by Susan Dunlap
While I waited, I used another line to call one of the few people I would dare expect to answer the phone civilly at this hour of the morning, Vikram Patel at the Indian consulate in San Francisco. Berkeley has a growing population from India and Nepal whose foreign affairs India handles, and many Berkeleyans have been to India. The result is that I’d had a number of conversations with the personnel at that consulate. And since Delhi time was almost twelve hours different from ours, Vikram Patel was forced to keep peculiar hours. When I told him of Kris’s death, Patel, the most courteous of men, expressed proper dismay. Then he paused so long I wondered if the line to San Francisco had been infected by static on my other line to Nepal. Finally, he said, “I do not wish to speak unkindly of the bereaved. I myself do not know the family, but I have heard of them. Often. From my associates in Delhi. They have seen them, often.”
“And they have said,” I prompted.
“They have described the mother dogging them like a beggar whining for baksheesh.”
I sighed. “Poor Kris.”
Patel sighed. “I have not met the unfortunate man. But at least he had a few weeks of normal life. I have met the woman who sent him the ticket to come to this country.”
“The woman?” Kris had told me Diamond brought him over. Bev Zagoya had told me that too. Diamond couldn’t have sent Bev to handle the arrangements because she was in the Alps when Kris came. “Mr. Patel, do you recall what the woman looked like?”
“Sorry. No.”
“Rats.”
“But I do have her name. Here it is. Leila Sandoval.”
“Leila Sandoval! Mr. Patel, can you be sure it was she, not someone using her name?”
“Ah yes, she applied for a visa. So, you see, I saw her and her passport. I am trying to recall her face … I cannot.”
I thanked Patel, hung up the phone, and got hold of Martinez. “Do you have someone who can bring Bev Zagoya down here now?”
“Leonard’s just leaving.”
“Thanks.”
The Kathmandu call came through. The static was heavy. It took me five minutes to convey my message to Kris’s mother, and another five to get from her confirmation that her son’s ticket had indeed come from Leila Sandoval. In another three minutes I was satisfied that she probably didn’t know why an American woman had sent Kris a ticket, that she assumed the woman was connected to Bev Zagoya since she remembered that Bev lived in California. In the final minute she explained that she had four younger children to occupy her, and assumed that the city of Berkeley would be paying for Kris’s funeral.
I had just put the phone down when it rang. Leonard had Zagoya in the interview room.
The interview room is at the far end of the station. Scarred pine tables form a square in the middle. Early in the mornings we hold meetings there. Later we keep “responsibles” in the holding cells that look in on it. Now the room was empty but for Zagoya, still in her yellow shirt and red running shorts, sitting on a pine chair, staring at the wall clock, scowling.
Seeing me her scowl deepened. Before she could speak I said, “Not an hour ago, I told you I wanted the truth. I meant the entire truth, not just what tidbits you chose to toss out. Hasbrouck Diamond didn’t bring Kris to this country. That wasn’t Leila Sandoval’s big favor to mountaineering, having him bring Kris over. She paid his way herself. Why didn’t you tell me?”
I expected anger, or even sheepishness, but Bev Zagoya looked up at me in surprise. “I didn’t think it mattered.”
“In a murder investigation everything matters.”
She hesitated only momentarily. “It was supposed to be a big secret. Leila swore Kris to secrecy. That amused Kris. Leila herself is no secret keeper, but she would have kept this one. She would have loved to put one over on Brouck.”
“Would have loved? Are you saying Diamond knew she brought Kris here?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“How did he find out?”
Bev Zagoya looked at me as if I were the village idiot. “Kris told him.”
Kris had begged me not to tell Diamond he even knew Leila Sandoval. I remembered him lowering his voice, looking at me with those pale blue eyes of his. Had he been lying to me? That possibility shouldn’t have surprised me. Still, I found myself surprised … and offended. I had to force myself to take the possibility seriously. Or, of course, maybe the one lying was Bev. “Why would Kris have admitted being in the enemy camp?”
