Cop Out (16 page)

That was why Jackson’s critical whistle now sent a cold wind down my spine. Was he keeping his distance because of his disdain for Ott? Or had something happened in this case I didn’t know about?

“The judgment call I made,” I said, “was that Griffon is of more use to us while he’s afraid of being arrested. The guy really doesn’t want to go to jail.”

“Why? A tattooer like him, jail’d be like hitting a trade fair.” Jackson laughed.

I shook my head. “Don’t know his secret. But he might as well have affixed a pump handle to his mouth. We can go back to the well again and again, as long as he’s on the street. Here’s the tasty drop pumped out tonight: He says Ott asked him whether Bryant Hemming’s trips to Mexico were just vacations.”

“Mediation, ACC investing, and now smuggling? Our Bryant was a diversified lad,” Eggs said. “While we’re talking Hemming and money, here’s Macalester’s droplet. He thinks maybe—he’s not sure—he doesn’t want to be quoted—”

“Say he hemmed and hawed enough to be a Hemming himself?” Jackson asked.

“Yeah, Clay. But I’m a patient man. And patience got me this: He thinks Hemming was paying off none other than Brother Cyril.”

“Whew! And proof?”

“Not a whit, Smith. Nothing in the ACC books, or so he says. But you don’t document your bribes for any accountant to see.”

Doyle leaned back in his chair, eyes half closed, looking for the thread that wove through this case. His loose skin was gray, and every hour of the long night seemed to have made its mark. To come up with the base thread, he’d have to have been in better shape than I was by now. Ott was investigating Bryant. Bryant was paying off Cyril.

I picked up an amber rhino and held it out in front of me like a talisman. Or a guard. I’d have given a lot to avoid saying, “I saw Ott Sunday afternoon.”

“So that’s where you went off to.” Emotions battled in Jackson’s voice. I’d left him—my guest—I’d left the Raiders game, in favor of Ott. He sounded appalled at my lack of taste rather than hurt the way Howard had been.

Eggs’s expression didn’t change. He was a master of the mask, but I could read the taut tendons in his neck required to hold his mask in place and the shock, disgust, even suspicion beneath it. Doyle didn’t bother with masks.

I hurried on. “Ott shucked me. He insisted he had to see me then, at the Claremont, for something vital, and when I got there, he’d changed his mind. But a little cross fell out of Ott’s pocket. It could have nothing to do with Brother Cyril, of course, but—”

“Shorter than an inch?” Jackson demanded. “Did it come to the point at the bottom, like a sword?”

“Uh-huh. Why?”

“That’s Brother Cyril’s all right. Gives them to the holy.”

“That lets out Ott,” Eggs put in automatically, but his eager expression discounted his own witticism.

“What you’re saying is either Ott’s fooled Cyril into awarding him the cross, or he swiped it.”

My throat tightened as I recalled Griffon’s assessment of Ott smugly striding into the lion’s den.

“What’d Ott say about it?”

“What do you think, Jackson?”

Jackson shut his mouth against that thought.

“I gave him till five to get back to me. He didn’t.” I didn’t recount that as an offering, but as I glanced at Eggs and Jackson and Doyle, I knew it wouldn’t have been enough. My meeting with Ott was on my own time. But I hadn’t mentioned it to them; I had separated it, and myself, from them. Now their faces said they didn’t know if they considered me one of them.

I had one of those flashes then, when the insight comes too fast and deep and it’s only later that you translate it into words so you can remember it. I knew two things: that I could have reinstated myself by regaling them with a ribald account of Herman Ott hanging his valuables out the window over the alley for safekeeping and that I couldn’t do it. Not because of them, my friends and colleagues, but because of Ott or maybe me. When I did mention it, matter-of-factly, offering no camaraderie, the only response was a groan from Jackson and a formal question from Doyle on whether I believed Griffon.

I replaced the amber rhino on the desk, away from the herd. Protecting me was beyond its ability now.

“Griffon’s holding back; I just don’t know what. But I’m beginning to view that alley not as a dead end but as a thoroughfare to eye Ott’s window.”

Doyle shook his head. Out the corner of my vision I spotted Jackson eyeing Eggs. Doyle cleared his throat. “We got zilch from the neighbors.”

“Company Ott keeps, no right-minded person would open the door if he was squeaking ‘Help!’ in the hallway either,” Eggs said.

Jackson nodded in agreement. “Way I hear it, only the blind were on the Avenue last night.”

