Sudden Exposure (3 page)

She winced. “I’m hardly rich.”

Wiley was five years younger than I and owned a house in the hills. More to the point, she had never deviated from her goal. If I’d done that, instead of opting to stay in Homicide because I was so sure I was making a difference, I’d have taken the sergeant’s test and been rotated back to patrol as a
sergeant
, not bumped from Homicide by a guy with better connections. As it was, I’d gotten tossed back here as a
patrol officer
responding to calls from a woman with better connections.

“Let’s discuss this in the light,” I said, motioning her toward her house.

It was a Mediterranean villa with a living room windowed on three sides, a house meant to bask in the sun and open its portals to the warm breezes of evening. Here, it might as well have been in a cave. Branch upon redwood branch thatched a dark ceiling over it, and the steep, wooded hillside behind clasped the damp to its back.

By the time I had breached the threshold, Bryn was halfway across the living room, a cathedral-ceilinged rectangle of hard surfaces, cold colors, and the bitter smell of Japanese green tea. How perfect for the diver who had never given herself slack. There was no warming fireplace—it must have been removed—and in its place was the skeleton of a confessional booth. Paint gone, wood bare, outer walls missing. But the center seat where a priest had sat was intact. So was the left side grating through which sins had been whispered, and the kneeling bench awaiting guilty knees. On its right flank the kneeler was gone, replaced by a seat with a provocative statue of the Hindu god, Shiva, clasping his voluptuous consort. It was quite the display of kitsch. I had to restrain myself from chuckling.

My face must have betrayed me, for Bryn looked at me and smiled. “That was my reaction. Ellen swore the thing would make the room—”

“Ellen?”

“Ellen Waller, my cousin. She works for me. I can’t afford anyone else,” she said pointedly. “Anyway, Ellen insisted this
thing
was the perfect accent piece, a touch of devil-may-care. I’m a diver, what do I know about decorating, right? But a huge piece like that in a living room this size: it’s like dropping a pound of curry in your stew!” She shook her head. “Ellen spotted it at the flea market. She stripped off five coats of paint and spent a week sawing away walls and sanding posts. So what could I do? I could hardly call out the Goodwill. Besides, they probably don’t have a big market for used confessionals.” She grinned and caught my eye, inviting me to laugh with her, her recent outburst forgotten.

I’d seen her do this push-pull with fans. It was amazingly effective. The pull of her intimacy was so great that when she pushed them away, they weren’t insulted, but just tried harder.

She glanced at the empty priest’s seat. But instead of grabbing a cushion and settling there, she raked strewn newspaper sections off the sofa till there was space and sat, motioning me to the other couch.

I propped myself on one of the padded sofa arms so my gun and flashlight and baton could hang freely. “So,” I said, “do you have any idea who shot at your car?”

“Not an
idea.
I
know.
The asshole opened up the great con job of the century two blocks away from The Girls’ Team. You know The Girls’ Team.” It was a statement, not a question.

“It’s a block below Telegraph, built on the parking lot next to the Berkeley City Club, right?”

“
Over
the parking lot. I saved all but two parking spots when I built there, so I wouldn’t harm the neighborhood. I planted trees around the building, full-grown and damned expensive trees. The deck has window boxes with flowers growing all year. I went out of my way to create the best health club in town. My StairMasters are the safest, my Exercycles have seats tilted to preserve the riders’ lumbar curves. I’ve got cold dunking pools to use after workouts, a sauna, a snack bar with healthy food and Peet’s Coffee. I’ve put my entire self into the Team.”

I couldn’t help but be impressed. Bryn Wiley had that effect. She could be a pain in the ass, but there was no doubting her commitment. “So,” I said, “what is this con job of the century a block away?”

“The name ‘Heat Exchange’ mean anything to you?” She spat out the words. Any resemblance to the shaken victim I’d met outside was gone.

“Tell me.”

“The biggest fraud on the Avenue.”

That was saying a fair amount.

“Sam Johnson—you do know him?” Her hands curled into fists—tight, symmetrical weapons on arms poised to strike.

“Of course.”

“He’s opened a so-called health club!”

“What?” Sam Johnson was the least likely individual to operate a health club. I couldn’t imagine him even having stepped inside one. Johnson was an old-time radical. If he saw a StairMaster, he’d probably take those endless steps to nowhere as a metaphor on capitalism. “Sam Johnson?”

