by Kirk Russell
‘Can I call u now?’
Raveneau texted back and his phone rang.
‘Do you want to meet them tonight?’
Raveneau glanced through the glass to the bar where Celeste was talking with her chef. He was looking at her as he answered, ‘Yes.’
‘There’s a bar called Grate’s Place. It’s south of Mission, I’ll text the address. I didn’t fake anything. They know who you are.’
‘Why shouldn’t they?’
‘There’s no reason, I just didn’t know how you wanted to do it. They’re taking my word about you being into Ann’s writings and that’s really why they agreed to meet. You’ll need to know your stuff. Two of them are super serious about everything she wrote. Have you read any of Death Cathartic: Spiritually Reconciling the Genocide of the US Western Expansion? That’s their bible.’
‘It’s my favorite book.’
‘I’m not kidding.’
‘What time are we meeting?’
‘Ten o’clock.’
‘See you there.’
THIRTEEN
Raveneau arrived at Grate’s early. When he was last here it was a deli serving office buildings that ringed three sides of the courtyard. He liked it more as a bar though it wasn’t his kind of bar. It was trying too hard. He ordered a Pilsner – a Trumer – and then waited for Lindsley, who came in a few minutes later. Lindsley threaded through people, made his way over.
‘That wood table through the window there is where we usually sit. Let me get a drink and then let’s go out there.’ He adjusted his glasses. ‘We can talk out there.’
‘How often do you meet these guys?’
‘Used to be once a week.’
‘What is it now?’
‘Lately, I’ve been missing the meetings.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Can I get a drink before we do this?’
‘I’ll see you outside.’
Raveneau walked out to the table but didn’t sit down yet. The hot valley wind was still blowing and it was more sheltered in here, but the wind reached around the corners. It shook dry leaves from a tree in a metal planter. He had looked forward to being with Celeste tonight, but needed to do this and didn’t see any reason for subtlety with the three men who were supposed to meet them. He still didn’t know what to make of Lindsley.
The table was a heavy wooden picnic table painted a dark green and now he and Lindsley sat with their backs to the still warm stucco wall of the bar and watched the other three arrive. The one leading was a wiry man of average height and younger than Lindsley. His name was Attis Martin and his handshake was moist and soft, but his eyes were focused and hard as he sized up Raveneau.
The second man seemed to be a woman, although this was one of the few times Raveneau wasn’t sure. His or her name was Ike Latkos, and she sat to the left of Attis and close to him. She didn’t give her name and let Attis introduce her as did the third man, whose name at least for tonight was apparently an inside joke that the rest got, including Lindsley. Attis introduced him as John the Baptist, and Lindsley giggled. He was dark-haired, square-shouldered, and in his mid-thirties with the look of a former soldier who had seen too many things.
When no one volunteered it, Raveneau asked, ‘Why do they call you John the Baptist?’
John stared, didn’t answer. Neither did anyone else, and Raveneau leaned back against the wall and waited for Attis. He was clearly the leader. When Attis was silent, Raveneau said, ‘Her murder is an active case again and I need your help. I’d like to get phone numbers and email addresses from each of you. I need a way to get in touch with you.’
‘You already have our names,’ Attis said and reached and put an arm around Ike’s shoulders. ‘Have to warn you, Ike likes to change names and John doesn’t use his last name anymore. John has stripped out the things in his life he doesn’t need.’
‘What about you? Have you stripped out the things you don’t need?’
‘Soon.’
‘How soon?’
Attis didn’t answer, and Raveneau turned to John. ‘Whose idea was it to call you John the Baptist?’
‘Mine,’ Attis said.
‘Is that because he recognized you?’
Attis didn’t like that much, but that was OK with Raveneau. This meeting wasn’t what he had hoped for and felt contrived and staged and as he got a text from la Rosa now he stopped to read it. Attis Martin didn’t like that either.
