by Susan Dunlap
“He doesn’t live there. Ms. Lott, where does he live?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve been intimate with him for years and you don’t know where he lives?”
I pictured the pineapple. “Yes.”
“Who is his next of kin? Parents, siblings, wife?”
Wife! “I don’t know.”
“He never mentioned any relatives at all?”
“No.”
“Friends?”
“I’ll have to think about it.”
“You do that.”
I gave up. “Look, I’m being straight with you. I’m going to do everything I can to find out who killed him. I was the one holding his hand when they lifted his car off him; I don’t just want to find who did it, I want to bludgeon him. But I have to tell you, Guthrie and I had an, uh, unusual relationship. Part of its appeal was that we didn’t ask questions. But here’s what I do know. He did something years ago and the guilt was eating him alive.”
“What was that?”
“He said he let a man die.”
“He killed him?”
“No! He walked away.”
“Give me details.”
“I’ve told you everything.”
But she wasn’t buying that. “You have to know more—”
“Like I just said, we didn’t ask questions.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Twice in two days he was at the Palace of Fine Arts. He was to meet me there the day he was killed. The day before that I followed him and lost him—”
“You were following him? Why was that?”
I told her about Jed Elliot’s demand. “I said I’d have Guthrie call him.”
“Did he do that?
“For chrissakes, get off this! His job prospects don’t matter. He’s dead. Look, we were working at Port of Oakland. It’s not next door to the Palace of Fine Arts. He doesn’t live in this area. Here’s what’s important, that something drew him to that spot twice.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
She checked her pad. “His guilty incident, when was that?”
I was ready to snap back again, but I stopped. “Good question. He didn’t say, and he’d never mentioned it before. I mean, it’s the thing that he kept secret. There was some kind of wall around him when I first met him; he didn’t suddenly change one year or another. So, my guess is that it happened well before I knew him.”
“Did he talk to anyone else about this?”
“He was going to meet John, my brother.”
“Inspector Lott?”
She uttered his name with such disdain that if I’d had any doubts about which side she’d picked in the departmental wars, it was sure gone now. “Right. But Guthrie didn’t meet John. By then he was dead.”
“No one else?”
I hesitated. I’m careful to protect friends, but this time I couldn’t let any stone go unturned. “He talked to Garson-roshi, the priest here.”
She did a flash-reveal. In acting it’s a hard thing to learn, showing your true emotion just long enough for the audience to get it, then shifting into a different, usually neutral expression. In front of the cameras you have to hold the flash longer than seems reasonable, to allow time for the audience first to see it and then to register what it means in relation to what happened before. Higgins did it normal speed. She flashed frustration, then tried to cover by busying herself with that pad of hers. She was thinking Leo’s talk with Guthrie would be privileged, as if it’d been in a confessional. I wasn’t sure where Zen fit into the world of legal privilege, but I didn’t disabuse her.
At that moment Leo opened the zendo door. Turning, Higgins saw a bald guy with features too big for his face, dressed in sweats and sandals. He grinned at us, waiting for an invitation from me.
I hesitated. Three things were in play here: I was desperate to know what Guthrie had told Leo. But I hated to involve Leo more than I already had. And Leo had an unfortunate habit of answering questions truthfully. He’s not naïve; it’s just that his commitment is to the dharma rather than the exigencies of the moment, and in the past some of his responses have led to exigencies in custody.
Still, it had worked out. He’d survived fine. “Inspector Higgins,” I said, “this is Garson-roshi.”
She did another flash-reveal before saying, “Sir, I need to ask you about your conversation with Damon Guthrie.” Her tone had the brittleness of uncertainty. It made me uneasy.
But, as always, Leo took her as is. He smiled, which made his features seem even larger. It was a disarming expression and Higgins—involuntarily, it appeared—smiled back. He pulled up a chair and took a moment to settle himself comfortably in it, as if this conversation would be important and he wanted to be prepared to give it his full attention. “Guthrie was at the point of balance,” he said, “that’s very unstable. If you’ve ever been in a handstand and suddenly you’re there, you’re terrified because you’ve lost the leverage to move forward or back. You’re dead still, but you’re out of control. See what I mean?”
Higgins nodded, but almost certainly to move things along rather than from any personal understanding. He’d been looking at her, but I knew the explanation was for me.
“That moment of ultimate uncertainty, when all normal paths seem closed, when you have to give up . . . when everything’s closed, everything’s open.” His cheerful expression implied that this basic Zen understanding was a bit of wisdom shared between the two of them. Her expression said she was humoring him.
“That’s the moment when a person is open to learning, so it was very good Guthrie came then. Here’s what I told him—it’s a koan, a story with a question. The story is an old Chinese ghost tale. A girl, Seijo, was betrothed to a distant cousin when she was an infant. She and her father and the cousin’s family lived in a village by a river in China. Seijo and the boy grew up together and were happy with the marriage plan. But”—Leo grinned, as if to say his listeners would know there was a “but” coming—“when Seijo was just about marriageable age, her father realized he could do better by giving her to another man. When Seijo’s original fiancé was told, he was indignant. He lit out, got a boat, and headed upriver.
