by Dane Hartman
This time the silence was stunned. Fatso looked at his partner as if he had sprouted wings. McConnell was completely disarmed. All the calm, rational answers she had been mentally preparing shot out through her scalp and into outer space. Suddenly she smiled warmly. Harry looked up from his gun, smiled back, and clicked it shut.
“Inspector Callahan,” she asked, “what are you doing for lunch?”
“Sorry, Sergeant,” said a new voice behind her chair, “but Callahan is going to be busy.” She turned to see Lieutenant Bressler stride in. “All hell’s broken loose, Harry,” he said. “You’d better come into my office. You too, Sergeant McConnell.” Both officers got up.
“What about me?” Devlin asked.
“Go have lunch,” Bressler instructed.
“Thank God!” said the starving cop.
“But don’t leave the building,” the lieutenant added.
Fatso’s joy turned to resignation. “Great. Cafeteria franks ’n beans again.”
“You eat that stuff,” Harry told him as he pulled on his jacket and went out the door, “and you won’t be sharing any squad car with me.”
Bressler’s office was different from all the other offices on the seventh floor in that it had a door that locked, its own ceiling, and a long leatherette couch. Both officers stood before the lieutenant’s regulation desk as Bressler leaned on the back of his padded chair.
“Harry, you’re off The Professor case,” he said bluntly. “I’m sorry, but Captain Avery demanded it. I did my best, but you know Avery.”
“Yeah,” said Harry, who had been expecting it. It wasn’t the first time he and the captain had had a similar conversation. And it probably wouldn’t be the last.
“But what about the investigation?” McConnell inquired. “The Professor is still the head of the organization, and he’s still at large.”
“Your part of the investigation will continue,” Bressler told her. “The captain commends you on your work so far. Only you’ll be teamed with another set of homicide officers.”
“But I’m so used to Inspector Callahan,” McConnell said realistically. Harry glanced at her as Bressler looked down at his desk. She was grinning at him. When the lieutenant looked back up, both their expressions were back to normal.
“I’m sorry, Sergeant, but that’s the way it is. You can go back to your department for the moment.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, turning to Harry. “It was a pleasure dealing with you, Inspector. I hope we can team up on another project some day.” She held out her hand. Harry took it. They shook for the second time that morning. Harry nodded slightly. Both were well aware that she had chosen her words precisely.
McConnell then gracefully left. Harry unabashedly watched her go.
When the door had closed behind her, Bressler sat down with a heavy, wistful sigh.
“What is a girl like that doing on the vice squad?” Harry asked, turning to the desk.
“Driving everybody crazy,” Bressler replied. “She’s so damn angelic and earthy-looking, you don’t know whether to give her some fatherly advise or attack her in the halls.”
“She seems pretty sure of herself,” Harry commented.
“Perfectly at peace,” Bressler decided. “Knows what she’s about and how good she looks. Can take care of herself, too. Top marks in self-defense and firearms. Dangerous combination.”
“For who?” Harry wondered.
Bressler looked up. “What does that mean?”
“Skip it,” Harry said, sitting on the couch. “What shit has hit which fan?”
“Fillmore District. Mission District. The headquarters of Uhuru.”
“Oh Christ,” said Harry. “Is that still around?”
“Still going strong, but quiet. Until now. What do you know about it?”
“It’s a black liberation group,” recalled Harry without much difficulty. “Big Ed Mohamid ran it. He was the guy who helped me out when the mayor was kidnapped by that People’s Revolutionary Strike Force, and Captain McKay pegged Uhuru as the guys who did it.”
“Yeah,” Bressler said. “The ‘Enforcer’ case.”
“Yeah,” echoed Harry. “The one where Kate Moore got killed. Remember?”
“Yeah. Right. Sorry Harry. I should’ve figured you wouldn’t have forgotten that.”
Harry shrugged it off. “Anyway, I heard Mohamid kept a low profile after that. Started all sorts of charity programs and shit like that. Fed and clothed the poor. Bought a ramshackle old Victorian house as a headquarters. What happened to all that?”
