by Susan Dunlap
“You . . . !” He was such an idiot words failed me. “Is there some reason you go out of your way to offend people?”
“Skill.”
“I’m impressed.”
He was grinning. “Listen, it’s illusion—something you of all people should know the value of. Now when the question comes up about us being there, no one’s going to ask why, they’re just going to talk about me baiting him. They’ll be thinking about Broder.”
“Very clever. But it may not be clever enough. Korematsu’s a decent guy, but now . . . You better hope illusion’s more important than fingerprint results. You know damned well Broder’d sell you for stew.”
The elevator car bounced. The gate opened.
John shoved me out, then grabbed my arm, and pulled me behind a Dumpster.
“Wha—”
“Quiet!”
“Hey I . . .”
“Hold it!” It was Broder.
An aide ran for the elevator, planted himself in the doorway. Broder strode toward it. He was so close I could hear his breathing. I didn’t dare look at John.
The group stepped into the elevator and the car rose.
The instant it cleared the ceiling, John and I made a dash for the car. Neither of us spoke.
The car was blocked in. “You drive.” He flipped me the keys. “I’ll go find out who’s behind us and get him down here.”
“Don’t bother. It’s Korematsu’s.” I recognized the red Mini Cooper.
“Asshole! No wonder he was so fucking smug up there.” He started back to the elevator.
I grabbed his arm. “What? You think he did this on purpose? This is a big fucking case and he was racing here! You flatter yourself.”
“Screw you. Cops notice. That’s what we do! Of course, he—”
“Listen!” I hissed. “We’re in a tight enough spot. Not just your car—us. Show a little sense, for a change.”
He shook off my hand.
I grabbed back and turned him so we were glare to glare. “I can get the car out. But you need to stop making things worse.”
He hesitated.
“Think how pissed Korematsu’ll be when he comes down and it’s gone.”
He turned toward his car. It was parked at the edge of the lot. That was good. Cars were jammed in on both sides—bad. Ahead was a steep grade and a three foot drop—very bad. If I could anchor a wedge in front, pull the wheel full out to the left and hit the gas hard, I just might be able to . . . to land in the Dumpster jutting out from behind the building.
I bent and checked the other direction. The drop was worse. “If I had a wedge—”
“If you had a helicopter!” John was shaking his head.
“I’ve driven—”
“—cars they tow and crush once you’ve had your way with them. Forget it! Not in my car!”
“Okay, then let’s just get out of here—”
“I can’t leave it. No cop walks away from his car and takes the bus. I might as well get a spray can and write: QUESTION ME! on the trunk.” He glared back at the Mini. “Bastard knows this is mine. Bet he was grinning ear to ear when he hemmed me in.”
For half a second he was distracted by six burly firemen walking out of the elevator.
I shoved him in the opposite direction. “Meet me on the street!”
“What do you—”
But I was running toward the men. “Hey, can you guys help me? I don’t know if it’s even possible, but see that little car over there, the Mini? It’s got me blocked in. If you could just get it a few feet back.”
“You want us to pick it up?” A crew-cut blond raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, well, I guess it may be too much to expect—”
“No, wait, you’ve got a winch, don’tcha, Dave?”
“Yeah, sure. If we pulled up the bumper—”
“You got the fire department to move it?” John asked as he slid into the passenger seat. “How the hell—”
“I flashed my red curls. We got lucky. So now, where’re we going?” I stopped for a light and glanced at him. I’d spent plenty of time figuring out where to hide in this city when I was avoiding him, but before, this brother had always been the one pursuing. “How long do you guess we have?” He understood that I meant before Broder, Korematsu, and the gang wanted his head on a platter.
“Ten minutes? Two minutes? As soon as they realize that black car up there on floor five is mine.”
“Your car? She drove your car up there?”
“Circumstantial, but yeah.”
“Why would she go there? A construction site? Don’t they have guards?”
