Done for a Dime (2 page)

From this side of the range, though, on a clear night, glancing south from the bluff headlands, you could see San Francisco glimmering in the distance, like a wicked dream. Northward, beyond the salt flats, lay vintner paradise, the Napa Valley, with its thousands of acres of fretwork vines and the hundreds of tons of silt load they sent downriver. You could hardly head a boat upstream anymore except at high tide. An ecological disaster, those vineyards, but the yuppie-come-latelies couldn’t love them enough.

In daylight, you looked west across the river to the Mayacamas Mountains, the interim distance greened with tidal wetlands riven by waterways—China Slough, Devil’s Creek, Dutchman Slough. As a boy, Murchison had water-skied those sloughs with his older brother, Willy, breaking an arm once, his brother losing teeth, prelegal teens anesthetized with beer. Once, they’d traded chugs from a fifth of Four Roses bourbon—paint thinner with food coloring, basically—filched from a passed-out fisherman snoring in his boat.

The brothers had hunted together, too, looking for ruddies and stiff tails flying in to feed in the tidal pools, jackrabbits darting in and out of the fennel and coyote bush on the salt marsh levees, pheasant flushed out of the artichoke thistle around Five Brooks. Up near Dutton’s Landing they’d helped buck oat hay for pocket money. After dusk they snuck into The Dream Bowl storeroom and helped themselves to a beer or two, then traded belches while the spinning tower light at the Napa Airport mesmerized them and they talked about girls they knew.

A lifetime ago, all that. As of 1972, Willy survived only in memory; you’d find his name etched in black granite among fifty-eight thousand others on the Mall in D.C. What hunting Murchison got to now concerned men. From time to time, he still felt the need for anesthesia.

He turned his eyes back to the immediate surroundings.

St. Martin’s laid claim to being one of the few genuinely integrated neighborhoods in town, though halfheartedness more than high-mindedness deserved the credit for that. Haywire zoning had let in the low-rent apartments, and they were nests of trouble. Absentee rentals were a blight. This had driven out a lot of the whites, and almost all the ones left behind worked in the building trades, cast adrift by the shipyard closing, traveling hours up and down the valley now for any work they could find.

In truth, the racial tensions in town were a good deal less edgy than you’d find in dozens of other places, though that didn’t mean they didn’t exist. Just because people intermingled didn’t mean they mixed. The same held true for the force. Murchison got along with Black cops all right, or he had before being partnered with Stluka. Now he was an enigma, but he couldn’t do much about that without undermining his partner, a cardinal sin the way Murchison saw it. Loyalty was a duty, not a bond. Besides, he knew only too well that getting along isn’t friendship. And you didn’t have to wonder much what secret feelings remained at work beneath the surface of things—on the force, among ordinary people.

As for the folks who lived up here, they did well to know their neighbors beyond hello, regardless of race, and the ones they did know owed that familiarity to trouble—a men’s rehab center trying to get zoning for ten additional beds; or the duplex owners who’d phonied up a permit request, then painted the house in clown colors when the Planning Department turned them down. Here and there, you did still find a family who’d lived in the same house for decades, but now their children were taking over the property, hoping for a little of that inflation windfall so key to the California dream anymore.

Being close to the panhandle, this particular street was mostly Black, though scattered here and there in the crowd Murchison caught a white face. He’d be interested in Hennessey’s Polaroids. Be interested in which faces Marcellyne Pathon could identify, which ones she couldn’t. Which ones she wouldn’t.

Across the panhandle in Baymont, things got worse. Up top there was a reasonably decent neighborhood called Home in the Sky, built by a man named Jameson Carswell, a local legend—only Black developer the town had ever seen. In the fifties and sixties he’d built almost all the new homes owned by African Americans up here, then formed his own finance company to loan out mortgage money when the local banks refused, hoping to ruin him. A fierce loyalty remained among the older home owners over there. Old folks, they remembered.

Almost everything below that one neighborhood, though, despite the stellar views, qualified for Section 8. More than shacks, less than houses, they were old federal housing units left behind by World War II, now with add-ons and renovations grandfathered in decade after decade. Shabby apartment buildings and four-room prefabs set onto concrete slab pretty much finished the picture.

