Cop Out (2 page)

Hemming sat and leaned toward the camera. “On
A Fair Deal
our goal is not for some outside judgment but a
solution
everyone supports. It’s a matter of listening to the other guy and ourselves, of acknowledging what we both really want. Then we come out with a plan we all support. That plan works, it lasts, because we’re all in it together, which is what makes it”—he paused and the camera drew back—“
a fair deal
.”

“The guy’s had death threats,” Pereira said.

“From Cyril’s boys?”

“Probably. They’re not likely to have been from the postmaster or the head of A.C. Transit—they were on the short end of Hemming’s last two mediations—but any crazy in town could be after him. Bryant Hemming’s turned into the gonzo frog of Berkeley public access TV.”

“Biggest frog in the puddle eh, Connie?” Howard asked.

On his bare-bones set Bryant Hemming was smiling as confidently as if he’d made it to a network feed. “Well, my friends, what would Berkeley be without a clash of wills, of thoughts, of hard-held beliefs? A real shock, huh?” He chuckled. “And it’d be downright boring. But not to worry, you’re in no danger of dozing off here. Not with our case tonight, our toughest case of the season. No matter what your convictions, this dispute’s going to bring you up cold.” He leaned forward. “We all know Berkeley’s commitment to freedom of speech. The free speech movement was born here. But what about freedom of commerce? The city’s had a rep as being down on business. When freedom of speech comes up against freedom of commerce, which side are you on? Don’t be so sure you know!” He wasn’t rubbing his hands together, but I guessed it was sheer will that kept him from it.

With a flourish he motioned toward a woman with long, wiry brown hair and jeweled bangles on every enclaspable portion of her body. “Demanding freedom of commerce, we have Serenity Kaetz, of the Telegraph Avenue Street Vendors. She has a display on Telegraph.”

“She
is
a display on Telegraph,” Howard muttered as the lights bounced off her silver breastplate.

“Where else is she going to get free advertising broadcast to households all over town?” Pereira said, scooping up a hillock of dip with her chip. “The reason people come on the show is publicity. Getting their problems mediated, that’s just the chance they take.”

But when Serenity Kaetz started to speak, she wasn’t jiggling her head to show off her earrings. And she looked anything but serene. She poked her elbows into her thighs, hands out at the ready. “Here’s the thing. I design this jewelry. I won’t tell you how long it takes me to make one inlaid cuff. But, so what, I’m an artist; that’s what I do,” she said, palms up, voice so clearly Bronx that I smiled. She reminded me of my great-uncle’s neighbor in the apartment on the Grand Concourse, a buxom, bustling woman with the face of a determined cherub. “You want I should come back from the deli with half a bag?” she’d say, staring accusingly at Uncle Jack’s sparsely filled kitchen shelves. She must have been half the age of my great-uncle and his friends in the building, but her comments were greeted with thoughtful nods, and she was always addressed as Mrs. Bronfmann. And one day she met a Spanish exchange student on the crosstown bus and never came back.

“Bryant,” Serenity Kaetz was saying now, “I’m an artist, but I also run a business. I have to jump the bureaucratic hurdles just like anyone who wants to add a porch to his house or an awning over his display window. The city made me go before a board to prove I am the maker of this necklace, this ring. That’s fine; good the city should be so committed to art I had to wait three years for my license; I’m not complaining.”

“On
A Fair Deal
we go beyond complaining to finding solutions.”

If she noticed the little whine in his chiding, she ignored it. She gave him that same smile Mrs. Bronfmann used to offer to Uncle Jack when he insisted that he didn’t need nice fresh carrots. “Every two months Berkeley runs a lottery for spots along Telegraph. A week each, eight total. Some weeks I don’t make the list at all. Half the time the slots aren’t worth having. So I’m talking one, two weeks a month max when I can sell my work. Serenity’s Jewelry,” she added.

“So what you’re asking us is?”

“Telegraph Avenue—the street—is my store. I pay for my license. I want the city to protect my rights. A couple years ago we had the nudists, stopping at the tie dye stalls, resting
their
wares on
our
wares, and you know damned well they weren’t planning to buy shirts. Then we’ve got the drug dealers…and the panhandlers begging for money they’re just going to plop in the hands of the dealers. This year we’ve got these religious assholes moving down the Avenue, running off our customers. And the city just lets them go screaming and pushing—”

Hemming put a hand on her arm.