“Yeah. Even when I realized the place was right on the Avenue, two blocks from the Team, and a whole lot more convenient for people coming from Cal, I still laughed. Who would waste their money on a fitness center run by a man who … who—”

“Thinks a Nautilus machine is something for mollusks?” I said.

“Yeah”—she grinned at me—“exactly. But when I heard about that ripoff, fraudulent, self-delusionary sham—At first I couldn’t believe it was real. Then I realized just how much trouble I was in. The guy really knows Berkeley.”

“How so?”

“Oh, you haven’t heard about The Heat Exchange’s gimmick? Well, here it is: Deep in their hearts, old lefties think working out is hedonistic, yuppie, politically incorrect. But they don’t want their butts to sag, right? To the rescue comes Sam Johnson, saying: ‘Pin up your ponytail, wear your “
U.S. Out of Wherever
” T-shirt proudly, and pedal your ass off on The Heat Exchange’s stationary bike, because—ta-da!—the friction you create can be converted into heat and that heat will cut the utility bills of the deserving poor who live on the floors below. Then you can feel downright smug about yourself.’ It’s just too good to be true, right?”

It sounded good to me.

“And it would be good.
If
it worked. But if the poor get one erg of energy from that club, I’ll eat my foot. And in the meantime, Johnson, who knows not a whit about exercise, will be injuring people right and left.” She was leaning toward me, her pale, angular face aglow with conviction, those startlingly blue eyes of hers open wide. This was no act.

I almost felt cruel saying, “Wait a minute. Why won’t the energy conversion work?”

“Because the machines you use in a fitness center don’t create energy, they consume it. Take the treadmill: You don’t move the belt as you walk, the belt goes electrically and you race to keep up with it. You
can
get a manual treadmill, but it’s a pain to operate. Johnson’s got both. Which do you think his people are going to use?”

“But the Exercycles, you do pedal those.”

“Right,
if
you just pedal like you would on a bike riding on an endless straightaway. But should you use the hill program, or any one that changes the level of intensity—and that’s the only thing that makes the Exercycle tolerable, believe me—every change within that program takes a jolt of electricity. And you know he’s not telling club members ‘only the hard, boring machines help the poor.’”

“Still, if someone wanted to—”

“Sure, you could use the bare-bones equipment. But, even the most noble-spirited person isn’t going to pedal full out on a machine that doesn’t tell you how you’re doing. You’re going to slow down without even realizing it.” She nodded in agreement with herself. “Look, what Sam Johnson has created is the perfect vehicle to fool yourself. If
wanting
created change, no one would even have pimples.”

I smiled. “So why not get a disgruntled customer to subpoena Johnson’s electric bills?”

“He’s too smart to give guarantees. He’ll say if there’s no excess electricity, people aren’t working hard enough.” She shrugged as if to say the implications were obvious.

But the corollaries weren’t clear at all. “Bryn, if he’s doing so well, why is he battering your vehicles?”

She let out a sigh of disgust. “Because I am the only one screaming ‘The emperor has no clothes.’”

In the dining room, a board creaked. I turned just in time to see a woman eye me nervously and scurry into the kitchen. She looked eerily like Bryn Wiley. “Who is that?”

“What?” Bryn glanced quickly toward the dining room, and then back at me. “Ellen.”

“Your cousin?”

She nodded.

There was a remarkable resemblance: similar height, similar coloring, that same suggestion of fragility. But in Cousin Ellen it was more pronounced, as if she were the child who got fed second. Or maybe she just looked older. Her hair seemed duller than Bryn’s shiny chestnut, her sharp features taut not with outrage but nervousness. “She lives here?”

“Like I said, Ellen works for me.”

I nodded. “And she lives in?”

“Yes.”

“Did she hear the shots? Would you get her?”

She sat a moment, as if she suspected I’d staged the diversion to derail her complaint. Then she jolted up and walked into the kitchen.

The sofa arm wasn’t meant for a chair; I shifted, trying to find a more comfortable position. I glanced around the colorless room, looking for any personal item. A white-on-white glassed collage hung behind the sofa. But there were no photos of Bryn with diving greats, no shots of her twisting high above the water, no awards or trophies. Not even a snapshot of her cutting the ribbon for The Girls’ Team. An amazing lack of self-congratulation. On my office wall in Homicide I used to keep news articles about every case I closed. When leads dried up in new cases, and the pressure of too many felony assault cases got to me, I’d look at those yellowed news stories and remember the relatives who no longer wondered, the dead whose death hadn’t been forgotten.

