Strawberry Sunday

by Stephen Greenleaf

  Her name was Jill Coppelia. She was in her early forties or so, with big blue eyes, light brown hair, a gently expressive face, and long legs and long arms and a long look that made me uncomfortable.

  “We meet at last,” she began.

  “Sorry I was tied up.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine.”

  “You don’t look fine.”

  “I never did.”

  Her smile was warm and soothing; she would have been good at getting confessions and earning promotions. “If you’re not ready for this, I can come back.”

  “Let’s get it over with.”

  She smiled wider this time, companionably and attractively, putting me more at ease than I wanted to be. She was the friendliest D.A. I’d ever met, which wasn’t saying much. She was also the first woman in more than a year who had made my libido perk up, which was saying even less.

  “I’m in charge of the Sleet investigation,” she began.

  “I didn’t know there was a Sleet investigation.”

  “There always is when an officer goes down.”

  “That may be, but this case is open and shut.”

  She raised a brow and crossed her arms. “Is that so?”

  “If you’re good at your job, you already know it.”

  She colored and shifted position and looked for a place to sit down. There was a chair in the corner and she spotted it, but when I didn’t invite her to sit, she stayed standing.

  “We’ve gotten statements from the other officers who were out there that night,” she went on, “and we’d like to get one from you.”

  I shook my head and gave the answer I’d already decided to give her. “Sorry. No can do.”

  She blinked and frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that whatever Charley did or didn’t do that night, you’re not going to get it from me.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t rat on my friends.”

  “Your friend is dead.”

  I smiled. “All the more reason.”

  “But all we want is the truth.”

  “In my experience, what goes in one end of your office in the form of truth often looks ugly and warped when it comes out the other end in the form of an indictment. Some sort of legal indigestion, I guess.”

  “I’m not that kind of lawyer,” Ms. Coppelia said primly.

  “I’m glad to hear it, but the answer’s still no. Why don’t you have a seat?”

  She went to the chair and sat down. When she crossed her legs, I paid attention. Apparently the source of the sex drive isn’t close to the spleen.

  “The survivors say Sleet killed Gary Hilton and Milt Mandarich—”

  I interrupted her. “He’s the big guy?”

  “Right. The survivors say Sleet killed Hilton and Mandarich because they were going to file a complaint against Sleet with Internal Affairs.”

  “Then the survivors are lying assholes.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  I ignored her question. “Complaint about what?”

  “That Sleet was shaking down several business establishments in the Tenderloin and North Beach. Offering protection for money.”

  “Extortion.”

  She nodded. “That’s where they were headed.”

  I shook my head to show my disgust. “Did you know Charley?”

  “A little.”

  “Does that sound like something he’d do?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “Then maybe you should find out the real reason he took Hilton and Mandarich out.”

  She recrossed her legs. I wondered if the show of thigh was deliberate. If it was, I wondered what she hoped it would get her. Then I wondered whether I’d give it to her.

  “I’m betting you could help me do that,” she was saying. Jill Coppelia was at ease and self-controlled, attempting to manipulate me according to a preconceived plan, going with the flow but channeling it in a direction she felt was productive. I began to admire her a little and lust for her a little more.

  “Charley’s dead,” I said. “That terminated any and all of my obligations to the SFPD.”

  “You’re still a citizen, Mr. Tanner.”

  “I was a citizen when Milt Mandarich broke my finger to get me to tell him how to get to Charley.”

  That one tilted her off center by at least a degree. “I didn’t know-about that.”

  “You don’t know a lot of things, it sounds like.”

  She pouted. “So why don’t you help us find out?”

  I shook my head.

  The pout became close to a sneer. “We could impanel a Grand Jury and subpoena you.”

  “And I could hire Jake Hattie to head you off.”

  “Jake couldn’t keep us from offering you immunity and putting you in jail for contempt if you don’t talk.”

  “Why would I need immunity?”