“Day turned to evening, but he kept moving. Evening turned to night. The sounds from villages he passed grew intermittent, then stopped entirely till he was alone in the dark. Suddenly he heard a voice on the bank, excitedly calling his name. It was Seijo. She had run after him. She’d run away to be with him. This is China almost a thousand years ago; what Seijo was doing was very daring. Her fiancé was delighted. He helped her onto the boat and they kept going upriver till they came to another village where they married, had two children, and lived happily.
“But”—he grinned again—“after a while they became homesick for their families and decided to take a trip back home.
“When they tied up the boat at their original village, Seijo stayed in the boat while her husband went to make apologies to her father for taking her away. But the father stopped him mid-sentence. ‘What are you talking about?’ he said. ‘My daughter’s right here where she’s been all along.’ He pointed to a bed where Seijo was lying unconscious. Not a hallucination, but a real girl.
“Of course, her husband was shocked. He ran out of the house back to the river to the boat. And there she was, the real Seijo. He grabbed her hand and ran back to the house. Seijo was still in the bed.
“There were two Seijos.
“When the Seijo from the boat saw the figure in the bed, the Seijo in the bed awoke and got up, and the two embraced and melted into one.” Leo paused. “It’s not the ending that you’d expect, right? Guthrie was surprised, too. He had the same expression you do. See, koans ask a question. It’s what gets you thinking. It allows you to see an issue in a different light, and that was what Guthrie needed to do then. What this koan asks is, which Seijo is the real Seijo? Most people would say the one living her life. But see, Guthrie already knew that, even though it a
ppeared he was living his life and living a good life in a profession he loved and was tops in, he really wasn’t living it. He was just going through the motions.” Leo shot a glance at me. I knew he was thinking of me living my life still caught up in the question of Mike. “Guthrie had done something so terrible, at least in his mind, that he was immobilized.”
“The girl in the bed,” Higgins said.
“Exactly. Except that he was still living his life. I think this story could help you understand where he was if you take a stab at the answer. Which is the real Seijo?”
For a moment she seemed to consider the problem. “What’s the answer? Just tell me.”
“That’s just what Guthrie said, though not in those words.”
And not in that tone, I’ll bet.
“There isn’t ‘the’ answer, Inspector; that’s what I told him. No, wait, I’m not avoiding your demand. In a koan there are two parts: the question and you. So, your answer would be subtly different than his. Having said that, there is the easy answer, the answer before the real answer.”
Higgins was afraid she was being played; I knew that look. I said, “Seijo is real when the two parts of her come together.”
“So, you were telling Mr. Guthrie to take initiative?”
“Why—”
“That’s the only time this girl does something on her own. Otherwise, she’s got this husband dreaming she’s running after him. And this father figuring he’s still got his property home in bed. And the girl, she’s got no life of her own. Like these battered women who get beat up time after time and won’t press charges because their boyfriends cry about how sorry they are and how they’re going to change.”
Spoken like a cop who’d spent too much time catching domestic violence calls. Still, I was impressed at how much Leo had drawn her in and, I had to admit, by her answer.
“But who is she, then?” he said. “What does ‘real’ mean? That’s the underlying question. When these two parts come together, what do you have?”
“She got up, she brought her halves together, and I’ll bet she’d got some things to say to both of those men.”
I laughed.
“Inspector, Guthrie’s answer wasn’t the same as yours.”
“What was his?”
“Of course he saw that the key was when the two parts came together. His guilt was the Seijo in the bed. In the story, what is it that motivates the girl in the bed to get up? Excuse me for asking. I know you’re here for answers, but this is just my way.”
“Omigod.”
They both turned to me.
“It’s the sight of her other half coming back from her happily-ever-after life. Her realizing maybe she’s just made that up.” Like Lott and Guthrie. Like our “almost loving.” Was all that a fantasy spawned by the hyper-emotion on the set? Had he lived, would we both be giving it second thoughts by now? I’d never be sure, because, dammit, I didn’t know who he was, not really.
But Higgins wasn’t dealing with such considerations. “So, what was Mr. Guthrie going to do?”
Leo hesitated. I wondered what he was considering. “You’re aware that he planned to talk to Inspector Lott. But before that, he said he had to go and face his guilt. Maybe, he told me, he’d return something.”
“What?” Higgins demanded.
“I don’t know. What he said was that it had been given to him but no one would believe he didn’t steal it.”
Higgins rolled her eyes.
“I’d believe him! You believed him, didn’t you, Leo?”
He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, something I couldn’t remember him ever doing before. “I believed he believed that was true.”
“You think he fooled himself?”
Leo said simply, “We live in delusion.”
He meant that Guthrie was no different than the rest of us. I nodded. But Higgins’s jaw was tightening. She had the look of believing herself the last sensible person in a room of babblers.
“In Buddhism,” he said, “we see our problems are caused by greed, hate, and delusion. Whereas, you think your problem right now is caused by me being flaky, right?” Before she could respond, he added, “This is the one hard fact I can give you. Guthrie intended to go and return the item before he met with Inspector Lott.”