Patrol units seldom ventured over into Baymont for so much as a barking dog except in teams of three. Narrow winding streets snaked downhill among eucalyptus trees and Monterey pines so ratty and thick with duff they almost qualified as tinder. At the bottom, where the panhandle ended, the streets on that side converged with those from over here on St. Martin’s—it was the only way in or out of either neighborhood, another relic of the federal housing plan. Traffic bottlenecked down there every morning and every night. A renovation plan was in the works, but that had been true for thirty years.

Beyond the low stone wall demarcating the Baymont and St. Martin’s Hill communities, twenty-five acres of vacant navy row houses sat empty. They’d been targeted for condo conversion—a contractor had the plans approved for 250 town houses, model units were due for completion early next year—but then cost overruns for heating and electrical upgrades halted work, or so they said. Meanwhile the project just sat there, inviting the worst.

To the south along the river, the warehouse district began. Boxcars tagged with graffiti turned to rust in the rail yards. Piles of pumice and concrete powder, heaped along the loading docks, sent gritty dust clouds sailing through town, ruining paint jobs and prompting asthma attacks.

The night trade down there, among the warehouses, made the action up here on the hill look like church. That’s where you found the lion’s share of meth labs and crack houses and shooting galleries—
if
you found them. They roamed spot to spot, week by week, to avoid crackdowns, and even with federal HIDTA money, the force had yet to build up the manpower to do much. Bangers ran roughshod, and where they didn’t the bikers did, the two sides negotiating truces only money could explain.

Beyond that lay Dumpers and the rest of southtown, absentee rentals again, a lot of Section 8. Live there, you inhaled mold through your walls and looked out at the street through metal bars. What you saw, more than likely, day or night, was hookers working twists along the side streets off the truck route. Come morning, if you ventured very far outside, you had to watch your step to avoid the spent rubbers.

The whole town had started to backslide when the first big wave of parolees came back to town, trying to reclaim what parts of the street trade they’d surrendered when they’d gone inside. Crime rates were ticking upward again. Six murders already this year, first week of February. Six murders and fifteen fires, in an overgrown town. A community in transition, some bow-tied consultant hired by the mayor’s office had called it.

Turning back to the murder scene, Murchison had to peer over the tall wood fence just to see a rim of roofline. The upper tip of an addition appeared near the back. Raggedy plum trees flanked the yard.

To either side, beyond the fence and the trees, two Queen Anne Victorians stood dark. The Victorians counted among about two dozen in this part of town, one of the reasons it bore the nickname Heritage Hill. In contrast to Homicide Hill, which it also got called from time to time. The Victorians were impressive despite long neglect—steep-hipped roofs, cross gables, spindlework. One had a veranda in front and a Palladian window on the top floor. The other had a tower and a widow’s walk. More to the point, they both stood empty. There’d be no neighbors on either side coming forward with eyewitness accounts.

Murchison approached the gate. Stluka, already there, leaned against the fence, trading wisecracks with Truax.

“Just slammed it down,” Truax said. “This green gunk. Said it had bee droppings in it, I kid you not. Bee droppings, not honey.”

“There a difference?” Stluka shook his head, leaned down, and spat. “Health food. It’s God’s way of being passive-aggressive.”

“The two Victorians.” Murchison pointed at one house, then the other. “Anybody check them inside?”

Truax shook his head. “Inside, no. But they’re secure. Doors all locked. Holmes sent me and Hennessey over to check both out first thing. No windows broke, except those must’ve got broke before. They’re all boarded up tight.”

“I still want both taped off. They’re part of the scene till I let them go.”

“Yeah, sure.” Truax flipped to a blank page and wrote it down.

“And back people farther away, across the street and beyond the Victorians, both directions. Neighbor said she didn’t hear a car, but just in case there’s rubber out here, I want to be able to find it.”

Truax puffed his cheeks. “Gonna need bodies.”

“Call it in. Blame me. There’s OT in it if anybody whines.” He pointed again at the Victorians. “You said boarded-up windows. Remind me—we get calls on work site thefts up here? Lumber, tools, paint?”

Truax shrugged. “Don’t look like much work got started yet.”

Murchison took out his notepad. “I’ll check. And fires. Unless I’m wrong, there were fires up here.”

“Been fires everywhere,” Truax said.

“I realize that.” Murchison kept writing. “Jerry, we’re gonna want to check property rolls, find out who the owners are, bring them in for a talk. See if they had words with the vic.”

