by Robert Roper
“I like it here because I fit at the tables. I don’t at every café.”
“It’s okay during the week, but Saturdays it’s getting to be like the French Hotel, a big line, a crowd.”
Kind of fun to be meeting a detective all casual-like. Berkeley cops probably hated Berkeley: think of all the sensitivity training they had to endure, the layers of political correctness inflicted on them. Generations of self-righteous left-wing city governments had made the force hyper-diverse, had fought to ban the bomb, free Huey Newton, free Leonard Peltier, shed no blood for oil. It would make for a certain amount of heavy ribbing when you went to conferences with your policemen colleagues from around the state: “I want you to meet my friend Byrum here,” they’d say, “he works in Berkeley, the poor dumb bastard.”
Detective Johnson didn’t seem like a Berkeley-hater, though. He was dressed like any local on a casual Friday, in wrinkled pants, comfy shoes, a fleece top over a T-shirt, with a laptop squirting out of his arms. He even had a copy of the Times. Younger, better built than Landau remembered from that chaotic night at the house, only a week and a half ago, my God, it seems longer.
“Detective, don’t you want one of those good cappuccinos?”
“At this point in the morning, Professor, I’ve already had about a quart of my own brew, so I think I’ll pass.”
“When do you get up usually?”
“Four thirty.”
“Four thirty? Wow. Impressive.”
“No, you’re the impressive one, Doctor, you are.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve just read a bunch of your papers. The first one, from ’71, was on rubella. Which I now know isn’t the same thing as measles. You went to the Philippines with three pediatric specialists and studied an outbreak on Luzon island and the use of the new MMR vaccine that was coming in around then. You are one hell of a well-traveled distinguished scientist, sir. My hat is off to you.”
“Thank you. But a lot of people travel for work. You don’t necessarily get anywhere.”
“When you look at the career as a whole, see the arc of it, that’s impressive. I didn’t know what an epidemiologist really does. What it all boils down to.”
“And that is?”
“Kind of being on top of everything. Being where the worst things are happening, all the time. Getting to know the world the way the rest of us never do. Never have to.”
“That’s flattering, I guess. Are you buttering me up, Detective?”
“Look here.” He fooled around with his clunky laptop for a while, couldn’t get something to upload. “Show you later. Anyway, I figured out where you were year to year by logging your publications, and it looks like twenty-some trips to Africa in fifteen years. Twenty separate trips.”
“Couldn’t be that many. More like a dozen. Only a couple meant anything, anyway.”
“No, come on, and that’s in between trips to Vietnam and Thailand and Cambodia. Going to Burma lots lately, I notice. Reporting for the UN special commission on the insurgency, the SLORC against everybody else, health consequences thereof. Major AIDS problem, Golden Triangle heroin-dealing, arms-dealing, child prostitution. You don’t think of people in the jungle getting into prostitution and having an AIDS epidemic—that’s more like a slum disease, right? But that’s not true. Injector studies you did over there, strangely parallel to your San Francisco studies. Then, Latin America. Guatemala and Mexico mainly. I have you in Sinaloa last spring, after a couple of weeks in Mexico City. Sinaloa is the major Mexican poppy-growing state, I believe, that’s where all the drug stuff starts.”
“I guess. That’s what people say, anyway.”
“Maybe you were there on vacation. You’ve certainly earned a vacation.”
The detective was shaking his head in amazement. But where are we going with this? Landau began to wonder. He could descry a portrait struggling to emerge, of a raffish “professor” figure who goes where the action is, to the cities of Asia to hobnob with prostitutes, to certain notorious drug regions, to the go-go zones. How stupid do they think I am, really? Is this not another TV show, Columbo, perhaps? With the fatuous perp trapped in his own superiority? Tripped up by flattery?
“And your point is, Detective?”
“Just that you’re always taking on risk, always at the center of things. It must come from a deeply compassionate place, to want to encounter that much misery and do something about it. You show up where the world is at its most hopeless, at its sickest.”
“For really, really hopeless, I would say, certain slums in Bangladesh. They beat everything, hands down.”
“Okay. I’ll remember that.”
