-to-be priest. Or at least that’s how we understood it. He could be both cool and serious, which impressed even the hooligans like me. In confirmation training, Deacon Roland had told us that our childhood was over, that we were moving beyond following rules to avoid punishment, that being an adult meant doing what’s right because it’s right. Seeing me in the hall, he stopped to inquire what I was doing there, as I was the sort of kid that might be up to something.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in class, Mr. Riley?” He called all the boys “Mr.” after their confirmation, which made an impression on us.

  “Mother Bernadette sent me to see Father Mahoney,” I replied. The Catholic hierarchy sounded like some sort of big family, except nobody could produce children. The Irish and Italian families in my neighborhood did their best to make up for this shortcoming in the Church.

  “Ah, I heard that you might be in for a bit of straightening out,” he smiled with what I took to be sympathy. I considered suggesting that u
pon confirmation, the deal was supposed to be that I didn’t do things to avoid punishment. By this adolescent logic, there should have been no place for paddling if the sacrament had done its work. But I didn’t figure that this appeal would have much hope with Deacon Roland. Moreover, he didn’t seem to carry much weight in the school.

  “Seems so,” I replied.

  He moved next to me and dropped his voice. “You have a choice, you know.”

  “I can get out of the spanking?” I tried hopefully.

  “No, you already chose that through your actions.”

  “What then?”

  “You can choose whether or not to cry. If you do, it won’t last as long.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  He put his hand on my shoulder. “You’ll have chosen to take your flogging and to keep your dignity.” He gave a gentle squeeze and headed down the hallway.

  When I was called into the office a couple of minutes later, Father Mahoney looked me in the eye. He held a long wooden paddle that looked like a flattened baseball bat. The priest told me that if he didn’t respect me he wouldn’t be delivering the punishment. I learned some important lessons that day. But probably not the ones that anyone was hoping to teach. With the possible exception of Ann Murphy.

  CHAPTER 45

  The next morning I was only too happy to return to my familiar world. Real work with real people sounded like just the antidote to yesterday’s drama. I woke early and stopped by Gustaw’s Bakery. It felt like the old days on the force, with my .38 pressing against my body beneath my jacket and reminding me that there were evil people while I had breakfast with good people. I wanted to return the gun to my office, as having it in the house with Tommy around wasn’t a good idea. Besides, I was more likely to need it to deal with some burglar hitting the shop than at home, since only a truly desperate punk would think there was anything worth stealing in my neighborhood.

  While savoring one of Ludwika’s apple-filled paczkis and sipping a mug of her husband’s thick coffee, I scoured the Chronicle for news about Morley. The paper claims to cover the region, although the coverage of East Bay happenings is spotty compared to San Francisco events. So I was surprised to find a headline in the Bay Area section: “Berkeley Professor Kills Self.” According to police, Morley had been distraught over a failed romance and had taken his life using poison. Sarie must have played her part effectively. The piece went on to say that he’d been a highly respected anthropologist with an international reputation in the study of Mesoamerican cultures. The university had issued a statement saying that “Professor Morley was a valued member of the faculty, and his tragic death has stunned the university community.” I supposed it depended on who you asked.

  I got to Goat Hill Extermination just after Carol had unlocked the front door and mercifully just before she’d had a chance to turn on her pop music station. She was happy to hear that my project was completed except for one last trip across the Bay to close the deal. I spent the morning returning messages and driving around the city to meet with prospective clients. It felt good to be busy, and after lunch I stopped off to see how the guys were getting on with a pigeon job at Ghirardelli Square.

  Most exterminators don’t want to mess with cleaning out birds, so we pretty much have these operations to ourselves. The merchants were getting fed up with pigeons crapping on the tourists and the outdoor cafés. Couldn’t really blame them. When I got there, Larry was on a ladder jamming wire mesh into gaps between the buildings where the birds were nesting. I could hear him cursing under his breath as dried pigeon crap showered onto his head. Dennis was carrying lengths of sheet metal that the guys had cut and shaped back at the shop.

  “How’s it going?” I asked him as he struggled.

  “I’d rather be spraying for roaches, Riley. Sheeit, this here nigger would rather be pickin’ cotton than messing with birds.”

  “Dennis, you’re a city boy. You wouldn’t know cotton from begonias.”

  “True ’nuff. But I know that pigeons are nasty. And working with this sheet metal is a drag. I got nicks all over my arms and I nearly cut off my own head unloading a stack from the van.”

  “Where’s Isaac?”

  “On the roof. Larry’s got him up there with a shovel, moving gravel to fill in the low spots. Keep the birds from getting water, he says.”

  “You headed up?”

