by Susan Dunlap
On the way back from the file room I stopped by Eggs and Jackson’s office. Outside, the fog had thickened, the wind had picked up, and tree branches scraped the windows. The overhead light was on, and it reflected off Eggs’s pale dome. In another few years what he referred to as a receding hairline would have spread like the Sahara, banishing all life across its sandy knoll. Jackson, who would have a forest of wiry hair long after he was dead, loved to tease Eggs with the prospect of one long strand crisscrossing his scalp like jeep tracks in the desert.
Now Jackson leaned back in his chair, phone propped between shoulder and ear, as he drank coffee, took notes, and grumbled into the receiver. “Hey, man, whole nations have emerged and deceased while you dangle a theory about how long this corpse was in the water. Now you think that the currents brought it from San Francisco, Treasure Island, or out from Oakland and back in to us?” Jackson reached for a paper bag, extricated an enchilada, and picked up the phone.
Across the desk Eggs put down his Mazda brochure and fingered his bifocals.
I settled myself against the windowsill. “Jackson giving the lab a hard time again?”
“You bad-mouthing me, Smith?” Jackson put down the phone. “Enchiladas don’t clog the ears, you know.”
I laughed. “Jackson, you’ve been on that guy at the lab ever since he won the Raiders bet. Rarely has one guy paid so dearly for his hundred bucks.”
“Careful, Smith.” Eggs slid his chair between us. “Just because Al Davis made a fool of the city of Oakland and the old football fans when he dangled the illusion of the silver and black coming back … Just because the gullible really believed—”
Jackson glared. He had a reputation as a cop who took no guff, a guy you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. Now his round face narrowed, his dark brown eyes seemed to pierce into Eggs’s maroon tie. He put down his enchilada and said to Eggs, “Bald.”
Eggs and I burst into guffaws. The 1980s defection of Jackson’s beloved Oakland Raiders to Los Angeles had been the receding hairline of his life. When the team had agreed to return to the Bay Area, he’d had a miracle regrowth. But when they reneged at the eleventh hour, Jackson was left without a figurative hair on his head. And with hundreds of dollars of debts to cynical friends delighted to profit from his credulity. Eggs, who’d been hearing about his pale pink dome for years, was number one. And Jackson, I noted, laughed with the same enthusiastic insincerity as Eggs on his touchy subject.
“You guys have been around for a while,” I began.
Another time, Jackson would have tossed in a comment about baldness as a sign of age, but the new parity of jibes must have stopped him.
“Ever heard of Azrael?”
“Hebrew angel of death, you mean? You getting religion, Smith?”
“Just facts, for now, Jackson.” I recounted the interchange with Scookie Hogan. “Any ideas?”
He shook his head.
“Aha!” Eggs pounced. “Another game the hirsute one misjudges.”
Jackson occupied himself with his enchilada. He had a comeback for everything. The Raiders was the only subject that silenced him. It made me uneasy. But Eggs didn’t seem to notice.
“Game?” I prompted, hoping to steer to neutral ground.
“The death game, Smith.”
“There’s a death game, and we in Homicide don’t know about it?”
“Some of you,” Eggs pronounced. “Neither of you’ve heard of it? Well, I’m not surprised that the well-thatched one missed it. Maintaining all that cover consumes a great percentage of the scalp’s nutrients. But you, Smith …” He settled back to enjoy his triumph.
“Eggs,” I said, “either you spit it out, or you see a round of this death game played locally.”
“Amen,” Jackson muttered.
“Okay, innocents, there’s the national death game and the local branch. The national one was written up in the Express. I’m surprised you two don’t keep up with the commentary on your city. But no, that’s okay—ignorance of the news is always an excuse.” Before I could speak, he held up a hand. “In the death game the players each make a list of sixty-nine people they expect to die within the year. The nominees have to be nationally known, or known well enough to have their obituaries in the New York Times. For each person who dies, the player gets points. The younger the deceased, the greater the points. So if somebody over ninety goes, it’s hardly worth the cost of buying the Times. Over ninety equals one point. Someone between eighty and ninety is two points, and so on.”
Jackson put down his enchilada. “So if I dispatch a pedagogical skindome in the lobby of the New York Times, I’d get five points for offing you?”