In a moment Bryn was back. “Ellen’s gone.”

“Gone? Gone where?”

“I don’t know. It’s not like this is a mansion. She’s not here. She must have gone for a walk.”

Or fled at the sight of the police. “At midnight?”

“She walks a lot. Anytime. Walking’s her outlet. We’re a good pair: She doesn’t drive and I never let anyone drive my car. Christ, now
I
can’t even drive it! Look, what’s the point of paying for police if your car can get shot in your own driveway?”

“Bryn, if someone wants to shoot out your window bad enough, a hundred police officers aren’t going to stop them. You know that,” I said. “You must have asked Ellen about the shots. Did she hear them?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Did she see anyone suspicious?”

“She didn’t say so.” Bryn’s face hardened. “Look, it doesn’t matter who she saw. How many times do I have to tell you, Sam Johnson’s the one you need to get after. The man’s a danger to society … with that ripoff club of his. He’s …he’s …” She sputtered. Then she stopped and stared at me in bewilderment. “I just don’t understand … How can people—my own
Team
members—go over there? They’ll get injured; I told them that. How can they do that to themselves?”

“And to you?” I said softly.

“How can they let themselves be deluded … I just don’t understand it.”

For the first time, I truly felt for Bryn Wiley. She
didn’t
understand. She didn’t even realize why she was upset: not because of their poor reasoning but because she had been rejected. “You’ve made the Team the best fitness center around.”

She shook her head slowly and again looked right at me, beseeching me to understand. “I don’t have a husband or even a lover. I spend my nights with sports medicine journals and equipment catalogues. I’ve given my life to the Team; it
is
the best. How can people …” She slumped back against the doorway.

Her eyes had faded to the color of worn denim and her wonderful cheekbones only made her look weary. I had the eerie sense that I was seeing the reflection of Ellen Waller, or, more accurately, seeing beneath the tough outer layer that Bryn had molded and Ellen apparently had failed to grow.

I tried for other suspects, but in Bryn’s mind there were none.

I asked to look through the house. But a survey of the bedrooms didn’t yield much. There was a small room with a scarred dresser and a futon covered by a black on white print comforter, and one larger room filled with an array of white wicker furniture. The bedspread was in the same design as the lesser room’s, but in bright primary colors. Even in home decoration, it seemed, Bryn reminded her cousin of her lesser place.

“The ID tech should be out in an hour or two. It depends how many calls were ahead of mine. But he won’t have to disturb you. You may just see him flashing his light around your car.” I moved back out the door. “Get an alarm on your car. Park the van in a safe place. If you’ve got a cellular phone, keep it with you. Hire a guard for The Girls’ Team for a month. I’ll be talking with Sam Johnson.”

“Is that all?” she demanded. She inhaled, her face the picture of contempt. “That’s nothing! If you’re too lazy to do more than that, then get out of my way!” She paused, took a breath, then tossed the bomb: “I’m giving a press conference Saturday, and I’m telling you if this isn’t settled by then, I’ll settle it myself. Don’t tell me how dangerous Sam Johnson is; I don’t care. I’ll expose the bastard.” She slammed the door.

I walked down the steps into welcome cool air. Her last threat unnerved me more than I’d have expected. I handle my share of frustrated complainants, but Bryn Wiley was in a class by herself. She was like Aesop’s fabled lion holding out a paw with a thorn in it. And when I’d reached out to pluck out the burr, she’d taken a swipe at me. If I accused her of that, she’d deny it, because—and this was the scary part—it was so natural to her, I doubt she realized it.

How many people had she clawed over the years? At her press conference, how many of them would be waiting for a shot at her?

I
T WAS CLOSE TO
midnight when I left. Branches of giant redwoods muted the light on Tamalpais Road. I pulled my flashlight out of its loop and aimed it at the ground, but it was like pouring skim milk into a cup of cocoa—it made only a momentary difference. The ground was still muddy from the rains. Maybe Raksen would find a bullet casing I had missed, or an incriminating footprint, and take a mold. But footprint molds are only useful after the fact. Footprints aren’t like mug shots. You don’t circulate the likeness of an 11B sole and wait for calls from everyone who saw it. Chances were the suspect had been shod in Adidas, or Nikes, or a pair of Teva sandals like half of California.