He wiped his mouth with his shirtsleeve.

  He threw the remnants of his meal into a wastebasket.

  “Now, you sons of bitches, what’s the bottom line? If I fight these Brie-eaters do I have a chance? Any chance at all? Coffman, give it to me on the level.”

  Eric Coffman intoned, “We lawyers are trained never to promise anyone anything. But if I had to make a promise, Mr. Burnside, I would promise you this. Fight this lawsuit and you will lose.”

  Burnside snarled. “You, girlie, what’s your name, MacDuff? Whatever. Does this stuffed shirt know what he’s talking about? If I hire you away from him, will you fight this case for me?”

  Kelly McGee kept her cool. Lindsey detected the ghost of a smile around Eric Coffman’s mouth. “I don’t think I could ethically go to work for you at this point, Mr. Burnside. But if I were your attorney, based on what I know of the case, I would urge you to settle.”

  “And you? Linsley, what do you have to say?”

  “Settle, Mr. Burnside. The other side isn’t demanding unconditional surrender. Let Mr. Coffman talk to their lawyer. You’ll be better off, believe me.”

  Burnside jumped to his feet. He moved with remarkable speed for a man of his age and massive girth. “All right! All right! Gulliver pulled down by the Lilliputians. You’re all against me. Every one of you. All right. You, MacWhatever, you, girlie, give me the goddamned paper and take it and get the hell out of my office!”

  They left with the signed memorandum in Kelly McGee’s briefcase. They refrained from laughing until they reached the street.

  Once there, Eric Coffman said, “I’ll talk with Caswell. You’ll be in town a little longer, Hobart?”

  Lindsey said he would. “In fact, I don’t know. I’ve lived in Walnut Creek for so long, I think I might make a permanent change.”

  Coffman raised his Raymond Burr eyebrows. “Really?”

  “You and Miriam are happy in Emeryville?”

  “I’ll be honest, it took some adjusting. You don’t just pull up stakes and move and go on seamlessly. But, yes, we’ve been here a while now and no regrets.” He paused, then added, “Miriam wanted me to invite you for dinner again. Sorry about last time but I was otherwise detained. Not tonight, Hobart. I’m still recovering. What about some night next week? And by all means, bring your friend Marvia Plum. Miriam and I have always liked her.”

  Lindsey was silent for a time, seemingly frowning down at his toes.

  Coffman asked, “Metal or plastic?”

  Lindsey was silent again. Finally he said, “I’m thinking about it.”

  Kelly McGee stared at the two hysterical men as if they had gone mad.

  SEVENTEEN

  Kellen Jamison showed up as promised. He was dressed in a Cal Bears sweatshirt that had obviously seen better days, a pair of jeans that could stand a thorough washing, and a baseball cap with FREE PALESTINE embroidered on the front.

  “Ready?”

  A Plymouth sedan badly in need of paint and with half its body trim missing stood at the edge of the street.

  Carolyn Horton stared at the battered car and shuddered. She was holding a white leather Gucci handbag—it was springtime now, nearly summer—and wearing Stuart Weitzman pumps.

  In the car—it didn’t even smell good—Jamison asked how her husband was doing.

  “Not well. Not well at all, I’m afraid.”

  Jamison said, “Sorry to hear that.”

  “You will still be paid, Mr. Jamison. No need to worry about that.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that at all, ma’am.”

  When he said “ma’am” he managed to make it sound like an insult.

  “We’re going to start at Berkeley High,” Jamison said. “I’m going to be driving. I’ll go as slow as I can but I don’t want us to be conspicuous. You keep an eye out for your daughter. If you see her, if you even see somebody you think might be her, you sound off, all right? Not to her. To me. All right?”

  “I quite understand, thank you.”

  “All right. If that doesn’t work, I’ve got another idea. They need food and there’s a big outlet store down on University near the railroad tracks. A lot of people get their groceries there to save money. We’ll try the school first, do ripple surveillance, and if we come up empty we’ll try University.”

  The Plymouth’s windshield had apparently not been cleaned since the last rainstorm. There were food crumbs on the floor. More to make conversation than because she cared, Carolyn asked, “Do they even build these cars anymore?”

