Poor Butterfly (15 page)

The lawyer, who identified himself as Manuel Flores, turned on the water in all four faucets and talked softly, our heads close enough together that I could smell his aftershave. I told him everything. It took about five minutes. Then he asked questions. That took about fifteen minutes.

“
Basta
,” he said when he had finished. “We have a problem. All they have is circumstantial evidence, but that is all they need. The law says they must establish your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. That means there can be some doubt as long as the jury, if there is a jury, is convinced that you have committed the crime. But what is a
reasonable
doubt?”

“You really think they’re going to hold me for this?” I asked.

Lawyer Flores shook his head to show he wasn’t sure. He washed his hands, patted down his hair, checked his mustache in the spotted mirror, and led me to the door where Sunset was standing guard.

Back in the little interrogation room, Flores pulled up a chair and sat at the table with me at his side. “I would like to hear charges and cause before deciding my client’s course of action,” he said, opening his briefcase. He took out a fresh white pad, removed his Waterman pen from his jacket pocket, and looked at Preston. Sunset stood in the corner, arms folded.

“Your client’s fingerprints,” Preston added, after he had gone over what else he had on me, “are all over the apartment. Just got a call from forensics. He was in that apartment with a dead woman looking for something, probably money, when a patrolman arrived. Also, we have testimony that your client had a fight with the deceased this morning.”

“Fight?” I said. “You …”

“Weapon?” Lawyer Flores interrupted, taking notes.

“Missing,” said Sunset. “There’s a balcony and the bay right outside the window. It’d take a good throw, but our Peters here looks like he’s got a whippy little arm. We’ll look in the morning, but it could have been washed clear down to San Jose by now.”

“Why do you not believe the Bartholomew woman was dead when my client went up to her apartment?” Flores asked.

“Doorman called up when he arrived,” said Preston wearily. “Miss Bartholomew told him to send said client up.”

“How does the doorman know it was the Bartholomew woman who answered?” Flores asked. “An intercom phone, a word, a uh-huh in answer to the doorman’s question if he should send my client up. Why could it not be the killer who answered the call?”

Preston shrugged and Sunset sighed. They had heard this kind of thing before.

“What are you fishing for, Senor Lawyer?” Sunset asked.

“My client answers questions,” Lawyer Flores said. “In return for the state’s attorney setting reasonable bond.”

“State’s attorney says we go for murder one,” said Preston. “Just talked to him. Asking for a hold without bond.”

“I need a toilet,” I said, standing up.

“You were just in the toilet,” said Sunset. “Something wrong with your fucking guts? Your lawyer slip you some greasy tacos or something?”

Lawyer Flores was looking at his legal pad notes, tapping his pen point in the margin. He looked up at Sunset, who tried to hold Flores’ gaze, but Sunset was a kitten and Lawyer Flores a tiger.

“I will be filing a grievance with the community relations section of the police department,” Flores said. “The grievance will cite your ethnic insults. This is not a threat, Sergeant. It is a piece of information so that you can prepare for the inquiry.”

“Confession,” suggested Preston. “And maybe we can recommend aggravated manslaughter. Maybe your client was high on reefers. Hell, maybe the lady threatened him and he had to take her knife away. Self-defense. Be creative.”

“I’m about to piss in my pants,” I said.

“Take him,” sighed Preston.

Sunset pushed away from the wall, made a sour face, and pointed to the door. Lawyer Flores was trying to be creative, but he didn’t have many blocks to play with.

“Taco lawyer isn’t going to do you shit, Peters,” Sunset informed me as we headed back down the dim hallway to the men’s room. “You got a long wait in County and then a long vacation in Folsom.”

I started into the washroom with Sunset no more than a step behind. I had no doubt that if I dropped my drawers and sat on the toilet he would stand and watch and criticize my technique. But I wasn’t going to give him that chance. I grabbed the end of the door, stepped to my left, and jerked the door back as hard as I could into Sunset as he took a step into the room.

He didn’t fall, but he did let out a woomph sound and slid down the slimy wall, his hand going automatically for the pistol in his holster. I got it first and gave him a little push with my foot that sent him the rest of the way to the floor. His head hit the tile and bounced like a baseball on concrete. I backed up toward the windows, pointing his gun at him.

Sunset was stunned but he wasn’t out. He tried to sit up and slipped. I went for the first window—put my free hand under the opening and pushed up. It didn’t budge. I looked back at Sunset, who was sitting up now. I tried the second window. It wouldn’t budge either.

“Don’t panic,” I told myself. “Calm. Be calm.”

I shook my arms in warmup, took a deep breath of stench, and used the back end of Sunset’s pistol to break the window. It made a hell of a lot of noise as the glass fell and cracked in the alley one floor below.

Sunset made an uncoordinated lunge for me from the floor. I got out of the way, pushed a few standing shards of glass away, and looked out the window as he got to his knees, shaking his head to clear it.

The alley was one floor down.

“I’ll tear your …” Sunset growled as I started to climb out the window. He put his hand on the nearby sink to try to pull himself up.

“I’m going to do you a favor, Sunset.” I said, looking back. “Little friendly secret between you and me.”

I flipped open the pistol, dropped the bullets into the sink, where they skittered toward the drain, flipped the pistol closed, and threw the empty weapon across the room.

“Go get your gun, Inspector,” I went on, easing myself out the window as Sunset made it to his feet. “No one has to know I took it from you. Just tell them I went out the window as soon as we got through the door. Our secret gringo.”

