Death in the Haight (6 page)

It wasn't the kind of fog that made things disappear. It was the kind that made you look through gauze. And in the gauzy light of a street lamp was the ghostlike form of Inspector Stern. His tie was in his left jacket pocket, and something weighed it down on the right—a gun or a pint of whiskey, maybe. Lang thought the cop might be drunk, but even so, a practiced drinker like him wouldn't be sloppy and slur his words. He was the type to drink himself sober and mean.

Lang waved with one hand and plucked his cell phone out of his windbreaker with the other. He hit the speed dial. Thanh answered on the second ring.

“Your bike running?” Lang asked.

“Like a leopard,” Thanh said.

“I'm outside my office. Stern is forty feet away. It has the potential of getting ugly.”

“Be right there,” Thanh said.

“Working late?” Lang said, shouting at Stern, to bridge the distance he hoped to maintain. He wasn't afraid of Stern, the man himself. But this could be it. Lang appeared to be on the verge of that no-win situation he'd thought about earlier.

“I'm not working,” Stern said. “Not officially. You?”

“Me? Getting ready to call it a day—or night, I guess.”

“Vanderveers aren't answering their phones back in Michigan.”

“No?”

“You working with them?”

“Didn't we cover that territory the other night?” Lang asked.

“You didn't listen, did you? I told you.”

“I thought you said you weren't working,” Lang said. Neither approached the other.

“I asked you a question.”

“Not at the moment. I'm talking to you. And given our feelings for each other, I don't know why we're doing that.”

“If you're working with them . . . Fuck, why do I even bother with ‘if'? You are in the way of a murder investigation. That's criminal. I try to arrest you”—he smiled—“you resist.”

“I take your meaning.”

“So?”

“The only job I have at the moment is working for an attorney on a case that requires attorney-client privilege. So I can't tell you anything without a court order.” He knew what he said didn't matter, but he'd feel better if they just kept talking.

Stern looked to the side as if someone were standing in the shadows.

“I think what we have here is not a failure to communicate, Lang. You have simply failed to understand the rules.”

“Oh, the rules?” Lang said, telling himself to ask him questions, keep him talking. “What are they again?”

“You know, there are rules that are written down and we all agree to abide by them. And most of us know that those kinds of rules mean very little in the real world. The real rules have to do with who has the power. Lang?” He waited.

“What?”

“I have the power,” Stern said.

“You mean if you want my bag of fajitas you can just take it,” Lang said, referring to a well-known local police brutality case.

“There you go, sport. I figured you knew the score.”

Cars passed, a little surge now and then when the light changed.

“I want to know about the Vanderveers.”

“I do too,” Lang said. “Have you found the boy?”

“This isn't a friendly, two-way conversation, Lang.”

“It rarely is. We could change that. You have a hobby?”

“I do now.” His grin was big and genuine.

“You know that I didn't kill that woman in Sea Cliff.”

“No, I don't know that.”

“Well, you should. Does Rose know you're here?”

“Why should he? I told you I was off the clock.”

Lang thought he heard the sound of Thanh's motorcycle, but the rumbling stopped some distance away.

“You're going to catch your death of cold out here, Stern.”

“We can go somewhere, get warm,” Stern said. “What about it?”

The sound of the engine was sudden and deafening. Thanh's bike had a black matte finish, and he was wearing black leather and a black helmet. He was just a shadow in the darkness. The bike squealed to a stop in front of Lang. Lang hopped on the back and waved at Stern before wrapping his arms around Thanh's waist. And they were off.

Lang wasn't sure he heard shouts. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn't. He looked back and the big cop was jogging toward his car.

“Can we lose him?” Lang yelled into Thanh's ear.

“We already have. He's got a flat tire.”

Shit, Lang thought. Now he'll really be pissed.

 * * * 

“He had three stiff drinks, which he downed like he was dying of thirst,” Brinkman said as Thanh and Lang arrived. “By the way, leather boy, you'll wake the dead with that thing.”

It was true, Lang thought. The sound would draw complaints.

