Too Close to the Edge Read online

  “I know. I look like something grabbed out of the ‘free box.’ I’m counting on Jackson’s coffee to help me pass for a human being,” I said, pouring another cup of coffee. “It would have been gracious of you not to mention my appearance. But I suppose you’re entitled to one free dig after the favor you did me. This isn’t my day for your garage.” I had done Howard a favor a few months back, in return for Monday and Friday use of the garage he rented.

  “If that’s the trade-off, I should be able to publicize every defect in your body, and your soul,” Howard said, grinning. That grin had charmed no small number of Berkeley ladies, several of whom, from time to time, had rented him a coveted garage near the station.

  “What are you planning to give me for that kind of presumption?” I demanded.

  “My parking spot.”

  “For how long?”

  “Until further notice. Maybe forever.”

  “For that you could repeat every malicious word I’ve ever spoken. And a few so damning I’ve only thought them.” I finished the coffee. “How come, Howard? I mean, it’s twice as hard to find a parking spot for your Rover than for my bug. With the size of that thing you could be among the elite in Rainbow Village.”

  His smile faded. “Well, I’ve got another parking spot.”

  “Another local lady wants you to park in her driveway?”

  He shifted in his chair. “Well, actually, it’s Nancy, the woman I’ve been seeing for the last couple months. She lives two blocks away.”

  “Oh.” I could feel my face flush. I lifted the coffee cup to my lips, putting it down slowly when I realized it was empty. “Forever, huh?” Howard and I had discussed our various relationships, but it was only when they were on the way out and we needed each other to gripe to. When I had been going through my divorce he had sympathized with a string of complaints that could only have interested another ex-wife. But afterward, when I found an intriguing man, I tended to keep it to myself. And I only suspected Howard had a new lady friend when he seemed preoccupied. Neither of us had talked in terms of forever before. I swallowed. “Pretty serious, huh?”

  “I don’t know. We’re going to see what it’s like, my staying at her place. You know what a zoo my house is. There are five other guys living there now and three have their girlfriends staying most nights. And Dwight’s got that Irish Setter, and his girlfriend’s got a parrot that squawks half the night.”

  “It’s probably got good reason. Setters are bird dogs.”

  “Well, this one’s not too bright. Or at least he hasn’t learned to open a cage.” He drew his legs in toward him so his knees pointed sharply to the transom. Shifting his gaze to the door, he said, “You know I’ve been thinking about moving out of that house for ages, or getting all of them out. And then Nancy offered, and well …”

  “Oh.” I said. It was more serious than I had thought. “Well, best wishes. I hope it goes really well. My house-warming gift to you is going to be no advice based on my own years of matrimony.”

  Now, as Howard laughed, I could see him relaxing. “How about some breakfast?” he asked.

  “I had breakfast,” I said, too quickly. “I had a couple of Night Watch’s donuts a few hours ago.”

  “I mean real food, or as close to real as Wally’s serves. You can tell me about your murder.”

  “Okay, maybe I could use some food.” Maybe hashing out a case, like we’d always done together, was what we both needed now. We stood up and headed out. I said, “I can’t help thinking about Liz yesterday, when I was pushing her chair. She wasn’t like the other times I’d come across her. She was more open, or at least she was sporadically. I didn’t think about it much then, but now, looking back, it seems like she was apprehensive, that she wanted to talk about something, or to be reassured, or even just to connect with someone who …”

  “Someone she could trust?” Howard asked as we crossed the street.

  “Well, yes. Liz knew enough of me from our encounters on the Avenue to have some sense of me. I’d always been straight with her.”

  “And you were pushing her home yesterday. That has to count for something.”

  We headed into Wally’s and settled on stools at the counter. Without asking, Wally filled two cups with coffee and set them in front of us. It wasn’t Peet’s, it wasn’t even good, but as Howard had said early on, “We’re cops; we’re tough. It’ll take more than Wally to make us give up caffeine.”

  I considered ordering pancakes, the nearest thing to respectable junk food, but decided on a fried egg sandwich.

  Wally nodded. “Your body will thank you, Smith.”

