Not Exactly a Brahmin (14 page)

“Nothing beyond what Palmerston paid him, which was probably more than his normal fees,” I said. I stood up, stuffing my note pad in my pocket.

As I reached for the door, Howard said, “Now don’t you go harassing Herman Ott.”

I
SIGNED OUT A
Homicide black and white and drove to Telegraph, leaving it in the red zone in front of Ott’s building. The sun was bright, the air still post-storm fresh. Telegraph Avenue looked just cleaned. The rain had washed the pizza papers and dog turds off the sidewalk. Many people complained that the avenue they knew was disappearing in a wave of gentrification. New boutiques and croissant shops boasted bright tile, clean windows, and orange neon signs. They gave the impression that the entire avenue could be hosed clean. Next to them, Ott’s building looked older, grimier, and more squalid.

I charged up the exterior staircase between buildings. The door was propped open. It was after school hours and the second-floor hallway looked like a playground with a mixture of the children of the avenue regulars and those of refugee families.

The third-floor hallway contained a drunk who had keeled over from a sitting position and was now sprawled on the floor. I stepped around him and banged on Ott’s door.

“Who’s there?”

“Smith, Homicide.” Already I was shouting.

He pulled the door open.

I barged in past him. “What do you mean calling in a complaint about this case?”

He moved back around his desk. “Hey, hold it, what are you talking about?”

“Look, don’t stall. We had an arrangement. The department was going to pay you for work that you’ve already collected on once. And then you call a city council member and put in a harassment charge.”

Ott stared across at me, his yellow-clad shoulders hunched. “Come on, Smith, everyone knows I don’t like the cops. What council member is going to take my complaint seriously? I wouldn’t waste my time.”

I pushed the door shut and stepped closer to the desk. “There’s a new city council, Ott. The liberals are out; the radical slate is in. They like us even less than the old group did. Nothing is so establishment as the police department. They’re just beginning their terms. Some of them would be delighted to hear a complaint, even from you. Some of those new members,” I said more slowly, “might not even know who you are.”

“They know.” He glanced tentatively at the city directory on his desk. “Much as it is against my principals to give the cops any free information, I’ll tell you this, Smith. I didn’t make any complaint.”

“Why should I believe that?”

He shrugged. The yellow sweater settled stiffly back on his shoulders. “Believe what you want. But I have to use the council members from time to time. It’s good business for me to be on the up-and-up with them. They’re only going to do so much for me, so I have to—say—ration my requests.”

That made sense. “Still, by my not getting into Palmerston’s house, I don’t see your report and the one person who stands to gain, financially, by that is you.”

He nodded.

“You can go a long way toward making me believe you didn’t file that complaint by neutralizing the effect. You can tell me what’s in that report.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “Smith, you attach a high price to your belief. Why should I care what you think I did?”

I smiled. I’d hit on one of the strands of Ott’s ethical underpinnings, like his embarrassment at having given Ralph Palmerston information he could have found himself. “I know you’ve got more than just one name of the Shareholders Five. You turned in that report. You hit on exactly what was important to Adam Thede. There was no reason Palmerston wouldn’t have been pleased with your work.”

A small smile flickered on Ott’s face.

“So there was also no reason he wouldn’t have given you the rest of the names. And since he must have paid you a lot more than your regular clients, you wouldn’t hold off getting to them.”

“I’m not saying anything. I know my rights.”

“Give me one name. With one name it won’t matter that I can’t get to your report. It will”—I searched for the right word—“underline the integrity of our agreement.”

He leaned back against the file cabinet. “I already gave you one name, Smith. I haven’t seen any money.”

“It’s been less than twenty-four hours. You’re dealing with government. You don’t get your tax refund for months.” When he didn’t say anything, I added, “I’ve done my half.”

He seemed to shrink back in thought. He looked like nothing so much as a canary with a big furry cat under its cage.

“On one condition, Smith. And I mean this. You break your word on this and we never do business again, on anything.”

“What?”

“You don’t admit to anyone where you got this from. Ever.”

“Okay,” I said, relieved. “You’ve got my word.”

Looking over my shoulder, he said, “Carol Grogan.”

“Carol Grogan!” I said in amazement. “Lois Palmerston’s friend.”

