Читать книгу The Radio Red Killer - Richard A. Lupoff - Страница 11

CHAPTER FOUR

Marvia Plum turned in her cruiser at Berkeley police headquarters and dragged herself upstairs.

She was suddenly bone-weary. She wasn’t surprised at that, but she was surprised at how deep was the hole that she felt she’d fallen into. The adrenaline rush of the run to KRED and the feeling of getting back to work had lifted her to the heights, and now that the adrenaline rush had ended she crashed like a cocaine addict when the drug wore off.

She felt stiff. She pushed herself into the gym. No one was using the heavy bag, so she pulled on a pair of gloves, blessing the genius who invented Velcro, then stood and pounded the bag to work off the soreness and help her relax. She locked up her uniform and equipment and luxuriated in a long, hot shower. She scrubbed her close-cropped hair with shampoo and rinsed it. By the time she toweled off she could feel her skin start to breathe again.

She pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. She took her personal weapon out of her locker and tucked it into her waistband. Compared to the S&W automatic she carried on duty, the little .38 Airweight revolver seemed as light and as tiny as a toy. She’d never been caught up in one of those off-duty nightmares where a cop just happened to wander into a shooting situation, but she’d known people it happened to. The .38 had limited stopping power, but you couldn’t walk around with a bazooka in your pocket. You had to accept certain limits.

She left the Hall of Justice and pulled her tan-and-cream Mustang out of the parking lot, onto McKinley Avenue.

On the short drive home she bypassed her usual traveling music and listened to KRED. It didn’t do her any good. Not as far as figuring out the Bjorner case. Assuming that there was a case to figure out, and that Radio Red Bjorner hadn’t died of apoplexy or a new strain of Ebola virus or a sporkful of spoiled Oriental food. But maybe it gave her a little insight into the goings-on at KRED.

Assuming that those goings-on had anything to do with Bjorner’s death. She made a mental note to think about that, about the show she’d been listening to. Lon Dayton’s OTR Heaven. Jessie Loman had mentioned Dayton; he sounded like a character with an obsession. Did that make him a candidate to commit homicide?

Dayton was also one of the people Herb Bjorner had mentioned. Was he one of the, what had Bjorner called them, the capitalist sellout gang? Or was he one of the valiant fighters who were in danger of being dumped, the way Radio Red was supposedly slated to be dumped if he hadn’t made a more dramatic exit in Studio B?

At Bonita Street, Marvia pulled the Mustang into the driveway and locked the car. She climbed the wooden steps to the veranda and slipped her key into the front-door lock. She stepped inside the foyer. The old Persian rug was still there. She’d crept around on it as a child, tracing its intricate pattern, searching for the end and never finding it. She blinked, and for a moment she was almost able to believe that her father would be there to wrap his huge arms around her, arms that were like mighty steel cables, and squeeze her to his great chest until she squealed.

That would never happen again. His arms had been more like spindles than steel cables in those last years of his life. His chest had been a pitiful rack. And now he was gone forever.

She heard the sound of a network talk show from the living room. Her mother was home from work and relaxing. Marvia made her way upstairs, her legs heavy and fatigued. Even the energy she’d got from the shower had been only temporary. She passed Jamie’s room—once her brother, Tyrone’s—and heard the squeaks and bleeps of a Nintendo. She paused for a moment and heard Jamie’s voice, and his friend Hakeem White’s.

She managed a weary smile and opened her own bedroom door. She closed it behind her and caught a glimpse of herself in the old oval mirror on her chiffonier. She looked away.

She slipped the revolver from her waistband and locked it in a case that she replaced on her closet shelf. She didn’t sleep with the gun under her pillow or in her night table drawer. Even a cop could make a mistake. Especially a sleepy cop, awakened in the middle of the night, seeing a silhouette in her room.

Only once in her career had Marvia fired at a human being, and she knew cops who went their entire careers without doing so. The incident had been almost banal—at the outset. She’d been on patrol duty, had parked her cruiser and stepped into a convenience store on College Avenue to use the bathroom. She was on the graveyard shift and it had been the quietest night in weeks.

She froze with her hand halfway to the glass door. Three thugs in ski masks and hooded sweatshirts were pointing Uzi’s at a terrified clerk. There wasn’t time to call for backup. She had her gun in her hand and took a step inside the store before the bandits turned. The smallest of the three started firing and Marvia put two .40 caliber rounds into the largest body mass, the robber’s torso, exactly as she’d been taught.