“You lose again, well-tufted one. As in law, even here you can’t gain from your own misdeed. Or at least on the national level.”
“It’s different locally?”
Eggs laughed. “It’s always different here. Even in the death game, the Berkeley players did not feel constrained by national rules. God forbid a self-respecting Berkeleyan should conform. What do they care about the death of a nationally known soprano or a Canadian hockey player? The pleasure they want is to see their enemies here die. So here the rules are a bit different. The age rule still holds. But there’s an arcane system of ratings. For instance, for politicos, they give an extra point for dead Republicans.”
“Because there aren’t any?” Jackson asked.
“No. Lists can contain names of anyone in the state. Plenty of Republicans down there in Raider-land.”
“Because Republicans are less likely to be assassinated?” I asked.
“Right, Smith. A number of tries, but few successes. So it’s two points extra for Republicans, one for Democrats, and zero for Berkeley Citizens Action.”
“What about professions?”
“Oh yeah, there’s a rating systems there too. The national group has to clarify some point every couple of years. The Berkeley Obit Band—the BOBs, they call themselves—confers each year to stay on top of complaints.”
I pushed up from the windowsill and paced to the far side of their desks. “Eggs, Scookie Hogan got twenty-seven points. Could that be for Philip Drem?”
“The IRS guy? How old?”
“Thirty-two.”
He made a show of counting down on his fingers. “That’d be seven for age. The IRS isn’t popular, but it’s not like being a fireman or a marine, either. I’d think Drem would be classified as a civil servant, which would probably be worth about five points, because the worst that’s likely to happen is the county car stalls in an intersection and he gets hit. That’s still only twelve.”
“Damn. You sure?”
“Not sure. Not with the BOBs.”
Jackson paused, enchilada halfway to mouth. “Dome, I can’t believe there’s not some more local spin.”
“You mean like the corpse urged Oakland not to take the Raiders back and keep fifty thousand drunks off the freeways on Sundays?”
Jackson didn’t respond. He didn’t react at all.
“But Drem’d go with an extra five points because he was murdered, Smith,” Eggs went on.
“Ta-da!”
“What? Do they get a bonus if we close the file?” Jackson demanded, surprisingly out of humor.
“Who would know whether Scookie picked him, Eggs?” I asked.
Eggs glanced at Jackson questioningly and then, apparently finding no answer to Jackson’s chilliness, plunged back into his topic. “As you might imagine, the death game is a pretty secret organization. I mean Chief Larkin or the priest at the Episcopal church isn’t likely to admit he’s a player. All the players have game names, so they don’t even know who the others are.”
“What’s the point of winning if you can’t lord it over your fellow players, if you don’t even know who they are? Is there a cash prize?”
“Zip.”
“Eggs, somebody has to know,” I insisted. “Games like this have a game master who keeps the official lists.”
He nodded.
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br /> “Okay. So the game master would have to be someone all the players trusted. A person with a job he or she wouldn’t lose if he were found out. Someone who everyone believed was reliable and who’d be able to keep up on who died.” I took a step toward the door. “Do you know any of the players?”
“Not anymore. The guy I heard this from died. Went for twenty-four points. He would have loved it.”
“Eggs! How do you know that?”
“In his twenties. Eight right there. Worked as a copy editor—next thing to a bureaucrat—four points. In his own home, so he didn’t even have the dangers of commuting—an extra two.”
“And the other ten?”
“Well, only his ex-wife got those points. Probably nobody else picked him.”
“Family members get extra points?” Jackson pulled his hand back from his food. “Hey, man, this is close to the marrow, even for Berkeley standards.”
Eggs flushed. In all the years I’d been in the department, I couldn’t recall ever seeing his skin any color but so white that his lips seemed rouged. Now, as he stared at Jackson, his cheeks were an odd shade of orange. Could Eggs be a part of this game? Would I be greatly surprised? Eggs fit the requirements for game master as well as anyone I could think of: solitary, fair, knowledgeable, reliable. I could picture Eggs sitting in his Morris chair in front of his fish tank discussing the rule changes with his fantail fish. The death game was just the sardonic view of things that would appeal to Eggs. Being game master would suit him. I could see him in wizard’s garb. Would Eggs have made that rule—extra points for close relations? There the wand faltered. That, I had to admit, would surprise me.