  “My sweater will thank me. At least a sandwich I can hold in my hand while I eat.” I had been known to get too caught up in pondering a case. It wasn’t a thing to do with maple syrup dripping from your fork.

  Howard ordered the Wallaroo—three eggs, a waffle, sausage, home fries, toast, and a couple pieces of fruit. Wally had been to Australia over Christmas. To commemorate the trip he had renamed his specials. The standard two eggs, home fries, and toast was now the Wallyrag (runt of the litter). The large breakfast was the Wallaby (small to medium sized kangaroo). And Howard’s Wallaroo was the former Gigantic Breakfast. But Wally hadn’t been sated with his menu changes. Over the counter in bright red letters he had painted, “WALLY—1. Fine, first-rate. 2. Ample, large, strong, or robust. 3. Pleasing or agreeable.” When pressed, he had admitted that Wally and Wallyrag were not Australian but Scottish. But he was so proud of his sign that neither Howard nor I could bring ourselves to mention the other definition of Wally, the noun: a toy, gimcrack, or bauble.

  “If Liz Goldenstern drove her chair to the waterfront, it must have been quite a trip,” I said. “There’s no sidewalk on the freeway overpass. And according to Murakawa she didn’t take the bus.”

  “And no suspicious vehicles down at the marina, right?”

  “Right. No one I interrogated turned up on any of the files. And the only question mark now is Liz’s son, and he hasn’t surfaced.”

  “So where does that leave you, Jill?”

  I took a swallow of coffee. “I don’t know. I’m not the best person to be handling this case.”

  Howard nodded. I had told him as much about my fears as I was willing to admit to anyone. “I wasn’t surprised you hadn’t been home. Didn’t think you could sleep, huh?”

  “The chance didn’t arise, but if it had I would have been staring at the ceiling.”

  “Jill, the idea of paralysis is awful. Most of us just don’t think about it. Why this big thing with you?”

  I took a long swallow of coffee, picked up my sandwich, looked at it, and put it back down. “I told you about my father’s cousin, John.”

  He nodded. “A little. Were you very close to him?”

  “No, on the contrary, I only saw him twice a year—at his birthday in June and sometime around Christmas. I resented him every moment of each visit and for days before and after. He died the summer I was fourteen. I was at camp when they held the funeral. I didn’t realize he was dead till after New Year’s, when it occurred to me that I hadn’t had to see him. Then I didn’t bring it up for two weeks, in case my parents had forgotten and we might still have to go.”

  Howard fingered his cup. “So this guilt is what’s been eating you all these years?”

  “No, no. I did feel bad, but it passed. No, Howard. I guess I never mentioned what happened to cousin John. I know I didn’t. My father told me one Sunday in August when we were watching the white caps break on the beach at Asbury Park. We’d just eaten lunch, so of course we couldn’t go in the water for an hour. That was a strict rule in those days. The water was calm that day. Beyond the breakers, people were lying on air mattresses, barely moving any more than if they’d been stretched out on a blanket on the sand. Even under the umbrella it was scorching. A hundred and three. I remember that. It was the hottest day of the year. My father opened a beer, leaned back on one elbow, and stared out at the o
cean. The beer foamed over the edge of the can and ran across his hand. When he spoke it was like he was talking to himself. He said, ‘I came here with John on a day like this. Hot. He was sweating. We both were. He had his clothes half off before we put the blanket down. He flung them at me. His shirt landed on my head. He looked at me and laughed. He had a big, booming laugh then. He was still laughing as he ran down to the water. He dived in through the breakers. His head hit the bottom. He snapped his neck.’ Howard, Cousin John was eighteen years old then. He never moved an arm or leg again.”

  I swallowed, lifted the coffee cup to take a sip, but my throat closed. “The family didn’t hold my father responsible, but he never forgave himself. He went to see John every Sunday afternoon. He never said where he was going and we knew not to ask. And when he got home it was as if he had taken on the pall of the sick room. As John got weaker over the years, it got worse. But as kids, we didn’t make those connections.” I looked out the window. Gray cars moved through the fog. “For years when I went in the water, it was all I could do to make myself stay in long enough so no one asked me why I was getting out so soon. I never let my feet leave the bottom. And then, finally, I decided I had to deal with it. I had to learn to swim. But even now, I never go in the water without thinking about Cousin John. And I never see anyone in a wheelchair without feeling that pall, and that awful fear.”