That robber went down, the others dropped their weapons and scampered past the clerk and out the back door. Marvia called in help and the robbers were caught. The one she had shot was dead.

The two robbers who’d run were boys of fifteen and sixteen. The dead one was a girl of twelve, the sister of the fifteen-year-old. Marvia made it to the parking lot before she threw up. She’d spent six months with the department headshrinker after that and she still had flashbacks. Thank God, not very often.

She crossed the hall again and knocked on her son’s door and let herself into his room. Jamie let Hakeem finish the Nintendo game. He bounced across the room and hugged Marvia. “Can Hakeem stay for dinner?”

Marvia smiled and said he could. Then, reluctantly, she went downstairs.

Gloria Plum looked up when Marvia walked into the living room. “I didn’t hear you come in. You could have said hello.”

“You were watching TV. And I just needed a minute to myself. You wouldn’t have wanted to see me in the shape I was in.”

Gloria clicked the TV remote and the screen went black. “You going to cook tonight, Marvia?”

“I was hoping you would. Mom, I caught a homicide today. Probable homicide—I have to hear from Bisonte.”

Gloria looked up at her daughter. Gloria wore her hair in a blond permanent wave. Her fingernails clicked on the plastic body of the remote. They were long and red except for one that was gold with a simulated diamond in its center. Every time Marvia looked at her, she vowed to keep her own weight down.

“You’re home now, Marvia.”

“I know. Jamie’s friend Hakeem is staying for dinner.”

“Nobody asked me,” Gloria said.

Marvia sighed. “I’ll order pizza.”

Gloria pointed the remote at the TV and the screen sprang back to life. Marvia picked up the cordless telephone and dialed a pizza delivery. She knew everyone’s preference, including Hakeem’s; there was no need to survey the household.

When she’d given the order she went out onto the porch and sat down. At least she didn’t have to worry about drive-by shootings in this neighborhood. Berkeley was holding its own. She’d been away only a few months, but when she returned she was afraid of the changes she would find. But there were few of them.

She felt a pang and realized she was missing her father again. Marcus’s death had been more a release than a loss. It had broken Marvia’s heart to see him fading, to hear his labored breathing in those last months. Worst of all, she had seen the fury on his face when he became too weak to care for himself and had to be helped.

She was over it now, especially when she stayed focused on other things in her life. But once in a while she let her guard down and then she would feel the catch in her throat and the sting in her eyes.

Maybe that was why she had dumped sweet, timid Hobart Lindsey and married Willie Fergus. Fergus had been her mentor in Europe, and when their paths crossed again, he as a sheriff’s department sergeant in Reno and she as a cop in Berkeley, she had been quick to accept his offer of marriage.

What an old-fashioned concept. Accepted his offer of marriage.

She didn’t know that he expected to own her.

A pair of headlights turned onto Bonita, and Marvia hurried down the steps and to the curb before the driver could cruise past.

* * * *

Gloria and Marvia sat at the head and foot of the dinner table; Jamie and Hakeem faced each other across its width. They talked about their schoolwork and Nintendo games and the NBA playoffs and about trying out for the Benjamin Banneker Junior High baseball team. They’d been friends all their lives.

They were a shortstop-second base combination and they were going to play together for Berkeley High and UC and then go to the big leagues as a team.

“So you caught a homicide?”

Marvia was startled. She’d been listening to the boys make their plans, she was a million miles away from Barbara Jordan Boulevard and the crimson-faced corpse sprawled on the table in front of the microphone. She’d have to call in a consultant to tell her what Radio Red’s last script said. What the little Braille dimples meant.

“Marvia?”

“Mom. I’ve been getting caught up. I was lucky to get my job back. And my stripes.”

“A good thing you did. How did you think you were going to meet your responsibilities, Marvia?”

Marvia clenched her teeth. She wasn’t going to get drawn into this argument again. Gloria had never forgiven her for divorcing James Wilkerson, Jamie’s dad. There had been no end of cutting remarks when Wilkerson made major and won his Distinguished Flying Cross in the Gulf War, and since he’d remarried and moved to Texas and won a seat in Congress, Marvia had the feeling that Gloria would rather have kept her ex-son-in-law and disposed of her daughter than the other way around.

“They had it on the early edition of the news.” Gloria lifted a slice of pizza and nibbled at its pointed tip. “They showed the radio station and they had a telephone interview with the manager, that Sunny woman.”

