Death and Taxes

by Susan Dunlap

  We were by my car now. He moved slowly, each step long, with a choreographed swagger. I did the only possible thing. I upstaged him. I stepped back into the street, forcing him to turn his back to the crowd. Then, using the width of his cape as a shield, I coordinated with his movement, and as he sauntered forward, I grabbed the edges of the cape and shoved him against my car. His shoulders hit the metal, his head jerked, but the floppy hat softened the effect for the audience. “This isn’t a stage here,” I growled. “We’ve got a man seriously injured. We’ve got our hands full dealing with him. You want to perform, try Berkeley Rep!”

  Even I was surprised at my anger. I hate these grandstanders. Little boys who rule by tantrum.

  “Release me, madame!” His voice was louder.

  The crowd moved to its left, pressing behind the old Datsun. I could smell the dirt and sweat, the beer, and the heady anticipation. Behind me came music from newly opened windows. Footsteps slapped the sidewalks. We needed backup—now. But neither Pereira nor I could get free to call in.

  I could toss this guy in the cage in Pereira’s car; that was the regulation move. But with this crowd it would be disaster, particularly in the full moon. I decided on a gamble. Lowering my voice, I said, “Give me a good reason, and I’ll walk you by.”

  His eyes shifted. He was weighing his options—going for the maximum exposure? Finally he said, sotto voce, “Maybe I know him.”

  I ground my teeth. I could hear my mother’s voice saying “If you’d said that when I asked …” Part of the reason I became a cop was to spite my mother. I never dreamed how often I’d end up sounding just like her. I eased my grip. “No theatrics!” To this guy I might as well have said “No breathing.”

  Dammit—on any other night, three patrol cars would have rolled up by now. “What’s your decision?” I said.

  “Okay.” Still sotto voce, but in twentieth-century English.

  “You’re going to walk calmly, right?”

  He grunted.

  “Yes or no?” A grunt is nothing in this type of situation. A yes is commitment, for what that’s worth.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. We’ll walk by him slowly, not stopping. If I let you stop, everyone on the block’s going to want a look. We’ll have people tramping on his hair, you understand?”

  “Yes,” he muttered. He was shaking, restraining himself. Seeing the victim was more compelling than a great performance. It made me curious. And worried.

  But I’d committed myself. If I reneged here, word of it would be all over Telegraph Avenue by morning, and every patrol officer would lose credibility. I started toward Pereira, still holding on to the man’s cape. Pereira was standing now, hands on hips. The pulser light turned her blond hair orange. It glistened on her keys, radio, the butt of her gun, all hanging from her belt. In the distance I could hear a siren. Minutes away. Whatever happened here would go down in thirty seconds. I could feel the crowd moving with us.

  We passed the patrol car. He was moving faster now. I was holding him back by the cape.

  He came abreast of the victim, still lying in the street, still not moving. He yanked free and squatted down, the brim of his felt hat an inch from the victim’s. Before I could grab for him, he started to laugh. A deep natural laugh that quickly gained resonance. He stood up and threw his head back, flung open his cape, and guffawed for the last row.

  He was facing the audience. I was just about to spin him around, the hell with the consequences, when he let his laugh subside. He turned to half-face me and said, “You are an officer of justice, right?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “Well, madame, here you have justice.”

  “What kind of justice?” someone in the crowd called back.

  Turning to them, he pronounced, “This man, who lies in the street like a defunct possum, waiting to be spat upon, trod on, run over—do you know who he is?”

  “Who? Who?” they yelled.

  “He is a revenue agent! With the IRS!”

  CHAPTER 2

  ANYWHERE ELSE IN BERKELEY—hell, anywhere else in the continental United States, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Guam—the becaped thespian’s announcement would have drawn guffaws and cheers. But here, right off Telegraph by People’s Park, he’d misjudged his audience. Had he declared the injured man a Cal professor or a police officer, he would have garnered applause. But an IRS agent lying in the street—that got no rise from this crowd of students and street people. Half of them hadn’t filed more than a 1040EZ, and the other half never would.