Landau waited. Then he said, “Seems to me you’re working up a curious dossier on me, my friend. Is that necessary?”
“Oh, it’s just the job. It’s interesting to me, getting to know someone like you. Do you know who Glenn Seaborg was?”
“Seaborg? Hmm. Not sure.”
“He was an atomic bomb guy. Manhattan Project. All that.”
“Okay. Yes, I think I’ve heard of him.”
“Another big thinker living quietly up here in the Berkeley Hills. Like having Einstein as your neighbor. They had a break-in at his place, and I was the cop sent up. He was eighty-six at that time. The most fascinating man I ever met, by far. Sharp as a tack although his body was failing, everything from the neck on down was useless, he said.”
“Glenn Seaborg. Discoverer of uranium-235, if I’m not mistaken.”
“No, not uranium—plutonium. God help him, he brought us plutonium.”
“Oh, oh. That’s a heavy burden. For him and for the rest of us.”
“Right, I expect it was.”
Detective Johnson then told a story about Darth Vader-ish Glenn Seaborg, how, that day when the policeman answered the burglary call, they’d had a sherry together. Seaborg could talk about a million subjects, but he’d turn everything back to arms control eventually—if you talked about golf, about your recent hemorrhoid surgery, somehow he’d bring it back to that.
“Did it in a making-fun way. ‘Of course that’s all I’d want to talk about, isn’t it?’ But absolutely determined to talk about that, really say the truth about that. Not be trivial, not at this late juncture. I was just some ignorant detective but he engaged me the way he engaged presidents, secretaries of defense, Eisenhower, Dulles, Churchill. Other brilliant scientists. Oppenheimer—another local guy, by the way. Berkeley Hills guy.”
“Did you have a personal relationship with Robert Oppenheimer, too, Detective?”
“No, and I didn’t have one with Seaborg, either. I just had sherry with him a few times. Oppenheimer, now, that would’ve been fun. He’s my favorite from among those atomic bomb men. Teller’s the only one I truly don’t like. Doctor Strangelove in the movie. Unless you believe it was Kissinger who was the inspiration—have you read Christopher Hitchens on Kissinger, by the way? Now, that’s a hell of a book.”
What fun—just talking to my friend here, my new detective friend. Landau searched for a reason to cut this interview short, but the man’s good face and forthright genial manner were disarming. No doubt he wants to get some angle on you, he’s feeling you out, not so sure you’re entirely innocent, but that’s okay. You can ride with that. Just be your charming, becomingly modest self. He’s a copper, but that doesn’t mean he’s the enemy. Even cops are sometimes what they seem to be.
“Byrum—did you get the autopsy results yet?”
“What? Oh, yeah. Some of them.”
“And?”
“Well, it’s funny. We almost didn’t get to do one. The husband dug in his heels. Was strongly opposed.”
“The husband? Bill Beevors?”
“Right. Also a big doctor-professor, as I understand. Said she would’ve been opposed to it, so he was opposed. Didn’t want it.”
“Right. Religious Jews don’t like autopsies, see. But even the Orthodox come around, when we explain how sensitively it’s done these days, how respectfully. Then, there’s the public health angle. Jews are big on public health, usually.”
“Samantha wasn’t Jewish. She was born half-Jewish, but she never practiced a religion. No, she was a village atheist type, a scientific skeptic. Thought all religion was bunk, basically. Scoffed at it.”
“Yeah? Well, the husband said different. Maybe she’d changed lately.”
“I doubt that. Could she have changed that much?”
In any case, the autopsy had showed Samantha to be in good health for a woman her age, except for one fatal flaw. She had a minute problem with her AV node artery, what was called fibromuscular dysplasia of the AV coronary node. That had produced a stenosis—a blockage, in other terms—and she went out like a light, bing, bam, all she wrote.
“Could’ve happened at any time,” the detective said. “Didn’t have to be unusual stress, didn’t have to be anything. But, probably stress was involved. The medical examiner thought so.”
“Dysplasia, coronary dysplasia. That’s exceedingly rare, I’m thinking. I’ve heard of renal arterial and spinal dysplasia, but never that.”