“Sun, Mom. Sun Mbolo. She’s from Ethiopia.”

“Had to be something like that. She was dressed like an Egyptian queen.”

“She’s Falasha, Mom. Anyway, it looks like a homicide but it might not have been. I mean, the man must have weighed three hundred pounds, and he was old.”

Gloria raised one eyebrow. “How old?”

Marvia shook her head. She looked at the pizza in its corrugated carton. She stood up and went to the kitchen for a beer. She opened the bottle, picked up a glass and carried them back to the table with her.

Gloria waited.

Jamie and Hakeem were reliving a sandlot game their team had won.

“An old man, Mom.”

“You said that. How old?”

“He was seventy-two. We got his birth records, everything. He fought in the Pacific, he was an old man.”

“Someday you won’t think seventy-two is so old.”

Marvia looked at the two boys. Each was on his third slice of pizza, and neither of them carried an ounce of fat on his body. She shook her head.

“I think you’re right, Mom.”

After dinner Gloria retired to the living room couch. Marvia made coffee and carried a cup and saucer for herself and one for her mother. Gloria dipped her head toward the table and Marvia set the coffee down. Gloria had turned on the TV but muted the sound so she could concentrate on the telephone.

Jamie and Hakeem were putting away the few dishes that had been used at the meal. Marvia asked if they had homework to do. They boys exchanged a look and Jamie, the spokesman, dipped his head a millimeter.

“Do you need help?” Marvia prayed they wouldn’t.

“No, Mom.”

“No, Ms. Plum.”

“Then you’d better get to it. Hakeem, what time is your mother expecting you home?”

“It’s just around the corner, Ms. Plum.”

“The DA would call that unresponsive to the question.”

“Ten o’clock.”

“Then you’d better get to work.”

The boys disappeared upstairs, headed for Jamie’s room. Marvia took her own cup of coffee upstairs and set it on the night table. She was careful not to spill it on the telephone. She’d put in a second line, she had to be available for emergencies. It was an unlisted number but the dispatchers could reach her at any time.

Marvia realized that she hadn’t eaten a bit of the pizza. She pulled up her sweatshirt and looked at her belly. She sucked it in. She shouldn’t have to do that. She could do without pizza. Besides, being a cop didn’t mean you had to live on cop food.

She turned on her tuner and found the KRED signal. Lon Dayton’s OTR Heaven had ended for the night and somebody was playing a scratchy record of an early Louis Armstrong Hot Seven performing “Shit Out o’ Luck Blues.” When the music ended a peculiar voice, both scratchy and whispery, announced the full personnel on the track. He made no mention of Bob Bjorner’s death, but that didn’t strike Marvia as strange. It was a long programming day and KRED announcers couldn’t talk about Bjorner constantly.

Marvia hoped that the man with the scratchy-whispery voice would identify himself, and he did, at least in part. “This is your master wax-miner, Little Bix, bringing the music of the past into the night of the present. Don’t you wish you’d been in the studio with Louis and Lil and Baby Dodds and the rest of the folks when they laid that down? Long ago and far away, my friends, long ago and far away. Now for a change we’ll hear the queen of the blues, Ma Rainey herself.”

The music started, and the voice began singing “Toad Frog Blues,” and Marvia put her head on her pillow and closed her eyes, listening to Ma Rainey’s voice and listening for the piano that she knew was there, Fletcher Henderson’s piano.

Little Bix.

She thought of her training at the academy. That too was long ago if not far away. Always know where you are, that was the first rule for the patrol officer, and every cop was a patrol officer, whatever else she was. In the army, Marvia remembered, every soldier was an infantry grunt, whatever else he was. And every cop was a patrol officer.

One of KRED’s neighbors was Bix’s Wax Cylinder, and the whispery-scratchy man called himself Little Bix. Jessie Loman had talked about how many volunteers and part-timers KRED used. People who had other jobs, other lives to live.

Little Bix might have appropriated the name from Leon Beiderbecke, the original Bix. The store, the station, the whispery-scratchy man. Was he one of Bjorner’s faithful or one of the sellout gang? If there was internecine war at KRED, would it go so far that a disc jockey murdered a political commentator? That seemed absurd, but people had killed people over political disputes before.

What else was war?

She fell asleep, or at least managed to lapse into a doze, and when she woke up she blinked at the digital clock beside her bed; it was after eleven. A thumping sound was going on but after a few seconds she was able to decode it and identify it as music.

