Too Close to the Edge (4 page)

She didn’t look around. I wasn’t sure she could turn that far. But now she kept her gaze ahead, and I had the impression that this admission, so unexpected and uncharacteristic of the public Liz Goldenstern, of even the Liz with whom I’d had cappuccino, was my thanks for the push. And I knew her well enough not to reply.

“Over there.” Now her voice was crisp. “The white stucco triplex.”

I pushed the chair across the street to the redwood ramp that sloped up to an alcove and two doors, one to an internal stairway and the other to the first floor flat. A thirty-foot California fan palm stood in the yard, its wind-rustled fronds making finger puppet shadows on the white stucco building. Alongside the ramp, a wisteria twined, and yellow, red, and violet freesias swayed in the window box. The building was typical of the Bay Area. Its white stucco had a vacation look about it, but the dark wood trim of the triptych windows in both flats gave it a more serious presence. At the top of the ramp the candy-sweet smell of the freesias met us. When Liz’s windows were opened it would fill the apartment.

As Liz reached for her key, a dark-haired boy of eighteen or nineteen loped across the lawn. The day pack on his back bounced with each step. “You going in?” he called to Liz.

“The officer is helping me. I’m okay.”

The boy stopped, stared from her to me. His soft hair settled against the sides of his head. He spun quickly and raced back the way he’d come.

Liz turned the key.

I shoved the chair forward and, once inside the living room, turned it toward the back.

“No,” she said. “Just leave it by the phone. I have to run my messages.”

“You want me to turn the machine on?” I asked. Immediately I was sorry.

Liz hesitated. “Thanks.”

I looked down at Liz. Her ashen face was drawn. There was no ember of the normal fire in her eyes. I had seen her after hours of picketing in the damp cold, but I had never seen her look this deflated. And I had never heard her let another person do something she could manage herself. “Can I get you anything? Maybe a brandy?”

Her eyes half-closed; her first two fingers pressed hard together. “Thanks, but no.” For the first time she met my gaze. “Sometimes I think it would be nice to have someone around again, someone I could count on to do things I need. Of course, the problem with malleable people is that what attracts you, attracts a lot of other people. You’re not the only one who can manipulate them.” She laughed ironically. “I just need to make a couple calls and deal with my messages.”

“Okay,” I said. “Good luck tonight.” I pushed the playback button on the answering machine, waited until the tape announced the first caller, and walked out, shutting the door slowly. I stood for a moment, my brow clammy, sweat running from my armpits. For the first time I allowed myself to feel the swirling in my stomach. What would Liz Goldenstern say, I asked myself with forced wryness, if she knew how much just the thought of paralysis terrified me? Me, a homicide detective. My eyes closed; I gave my head a sharp shake; I flexed my fingers and pressed my toes down against the soles of my shoes, feeling a wave of guilt at the relief those movements gave me.

The sharp breeze slapped my face. I realized I had been standing on Liz Goldenstern’s porch for minutes. I was just starting down the ramp when the voice on the tape said, “Liz, you were right; only they are up to date. My fee is dinner. Let me know when.” There was an unusual tone to that voice, but that wasn’t what caught my attention. The caller hadn’t bothered with a name. He knew Liz would recognize his voice. I could understand that. I recognized it too. It was the voice of Herman Ott.

I
T DIDN’T SURPRISE ME
that Liz Goldenstern knew Herman Ott. Ott was more of a fixture on the Avenue than Liz, or at least he’d been there a lot longer. I wasn’t sure how long Liz had been spearheading the access campaign on Telegraph, but I had the impression when I got the Telegraph beat three years ago that she was fairly new. Herman Ott, on the other hand, had been around since the sixties. Then he had been an introverted student at Cal, the type who would now be a hacker. But in those precomputer days, there were only math, sciences, and philosophy for the adolescent Herman Otts to nest in. Ott had chosen philosophy. He had followed the well-worn path of social awareness, volunteering in the offices of the ACLU. But early on he realized that he had no more ability as part of a system, even one he believed in, than he had as a student of a system. From the ACLU he had shifted to doing leg work for an old Avenue detective whose ethics he could support.