“Nothing,” Bressler informed him. “It’s all still there. But according to an anonymous phone tip we got this morning, only one thing has been added. A dead girl in the cellar.”
Barbara Steinbrunner had died with her eyes open as well. They stared unblinkingly up at the coarse rafters and spotty insulation of the ceiling in the Uhuru cellar. She was completely naked with her hands tied to a pipe along one wall and each ankle tied, spread-eagled, to the base of an old, broken freezer. The coroner was going over her like a sculptor over a particularly rich piece of marble, the police photographer was circling around her like a flashing fly, and the uniformed men were discussing affably how such a good-looking girl could end up that badly. They weren’t unduly shocked by her position. It wasn’t anything they had not seen in a Hustler magazine.
“What’s her name,” Harry asked tiredly.
“I don’t know,” said Big Ed.
“How long has she been there?”
“I don’t know.”
“How did she get here?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s the capital of Nebraska?”
Without blinking an eye, Mohamid answered, “Lincoln.”
Harry replied just as effortlessly. “Good. Now if anyone should ask, I’ll be able to say I got some information out of you.”
Nobody laughed, least of all Callahan or Mohamid. Both knew how serious the situation was. They sat opposite each other on milk-packing cases that were emblazoned on their sides with notices that read, “PROHIBITED FOR NON-DAIRY USE.”
Next to them were the cellar stairs, upon which stood most of the house’s Uhuru members. Harry looked up at them. They were different than the Uhurus Harry had encountered in the mid-seventies. They had wanted to hold onto the spirit of revolution any way they could. They only succeeded in acting and dressing like assholes as well as alienating almost everyone they came into contact with.
Today, the dress was not unusual or garish, and the manner was more classically civilized. And there was no more burning hate in their eyes. Now, each one of the young black men and women on the stairs looked at Harry with a deep, smoldering dislike.
Harry stood up from his plastic perch and approached the coroner’s assistant, lab man Walter White. Unlike his name, Walter was as dark-skinned as anyone on the stairs.
“Been taking notes?” Harry inquired.
“Every pearl of wisdom the M.E. grunts,” White replied.
“What’s new?”
“Body markings suggest that she suffered extremely painful physical and sexual abuse before she died. And she died about twelve hours ago.”
“Any distinguishing marks? Anything linking her with this place?”
“Nothing yet,” White reported. The lab man looked at the sullen crowd across the basement. “Doesn’t look good, does it?”
“It stinks,” answered Harry. “Reporters are already crawling all over the place, digging up meaningless shit from Mohamid’s past, and this crowd already distrust, the police so much they won’t twitch an eyebrow to cooperate.”
“Not after McKay tried to railroad them last time,” White added. Both men fell silent. Walter examined the people on the steps. Harry studied the dead girl. “It just doesn’t figure,” muttered White.
“What doesn’t figure?” Harry asked, turning.
“Look at her,” White said, shrugging his head toward a black girl near the top of the stai
rs. Harry took a gander at a black girl attractive by any man’s standards. Even though she was somewhat short and dressed simply in an old pair of jeans and a western shirt, she was still quite a slim, well-made package. “I mean, why go out and gang bang a white chick when you’ve got that in the house?” Walter wondered.
“I was wondering the same thing myself,” mused Harry. “Delayed reaction black rage maybe?”
“This is the eighties, man,” White retorted. “That don’t wash no more, honky. It ain’t ‘burn, baby, burn’ no more, bro, it’s ‘cash, flash, cash.’ ”
Harry snorted and turned back to the corpse in time to stare over the head of the coroner, who had just stepped up to him.
“I can’t get anything more here, Harry,” the doctor stated. “I’ll have to go over her on the slab back at headquarters.”
“All right,” said Harry, waving the orderlies over, “untie her.”
Just then Fatso Devlin came bustling in from the basement door that opened up on the tiny back yard, waving a sheet of paper.
“Got a positive I.D., Harry,” he announced. “Her prints and picture matched up with someone at an anti-nuke demonstration arrest at Berkeley last year.”
“Student?” Harry guessed.
“Student. Barbara Steinbrunner. Dropped out of classes two weeks ago. Teachers hadn’t seen her since.”
