“Nonsense. Every rule has its exceptions. This one could be most profitable.”
Sometime in there I got mad. I think it was the way he kept wrinkling his nose, as though he was smelling the trappings of my nest and finding them cheap and offensive, both morally and chemically. “I don’t know about the Arabic and the Portuguese, Hedgestone,” I said, “but I do know you’re the only man in this hemisphere with an asshole as big as the bay. It’s not so bad that you’re trying to buy me off, but it’s tacky as hell that you’re using my own client’s money to do it. Now you and your professor get out of here before I wrinkle your suits. And take that phony accent with you.”
Hedgestone smiled mildly. “The accent is quite genuine, I assure you.”
“How the hell would you know?”
Hedgestone considered the situation but failed to come up with a counter. He stood up. “Good day, Mr. Tanner. If you change your mind I can be reached at this number. It’s a private line.”
He flipped a white card on the desk and followed the professor out the door. I hoped he heard me tear it in half.
ELEVEN
Since I was walking down Montgomery Street, the heart of the city’s financial district, I naturally started thinking about greed. Not about greed for money or power, the common forms, the greed we expect to encounter the way we expect to encounter the light bill, but a third variety, one not always appreciated either by the one who wields it or by the target of the exercise. This is the greed for moral suasion, the often unconscious impulse to dictate the habits, the desires, the behavior of others. It inflicts more psychological damage than either of the other forms because it is the variety most capable of evading our defenses. Perversely, we more willingly allow someone to dictate how we live than we allow that same someone to make a few bucks at our expense. Moral charlatans are welcomed with hosannas; welfare cheats are jailed with dispatch.
In Walter Hedgestone and Belinda Kottle I had seen two capable practitioners of ethical evangelism. Their importunities were to have persuaded me that the ailing Max Kottle was both unwise and addled, that by assisting him in locating his son I was compounding the tragedy of his decline, and that the greatest good for the greatest number would be accomplished by a slight but significant alteration in my pursuits.
But Walter and Belinda had made two mistakes. When the greatest good for the greatest number coincides with the greatest good for the person telling me about it, I never go along. Also, I’m not in business to achieve the Humanistic Calculus; I’m in business to serve my client. Lots of times the interests of the client and the masses don’t coincide. Once in a while they’re completely at odds. So be it. Max Kottle’s spouse and Max Kottle’s factotum had succeeded only in making me determined to do what the dying old man wanted me to do: find his son.
Charley Sleet was waiting for me at the bar. The customers were three deep, as usual, and they were mostly men, also as usual. The food at Hoffman’s comes hot and heavy and Germanic and the atmosphere keeps pace. So did Charley Sleet. He was as thick as the goulash and just as reliable. His jaw was square and his head came close. His stomach rested above his belt like a medicine ball on a golf tee. The cops use Charley the way the Steelers use Lambert—he goes where he’s needed. Over the years Charley’s done enough favors for the movers and shakers around town—favors that often involved calming the victims of various sexual peccadillos—that he’s become immune to department politics. They don’t mess with Charley and he returns the favor.
Charley already had a beer and after I got a Bloody Mary I asked him how life was among the forces of law and order. “We’re gaining on the bastards, Marsh,” he said loudly. “We’re gaining on them.”
“How can you tell?”
“The smell, Marsh. The city doesn’t smell quite as bad as it used to. Haven’t you noticed?”
“I thought it was the rain.”
Charley shook his head. “Hit the streets, Tanner. Quit lying around moaning over why you’re a cheap-suit shamus instead of the Clarence Darrow you always wanted to be and hit the streets. Breathe the air. Feel the soil. Talk to the folk. Live, Tanner. Live.”
“Christ, Charley. You must be the only cop in the world who still venerates the folk after thirty years on the force.”
“You got to distinguish the bastards from the folk, Marsh. That’s all there is to it. Some people are bastards and some people are folk. As long as there’s more of the latter than the former, things are all right. When it gets the other way around I’m moving to Australia.”