“Thanks,” Lang told his friend. “You probably need to make yourself scarce.” Thanh nodded, and the harsh roar of the engine when he took off faded as he disappeared. “You too,” Lang said, turning to Brinkman.

“Why are the kidnappers waiting so long?” Brinkman asked.

“Good question,” Lang said. “Maybe the timing has to be just right in order to work. Maybe disagreement in their ranks.”

“It's certainly working on Mr. Vanderveer.”

“And us. We can't let our impatience make us less effective.” Brinkman turned to leave. “Tomorrow,” Lang said, interrupting the older man's departure.

“Same time, same place?” Brinkman looked exhausted.

“I'll call you.”

Brinkman nodded.

“More money for the horses,” Lang said. “Right?”

“Oh,” Brinkman said, almost painfully, “another era. They're closing down the tracks right and left. Not like it used to be. Not much like it used to be. You going to sit out all night again?” Lang didn't answer. “Vanderveer is snug as a bug in a rug, the great whiskey knockout,” Brinkman continued. “You should try it.”

 * * * 

It would be all too easy, Lang thought. Thanks to a detail-oriented Thanh, Lang had Stern's address. He also had a few insights that would be helpful. Stern was in his mid-fifties and divorced. His only interests—aside from harassing Lang—appeared to be baseball and drinking. It was too late for a game. And the seriousness of Stern's alcoholism made it a sure bet that Stern wouldn't merely go to sleep; he would pass out.

Lang took a cab back to his place, picked up a few items he expected to need, and waited until three a.m. before heading out to Dogpatch, a blue-collar neighborhood in what was, at one time, a nearly abandoned part of the city. Stern's was a small frame bungalow, built before the earthquake and bought before the inevitable gentrification. Unlike the others, his house showed all the signs of neglect—not out of poverty, probably, but disinterest.

Behind the curtains, Lang could see the kaleidoscopic colored flashing of a television set. He slid on a pair of latex gloves before he did a pull-up on the window ledge and caught a glimpse of the silhouette. It was of a big chair and an arm dangling down the side. There was a bottle just out of reach. So far, Lang's predictions were correct. If his calculations continued to be on the mark, Stern wasn't just asleep; he was passed out. Lang had hours to do what he needed to do.

There was a narrow passageway between the houses, used to cart out the trash bins from the back to the street for pickup. The back door and the frame that held it were out of kilter, the house obviously having settled over the years. There was a big pane of opaque bubble glass at the top of the door. The rest was wood. The handle wasn't very secure either, but the door was locked. There was some give to the lock. Lang suspected it was as old and worn as the house itself.

He set his small bag down and plucked from it a flat-edged piece of metal. He slid it in, then up, and that was enough. The door moved in a few inches and stuck on a chain. Lang slid in a piece of thin, L-shaped metal and closed the door far enough to give the chain enough slack for Lang to disengage it. He could hear it bang against the door.

Lang was inside.

The overhead kitchen light was on, and its low-watt bulb spread a dirty gold luminescence over the surprisingly neat room. The countertops were chipped, and the linoleum on the floor was worn down to the wood in some places. The floor creaked as he walked.

Stern hadn't heard a thing. The veteran cop hadn't bothered to remove his suit coat, but he had taken out his service revolver and placed it on what was the dining room table, no longer needed so shoved to one side of the dining room. The belt and the top button of Stern's pants were undone. His head slumped to one side. The light from the television caused shadows to dance on the inspector's alcohol-swollen face. A PBS travelogue was on TV. They were in a street bazaar someplace in the Middle East, and there was a British voice describing it all.

Business first, Lang thought. He took out plastic restraints. They were notched like the ties on some garbage bags and locked into place. He put them on Stern's feet first, locking them together and then to feet of the chair. He ran an elastic cord with hooks on each end around Stern's chest, hooking them behind the chair. Stern moved and lifted his head, but only briefly. Lang waited a few moments, until he sensed the man drifting back into a more solid stupor. Lang put the restraints on Stern's wrists, brought them together and locked them in. They acted as plastic handcuffs. He ran a longer piece of plastic from the wrists to the feet, allowing him to sit comfortably, hands in his lap, but preventing him from raising his arms.