  He had made his announcement and flung open his cape to near silence. Only Connie Pereira, who’d had her hassles with the IRS, cracked a smile, and one glance at the victim wiped that off quick.

  Removing that cape exhibited a T-shirt with a huge foamy white OO on top, a small sketchy city skyline beneath, and the words MOON OVER BERKELEY, in this case apparently a double moon. “Mason Moon,” he announced in a tone that hoped for a glint of recognition. But I was too caught up in the shock that I hadn’t gotten his name before. It’s the first thing we do. Always. It said something, something bad, about my state of mind that I hadn’t. I asked for his address.

  While I was writing that down, a fire engine pulled up, and two firemen jumped out. I could see the worry on their faces. Firemen know first aid, but they aren’t medics; they’re not trained to carry the whole load of the injured. We should have heard the siren from our ambulance by now. There are only two rigs in Berkeley. We roll the fire trucks because we’ve got them at every station and they’re likely to make it to a scene well before either of the ambulances. But one ambulance was only a mile and a half away. It should have been here by now. The fact that it hadn’t meant it was out picking up some other full-moon casualty. Our IRS man would have to wait for the other rig, or failing that, one from Albany to the north. The pull of the moon wasn’t as strong there.

  Another patrol car rolled up. Pereira motioned the driver to crowd-control while she stayed with the firemen. One of them knelt by the victim’s head trying to get a pulse at the carotid artery. Giving up, he put his hand by the victim’s nose, hoping to get some sign of life. The victim had been breathing adequately before. He was fading. If the ambulance didn’t make it soon …

  But there was nothing I could do for him. A cop can’t wallow in pity, sorrow, fear. If you can’t shift gears, you don’t make it in this kind of job. I turned away and focused on the problem at hand—Moon. Shepherding him to the far side of the street, I asked for identification.

  “Mason Moon,” he repeated.

  “Driver’s license?”

  “Take my word.” His volume was increasing.

  Plenty of our citizens change their names, some at the behest of their gurus, some to align themselves with nature, some to separate themselves from their debts. Looking pointedly at his T-shirt, I said, “Maybe you drag out this name every full moon.”

  Moon looked from me to the T-shirt and back again. His expression changed from incredulity to affront. He fondled one of the foamy O’s. “Madame, perhaps you lack artistic sense.”

  Seeing the hand there clarified what his skill in textile art had not. I’d grown up in Jersey near the Garden State Parkway toll booths where mooning was born. Even then it had been considered a tacky outgrowth of youth and beer. Moon over Berkeley. I restrained comment.

  Moon reached into his pocket and produced a card. Underneath the T-shirt picture was Mason Moon, Artist of Opportunity. The name was vaguely familiar, but neither that nor the card proved it was real. As for the T-shirt, the most it proved was that Moon was not a craftsman. “I still need the driver’s license.”

  In the distance the siren rose shriller, louder. I felt a shiver of fear deep inside. The crowd felt it too. They quieted, a somber hush, and turned from Moon and me toward the victim in the street. Odd that ambulances are never seen as vehicles of hope, rushing the injured to the miracles of healing as opposed to providing a stop on the way to the morgue.
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  Maybe the siren affected Moon too. Whatever the reason, he pulled out his license and handed it to me. I glanced at it—Mason Moon was the name listed—and said, “So, Mason, who is the treasury agent in the street?”

  “I don’t have a name. I’ve just seen him around.” He pocketed the license without fanfare. We both knew his show was over. The onlookers had shifted their allegiance to the firemen and the body in the street. Moon didn’t look at them, but he cocked his head, listening, getting the feel of them, poised for the chance of a comeback.

  “So how do you know he’s IRS?” I said, pulling his attention back.

  “He’s auditing a friend of mine. She’s bitched enough. When she saw the guy sitting in the Med, drinking a cappuccino like a decent citizen, it was all she could do to keep from punching him out.”

  I allowed for hyperbole. “What’s her name?”

  “I don’t—”

  “I’m not asking for the fun of it. This guy’s barely breathing. When the medics get here, they’re going to start pushing drugs into him. We need medical information. Is he allergic? Does he have some condition Advanced Life Support needs to know about? Your hesitation could kill him.”