“They won’t let you in.”
“Hah. One good thing about being a cop for thirty years. You learn enough about enough people so that you can get in any damn place you want.”
“You ought to write a book.”
“Hah. They’d never believe it. Never, ever.”
“Who?”
“The folk, of course. What’s the point of writing a book if the folk aren’t going to read it?”
I made a bad joke about Charley and the pulpit and ordered another Bloody Mary and asked Charley if he’d come up with anything on Karl Kottle.
“Why else would I be here?”
I laughed. “Because you’re a lonely old man.”
“Hah. We rousted the hookers from in front of the St. Francis again last night. When I left they were all over the station house, cackling like a pen of turkey chicks. A cop is never lonely, Marsh.”
Charley was protesting too much and we both knew it. His wife died five years ago and since then he’s been a cop twenty-four hours a day, roaming the streets of the city like a foster parent to us all, a nomadic life more akin to the derelicts and pushers he sometimes has to run in than to the citizens he was hired to protect. I think Charley Sleet is a saint, but it’s not the kind of thing you mention to anyone.
I was about to ask Charley what he had on Kottle when they showed us a table. Charley ordered franks and beans and I ordered sauerbraten and we both ordered sourdough. When the time was right I asked Charley if he’d ever heard of a man named Howard Renn. Because his memory was as substantial as the rest of him, Charley answered in about five seconds.
“A poet, right?”
I nodded.
“Hangs out around North Beach. I see him around. We haven’t got anything on him as far as I know. Although just maybe … hell. Half the time I can’t remember how to unzip my fly anymore, Marsh. Too many gray cells pickled over the years.” Charley laughed grimly. “You know how relevant poetry is to what I do for a living, Marsh? As relevant as spats.”
I shook my head, then asked Charley if he knew anything about a girl named Amber who worked at the Encounter with Magic on Broadway.
“Broadway. I don’t do vice anymore, Marsh. Haven’t got the stomach for it. Too many girls dancing in those clubs I saw last at eight o’clock Mass. Last time I made a bust up there three white girls with razor blades and butter sticks were doing things to two Jap guys you wouldn’t believe if I showed you a movie of it. Bastards. All of them.” He shook his head. “I know about four girls named Amber. They’re all junkies.”
“This one might be, too.”
“What’s she look like.”
“Blond. Thin. Pretty about five years ago.”
“That describes every one of them. They only eat when someone feeds them, which is never. You know what I found yesterday, Marsh?”
“What?”
“Girl OD’d on smack.”
“What’s new?”
“She was pregnant. Just before she croaked she apparently decided to give the fetus a hit too. The syringe was sticking out of her belly like a dart. How about that?”
“How about that.”
“Her boyfriend watched her take the hit, then watched her die, then called the police.”
The image bounced around the room for a while, tarring everything it touched, then I asked Charley what he found on Karl Kottle.
Charley pushed himself away from the table and looked at me like I
was one of the bastards and not one of the folk. “You looking for this Kottle guy, Marsh?”
“I might be. Why?”
“You’re not the only one. He’s wanted.”
“Who by?”
“Alameda County.”
“What charge?”
“Murder one.”
Charley folded his arms across his chest and studied my reaction. I hoped I wasn’t giving one, but Charley looks like that when we play poker and he always beats my ass. I asked for the details.
“It’s an old one, Marsh. I didn’t get a chance to talk to the guy who has the case, but here’s the gist. Kottle was real political back in the sixties. Got hauled in during some of the antiwar marches at the Induction Center and the Army Terminal, but no time served. Charges all dismissed, apparently. They usually were, in those days. That’s the only record on him except this other thing.”
“Tell me about the other thing.”