“Unmarked cars aren’t that unmarked. Some guards give them a pass. They worry more about thugs carrying stuff out than about broads. Whatever. By tomorrow they’ll be lawyering up and we’re not going to know shit.”
“But how’d she even think of it? She was a tourist. Wait, maybe that’s it! The entrance to that parking lot’s really confusing. Plus it’s off the most confusing bit of road in town. One minute you’re going along Harrison, you make a left onto a city street and suddenly it’s turned into the entrance to the Bay Bridge. That parking lot entrance—in the dark, it looks like just another lane, a last chance to keep from getting stuck on the bridge.”
“Hmm. Want to know what I was doing while you were diverting Korematsu? Taking note of the scratches on the hood, the blue fiber caught on the bumper.”
“Omigod! She was hit? No wonder her trajectory—Omigod, poor Karen!” I coasted through a yellow light. “Hit! She didn’t jump. Didn’t do a running leap. Hit! Jeez, John, someone killed her! Someone stepped on the gas and—”
“Someone in my car. That’s what Broder’s going to find out plenty soon.”
“This is seriously bad,” I said, my knuckles white on the wheel.
“You don’t want to think how bad. If I only get canned I’ll be thanking St. Jude. I’m a sworn officer. I’m withholding evidence in a capital case.”
He didn’t say the word prison but it hung between us. ROGUE COP SENT TO SLAMMER. My whole body went cold, imagining the headlines. I reached over and rested my hand on his arm, and he didn’t shrug me off.
When I could trust my voice, I asked, “Were you involved with her?”
I thought he’d shake me off now, but he was listening to his own thoughts. “I’m the guy who’s always got things planned and double-checked, the guy who’d run a make on his own mother. Things are falling apart faster than I can chase after them. I don’t know who I am.”
I wanted to pull over and just take him in my arms. But the only reason he could speak at all was the solitude of the dark car in the dark and empty street and me driving on. So I said nothing. Not at first, anyway. Then I thought of something, a question I needed to pose.
“There’s a koan that says: a master makes a magnificent cart. If he removes the wheels and the axel and the cart box and all the parts, then what is it? John, what is Karen Johnson now?”
“What was she before?”
I started. That wasn’t a bad question: what was the cart before it was built? But John wasn’t asking about carts, or about Karen Johnson’s essential being.
“Before she stole your car? Don’t you know?”
“There are things I know, or things I thought I knew. But nothing I knew or imagined or guessed wrong about explains why she’d do what she did. It’s crazy. Like a sci-fi novel where you step into another dimension and everything looks normal until you realize the laws of nature don’t hold.”
“What do you know? John? John! How’d you ever get involved with Karen in the first place?”
“Gary.”
“What did Gary say?”
“Gary, dammit! Where the hell is he?” John flipped open his phone, then closed it again. There was no one he dared call. If you spend your life being a police detective and suddenly your connections, your status, and your power to demand answers are taken away, then what are you?
“Gary g
ot you involved? How? Why?”
“Later. Things’re going to close in on us, real soon. Where is he, dammit?”
“We’re going to have to split up, John. You check his house, Mom’s, wherever.”
“Those are the first places they’ll look.”
“Then we need to move fast.”
“And you? What are you going to do?”
“Drop me at the zendo.”
“You’re going to meditate?”
“No. I merely want you to be able to be honest about one thing.”
He made a gurgling noise I took for a half-swallowed laugh, a grudging admission that I had more street smarts than he’d imagined. Then when I pulled up at the corner of Pacific he squeezed my shoulder. “Be careful—more careful than you ever think you should be. Put your phone on vibrate. Time’s 12:02. I’ll call you in an hour.”
“Yeah,” I said, for want of a more appropriate word. How could I not be tongue-tied? Twenty-four hours ago, I’d never have believed I’d be conspiring with him to withhold evidence and stay out of the clutches of the SFPD, his once sacrosanct employer. It was as if the entire fabric of the known universe had turned inside out.