“I’m not saying another word, Smith. Out.”

I didn’t press. I’d already gotten much more than I could have hoped for. I almost thanked him, but to Herman Ott thanks from a cop would have been an insult.

Carol Grogan, I thought as I made my way down the stairs, was the woman Lois Palmerston had had dinner with last night, the woman who had left her alone while she went to pick up her children from day care. Swenson, the officer on her beat, had checked on that. But it was time I saw her myself. I looked at my watch. Ten to four. Plenty of time.

I stood for a moment on the sidewalk. The sun was getting low. Shadows hung almost to the middle of the street. Sidewalk sellers of leather pouches and belts were gathering up their wares and folding the blankets they had been on. Ott had told me another thing besides Carol Grogan’s name. He’d given me good reason to believe he hadn’t been the complainant. But if not him, then who? Lois Palmerston stood out. With Ott’s information, I could file that question away for later. I turned toward the car.

“Hello there.”

Startled, I looked up at the languid, handsome face.

“Cap Danziger,” he said, extending a hand. “It was my Cadillac showroom you chose to dry off in last night.” He wore jeans and a French blue turtleneck that accentuated his silver-blue eyes. A gray corduroy jacket hang over his arm. All of them—the jeans, the turtleneck, and the jacket—looked carefully chosen and expensive. He looked about as different from Herman Ott as one was likely to get. When he smiled—an easy, confident smile, again at the far end of the spectrum from Ott’s wary-of-the-cat look—even his teeth gleamed.

“Are you getting ready to go on duty?”

“No.” It took me a minute to realize that since he had seen me yesterday in the evening, he would think that that was my shift. “No, actually, I work days. Like a normal person.”

“Must be nice. I wish people could be forced by law to buy cars between nine and five. Could you do that for me?”

“I don’t have the power now. Wait till I’m chief.” I was anxious to get to Carol Grogan’s, excited about my discovery. But Cap Danziger was a very attractive man. A couple of minutes wouldn’t hurt.

“I was going to suggest I walk you to your car, but I suppose that’s it by the curb.”

“’Fraid so.”

“Well then, how about a drink after work, since you work such civilized hours?”

Again I hesitated. How long would Carol Grogan take? Then there were the reports to write up. I looked back at Danziger’s silver-blue eyes, the easy half-smile as he watched the man who sold cloisonné earrings packing up. “Sometimes my work runs over. Could we make it later?”

“Let’s say eight. Then we’ll have the evening.”

“Okay.”

“Make it even easier, since you know where the showroom is, why don’t you come by? Then if you’re late, you won’t have to worry. It will just mean that I’ve sold another de Ville.”

“Great,” I said, opening the squad car door. I slid under the wheel. Cap Danziger reached toward the door, then drew his hand back, as if realizing he shouldn’t help a cop shut her door.

I sat for a moment, checking my note pad for Carol Grogan’s address. It was across town in North Berkeley, not far from where I lived. As I pulled into traffic, I found myself uneasy. It might have been from anticipation of confronting Carol Grogan and maybe finding the key to Shareholders Five, but I didn’t think so. The answer was a little closer. Cap Danziger was a very appealing man. There was something about him, about his very blue eyes, about the way the turtleneck hung off shoulders that were wide but not overmuscular; about his quickness and good sense in not closing the car door. There was definitely something about this man that got to me.

I turned left, driving past the University. It had been a long time since I had felt this kind of intense attraction. Had Nat, my ex-husband, elicited that? I couldn’t remember. The early days with him, in college, when everything was exciting, had been overwhelmed by the years after we moved to Berkeley. He had entered graduate school on his way to becoming a professor, and after searching for the right job to fill the interval before we moved on to some ivy-covered little college where he would begin his climb up the academic ladder, I had joined the force. From then it was just a question of whether things were falling apart slowly or at slam-bang pace. Our lives diverged. He agonized over the Oriental influence in Yeats’s poetry and I chased felons into alleys. The give-and-take (more accurately, take-and-take) of our divorce removed any veneer of maturity. Nat interrupted my work on a murder case because he didn’t think it was important. I sullied his dissertation notes because I knew how vital they were to him.

