Cop Out (5 page)

Regina Wilson was lucky, luckier than Howard’s mother would be if she slipped in her bathroom and broke a hip. Howard’s mother would be too new a resident wherever she lived for her neighbors to think about her, to care whether she’d fallen to the bottom of her pigeon cage. And her police department would never get a worried call from her son. He wouldn’t know how to find her.

The afternoon with Regina Wilson had numbed my stomach, but as soon as I called in for code seven—very easy to get at this hour—I was starved. Before dealing with that issue, I called Herman Ott on my cell phone. He was now over twenty-four hours past deadline with me. Not surprisingly he didn’t answer the phone.

“Jerk!” I muttered as I hit “off.” I still didn’t know whatever he was
not
telling me, and now I was going to have to waste time finding out. Worse luck, it probably wouldn’t turn out to be important. But the principle of the thing mattered to me, and enforcing it was going to be more of a nuisance for me than for him.

Unless I could reverse that.

I didn’t have time to drive across town, park outside Ott’s building, run up the flights of stairs, and stand banging on the door he wouldn’t answer. “Lunch break”—it’s lunch no matter what hour of day or night—is a break, not time off. The beat officer’s still on call as her fork moves to her mouth, so the rule is you eat close to your beat.

The apartment behind Ott’s rented parking slot was no nearer. But if I got a take-out burger and got lucky, I could see if the bird had flown the coop entirely.

U
SING THE PHONE—
I wasn’t about to go through the dispatcher on this—I called Howard.

“Sergeant Howard.”

“What a sexy-sounding sergeant. Berkeley must be a lucky city.”

“Some citizens are luckier than others.” His voice dropped mid-sentence. I was alone in the car; clearly he was not so in his office.

For years Howard and I had shared a tiny office. I still had trouble picturing him in the sergeants’ office that he now shared with someone else. It was as if his curly red hair were too bright for the drab metal desks, and the long, lean body I knew and loved out of place in such a public room—separated from the meeting room, by only a window. When he was grinning, as he would be now, his blue eyes sparkled.

They might have sparkled at me while I ate. Downing a burger on a French bread roll, laughing about the red Miata and the blue van crashing together into their parking spot were just what I needed now. Then I said, “Howard, I’ve got to use lunch break to check on Ott’s car.”

“What?” I could hear the anger in his voice and the muffled sound as he tried to swallow it. “Why? Did something happen to him?”

“He’s still not picking up his damned phone.”

“Now there’s a surprise. Herman Ott doesn’t answer his calls, so you’re racing out to check his car?”

“Uh-huh,” I said, cutting off whatever comment was coming. There was no point in listening to Howard tell me that Ott was a pain in the ass withholding information whenever possible, with the goal of strengthening the hand of his clients, who were also our clients, and who remained on the street longer until they burglarized or boosted or botched things up so that even Ott couldn’t help them. I was checking on Ott in spite of all that.

“Howard, it’s just a welfare check.”

I could almost feel his outtake of breath over the phone. Behind him his fellow sergeant, Stetsky, would have discreetly turned his back and walked his desk chair to the farthest corner of the office. Sotto voce Howard said, “What makes you think he’s faring any less well than his usual high standard?”

Ott’s usual living was done in two rooms—office and home—in a run-down building on Telegraph. His stonewall lips garnered him trust in circles throughout the city. And allowed him to continue breathing. Still, considering the caliber of Ott’s clients, it would take only one breach…“That’s not the point. The—”

“What is your point then?”

“The point, Howard, is that Ott made a deal with me. I can’t let him blow me off.”

Howard was silent. He couldn’t disagree with that. It was a moment before he said, “So you’re assessing his welfare by checking his car?”

I could have explained the logic, could have soothed Howard’s pique. Instead I snapped, “Right.”

“That’s a long way from your beat,” he said icily.

“Not with lights and siren,” I iced back.

“Look, I can’t be making exceptions—”

“Howard, it’s not an exception. If I were on another team, the sergeant wouldn’t think twice.”

His rasp of breath struck my ear. “Fine. Go. But remember your beat.”

“Right,” I said, failing to keep the sarcasm from my voice. I wondered again why Herman Ott infuriated him so much. Any other welfare check would have been fine.

