Sudden Exposure Read online

  “Oh, and Smith,” Brucker said when I was half out the door, “I hope you won’t get your back up: I told the dispatch sergeant to remind his crew you are in patrol now.”

  I could have protested that I’d been on patrol two weeks now, getting calls from those same dispatchers. Instead I waited, forcing his hand.

  “I caught them after the first misdirected call.”

  I crossed my arms.

  “For you.”

  “From?”

  “Ott. That’s the slimeball PI on the Avenue, right? What’s he up to, Smith, trying to squeeze you like those scumbags do the city council?”

  “Got me, Brucker.” I walked out feeling like I’d been frisked. My pockets were empty. The man had my job and my office. There was nothing more for him to find. But I was glad I’d kept my mouth shut. It sort of made up for not answering Ott’s calls, not that Ott would ever know, much less appreciate.

  Two weeks ago I’d been making a difference. Now I was putting up with crap so I could … what? Keep Bryn Wiley and Sam Johnson from acting like two-year-olds?

  When I got to the squad room, shoes unlaced, still snapping the keepers that hold the equipment belt to my pants belt, a box of macaroons was making the rounds. I took one and, while Pereira watched, squeezed it until it broke in two mangled parts.

  The clouds Saturday afternoon should have been big and black and centered over People’s Park. In fact, the sky had a thin dusting of gray. Good shooting weather, Leonard said as we headed toward People’s Park, eyeing jackets slung over forearms, baggy shirts, loose jeans for signs of concealed weapons.

  It was also good crowd weather. Half the people around were drinking coffee or Italian sodas from paper cups or eating cookies, pastries, or slices of pizza. I stared longingly as a slice of pepperoni made its way into park and mouth.

  “Looks bad for a cop to pull a four eighty-four, Smith,” Pereira murmured as she headed to the far end of the park. By now, of course, half the force knew about Howard’s and my bet. After four steps Pereira stopped and turned, just in time to catch me checking my cheat sheet for the 484—petty theft. She grinned. After all the hours Connie Pereira had spent perched on the corner of Howard’s desk, ogling my coffee or doughnut till I gave in and relinquished what was left, this bet was going to be hard on her, too. Not that that would keep her from enjoying my frustration. But what are friends for?

  When I come to People’s Park, I am always struck by how much I care about the sixties symbolism of the place, and how little I actually like being here. And if I weren’t in uniform, I wouldn’t want to walk through it at all. As it was, I spotted one of the coke dealers I’d surveilled when I was on this beat just as he raised his hand to his mouth ostensibly to cough. If we’d had a camera on him, maybe we’d get a shot of the rock going from his mouth into the buyer’s hand.

  Set behind a row of stops on Telegraph Avenue, People’s Park occupies the rest of the block. The far end, about a third of the park, is trees and underbrush and transients in sleeping bags with grocery carts packed full. In the middle, the University (owner of the land) built volleyball and basketball courts and a public bathroom—not without years of protest. On those courts, Cal students wearing bright blue and white now run and shoot hoops. A university-hired guard stands by. And the homeless, in dusty brown clothes, hang around the edges, tacitly announcing it’s their park still. In true Berkeley fashion, years of controversy, demonstrations, scores of arrests, complaints, review hearings, and a spattering of lawsuits have resulted in nothing changing.

  I took up a post at the northwest corner of the park, near the free box. A roofed container about five foot square, it’s sort of a pound for clothes. Clothing owners who’ve become bored with or outgrown their garments drop them off there to be adopted by new owners. By four-thirty the afternoon wind was picking up, flapping the collar of my wool uniform shirt, carrying the smell of life on the street.

  I surveyed the crowd. Peaceful enough now, though there were clumps of young male adults who’d killed more than one six-pack this day, and half a dozen older guys nodding off under the trees. Bryn Wiley’s talk was likely to be only slightly more popular than I was here. I scanned the crowd for Sam Johnson, but he wasn’t visible. But I counted six, no, eight, of his protégés sprinkled around the park, and that made me wary.

