Janssen was trying, trying to hear. Shelby was swallowing any reaction; Maduri’d seen him do that before when the witness was on the verge of something.
Maduri was trying not to tell Janssen not to squeeze his eyes closed.
Janssen was thinking.
“Don’t think! Remember!”
Janssen jerked.
Shit!
“Nothing special. I mean, it was like a growl, like right next to him. Just those two words: Mr. Lampara? Like a question.” Janssen’s jaw was quivering.
“Five thirty at night. How’d the killer just walk away?”
Did Shelby realize he was muttering aloud? Or was he just losing it?
Whatever. Maduri knew it was all up to him now. He checked the rearview. The girl was looking out the window; the boy’s expression was blank, his shoulder moving up and down in response to his hand on her thigh.
“I’m not surprised,” Shelby continued. “Lampara’s well known in this town. Well hated.”
Janssen and Kozlovski cocked their heads toward him. Almost in unison.
“You know what the Law of Karma is?”
“Sure,” Janssen said.
“Right. It’s the one law citizens in Berkeley respect.” Shelby uttered a weary chuckle. It was an old joke at the department. “I’ve been on the force a long time. I used to laugh when the new guys whined about driving up one block and down the next every morning, eyes out for a parking spot, them hauling themselves out of bed half an hour early to do it, to find parking within a mile of the station, then having to run to make the squad meeting. I didn’t respect the Law of Karma then, so I laughed. Then they bitch about coming back at the end of shift and finding a parking ticket on their windshields! Rite of passage, I’d tell them, and I’d still be chuckling when I walked the four blocks home to a sweet two-bedroom cottage I was renting there... Lampara, he taught me about karma. Evicted me. Flipped my house.”
Now Shelby drove an hour in traffic each way to the lesser house he could afford in the lesser town. The best he could say was that by the time he got there, he only had an hour or two to listen to the wife go on about the ugly streets, the bland neighbors, the boredom. The exile.
“Lampara was just beginning then,” Shelby went on in that musing voice, almost like he was inviting them all inside his head. “That was before he could buy four-plexes, eight-plexes, four-story places — and slumlord the tenants out. Mostly near campus. And then there was the fire last month, the grad student who died. You live near there, don’t you, Mr. Janssen?”
The girl jumped. Had Janssen squeezed her thigh that hard?
“You live near that apartment of his that burned, right? You must’ve heard the sirens, seen the engines roll in, the water, heard about the shitty wiring that sparked it. Didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but... Yeah.”
“You live across the street, right?” Shelby said. “Did you see the fire from your window, Mr. Janssen? Did you watch? Did you know the guy who died? In the flames? The smoke? Was he your friend, Brian? Did you see him at the window, trying to break the glass, Brian?”
Janssen was shaking, trying to get words out.
“Did you see his suitcase on the sidewalk? Taxi for the airport? To fly to LA? To get married? Did you see that? Did you know that? Did you, Brian?”
“Stop it. Just stop it, now!” The girl wrapped her arms around Janssen and pulled him to her. She was shaking too.
Maduri shot a glance at Shelby to see if the old guy had a plan or if he’d just lost it. If all those hours on the freeway had wadded into rage. Or if it wasn’t that. If, maybe, it was the boy who’d died in the fire. But all he saw was the back of Shelby’s head. Shelby was staring hard out the window, or just staring blankly. He said to Janssen, “Black, could be brown, hoodie ahead walking fast. What do you think?”
Now Janssen was staring hard, wanting it to be the suspect.
“Wait, wait! Slow down,” the girl said. “Think that’s him, Bri?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can we get closer?”
“Not without spooking him.”
The computer flashed. Shelby leaned toward it. “Wait! They’ve got something.”
Janssen stretched up to look over the seat.
“The guy on the street” — Lisa Kozlovski pointed frantically at the window — “what about him?”
“The jacket!” Shelby said. “They found the coat. Puffy hoodie. Bloodstains.”
Maduri flipped on the flasher and siren and pulled into the left lane. From inside the car it shrieked so loud that Maduri wanted to slam his hands over his ears. “Where’d—”
“Behind a fence on Walnut. Brown hoodie. Reddish-brown!” Shelby was reading off the computer. “Go! Let’s go!”
Maduri hung a hard U.
The back door popped open.
Janssen slid across the seat, grabbed for the cage wire, caught himself.
Lisa Kozlovski was gone.
Maduri slammed on the brakes. The crash from behind shocked him, sent Janssen into the cage. Sent Shelby into windshield.
The EMT van didn’t stop. Maduri was trying to make the call; he was cradling Shelby’s head. Lights flashed white, red. Sirens screamed.
A patrol officer pulled up, Maduri didn’t get his name. He flipped him the keys, muttered “Witness” toward Janssen, and pushed into the van with Shelby.
Later, after Shelby went into surgery, after Shelby’s wife arrived from the distant town she hated, after a wave of cops flooded the waiting room and then another when they got off their shift at eleven, and after the surgeon came out to say that Shelby would live, but not walk — only then did Maduri think of Lisa Kozlovski and how easy it would have been for her to shoot Lampara, circle around through the Walnut Square walkway, chuck her mahogany hoodie, and stroll up to the scene.
And then — he shook his head — all she would have needed was a way to get clear of the scene, pick up her former boyfriend’s car, and drive off.
Wifebeater Tank Top
by J. M. Curet
West Berkeley
1.
I survived a ten-year stint at San Quentin. I did exactly what I was supposed to do — kept my head down, my ear to the grindstone, and my mouth shut. I stayed alive and made it out. One week in West Berkeley and it’s all shot to hell.
You hear the cops tell it: I’m probably getting exactly what I deserve. But cops can be sons of bitches. My PO, Greg, hooked me up with a small studio apartment in a run-down two-story complex on 9th and Bancroft and a night-shift janitor job at the pharmaceutical company on 8th Street.
“You know why I’m sticking my neck out for you, Red?” he asked me.
“Not really, Greg. I’m just grateful for the vote of confidence, to be honest.”
“I’m helping you because there’s something about you. I don’t know what it is exactly, but there’s something about you that gives me hope. Don’t fuck this up.”
I’m not a bad guy per se; I’ve done some things I’m not particularly proud of, who hasn’t? So I’ve dabbled in illicit drugs, methamphetamines mostly. So I’ve gotten into some stupid physical altercations with stupid people. But mainly it’s been about being at the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong fucking peeps. I thought those days were behind me. All I had to do was go to work, piss in a cup every once in a while, and stay invisible. I really thought I could do it too, and then I met Teena.