Yanking the wheel, I turned onto Dwight Way.

Had I ever heard of Herman Ott leaving Berkeley overnight? Not on a case; for that he could call on a statewide ring of private eyes who had come of age with the counterculture. His ancient Studebaker could be cited for noise violations any time it moved (which made it clearer why he didn’t tail suspects out of town, or in town for that matter). As for vacation,
if
Ott ever considered indulging in anything so bourgeois, his leaving Berkeley for pleasure would be like my choosing a resort with bad coffee. For Ott, crossing University Avenue into North Berkeley was a trip worthy of a passport.

I couldn’t picture Herman Ott walking out of his office into his Studebaker and driving to the wine country for a week of mud baths and massage. Certainly not just to avoid me.

I drove up Dwight, made a right on Telegraph, and in a couple of turns came up behind the eight-unit apartment. If the corner slot was vacant, I would forget about Ott and assume he was taking the waters in a spa above his element. I’d be surprised but—

I wasn’t. Ott’s Studebaker sat snugly at the end of the carport. I pulled up by its fender.

Behind me the lights were on in the third-story apartments, but the first two levels were dark and the spotlight that might have illumined the carport in back was out. On the patrol car we’ve got overhead lights, wigwags that blink, “alley lights” on the end of the light bar up top, and swivel lights by the side mirrors. I left the headlights on and aimed the swivel light down the row of stalls. The far two cars—a VW bug and one of those aging Toyotas or Hondas that have taken over the Volkswagen’s place in American society—looked empty.

I walked to the back of the carport and shone the light in front of them and Ott’s Studebaker. In the world of the homeless, carports are a boon, but citizens who are happy to give spare change to a transient on the street don’t want him sleeping in their own backyards. Uninvited guests often have different standards from their hosts. I understand that; still, it doesn’t make rousting the sleepers any more pleasant.

Tonight no one was sleeping against this cement wall, and I turned back to Ott’s car and shone my light in the window.

There was a body on the backseat.

I
STARED INTO THE
S
TUDEBAKER
.

The body there wasn’t Ott’s.

Long strands of brown hair looped out from a red serape that covered the curled body like a shroud. A pale, long-fingered hand clung to one edge. There is a skill known as watching with your ears. Those of us who grew up in busy, urban societies learned to block out whole levels of sound. Leaves rustle, VCRs hum, people breathe nearby; we don’t notice. But if you listen…It didn’t take too much concentration to hear the forced flow of breath in the car, like the snore of a little pink pig. I tried Ott’s door handle and was not surprised to find it locked.

“Police,” I called. “Move your hands out where I can see them.”

The serape flew up. I jumped back out of immediate range. I didn’t expect him to have a weapon, but in my business you guess wrong, you die.

“Put your hands out slowly.”

Fingers, palms, and finally wrists slid into view. The serape fell back, revealing a face I’d seen on the Avenue in the last few weeks sitting against the wall selling Free Advice. “If it’s not free,” he had told me, “it’s not worth anything.” It had been a clever and harmless riff, the kind that makes Telegraph Avenue fun.

I eyed him. “Let me give you some advice,” I said, “free advice. Don’t use someone else’s car as a crash pad.”

I was ready for him to insist indignantly the car was his and, when I axed that, to declare with undiminished outrage that he had permission to sleep there and finally to announce with great righteousness that he wasn’t harming anyone and if the city of Berkeley provided beds for its citizens, he wouldn’t have to be sleeping in a backseat that was way too short for him anyway. Blame someone else, it’s the way of the nineties. But he surprised me. He said nothing and sat up.

“Now move out here slowly. Keep your hands where I can see them. Okay,” I said as he got out, “now hands spread on the car. Do you have any weapons on you?”

“Not hardly.”

“I’m going to check you, okay?” It’s a thin line here between a witness’s rights and my safety. You never know what you’ll find: a knife taped to the inner thigh so close to the groin you wonder if the suspect was planning a sex change or an uncapped hypodermic under the sock.