She sat up and rubbed her scalp with her knuckles to make the blood flow to her brain. She stood on the carpet. She was still wearing her sweatshirt and jeans, woolen socks and no shoes. She opened her door. The thumping was louder.

Her first thought was about her mother. Gloria went to bed early on week-nights. She had a responsible job with the Social Security Administration and she commuted every day to Richmond, a dozen miles up the freeway. If Jamie’s music disturbed her sleep there would be an explosion.

Marvia knew she had to move out of this house and take her son with her. She loved this house but that didn’t matter. She stood at her bedroom window and peered at the old California blue oak in the backyard. Her father had built a tree-house there for Marvia and Tyrone. Rather, they had built it together. The children had each had a chance to hammer a nail in place, or to wield a saw once or twice. They felt as if they had built their own tree-house, with help from Dad. That made it all the more precious.

They had played pirate games there, and turned the tree-house into a spaceship and a castle and an Eskimo igloo and an Indian tepee and an African fortress where they fought off Arab slavers to the last drop of blood.

The tree-house was still there, silhouetted against the night sky. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d climbed the ladder of two-by-fours Marcus had nailed to the tree-trunk, but she could remember the feel of the wood under her hands and her bare feet.

She blinked and returned to the present. Gloria had been generous about keeping Jamie when Marvia moved to Nevada. He’d lived with her and Marcus while Marvia was single and living on Oxford Street, and he’d stayed on when she remarried. And Gloria had been generous about Marvia’s moving into Bonita Street when she returned to Berkeley, but there was no domestic tranquility here, and the sooner Marvia and Jamie got out the better.

Padding silently down the hall to Jamie’s room, Marvia tapped at the door and turned the knob. Jamie and Hakeem were almost men, but they weren’t men yet. They were still boys, and they needed supervision.

There was a frantic scrambling inside the room. Even before Marvia could get the door open the volume of the music dropped dramatically and she heard a window being opened. She stepped into the room and with her first breath recognized the familiar odor of cannabis.

Jamie was shoving something under the mattress of his bed and Hakeem was closing a dresser drawer.

Marvia shut the door behind her.

The two boys faced her. Their faces were identical studies in terror.

Marvia said nothing, waiting for one of them to make the first move.

It was Hakeem who made it, taking a tentative step toward the door. He realized that he couldn’t get past Marvia, and she was obviously not going to step aside. He turned around and looked out the window.

Marvia said, “Won’t do you any good.”

Hakeem stood still.

Jamie dropped his gaze. He murmured a few words.

Marvia said, “Speak up, young man. And look me in the eye when you speak to me.”

Jamie raised his eyes and said, “I guess we’re busted.”

Marvia nodded. “No guesses about it. You’d better take that out from under your mattress before you start a fire.”

Jamie bent over and lifted the edge of his mattress. He came back up with a makeshift ashtray, a soup bowl with a roach in a roach clip shaped like three intertwined human figures, and a disposable butane lighter.

Marvia nodded. She turned to Hakeem. “Your turn, Mr. White.”

He didn’t move.

“I said, it’s your turn, Mr. White.”

The boy trembled visibly as he pulled open a drawer in Jamie Wilkerson’s dresser. He turned back toward Marvia with a sick grin on his face. “See, nothing but socks.”

Marvia said, “Don’t shit me, boy!”

Hakeem turned away, opened another drawer, extracted something, and stood with his back to Marvia. For all she knew, he had an Uzi there. She shook her head. Neither cop school nor her army training had ever prepared her for this. “Come on.”

He turned back toward her and held up a cellophane bag. Under the ceiling light of Jamie’s room, Marvia could see the dark-green buds and the neat little package of rolling papers.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Plum. I never did this before.”

The music was still playing, faintly. It sounded like something coming from a million miles away. From Africa, or Mars, or Fairyland.

“It was my fault. I brought the stuff over. Jamie didn’t know anything about it.”

That much, she could admire.

“Jamie, is that true?”

He shook his head. She didn’t like the expression on his face but he said, “No, it isn’t. It’s my weed, I gave some to Hakeem. No way it’s his.”

At least they were both being men. Read, stand-up guys. The kind of gangsters who wouldn’t rat out a buddy to save their own necks.

“Jamie, how old are you?”

“Old enough.”

“Hakeem?”

“Me too.”

She pulled in air. “Don’t you boys know better than to do this? What’s the matter with you?”