I glanced from Jackson to Eggs, waiting for another line of banter, but they offered nothing more, nothing they wouldn’t want repeated outside the room.

“What about Kidd?” Doyle asked.

“He could know more than he let on, but what, I can’t guess,” I said. “Still, he’s smart enough not to kill Hemming in Ott’s office, then dream about it in Ott’s car. I’m buying his story of Ott getting into a dark car on the Avenue Sunday night.”

Doyle gave a snort. “Eggenburger, what’d you get from Hemming’s assistant, Macalester?”

“He had no idea why his boss would be in Ott’s office. He appeared appalled. He said he was baffled, although he did want me to understand that Hemming mediated for all segments of society. The implication seemed to be that Ott was a step beneath all those segments.”

“What about Brother Cyril? Anything on him?”

“Cyril Bernauer. Two assaults. Felonies. Three and five years ago. Nothing since. He’s known to Monterey, but only for helping out society by hiring ex-cons.”

“Local address?” Doyle asked.

“Zip. We know he’s got a place big enough for two dozen guys somewhere around here.
Where
is the big Q.”

Doyle nodded at Jackson to keep on it. “Eggs, you’re still backgrounding Hemming and ACC?”

“Right.”

Doyle nodded. Neither of them looked at me.

Jackson pushed himself up. He had seemed as worn out as Doyle, but now there was no sag in his dark brown cheeks. “I am prepared for the good brother when I track him down. Ain’t no passage or verse I can’t answer.”

“So you can go head to head with Cyril and his Scripture on Jesus in the temple obliterating the money changers and their pigeons.”

Jackson shook his head. “We’re not talking Kentucky Fried here. Smith, where did you spend your Sabbath mornings?” He glanced at Doyle and Eggs, but clearly whatever I had missed had passed them too. “Mark eleven: fifteen: ‘and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves.’ ”

“Doves?”

“Doves, pigeons, same bird, different translations. Point is, Smith, Jesus was after the people, not their birds.”

“But Cyril said—”

“Right, and he’s not the first preacher to rewrite the Scripture in his own image.”

I felt a cold stab of fear. “So killing the birds is his own idea?” Was Ott in Cyril’s cage? Was he, as Howard said, a bird held for sacrifice?

“That and who knows how much more. I’ve seen more phony men of the cloth than this boy’s got years. Hauling his ass out of bed’s going to be like a good cup of coffee.” He nodded to Inspector Doyle and headed for the hall.

I followed him into the hallway.

He was a big guy, but his gait was closer to a glide than a walk. Now the slide had been preempted by the heavy steps of finality. He stopped and for the first time tonight stared me in the eye. “I’m keeping my mind open, and my eyes.” He didn’t ask, “
What about you?
” He took a step back toward me and lowered his voice. “The system can set you up and send you up. No one knows that better than a black man. Yet and still, you got a guy dead in his office, killed by a nine-millimeter like Ott’s got out his window, and Ott on the lam. We don’t look for him number one, we might as well boogie on home and pull up the covers.”

I stared him back. “Hemming controlled people’s money. He’s got an ex-wife he screwed. There could be girlfriends he was leaving behind and disgruntled mediation clients all over town. We know squat about the man, and you’re writing off everyone but Ott!” I wasn’t shouting, but I had to choke back the urge.

“Smith, the dude sidled into a car and drove off into the sunset. The same night as Hemming was shot in his office.”

“Right, he left, Jackson. Ott was
gone
. But we go charging after him because he’s the outsider.”

“Smith—”

“Don’t big-brother me.”

He stared, clearly as shocked by my fury as I was, then shook his head and left.

I stood watching till he disappeared behind the reception door, till my shaking stopped and I’d tightened my face into a mask worthy of Eggs. Then I turned back to the office. Doyle was examining a yellow jade rhino with the care of a trophy hunter redecorating his den. I didn’t know how much Doyle had heard, probably all of it. Didn’t matter. Nothing I could do.

Doyle replaced the animal and leaned forward over the pile of papers on his desk. “Smith, I never thought I’d have to say this to one of my officers.” He inhaled, swallowed. I watched his Adam’s apple flutter and descend. “Maybe I should take you off this case.”

