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  Howard and Pereira shook their heads. The first time I had seen Brother Cyril, I’d laughed. What I’d expected was a street thug who’d been cleaned up for trial—big near-shaven head, round face, and muscles that screamed steroids. But Brother Cyril was a slight middle-aged man with thinning light brown hair. Seen on the Avenue, he’d have been taken for an undergraduate’s father, the type who would hesitate before suggesting his son change majors and the before asking his daughter about birth control. He looked like a man who would wait at the end of the line forever. Now I could see his pale eyes were a bit too close together, his nose a bit too narrow, lips thin, chin falling too quickly back toward his neck.

  He looked like a man his half of the audience would have kicked out of the way. They were the street thug models I had expected Cyril to be: young, muscled, surly, with black pants and shirts and bulbous arms that sported tattoos.

  “How does Cyril keep ’em in line? Fire and brimstone?”

  “More likely drugs and sex, Howard,” Pereira said. “Maybe hypnosis. I can see him with candles and a swinging watch.”

  “More likely a computer password or a delete key,” I said. Cyril reminded me of the nerds I’d known in school before nerds became stylish. Then they were just bright, pimply guys, seething at the ludicrous unfairness of being shunned by brawny guys, pretty girls, all clearly their inferiors. And when they got even, they dished out excruciating humiliations that echoed loud and long.

  Howard gave my shoulder a squeeze. “I hope ol’ Bryant’s got plenty of security off camera. If the Righteous leap the aisle, they’ll pound the vendors into parchment before he can call nine-one-one.”

  Bryant Hemming must have had a similar thought. His clean-cut smile looked brittle, and when he spoke, his voice had lost that easy, hopeful tone. He patted Cyril’s chair. “In one sentence, Brother Cyril, tell me what you want.”

  But Cyril didn’t sit. He looked directly at the camera almost shyly, as if he were surprised a nerd like him was allowed to speak. His voice was soft, his tone thoughtful. “They seem so innocent, these out-of-time hippies with their feather necklaces and their peace symbols, but what do we know about them? Let me tell you”—his words were coming faster, his voice higher—“they are money changers. They allow drugs, licentiousness, baby killing. They are money changers. And what did Jesus do when he saw them in the temple? He cast out all them that sold and bought and overthrew their tables and”—he glared at the vendors with an intensity nothing in his bland face had foreshadowed—“he obliterated their tables and their caged pigeons.” He started toward them. The camera preceded him, focusing on Serenity Kaetz and her graven bird breastplate. She shrank back as if Cyril had struck her there. Colleagues shoved closer, their faces narrowed in anger. But even they reflected a fear left by Cyril’s piercing accusation.

  There was a rumble of muffled voices as the camera shifted. At the side of the screen black-clad biceps jerked up and bruised forearms thrust forward in a jumble of movement. Cyril was at the edge of the stage before Hemming caught him.

  “Berkeley’s as foreign ground as he could find for that tirade. What’s he after?” Pereira asked.

  “If he were crazy, the Avenue’d welcome him,” I said. “He could shriek and shout and dress in a coat of many colors. Citizens’d line up to defend his rights. Then he couldn’t offend people enough. He’d be right up there with Hate Man or the guy who sold acres on the moon.”

  “ ’Course people’d blow off his message,” Pereira said. “But they will anyway. What we got here is just another wacko out for the limelight.”

  I shook my head. “Looking for attention, sure. But wacko, no way. This guy gives me the creeps. It’s like his parts don’t mesh. I can’t tell what’s real and what’s costume. Or what’s behind it all.”

  Howard was strangely silent on the subject.

  On the screen Hemming was still smiling, but now the smile seemed real. He looked not at the camera but at Cyril. “Brother Cyril, in one sentence what is it you’re asking for? We don’t expect our viewers to remember more than that. They’re watching you.”

  I thought Cyril bristled at Hemming’s subtle condescension—Hemming was exactly the popular jock type that nerds hated—but he held himself so stiffly I couldn’t be sure. The audience was silent. The silence lengthened. Finally Cyril thrust his inadequate chin forward. “We demand a platform for our free speech rights and rights of assembly, right on Telegraph Avenue, the home of free speech.”

