One Murder at a Time: A Casebook. Richard A. Lupoff
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it takes, Dorothy.”
* * * *
The Crash Club was on the north side of University Avenue, less than a mile from the UC campus. The doors opened at 9:00 PM, and the first band wasn’t scheduled to play until 11:00. Marvia Plum had checked out and gone home for a quiet nap and a light meal before making her rendezvous a few blocks from the club.
Time was, time had been, when she could have worked a full day, stayed up most of the night on a stakeout and gone back to work after a shower and breakfast. Right. And time had been when she could party all night and keep on going the next morning, too.
She wondered if she could pass for young enough to patronize the Crash Club.
She was teamed with Evangeline Rhee. Marvia had known Vangie for years, knew that she had worked deep cover for the DEA before she got disgusted with the agency’s tactics and her boss’s high-handed attitude and resigned. No explosion, no confrontation, that wouldn’t have been Vangie’s way. A quiet, dignified letter of resignation, and a new job at the local cop-shop.
Vangie had started life as a forensic photographer. She knew everything there was to know about lenses and shutter speeds, apertures and emulsions. Moving from that role into undercover work had brought her out of the lab and into the world of hitters and snatchers, bagmen and mules. Her later hiring by the BPD was done quietly and she pursued a public career as a celebrity photog, a member of the paparazzi gang who would turn up at everything from opening night at the San Francisco Opera to opening day at the Oakland Coliseum. She sold photos to the Chronicle, the Examiner, the Trib, the Express, and the San Francisco Mirror.
And she got into backstage scenes, dressing rooms and locker rooms and smoke-filled rooms (there were still a few of those) and provided reports to the Berkeley PD Intelligence Unit that had put more than one fence, skank, or sleaze-bag into San Quentin, Soledad, or Pelican Bay. It was risky work, and she knew that if her cover were blown she’d be lucky to get out alive.
She loved it.
Dorothy Yamura had told Marvia that there would be a couple of male plainclothes officers in the crowd at the Crash Club, and a ’tac squad ready to close in if needed. That was the good news. But the officers going inside would be unarmed. The Crash Club’s bouncer/manager, “Chuff” Fernández, had installed a metal detector just inside the club’s doorway. No guns, no knives, no weapons in the club.
It was a good idea. Nobody could complain about that, not even City Councilmember Sherry Hanson, last of the red-hot radicals. She considered the police department a pack of Fascist pigs and Marvia Plum a traitor to her race, her gender, and her class.
The detector kept weapons out of the club. It also meant that the police couldn’t carry their normal equipment with them without giving themselves away.
Marvia had raised that question, and Dorothy Yamura had said, “We can’t risk it. If Solly is in cahoots with the pushers—or if Chuff Fernández is—and we clear our presence in advance, there’s no way we’ll catch anything. The support will be outside, that’s the best I can offer.”
Now Marvia and Vangie stood on the sidewalk outside the Crash Club.
They were surrounded by celebrants of varied persuasions. Most of the line was composed of young people, and it was moving, up ahead. Red and blue neon made garish patterns on the customers. Some got past Chuff Fernández and disappeared beneath the Crash Club’s neon logo. Others too young to pass muster were turned away. Some tried to argue the point, but Fernández never yielded.
Ahead of Marvia and Vangie were a couple with spiked Mohawks, the taller partner’s hair dyed a vivid green; the shorter partner’s, a rich maroon. They wore identical black biker’s jackets and silver chains running from their ears to their nostrils.
The line lurched and Marvia felt a shove from behind. She turned and saw that the person behind her was apparently alone. Not that it mattered: he was big enough for a party of four. His skull was completely hairless but he sported a bushy iron-gray beard. His forehead had a single word tattooed on it: TOD. Drops of blood—Marvia realized they were simulated—ran from the letters and disappeared into the man’s eyes. He wore a long-sleeved shirt with fancy embroidery at the cuffs: braid like the decoration on an army officer’s dress uniform, with a grinning dinosaur peeking between the loops. At least the strange man had a sense of humor.
Outside the Crash Club, what looked like a onetime church announcement board had been adapted to list the night’s attractions. Hitler Youth…Smutnik…PRYZN GYRLS.
The line reached the door. Marvia had the price of admission in her hand but Vangie Rhee held up her camera with one hand and her press pass with the other. She was testing a new electronic camera tonight, courtesy of the San Francisco Mirror. A combination camcorder and minicomputer, it would allegedly store an image on a silicon chip instead of a piece of celluloid and display the image on a rectangular screen without benefit of chemicals.
Chuff Fernández nodded at Vangie. Vangie pointed over her shoulder at Marvia. Chuff grabbed Marvia by her biceps and propelled her inside the club. He was dark-skinned, darker even than Marvia. His shirt had a Cuban flag on it. He didn’t say a word.
At least she’d got through the metal detector with her badge in her pocket. Not enough metal in it to set off an alarm. She might not be able to apply deadly force, but if it came down to it she might accomplish something with moral force.
Sure.
The club was already jammed. If the BPD or the ABC didn’t close it down, Marvia thought, then the Fire Marshal ought to give it a try.
The bands had brought out their respective followings, and Marvia played a silent game, identifying patrons by their musical taste. It was easy enough to pick out Hitler Youth’s fans—skinheads, some of them in T-shirts and jeans, some in pseudo-military attire. Swastika necklaces and sneering faces and lots of bad complexions. Smutnik fans wore death-white makeup and black clothes, black hair and black lipstick. There were even a few black Smutniks with deep white sockets painted around their eyes to simulate death.
And PRYZN GYRLZ seemed to draw Lesbian couples. When a pair drew near one of them put an arm across Marvia’s chest and leaned her mouth against her ear. Her breath was hot and moist. She said, “Ditch the white bitch, honey, what’s the matter with you?”
Marvia shook free. “We’re just friends,” she managed.
The two PRYZN GYRLZ fans traded looks and nods. They were both wearing PRYZN GYRLZ T-shirts. “Sure, honey. Just don’t waste it. Come on over and have a drink.” They headed for the bar.
Marvia looked at Vangie.
Vangie’s eyes lit up as if she’d seen an old friend and she disappeared into the crowd.
Marvia and her new friends fought through the crush to reach the bar. Somehow they succeeded. Marvia found herself with a new friend on either side. Two black women, both of them in sweat-stained T-shirts. Marvia wore a sweatshirt, its sleeves chopped at the shoulders. She missed the familiar weight of a piece on her hip or in a shoulder holster. The bar was dark wood, had a real brass rail, a huge mirror on the wall behind the bartenders. Clearly, the heritage of some earlier incarnation of the Crash Club.
One of Marvia’s new friends yelled at a female bartender. She slapped a bill onto the wood. The bartender drew three beers into plastic cups and set them on the mahogany. There was a stack of paper napkins printed with the Crash Club’s logo, a huge, ancient Buick convertible wrapped around a tree.
The woman to Marvia’s left raised her glass and said, “To us, honey.” They all drank. Marvia took as little beer as she could; it wasn’t the old drinking-on-duty taboo, she just needed to keep her wits as sharp and her reflexes as fast as she could.
The club was already dark, Marvia thought, when she came past Chuff Fernández. Now it got darker. A spotlight hit a man standing on the stage. Marvia recognized Solomon San Remo, but just barely. He’d been a heavyset man when she’d known him—or known of him—in the past. She hadn’t seen him for a long time, not