The Sourdough Wars (11 page)

I hollered. I couldn’t help it. “You were trying to shoot my boyfriend!” I leaped up, not even caring that he had the gun and he was threatening me. I just got up and yelled, “You goddam killer! You societal menace!” And I went for his throat.

Red lights flashed and someone spoke loudly: “Hold it right there!” Someone else said, “Drop it!”

It was the cops, of course. It was sort of disappointing to learn that in real-life dramas, their dialogue is the same as it is on TV. However, what they said was brief and to the point. I held it right there, and Larson dropped it. Both of us even put our hands up, the result, no doubt, of brain rot caused by the tube.

I never go anywhere—even burglar-hunting—without my trusty Sportsac shoulder bag (genuine synthetic and indestructible), so I had some ID and of course Larson had his uniform. But even so we had a lot of explaining to do. Each of us, naturally, felt his or her own side of the story was the more important, and neither would shut his or her mouth and let the other one talk.

I was trying to explain that Larson had falsely imprisoned my friend and me and tried to kill my friend—who was a respectable member of the community—by discharging a firearm, and that furthermore he had pistol-whipped me for no reason at all except that I had tried to defend my own true love and myself.

Larson, as far as I could tell (I wasn’t listening too well), was claiming that Rob and I were the ones who clobbered him and stole the starter, then tried to throw him off the track by coming back and untying him. But he, Larson, had seen through our nefarious plot and rounded us up for the proper authorities. Alas, he had been thwarted when I magically transformed myself into a fearsome gorgon and leaped upon his back, allowing my accomplice to escape.

I think he believed it, too. A true paranoid, that Larson. He probably thinks the CIA is in league with the Mafia, OPEC, and the DAR. He shouldn’t be allowed to carry a gun. He ought to use his talent constructively, maybe start a newsletter called
Conspiracy Times
or something.

The fellows in the black-and-white apparently weren’t psychologists. Or even perceptive. They didn’t say, “Gee, Miss Schwartz, sorry this awful thing happened to you. We’re locking this maniac up right away and we hope your face gets better soon.”

They said, “You have the right to remain silent…anything you say can be used against you in court…you have the right to talk to a lawyer….”

Stuff like that. That is no way to talk to a nice Jewish girl from Marin County and I so informed the officers. Which, I guess, is why I was booked for resisting arrest as well as for assault.

I had once been picked up for drunk driving, but this was ten times worse. A hundred times worse. Nightmare-strength ignominy.

They actually threw me into a cell. That was bad, but it was nothing compared to what I knew I had to go through to get out. There you really got into your chamber-of-horrors material. I had to make a phone call.

I actually had to call someone and say, “This is Rebecca Schwartz, and I’m in jail, and I wish you’d bail me out.”

O degradation! O debasement!

Who was I going to call? My mom? I could hear her already: “I’ll have to send the bail by messenger, because I’m sitting shiva for your father. His favorite daughter has just killed him.”

Definitely not my mom.

My dad? Isaac Schwartz, the famous criminal lawyer? I could hear him, too: “Beck, you’re a fine lawyer, a great little lawyer, but don’t you think if you weren’t so impetuous…” No. Not Dad either.

And certainly not Rob. I’d had time to give him some thought, in the back of that black-and-white, and I was thinking of sending him a large bouquet of poison oak. He’d risked his skin—and mine, when you thought about it—for some stupid newspaper story, and not only that, he’d also put me in the position of having to duke it out with a lunatic to save his life and then getting tossed in jail for my pains. They’d be wearing fur parkas in Death Valley before I’d call him for a quick rescue.

Who else was there? Chris, of course. Why hadn’t I thought of her in the first place? I dialed. “This is the recorded voice of Chris Nicholson,” said her machine, and gave message-leaving instructions. Where
could
she be? But then what did it matter? She wasn’t home and couldn’t help me. “Try me at home,” I told the machine. “If I’m not there, call City Prison instantly. I may still be moldering there.” A bit melodramatic, but that was the kind of mood I was in.

That left Mickey. She wasn’t likely to have any money lying around, but surely she could raise some. Couldn’t she? Kruzick answered. “Yeah?” That was his style.

“Alan, this is your boss, and you are fired if you give me any kind of crap whatsoever at this moment.”

“You on the rag or something?”