  Serenity Kaetz jumped to her feet, rattling metal. “If he’s there yammering and haranguing, we might as well move out. Our customers aren’t going to put up with that.”

  “Yeah, what about our rights?” came a female voice from the audience.

  Hemming put a hand on the shoulder of each adversary. “Let’s sit back down. It’ll make things easier for the cameraman,” he said, again reminding them of the greater audience judging them. “Remember we’re here to find middle ground. So,” he said, settling between them, “Ms. Kaetz, you would like Brother Cyril to stay off Telegraph?”

  “And stop hassl—”

  “Right, Ms. Kaetz, and you, Brother Cyril, want your voice to be heard on the Avenue?”

  The preacher was poised to retort but seemed to think better of it.

  Hemming let a moment pass, then spoke directly to the camera. “This is one of those issues that make you say: How can you possibly come up with a solution that pleases everyone? And that’s the trick—no, trick’s a bad word, because there’s no trick to mediating. The reason mediation works is that we’re all basically decent, honest people who are willing to give a little as long as we know we’re getting…a fair deal.” With that Hemming looked at each adversary. He offered them that small smile of understanding. But when he sat back in his chair and let his eyes close, he seemed to lose control of his face, and his mouth tightened into a greedy little grin. The not-quite-quiz-show music played in the background. The audience knew the routine and waited.

  As one, Howard, Pereira, and I reached for crab dip. Howard selected a chip, held it in abeyance. “If he can get Cyril and his blackshirts on Telegraph and off Telegraph at the same time, he can forget this mediation business and take over Cyril’s church.”

  “With that kind of miracle, he can take over the pope’s church.” I took the chip from his hand and popped it in my mouth.

  “He’s got to have the fix in. The last thing a guy like Cyril wants is to make peace.” Howard’s voice was tight. He should have been lounging happily, still warmed by the afternoon among friends. I glanced over at him; his jaw was set firm, his tense gaze square on the TV screen.

  Bryant Hemming wasn’t precisely smiling but it looked as if he couldn’t keep completely at bay the satisfaction or maybe the triumph he felt. “This dispute seemed insoluble, right? But the wonderful thing with mediation is that there are no views so divergent they can’t be brought together. If the Israelis and the Palestinians can talk peace; if the Irish can sit down with the Brits”—the grin took control of his face—“then well-meaning people even here in Berkeley can come to agreement.”

  The camera panned the audience: tense street vendors sitting with their arms crossed tightly over their ribs and the black-shirted Angels poised to shoot from their chairs. If either group sent good wishes across the aisle, no glance revealed it. All eyes were straight ahead, all lips pressed hard together, all brows sullenly lined.

  The camera moved in close on Bryant Hemming as he lifted his head and smiled again at Kaetz and Cyril. “Ms. Kaetz, Brother Cyril, there are some things you have in common. You’re both concerned about the drug dealers in People’s Park right off Telegraph and the pernicious influence they have on the Avenue, right?”

  It was a moment before each nodded, Kaetz looking confused, Cyril suspicious. Drugs weren’t either of their main complaints. And they, no more than we, expected dealers to be swept off the Avenue for good.

  “And you both want your message, your
product, as it were, to reach the shoppers on the Avenue, right?”

  This time the nods came more quickly.

  “So here’s what we’ll do. You’re familiar with Hyde Park Corner in London, their sacred ground of free speech. Why not have a Hyde Park Corner here in Berkeley? We have speakers in Sproul Plaza on campus, but no place set aside in the city itself. And Telegraph’s the primo place.”

  “Aw right!” Whistles and bass cheers from half the audience seemed to startle Hemming. Beside him Brother Cyril’s thin lips curled up into a disbelieving smile. Not much of Serenity Kaetz was on camera, but it was enough to show a fist clamping down hard.

  Hemming held up his hands. “Let me finish. Telegraph Avenue is primo but not perfect. Perfect is the corner of People’s Park, near enough to be seen on Telegraph, and with a speaker system every word can be piped out there.”