And after that was over, I kept my distance from men. No romances at work—that was an unbreakable rule. No flirtations with suspects or victims, or those likely to be—only common sense. I had never broken those rules. The only time I’d even been tempted was when Howard and I were out drinking one night. And even then I’d pulled back. Howard was my friend, probably my closest friend, and I wasn’t about to endanger that.

I had protected myself so well, that now what must have seemed like a normal reaction to the average woman came as a surprise. But Cap Danziger didn’t break any of my rules.

I screeched to a halt as students raced into the crosswalk. I decided I’d better think about Cap Danziger when I wasn’t driving.

I
CLIMBED UP THE
four wooden steps to Carol Grogan’s door and rang the bell. Carol Grogan worked at the Albany library. After State Proposition 13 had cut funds to local governments, the library had limited its hours. Some days it opened at ten, others at two and stayed open through the evening. Today it was closed all day.

The woman who answered the doorbell was about my height, five foot seven, with shoulder-length brown hair that was streaked with just enough gray to make it noticeable. She wore a royal blue T-shirt that said
READ
and brown sweatpants over hips that had sat too long in a chair. Her eyes were brown and set wide apart, her nose thin until the end, when it spread abruptly to the sides, as if to balance her eyes. Her skin had that same pallid coloring as Herman Ott’s. She looked as if she had been cleaning house. But the room behind her was clearly not what she’d been working on. She looked tired and irritated, but her face held the promise that with rest, sun, and makeup she could use those unusual features to make herself striking. Now they were drawn down into a scowl.

“I’m Detective Smith, Berkeley Police.” I held out my shield. “Are you Carol Grogan?”

“Yes,” she said with the normal wariness.

“I’d like to talk to you about Ralph Palmerston.”

She hesitated, glancing behind her at the living room that was littered with push trucks and plastic cars, small polo shirts, a beach ball, a red rubber football, and a virtual hurricane of small plastic building blocks in various bright plastic colors. “Come on in, if you can find your way. I was babysitting a two- and four-year-old this morning. I should forget that and enroll them in janitorial training.”

I stepped over what appeared to be two concentric plastic circles with a handle on top. Seeing my confusion, she said, “It spins, but you have to be under five to figure out how to use it.”

Pushing aside a Richard Scarry book with trains and cars and other odd vehicles on the cover, I sat on the couch. Carol Grogan cleaned off an ottoman opposite. I was just about to speak when the phone rang.

“Excuse me.”

“Sure.”

She walked through the dining room to the kitchen to take the call. The house was typical of Berkeley, with the living room across the front, the dining room and kitchen in line behind it, and a door leading from the dining room into a square hallway that in turn led to both bedrooms and the bathroom in between. In contrast to the jumble of the living room, the dining room was an adult area. An antique cherry table and sideboard stood on an Oriental rug. In the built-in cabinet was a set of gilt-edged china. The furniture dwarfed the room, as if it had come from a larger house, from a wealthier life style that Carol Grogan was not willing to let go of.

“Sorry,” she said, settling back on the ottoman. “That was one of my research people wanting to know the extent of Julia Morgan’s influence on architecture in the East Bay. I needed to get some specifics.”

“Is that how you know Lois Palmerston, through architecture?” I asked, remembering that Lois had worked for an architectural firm.

She stared a moment, then shook her head. “No. I’m not a specialist in architecture. I do research. This client just happens to be into Julia Morgan.”

“Is that part of your job at the library?”

“No. It’s a side business. A very small side business. I am a conglomerate of Carol Grogan Research, Carol Grogan Typing Services, and more often than I’d like, Carol Grogan Babysitting. My job at the library is only part-time. The payments on this house alone cost a fortune. And my kids go through clothes like they were an EPA testing service.”

“Their father—”

“Their father,” she said with a sigh of disgust, “was in middle management with an oil company. When we were married, we bought a house at the base of the hills. It seemed like we were paying a fortune then. Now that house costs twice as much as this, and I can’t afford either. What you were going to ask was, do I get support from him, right?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “? did for a while. When we were married, he traveled. He said he hated to be away. Then, after a while, he stopped saying that. Then he stopped coming home. And lately he’s stopped paying support.”