  Jamison smiled. “No, ma’am. This was one of the last. A real classic. Going to be collectible one day.”

  The conversation lapsed.

  Berkeley High was south of University and west of Shattuck, two of the city’s main thoroughfares. By the time Jamison had covered enough territory without a sighting he said he would try the next option. “Gotta keep trying,” he announced.

  They headed down University. The traffic was heavy. The sun beat down. The Plymouth didn’t have air conditioning. The Plymouth pulled to a stop at a traffic light at San Pablo Avenue.

  Carolyn Horton screamed. “I see her! I see her!”

  “Where?”

  “Right there,” she was crying. “Don’t you see, don’t you see, right there!”

  “You gotta tell me where, damn it! ‘Right there’ is no good. Left or right or—”

  She pointed ahead of them and to their left, to the south, toward Emeryville and Oakland. “Oh, catch them, catch them!”

  Traffic was flowing past them on San Pablo Avenue. They were in the wrong lane to make the turn. A truck painted with the name of a plumbing company blocked their path. Jamison leaned on the Plymouth’s horn. Carolyn Horton pointed a well-manicured fingernail past him. He caught sight of a slate-gray BMW convertible, its top down. The driver wore a sporty cap. There were two figures crammed into the passenger seat, one of them a young girl with red hair. Jamison pounded his horn again and again. He even caught a glimpse of the Beamer’s license tag. Long training came into play. He noted the vanity plate: BMRMEUP.

  By the time the light changed, the Beamer was out of sight. It was quicker for Jamison to push on another block and circle left, back to San Pablo, hoping to catch sight of the Beamer again, but the car had disappeared. Jamison pulled to the curb in front of a Salvation Army thrift store. Mrs. Horton sat beside him, weeping loudly.

  “I saw her. She was with those two men. I saw her, I’m sure of it. Didn’t I see them, Mr. Jamison? Didn’t I see them? Say that I did. Say it. She’s alive. Oh, say that she’s alive.”

  Jamison said, “I think you did. We can’t be certain, but from the photos you’ve shown me, I think that was your daughter.”

  “And we lost her again. We’ll never catch that little car. Oh, you should have let me take the Lexus. It’s so much better than this … this—”

  Jamison resisted the impulse to say, “This Plymouth, Mrs. Horton, it’s a working man’s car. Made in the USA. Except they don’t make ’em anymore.” That was his impulse, but he resisted it. Instead he said, “I got the license.” He opened the map compartment and fished out a pencil stub and a scrap of paper. “I’ll remember it anyhow, but just to be safe…” He scribbled, “Slate gray BMW convertible, tag BMRMEUP.”

  Carolyn Horton turned to him and asked, “What good will that do?”

  Jamison said, “Lend me your cell phone, will you? I really need to get one of those things.”

  He punched in a number and exchanged a few words with someone. The conversation ended with, “Holy shit, Olaf, I’ll be right there!”

  He handed the phone back to Carolyn Horton. “Go home. I can’t take you. Look, grab a taxi and go home, or go down to Kaiser and visit your husband. I have to hustle.”

  Flustered, she tried several times to get an explanation from Jamison but finally allowed herself to be expelled from the ramshackle Plymouth. She hailed a cab and gave the driver, an unshaven, turban-wearing foreigner who spoke little English, her address. She set her jaw at an angry angle. Next time, whatever Kellen Jamison or anyone else said, she would use the Lexus!

  Meanwhile, Jamison hit the accelerator and made it to police headquarters on MLK in record time. Olaf Strombeck met him in the lobby and they hurried to Strombeck’s office in Homicide. “Got your Beamer info from DMV. Car is registered to one Stanley G. Wilkins, residence one of those new condos on Telly near the campus. Teaches Pre-Islamic Middle Eastern History, grad level.”

  “Great!”

  “More than great. Listen to this: We just got a mutual aid call from El Cerrito. A really nasty 187 at the Ruby Red Pup.”

  “The ruby what?”

  “Ruby Red Pup. It’s a bar on San Pablo. Bartender was lured into the back room by a couple of kids. They cut his throat and left him there.”