  “Hey! What the—” came from the audience.

  Brother Cyril’s thin smile vanished, his narrow features sucked in tightly, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as if desperate to plug the venom about to spew forth. His fingers squeezed into fists. He didn’t speak, and the only thing that revealed his fury was a slight, uncontrollable bobbing of his Adam’s apple. I felt I could see a hard black knot smoldering behind it; he would never be able to swallow without its blocking his windpipe.

  Hemming reached a hand toward the preacher’s shoulder, then seemed to reconsider. “And here’s the added good you’ll be doing, Brother. You’ll fill the park with righteous men, believers. You’ll create the kind of atmosphere drug dealers hate. Your message will be cleaning up People’s Park.”

  Serenity Kaetz’s expression turned to one of amazement.

  But Hemming didn’t see that. His eyes never left Cyril. Perhaps it took the brother a minute to realize how bad he would look refusing the deal. Or perhaps he spotted unintended possibilities in Bryant’s offer.

  “A fair deal, right, Brother Cyril?” Hemming’s voice fluttered.

  Cyril stood stone still for a moment before extending his hand to Serenity Kaetz. By the time she shook it, she was smiling. Cyril’s sucked-in expression never changed. The theme music rose, the camera moved in close on the clasped hands, and the credits rolled.

  I stretched. “How long do you give that deal?”

  Pereira tucked a foot under her thigh. “It’s four days to Thanksgiving. If Brother Cyril doesn’t manage to empty the Avenue of buyers this weekend, the truce could make it for two weeks. But if he ruins the biggest shopping weekend of the year, I’d say we’re out there in uniform, batons in hand, by Sunday.”

  Howard groaned. “And by Monday both the vendors and the brothers will be ‘victims’ and we’ll be the bad guys.” He glanced at me. “Or we will be if your friend Ott has anything to do with it.” He didn’t move, but his hand resting on my shoulder tightened. “So, Jill, it’s five o’clock. Shouldn’t the phone be ringing?”

  “Come on, Howard,” Pereira said, “Ott’s a Berkeley person; his time is fluid.”

  “Right, fluid like water under the dam. Jill, when has he ever called back? Ever?”

  Howard was right, more or less. And when he got around to telling me I should have known better, he’d be right too. But understanding that something is your own fault rarely makes you feel better.

  I glanced at the detritus of chips and dip. “We’re going to need something for dinner. Vietnamese?”

  “I’ll keep a pen handy so I can take a message when Ott calls.”

  “No gifts are necessary,” I snapped.

  “My gift, Jill, was not telling anyone but Connie where you went this afternoon.” Howard was still standing next to me, his hand stonelike on my shoulder, his voice as cold as I’d heard it in interrogations. “I didn’t tell your friends that you rushed out to accommodate a guy who shits on them.”

  Connie grabbed her jacket and headed for the door. “I gotta go. Bryant Hemming’s going to be interviewed on the local news tonight. Be interesting to hear his take on the mediation. He’s on at six. I gotta rush.” She was jabbering, trying to propel herself away before things got worse here.

  As soon as she was out the door, I pulled loose from Howard’s hand. “I’ve had enough hassle already today. I don’t want to deal with your attitude about Ott. Call in the order to Da Nang, and they’ll have it by the time I get across town. If I hurry, I can get back in time for the interview.”

  I was out the door before he could answer. No one in the department liked Ott, of course. Plenty of officers held him in a special contempt. But Howard’s reaction was different; I could see it in his suddenly pale face, hear it in his icy voice. He should have felt the affinity I did for Ott’s commitment to his principles. Howard, the King of Sting, should have applauded Ott’s maneuvers, but their similarity in that regard just scraped him closer to the bone.

  No one hates conflict more than Howard, particularly conflict in his home and most particularly with me. There was a level to his scorn of Herman Ott that I didn’t understand. If I hadn’t been so annoyed, I’d have done the wise thing and found out what caused it.