And over the years, his college classes had become fewer and fewer, and cases more. And when Ott’s boss finally died (of natural causes) the Ott Detective Agency was born. Ott’s office, which doubled as his home, was in a shabby building on the Avenue. He dealt with the shadiest of characters, but he didn’t carry a gun, and I had never seen him in a fight or even a standoff. Over the years Herman Ott had come to know everyone on the Avenue, and everything they were up to.

As I came abreast of the Avenue, Connie Pereira hurried toward me. In the failing light, she looked like she had intended to run but couldn’t muster the effort. Her blond hair stood out in recalcitrant clumps, and her face had an indistinct look—she had sweated her make-up off. “Jill! Where were you?” she demanded.

“Getting Liz Goldenstern home,” I said, hoping I no longer resembled the woman who had stood shaking on Liz Goldenstern’s porch. That fear of paralysis had haunted me since childhood. It was there whenever I swam. The hours of physical training the department required had given me a control of my body I hadn’t dreamed of before. It made the possibility of losing it more terrifying. Swallowing, I asked, “What about your thief? Did you catch him?”

“What do you think? By the time I got going he was half a block away. I spotted him at the corner; then he cut down a driveway; and when I got to the garage there was no sign of him. I spent the next hour rooting through the neighboring yards. You wouldn’t believe the garbage people leave piled up behind their houses. One man told me he redid his roof five years ago. Jill, the old shingles are still heaped next to the porch! And piles: compost, wood, scraps, cardboard! It’s like the concept of empty space never occurred to these people. They’ve created a labyrinth back there. There are hundreds of places to hide. I know the shoe thief was hunkered down in one of those yards, watching me and laughing.”

I almost said, “At least it’s not your case,” but once you’ve devoted as much time as Pereira had to a case, its hold is permanent. I pulled my jacket tighter around me. There was no sign of the sun now. It had settled down into the pillow of fog behind San Francisco. Now it was just a matter of that fog becoming an ever deeper gray-brown until it signaled night proper.

But on the Avenue it might have been night already. The clutches of students who had rushed past our table an hour ago were gone. The street sellers had packed every ceramic toothbrush holder and cloisonné earring away. The Nepali import shops and the computer stores were closed, the latter with metal grates pulled across their windows. Even the pizza and the cookie take-out places were nearly deserted. The only spark of life was Pereira, kicking the sidewalk with each step.

“You can’t dig him out that way,” I said.

“It just makes me so mad. If I hadn’t let myself get distracted, I would have had him.”

“Maybe.”

“No, definitely. I run every morning. I’m in good shape. I could have been on him before he had his fingers through the laces.”

I turned toward her and stopped. “Look Connie, the fact is that he got away. Now the only choice you have is whether you’re going to kick yourself about it for the rest of the night or get on with things.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not so easy,” she said, continuing her pace.

“I know.”

“I’m not going to let this case go back to Caldwell like this.”

“So what are you going to do?”

Now it was Pereira’s turn to stop. “I’ve given that a lot of thought while I was waiting for you. I could stake out Shake A Leg from now till Christmas and get nowhere. We could have someone on every one of these al fresco shoes spots and still not catch him, or them. We’re not going to get anywhere till we know what the plan is, right?”

Slowly, I nodded. I knew Pereira’s need-a-favor tone.

“Most of the thefts have occurred on the Avenue. So it’s safe to assume that the plan is centered here.”

I could see the request taking shape.

“And the person who will know what that is is Herman Ott.”

I sighed. “And you want me to ask him, right?”

“Jill, you’re the master of dealing with Ott. No one, not even the venerables in Details, has your record.”

“I don’t know how true that is; I’ve gotten maybe three leads from him in the same number of years. I also don’t know what it says about me.” Herman Ott viewed the police in much the same way his clients did. He was just more practical about it. He had survived all these years by knowing exactly how much he could withhold from us legally and how much he was required by law to admit but could still bargain for. He produced as little as possible, never incriminating information about his clients and nothing without being paid. For his clients to confide in him was like whispering in the confessional. As for us, threats and cajoling only devoured his minute store of patience. To say I was the officer he dealt with best or, more accurately, least unpleasantly, was a dubious endorsement. “Anyway, Connie, the department hasn’t come through with the two hundred I promised him last month. He’s not going to tell me anything.”