“Well, at some point in there, May of 1970 as I recall, the ROTC building at Berkeley was torched by person or persons unknown. Pretty clearly a political act. Late at night. Slogans painted on the building. Lots of protests beforehand, demanding ROTC be shut down. Fairly typical stuff for those days. There was just one problem.”
“Someone was inside.”
“You hit it, Sherlock. A girl. Not political, not even employed at the ROTC joint. Just a student who snuck in there at night to study, is the way it looks. Overcome by smoke and died. No one even knew she was there till the firemen found her two days later.”
“What’s the connection to Kottle?”
“His group struck the match, is what it comes down to. He was the head of something called the Student Antiwar Brigade. They were the main ones taking on the ROTC.”
“Doesn’t sound like much of a case.”
“Then how’s this sound? Kottle wasn’t seen in Berkeley again after the fire. In any case, Kottle’s the only one charged with first degree. A couple of other guys were charged with second and one of them went to trial but he was acquitted. Kottle’s the man they want, according to the guy I talked to.”
“Who’s in charge of the case?”
“Cop named Lanahan, in Berkeley.”
“Do they have any information on Kottle’s present whereabouts?”
“Nope. It’s not on the front burner any more, of course, although there’s apparently lots of pressure from the father of the dead girl to keep the case active. If something comes in the computer will spit it out, that’s for sure.”
“You tell anyone I was interested, Charley?”
“You know better than that, Marsh. Who’s your client?”
“You know better than that, Charley. Anything else on Kottle?”
“Nope. That help you any?”
“Not a damn bit.”
“I’d like to know it if you find the guy.”
“I know you would, Charley, I know you would.”
I lit a cigarette and thought briefly about what Charley had told me. It probably meant that whatever Max Kottle’s dreams were, they weren’t going to come true. If I found Karl chances are the cops would find him too. In fact, I had an obligation to tell them where he was. And if I couldn’t find Karl, chances are he was hidden away so deeply no one could find him, not before Max died. The underground in San Francisco was still pretty effective. It hid the Weathermen and it hid the SLA and it was still viable enough to hide a single man who was smart enough and desperate enough to want to stay hidden.
Charley glanced around the room at the thinning crowd and leaned forward toward me, propping his elbows on the table. When he spoke it was as close to a whisper as Charley can get. “You got a lot of sources around town, Marsh. You hear about anything big going down?”
“Big how?”
“Big this. Cops worry about a lot of things, you know, and one of the things we’ve been worried about most over the past couple of years is terrorism. The Red Brigades, Black September, that kind of chickenshit operation. Kneecapping. Bombings. All that stuff. Well, we may be about to get a taste of it right here in sweet San Francisco.”
“What makes you think so? I haven’t read anything about it.”
Charley nodded in agreement. “The reason is, the papers and the TV haven’t gotten wind of it yet. I can trust you on this, can’t I, Marsh?”
I nodded. Charley was as serious as I had ever seen him.
“Over the past few years,” he went on, “the police commission has met in secret with the various people and organizations who are the most likely targets of terrorist activity. Wealthy individuals, politically sensitive businesses, politicians, people like that. A code has been worked out so we can respond to a suspected terrorist attack without alerting the media as to what has really happened. That Aldo Moro thing in Italy really got to people. All of the ones we approached have gone along. We’ve convinced them that if we can keep the stuff out of the papers we can put a stop to it pretty fast, even if some group does get started. Hell, those punks don’t go to the crapper unless someone agrees to put it on the tube.”
“So what happened, Charley? Who got hit?”
“Last week someone put a bomb in a restroom at Laguna Oil, down on Sansome. There was the usual note beforehand, full of threats and boasts and demands and like that.”
“Anyone hurt?”
“Hell of a blast, but no injuries and not much fire. They gave ten minutes’ warning.”
“Wait a minute. I read something about that. The Chronicle said it was a short in the electrical system.”
Charley smiled. “That’s what we wanted them to say. Laguna Oil wanted them to say that, too.”
“What makes you think they’re going to strike again?”