  CHAPTER 4

  I STOPPED AT A phone booth on University Avenue and called Herman Ott. He didn’t answer. Of course he didn’t answer. He wouldn’t have picked up the receiver if Ed McMahon had been calling. “Ott,” I said into the phone, “you contacted me; you dragged me to a meeting for nothing. You said you’d call me by five—half an hour ago—and now you don’t even have the courtesy to reach over and pick up the receiver. I know you’re there.” I didn’t know, but I was too pissed to deal with that. “Call me at home. Tonight.”

  Maybe he’s not there, I thought, as I drove across town to the Da Nang Restaurant on San Pablo Avenue to pick up dinner. Maybe he was going out of town, and he wanted someone to know.

  But I couldn’t believe that Ott would leave town. And if he did suddenly, why would he use me as his tether? Surely he had friends and associates he trusted more than a police officer.

  But that was the thing: he didn’t. His associates were not the types you would trust with your files, much less your life.

  I pondered that while I picked up the coconut satay and chicken brochettes, and if I hadn’t had the food in the car, I would have swung by Telegraph Avenue and bearded Ott in his den. His reason for not getting back to me wasn’t the issue; even the animosity he’d spawned wasn’t it. The bottom line was that a police officer doesn’t keep her sources by allowing them to blow her off.

  When I got home, Howard was sprawled on the couch, left arm hooked over the back, right leg stretched across the coffee table. He looked back to normal. The truth, I knew, was that he didn’t want any more dissension. That was fine with me.

  “Bryant Hemming’s already on,” he said, nodding toward the TV. He hadn’t looked up. That was fine with me too.

  I put the cartons on the table and plopped on the ottoman. On the television screen Bryant Hemming was smiling. The man looked so pleased it was hard not to be pleased for him.

  Next to him at the news table Jason Figueroa, the young anchor, made a quarter turn toward him. “What’s this we hear about your being called to mediate in Washington? You’ll be focusing on your specialty—disputes with bureaucracies, right? So, does that mean the Berkeley way has finally become legitimate?”

  Bryant Hemming nodded. In a light denim shirt and chinos, he could have been a Cal professor or a checkout clerk at Andronico’s Market. A man giving you something. “This is an important—a vital—project, if I do say so myself, and I’m delighted such a prestigious foundation in Washington is getting behind it.”

  “The Mutual Respect Project,” Figueroa slid in. “We’ll be following your progress with it, Bryant, in a weekly segment here on the evening news. And we—”

  “Here’s why it’s so vital.” Hemming leaned forward. “People are pissed off all over. Like these homegrown militiamen, and the radical right, and the radical leftists; everyone is pushed to the wall. But the thing
is they’re not bulldozed by one big force, ‘the government.’ They’re pecked to death by a flock of smaller, often unintentional tyrants. Phone company marketers interrupting their dinners. People just want to mail letters and use the phone and get on with life. But see, these bureaucracies keep pecking. And when the citizen tries to deal with them, there’s no one to take responsibility. All people want is to be treated fairly and with respect. Bureaucrats want to be viewed as serving the public, but most of the time they just don’t know how.” He was looking right at the camera, imploring me to understand. Just as he’d done on A Fair Deal and just as effectively.

  “And are they happy when you point them out?” Figueroa asked, barely controlling a grin.

  Hemming had his smile in place too. “Well, Jason, a bureaucracy that sloughs off its clients isn’t likely to treat its workers much better. It’s demoralizing to represent a department people hate or, worse yet, scorn. What’s the TV image of the postal worker? Do you think letter carriers like to be portrayed that way? Of course not. Wouldn’t they rather work for a place they could be proud of?”

  Howard laughed. “Are we talking Utopia here?”

  “—Washington power brokers,” Figueroa was saying. “Won’t you be stepping on toes asking them to compromise?”

  Howard held up a finger. “Translation: Those guys don’t want to compromise; they want to win. Hemming better watch his ass.”

  On the screen Bryant Hemming simply smiled. “Good mediation means everyone benefits. The Mutual Respect Project is a great breakthrough. If it takes hold, think of the difference it’ll make. We can nip people’s fury in the bud. The project will save lives, not just through a lessening of tension in everyday life…”