“Yeah,” Stluka said, cracking his back. “Don’t forget to remind me to remember that.” He showed his badge to Truax, so he could log the number. “Let’s bop on in, see what Sherlock’s got.”

2

T
he halogen lights, erected just inside the gate, lit things up like a stripper’s wedding. Five yards in, the body lay sprawled along the gravel path, covered with a plastic drape. The hands and feet stuck out from underneath, already bagged by the evidence tech. The bags made it look like the dead man had washed up in his own front yard, with jellyfish attached.

Holmes crouched close to the body, as though to defend it. Beyond him, spaced evenly across the yard, three patrolmen in rain slickers walked shoulder to shoulder, one small step at a time. Near the house, two others, one with a metal detector, checked the bushes.

The house was painted blue, a low squat cinder block structure like the kind used for rest rooms at the beach, except this one had windows and a front door. Flat roof, dry-rotted eaves, cheap metal windows pocked with rust. Behind it, the addition, made of wood plank and with a pitched roof covered in tar paper shingles, stood slightly higher and wider than the front. The effect was that of two completely different structures, trying to mate.

Seeing Murchison and Stluka, Holmes rose, rubbing his legs to get the blood flow back. At full height, he had three inches on Murchison, towered over Stluka. His slicker barely covered his knees.

Holmes had played basketball locally, starring in high school, then got lost in the rotation at Fresno State. Murchison, who’d been something of a local star himself fifteen years earlier—football, strong safety—had followed Holmes’s career. He was ugly in the way that paid off for an athlete and a cop. He scared people: bony head, itty-bitty ears, nose like an ax blade. He had thick-lidded eyes that seemed both sleepy and pitiless. Especially when he looked at Stluka.

“I was going to hoist the tent. Keep all this dry. But the rain?” Holmes glanced up at the low clouds sailing inland. “Soon as I got here, pretty much stopped. Got to work.”

“Got storms lined up halfway to Hawaii, Sherlock.”

Murchison flinched at the nickname. Holmes, eyes steady, just nodded.

“Not the way I heard it,” he said. “All clear.”

Stluka uttered a throaty laugh. “Got yourself a real future with the weather bureau.”

Murchison cut in. “Rain starts again, the tent goes up. Till then, we’re here, let’s get it done. Holmesy, take us through it.”

Rio Mirada had eighty-five police officers. Only fifteen were Black, none were detectives, and only one was on track to change that. Sgt. Marion Holmes. Stluka, a refugee from Newton Precinct in South Central—the infamous Shootin’ Newton—found nothing at all amiss in the numbers. But the current chief was a job hopper, more politician than cop, and he saw elevating Holmes to detective as a way to make his mark here before moving on. Holmes got more latitude at crime scenes than others assigned In-Charge. It rankled some on the force. Stluka, for starters.

Holmes pointed at the body with his pen. “Victim’s known as Strong Carlisle. Raymond’s his given name. It’s his house here. Musician, headlined an outfit called The Mighty Firefly. Big band R&B, they do dances, Juneteenth, the festival and Shriner circuit. Once upon a time, man played with Ray Charles, King Curtis, Bobby Blue Bland—”

“Bobby Boo who?” Stluka rocked on his heels, sport jacket open, hands deep in his pockets. “I mean, am I supposed to know who that is?”

Murchison said, “We’ll finalize the music appreciation aspect of this later. That all right?”

“Just a question,” Stluka said.

“Understood. Holmesy?”

Holmes drew a line in the air between the gate and the body. “Gunshots from the rear, looks like three hit. Techs’ll test the jacket for powder, but from the entry wounds alone I’d say close-range, probably ten feet or less. Exit wounds are big, real big, maybe hollow-points. Could be we’re talking a .357, a .44—”

“You don’t guess caliber from exit wounds,” Stluka groaned. “Jesus.”

Holmes locked eyes again. “I’ll pass that along to the ME, Detective.” Turning back to the body, he went on, “There’s no casings, so revolver most likely. Got the guys here checking for spents.”

Murchison’s mind began to drift as Holmes crouched down beside the body again and got deeper into the detail, the science of it, the stuff that so impressed outsiders but didn’t change the fact the situation basically reduced to:
Old guy got shot in the back by somebody who ran away.