Voices whispered behind the ringing and clamor. One was Sharpie’s: “Can I check out a book... so I got something to read in the hospital?”
Harry’s voice was there too, barking and spitting, but it mattered nothing to Mason. The last time it had taken four cops to subdue him. Probably take a thousand this time, Mason drowsily thought.
Among those two voices, there came a third. It was the woman who’d finally brought Harry down: “It’s been a hell of a first day on the job...”
Mason floated down the stairs to the first floor and out through the security gates. He heard smatterings of applause. So, they’d opened at last. “Go, Mason!” someone cried.
Then the daily greeting rumbled out through the PA system: “Good afternoon! Welcome to the Berkeley Public Library! We apologize for the late opening after our little kerfuffle. The second-floor reading room will remain closed for the time being! Our Tai-chi-for-Lunch class at one p.m. is canceled for today. Again, we apologize! However, our three o’clock Super Cinema program in the Community Meeting Room will continue with O Brother, Where Art Thou? The temperature outside is forty-five degrees, but it looks like we’re getting a break from all the bad weather! Again, welcome... and have a great day!”
Indeed it was looking to be a fine day, as bits of blue sky showed through the gray ceiling.
“Make way for the hero!” someone cried.
“What’s so funny?” the EMT asked as they loaded Mason into the ambulance. But with that mask fastened over his mouth and nose, Mason couldn’t tell him.
Barroom Butterfly
by Barry Gifford
Central Berkeley
Roy’s grandfather subscribed to several magazines, among them Time, Field & Stream, Sport, and Reader’s Digest, but the one that interested Roy most was San Francisco Bay Crime Monthly. One afternoon Roy came home from school and found his grandfather reading a new issue.
“Hi, Pops. Anything good in there?”
“Hello, boy. Yes, I’ve just started an intriguing story.”
Roy sat down on the floor next to his grandfather’s chair. “Can you read it to me?”
“How old are you now, Roy?”
“Ten.”
“I don’t know everything that’s in this one yet. I wouldn’t want your mother to get mad at me if there’s something she doesn’t want you to hear.”
“She’s not home. Anyway, I’ve heard everything.”
“You have, huh? All right, but I might have to leave out some gruesome details, if there are any.”
“Those are the best parts, Pops. I won’t tell Mom. Start at the beginning.”
Elmer Mooney, a plumber walking to work at seven a.m. last Wednesday morning, noticed a body wedged into a crevice between two apartment buildings on the 800 block of Gilman Street in West Berkeley’s Little Chicago neighborhood. He telephoned police as soon as he arrived at Kosztolanski Plumbing and Pipeworks, his place of employment, and told them of his discovery.
The dead body was identified as that of Roland Diamond, thirty-four years old, a well-known Bay Area art dealer and lecturer at the University of California who resided on Indian Rock Road in Berkeley. He was unmarried and according to acquaintances had a reputation as a playboy who had once been engaged to the Nob Hill society heiress Olivia Demaris Swan.
Detectives learned that Diamond had been seen on the evening prior to the discovery of his corpse in the company of Miss Jewel Cortez, twenty-one, at the bar of the Hotel Madagascar on San Pablo Avenue, where Miss Cortez was staying. When questioned, Miss Cortez, who gave her profession as “chanteuse,” a French word for singer, told authorities she had “a couple of cocktails” with Diamond, with whom she said she had only a passing acquaintance, after which, at approximately nine p.m., he accompanied her to her room, where he attempted by force to have sex with her.
“He was drunk,” Cortez told police. “I didn’t invite him in, he insisted on walking me to my door. I pushed him out of my room into the hallway but he wouldn’t let go of me. We struggled and he fell down the stairs leading to the landing below. He hit his head on the wall and lay still. I returned to my room, packed my suitcase, and left the hotel without speaking to anyone.”
Jewel Cortez confessed that before leaving the hotel she removed Roland Diamond’s car keys from his coat pocket and drove in his car, a 1954 Packard Caribbean, to Los Angeles, where, two days later, she was apprehended while driving the vehicle in that city’s Echo Park area. Miss Cortez was taken into custody on suspicion of car theft. Upon interrogation by the Los Angeles police, she claimed not to know that Diamond was dead, that he had loaned her his car so that she could visit friends in LA, where she had resided before moving to Berkeley. Miss Cortez also said she had no idea how his body had wound up in the Little Chicago neighborhood. When informed that examination of Diamond’s corpse revealed a bullet wound in his heart, Cortez professed ignorance of the shooting and declared that she had never even handled a gun, let alone fired one, in her whole life.
Betty Corley, a resident of the Hotel Madagascar, described Jewel Cortez as “a barroom butterfly.” When asked by Detective Sergeant Gus Argo what she meant by that, Miss Corley said, “You know, she got around.” Then added, “Men never know what a spooked woman will do, do they?”
Berkeley, California, May 4, 1955
“What does she mean by spooked?” Roy asked. “Frightened?”
“Yes, but her point is that women can be unpredictable.”
“Is my mother unpredictable?”
Pops laughed. “Your mother is only thirty-two years old and she’s already been married three times. What do you think?”
Part II
Directly Across from the Golden Gate
Eat Your Pheasant, Drink Your Wine
by Shanthi Sekaran
Kensington
Henry Wheeler walks into the Inn Kensington looking for all the world like a man who’s just gotten laid. He wears a humid sort of smile and his arms dangle from his shoulders like sausage ropes. With him is a woman: younger, her long dark hair parted in the middle, her mouth set straight and firm. She leads him by the hand like a mother. He bumps into a square table, holds his hand up, and mumbles something, still smiling, still wrapped in the good love or slow sex or whatever has tugged him into this Friday morning. Shaila has spotted him, I can tell. Her chest tenses. Dread and longing course by on opposite tracks as our man Henry scoots into a booth, flips his hair back, squints, grins, and examines the hot sauce before him.
He takes a few seconds to spot us. His smile drops. The woman is talking and he tries to look at her, but his eyes dart back, again and again, to Shaila. At last, he gets up.
“Fuck,” Shaila whispers. “Fuck fuck.” He walks to the bathroom and Shaila gets up and follows.
They speak all at once. They stop. I can feel the pump of Shaila’s heart, the heat rising up her neck. They stand and look at each other, waiting.
“What are you doing here?” she finally asks.
“I need to come clean, Shaila.”