“Okay, that’s it. Darken my office door ever again and you are dead as well as fired. Please tell my sister that I am currently incarcerated at City Prison and wish to hear her sweet familiar voice.”

“Uh, Rebecca, listen, we had kind of a little tiff and—”

“And what?”

“Well, she went out somewhere. I don’t exactly know where.”

“Okay, Alan. You’re back on the payroll, you
momser
. Just get me out of here. Fast.”

“But—”

I hung up, knowing he wasn’t going to get me out. Nobody was. I was going to have to stay there the rest of my life, which wouldn’t be very long. I would die of exhaustion because I had to keep standing up. If I sat down on the bed in my cell, I was sure to catch something. Syphilis, probably, or worse yet, body lice. I started pacing. That must have annoyed the deputy, because she came to see what the trouble was. “First time in?”

I nodded.

“Prostitution?”

I shook my head and swallowed. “Assault. But I didn’t do it—I mean, I was just defending myself.”

She nodded automatically, and I could see it was a story she heard an average of three times a day and believed every time the Bay dried up. If I ever got out of there, I was going to kill Rob Burns, probably by flaying.

“Why don’t you get some rest?” said the deputy.

“No. I mean I can’t. …” I glanced at the bunk. She nodded and disappeared. When she got back, she was carrying a clean sheet.

“I know how you feel,” she said, and pushed it through the bars.

You don’t expect to meet someone nice in jail. It threw me off the track so thoroughly that I forgot to feel sorry for myself while I was folding the sheet and making myself a louse-free pad to sit on. By the time I got around to sitting on it, I’d exhausted gratitude, amazement, and the milk of human kindness. I started plotting revenge against Rob, and I ended up in tears.

I was still teary when the deputy came and said I was bailed out. That was the last thing I expected to hear. I hadn’t really expected Kruzick to get it together that fast. I knew he’d probably manage by morning—that is, if Mickey hadn’t left him permanently, as she would if she had any sense. Once she got home, wheels would turn—young Mickey certainly wasn’t going to let her big sister spend the night in jail—not the
whole
night, anyway. But I figured she’d take advantage of being away from him and savor it as long as possible. Otherwise, I certainly wouldn’t have been all red-eyed and undignified like I was.

They gave me my personal belongings and let me take the elevator to the first floor. Did I mention that City Prison is in the Hall of Justice, which also houses a good many courtrooms in which I had successfully argued cases for my clients? I was just glad none of them could see me then.

Mickey and Alan were waiting in the rose-marble lobby, as I’d hoped. Unfortunately, they weren’t alone. Mom and Dad were there, too. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Rob was just coming through the door. But even that wasn’t the worst part—he had Pete Brainard with him. Pete Brainard is a
Chronicle
photographer.

It occurred to me simply to step back in the elevator and go back to the sixth floor, where it was nice and peaceful. But Mom was on me like wrinkles on raisins before I had a chance. She’d been crying, too, and she hadn’t stopped yet. She was wearing her black Bill Blass coat—mourning, I supposed—and she engulfed me in a blanket of high-quality wool. To my amazement, she didn’t utter a word of reproach. Just cried and sobbed, hanging on to me.

That was a nice surprise, but a little embarrassing. I couldn’t keep my mind off Pete Brainard’s strobe, which was going off repeatedly.

“Mom,” I said gently, “You’re wrecking my suede jacket.”

She let up and I fell into Daddy’s arms. “Take it easy, Beck,” he said. “Everything’s okay.”

“I was robbed,” I said. “I didn’t do anything.”

“I know, baby. We’ll straighten it out in the morning. You’ve got the best lawyer money can buy.”

That made me smile. “Modest, too.”

Then Mickey hugged me, and Alan gave me the “okay” sign. The camera kept clicking away.

Rob came forward, but I stepped back. “Honey, I’m so sorry,” he said.

“Don’t you ‘honey’ me. I saved your life and you left me to rot in jail.”

He looked bewildered. “But what happened? I don’t understand.”

Mom turned on him like one of the furies. “You get away from here, Mr. Rob Burns of the
Chronicle
. Look at that bruise on her face! You did that to my daughter, you, you”—she searched for the right words—“newshawk!”