She shook her head, “I wasn’t there. I was in the Alps then. I don’t know what went on.”
I sat heavily on the edge of the table and this time made no effort to restrain my disgust. “Don’t tell me you came back, heard about Leila paying for Kris’s ticket, and you never so much as asked why? No one’s that incurious.”
Lieutenant Davis, the morning watch commander, opened the glass door to his office and headed across the room. Zagoya followed each step with her eyes. When he disappeared onto the stairs she looked back at the wall clock, scowled again, and said, “I don’t know why Leila brought Kris here. Kris didn’t know. But Kris was a kid with an eye for a chance and he took it. Then Brouck realized what a plus Kris could be in promoting my new expedition and—well, you know how Brouck and Leila are—he co-opted Kris.”
“And Leila was so put out that she killed Kris before he could perform?” A trace of sarcasm came through, but only a trace. With what I’d heard of Sandoval I couldn’t rule out that kind of reaction. Zagoya didn’t answer; she stared angrily at the wall clock, as if she begrudged every second that ticked by. I pressed her for leads to Sandoval’s whereabouts. I asked about my only other possibility of a lead, the boy with the tattoo, but Zagoya swore she knew nothing about him.
She sat glaring at the clock, and I was so irritated at her attitude, I was tempted to drag out her stay here. As it was I restrained the urge to comment on her busy schedule or her exemplary ability to concentrate—at least on our clock.
I looked down from our clock to her empty wrist. A watch was not something a mountaineer would do without. When you’re working your way up a mountain face and there are only so many daylight hours left, your life depends on knowing the time. And clearly, she had not done without one. Her tan outlined the place where a watch had been. “Where’s your watch?” I asked, suspecting the answer before she said it.
She jerked her eyes away from the clock. “Kris,” she said, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “I gave it to him.” She forced a smile. “I didn’t want to. But you know how Kris was. He loved it, he wanted it. He’d had so little, it was hard to refuse him. It was sort of a celebration of his coming here.” Standing, she said, “I feel a little awkward about asking this, but when you’re through with the investigation, I would like to have it back. I just bought it in Switzerland. It was an expensive watch.”
I let her go, and walked back into my office. It was still early, but not too early to call the hospital. I dialed and got through to the nurses’ station nearest Mr. Kepple’s room. Mr. Kepple didn’t have a phone. The report on his condition was “resting comfortably.” Nothing more. I asked the nurse to ask Mr. Kepple about the boy with the tattoo. “That boy was in his Trees class, in gardening,” I added. “Ask him what the boy’s name is, and see if he has any idea where I might find him.”
She put me on hold. It took almost as long as calling Kathmandu for her to return. “Sorry to keep you waiting. It took me a while to get an answer to your question.”
I could believe that.
“I’m afraid Mr. Kepple doesn’t know where to find your friend. He says that Cypress—that’s his name, you know, like the tree—”
Like the tattoo.
“—he never finished the class. Mr. Kepple seemed to think he was thrown out of the school.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Can you ask him?”
“Doctor came in while I was there. He’s with him now. I couldn’t interrupt.”
“Thanks.”
&nb
sp; I called Howard. I woke him up. It was still not quite eight in the morning. “I need a favor.”
“Some people say ‘Good Morning.’”
“I’m a police detective. That is good morning.”
“I missed you last night.”
Despite the fact that there was no one else in my tiny office, I lowered my voice. “Me, too.” Then I told him about Mr. Kepple and his hospitalization, and his observation about Cypress.
Howard laughed. I could picture him propped on an elbow in the middle of his double bed, the tuft of red hairs on his bare chest matted from the night, the door to the balcony that overlooked the back yard open despite the cold fog outside. It was a nice room. Dark green walls, white molding, with big windows letting in the sunlight that filtered through the live oak tree in the back yard. No wonder Howard loved his house. No wonder he was hurt that I didn’t. Maybe I should … I reminded myself of its other attributes: the sounds of jazz, rock, television, barking dogs, a baying beagle who paced along the upstairs gallery as if each room were inhabited by rabbits, and the screams of lovers and ex-lovers in one or more of the other five bedrooms coming through the walls at any hour of night.