  The crowd had thickened to a hundred fifty, about half the increase in media: reporters from both San Francisco dailies, The Bay Guardian, the Oakland Tribune, The Daily Californian, and the East Bay Express, plus crews from three television stations. A full house. Press conferences are a dime a dozen; the press is leery of being used by talking heads seeking legitimacy, and delivering tedium. But Bryn’s call was a sure story for them: local star, yuppie controversy in historically yuppie-phobic Berkeley. The background of People’s Park was the perfect “visual” to illustrate the yuppie-Berkeley dichotomy. It was a shoo-in for the broadcast’s cute windup story, and a coup that meant the last words before sign-off would be the reporter’s name. And it could turn into a lot more than that. No wonder every station had crews already taking background shots.

  “If Wiley takes a dive,” Leonard muttered with a straight face, “we’ll have it from every angle.”

  “She called this thing for four o’clock. It’s already twenty-five after,” Pereira said. “Maybe she got a better offer.”

  “Gives her a wide, wide range,” I said. Leonard ambled back through the crowd. This was his territory. Even in uniform he moved easily through the sleepy subcultures of the park. The regulars trusted him, as much as they did anyone, and they counted on him to protect them from the dealers and the crackheads, as much as they could anyone.

  “Getting antsy,” Leonard said as he circled back. “You don’t leave guys hanging this late on a Saturday. Too much loose time. Before Saturday night, they’re too ready-to-go.”

  Reporters checked watches. Camera operators fiddled with their equipment. Two of Johnson’s allies chatted them up. They were right in front of the stage.

  “How long are we giving it?” a rookie asked his team sergeant.

  “Till they disperse. We’re not here for Wiley; we’re here for them.” He nodded at the crowd. “It’s not getting smaller. It’s growing on itself. If Wiley doesn’t show, we’ll end up dealing with a blowup here from the frustration alone.”

  On Haste and Dwight streets cars slowed nearly to stops. Radios blared a cacophony of strings, horns, and rappers. The smack of hands batting the volleyball was as regular as clockwork.

  It was four-forty when Bryn Wiley mounted the platform, eighteen inches above ground level. News crews jostled anew, shoving closer, trying to figure where Bryn would be on the podiumless dais. Reporters extended their microphones, cameramen shifted their minicams. In the crowd the tenor of voices lowered as people shifted toward the action. I checked for faces, looking for those who lived to confront and those who felt “their” park was being invaded. And for the young bullies who preyed on the homeless. Three guys standing together I recognized from every demonstration I’d been to here—Johnson’s crew. I moved between them and the stage. Murmurs bubbled up here and there, but mostly the crowd was quiet, waiting, ready for … for something.

  I checked again for Sam Johnson. He had to know about the event. Nothing happened on Telegraph without Johnson’s knowledge. So why wasn’t he here? Was he “not dignifying” the event with his presence? Or maybe he had no answer to the charges Bryn would hurl. Either way, avoiding confrontation was not like Johnson. Particularly when the battle was in his own kingdom. Or maybe Johnson, the great tactician, had set himself an alibi elsewhere for whatever came down.

  Bryn stepped to the microphone just as the sun broke through the clouds for that final startling gleam it gives on overcast days. The beam may not be stronger than it is all afternoon long on a sunny day, but on a gray day it’s like the piercing light that precedes a divine proclamation. Dressed in walking shorts and tank top with The Girls’
Team emblazoned in gold, Bryn smiled as the beam hit her and still cameras flashed. Her angular face was tan, her curly chestnut hair shining in the sunlight, the muscles of her lightly oiled arms and shoulders visible. All she needed was a red, white, and blue ribbon with an empty circle hanging from it for the Olympic medal she hadn’t gotten. I couldn’t help wondering if she had kept us waiting for forty minutes so she could catch the heavenly glow.

  There was no podium to protect her. She strode to center stage and stood, slowly surveying the crowd as if to put each clutch of men—and the audience was almost entirely male—on notice that her words were meant for them. “Berkeley,” she said, in a deceptively lazy voice, “is living in the past.” She paused, staring into the crowd, daring them to object.

  When no one did, she went on in that pulling-theories-from-the-back-of-the-mind voice. “What is ‘Berkeley’? Not this patch of land we’re standing on, not the National Guard troops that pointed rifles to keep you out of it, not the peace marches that brought you to it.”