“Before six in the morning?”
“I left him at his truck in Oakland around 8:00 P.M.” I said. “Omigod, was he lying dead in the park all night?”
Higgins looked at me as if I were an idiot. Closing her notebook, she hooked her pen on the spiral, slipped the combo into a compartment in her purse, and checked around in there as if searching for something she couldn’t name.
“If you need anything more, ask now,” Leo said. “I’m going to be out of town for a couple days, at the monastery.” He waited a minute, letting her dismiss him, and left.
When he was out of sight, she rose and said, “There’s another hard fact you didn’t give me.”
I stared at her.
Neither of us said anything for a minute. Then she sighed.
“Tell me,” she instructed, with ill-disguised contempt, “how, all that greed, hate, and whatever aside, did you manage to forget that Damon Guthrie’s got a sister living across the street from where he died?”
11
“GUTHRIE HAS A sister? Across from the Palace of Fine Arts?”
“Are you going to tell me he didn’t mention her either? Living in the house his parents bought in 1965? He hauls himself across the Bay twice in two days to go there, tells you to meet him across the street at an hour that says he wanted to creep out the door without waking her, and you’re claiming he never mentioned her?”
“Yeah.” My voice was barely audible. I had no answers. Higgins was asking what I was thinking, and it was a whole lot more incriminating coming from my own self. Guthrie had a sister here in the city? How could he not have told me? A sister who lived in one of the toniest neighborhoods in town? Did he grow up there? His whole person screamed, No! Topeka, Spokane, Medford, Roanoke: those, I could believe. El Cajon. Places like that. Or smaller towns where eighteen-wheelers are big deals. Places where you drive to get where you’re going, where cruising the main drag, low-riding, wheelies made for a big weekend. The Marina district just didn’t compute.
“You thinking up a better answer?”
“No.” I had to project calm. “As I said, I’m the one who most wants to find Guthrie’s killer. You say he grew up here, so now I’m wondering: who were his friends, what did they say about him? Who’ve you—”
“We don’t reveal evidence.”
You mean, we don’t have any. “What were the autopsy findings?”
“It’s not scheduled till—”
“He’s been dead for two days and you people haven’t taken him out of the drawer?”
She just stared. She didn’t have to tell me a damned thing and we both knew it.
I tried another tack. “The sister, she must have identified his body.”
“Of course.”
“So? She must’ve said something about him.”
She didn’t bother to respond at all.
I could have smacked her.
But I didn’t have that luxury, not even the comfort of rolling my eyes. I had to make one last effort to create cooperation. Mustering every bit of control, I said, “This is San Francisco.” I chose my words carefully. “When I was a kid my brother was already on patrol, and there were kids who called me piglet. I know—”
“We’re not buddies, you and I.” She was almost sneering. “This is a police investigation—”
The hell with it! “I’m done here. You need me, call my lawyer.”
“I repeat—”
“Repeat till they give you a cracker. I’m going to talk to Guthrie’s sister and I am going to find out about him. What matters to me won’t be what you want to know.”
“Do not—” She looked like she was going to bite me. “You’ve already got a reputation at head
quarters. You’re not special. Cross the line this time and your brother won’t be able to save you.”
I laughed.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” John demanded.
“Higgins got word to you this quick?” I’d barely gotten back upstairs to my room above the zendo before he called.
“Did you go out of your way to piss her off?”
“No, it was a straight shot. The woman’s an ass—”
“A well-connected ass. Don’t let her looks deceive you—”
“She looks incompetent, and like she’s happy to screw John Lott and family.”
“Incompetence is a dangerous quality in an adversary, particularly a well-connected one.”
I snorted.
“Listen, Darcy. I’m the department straight arrow now. Have to be. Everyone’s eyeing me—guys who care about the department look up to me, guys with grudges watch for me to cross the line—any line. It’s not my case and I can’t barge in.”
“Fine! Forget it. I’ll find out what I need to.”
“Going to see the sister?”
“Right. I told Higgins.”
“She warned you off, right?”
“So?”
“Exactly. Don’t you hear me? You’ve got a reputation going. She knows you’ll barge ahead. That warning—she’s just baiting you. When you get to that door, she’ll be watching. When you walk out, she’ll be waiting. And you’ll be sitting in a soundproof room downtown till dawn.”
“I’m sure you—”
“Haven’t you heard me? I can’t. Even for you. Especially for you. I . . . cannot . . . bend . . . the rules.”
“Fine. Forget it!”
“Don’t be a patsy. At least take a lookout.”
I laughed. “What? With tin cans and string?”
“I’m serious. Take . . .”
“Right. Not Gary—too well-known. Gracie? Spare me. Mom? Think I should take our mother to help me impede a police investigation?”
“Or Janice, now that’d improve your chances. She’d be so wowed by the Palace she’d forget all about you.”
I’d had enough of him and his straighter-than-thou-ness. “Give her a break! No wonder she moved away.”