Eggs was facing the window, but I could see out of the corner of his eye he was concentrating on Jackson. “Jackson, it’s only a game. We see a dozen corpses done more casually than these.”
“Not family.”
“Look, I’m sorry I—”
“Forget it, man.” Jackson picked up his enchilada, took a last bite, and threw the wrapper in the trash. “I’ll be back around four.” He grabbed his jacket and headed for the door.
Jackson had never left without a good-bye to me. That was two firsts for this interchange. I stared at Eggs.
It was a moment before he said, “Jackson’s uncle—I forgot about him. He was a big Raiders fan, season-ticket holder, had a bunch of friends he’d meet there each Sunday, flew to all the away games. He must have used every spare penny for that. When the Raiders left, he was lost. I guess he’d drunk a lot at the games, all those tailgate parties and all. But the games were his social life, and when his team left, he fell apart. Jackson and the whole family tried to divert him, but nothing worked. He died. God, how could I forget?”
“Suicide?”
“No gun. Drove off the road, drunk, on a Sunday afternoon. Same thing. Or worse.”
I put a hand on Eggs’s shoulder. “Jackson knows you feel bad.”
Eggs shrugged.
“Look, maybe you’ll lose a few hairs over it.”
He didn’t look up. I was beginning to feel as awkward as he did. Eggs and Jackson had shared this office for nearly a decade. They were as close to friends as two so different men could be, and still Eggs poked a raw spot till it bled. Inadvertently, sure, but that only made it worse. Eggs and Jackson were different races, from different states, had divergent interests, but they were both men. They shared a more common background and mythology than Howard and I ever would. How could I expect Howard to understand how life imprisoned women, imprisoned me? Was I asking the impossible?
I pulled my hand back. “About those extra ten points—if they weren’t for closeness of relative, for what?”
Eggs shook his head. “Individual choice. Each player chooses the name on his list he’d most like to see die. If they cash their chips, he gets a bonus.”
“Add ten to seventeen,” I said in triumph, “and you get Scookie Hogan’s twenty-seven points.”
“So Drem finally did something good for her.”
“Or she decided he would.” I wished Howard were here to enjoy contemplating such a macabre sting. But I’d spent enough post-sting time with him to know the smug delight that flows from the triumphant. I recalled Scookie Hogan’s glee as she accepted kudos in the Med. To a serious player that victory over Drem and because of Drem would almost have evened the score. “Did she kill him, or was she just lucky?” I asked, slipping into death-game mentality. “Eggs, do you remember names of players?”
“Only code names. Tarantula, and Clumsy Medic, and—wait—Ice Pick, and, oh yeah, I think the game master was called Canary’s Keen.”
“Canary’s Keen?” I smiled. In a case that had been plagued with dead ends like Maria Zalles and blocked alleys like the IRS, Canary’s Keen could be an eight-lane freeway. I thought back on the game-master requirements: smart, reliable, informed, no danger of losing his job, someone people trust. I’d been speculating about Eggs. Had he been game master, I doubted he’d have admitted it. But he wouldn’t lie and make up a name just because it didn’t fit him. Whatever his hobbies, he was a police detective first.
“Canary’s Keen, indeed. It just may be that I know that yellow bird.”
CHAPTER 16
I CHECKED MY IN box, hoping for word from Leonard that he’d unearthed Sierra, the street person, and derailed his tale about the errant cop near Drem’s bicycle. But the box held only the normal departmental memos. I left a message for Pereira to get in touch with Mason Moon and check out the Inspiration Hotel books. Then I signed out a car, headed up to Telegraph, and parked across the street from Herman Ott’s building.
Darting through the plodding two-lane traffic, I ran toward a doorway between a take-out pizza parlor and poster shop. Fog dampened already mushy piles of discarded napkins on the sidewalk. The aroma of tomato and garlic flowed out of the storefront, and up from the debris, and followed me inside Ott’s lobby. There the elevator car, one of the old ones behind a folding metal gate, sat waiting. It had been waiting for as long as I’d been on the force.