  Low murmurs ran through the crowd. Bryn took a half step closer to the microphones. “All that was twenty-five years ago! A quarter of a century ago! You”—she pointed to a boy with long blond hair and baggy clothes—“weren’t even born then.”

  “Hey, what do you know? You weren’t here! We were talking about freedom!” yelled a dark-haired guy fifteen feet from the stage. I couldn’t make him. I glanced at Leonard. He shook his head—unknown to him, too.

  “Right you are, man,” Bryn said. “Freedom, it was Berkeley against the state, Berkeley under siege from armed militia. Berkeley committed to freedom. Those were glorious days, important days, days when we stood for something—when we stood up for the truth, when we faced the government eye to eye, and said: We … will … not … be … deceived.” She paused, eyeing the heckler. “And what is the legacy of those days? What have we got now?”

  “Ain’t honest government, that’s for sure!” That was one of the park regulars.

  “Right on, man!”—another guy I couldn’t make—“They lie in Washington, they lie in Sacramento, they lie in City Hall.”

  Bryn broke into the calls. “Right, and they lie right here on Telegraph Avenue.”

  “Yeah! Damn cops, they tell you—”

  “Back in Those Days, the cops stood with us, against them! Now they stand for nothing!” She waited, but kind words about police, even a quarter century ago, didn’t reverberate with this crowd. Before the hoots could start, she shifted focus. “We will not be deceived!”

  I tensed, hand-poised over baton.

  “We will not be deceived by our government!” she called. “And we will not be deceived by those who tell us they are helping us, and then rob us.”

  A murmur of confusion ran through the crowd. Bryn’s was a sentiment that could hardly be disagreed with, but no one could tell where she was headed. They eyed her suspiciously.

  “What am I talking about?” She flashed a smile. Cameras flashed in return. She let the anticipation stretch. “Sam Johnson, that’s what! That’s who! Where is Sam Johnson? Not here! But you all know Sam. And you—”

  “Hey, who the hell are you?” a voice called from the back. One of Sam’s crew. The crowd stiffened, shifted in toward the stage.

  I stepped in closer and eyeballed the two Johnson friends in front of Bryn—no visible weaponry.

  “And you,” Bryn repeated more firmly, “know what he promised with The Heat Exchange. He promised people like you, people who have to choose between food and heat, he promised you help. And are you getting that help? No! Have you seen one cent from Sam Johnson? No! And why not? Because the Emperor has no clothes on!”

  “Like the Olympic phone call!” Sam’s friend from the back yelled.

  Bryn stopped.

  “Hey, lady, you’re—”

  “Don’t be fooled.” Bryn stepped forward till her mouth was an inch from the cluster of microphones.

  Her voice blared. “It’s Sam Johnson who’s cheating you. Sam—”

  Like a wave the crowd’s attention swept to the right. Like the Red Sea, a path opened. And like in the Garden of Eden, a bald, naked man ran out, holding a banner: THE HEAT EXCHANGE.

  Camera operators made 180-degree turns and, seeing the crowd five deep in front, backed up onto the stage, nearly knocking over Bryn Wiley.

  But the nudist was quicker. He skirted around them, onto the stage, and reached out.

  “Hold it!” I yelled.

  She flung an arm at him.

  He grinned. In one swift movement he rubbed his hand down her bare arm, then spun, jumped from the stage, and ran through the crowd.

  “Move aside!” I shouted, shoving between two brown-jacketed men. They gave way, but the crowd in front was rush-hour thick. Everyone was cheering on the nude Mercury. Murakawa and Pereira pushed toward him.

  Bryn was alone on the stage! I turned and shoved back between the jackets and pushed onto the stage.

  She was gone.

  Frantically I scanned right and left to Dwight and Haste streets. I spotted her on the sidewalk by Dwight Way, next to her Volvo wagon, holding a reporter by the sleeve and pressing a paper into his hands.