  Howard put his hand over mine. “Jackson or Eggs could take this case. You could swap with them.”

  I shook my head. “No. It’s just something I have to deal with. Look, I can dive off the high board at King Pool. I’m tough.”

  Howard grinned, releasing my hand.

  “Besides, I’ve spent all night on this case. I’m not about to plop it in Jackson’s lap.”

  Wally set my dish in front of me. I reached for the mustard and ketchup. Eyeing my hand, Wally shook his head and set down the serving platter that held Howard’s breakfast.

  “So now what, tough detective?” Howard asked, forking a mound of scrambled egg.

  “I don’t know. Before I left her, Liz let me turn her phone machine on for her. That was very unlike her. She was anxious for me to leave. I had the impression there was something she was waiting to hear on that tape.”

  “You could hardly have stayed and eavesdropped. It wasn’t like she was a suspect.”

  “Howard,” I said, holding my sandwich in mid-air. “I did stop outside. I could hear the tape through the window. Guess who the call was from?”

  “Got me.”

  “Herman Ott.”

  “Well, now there’s a pleasant prospect for you. And you, Ott’s favorite cop.”

  Plunking the sandwich on the plate, I stood.

  “Hey,” Wally called from the end of the counter. “You eat that.”

  “Got to run.” To Howard, I said, “I have to catch Pereira before she gets to Ott herself.”

  CHAPTER 13

  “GONE? WHERE IS SHE?” I demanded of Pereira’s fellow beat officer.

  “Doing her rounds. A bottle of milk here, two creams there.” It was an old beat officer joke.

  “Did she say anything about where specifically she was going?”

  “She had to make a check on some vandalism outside a dental office at the top of Solano. After that, who knows.”

  “Thanks.”

  My next stop was at accounting. “I requested two hundred dollars from the discretionary fund. That was three weeks ago, Mrs. Vorkey,” I said. Plump, gray-haired Mrs. Vorkey had ruled accounting when Jackson and Eggs were eyeing their first play pistols.

  “I’ll check.” She pulled a ledger from her second drawer. “March twenty-fifth. Right here,” she said in a tone of crisp satisfaction, as if my question had thus been answered.

  “I haven’t gotten the money,” I said. “But I can take it now,” I added, businesswoman to businesswoman.

  She started to nod, then stopped. “Now wait, eh, Smith.” I suspected Mrs. Vorkey knew every employee of the department by sight, if only to avoid handing Jackson’s money to Howard, or Pereira’s to Eggs. But she never addressed one of us by name without that regal pause. To her we were only names to be filled in after “authorized by” or “disbursed to.” Without looking up, she said, “This requisition has never gotten proper authorization.”

  “I put it through Inspector Doyle.”

  “He has not authorized it.” She held out the form. The line over “authorizing officer” was blank.

  “Why didn’t you send it back, then?” I demanded.

  “Officer, it’s not the purview of the Accounting Department to question an inspector’s decision.”

  “Well, then why didn’t you send it back to me? How long has it been sitting here unsigned?” I said, furious.

  But Mrs. Vorkey wasn’t ruffled. “We in Accounting assume that officers will follow up their requests. It is not our function to track down requestees.”

  I grabbed the authorization form and stomped out, up the stairs, and down the hall to the inspector’s office. “He in?” I asked the division secretary.

  “Working on a report,” she said, which meant he would be anything but agreeable.

  “I need to see him. I’m in a hurry.”

  “Okay,” she said, shaking her head. Picking up the phone, she announced me. “Go on in.”

  Inspector Doyle was slumped behind a desk covered with a mound of white papers, some mimeographed, some Xeroxes, some printouts, and a few just typed. Atop the pile, like the hard yolk of my fried egg sandwich, was a clump of wadded up sheets of yellow paper. The pad from which they’d been ripped was on his lap. He looked irritated and haggard. His face was almost the same color as his short, gray-laced carrot-colored hair. Behind him, the sun was beginning to singe the fog, breaking through in short-lived bursts. It showed the dirt on his window.