Ott’s building, once a sought-after business address, had fallen into hippie-pad-dom during the seventies and more recently had been occupied by Asian-refugee families who were willing to endure life in offices-cum-apartments with the bathrooms down the hall.
I climbed the two flights of double central staircase and made my way around the square track of hall that surrounded them. It had been a couple of months since I’d had reason to poke into Herman Ott’s burrow. But I could sense another change in the building. The hardworking refugees were moving on. The inviting smells of satay and curry were sparser now, thinned by an odor of turpentine and chemicals. Was the landlord renovating? If so, it would be a first for this building.
Ott had been the first tenant to illegally transform his two-room office into an apartment of sorts. One room was an immaculate office. The other housed cot, hot plate, an overstuffed chair that had been spitting out its springs and batting for years, and a pile of blankets, newspapers, and clothes that covered the floor shin-deep. Had that pile been mud, Ott could have gotten federal disaster relief. I knocked on the D of the Ott Detective Agency in the opaque glass window.
“Who?” Ott called.
“Jill Smith,” I said, omitting “detective.” I didn’t want to proclaim Ott’s connection to our department—not yet, anyway. Herman Ott made it a policy never to cooperate with the police, at least never without a long and exceedingly tedious argument, never without recompense, and never never if it endangered one of his clients. I had gotten information out of Ott over the years, an achievement worthy of an epitaph. More amazing was the fact that for once, there were no overdue discretionary-fund disbursements outstanding to Ott. I was not indebted to him. In fact, I had done him a favor, a big one, and for the only time in the years I’d dealt with him, Herman Ott owed me. It made him exceedingly uncomfortable. Seeing Herman Ott edgy, having to choose his words with care instead of merely growling “out!” was almost payment in
itself. Almost, but not quite.
I was just about to move into stage two of our encounters and start ordering him to open up when he surprised me and did. Debt was definitely improving his manners.
But not his appearance. For a moment I thought I’d woken him. He rubbed a small plump hand across his little hazel eyes and gave his stringy blond hair a shake. There was no sartorial clue to his immediately previous activity. As if sleep came as a startling discovery every night, Ott didn’t own night-clothes. He fell onto his cot in whatever he had on and yanked up the clutter of sheets, blankets, clothes, and newspapers that covered the floor.
I walked into the twelve-foot-square office. Maybe I had woken him. Ott’s office was always in order: no stray papers, pens, or newspapers. Pages of notepads with any written message were carefully torn off. Even his paper coffee cup was usually deposited in the trash. But this morning the Daily Californian, an eight-pager, was lying open across the scarred wooden desk. Covering something. And the cover-up had been too hurried to conceal the lump beneath but unfortunately too proficiently done for me to tell the nature of that lump.
“Whadaya want, Smith?” Ott’s thin lips formed a scowl—his natural expression.
“Courtesy’s hard to maintain, huh?” I shouldn’t have gloated. I couldn’t help it.
Automatically Ott’s mouth formed a circle, ready to demand “out!” Instead he closed his mouth.
I settled in his straight-backed pine chair and watched for his reaction. “Does the name Canary’s Keen mean anything to you?”
Ott’s tiny pale eyes pulled back in his sallow skin. Each time I saw the man, I had the same initial reaction. He looks even worse than the last time I was here. With the best haircut, the best tailor in town, Herman Ott could never have looked good. But had he also been the richest man in town, he would still have been too counterculture to spend money on his appearance. His clothes came exclusively from the Salvation Army or Good Will and would have come from the free box in People’s Park across the street had he not felt guilty about taking clothes out of the hands of the destitute. Today his ensemble included a lemon turtleneck with a hole in the neck seam, a tan-and-ocher argyle sweater with a stain just below the point of the V that could have been from dark curry or pale bean sauce, a tan down vest that was unlikely to make it around the arc of his gut, and spanning that gut but hanging so loose on his spindly legs that they looked more like curtains than pants were threadbare chinos with two of those brown patches that you ironed on and then waited uncomfortably as they worked loose again. I hadn’t seen those since I was in high school. I wondered if Ott got them from the Salvation Army too. I had never seen Herman Ott in any garment that quite fit—anything new, anything not some shade of yellow. I repeated my question. “Does the name Canary’s Keen mean anything to you?”