I started toward the zendo. Everything on the block was dark. Even Renzo’s Café on the corner was closed. Only the zendo might be unlocked. Once in the zendo I might be able—just for a moment—to step back from everything, to see it all as merely thoughts and sensations, to take away the axle and the wheels of it and sit there in the dark with what it would be.
But I knew Leo, Garson-roshi, would be upstairs. There was no way I could involve him. So I turned back toward Columbus, heading for Gary’s office. At the corner I picked up my pace, relieved when I crossed into North Beach by the normalcy of people still eating in trattorias and drinking coffee at outside tables. I was glad to be in a place where tragedy was a burnt pizza crust.
The last time I’d been here—what, two hours ago?—I’d been greeted by a “body” behind the desk. I let myself in.
The room was darker than before. Now the single streetlamp shone mutedly through the fog. I stood beside the door, letting my eyes adjust, straining to catch any sound of breathing through the snore of the fog-horn. I couldn’t resist checking under the desk first thing, but of course no one was there now. I stood against the wall, as I’d done earlier, looking across the tundra of case folders. Karen Johnson’s file could be anywhere, bunched with others by any rationale, alphabetical being the least of the possibilities.
Think like Gary.
I plopped in his chair. It was a high-backed leather swivel. The dim light flowed from the cupola windows behind. Odd that Gary would choose a place like this for its charm and view, then sit with his back to it. But then, I realized, it made perfect sense. His clients sitting nervously on the other side of his desk eyed the view; Gary eyed them.
If I were Gary . . . I pictured Karen Johnson facing him. She’d cross one leg over the other as he shifted the stack of folders he’d scooped up to clear a place for her. She’d be amused by the office, just as I’d been the first time I met Gary here. He’d have put the stack where? I concentrated, channeling my brother’s habits of mind, trying to re-create his routines.
If this were her first appointment, he’d make notes on a yellow pad and put them in a folder with her name written on a sticky. By her next visit her file would have a typed label and be waiting on his desk. Even after he’d sent her off to meet me, it would have sat there until he heard my call, or something else sent him racing out of here.
Holding my hand over the flashlight I checked the desk. “Oh, shit!”
Someone had been in here! Someone had been rooting around on his desk. With the insane mess of clutter no one, not even Gary, would realize the place had been searched—no one but me. But I’d been perched on the corner of the desk when I’d been talking to John there, and now that space was piled high. What was going on here? I made for the door.
Halfway there, I stopped. Whoever was here had looked through the cases; he was hardly coming back.
Unless he was still here.
Common sense said: clear the building pronto. It said: call John. But I didn’t have time to deal with him telling me to get out quick. Be careful, more careful than you think you should.
I walked back to the desk. The concession I made to carefulness was that I knelt on the floor, head just about desk level so I could scan the room as I examined documents. If anyone moved I’d . . . do something.
No luck. I found nothing, and no Karen Johnson–related notes or file usefully presented themselves. But I couldn’t leave empty. I surveyed the floor. Folded open was the Las Vegas Sun. Dammit, had Gary gone to Las Vegas? Was that where he was hiding out? Or . . . or had he advised Karen to go there to get her divorce? Or for some other reason? Or was Vegas just a neon herring?
I stood. My knees screamed. Gary needed thicker carpeting.
A clock chimed. I panicked, then forced myself to smile. He needed a quieter clock.
It chimed again. Two o’clock. How had it gotten so late? It’d been between eleven and midnight when we left the site, midnight when John dropped me off—when he said he’d call in an hour! He would never, ever be unreliable, especially now. I tried his cell. This number is not accepting calls, the automated voice buffed me.
John, I wanted to yell, where are you? What happened? Why isn’t your phone working?