  The crowd cheered louder. By now the runner had dropped his banner and was loping by the free box. No uniformed officer was near him. He turned to the crowd, pointed to a truck at the curb, and disappeared behind it. Doors on the side of the truck sprang open, and two men passed cardboard cartons of cans and lunchbags to the guys nearest them.

  The nudist was forgotten. Bryn Wiley wasn’t even a memory.

  Murakawa and Pereira moved toward the truck. The sergeant pulled the radio free and called for backup.

  Murakawa reached the truck. Two guys pushed in front of him. “Hey, cop, this food’s ours!”

  He glanced at the cans. “Enjoy,” he said, “we’re just watching.”

  But he was wrong about that. Within minutes we were breaking up fights. The sergeant was calling for more backup. By six o’clock the food was gone, the park was a mess, and we had two men in custody and one in the emergency room.

  At six-thirteen I cut the engine in front of Sam Johnson’s construction site. No lights were visible from the house. Big surprise there. I made my way over the rubble and banged on the door. There was a hole where the bell used to be. In half a minute I banged again. Footsteps? Or was that just the wind? Behind the house eucalyptus trees waved their spindly leaves like finger bones from a dangling skeleton.

  “Po-lice! Open up, Sam.”

  He didn’t.

  I could picture him holed up across town in some buddy’s room overlooking People’s Park, hefting a beer in a return salute and laughing. Still, I made my way down the cement steps of Tamalpais Walk. A rusted pipe railing ran shakily beside them. In the dusky light, moist leaves blended into the stained cement. Earthquakes and ground settling had thrown the flights of stairs forward, threatening to slide the unwary foot off each step. It was not a descent for the nervous.

  To my right Johnson’s house loomed large, dark, ragged. I shone my light underneath it. “Sam, you in there?”

  “Who wants to know?” he demanded.

  “Police. Come here.”

  Another time he would have told me what I could do with my order. Now he trotted out from under the house and stood opposite me inside the hurricane fence, looking for all the world like a brown-haired, buttoned-down kind of guy with no concern but working on his house. His yellow oxford cloth shirt was rolled to the elbow, his forearms streaked with dirt, a smudgy line across his forehead. Sam Johnson was as befouled as I’d ever seen him.

  “Okay, Sam, let’s talk about this afternoon.”

  “This afternoon? You want to hear about the two by eights I’m cutting? Or the cement guy I contacted to come Monday noon? Or—”

  “Skip it. Who’s your nudist?”

  “Officer,” he said, less smugly, more angrily than I would have expected, “I wasn’t at the diving woman’s press
conference. But I heard about it. She got off easy.”

  “Is that a threat, Johnson?”

  “Nah, nothing’s ever a threat, is it? But if she takes it as a warning, she’s wise. Tell her—you’ll be reporting to her …”

  I wouldn’t, but I didn’t feel obligated to explain that to Johnson.

  “I wasn’t at the park today. What happened today, I didn’t do it.” He paused, that puckish grin of his teasing me from behind the empty metal diamonds of the fence. “You don’t create an itch then expect a guy not to scratch it—tell her that.”

  “Spoken like a teenager in heat.” I sighed. “Sam, I really expected better of you.”

  “Tell her,” he snapped in a voice that turned his grin hollow. He turned and strolled out of sight.

  I climbed back up the slimy steps, avoiding the rusty pipe railing, thinking of what Sam Johnson could have done to Bryn had he chosen to. And pondering his uncharacteristic message. Boorish wasn’t his style. Sam Johnson was not Howard, but they were both star performers. On the protests he created, he’d given himself near perfect style points. And his threatening comment had wiped out all today’s style. Why would he …

  I was getting into the car, repeating: “You don’t create an itch then expect a guy not to scratch it,” when I remembered my last encounter with a nudist. The nudist. I couldn’t swear he was the same one, but how many bald nudists could there be in Berkeley? The last time, my nudist had run up Rose Street, then down through the underbrush, through the poison oak!

  I smiled. Howard wouldn’t give it a ten, but it’d be close. Bryn Wiley wouldn’t be smiling. She’d be scratching her arm.

  In the car I called dispatch, got Pereira, Murakawa, and Leonard on channel 2 and—the first positive event of the day—we could all go code seven. “My place. Ten-four.”