Lang's precautions completed, he would have to wait for the rest. Waking up a drunk mid-blackout would only mean an angry, loud, and incoherent drunk rather than just an angry and loud one. Lang wanted Stern sober. Completely.

All sorts of dark thoughts passed through Lang's brain. The room continued to be lit by the erratic flashing of colors on the screen and the changing shadows: brighter, then darker, as if there were a sometimes fiery thunderstorm on the interior scrim of his skull.

It made for a depressing couple of hours, mind moving from anger to hopelessness. In the end, Lang preferred not to face reality and certainly not this way—in a stinking, crummy living room in the middle of the night.

He would have liked to have finished Stern's bottle of whiskey. It would at least dull the erratic images that swept across his sleep- and food-deprived mind. The thing was he knew he could do it. He could kill the man. The perfect opportunity lay right before him, and he had the mind-set. It would be a preemptive strike. The law might not buy it, but his conscience would. It was, in its way, self-defense. Hadn't his country used that same argument to invade a country halfway across the world?

A little after six, light began to seep in through the living room window. Lang took a deep breath and stood. He walked from the sofa into the dining room. He walked back and forth because of impatience, not purpose. Stern was still out. He'd had at least three hours sleep, Lang thought. Maybe more. He didn't know when the inspector had passed out. No earlier than midnight, because he was still standing outside Lang's office shortly before the bewitching hour.

Instead of shaking him awake, Lang turned off the television, went into the kitchen, and found what was necessary to brew a pot of coffee. If Stern's drinking was a regular pattern, Lang thought, then Stern would have to show up by eight or nine at Homicide, which would mean he would likely wake up in the next hour or so, sooner if the rattling in the kitchen woke him—an unaccustomed noise for the single man.

There was nothing in the refrigerator except a bottle of catsup, a jar of mayonnaise, and another of mustard. No eggs. No milk. No lunch meat. A couple of wilted stalks of celery occupied a corner of the vegetable bin. There were three boxes of sausage and pepperoni pizzas in the freezer. There was no cereal in the cabinets. There was a box of Ritz crackers and cups of ramen noodles enclosed in cellophane beside a bottle of vinegar. However, the trash was overflowing with various takeout containers, revealing a man with unsophisticated but certainly international tastes in food.

Here was a man, Lang thought, who didn't really sleep at his house or have a home-cooked meal. There were no books or magazines, just a pile of newspapers. He had no computer. Dry cleaning, still in its clear plastic, hung on hangers that were hooked over the back of the open door between kitchen and dining room.

Back in the living room Lang found his victim, still firmly bound, staring at him.

“Why didn't you take me out?” Stern asked, surprisingly without anger. It was a sane voice.

“Don't like shooting monkeys in a barrel.”

“That's fish in a barrel, numb nuts.”

“Well, you're more like a big dumb ape,” Lang said. “And what makes you think I can't still take you out?”

“You thought about it, right?”

“Not past tense.”

Stern laughed. “Gloves?” His laugh evolved into a cough that went on for minutes. Finally in control, he said, “Smart. Hey, I would have done it. No balls, Lang.”

“A couple of hours ago, I realized I could take the cap from the whiskey bottle and shove it down your throat. You would have choked to death.”

“A drunken accident. You'd have gotten away with it, probably.”

“Could have set fire to your chair. A careless cigarette. Or your revolver, over there.” Lang pointed to the .38 now on top of a stack of newspapers. “I could have put it in your limp hand and put the barrel right up under your chin and fired right into your brain.” Lang mimed, putting his finger under his chin. “Or here,” Lang said, putting his finger in his mouth. “You exhibit every symptom of a man who wants to destroy himself.”

“You been talking to Gratelli?” Stern asked.

“Tell me, Stern,” Lang said, looking around, “do you have a real life somewhere that nobody knows about?”

“I got nothing and nothing to lose.”