“We demand our rights.”

The camera panned the audience. The half cheering theatrically were women in tie dye, men with Crisco’d Mohawks, girls with hair every shade food color will provide, guys in turbans, berets, fedoras, and one with six snakeskin belts encircling his chest and a snake over his shoulder. Across the aisle close-clipped scowling men in black looked anything but righteous. The angels they resembled were Hell’s Angels. They sat as if they were straddling hogs, legs apart, hands poised to rev up and mow down anyone in their way. Patience and forbearance looked like virgin ground for these guys.

Bryant Hemming’s brow tightened. There’d never been a free-for-all on the show, but his expression said: There’s always a first time.

W
ITH WHAT MUST HAVE
been practiced effort, Bryant Hemming relaxed his face back into an encouraging half smile. But his voice was tight as he said, “And who is it that Serenity Kaetz says infringed on her rights?” He let the question hang long enough for the unknowing viewer to consider Telegraph Avenue’s usual suspects: students, street people, environmentalists, the old radicals, and, of course, us—the police. Then, turning his attention to his left, he said, “Demanding freedom of speech and freedom of religion, we have with us Brother Cyril of the Angels of Righteousness.”

Howard and Pereira shook their heads. The first time I had seen Brother Cyril, I’d laughed. What I’d expected was a street thug who’d been cleaned up for trial—big near-shaven head, round face, and muscles that screamed steroids. But Brother Cyril was a slight middle-aged man with thinning light brown hair. Seen on the Avenue, he’d have been taken for an undergraduate’s father, the type who would hesitate before suggesting his son change majors and the before asking his daughter about birth control. He looked like a man who would wait at the end of the line forever. Now I could see his pale eyes were a bit too close together, his nose a bit too narrow, lips thin, chin falling too quickly back toward his neck.

He looked like a man his half of the audience would have kicked out of the way. They were the street thug models I had expected Cyril to be: young, muscled, surly, with black pants and shirts and bulbous arms that sported tattoos.

“How does Cyril keep ’em in line? Fire and brimstone?”

“More likely drugs and sex, Howard,” Pereira said. “Maybe hypnosis. I can see him with candles and a swinging watch.”

“More likely a computer password or a delete key,” I said. Cyril reminded me of the nerds I’d known in school before nerds became stylish. Then they were just bright, pimply guys, seething at the ludicrous unfairness of being shunned by brawny guys, pretty girls, all clearly their inferiors. And when they got even, they dished out excruciating humiliations that echoed loud and long.

Howard gave my shoulder a squeeze. “I hope ol’ Bryant’s got plenty of security off camera. If the Righteous leap the aisle, they’ll pound the vendors into parchment before he can call nine-one-one.”

Bryant Hemming must have had a similar thought. His clean-cut smile looked brittle, and when he spoke, his voice had lost that easy, hopeful tone. He patted Cyril’s chair. “In one sentence, Brother Cyril, tell me what you want.”

But Cyril didn’t sit. He looked directly at the camera almost shyly, as if he were surprised a nerd like him was allowed to speak. His voice was soft, his tone thoughtful. “They seem so innocent, these out-of-time hippies with their feather necklaces and their peace symbols, but what do we know about them? Let me tell you”—his words were coming faster, his voice higher—“they are money changers. They allow drugs, licentiousness, baby killing. They are money changers. And what did Jesus do when he saw them in the temple? He cast out all them that sold and bought and overthrew their tables and”—he glared at the vendors with an intensity nothing in his bland face had foreshadowed—“he obliterated their tables and their caged pigeons.” He started toward them. The camera preceded him, focusing on Serenity Kaetz and her graven bird breastplate. She shrank back as if Cyril had struck her there. Colleagues shoved closer, their faces narrowed in anger. But even they reflected a fear left by Cyril’s piercing accusation.

There was a rumble of muffled voices as the camera shifted. At the side of the screen black-clad biceps jerked up and bruised forearms thrust forward in a jumble of movement. Cyril was at the edge of the stage before Hemming caught him.

“Berkeley’s as foreign ground as he could find for that tirade. What’s he after?” Pereira asked.