“No!” burst out through my tightly pressed lips. But that was just my first reaction. I forced myself to stop, think. Doyle was giving me a way to maintain my bond with Ott and not undercut the investigation and my career. Taken off the case, I could go back to Ott later, if he was found innocent enough to be on the street again, and still be his least undesirable cop. Among the sworn officers there would be questions, gossip about my reassignment, but that would die down; I’d go on riding patrol; nothing would change much. Doyle was offering me an out; all I had to do was take it. I looked at Doyle, leaning back in his too fine desk chair, eyes half closed, giving the illusion he was resting behind the lids instead of watching between the lashes. Again I wondered: Is there something more going on here? I said, “I don’t think Ott is a killer.”

“Smith—”

I held up my palm. “But if he is, Inspector, he’ll have duped me and duped me good, and you can believe I will be pissed enough to make him crawl in here.”

Doyle fingered the rhino. Slowly, equivocally he said, “All right.”

I stood up. “You’ve got an APB out on Ott, right? You’ve got everyone on patrol hunting for moving yellow. They’re not going to find him. Ott’s got a thousand places he could go to ground in this city. Don’t hope for a snitch. Ott’s too savvy to stay put long enough to be turned in. Odds are a hundred to one we’ll never find him. But, Inspector, if you care about that ‘one,’ you’re going to have to go with me. And trust me.”

The yellow rhino was in his hand, belly up. “I’m trusting you, Smith,” he said in a skeptical tone. “I’ve already talked to half the media in the Bay Area and had two calls from L.A. I’ve got a press conference scheduled in the morning. By noon we’ll be news in D.C. We’re under the microscope, Smith, and the rest of the country’s going to be looking through the other end. Looking to see how ridiculous Berkeley can make itself.” He laid the rhino on its side, as if it had been gored. “Man shot. Office tenant disappears. Tattooed vulture breaks in; cop lets him walk. The loonies are running the institution, they’ll be saying. And, Smith, they’ll be right.”

I
CONSIDERED CHANGING OUT
of uniform. I could make the rounds of Ott’s associates in jeans and turtleneck in my own VW bug. But the only difference between that and arriving in full gear at People’s Park would be the increased danger to me. My first beat had been by the park; it would be a decade or two before I could pass for a civilian there. I signed out a patrol car and headed back to the Avenue.

Set behind a row of shops on Telegraph, People’s Park is safer than it used to be in daytime. At night the curfew is strict, but still only the ignorant, foolhardy, or greedy walk through alone. Any other time I could have stopped at the far end and found an “informal campsite” of homeless men, bundled in drab, dirt-sweated coats, asleep next to their Safeway carts, amid the bottles and needles that cause and ease their plights. I could have given my spiel about Ott once and known it would make the rounds before I got home. But now there’s a curfew, and for the time being sleepers have dispersed to alleys, to doorways, under bridges and bushes, plus the university campus, and miles and miles of state park bordering Berkeley on the east.

I spotted Wesley, a guy in his thirties who had blown in from Texas and got caught on a laid-back branch. He had staked out a spot leeward of a restaurant Dumpster. The café was a breakfast and lunch place. It spoke well of Wesley to have chosen this Dumpster, which wasn’t touched after dusk. He was curled around a covey of plastic bags, his nose almost on the macadam.

“Wesley.”

His eyes shot open before I got to the second syllable. He was on his feet in an instant. “Hey, man, I didn’t—”

“No problem. I’m looking for Herman Ott.”

“Don’t know the dude.” He checked over his shoulder. If anyone else was in the alley, he wasn’t moving.

“You do know me. Jill Smith.”

“Smith? Oh, yeah.”

“Ott’s in danger. Big time. He needs to call me.”

“Don’t know the dude.”

“And Brother Cyril. I’ve got to find him. I’m looking for where he stays in Berkeley.”

“Don’t know.”

“Thanks.”

I repeated variations of the conversation with six other guys, one in a doorway, a couple of dealers, three old rads, putting the word on the World Wide Web of the dispossessed. It would reach Ott if he was reachable.

I rolled west to the station, signed the car in, unpacked myself from uniform, and headed to my VW. Those first steps without twenty-five pounds of equipment hanging off my hips, and the bullet-resistant vest corseting each breath, were like flying free.

Then the weight of the day, all sixteen hours of it, fell like sandbags onto my shoulders.

It was nearly 2:00
A.M.
when I trudged in the door at Howard’s house. The lights were on—a bad sign. Frequently one or another of the tenants was in the living room with friends or a lover. Low lights meant compromising positions for them and a quick pass through for me. But brighter lights warned of an eager, chatty group or one anxious to argue the politics of my being “the man.” Or worse yet, one of the lovelorn needing to talk. I could put them off, but not without cost. Right now the most diplomatic response I’d be able to muster was silence.