Mickey and I both giggled. It started out as a little tiny ripple of a giggle, and before we could stop it, it was a giggle fit. Mom and Dad just stood there with the corners of their mouths turned down, looking like a couple of tragedy masks. Several times before I’d come very close to disgracing the family and now I finally had, and Mickey and I were yucking it up while Pete Brainard recorded the Fall of the House of Schwartz for the
Chronicle’s
half million readers.

Rob looked as if I’d punched him in the
kishkas
. He finally managed to speak, in a high, kind of cracked voice. “Rebecca, are you okay?”

The giggle fit blew over, and I was suddenly very mad. “Okay? Okay? No, I am not okay, you newshawk. I have been pistol-whipped, falsely arrested and thrown in a cell, where I have probably contracted a rare venereal disease, and all because you had to phone in your stupid story.”

“But, Rebecca, what happened?”

That nearly sent me around the bend. “And you’re
still
thinking about it. You’re not worried about me; all you can think about is what’s going in the final edition. Get it from your ‘sources,’ newshawk!”

“Rebecca, believe me—”

Dad stepped forward and took Rob’s arm, his face a sky full of thunderclouds. “Rob, I think you’d just better stay out of this.”

He put an arm around me, putting his body between me and Rob and Pete, protecting me from the dread press plague. Of course, the very press he now sought to save me from was one both of us manipulated shamelessly and, in Dad’s case, skillfully, every chance we got. But at the moment it seemed our bitterest enemy.

Pete had fallen back, out of the line of fire, but Rob just couldn’t let well enough alone. “But, Mr. Schwartz, it’s my job. If there was anything I could do, you know I—”

Mom turned on him again. Her black brows came together under her perfect silver hairdo. “There’s something you can do.”

Rob moved back a step or three. “What?”

She pointed at Pete. “Tell him to hand over the film.”

“But I—”

Pete spoke for the first time, softly. “You know he can’t do that.”

Even I in my weakened condition knew he couldn’t do that. Mom had no right to ask.

Rob stared for a moment at the marble wall behind us. “I’m sorry,” he said, and walked away. Pete followed.

“So, jailbird,” said Alan. “Need a ride home?”

And Rob was the one my parents didn’t like! Just because he was only half Jewish. True, Rob was a newshawk, just like Mom said, but Kruzick needed drawing and quartering.

“You’re fired,” I said.

He just smiled. “See you tomorrow.”

And he and Mickey left.

That meant I had to go home with Mom and Dad, which was the last thing I wanted. Mom started in before we were even out the door. “Rebecca, it’s a wonder your father’s heart doesn’t give out, the trouble you give him. If you don’t get rid of that Rob after this and find a nice doctor or something… Listen, remember Marty Becker? He grew up to be a banker and nobody’s landed him yet.”

At the moment I was so mad at Rob I was almost willing to take a chance on Marty, but I was also unreasonably mad at Mom and Dad for being in the middle—however unwittingly—of a fight between my boyfriend and me. My head felt as if it would crack open.

“He wouldn’t like me,” I said. “I’m disfigured.”

“Beck, he really didn’t have to bring that photographer,” said Dad.

I didn’t think I could take much more, and I didn’t like the direction in which Dad was driving.

“This isn’t the way to Green Street.”

“You’re coming home where you belong,” said Mom.

It took all my strength to speak, and when I did, I sounded as if I were about two.

“Mom, please. I just need to be alone.”

She didn’t answer, and neither did Dad, but I think they both got the message. Dad turned right and took me to Green Street. Of course, they had to go in with me and make sure no goblins lurked in my overpriced apartment, but then they left me blessedly alone.

“Be sure,” said Mom as they went out the door, “to have those clothes fumigated before you wear them again.”

I’d been thinking along these lines myself, but hearing Mom say it made me realize that I’d reverted to being the Marin County Jewish Princess I like to think I haven’t been since high school. I was suddenly ashamed of imagining lice in what was probably a perfectly clean jail. There was nothing wrong with my clothes a little dry cleaning wouldn’t fix.

I hung them up and stood in the shower for about half an hour, washing my hair and rewashing it, letting jail and all its real or imagined cooties run down the drain. Then I slipped into a clean white nightie.

I was feeding Durango and company when Chris called. I babbled out my tale, going heavy on the humiliation of having my folks in the middle of my fight with Rob, which was the part that now bothered me the most, and then asked her where she’d been when I needed her.