  “Okay, okay. My friend’s name is Lyn Takai.”

  “Address?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Think! His pockets are empty; we’ve got no ID. The man could die, Moon!”

  He shook his head. His party whistle unrolled and snapped back. “Did you look at his bike? Maybe he’s got one of those carrier bags.”

  This was the first I’d heard of a bicycle. “Where is it?”

  “Under that streetlight.” He motioned across the street by a house up on blocks, one of the post-earthquake casualties.

  “So you saw him ride up?”

  “No. Look, I know from Lyn the guy rides a bike. When I recognized him, I looked around for it. Lyn said the guy was so paranoid, he chained both wheels to her railing every time he came. She does a great imitation of him, checking this, checking that, bending over, eyeing the lock from the bottom.”

  I could imagine the man the firemen were still working on being suspicious; that fit with the awful picture of fear imprinted on his face. But there was a step missing in Moon’s recitation. The telephone pole at which Moon pointed was too far from the victim for Moon to have noticed. “Who was it who saw him get off the bicycle?”

  He hesitated, then shrugged and glanced around. I wasn’t surprised when he said, “A guy I’ve seen on the Avenue, not one of the regulars. He’s not here now. He probably split when you showed.”

  “Because?”

  “A sensible sense of self-preservation.”

  “What would we know him from?”

  “Perhaps you don’t.”

  The siren silenced the crowd once more, longer this time. It was near enough so we could hear brakes shrieking and tires squealing. I looked over at the victim. The firemen were checking the carotid for a pulse again, a routine they’d do every couple of minutes. I heard one of them say, “Cyanotic.”

  “Moon, we’re going to find that witness. Make it easier for us.”

  Moon took a step toward me. Even he seemed affected by the controlled desperation of the scene. “Lyn Takai lives on Derby, a couple blocks below the Avenue. Behind a violet stucco with a white picket fence. But this guy who saw him stumble into the street—I really don’t know. I’ve just seen him around. I think he boosts bikes.”

  Moon’s identity I had. Pereira could get a patrol officer to baby-sit him on the Avenue till he spotted the booster. “Okay, so he was eyeing the bike when he spotted the flashing lights and split. What did he say about the victim?” If Moon’s story was true, the victim must have looked bad enough that the booster didn’t expect a fight over the bike.

  “He said the guy came down Dwight, real slow, made a wide loop at the corner, coasted to a stop, and got off.”

  “Not fell off?”

  “No. He fiddled with his locks. Then he started across the street and fell on his face.”

  “And your guy left him there and headed for the bike?” I said, disgusted.

  Moon shrugged. “He took a look around.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he was so pissed off. Kept saying if he hadn’t screwed around taking precautions like his old lady kept telling him, he’d be riding instead of walking.”

  I headed for the bike. Moon followed.

  The bicycle was an old white racer with long narrow baskets on either side of the back wheel. It was probably a twenty-eight incher, which seemed about right for the man on the street. The only thing unusual about it was the two-pad seat, reminiscent of Mason Moon’s T-shirt. I’d heard those seats were more comfortable, and from my brief foray into bike riding as an adult, it was a fair guess anything would beat the knives that pass for regulation seats. Still, an old bicycle with seats added for comfort would not have been the means of transportation I would have imagined for a Treasury agent.

  Bending, I looked closer. The plastic was torn where the two seats met in the back. It looked like a recent tear that someone may have tried to fix with what seemed like a mixture of chewing gum and plaster of paris. We would impound the bike. An errant tear like that and the tan-and-white specks of “fix-it” would be the meat of Raksen’s day in the lab.

  A small carrying bag fit in the angle of the crossbar and one of the descending ones, but there was nothing inside. “Are you sure it’s his?”

  Moon was already hunkering down. “Look at the chains.”

  He had a point, if his story about the victim was true. Plastic-covered chains were looped through the spokes of both wheels. A lock caught the ends of one, but its tongue hung open. On the second one the ends of the chain hung loose. It looked like the work of a finicky man who was losing control, actions done from habit but beyond his waning physical ability. It suggested he’d gotten off his bicycle, been in good enough shape to try to lock it, then walked into the street and fallen.