Hakeem White looked away from Marvia. Jamie said, “You drank a brew at the table. Don’t deny it, Mom.”

“I didn’t break the law, Jamie. And that isn’t the issue. The issue is that you and your friend, did. All else aside, you put me in a very difficult position. I’m a sworn peace officer. I can’t just ignore this.”

“So write us a summons. Like a parking ticket. Big deal.”

They were all keeping their voices down, caught in a tacit bond. Nobody want to bring Gloria Plum into the room.

“That’s for adults, boy. You’ve got a long, long way to go before you’re an adult. How would you like a trip to Juvenile Hall?”

The boy stood hipshot, one fist on his offside hip, the other stuck in his jeans pocket.

Marvia inhaled and counted to five. “Where did you get the grass?”

The two boys looked at each other. Hakeem shook his head. Jamie said, “Someplace.”

“Where?”

Hakeem said, “Everybody has it at school. You can get it anyplace. Ho Chi Minh Park. Over by the baseball diamond. You know, where Blue Beetle and Acid Alice hang out.”

That was no surprise to Marvia. She said, “Hakeem, here’s your choice. You’ll tell your parents about this and they’ll phone me to discuss it. Will you do that?”

The boy looked as if he wanted to pull his head in between his shoulders like a turtle. He wore a dark green T-shirt and baggy jeans. He had a peace symbol carved into his hair. He shriveled before Marvia’s eyes and opened his mouth a couple of times but he didn’t say anything.

“Your other choice is, I’ll call them. Now, how about it?”

He hesitated, then said, “Okay. I’ll tell—does it matter which one?”

“Either or both. Take your pick. Now you get out of here. I want you to go straight home. No detours, no hanging out. If I don’t hear from your mom or dad in twenty-four hours, they’ll hear from me.”

Hakeem slunk out of the room. Marvia waited until she heard the front door of the house open and close.

Marvia looked at her son. Her heart was racing and she had trouble catching her breath.

Jamie said, “At least he has a mom and dad. At least they make a home for Hacker.”

Marvia closed her eyes and put her hand on the wall to steady herself. “Blue Beetle and Acid Alice. I don’t want you anywhere near those thugs. They belong in prison.” They were two of Berkeley’s counter-culture icons; they’d been suspected of dealing drugs but never arrested. “Have you tried those drugs? What drugs have you tried? I want the whole truth from you, right now.”

At least Jamie looked a little bit frightened. “Hack and me, we just shared a joint.”

“Nothing else?” She felt cold and she was trying not to shake.

He looked sheepish. “Couple of brews.”

Marvia let out her breath. “Don’t you have a DARE instructor at your school? I know you must, I saw your workbook.”

“Yeah.” He was looking out the window. “Jennie Steinberg. That’s one of those Hymie names, isn’t it?”

“It’s her name, that’s all it is!”

“Sure. She’s not a real cop anyhow, she doesn’t even have a gun.”

“You think that’s what makes a police officer? Carrying a gun?”

“You do. All the real cops have guns.”

Her chest felt tight. What was she doing? What kind of mother had to carry a gun to win the respect of her son? She said, “I know Officer Steinberg. She’s a good cop. I worked with her for a year, on patrol. She has what it takes, Jamie, and for your information she’s a better shot than I am.”

At least he’d turned back from the window and was paying attention.

“Don’t you believe the things you learn in the DARE classes?”

“The little kids do. The big ones just laugh at that stuff. Hack and me toke up once in a while, so what?”

She hated to fall back on the old lines but she couldn’t fight him any longer. “I’m your mother, and I have a duty to guide you. God gave you to me, and I’m responsible for you. When you’re a man you’ll make your own decisions. Until then you will listen to me.”

He grunted.

She said, “I’ll see you in the morning. Six o’clock, Jamie. Set your alarm. I want to see you washed and dressed in clean clothes. At the breakfast table. And you’d better bring a good attitude with you.”

He said, “Sure I will.”

She managed to kiss her son good night; his cheek was like granite.

“And, Jamie, do I need to tell you, you’re grounded until further notice. Until we get this worked out.”

“But mom!” Uh-oh, here comes the but-mom. “Baseball tryouts are next week. Hack and me are gonna make the Clockers!”

“Grounded. Period. School and home. Period.”

In her own room, she picked up her black Raggedy Ann doll and studied its wide, triangular eyes and its merry smile. She pressed the doll’s face to her own, feeling its cheek with her own cheek.

She sat on the edge of her bed hyperventilating.