He wrote back: ‘With them now.’ He typed the address of Grate’s Place and dropped the phone back in his pocket after sending it.
‘Sorry,’ he said to Attis. ‘Where were we?’
Attis sent John the Baptist in to get drinks, another vodka Collins for Lindsley, two vodkas on ice for Latkos, and sparkling water for him. The conversation wandered around the Coryell investigation and the bomb shelter coverage on local TV where reporters questioned Raveneau’s belief that the bone find wasn’t evidence of a serial murderer at work. Experts consulted also questioned SF Homicide ruling out serial murder.
John returned with the drinks and nothing for himself. He took the same seat at the end of the table and adjusted the long coat he wore over a T-shirt and black jeans. His face was pale and drawn as if fasting, his focus on Attis. It was quite a crew.
Attis asked, ‘Are you one of us?’
‘Is this where I show what the aliens implanted in my neck?’
‘I’m asking if you believe in the Boundary.’
Raveneau nodded and regretted now letting Celeste go home alone so he could be here. He glanced at John the Baptist and knew he wouldn’t be talking at all tonight, so that left these two and really only Attis, who so far spoke for all of them.
‘You’re talking about Ann Coryell’s Boundary idea?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t think she meant a boundary like a fence. She was communicating something about how memories are passed on and how a society has a personality and being that exists as our collective consciousness. We all contribute to it, and what we contribute individually outlasts our lives. She was writing about how unanswered things get passed on.’ Raveneau took a drink of his beer.
‘You’re wrong.’
‘Maybe, but here’s the thing, I’m working her murder, not an interpretation of her work. Brandon says he knew her. What about you? Did you know her?’
‘What if I told you I’ve been to the Boundary? What would you say to that?’
‘That you were a decent guy and we had a drink together but sometime before I met you you fell too hard on your head.’
Attis smiled. He lifted his right hand and reached across the table to fist bump Raveneau. ‘You’re right about me. I’m crazy. What do you think about page twenty-nine?’
Raveneau was ready. He’d trolled the Internet. He saw once, twice, five, a dozen times the mention of page twenty-nine in her thesis. He read the commentary. It was where she speculated how successive generations were connected. She believed history wasn’t a series of events but one ongoing event and that the repetitive nature of our struggle to understand ourselves as a species, the recurrent wars, patterns repeated, was manifestation of unconsciousness awareness of our spiritual incompleteness. She called religions mythology but our spirituality our one true thing.
For her, the settling of the American west was a tragic chapter in that struggle. She acknowledged atrocities on both sides, but the defeat of the American Indian tribes included a pattern of broken treaties, a soul defiling reservation system, and knowing genocide by a far stronger force. That was the unanswered thing carried forward that she believed had to be answered.
‘She left it to us to interpret how genocide gets answered,’ Attis said, ‘and that gets us to the Indian Wars and the American western expansion.’
‘Now you’ve got my attention,’ Raveneau said.
‘It’s why we’re here. I invited you to get your attention.’
‘Is that right?’
‘What better witness than s
omeone who has read Coryell and better still a homicide inspector? It’s perfect.’
‘OK, you’re communicating something important and I get that, but I’m a little slower than you, same as I can’t interpret her writings as clearly, so spell it out for me. Are you preparing to do something?’
Attis stared then glanced at Lindsley who sat motionless, no more shifting of his shoulders or adjusting his glasses. Latkos picked up her second drink. She gave him a sly smile as Raveneau asked Attis if he was by any chance missing an iPhone.
‘A phone threat was made,’ Raveneau said. ‘We get some surprising and sometimes off the wall threats from time to time, but I can’t remember hearing another where the caller threatened to make the people of San Francisco pay for America’s nineteenth-century western expansion. It just doesn’t come up that much. Do you know what I mean?’
‘It doesn’t come up, but it never went away.’
‘Ann Coryell shunned violence. That was one of her problems with the religions of the world. She wrote about a non-violent cleansing, talking it through, acknowledging what happened. But again, I’m not here to interpret her. I want to find her killer. I want to know why.’