“If he were crazy, the Avenue’d welcome him,” I said. “He could shriek and shout and dress in a coat of many colors. Citizens’d line up to defend his rights. Then he couldn’t offend people enough. He’d be right up there with Hate Man or the guy who sold acres on the moon.”

“ ’Course people’d blow off his message,” Pereira said. “But they will anyway. What we got here is just another wacko out for the limelight.”

I shook my head. “Looking for attention, sure. But wacko, no way. This guy gives me the creeps. It’s like his parts don’t mesh. I can’t tell what’s real and what’s costume. Or what’s behind it all.”

Howard was strangely silent on the subject.

On the screen Hemming was still smiling, but now the smile seemed real. He looked not at the camera but at Cyril. “Brother Cyril, in one sentence what is it you’re asking for? We don’t expect our viewers to remember more than that. They’re watching you.”

I thought Cyril bristled at Hemming’s subtle condescension—Hemming was exactly the popular jock type that nerds hated—but he held himself so stiffly I couldn’t be sure. The audience was silent. The silence lengthened. Finally Cyril thrust his inadequate chin forward. “We
demand
a platform for our free speech rights and rights of assembly, right on Telegraph Avenue, the home of free speech.”

Serenity Kaetz jumped to her feet, rattling metal. “If he’s there yammering and haranguing, we might as well move out. Our customers aren’t going to put up with that.”

“Yeah, what about
our
rights?” came a female voice from the audience.

Hemming put a hand on the shoulder of each adversary. “Let’s sit back down. It’ll make things easier for the cameraman,” he said, again reminding them of the greater audience judging them. “Remember we’re here to find middle ground. So,” he said, settling between them, “Ms. Kaetz, you would like Brother Cyril to stay off Telegraph?”

“And stop hassl—”

“Right, Ms. Kaetz, and you, Brother Cyril, want your voice to be heard on the Avenue?”

The preacher was poised to retort but seemed to think better of it.

Hemming let a moment pass, then spoke directly to the camera. “This is one of those issues that make you say: How can you possibly come up with a solution that pleases everyone? And that’s the trick—no,
trick’s
a bad word, because there’s no trick to mediating. The reason mediation works is that we’re all basically decent, honest people who are willing to give a little as long as we know we’re getting…a fair deal.” With that Hemming looked at each adversary. He offered them that small smile of understanding. But when he sat back in his chair and let his eyes close, he seemed to lose control of his face, and his mouth tightened into a greedy little grin. The not-quite-quiz-show music played in the background. The audience knew the routine and waited.

As one, Howard, Pereira, and I reached for crab dip. Howard selected a chip, held it in abeyance. “If he can get Cyril and his blackshirts on Telegraph and off Telegraph at the same time, he can forget this mediation business and take over Cyril’s church.”

“With that kind of miracle, he can take over the pope’s church.” I took the chip from his hand and popped it in my mouth.

“He’s got to have the fix in. The last thing a guy like Cyril wants is to make peace.” Howard’s voice was tight. He should have been lounging happily, still warmed by the afternoon among friends. I glanced over at him; his jaw was set firm, his tense gaze square on the TV screen.

Bryant Hemming wasn’t precisely smiling but it looked as if he couldn’t keep completely at bay the satisfaction or maybe the triumph he felt. “This dispute seemed insoluble, right? But the wonderful thing with mediation is that there are no views so divergent they can’t be brought together. If the Israelis and the Palestinians can talk peace; if the Irish can sit down with the Brits”—the grin took control of his face—“then well-meaning people even here in Berkeley can come to agreement.”

The camera panned the audience: tense street vendors sitting with their arms crossed tightly over their ribs and the black-shirted Angels poised to shoot from their chairs. If either group sent good wishes across the aisle, no glance revealed it. All eyes were straight ahead, all lips pressed hard together, all brows sullenly lined.

The camera moved in close on Bryant Hemming as he lifted his head and smiled again at Kaetz and Cyril. “Ms. Kaetz, Brother Cyril, there are some things you have in common. You’re both concerned about the drug dealers in People’s Park right off Telegraph and the pernicious influence they have on the Avenue, right?”

It was a moment before each nodded, Kaetz looking confused, Cyril suspicious. Drugs weren’t either of their main complaints. And they, no more than we, expected dealers to be swept off the Avenue for good.