“Because we got word that some new group is in the market for weapons. We think it’s the same outfit. They want military stuff, grenades and launchers and M60s and M16s. The word is out, and you know as well as I do there’s been enough of that kind of ordnance stolen from armories in this state to supply them with everything they want. All they need is bread.”
“Do they have a name? Generally they pick a name.”
“They call themselves the Sons and Daughters of Isaiah. The SDI.”
“Son of SDS, out of SLA.”
“That’s about it.”
I thought a moment. “‘I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.’”
“What the hell’s that?” Charley asked.
“The Lord according to the prophet Isaiah. Chapter one. My mother was a Baptist.”
“Mine wasn’t.”
“What do they want, Charley? What’s their particular blueprint for universal salvation?”
Charley shook his head. “That’s not clear. They want Laguna to stop importing oil from overseas, and to divest its retail operations, and to roll back prices on domestic crude. And employ more black youth. And on and on. Lots of ranting and raving about inflation, the poor, the environment, Israel. Hell, to listen to them you’d think Laguna Oil was the only one shitting on the earth.”
“How many Sons and Daughters are there?”
“Who knows? But if this thing gets some publicity there’ll be more than enough to do some damage. There’s a lot of chiefs and a lot of Indians in this town, Marsh. Enough to make a hell of a tribe.”
“What’s that mean, Charley?”
“I mean there’s all those people who a decade ago were spending every minute debating peace and war and sexual freedom and civil rights and all that, shutting down schools and confronting the cops. Now all they confront is the next mortgage payment and all they debate is which flick to see on Friday night. They’re the chiefs. Then there’s the younger ones, the Indians, the new kids in town with big holes in their middles that they can’t fill themselves. We’ve been lucky for a long time. The people filling those holes have been basically nonviolent, the Erhards, the Krishnas, like that. But for a lot of those kids that hole can be filled just as well by tossing
a firebomb as by wearing saffron bedsheets and playing finger chimes. If the chiefs and the Indians ever get together we’re in for some long nights.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Just keep your ears open. If you pick up anything we can use, let me know. You remember Zebra. I’d just as soon that didn’t happen again.”
Zebra. The name still chilled. The Death Angels, blacks killing whites, at random. Twenty-three victims over a six-month period in this city alone—hacked, stabbed, shot, butchered, raped, maimed, kidnapped. The city had almost closed down, the nighttime streets filled only with the fear that leaked out from behind locked doors and shaded windows. The cops had tossed the Fourth Amendment out the window and searched almost at will. Most of the city fathers had gone along. When a half dozen businessmen have their legs shotgunned out from under them, and the rest spend half their time imagining the sex life of a paraplegic and double-checking the due date on the disability premium, a lot more than the Fourth Amendment will be in jeopardy.
I told Charley I’d do what I could and we stood up and shouldered our way out the door. We promised each other we’d get together soon and then Charley took off, ambling down Market Street toward his car, a hulking bear of a man who, like every cop in the world, eyed the people in his path with eyes as hard as fists.
Looking for the bastards.
TWELVE
Montgomery Street had lengthened considerably over the lunch hour—it seemed to take forever to get back to the office. Along the way the Kottle case sloshed around in my mind, its elements dispersed, a floating slick of puzzles and questions that were badly in need of a catalyst. The puzzle that was Karl Kottle had taken on a new dimension, a new and grotesque thickness that I didn’t like. Instead of the rebellious youth I thought I was seeking, Karl was instead a fugitive, quite possibly a murderer, a man on the run from his past, a man with nothing to lose. It would make him harder to find, and when I did find him it would make him harder to handle.
As I climbed the stairs to my office it occurred to me that the case was probably over. As much as he wanted to see his son, I doubted that Max Kottle would want to jeopardize the boy’s freedom by taking the chance that the cops would follow my path to Karl and take him away from both me and his father.
Death Bed Page 8