“Got a list of friends and known associates?”
“Teachers are working on that now.”
“All right, let’s get over to the campus,” decided Callahan. “I’ll give Bressler’s fondest regards to Mohamid and meet you at the car.”
Harry stepped around the hospital workers who were wrapping Barbara up for the one-way trip to the medical examiner’s office and walked back to the milk case. Before he sat down he glanced up at the pretty black girl in the western shirt. High forehead, upturned top lip, terrific nose, and a no-nonsense body. Eighteen at the most, but definitely a woman to watch out for.
“Watch your ass,” Harry told his ex-ally as way of introduction. “Take it easy and don’t let any of your people overreact. This thing smells worse than a gay bar’s bathroom, but it’s not going to take much to set off a backlash in the community. Just don’t plan any sudden trips to Rhodesia or burn down any municipal buildings, and I think it’ll be OK.”
Big Ed Mohamid looked up, his face expressionless. “Is that an order, sir?” he asked flatly.
Callahan lost all his humor. His eyes narrowed and he frowned. “Just some advise. Friend to friend.”
“We were never friends,” Mohamid stated.
Harry’s reply was cut short by a commotion at the basement door. He turned to see Fatso struggling with a wiry young white man with curly hair waving a sheet of paper and shouting. Before Callahan could move, the thin guy slipped out of Devlin’s grip and charged across the room at Mohamid.
Three black men swung down off the steps to land in front of Big Ed, effectively creating a human partition. The uniformed men started forward just as it seemed the curly-haired man would lay into Mohamid’s guards. Harry stepped in front of the black trio, slapping one hand over the white guy’s waving wrist and the other hand on the man’s neck.
“Hold it!” the curly-haired white guy choked out. “Hold it!”
“It’s a reporter,” Devlin explained, trudging up to the tableau. “I couldn’t stop him.”
The reporter wrenched himself out of Harry’s grip and pulled himself back together. “I just wanted to ask Mr. Mohamid about this letter he sent the newspapers,” he said, pointing at the paper in his other hand.
“Letter?” Harry queried, looking at Big Ed from between two of his Uhuru members. Mohamid stared at the floor and didn’t say anything. “What letter?”
“The one about how the revolution is still on and how whitey still had to pay,” the reporter paraphrased quickly. “Do you have any comment, Mr. Mohamid?” he shouted under Harry’s arm.
The three black men started forward as Harry grabbed the reporter under both arms and threw him into the clutches of two uniformed men. “Get him out of here,” he ordered.
Fatso brought up the rear as the cops followed instructions. As soon as the cellar door closed behind them, Harry turned to Mohamid, who was standing among his reassuring Uhuru crowd.
“It’s starting again,” Mohamid intoned. “Get out, Callahan. Get out now.”
Harry examined the group silently for a moment. All the men were standing tall, their faces expressionless but strong. The pretty girl was standing with them in the front, defiant, proud. They found dignity and pride in their unflinching dedication to each other. Their self-respect was replacing their common sense, Harry realized. Just as expressionlessly, the cop turned and walked out.
“Open and shut. Clear as day.”
Fatso Devlin was going through his inventory of crime clichés as he drove toward the University of California campus at Berkeley.
“Easy as pie. Nothing to it.”
“Either get on with your theory or shut the fuck up,” Harry suggested from the passenger seat, one hand over his eyes.
“You’re definitely losing your warmth and sensitivity, Harry,” Devlin chortled as they passed over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge onto Route 80 north.
“What I’d like to lose is my warehouse of fat fuzz waiting to quip me to death every time I pull time with them.”
“Don’t you like me or Frank DiGeorgio?”
“If I don’t get the fat guinea, I get the fat mick,” Harry snarled. “Either way I lose.”
“Now there’s the tender sentimentalist I know and love,” Devlin laughed.
“I wish DiGeorgio wasn’t on vacation now,” Harry continued seriously, looking out the window for the Telegraph Avenue exit. “He knew about the ‘Enforcer’ investigation.”
