As a Favor (2 page)

“Right. He’ll decide the easiest thing is to put me on foot patrol where all they can steal is my night stick.” The tires screeched as he turned the car left. “Goddamn it. Before this I had a good record. Now my very presence causes crime.”

Howard had every right to be frustrated and to be worried. At any other time he might have waited out the thief, with the assurance that any appearance of floundering on this case would have been more than offset by his competent handling of major crimes. But now every officer needed to look his best. The department was reorganizing. A patrol officer would no longer handle all cases on his beat, whether they were drug dealing or jaywalking, shoplifting or homicide. Now murders would go to Homicide, pandering to Sex Crimes. And beat officers would be left with whatever assignments the detectives in those departments gave them. And with traffic.

As new departments were created and old ones expanded, some patrol officers would be promoted to detective—patrol officers with good records, who’d shown they could handle themselves on the street. Howard and I had both dealt with murders. That looked good. Penny-ante theft—unsolved—did not.

The car screeched to a halt at a red light. “Goddamn it,” Howard said, “one Telegraph Avenue psycho is not going to ruin my career. I’m going to get him. I have to explain this fiasco to the lieutenant. But I’ve got a plan, one with no loopholes. You with me, Jill?”

“Sure.”

T
HE
U
NIVERSITY SITS IN
the center of Berkeley where the eastern hills meet the flatlands. The city was created around it. University Avenue runs west to the freeway and the Bay.

From the Berkeley hills west, wealth decreases with the elevation. Houses that start at more than six figures hang precariously off the hillside. Every few years the winter rains pound, the land slips, foundations give way, eucalyptus trees topple onto roofs. In autumn after six rainless months, dry grass catches fire, and homeowners spray their roofs hourly—and hope. The spectre of the Big Quake is always there.

The half mile between College Avenue and Telegraph is flat, and filled with large older homes, some, like Howard’s, shared uneasily by four to six acquaintances, some converted to student apartments.

Half a mile further west, Howard turned off University south on Grove and made a quick right into the station lot. By now he wasn’t talking. I didn’t need to ask why. Explaining the loss of a suspect to Lt. Davis was a daunting prospect.

We walked silently up the side steps to the second floor. Howard knocked on the glass door of the cubicle to the left—Lt. Davis’—and I kept walking past the meeting room into the squad room.

Now, just after six, it was virtually deserted. Twenty wooden desks in three rows filled the room. At the beginning of our shift—Day Watch, 3:00 to 11:00—beat officers headed for their desks and frequently found them still held by their Morning Watch occupants. Everyone was anxious to pass on tips, discuss suspicious behavior on their beats, to ask for follow-up assist. The squad room had the atmosphere of a bus station. But now it was almost empty. I walked halfway down the aisle to my chair, glancing briefly at the front desk to my right. Nothing going on there.

I slumped into the chair. The room matched my spirits. At the sunniest of times the small high windows on the east side were too far away to allow much light to reach my desk. Now the fluorescent lights made the windows darker.

Checking my IN box, I skimmed and discarded a memo reminding us not to park personal cars in the station yard, filed two lab reports, and fingered a message from Nat. Nat, my ex-husband.

“What does he want now?” I muttered aloud.

I looked toward the lieutenant’s office, hoping to see Howard emerge, ready to discuss the case. But there was no movement through the doorway.

I glanced back at the note, feeling the familiar pulls of anger and guilt.

At the reception desk, twenty feet away, a woman placed a bundle of clothing in front of Sabec, the desk man. A boy about ten looked scared.

“Tell the officer how you found the clothes,” the woman said.

The boy hesitated, undoubtedly wavering between fear of the uniform and elation at his own importance. Finally he said, “Me and Joey, my friend, we were down by the Bay and Ralph, my dog, he—”

“They’re good quality,” the woman interrupted. “The dress is linen; it’s monogrammed, see—AMS—so it was ordered, if not handmade. I—”

“Is it blood?”

“Ssh.” She pulled the boy’s hand away from the dress. “It’s been torn, Officer.”