  Jamison let loose an expletive.

  “But wait, there’s more. Relief bartender heard the scuffle. Had to break the lock to get into the storeroom. He found the body. Throat slashed. Not sure whether the vic bled to death or choked on his own blood. Two perps, got away, out the back door of the establishment. There was a little loading dock back there and they took off on foot.”

  “That witness, the relief bartender … did he get a description of the perps?”

  “You bet. Male, fifteen to seventeen, dirty blond hair, maybe five eight, hundred forty pounds. Female, thirteen to fifteen, red hair, skinny build, not much over five feet, maybe a hundred pounds. Both wearing T-shirts and jeans. And here’s the best: Witness says the vic knew the perps, called them Bobby and Red.”

  “They’re my kids! Holy Christ! What the hell were they doing in El Cerrito? What the hell?”

  “Yeah, Kellen, what the hell, indeed. El Cerrito PD says they suspected the vic, name Morty Korman, was a mid-level distributor. Anything you wanted, either Korman had it or he could get it for you, but he specialized in pills. Big man with the latest jolt, something called Adderall. It’s legal with scrips but it’s all the craze with the student population, college and high school, and it’s working its way down to middle school.”

  Jamison ran his hand across his face. “And I just saw them. This Wilkins character—sporty type, that Beamer must have cost him fifty grand—heading down San Pablo with Bobby and Red jammed into the passenger seat.”

  Sergeant Olaf Strombeck reached for the phone and punched one key. He had the UC Police on speed-dial. He shot the urgent info to his campus contact, said he’d stand by for an answer.

  When it came, it came from the secretary of the chairperson of the history department. Professor Wilkins had no classes scheduled today. Nor office hours. In fact, he wasn’t expected back on campus until Monday. Strombeck requested Wilkins’s home and cell-phone numbers.

  He tried both and got switched twice to voice mail. He left his own number and an urgent request for a call back. Then, he and Jamison went and found Captain Yamura and Lieutenant Plum in conference. He briefed them on the situation. Yamura authorized him to station a uniformed officer at Wilkins’s condo. And to issue an APB for Wilkins, Bobby Last-Name-Unknown, and Rebi Horton.

  Yamura knew Jamison. She asked if he had any idea where Wilkins and the two suspects were headed in Wilkins’s Beamer. Jamison told her that he’d seen the roadster heading south on San Pablo at University. Wilkins could have been headed for Oakland, Alameda, or points south or east of there. He had no idea what relationship existed between Wilkins and the two kids, whether the trio had remained together or separated, and in the latter case, at what point.

  “Okay, Sergeant, get on the horn to the Highway Patrol. That Beamer roadster with the vanity plate should be pretty easy to spot.”

  * * *

  Lindsey had finished another report to Desmond Richelieu in Denver, outlining his meeting with Coffman, McGee, and Jack Burnside. The key item in the report was the fact that they’d managed to get Burnside’s signature on the memorandum of agreement. Not that the paper had any legal force. Burnside could still balk at signing off on International Surety’s payment to Marston and Morse, Gordian could insist on fighting the case, and if I.S. refused to stand with him, he could sue the insurance carrier. But that looked damned unlikely. Lindsey was just about ready to wrap up the case.

  He shut down his laptop, swung his feet onto the bed, and picked up the remote. Maybe he could turn up a good noir to while away a couple of hours.

  Before he’d found anything, Richelieu responded to the report with a phone call.

  “Lindsey, I can’t say I’m happy with this thing. I’d hoped you’d get I.S. off the hook.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Richelieu. I can’t change the facts. I think we’re getting away about as well as we can.”

  “And I assume you’re going to check out of that Taj Mahal and send in your final cheat sheet.”

  “I might stay on a little longer. Personal reasons.”

  “You do whatever you want to do, but as far as I’m concerned you’re off the slush fund as of now, you understand?”

  “Understand. And you’re welcome.”

  Lindsey finished hyperventilating and picked up the remote again. They had a music service as well as the usual video and he channel-surfed until he stumbled onto the first movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

  Peace.