I jumped. I didn’t want to jump. I was afraid to jump. But it was better than being locked up and having the key shipped to Peru. I jumped in the general direction of a pile of garbage stacked next to rusty trash cans. I hit the garbage feet first. I landed on an oversized paper bag that popped open like a balloon, and I went rolling in the oily alley. Above me I could hear Sunset scrambling for his gun and bullets. I got to my feet and lurched to the entrance of the alley. I was too old for this kind of thing. I was too old for most kinds of things, but I wasn’t going to admit it, not even to myself. Behind and above me, Sunset was not calling for my surrender.

“Halt,” he yelled. “Or I’ll fire.”

“I’m not armed,” I said.

“Who gives a shit?” he bellowed, and took a shot at me.

I went around the corner to the street as two more shots tore up brickwork. The street was empty. The sun was setting behind a row of apartment buildings across the street. I hurried across that street and tried to leap the small metal fence of the first building. I settled for scrambling over. I moved to the side of the apartment building and ducked into a concrete-paved walk to the back of the building. From the darkness I looked back across the street at the station entrance. A spurt of four cops came out, all with guns in their hands. Sunset and Preston were two of the cops. They started to fan out. Preston went left, mumbling to himself. Sunset went right into the sunset. Cop Three crossed the street, and Cop Four looked as if he were heading straight at me.

I turned, moved slowly around the building in the darkness till I hit the backyard and the lawn. The back fence was a little higher than the front. I ran across the lawn and went over that fence as if I were in spring training in Arizona, and then I was on my way.

I had a dog to find and I knew where to look.

I
found a Plymouth with the back door open about four blocks from the police station. I got in, locked the door, and curled up on the floor. Maybe the search would pass me by. I needed some sleep. I needed something to eat. I needed to think.

My car was probably still parked in front of Lorna’s apartment building if the cops hadn’t taken it in. I could have found a cab or hopped a bus if I had money, but I didn’t have money. The cops had my money, my wallet, my pencil, my notebook, my old man’s watch, and my keys in a paper bag. I curled up and closed my eyes. I can’t say I slept. I discovered one thing. A man with a bad back shouldn’t spend the night on the floor of a Plymouth.

When I thought the first light of dawn was promising to hit the street, I crawled out of the car and looked around. The street was empty.

I slouched into an alley heading south, looking up at the sky every few seconds to watch for the first sure signs of dawn. I must have been tired but I didn’t feel it. I must have been tired, because I didn’t hear the patrol car turn into the alley behind me. I was moving along close to the fences and garages on the right. The beam of the car’s headlights bounced in front of me, catching an early morning cat who stared, eyes glowing for a second, and then ran off. I ducked into a yard and crouched down behind a bush.

The patrol car came slowly, so I knew they hadn’t seen me. A small spotlight scanned yards and garbage cans.

The cops in the car didn’t have the heart for hard looking. They were probably at the end of a shift and tired or just starting a shift and not yet fully awake. I knew the feeling. I’d gone through it as a beat cop back in Glendale. The car bounced slowly past me, pausing for an instant to scan the yard and bushes. The beam caught my face momentarily. I closed my eyes and they passed on. I stayed crouching while the car rumbled past, and then I got up. I was about to continue on my way when the headlights of the cop car sent twin white probes down the alley again. They had turned around and were moving slowly back. I was next to a garage. I tried the door. It was locked, but it was a lock that should have been ashamed of itself. In the gray light of dawn, I found a rusty nail. Now I could hear voices from the returning cop car. I used the nail to open the garage door and threw the nail away.

There were two windows in the garage, both covered with curtains. I closed the garage door behind me and made my way to one of the windows, following the gray light that seeped through the dirty curtains. I banged my ankle against something hard and felt the skin break under my pants. The patrol car had stopped just outside the garage. I could hear the engine. I could hear the voices as the cops got out.

“Right there, by those bushes,” came a voice.

“So why didn’t you say so when we came past?” came a rasping complaint.

“I … I just wasn’t sure, and you were talking,” the first voice said.

A flashlight beam scanned the curtains of the garage and footsteps moved across the grass.

“Well,” sighed the raspy cop.

I held my breath and waited. And then they stopped, and one of them started to try the door.

“Maybe I just …” he began.

“Maybe you just,” the raspy voice agreed. “Let’s get over to Mel’s and have something to eat.”

The car doors closed and the engine hummed away, but I didn’t move for a few seconds. I pushed back the curtain and found myself looking into the eyes of an alley cat who was perched on the ledge outside. San Francisco was filled with cats. I’d have to tell Dash about this.

Then I turned around. This was not the simple one-car garage of a happy family with a mom and pop and a couple of fat kids. The place was full of bicycles and parts of bicycles. Tires and wheels hung from hooks on the ceiling. Biking helmets and handlebars were mounted on one wall like a hunter’s antler trophies. A table in one corner was lined with cans of paint. Either Santa Claus lived here or I’d stumbled on a stolen bicycle shop.

My heart soared like a bird. I could be a self-righteous thief. I could steal a bike and feel like MacArthur liberating stolen property and giving it to a deserving peasant, me. I picked the nearest bike, a man’s bike with a bad paint job. I didn’t have time to go quietly through the pile. It would have to do. I found a dirty white painter’s cap with the word
ZOSH
printed across the brow in nail polish or something else red, and plunked it on my head.

I wheeled the bike to the door, opened the door, and went outside. Dawn was coming fast. I could see light from the sun. I looked into the alley. No cop car. I looked back at the house behind the garage and something caught my eye. A man was standing in the second-floor window looking out at me. He was big, bearded, and naked, and he did not like what he saw. He threw open the window as I ran the bike into the alley and jumped on.

“You goddamn thief,” the man hissed, but he didn’t yell, which confirmed my belief that this bike and the others weren’t kosher. The man wasn’t shouting for help or running after me with a gun. The man was a thief, and he was taking his losses rather than draw attention to himself and his vocation.