“And so, Detective,” Howard said, “you figure that there aren’t too many reasons why a guy gets thrown out of a government-sponsored gardening class, right? And you want to trade off my associations in Vice and Substance Abuse and have me check my sources and see if Cypress was dealing.”
“That and a local address for him.”
“Okay. But this’ll cost you.”
I smiled. “How much?”
“Come by and see.” Some place in the house the beagle bayed.
I could feel the tension in his silence, the tension that was always there now when he coupled a lascivious proposition with an invitation to his house. In my mind, the one detracted from the other. But I wasn’t sure Howard was clear on that. And this was hardly the time to comment on the infuriating whines, whistles, and screechings in that house he loved so, as opposed to the seductive appeal of his sleekly muscled chest with its light mat of sun-goldened hairs, or his cute little butt. Quickly, I said, “This is the oddest homicide I’ve ever had,” falling into our sure-fire way of handling awkwardness. “There’s the squabble. Now I find that Leila Sandoval paid for Kris Mouskavachi to come to this country. Why? This is a woman who exited a divorce with no money. And then she spends a thousand dollars to fly a strange kid over here.”
“How did she even know he existed?” Howard asked. There was no hesitancy in his voice. It was one of his charming qualities this ability to throw himself wholeheartedly into the problem under discussion.
“So she brings him here, Howard, and then he defects to Diamond.”
“Nice kid.”
“But, Howard, Kris was still hedging his bet. Diamond offered to loan him money for college, he gave him his nicest guest room, and how did Kris react? Kris put not one personal item in that room. He didn’t even sleep there. He slept on the deck.”
Took his money and scorned his house. Kris knew how to hit Diamond where it hurt, huh?”
I swallowed. “Yeah,” I said, but the word was barely audible. I wasn’t sure Howard had heard it at all, much less understood that I had caught the personal implications.
The beagle bayed. For once I was thankful. I said, “I’ll talk to you later.”
I could hear Howard’s quick intake of breath. “Where you off to now?”
“To get another man out of bed.”
14
MAYBE HOWARD WOULD FIND Cypress. Maybe Cypress would lead me to Leila Sandoval. But I couldn’t wait. It was time for my one trump card: Herman Ott.
I headed for Ott’s office. Patrol hadn’t reported a sighting, but I was familiar enough with Ott to know he could have gotten back unseen into the two rooms that housed his office and himself.
Amazingly, it was not quite eight A.M. My reward for starting the day at 4:37.
Two hours from now, Telegraph Avenue would be bustling with students making their way to more civilized ten A.M. classes, or even more civilized cafes, with shop owners unlocking doors and street sellers unfolding card tables and display cases. But now the sidewalk held only two undergraduates running in tandem, clutching notebooks, and a street person who had been an Avenue regular longer than I’d been on the force. He was easing himself up from the vestibule of the pizza shop next to Herman Ott’s building. The fog clouded the shop windows and blurred the signs; there was a black-and-white quality to the street.
I could have driven another thirty yards down Telegraph Avenue and parked in a red zone. Instead I left the patrol car double-parked in front of Herman Ott’s building. I was tempted to turn the pulser lights on, but I didn’t want to overdo it.
I made my way up the staircase and turned left into the hallway that formed a square around it. As I passed the other “offices” the rhythm picked up and I caught bursts of high-pitched television voices and frenetic music from Saturday morning cartoons, and giggles of the children watching them.
Ott’s two-room office and home was at the end of the hall. As always, the office door was closed. The other room, I knew from my numerous visits here, contained a cot, hot plate, a chair with springs springing, and a homogeneous pile of clothes, sheets, and half-read newspapers that made walking across the floor akin to traversing the pasture at the end of mud season. The door was nailed shut. But Ott was in there, I was ninety percent sure of that. With his clientele Ott wasn’t likely to leave his office untended long enough for word to get around. Ott was not a morning person. By nature he was not even a day person. With the same fervor with which a bodybuilder nurtures muscles and a year-round tan, Ott maintained his sallow complexion. Right now, he’d be lying under a heap of yellow blankets on the cot. He was in there all right. But if I knocked on the door, he’d never answer.