  Peace for a little while. He stared at the ceiling. He’d come out of retirement. He’d worked a case and succeeded. He felt like a pitcher who’d been called back from retirement and invited to spring training—and who made the team and won his first start.

  What do you do now? he asked himself. What’s left to prove?

  He closed his eyes, allowing himself to be carried along by the music. He drifted in and out of sleep. Again an image floated above him, a single image this time, the image of Marvia Plum’s face.

  He sat up and reached for his cell phone. He punched in Marvia Plum’s cell number and felt like a schoolboy waiting for her to answer. For a moment when he heard her voice he couldn’t speak. Then he asked, “Have you had dinner yet?”

  What a dunce! He was as tongue-tied, as restricted to banalities as a fifteen-year-old.

  She laughed, but not derisively. “I haven’t.”

  “Could we—?”

  “I’m at home.”

  He showered and dressed, retrieved the Avenger, and drove to her home on Bonar Street. He didn’t notice what she was wearing, only her face and her hair and a perfume far too subtle to identify but far too compelling to ignore.

  He remembered a restaurant in Berkeley’s Northside neighborhood, a place he hadn’t visited in more than a decade. Fortunately, it was still in business. It was old-fashioned enough to have linen tablecloths, polished silver, and candles on the table.

  He had no idea what they ordered or what they drank, only that he kept trying to ask Marvia to marry him and suffering a failure of nerve again and again. Afterward, sitting in the front seat of the Avenger, he took her in his arms like a smitten sophomore and said, “Marvia, marry me.”

  It was so simple, and he felt his heart racing until she said, equally simply, “Yes, Bart. I will.”

  * * *

  Olaf Strombeck felt the phone vibrating, dragged himself into wakefulness, and reached for the cell phone. Over his shoulder he said, “I know, I know, go back to sleep.” He took the phone into the living room and closed the bedroom door.

  “This is Stan Wilkins. You’re the police?”

  “Sergeant Strombeck.”

  “Sorry to bother you at this hour.”

  Strombeck turned on a lamp. The clock on the mantel showed a few minutes before one.

  “Is this Professor Wilkins?”

  “I said so. What is it?”

  “Are you in your apartment, sir? In Berkeley?”

  “No, goddamn it, I am not. What do you want?”

  “Do you have those kids with you? Bobby and Red?”

  “What did you say your name was? Stromberg?”

  “Strombeck. Sergeant Olaf Strombeck.”

  “Well, Sergeant, I’m not in my condo, I’m not in Berkeley, I don’t have any kids with me, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and to put it mildly, I am very annoyed.”

  “You drive a slate gray BMW roadster, California license tag BMRMEUP?”

  “Yes, I do. You’re not another Trekkie calling to talk about that vanity license, are you? I’m going to get rid of that thing. It’s more trouble than it’s worth.”

  “Sir, please, this is official business and it’s very serious business. Would you mind telling me where you are and what you’re doing?”

  “All right. I don’t like this. It’s an invasion of privacy. But all right. I am at the Seven Gulls Inn in Santa Cruz. I am here with my wife. We’ve been separated and we decided to try for a reconciliation, and we are having a romantic weekend getaway for two, and I foolishly decided to check my cell phone for messages before getting into bed and I found your message.” He stopped, probably to get his breath. Then he said, “Would you tell me what the hell this is all about?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m sorry to bother you. Here’s the situation, Professor. There was a serious crime this afternoon in El Cerrito. Someone lured a man into the storeroom of a tavern called the Ruby Red Pup and murdered him. In a particularly distressing way, I might add.”

  Wilkins said, “I’m sorry to hear it but things like that are police business. I’m an academic, not a crime-fighter.”

  “Sir, your car was seen headed south on San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley shortly after the crime was committed. Our witness says that two young people, a male and a female, were crowded into the passenger seat of your car. Is this correct? Does this agree with your recollection?”

  There was a lengthy silence. Then Strombeck could hear a mature-sounding female voice in the background but he couldn’t understand what the woman was saying. Wilkins replied, also incomprehensibly. Then he said, “Sergeant, that changes things. I’m sorry. What can I do to help?”

 

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