“He ought to know,” Devlin mentioned. “He’s got a knife scar from his cock to his navel to prove it. Besides, what more do we need to know? Mohamid and his boys get a little hot, send a letter to the papers, get a little horny, and get caught with the corpse.”
“He’s not that stupid.”
“Hey, Harry, no big deal. Everything goes fine until one of his boys gets a little queasy from all the gang-raping. He gets guilty, calls in a tip, and wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, case closed.”
“You keep talking like that,” Harry warned. “And they’re gonna promote you to captain.”
The University of California at Berkeley was a solid West Coast establishment—laid back, spread open, and overpopulated. There were more than 20,000 students, many of them the glowing blond coeds that the Beach Boys and Sunkist Orange Soda commercials made famous. As the cop car pulled onto Bancroft Way, Harry marveled at the nearly stunning display of flesh in the early evening light. Tank tops, cutoffs, jogging shorts, swimsuits, elastic tube tops, slit skirts, designer jeans, high heels, roller skates, radios, leotards, boots, string bikini bras, and T-shirts of all kinds.
Ripped T-shirts, white T-shirts, net T-shirts, and T-shirts with such subtle messages emblazoned across the chests as “Good and Plenty,” “Foxy Mama,” “Mounds-Indescribably Delicious,” “Lawyers Do it in Their Briefs,” and “Stick in Your Tongue, You’re Drooling on My Shirt.” Occasionally these 100 percent cotton tops were stuck into shiny spandex pants. The main effect was that the cops had just died and gone to voyeur heaven. Harry remembered the times during the “Scorpio Sniper” case when he found himself looking in windows with binoculars during a stake-out and seeing the most interesting of things. The way things looked here, he wouldn’t need the binoculars anymore.
“Find a place to park,” Callahan instructed as the car slowed down in front of the Student Union. “I’ll go in and try to find . . . ?”
“Hinkle,” Devlin told him. “Roy Hinkle is . . . uh . . . was her counselor.”
“Hinkle. Right.” Harry pushed open the car door and hopped out without Fatso having to stop. He paused on the steps of the Union and looked down the street both
ways. Down one direction he saw a variety of book stores. Down the other way he saw a long, squat building. At the very edge of the building was the left side of a small shack. The rest of the dilapidated shed was masked by the building. Having gotten his bearings, Harry went inside.
The parade of feminine flesh continued unabated inside. There had to be mediocre women and men on the campus, but they were very hard to notice among the good-lookers. Almost everyone had something to show off and they were doing their best to spotlight their highlights. Harry made his way toward the Information desk slowly. He had had a hard life and a tough case to crack, but he still had eyes and he wasn’t going to waste them.
One of those mediocre-looking women sat behind the long, light oak Information desk. Harry assured himself that she was probably a lovely, interesting girl once one got to know her, but somehow, all this seething skin exposure made his mind label the bodies around him merely “male” and “female” in self-defense. It was hard to see the flashing legs, tight bums, and wiggling tits stuffed inside all manner of clinging material as human beings. On display as they were, they just became so much meat.
“Roy Hinkle in this building?” Harry asked the girl.
“Mr. Hinkle?” the girl echoed, looking down at the typed list on her desk. “Let me see. Just a minute . . .”
While she checked, Harry turned to scan the lobby again. In the corner a group of students were lounging around watching a six-foot-tall TV projection screen. They were watching the six o’clock local news. A studiedly serious woman reporter was gravely relating the murder of Barbara Steinbrunner while standing in front of the Uhuru house. By the looks of it, she wasn’t the only reporter using Mohamid’s headquarters as a rallying point. The students reacted to the report by reading the Berkeley Barb, talking to each other, picking their noses, and observing other television etiquette. On a campus of over 20,000 it wasn’t likely that more than one person in every fifty knew each other.
Harry still couldn’t understand why he was so pissed at their reaction, however. What did he want them to do? Scream? Cry? Go running off in all directions? The damn thing was being reported on television—on the same channel that brought them The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo and Diff’rent Strokes. Could he blame them for not taking it as reality? After all, what was he doing? Ogling at flaccid cheeks while a mediocre girl looked up Roy Hinkle.