“Yeah, well, but that’s what it was. They’re almost one hundred percent on that. And when it does happen it’s fatal. Bottom line, her heart stopped, blood couldn’t go, and she died.”
It jibed with the blogger story, Landau reflected, about her fainting in front of an audience. So, Samantha had had a bad heart! All those years, just lying in wait for her—had she been aware of it somehow? Aware of her mortality? What was that novel with all the heart business—oh, right, The Good Soldier. By Ford Madox Ford. Ford Hermann Hueffer, to give him his proper name. A Hueffer and a puffer.
“The night she died—were there any medical examiners up at my house?” Landau inquired.
“Examiners? Probably. Sure, and they usually they beat us to the crime scene. They’re very good in this county. Very professional.”
“I wonder, because I didn’t see anybody who was doing that kind of work.”
“You don’t necessarily see them, Professor, but they’re there. They kind of hang back, until they get their body to play with.”
And that was about that. The detective made another attempt to pull up something on his computer, succeeded this time, and showed it to Landau—it was the long list of the trips of the last two decades, correlated with his paper publications. Mad movements all about the globe, an unconscionable number of them. Suggested someone just unable to sit still, someone profoundly restless. Just think of all the frequent-flyer miles, had he only been smart about that. Then the detective had to rush off, to a meeting, and Landau was left by himself in the café, wondering if he had advanced his cause or done it grievous damage. Hard to tell.
When he left the café he found a parking ticket on his windscreen—not a citation, it turned out, just a note scribbled on the back of a blank form. “If you hear from the maids,” Byrum wrote, “please get in touch with me immediately. I am making formal inquiries in Mexico and elsewhere but they could take some time. Things being what they are down there. Pleasure talking to you today, sir, it was a distinct honor. Byrum.”
chapter 6
To market, to market, to buy a fat pig. Or am I the fat pig? So Landau reflected as he bought flowers down at Monterey and Hopkins that quiet Saturday morning, to bring to Deena’s later. Didn’t really need food but went into Monterey Market anyway, across the street from the flower shop, along with what felt like five hundred other Berkeleyans of roughly his vintage, finicky eaters and cookers all, wrinkled and gray-haired now, the rampart-rushers of ’68 gone cranky, gone peculiar. In the narrow aisles of the grungy but bursting veg market, one had face-offs with angry Free Speech grandmas, all of them intent on getting their own stuff right now, right now. Sneaky old Asian ladies, too, with kampong-honed moves, with ballsy ways that put him in mind of Wangfujing Street, Beijing, the market there. Kept him on his toes.
Was he wrong, or was there a lift in the public mood? The Dems had just taken Congress. Nancy Pelosi, local gal, was to be the new Speaker of the House. Is that why the fight to get a shopping cart is more benign today than usual? Less grumpy-desperate? And look, that woman over there is actually smiling at me. No—she’s looking my way, but she’s not smiling, and now she’s turning around. Another celebrity sighting? Have I been outed again? Once these people know me as the woman-scientist-murderer of Hopwood Lane, they will turn on me with a special savagery, because the oppression of women has not been forgotten hereabouts, not at all, and it’s but one small step from snuffing an ex-lover to tossing acid on helpless schoolgirls in Pakistan. You may get away with that kind of thing in other places but not here in Berkeley, by God. And here came that woman, wheeling up out of the string bean and parsley aisle, almost running into him.
“Sorry to bother you. I’m Melody, from the pool? Arthur Fromm’s wife? I think I know you.”
“What? Oh—hi there. Melody. Yes, of course. Melody.”
“I recognized you, although I’m more used to seeing you in a bathing suit.”
“Dark vision, that.”
She didn’t seem to understand him at first. Then she smiled.
“No, not so bad. But I wanted to tell you, I was sorry to hear about your friend. I knew her slightly, from a long time ago. I used to be one of her students.”
“You were Samantha Beevors’ student?”
“Yes. I was in the school of public health in the mid-eighties, when she had an appointment. I’m not talking about here—I’m talking about the U of Illinois.”
“So you’re some kind of doctor?”
