Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail! (51 page)

“Thanks for coming. Just heard from Nicole. She'll be here by this afternoon.”

“How do you feel?” Carl asked.

“Kind of groggy from the drugs. The pain will come later. Funny, I got through 'Nam without a scratch. I come to Berkeley for the first time in thirty years and get shot. Go figure.”

Nancy placed the flowers on a table and they both found seats around Ron's bed.

“The fellow with the red fez who shot me,” Ron said. “He was the shooter in 1970.”

“His name is Ishmael Shabazz,” Carl said. “Runs a splinter Black Muslim sect. Some say it's a cult. There are rumors of sex with fourteen-year-old girls. Got his thugs going around smashing up liquor stores in black neighborhoods. A protection racket. Shabazz is a longtime supporter of Robeson's political machine.”

“I'm sorry for dragging you into this,” Nancy said.

“I dragged myself into it. I didn't have to look you up after spotting this Robeson fellow in the paper.”

“What are you going to do?” Carl asked.

“I'm not going to change my story or run away again. Already told the cops. Going to tell the press. Then testify.”

“You don't have to,” Nancy said. “He's a powerful man.”

“But I do. For me, not just you.”

Carl said, “That's all I wanted to hear. Nancy and I have a visit to make.”

“We do?”

“A certain candidate owes you the truth.”

Carl led Nancy into the headquarters of the Robeson campaign, a storefront on Shattuck Avenue. He remembered the place as Amy's, the kind of restaurant working people went for lunch. Before California Cuisine. Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, gravy, bread pudding, hamburgers, lemon meringue pie. Lawn signs were stacked along the walls. A full sized cut-out of Robeson stood in the center. Looked startlingly real. A huge Robeson banner, festooned with red, white and blue bunting, covered the upper portion of the back wall. A half dozen young men and women, black and white, sat at desks staring at computer screens. Along one side another group, largely older blacks, some wearing clerical collars, staffed a phone bank.

A tall young black man in a suit, black tee shirt, got up from his desk and approached them. “May I help you?”

“We'd like to talk with Mr. Robeson,” Carl said.

“He's very busy. The election is less than two weeks away.”

“Tell him it's Nancy Yamamoto and friend,” Carl said. “He'll see us.”

The man left them in the middle of the room and headed toward a back office. People drifted in, picked up signs, leaflets, buttons then back out the front door. A constant buzz of one-way phone calls filled the place. The same mantra, different voices. “Robeson means change. Robeson means a better, progressive Berkeley.”

In two minutes the young man returned. “Come this way.” They followed him through the maze of desks and into the back office.

Carl had no trouble recognizing the man who rose from his desk to greet them. It was as if the cut-out in the main room had come to life. His face had been plastered in posters on lampposts and walls of vacant buildings, his name on yard signs all over Berkeley. Fatherly, mature, trustworthy.
This fellow abetted a killer, sicced this same killer on Ron.

Not a large man, Carl thought, yet he had a commanding presence.
It's an act he's perfected during his years on the City Council.

“How can I help you?”

“To begin with you can give Nancy here a long overdue apology for your role in the shooting of her husband”

“I had absolutely nothing to do with that terrible wanton act of terrorism.”

“Ron Bradley says different” Nancy said, “and I believe him.”

“I have the greatest respect for Ron's father. A pillar of our community and long time supporter of my endeavors. But I am afraid his son is mistaken. He bases his claim on an old photo in the newspaper. We are talking about an event that occurred almost forty years ago.”

“That will be for a jury to decide,” Carl said.

“You have no case. The DA wouldn't dare to prosecute a prominent political figure on such flimsy evidence. It would be interpreted as politically motivated, fear of a black man becoming mayor of this predominantly white city.”

“There's more,” Carl said. “The shooting several nights ago of Bradley out in front of the Platypus.”

“Absurd. I had nothing to do with that. This Shabazz charlatan is mad. He has no connection with me.”

“But he does,” Carl said. “He has supported your campaigns and you, in turn, have steered city money to his phony front groups.”

“I admit I, like most of Berkeley, was fooled by him. My treasurer has sent back any contributions he's made to our campaign.”

“The only person outside of Carl here that knew I would be meeting Ron at the Platypus was you,” Nancy said. “You must have overheard his phone call to me.”

“You two keep this up and I'll sue you both for slander.”

“You bastard!” Carl leapt at him. Nancy reached out to restrain him.

“Get out of here!” Robeson demanded. Then he shouted, “Edmund, these people are threatening me.” Edmund, the young man in the suit, reentered with a rent-a-cop.

“We're going,” Carl said. “It's not just us or even Ron. Ishmael Shabazz is alive. My friends in the Department say he has confessed to the 1970 shooting. He's implicating you. Says he won't take the fall for all this by himself. Says you told him to take Ron out.”

“He's a drug addict. Has a criminal record. It will be his word against mine.”