11
I RACED OUT of Gary’s office. And found myself standing on the sidewalk, in the fog-thick middle of the night without a clue what to do next. I had three brothers and at this moment they were all missing. My anguish over Mike remained at the center of my life. In the two decades before I gave up my exile and braved the city again, it had been possible to have days when I didn’t flash on his taking me on my first trip to the notorious Haight-Ashbury or cutting under the fence to climb around the ruins of the Sutro Baths, and whole weeks when disasters on the news didn’t spark new fears about what might’ve happened to him. Back at home now, as I was, every block held memories of us kids dangling our feet on the cable car’s outside benches, pushing through crowds to the edge of the Bay to watch the fireworks explode overhead. But last night, worry about Gary’d eclipsed all that.
And now the crisis was John.
I’d liked Karen. Obviously, John had liked her, too. But she’d grabbed his car and left him to twist in . . . in his own stupidity and whatever else he wasn’t telling me. Then she turned up dead! I didn’t know what to think—or feel—anymore.
Without conscious decision I found myself walking back toward the zendo. North Beach prides itself on its night life, but there’s a limit and 2:00 A.M. on a cold soggy night blew through it. The only things moving on Columbus were sheets of yesterday’s papers skittering toward the financial district. I picked up my pace. By the time I crossed Broadway into the Barbary Coast I was admitting to myself that being cold, exhausted, without plan or car was no way to begin a search. Silently as possible, I went in and padded upstairs to my room.
I am the abbot’s assistant. He—Leo Garson—is understanding about my work taking me away. But when I am here I make a point of fulfilling my duties. My alarm blasted at 6:30 and at ten to 7:00 I was in the courtyard striking the clappers—polished wooden blocks—three times to announce the morning sitting. Inside the zendo oil lamps glowed but cast no shadows. The large, brick-walled room was cold and the black cushions—zafus—on black mats—zabutons—lined either side in an unmoving procession toward the altar. I bowed to the altar, lit the candle and broke a stick of incense in two to set in the ash near the sides of the bowl. Waiting sticks, the two stubs were called.
At 7:00 when Garson-roshi entered, I handed him a full stick to place in the middle of the bowl. The pungent aroma ribboned into the room as I took my seat, turned toward the wall and placed my hands in a mudra, left hand resting in the bed of the right palm. They say one reason monks traditionally sat in full lotus was so they could fall asleep an
d not fall over. I’ve attained this in half lotus. My head drooped; I snapped awake. I’d been dreaming of Gary’s enigmatic phone call, me curious but not worried. Again I woke, remembering Karen Johnson. Something about her hadn’t been in sync. What? Again I woke, this time with no picture, only the echo of feeling she’d understood the urgency of my search for Mike.
I badly wanted to talk to Leo, to have him brush away my clutter of extraneous thoughts, but to tell him too much would open him to police focus; that would be terrible for him and worse for me. The problem with Leo was his proclivity for answering questions truthfully. Tell him and I might as well cut out the middle man and just call Korematsu for a chat.
I wasn’t sitting zazen at all! I was thinking! I might as well be in an armchair with a latte! I inhaled, focused on my breath, noted my pale shadow on the wall, the sounds of breathing behind me, the wind, the rush of traffic, a stomach gurgling. I’d complained to Leo once about my thinking: I think I’m sitting zazen, but then without noticing I realize I’ve just been sitting here thinking. Leo had smiled and said, Just keep bringing your attention back. That’s the practice. Thoughts are illusion. Goals are illusion. Everything changes. Once again I brought my attention back to my breathing. When the bell rang to end the period. I turned and was surprised to see six people in the room.
Ten minutes later, after I’d put out the candle and sifted the ash so the altar was ready for evening zazen, I caught Leo upstairs. “Roshi, you have a moment?”
“Always.” He grinned. Life in this very moment is a basic concept of Zen. Life is this moment—this moment—this moment, nothing more. Of course he had a moment. “Sit.”
I stepped into his room, a narrow cell like my own, with low Japanese dresser and chair, also low. He settled on his futon and crossed his legs. Instead of the robes in which he’d led the service he now wore black drawstring pants and a T-shirt. The sweater he’d added would be too warm in an hour.
I wasn’t about to reveal too much, but there was one question that would cause no problems. “Roshi, how do you proceed off a hundred-foot pole?”