“Yes, ma’am, I see. Now, son, you and your friend found these clothes…”

“Joey, that’s my friend, well, he—”

“Ready?” It was Howard, looking not unlike the pile of garments on Sabec’s desk—definitely limp, and figuratively bloodstained. I opened my mouth, but before I could form the question, Howard said, “Let’s go. I’ll tell you about it at dinner.”

“So what did the lieutenant say?”

We were seated in our regular booth in the back of Priester’s on Telegraph Avenue.

Howard forked his lettuce, then paused. “The lieutenant commented in detail, in minute detail, about our losing the suspect.”

“You mean
my
losing the suspect.”

“That’s not how the lieutenant sees it. You, at least, were within a few yards of the suspect. I wasn’t even within a block.”

“Well, that’s how we planned it. You were supposed to be
seen
away from the car.”

It was an understatement. A six-foot-six redhead, Howard never went unnoticed. In newspaper stories on the Berkeley Police, he was always pictured. Twice, a shot of Howard towering over his patrol car had accompanied stories with which he had no connection at all. Howard, the archetypal cop.

Even now as I glanced at the booth across from us, a blond, curly-haired young woman was staring at Howard. “I see your point,” I said to him. “You seem to have attracted a Little Miss Muffet.”

He looked over and sighed. “Wonderful.”

I finished my burger. “Did the lieutenant say anything else?” Howard’s burger lay barely touched.

“Oh, yeah. He said, one more day. Then, no thief, no car. And definitely no hope of making detective.”

I put my hand on his arm and gave it a squeeze. “We’ll get your thief. Come on, have a little confidence in us. And in the meantime, eat some of that mound of food you ordered.”

A trace of his normal grin returned. “I take it that means you’ll help with my ultimate plan?”

“Sure. Tell me.”

“In a minute. I’m taking your advice and eating now.” Eyeing my empty plate, he added, “There’s nothing holding you back from talking. Tell me what you have on for the rest of Watch.”

I sat back, fingering my coffee cup. “Not much. A couple of routine follow-ups that I could put off. Some reports. Oh, and a message to call Nat.”

Howard took another bite of his burger. He was one of the friends who had heard all my complaints throughout the divorce. The couple of times he had met Nat it was obvious they disliked each other. Whether the cause was merely natural antipathy or because Howard was my friend, I had chosen not to consider.

Now Howard asked, “What did you ever see in Nat? Take your time. I’ve still got salad and dessert to eat.”

I leaned back against the booth. “It’s something I’ve asked myself. Probably the answer is excitement and a certain amount of snobbishness. Nat’s family was so wonderfully patrician, so almost Boston-Brahmin. And then, Nat and I were going to Europe, going to live like the literati in the twenties. And he was going to be a professor, which to a college senior like me was virtually next to God. He knew exactly what he wanted and it sounded fine to me.”

Howard started in on his salad.

It was the job that had changed me, that and growing four years older. We’d moved to Berkeley when Nat started graduate school and I’d taken the Patrol Officer’s test hoping for a job to support us during that time. Our stay in Berkeley was to be temporary, a necessary period until Nat graduated and our real life began.

But I had come to love Berkeley, with its warm winters and dry summers, its street artists, the coffee houses, the campus haranguers, the Telegraph Avenue freaks, and the atmosphere that gave them freedom. I enjoyed the pottery studio that was open till midnight, where on my nights off I could throw lopsided bowls and call them artistic. I liked my friend Sarah, who worked part-time and shared a tiny house because she wasn’t willing to sell any more of her time, and Lydia, who designed and sewed wild and wildly expensive vests and dresses, and Jake at Super Copies, the poet—all the people who would never become staid and grown up. I wasn’t willing to leave Berkeley, or my friends, or my career.

“Besides my own feelings, Howard, it became evident that I was not likely to be an asset as the wife of an aspiring professor.”

“How so?”

“Look how I spend my time. I chase suspects down alleys no sensible woman would walk in. I deal with overdoses and assaults. I break the worst possible news to wives and parents. Frankly, after all that, Nat’s concern with the Yeatsian interpretation of life often seems a bit trivial to me. And, I must admit, our divergence has not been one-sided. Nat accused me of an unnatural fascination with the squalid.”

Howard laughed.