But he was clean. And he had a driver’s license: Charles Edward Kidd. Twenty-seven years old. Address: a trailer space number in Portland, Oregon. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. I should have been relieved that it wasn’t Ott in the car, that Ott wasn’t dead. But I knew Ott. The man was a leftover from the hippie era, but when it came to his car, he was a neat freak. No papers were ever left in it, no client of questionable hygiene allowed inside, and even a passenger who passed muster would never be permitted to put parcels or; God forbid, feet on the fine leather seats. No way would Herman Ott allow Kidd to use the Studebaker as a crash pad.

If he knew.

Maybe Ott
had
left town. Yesterday afternoon he’d looked worried. Worried enough to call me.

“Where are your car and your trailer, Mr. Kidd?”

“Didn’t have a car. If I’d had the cash for a car, I wouldn’t have lived in a trailer. Here’s my free advice: Don’t live in what you can’t stand up in.”

I glanced questioningly at Ott’s car.

“So I don’t always follow my advice. No loss; it’s free.”

Relief blew over me. Kidd wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t kill, maim, or abduct Herman Ott and then doze off in his car.

The radio on my shoulder crackled. I cocked my ear. I didn’t want to miss a beat call, not for what might well turn out to be a housekeeping problem. But the call was for Adam 2 on a beat in the hills.

I concentrated on Charles Edward Kidd. I’m a sucker for guys like him, not the ones who threw spit-balls in school but the ones who came out with the quips. Add to that someone who has heard the song of the open road and written his own chorus, and I can feel the wind in my hair. It makes me think of driving down Ashby Avenue, turning right onto Route 80, and having the whole country open up ahead. What’s beneath that freedom? I always want to ask guys like Kidd. Are you running away, or have you slipped your bonds to walk unfettered? Does the road rise up to meet you? And when there’s no more open road, will you regret having driven so long and far that you can never find your way home again? Or will you know things in your soul the rest of us can only dream of?

None of that feeling was I about to let Kidd see. “You’re in a lot of trouble here, you know that, right? Your only chance to make things better is to be completely straight with me.”

“And you’ll let me go?” he said, leaning back against Ott’s car as if he owned it.

“And I’ll do what I can for you.”

He laughed. “ ‘Up to twenty percent off’? That means nothing.”

“Wrong, Mr. Kidd. Nothing is what you’ve got if you don’t cooperate. Nothing plus breaking the law. Now how did you get in this car?”

He was a tall, rangy guy. He looked at me, behind me at the driveway that led between the buildings to the street, and then, without moving his head, at the six-foot cement wall between this parking area and that of the next building.

“Don’t even think about it.”

He smiled sheepishly. “Okay, I’ll tell you. It’s no big thing. I did take the keys, but it’s not like I stole this old jalopy of Ott’s. I just wanted a place to sleep, and I knew he wasn’t going to be using it.”

My throat tightened. “How’d you know that?”

“Because I saw him getting in someone else’s car.”

“When?”

“Last night.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, ’cause it was real foggy by then and I was cold and didn’t want to spend another night sleeping outside. I mean I looked at him getting into someone
else’s
car and bingo—lightbulb—it came to me he wasn’t going to be in
his
car, so—”

“What kind of car was it?”

“Brown or gray or like that. Or maybe it just looked dark. It was dusk, so I couldn’t see good.”

“But what
make
of car?” Please, I prayed to the gods of interrogation, don’t make him one of those dropouts who pride themselves on the ultimate un-Americanism: not knowing cars.

Idols beseeched in desperation rarely deliver. And what this one gave me was about as much as I could hope for.

“Big. Lumpy. A van, or a station wagon, or one of those four-wheel-drive things for people who’d never consider an unpaved road.”

That limited the possibilities to half the vehicles on the freeway.

The radio crackled. Again it wasn’t for me. But I’d used up the time I’d normally have spent at lunch. I had to wrap up here and get back to my beat. “Was Oct alone?”

“No. Someone was driving.”

“What did that person look like?”

“Dunno.”

“Come on, don’t start that now.”

“No, listen, this is the truth. I was across the street, and I just saw this blur of pus yellow and looked up, and there was Ott getting into the van or whatever. Well, really what I saw was mostly his butt. It was on the other side of the street—Telegraph—did I say that? Then a bus pulls by in the near lane. I’m lucky to’ve spotted him.”