‘She knew she had to die.’
Attis held out his hands as if balancing weights in each. ‘There’s living and there’s dead and each has a place and the places have a boundary between them that can be crossed and sometimes recrossed but only if our consciousness is kept in a heightened state. You have to remain very aware just at the moment you’re right on the edge of dying. If you do, you can cross over with awareness, and if you have the awareness then you’re free to touch both sides. She’s around us right now and you’re starting to frustrate me. I’m trying to help you see, but your questions are blunt and your vision narrow. You were brought here because Brandon said you understood her and now you’re making Brandon look bad. You were given an opportunity and you’re wasting it.’
‘I saw her remains.’
‘A snake molts and leaves a skin and we’ve come to understand that. I’m not unhinged, Inspector. I’m not insane or deluded. I studied physics. I could have gone on in theoretical physics. I believe in science and mathematics, and I also believe she was ready to be free of her body. She understood her death differently than you do. She saw our true being in that collective unconsciousness. That’s how history is woven and passed forward and where change happens. Everyone at this table believes except you.’
Raveneau turned to Lindsley. ‘Do you believe that?’
‘I believe in aspects,’ Lindsley said.
Attis cut in, saying, ‘That’s him, that’s the way he is, which is to say he doesn’t know who he is and the consequence is he’s two-faced. We deal with that. You will too. I sent Brandon to find you. I called you here. You’re destiny’s witness and you’re perfect, a man sworn to find the truth. Death is an illusion, Inspector.
‘When the bird leaves the nest that first time it has its instincts and what it has seen other birds do. Coryell saw things you don’t. She saw the flow of humanity through time and she knew she was in touch with that. She had the gift to see the Boundary and she went for it. I see that too. I understand it and you look at me and see a threat. That’s the way you’re trained. But you’re also trained to observe. You’re the highly skeptical observer who will record what he sees and that’s why I agreed to meet you.’
‘So now we’re meeting,’ Raveneau said. ‘We’re talking. We’re having a drink and I’m going to ask, do you know who made the threat?’
‘If I said yes, you’d have to detain me and take me down to a police station. The answer is no.’
‘That’s a different answer than a straight no.’
‘Of course, and again, that’s why we’re meeting.’
‘Are you using me to communicate with the San Francisco Police Department?’
‘Here.’ Attis pulled his wallet out and handed Raveneau his driver’s license. He told Ike and John to do the same, but said nothing to Lindsley. ‘You have your phone, Inspector. You can take photos of us, but what you can’t do is stop the flow of history.’
‘OK, then let’s just get some photos.’ Raveneau turned his phone on John the Baptist first. ‘How about a big smile, John?’
Ike smiled. Attis stared. Raveneau wrote down driver’s license numbers, addresses, phone numbers, and emails.
‘What am I going to witness?’
‘Inspector, can I give you anything more than I already have? Do you want to follow us out and get the license plates of the car we came here in?’
‘Sure, I’ll do that.’
‘Then walk out with us. Brandon will stay with the table.’
‘I will walk out with you, but before we do that how are you and I going to communicate after tonight?’
‘With the email address I just gave you.’
He walked out with them. The car was a 2010 Malibu. Its burned out shell was found two days later out at Hunter’s Point.
FOURTEEN
Brandon Lindsley was still at the table and had ordered himself another drink while Raveneau was out front with Attis and the other two. It was close to midnight and the bar was getting busier. The bar door was open. People spilled out into the courtyard and a techno beat vibrated into the night. Raveneau wanted more from Lindsley before they left here, but it was harder to talk now.
‘He called you two-faced. How do you feel about that?’
‘Really mad. I guess I’ll beat him up after school.’ Lindsley adjusted his glasses, offered a wry smile. ‘I don’t know, Inspector. How should I feel? I don’t feel much of anything right now and it’s not the first time someone has claimed I’m not who I say I am. The police did that when I was sixteen.’