“The thing is that instead of divorce being the end to a marriage, our marriage was more like a preparation for the divorce. Once I realized I didn’t want Nat’s life there was nothing else there. In the end it was more a matter of removing my possessions than myself.”

“Oh? What about the hibachi? What about,” he paused for effect, “what about the seventeen untouched cans of Pepperidge Farms soups? What about…?”

“Okay, okay. Admittedly we hit new levels of immaturity after the separation.” We had squabbled over a coffee grinder neither of us had ever used, and the blender, and the houseplants. It had come to a head in September while I was working on a murder case and Nat was calling me about our Cost Plus stainless. “But I did buy him a new set of stainless, and he is going to split the
National Geographics
.”

“And this finishes it?”

“I’d like to think so. I just wish he’d realize that the reason you divorce someone is so you don’t have to deal with them.”

“You
could
ignore his call.”

“I could, but you know I won’t.” I still felt the guilt, not about our possessions or moving out. But my departure had forced Nat to leave school, to take a job working at the welfare department, which he hated. It wasn’t logical for me to feel responsible, but I did. I couldn’t explain it to Howard; it wasn’t even really clear to me.

Howard ate in silence.

“Anyway,” I said, “I’m safe now. We’ve haggled over everything but the stamps and the straight pins. Maybe Nat wants to give me something he took.”

“You know you’ll have room for it, whatever it is.”

“Hey, no sneering at my apartment.”

It was still early for most people’s dinner, but Priester’s was getting crowded. The blond Miss Muffet had been replaced by a duo in jeans and T-shirts. Out front the noise level rose.

“You can eat and talk,” I said. “Tell me about your plan.”

“Okay.” He chewed the remains of the salad and shifted a slice of cherry pie in front of him. “I’m going to get my thief on my own ground, away from Telegraph, where there are no head shops for him to run into, no street artists to hide him, no spaced-out freaks for him to use as camouflage.”

“How?”

“Lure him. I’ll cruise down Telegraph twice, then park a couple blocks away and leave the car just long enough for him to salivate. Then I’ll snatch it away and park a few blocks further on. By the time I get to College Avenue his tongue will be hanging out and I’ll grab it.”

“That’s a fairly disgusting picture, Howard, but if you don’t lose him it could work.”

“It should take about an hour for me to make it to College.”

“Okay. I’ll be there.”

Howard grinned. “That’ll give you time to call ol’ Nat and see what he’s decided to give you.”

I
TRIED
N
AT.
H
E
wasn’t home. My obligation paid, I tossed the message into the garbage and pulled out my pad. I would have to record this afternoon’s fiasco. I wanted to slant the report, to somehow make this, the third attempt to capture this very minor thief, look less inept than it seemed.

My phone buzzed.

“Patrol Officer Smith,” I said.

“Jill? It’s Nat. You didn’t call me back.”

“I tried. You weren’t there.” Already the conversation had that familiar accusatory theme.

“I went to Anne’s again. She still wasn’t home. You remember my telling you about Anne.”

I didn’t remember. I could feel my fingers tightening on the receiver. Who was this Anne who had gone out? A girlfriend? And, more to the point, why was Nat calling me, at work, to ponder her whereabouts?

In the background I could hear traffic sounds. “Are you in a phone booth?”

“Yes. I’m a couple blocks from Anne’s.”

“Uh huh.”

“I called you before. Anne’s missing. I haven’t seen her since yesterday; she didn’t come to work, didn’t call in. It’s not like her. Everyone’s worried.”

But presumably
everyone
was not worried enough to go to her house or call an ex-wife to talk about it. Now I remembered Anne, Anne Spaulding—she was one of Nat’s coworkers at the welfare department. I hadn’t met her, but Nat had talked of her—how interested she was in his studies, what clever points she had made. He had hit me at low moments when I first moved into my apartment, when it bothered me that the apartment was merely a converted porch at the back of someone’s house, when I felt aimless, when I missed not him but the supposed order of our life together. And when I felt guilty about leaving him. Anne, by his description, was all that I had not been, someone who could be the ideal professor’s wife.

“Maybe she forgot to call,” I said.

“Anne doesn’t forget.”

“Well, then something probably came up and she was too rushed to call.”