  “Yeah, we cut these to fit into the freight elevator. I’ll mount them along the edge of the roof. Sure is a lot of work to harass the pigeons into finding new digs.” The sheet metal would form a steep slope along the parapet to prevent the birds from roosting.

  “Need a hand?”

  “This is the last load, but you could grab a couple bags of that poisoned corn.” He nodded toward the open doors of the utility van. I loaded up and followed Dennis into the elevator. On the rooftop, Isaac was leaning on his shovel and staring toward the Balclutha, a beautiful three-masted square-rigged sailing ship moored near Fisherman’s Wharf.

  “Looks good,” I said.

  “The ship?” he asked wistfully.

  “I meant the roof. I don’t see any puddles, so that should keep the pigeons from enjoying their penthouse arrangements.” I set down the bags.

  “Well, I’m done here,” he said, looking anxiously toward the deadly grain and heading toward the door.

  “What’s up with him?” I asked Dennis, who was slathering epoxy along the edge of the roofline.

  “Don’t know, Riley,” he replied. “He’s been real funky since we did that rat gig last week. Won’t go near the chemicals.”

  “That’s okay on this rooftop job, but he’s not going to be much good otherwise.”

  “You ain’t jiving, man.”

  I left them to their work and headed up Van Ness toward City Hall. Carol had asked me to drop off a bunch of paperwork and pick up some forms from the Housing Authority. On most days I couldn’t stand dealing with bureaucracy, but I looked forward to the mindless errand as an opportunity to think through what I would tell Laurie Odum.

  Tomorrow was the deadline, and I had solved the murder of her husband. She needed enough to provide the police with evidence to convince them that Paul Odum had been murdered. We needed the district attorney to call his death a homicide for the insurance company to pay on the double indemnity clause—and for me to get my money. But I didn’t want to give her so much that if things got messy with Morley’s death—or Sarie’s life—I would be dragged into an investigation. The most worrisome complication was the very real possibility that if I gave Laurie the name of her husband’s killer, she’d seek revenge. Whether she’d try a do-it-yourself job or try to hire professional (and usually inept) assistance, whatever happened could likely also lead back to me. What I needed was a clean ending to a dirty saga.

  Playing out various scenarios while standing in lines and waiting for clerks made the afternoon seem productive. By the time the enormous woman waddled back from the files clutching a copy of “Vendor Approval Form 928c: Landscaping, Refuse Disposal, and Extermination Services,” I’d worked out my story for the widow Odum. It would take some ducking and weaving, but I had an idea how to convince her that I’d fulfilled my side of the bargain without her wanting to even the score.

  Since it was Wednesday, I met the gang at O’Donnell’s Pub. Brian was behind the bar. He reached across to give me a slap on the shoulder and ask about Tommy. I told him that the kid was doing great—still chasing insects like his old man. I didn’t see Cynthia in the back, so I asked if everything was all right with his family. The poor guy shook his head and explained that his wife had to drive up to Sacramento, where their second-oldest boy had gotten himself into some trouble.

  “Crosswise with the law?” I asked sympathetically.

  “Nay, that’d be easier. His brother Kevin learned that lesson after a stint in jail and passed it on to the others. Seems that Sean’s managed to get himself fired and his girlfriend pregnant.”

  “Makes yo
u understand why some animals eat their young, eh?” Brian threw back his head and laughed. There was nothing that the guy wouldn’t do for family, including knocking his sons in the head if they needed it. And no matter how bad it got, he’d find a way to keep things together.

  “Better join your crew before they bankrupt you with their bar tab.” He nodded toward our table, where Carol, Larry, and Dennis were dividing the last of a pitcher among their glasses. I walked over and Dennis handed me a full glass and the empty pitcher.

  “Gee thanks. That’s mighty polite of you to offer me some of my own suds.” He gave me a “gee shucks” grin while I took a deep drink, then set the half-empty glass at my traditional place at the table, the chair beneath the autographed photo of O. J. Simpson—the greatest communal treasure at the pub. O. J. had grown up in the Potrero projects. He was the neighborhood’s most famous product. Everything on the Hill shuts down when he’s playing in a televised game. Except, of course, O’Donnell’s, where it’s standing room only.

  I asked Brian to pull a pitcher of Anchor Porter. It wasn’t the cheapest beer by a long shot. But I liked supporting local businesses, and Anchor Brewing had been a part of Potrero since the 1890s. Besides, I was in the mood to celebrate. I was looking forward to wrapping up the Odum case and revitalizing Tommy’s Fund. So Carol’s bad news wasn’t on my radar.

  “Where’s Isaac?” I asked, settling into my chair. Larry and Dennis took long, serious pulls on their brews.