  Moon verbalized my suspicions. “What do you think—drink or drugs? God, Lyn’s going to love it.”

  Another patrol officer pulled up just as the ambulance rounded the far corner. I motioned the officer over to protect the scene around the bike.

  With the pulsers from the fire truck, ambulance, and patrol cars, and the radio squeals coming from all directions, the street was like a movie scene. The medics jumped from the ambulance and raced to the victim. Their energy seemed to pick up the flagging spirits all around. I headed toward them.

  Moon straightened his shoulders and followed. “Think about it,” he said, “IRS agent on drugs. It’ll make the best courtroom drama of the decade. Everybody he ever screwed will be demanding blood.”

  One of the medics held the victim’s arm, spreading a vein lengthwise, waiting to see if it would fill back up so he could use it for the catheter. The vein must have faded. The medic stuck the catheter in the carotid artery. His partner conferred with the firemen, then yanked the gurney from the truck.

  Another patrol car pulled up. Murakawa got out.

  The medics rolled the gurney to the ambulance and slid it in. I started toward them, Moon on my heels. I motioned Murakawa to take him. The drivers shut the doors and ran to the cab. The ambulance rolled with lights and sirens.

  I was sure of the answer before I asked Pereira, “What’s the prognosis?”

  “Better than if he wasn’t breathing. That’s what they said.” Her blond hair hung limp over the collar of her tan uniform jacket. Under the streetlights she looked washed out, exhausted. “I still don’t have an ID,” she added, a tacit appeal that I track it down. It was a request not from a district officer to a detective but from friend to friend.

  “I’ll take care of that.” I didn’t want to go home anyway.

  Out of the corner of my eye I spotted Mason Moon moving toward us, Murakawa five yards behind. Quickly I said to Pereira, “In case the victim doesn’t make it, keep the scene secu
red until you can get Raksen out from the lab. Right now, if the cyclist dies, we’ve got nothing.”

  Moon stopped beside me, rubbing his hands in glee. “Time for the audit in the sky! Lyn’s going to love it.”

  CHAPTER 3

  THREE PATROL OFFICERS WERE already checking out the crowd, taking preliminary statements, getting names and addresses, and IDs where either of the former seemed ephemeral. Pereira called in a request for backup to canvass the neighbors. Neither of us had noticed an open shade, but maybe there’d been someone putting out the garbage or the cat when the bicycle coasted to a stop. Pereira would gather the reports from the scene. If the victim died, she’d turn them and the case over to me. (In Homicide-Felony Assault Detail we handle all questionable deaths.) If he lived, we’d have what they called in bureaucracies a challenge: justifying all this manpower for a guy who stumbled off his bicycle. I’d hope when the next budget hearing came up that this didn’t.

  I left Mason Moon in the squad car with Murakawa, who’d take Moon’s statement. And irritated as he was at Moon wriggling past him, he’d be delighted at the prospect of squeezing out an ID for the thwarted bike thief.

  With luck, I’d have the victim’s name in half an hour. With at least that much luck, the victim would survive that long. By now, Advanced Life Support would be pushing drugs into his system, hoping to find the right combination before the drugs started to contradict. They’d chase this thing till the last minute. And when the victim hit the emergency room, they’d start the clock there. Six minutes with no response, and it’d be all over.

  Even if I couldn’t get an ID in time for the doctors, it was still vital. Somewhere in Berkeley a wife or lover, father or daughter, could be waiting for that bicycle. Getting bad news in the middle of the night was never pleasant, but getting it after hours or days of waiting and dreading was torture.

  The address Mason Moon had given me for Lyn Takai turned out to be a rear cottage south of campus. Although it was a high-density area tenanted by students and young families, at midnight the streets were empty, and few house lights were lit. I made my way between the violet stucco cottage and a two-story wood house. The path was narrow enough that I could almost have touched both dwellings. The only light came from a fixture in the backyard.