“You could at least give it a try.”

I looked down at my watch. “You know Ott better than that.”

“What were you going to do that can’t wait half an hour?”

“I was going to do some laps.” I was going to make myself swim laps.

“The pool’s open till nine-thirty.”

“And eat dinner.”

Connie laughed. “You can buy junk food all night.”

I sighed, again. “Okay, as a personal favor I’m doing this. But I don’t hold out any hopes.”

“Thanks.”

I nodded. I needed time to come up with an angle—Ott’s scorn for the unsupported request was legendary—but nothing would still be nothing half an hour from now. I could wing it now as well as later. Ott’s building was across the street. I waited until an old blue sedan passed and then crossed toward it.

The building had been constructed for offices in the early part of the century. The double staircase and the fold-down seat for the elevator operator were reminders of a day when it was a stylish place to work. But it had been many years since Telegraph Avenue had been a sought-after location for business offices. Telegraph was too student-oriented, too left-wing. Today, the most respectable business in the building was the Ott Detective Agency. Most of the “businesses” weren’t businesses at all but people living in the ten-by-twelve offices who used the bathrooms down the hall. Many didn’t even bother with the pretense of work.

The door of the building was between a pizza outlet and a poster shop. As I neared it, the aroma of garlic and tomato sauce replaced the smell of exhaust left by the blue sedan. Suddenly the thought of confronting Ott, with no ace in the hole—indeed, no cards whatsoever—and doing it on an empty stomach seemed even more appalling. I stepped inside the pizza place behind a student who had a pile of books so daunting that I couldn’t imagine how he could balance them and a slice of pizza, much less the large Coke he was ordering. But in a minute he had placed the Coke in a paper bag, had folded the pizza in half, and was ambling out. I ordered two slices with anchovies and pepperoni.

As usual, the light was out at the entrance to Ott’s building. I climbed the stairs to the second floor. The door at the top was unlocked, as always. The double stairs wound up the center of the old building, one flight on the inside, the next, split to rise on both sides of it. As I reached the third floor, the acrid smell of marijuana and the stench of dried urine almost masked the aroma of the pizza, and the liquor-thick yells of a man and woman in a room near the landing were mixed with a laugh track from their television. The hallway made a square around the stairs, with the offices on the outside and the old-fashioned bathrooms, the ones with the toilet in one room and the sink in another, on the inside. Ott’s office was at the end of the hall. Through the opaque glass in the door a light was visible.

I knocked.

“Who?” he demanded in a tone unfriendly even for Ott.

“Detective Smith.”

“Okay, hang on.” Ott never opened the door right away. Doubtless there were times he used the minute or so to put suspicious items out of sight. But I felt sure the rest of the time he just sat at his desk and let me wait. Whatever his motivation this time, it was more than two minutes before he pulled the door open and stood by the jamb.

Herman Ott never looked good. His blond hair was thin and getting thinner. His midriff was getting rounder. And the chinos and sweaters he wore, regardless of season, were invariably tan, brown, or yellow. They were never new. I suspected Ott was like a book collector, prowling the used goods stores in his spare moments for a discarded ecru crew neck, a mustard or gold striped shirt, or saffron pants. Today’s ensemble was topped with a smudged lemon tennis sweater. He glared down at the slices of pizza. “You haven’t got my money, huh, Smith?”

I extended a slice. “I’m keeping on them at the department. This is to show you I haven’t forgotten.”

His pale brown eyes narrowed. He stared at the pizza like it was a letter bomb.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“Two slices? What do you want, Smith?”

“Only one’s for you. But you can eat it, no strings attached.”

“Smith, I don’t have time to chat, particularly with a cop who owes me.”

I took a bite of my own piece. It tasted as good as it smelled. Holding the other slice out, I said, “It’s getting cold, Ott.”

“Two hundred bucks, Smith. You should have gotten it to me three weeks ago. I don’t deal like MasterCard.”