I stepped softly down the hall to the nailed-closed door, bent down, poked open the mail slot, and stuck my ear next to it. No snores. He probably even had his nose under the yellow blankets. Probably all of him that was visible was a few greasy strands of blond hair. I rattled that door handle as loud as I could, and listened. A groan.
Behind me, across the hall, a door squeaked open. A young woman peered out. I smiled. She shrugged. She might well want to warn Ott, but it was too late for that.
I pushed Ott’s mail slot in and let it bang back. In and bang. In and bang. Then I rattled the handle again. I smacked both hands against the door and ran loudly down the hall in my best imitation of the mischievous children that Ott had grumbled about. It wasn’t an Academy Award performance, but then Ott wasn’t exactly awake, either.
I was rewarded with a grunt.
It took three more runs through the whole routine before I could hear Ott cursing and clambering up and heading for the door in the office. He flung it open, and before he could get both feet out into the hall I was inside.
He glared at me. “What the hell— You! Hey, you have a warrant or something?”
I held up my hand. “Skip it, Ott.” I settled on the edge of his desk. “I don’t have time for amenities. We have a common goal here.”
“No, we don’t, Smith. My only goal is to get you out of here and get back to bed. Unless you’d like to join me there.”
I stared at Ott. Mustard-colored sweatpants spanned his round belly and flapped around his skinny legs. A lemon-and-ochre-swirl turtleneck came down not quite far enough to camouflage a burst of pale fuzz in the neighborhood of where his waist might have been. His thin blond hair lay plastered to his head except for one greasy clump that poked out above his left ear, and his eyes were so caked with sleep it looked like the sandman had dumped his whole load and taken the rest of the night off. “Ott,” I said, “the sight of you in the morning would be enough to make a lesser woman turn to sheep.”
“Out!”
“The Sandoval case—it’s murder now.”
Ott had been about to repeat his order. Instead, he twist
ed his fists around his eyes. I knew he was using the time to try to figure who might have been killed, and what his own reaction should be. I gave him a full sixty seconds; I needed him awake.
“Who?” he asked.
“Kris Mouskavachi.”
A small shiver rippled down Ott’s flesh. It was a big reaction for Herman Ott, who prided himself on never reacting, never getting personally involved, and above all, never giving anything away. That shiver revealed more than half an hour of questioning would have drawn out. A fairer person might have told him that Hasbrouck Diamond might have been the intended victim. I didn’t; I went with the advantage of that shiver. “Leila Sandoval is in the middle of this. And she’s still not home.”
“So find her, Smith. You’re a hotshot detective.”
“Ott, I don’t have time to run through our usual song and dance. I’ve got a call in to Humboldt County. It’s only a matter of time before we bring Cypress in, and Cypress ties you into Sandoval and that performance on the street yesterday. Do I make myself clear?” I didn’t know whether Ott had been a party to Sandoval’s escape, or if she’d used him. For the moment it made no difference; Ott would be more likely to deal with the consequences of the former than admit the latter.
Ott leaned back against the door. He muttered, “You got nothing, Smith.” Then he waited. I knew that look: puffy eyelids half closed over deep-set hazel eyes. It meant: Make me an offer.
But I wasn’t about to deal, not on this one. “Ott, let me put it in the terms of those volleyball games you like to watch so much. The woman spiked me. She spiked me, but you gave her the lay-up to do it.”
Ott relaxed back against the edge of the door. It wavered from side to side.
I stepped forward, grabbed the door above Ott’s head, and slammed it shut. As Ott jerked forward and hobbled for his balance on the balls of his surprisingly long narrow feet, I said, “Sandoval’s got land in Humboldt County. Maybe she’s there. Maybe she’s hiding out with someone in Berkeley. I don’t care. You see that she is here by noon.”