“No. I’m just a physical therapist.”
“Ah, can you fix my bad back?”
“Probably. But not here. Not right now.”
“My chiropractor wouldn’t allow it, anyway. He’s very jealous. Only he can touch my lumbars.”
“Georges Vienna, right?”
“Yes, how do you know that?”
“Everybody knows Georges. And you and I talked about him once—at the pool.”
Now, why don’t I remember that? Landau wondered. I’ve been forgetting things lately, many important things. Can’t remember ever looking closely at this woman before, the way she deserves to be looked at. The way I’m looking now.
“What’s the physical therapy take on chiropractic? Have they got it all wrong?”
“Well, it’s crackpot science,” she replied. “But some of them have a gift, and they can bring enormous relief.”
“Maybe that’s true for all of us, don’t you think? Doesn’t matter what ideology we’ve got sluicing around our overheated brains, if someone’s got the touch, really got it, then nothing else matters. Carries all before it.”
“Yes, but I prefer that my doctor know something about real science. The same way I prefer that my accountant know the fundamentals of profit and loss. Let’s not leave everything in the realm of the touch, the magic touch, please.”
“I’m with you there.”
She seemed about to hurry on. Landau wished that she would tarry a bit, but he couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Your friend. Doctor Bernstein Beevors,” she continued. “One of the reasons I didn’t go on in public health is because I had her class in biostatistics, and I went to her office to talk to her once.”
“Wicked hard grader, I bet.”
“Not so bad. Having her for a professor was like having Socrates teach you basic arithmetic. Completely wasted on us innocent boobs. She said that she liked teaching first-year students because they were so wrongheaded. She was very kind, very sweet to me.”
“Hmm. Not my memory of her, but no matter.”
The woman paused for a second. “Well, we knew her in different capacities. I liked biostatistics, I saw the point of it. But sometimes I fell asleep in class. One day I fell asleep standing up in the back of the hall. Like a horse falling asleep in a pasture.”
“Indicates what, drastic boredom?”
“I guess. She listened to what I had to say, and then she said that some people were cut out to be public-health administrators and others weren’t. Some should go to med school. Deal with patients directly.”
“Oh, so you are a doctor.”
“No. But she was right, I wasn’t happy till I was laying my hands on people. Going skin to skin. Roughing them up a bit.”
“Okay, now I get it.”
Funny little encounter. A bit of a charge, a man-and-a-woman sort of charge, almost below the level of detection. Am I fooling myself? Woman comes up to a human whale in a veg market, Landau reflected, smiles up into his face, says a few ordinary words and listens to what he says in return. About how she likes to touch people. Rough them up. Gee, I don’t know, but it’s sunnier in here all of a sudden. Look at these organic miniature beets, I want some. Garlic shoots, fragrant bunches of them, and little butter lettuces, raised organically at Long Lea Farms, Olema, California. Give me some of them, too.
The day passed happily enough, but with a background feeling of mild desolation. Often that was the quality of time spent in Berkeley, on the streets and under the blue, blue skies. And why? The place was rife with pleasure, agreeable sights often met the eye, and the weather was boringly splendid. In November you might walk about in a short-sleeve shirt, with leather sandals on your feet, sandals over socks. (Deena had reprehended him about this several times: do not wear white socks with sandals, Landau, please, not in public anymore. But he did it anyway, rejoicing in the dorkiness of it—his mother had dressed him that way as a boy, and it made him think of her.)
But the desolation, the mild anxiety. The perfect skies induced, by their very serenity, a feeling of failure; if you cannot succeed here, where nature is your pal, then there’s not much that can be said for you. Imagine what a lazy washout you’d be in Cairo, say, or Vladivostok. Somewhere a bit challenging. Landau fell into a low-grade grumbling at himself; you almost achieved something, he complained, but you lacked endurance, and your life, as Chekhov once said of himself, has lacked a general idea. You’ve had fabulous advantages yet have ended up like this, asleep on your feet, out to pasture, indeed. Funny that the detective sees you as such a star, an exemplar—even if he’s simply bullshitting you, telling you that to soft-soap you, you know the truth, and it’s not that good.