  “You shot a cop, for one thing.”

  “And for another thing, I saved two more cops from dying the way Hilton and Mandarich died.”

  “The proof of that is only anecdotal.”

  “The word of the survivors, you mean.”

  She shrugged.

  A twitch in my gut curled me up. When I finally straightened out, Jill Coppelia was by the bed. “Do you need the nurse?”

  “No.”

  “Water? Medication? Anything?”

  “I’m fine.”

  She patted my hand. I waited till she sat back down. “Look,” I said stiffly. “Charley Sleet was my best friend. Plus he had a brain tumor. So why would I murder him, even if I wanted to? Why wouldn’t I wait till the cancer took its toll?”

  She shrugged. “Motive isn’t an essential element of a criminal conviction.”

  “Then how do you expect to prove malice and intent, which the last time I looked were essential elements?”

  She shrugged. “Why do you think we haven’t put you in the prison ward in this place? Even though there are lots of guys on the force who think that’s where you ought to be.”

  I thought it over while I looked her over. What I saw was enough to soften me up. “Okay. You gave me a break, so I’ll give you one. Does the name Triad mean anything to you?”

  “You mean the Chinese family organizations?”

  I shook my head. “This is something else, and you need to find out what it means. But put your own guys on it, not the SFPD.”

  “You’re saying this Triad has something to do with the department?”

  I kept my mouth shut and smiled.

  “That’s it? That’s all you’re giving up?”

  “That’s it.”

  “It doesn’t seem nearly enough.” She stood up and smoothed her skirt and came to the bed and looked down. “We could go at this another way,” she said, with something more ardent in her voice than a threat.

  “How?”

  “We could hire you to help us as a special investigator.”

  “Not for a while, you can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “As soon as they let me out of here, I’m going out of town.”

  “Not far, I hope.”

  “Not in terms of geography.”

  She handed me her card after scribbling a number on the back. “Call me when you get back. By then I’ll have come up with new reasons why you should cooperate with us.”

  “Those reasons became irrelevant when the Honor Guard didn’t show up for Charley’s funeral,” I said.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Without Rita’s charm to speed it along, the week crawled by like a slug, obese and repellent and interminable. But the healing progressed, the pain diminished, the strength returned, and suddenly it was Friday morning. I was dressed and packed and waiting when he got there.

  “Well, Mr. Tanner.”

  “Well, Dr. Stratton.”

  “How are we feeling today?”

  “We’re feeling tip-top, shipshape, A-okay, and then some.”

  H
e smiled. “I’ll be the judge of that. Let me give a listen.”

  He slid his stethoscope off his neck and pressed it to my body in several places, most of them ticklish. I don’t know what they hear in there, maybe a little voice that gives them medical updates on the hour, sort of like a miniature NPR. Or maybe it’s just for show.

  “Pulse is steady; lungs are clear; the gut is gurgling away, doing its work. I think we’ve done all we can do for you here.”

  “That must mean my insurance is running out.”

  His laugh was slightly forced. “It’s more that we need the space. Gunshots are as fashionable as tattoos this season—we’re starting to take reservations. Although I must say yours was one of the sexiest we’ve seen in a while. And it wasn’t the first bullet to pass through the vicinity, was it?”

  I thought of a night in an alley near Broadway almost twenty years back, in the first weeks of my career as a detective, when I’d been gut-shot by an assailant who was unknown to me then and now. “I’ll try not to develop a taste for it.”

  “Good. Because if you’d had this wound back then, you’d be dead. In a way, you owe your life to the street gangs.”

  “How so?”

  “They’ve given us lots of practice. Our techniques are much better than they used to be.”

  “I’ll drop them a thank-you note.”

  The doctor grinned and stuck out his hand. “Go on, get out of here. Take your pills and call me if you turn for the worse. I’ve made an appointment for the end of next week, just to be sure you’re on schedule.”

  “Don’t I get wheeled to the door?”