‘Let’s talk about that.’
‘No, we’re not up to that part of the script yet and I’m ready to call it a night.’
‘You sat here. You listened to him. You know him. Explain it to me. He all but said he doesn’t trust you, but you’re part of the group.’
That got to Lindsley. For the first time he stirred. ‘I’m not part of them, and if Attis included me in their group I’d be looking in a mirror wondering what was wrong with me.’
‘John jumped up when Attis told him to go get drinks. You sat and took what he said. He had an arm around Ike. He’s talking like he knows more about the threat we’re investigating than I do. What am I supposed to do with that?’
‘I don’t hang with these people. I talk to them online and we talk about Coryell. You wanted to meet people who chat online about Coryell. You want to get into that community. I set you up. This other stuff Attis was talking about I don’t know what you do with that. I heard him too. It was weird. Maybe you should bring him down to the police station and interview him. You’re the expert. I’m the guy who wants to write books like Professor Lash wrote. That’s my whole deal, following in Professor Lash’s footsteps.’
‘You’ve told me.’
‘I’m just saying I’ve got a goal that’s apart from anything to do with these guys.’
‘Is your inheritance from your parents?’
‘Yes.’
‘When did they die?’
‘When I was sixteen.’
When he didn’t volunteer more Raveneau moved the conversation to Ike Latkos.
‘This is what Attis told me,’ Lindsley said. ‘She’s a hacker and some pretty bad people are after her, but they’re not law enforcement types. She has protectors in some agency in Washington that she helped out. The first time I heard about it the city was Berlin and then it was Leningrad, and after that Prague, and now it’s back to Berlin. She got away with some large chunk of somebody’s money. Transferred it and ran and hid and will be hiding for the rest of her life if they don’t find her first. She was a he when she stole the money and had a sex change in Mexico and not because she wanted to. She needed a female body to hide in, but she doesn’t live in it. She lives online and she’s got about a thousand identities a
nd supposedly secret friends in high places.’
‘What’s all that mean?’
‘That you shouldn’t waste your time with her driver’s license.’ Lindsley smiled a crooked smile.
‘And what about John the Baptist? What church would I find him in?’
Lindsley smiled again. ‘That’s a good one,’ he said. ‘I’ve got another story about Ike that Attis told me. She set up a Spanish language website for doing US tax returns for almost no charge. Then she collected a bunch of names, social security numbers, everything needed, and killed the website. The following January she filed for early returns on something like a thousand names and made up numbers for everything including what they were owed as refund checks. Attis said she collected millions of dollars, and I didn’t believe it, but a couple of days ago I read it’s a big scam out there. The IRS has paid out something like ten billion in phoney claims. No one comes to arrest her. That’s why Attis was stroking her head.’
‘Where’s John from?’
‘Fuck if I know.’
‘But you know about Ike.’
‘From Attis, not from her, and John doesn’t talk much, or maybe you didn’t notice. He might have a job in medical engineering. I don’t think Attis works and I’m pretty sure he and John met in the Coryell chat room.’
‘How would you find Attis tomorrow?’
‘I’d go online.’
‘What about a phone number?’
‘He won’t give it to me. He calls me on those temporary prepaid phones. Ike got all my personal information and he’s got that. He let me know by telling me I should strengthen my passwords.’
‘OK, I’m back to where I started with you. Things are almost believable, but not quite, and you need to really think about that. If they’re planning something, there’s not going to be any gray middle ground later. Attis called me a witness. You’ve got to think about what kind of witness you’d want me to be later in a trial.’
‘Whoa, whoa, slow down there, Inspector. You asked me to connect you and I did, and I’m telling you again, right now and here, that I don’t know about anything they’re planning, and if Attis knows anything about this threat the police told the media about this morning, and it sounds like he does, I don’t know anything. I heard the same things you heard and that’s all I know. But you don’t believe me.’