  “So, Smith?” he demanded.

  This certainly wasn’t the time to see him. “Quick item, sir,” I said. “Accounting needs a signature on this authorization. It got sent on without one.”

  He nodded, taking the form.

  I waited. When I’d joined the Detail, there was a rumor that Inspector Doyle had cancer. He’d lost a lot of weight. He looked tired and worried. Now four months later, he looked exactly the same, no worse, but certainly no better. The rumor mill had stalled.

  His ruddy forehead wrinkled. “Sit down, Smith.”

  I sat.

  “I thought I had sent this back to you.”

  “No.”

  He shrugged. “It should never have got to Accounting.” He laid the form atop the yellow pad. With both hands he shoved the piles of white papers toward the sides of the desk, as if he were treading paper-strewn water. “The thing is, Smith,” he said, propping an elbow in the space he’d cleared, “I don’t like this type of pay-off. Informants! These guys, they spend half their time thumbing their noses at the law and the other half picking our pockets.”

  It’s a bit late in the day for this kind of idealism, I thought, particularly for the head of Homicide. There had to be something behind Inspector Doyle’s reaction. “Sir, this is Herman Ott. He’d never flaunt the law in public. He’s too careful. Sometimes I wish he would; we’d have a little more to bargain with.”

  His color deepened. I had taken the wrong tack.

  Quickly, I said, “He did give me information I couldn’t have gotten anywhere else. I collared the South Side Basher because of him.”

  “Still, Smith …”

  “Sir, I did discuss this with you then.”

  “I don’t recall any mention of two hundred dollars.”

  “I didn’t know the amount then. I hadn’t done the actual bargaining.” I added, “I assumed you would expect me to check with you first.”

  Grudgingly, he nodded. “I’ll look this over, Smith. It won’t do Ott any harm to wait.”

  “Maybe not, but he left a message for Liz Goldenstern. It could be important. If I don’t come through with that money—money I p
romised him—you can imagine how much he’ll tell me.”

  Inspector Doyle leaned back in his chair. His shirt hung loose. It was obviously a garment from his heavier days. “Ott talks enough when he chooses,” he grumbled.

  Rats. I’d forgotten Herman Ott had testified before the police review commission last month. It was his testimony that had convinced the board to hold another week of hearings, and to call in Inspector Doyle. Ott hadn’t won his point, but his accusations had triggered the board’s request for another, more detailed report, a report Inspector Doyle had to write up, a report that had caused him to miss a three-day conference in sunny Santa Barbara.

  I took a breath, trying to decide on the right tack. I said, “Sir, it’s not a question of Ott. It’s a matter of my reputation. I made a deal, and I’m not holding up my end. If I don’t pay Herman Ott, I’ll never get another thing out of him, or, when the word spreads, any other informant.”

  He pressed his lips together.

  “And everyone else in the department will be tainted. There will be borderline deals that won’t get made, collars we won’t get.”

  With a sigh, he said, “All right, all right, Smith, you’ve made your point. You’ll have your money. But it’ll go through channels like anything else. I’m not shaking up the department for Herman Ott.”

  There was no point in arguing. Muttering the minimum necessary pleasantries, I walked out. The division secretary eyed me for wounds. I shrugged. I’d won the battle, after a fashion, but lost the war. The operation had been a success, but the patient had died. I’d get my money, but by then it would be too late for it to be any use in bargaining with Herman Ott. By then it would just be payment for services rendered. Without it, I could kiss Herman Ott’s reason for calling Liz good-bye.

  The only possible leverage was Pereira’s tax knowledge. To get any use of that, I’d have to catch her before she spent it all on leads to the shoe thief. After an all-nighter learning the intricacies of Form 45-whatever, Connie wasn’t going to be in a mood to share the reward. But she’d be easier to bargain with than Ott. She owed me. I glanced into the bullpen. Her desk was still empty.