  “We don’t have the manpower anymore.”

  I waited until he looked me in the eye. “I appreciate what you did for me, Doctor.”

  “It’s my job.”

  “I’m glad you’re good at it.”

  He reddened and looked away. “Speaking of jobs, if I were you I’d consider a new line of work.”

  “When they start paying wages for watching the Giants, I’ll hand in my license and bury my gun. Which is where, by the way?”

  “The police took it the night you came in. Evidence of something or other, they said.”

  I picked up my bag containing my jammies and the unopened bottle of scotch—the Oreos were already history. “If you’re ever in need of detective work, I owe you a big favor.”

  “The only thing I need to find is some spare time.”

  “I’ll lend you some. I’m one of the few people I know who’s got plenty.”

  “Out,” was all he said.

  Half an hour later I was home, inhaling the musty air of my apartment, flushing the brown water out of the taps, tossing out the bad food in the fridge, hauling the sheets and towels down to the laundry room—I was so manic and efficient I worried that my stay in the hospital had made me a neat freak.

  While it was good to be home, and while even sour and mildewed air was preferable to the medicinal musk of the surgical ward, by the time I finished cleaning up I was both exhausted and depressed. Exhausted because despite the adrenaline rush of the morning, my body wasn’t nearly back to normal—my lungs were laboring and my heart seemed close to fibrillation. And depressed because nearly everything I came across, from the poker chips on the shelf to the beer bottles in the fridge, reminded me somehow of Charley. He was gone and would never be back and I would be lonely forever because of it. It hadn’t hit me fully in the hospital, I guess, because now it hit me like a Tyson right hand, or at least a Tyson bicuspid.

  Usually what I do in such circumstances is drink. I don’t recommend it, I don’t even claim that it helps, but that’s what I do when I’m sad. Thanks to Ruthie Spring, I had some quality scotch in my duffel bag that was beckoning me as seductively as an episode of Robbie Coltrane’s Cracker. But I was still taking four different medications a day, none of which called for alcohol as a chaser; in fact, I’d been explicitly warned to lay off. So I made do with the second best tranquilizer I know of—I ate.

  A trip to the store produced Oreos, Red Vines, burnt peanuts, a bag of tortilla chips and a jar of salsa, and a pièce de résistance in the form of a chocolate cake frozen and packaged by Pepperidge Farms. The clerk at the cash register couldn’t stop giggling at the subtext to my purchases and I was already halfway into an anticipated sugar high as I climbed the hill toward my home, but what the hell? I’d had a tough time, I’d lost thirteen pounds, my best friend was dead, so I deserved a fucking treat.

  But one man’s treat is another man’s folly. I ate so much preprocessed bilge I got sick, involuntarily purging into the dingy porcelain stool in my bathroom, finally falling into a slumber that didn’t lift till ten the next morning. Eleven hours of sleep not even courtesy of a hangover. Maybe that part of the regimen would become a habit.

  Thankfully, the quality of my menu picked up. The woman across the hall brought vegetable soup in a vat the size of a hogshead. The triple divorcée from Guido’s bar brought a casserole dish full of her patented tuna and noodles. And the widow of one of my former clients sent over a five-course meal catered by one of the city’s best restaurants. So I was feeling fairly fat and sassy when someone brought me something far better than food, far better than booze, far better than anything any doctor had ever prescribed. On Sunday evening at six, Millicent Colbert brought me my daughter.

  My daughter’s name is Eleanor. She was born to a surrogate mother and turned over to Millicent Colbert and her husband Stuart pursuant to the contract they had made with the surrogate, a contract drafted by the lawyer who had hired me to verify the surrogate’s suitability for the role. I got to know the surrogate a little too well, as it happened. That it was my sperm and not Stuart’s that fertilized the surrogate’s egg is unknown to both of the Colberts—I hope it will always be thus. That my sperm was able to find purchase in the surrogate’s ovum was a surprise to me as well, since I thought the birth control method I’d employed had made such a union impossible. Not so, as it turned out, although conception was by the surrogate’s design rather than by accident. In any event, I’ve been a proud papa for more than two years, although the papa part of it I kept under wraps even from Charley Sleet.