“It's interesting that Shabazz's background never bothered you before,” Carl said. “But it's not just his word. There's Ron's word. But it won't matter. There's enough evidence to bring you to trial. Whatever the jury says, your political career's finished.”

A piercing shriek rent the air. Nancy. Carl had been so wrapped up in Robeson he had almost forgotten that she was in the room with him. She rushed toward Robeson, rage distorting her face. It was as if thirty years of pain burst out of her in that one moment. She scratched, she clawed, she pounded.

This time it was Carl's turn to restrain. He was not about to allow Edmund or the rent-a-cop to touch her. He surrounded her in his arms and pulled her away. She continued to wriggle and flail out. This time Nancy struck Carl. Then looked at him, shocked by her own fury. He felt her surrender in his embrace, to relax, trembling.

Edmund and the rent-a-cop approached. They took one look at the expression on Carl's face and backed away. Carl walked Nancy out of the room.

Carl led a still-shaking Nancy out of the headquarters and into a cold drizzle. She clung to his arm.

“Some coffee?” he asked.

“Yes … ”

They found a small coffee shop a block away. Carl ordered lattes and they settled into an overstuffed couch that gave a view of the street, now deserted because of the rain. He said nothing for minutes allowing Nancy to regain control.

“Sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

“That outburst. But he was so smug, slick, unfeeling. He destroyed my life and all he cares about now is his political career.”

“Do you feel any better?”

She smiled. “Like my screaming. Catharsis?”

“I was thinking more about learning the truth.”

“It hurts. All so vivid now. I never thought I was one for vengeance but, damn it, Robeson must pay.”

“He will go down. I promise you. Regardless of the outcome of a trial he's finished as a politician. Shabazz is a criminal, a scam artist, a killer. Twisted, sociopath. Robeson should have been different. He protected a murderer in 1970. Accepted his support for his political ventures. And now refuses to face up to the truth. As mayor he would have continued to cover for him.”

She moved closer to him on the couch. She started to cry, the crying turned into a torrent, she began to hiccup, hyperventilate. He put his arms around her and felt her throbbing body. She began to calm down. The storm had passed. He didn't remove his arms.

“The pain will subside,” he said.

“It helps.”

“What helps?”

“The truth.”

“I'm here for you.”

“I know.”

Luis Rodriguez

I can't seem to tear the image out of my head—a teenager, pallid skin, sun bouncing off torn clothing and flesh, dirt creased into face, neck, arms, legs, with streaks of blood everywhere, along the temple and cheek, then the ashen lips, closed and textured, on round face, cute, smeared mascara, with rows of gold rings along her ears, through those bloodless lips, on her nose and eyebrow, a few blue tattoos, actually black ink under veiny skin, mostly naked, bruised, beaten about with something, a bat, a stick, a tire iron, open cuts, raised flesh. Then the nipples … puffed and pierced.

I'm new to the Robbery-Homicide Division. I've seen dead bodies before as a beat cop but this one lingers with me longer than it probably should, the battered face and tossed way the body is lying there, in a vacant lot off Sixth Street in the barrio, next to scattered leaves, dumped thrash, graffiti-scrawled wall. This is not a usual barrio death. I mean not like a gang shooting, boyfriend beating or robbery victim. She was brought here from somewhere else, outside the neighborhood, late at night.

I can see why. A killer would know this is a rough area. Not far from MacArthur Park. Mostly Spanish voices, Central American and Mexican, with open-air peddlers, baggy-panted street dudes, and families, so many families, pudgy women, brown babies, running children.

“Pierced nipples” doesn't belong here. She looks part-Asian, part-white. She looks goth, emo, whatever … distanced, disconnected, middle-class. Maybe from Koreatown. Maybe from Hollywood. She was killed somewhere else and dumped here. Killers tend to do that. Remove their work to places where such bodies, you'd think, just happen to be lying around. But that's not true. Not even for MacArthur Park. Not for the barrio.

This case is now priority. Why? You can guess. Non-barrio girl killed is more important than the other deaths around here. She's white, even if mixed with Korean or something, and that makes her more valuable, especially if she's not poor or a prostitute. I hate to say that. It's just the way it is.

“Any leads, Sammy?”

“Nothing, Timbo, we've hit a brick wall.”

“Yeah, well, The Times is banging down my door. They want something, anything, to put in their main story.”

“Anything is the last thing we told them—there's nothing new.”

“Give me a new angle, you know … just to keep the wolves a little satiated before they go on a feeding frenzy.”

“We don't have an ID on the girl … she's in the county morgue, Jane Doe. No witnesses. No prints. No DNA match. Sorry, this is all we have.”

The press people along with TV and major radio are big in this town. Yeah, there are paparazzi for all the celebrity nonsense, and a lot of print is wasted on this stuff, but when it comes to out-of-the-ordinary killings, like “pierced nipples,” they all want to break out with the latest news. It's pressure I don't need, I don't want.