  Millicent greeted me with a kiss and a grin. She wore a form-fitting blue jump suit that was cinched by a silver conch belt and snow white tennies that looked fresh out of the box. It was what she always wore when I saw her, maybe because she looked great in it and I always told her so. Her blond hair was drawn back in a bun; her eyes were made even bluer by some form of mascara. Somehow Millicent made tending a child seem as casual as minding a goldfish.

  Eleanor greeted me with a hug around my kneecaps. That she was already walking and talking and had taken on a distinct personality was a continual wonder to me. That she and her mother included me in a large portion of their lives is the blessing I’m most thankful for. That something vile and violent might happen to Eleanor one day, that the world that provides me my living might lash out and scar her for life, is the stuff of most of my nightmares.

  They filed into my apartment and took seats side by side on the couch. They bounced till they were comfortable, then crossed their hands in their laps in a precision as deft as a drill team’s. I thought for a minute it was some kind of burlesque, then decided it was only good breeding.

  “Hi, Mush,” Eleanor said suddenly.

  Millicent rolled her eyes. “That’s her new name for you. Mush.”

  “Hi, Mush; hi, Mush.”

  “I like it,” I said, then placed my hand over my surgically repaired interior. “Fitting, too.”

  After a couple of minutes of baby talk, I hauled out the box of toys I’d bought for when Eleanor paid me a visit—dolls, balls, rattles, and blocks—and dumped them on the floor for her pleasure. After receiving permission from Mom, Eleanor slid off the couch and began to rummage. I watched with as much pleasure as I’d had in two months.

  With her daughter fully engaged with the toys, Millicent inspected me closely.
“You’re hurting still, aren’t you, Marsh?”

  “A little.”

  “And you’ve lost weight.”

  I glanced at the half-empty bag of burnt peanuts. “Not for long.”

  “Do you need anything at all? Can I bring Juanita over to clean house for you some afternoon?”

  I shook my head. “I’m fine, Millicent.”

  “I’m doing it anyway. And you need food, surely. Come to dinner on Tuesday.”

  I hesitated, then opted for truth. “I make Stuart nervous.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  She smiled. “Well, maybe a little.”

  “Why don’t we skip dinner? I’ll drop by some afternoon for a snack.”

  “Juanita’s off on Wednesdays. Come then; I’ll make that coconut cake you like.”

  “Perfect.”

  Eleanor threw a ball at my head. I caught it just before it bounced off my chin and rolled it back to her. When it ran through her legs she sat down with a thump. “E three,” I said.

  “What was that?” Millicent asked.

  “Baseball talk. How’s she been doing, anyhow?”

  “She’s been doing great. I would have brought her to see you in the hospital but they said it was against the rules.”

  “It’s good you didn’t. Lots of germs floating around those places. You’d think they’d do something about it.”

  Millicent’s smile was disappointingly perfunctory. “You won’t go back to work for a while yet, will you?”

  “Probably not.”

  “I don’t like to think this could happen again.”

  “Odds are good that it won’t,” I said. Though not as good as she thought they were, given the night in the alley off Broadway.

  “Stuart said he would be happy to put you on the security staff at the store. You could work any shift you wanted to.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. But thank him for me.”

  “It would be safer than what you do now.”

  “Among other things.”

  Millicent’s aspect turned grave, her eyes shaded by her brow, her forehead rippling with concern. “It would be horrible for Eleanor if anything happened to you, Marsh. Horrible for both of us,” she added firmly.

  I was tempted to slide to her side and give her a kiss, but I made do with a pat on the hand. Our attraction is such that someday Millicent and I will probably have an affair. I hope we’ll be smart enough to keep it short and secret.