Death and Taxes (12 page)

“
Up
the street? East?” To go home, he would have coasted
down,
west. “Which way did he go on College?”

“Right.”

Right—south—away from home. “Did he sit on the bicycle seat?”

“When he turned, yes. It’s a downslope on that street.”

So Philip Drem had waited for someone who didn’t show up. Then he rode off in a huff, in the opposite direction from his flat. But where was he going?

“What about his briefcase?” He hadn’t been home or back to the office since he’d stuck that briefcase in his basket and pedaled away from Lyn Takai’s.

Maria picked up the ceramic cup and drained the coffee. Her hands were shaking.

“Did he have the briefcase when he got here?”

“Yeah. He always had the damned briefcase. I teased him about it. I mean, here we are fantasizing a carefree month in Samoa”—she clunked the cup down—“or Lisbon, or Paris, and he’s clutching his briefcase like he can’t be away from his work for an hour. It’s like his anchor to his job, his life here, whatever. Like it kept him from being washed away with me.”

“When he left on his bicycle, did he still have the briefcase?”

“If he went to the men’s room, he took it. To be separated from it, he’d have to have been … dead.” Her breath caught. Behind us the clattering of china and silver seemed suddenly louder. Her voice was shaky as she said, “He stuck it in his basket, unlocked his chain, and rode off. Didn’t you find it?”

“No. Who would have wanted it?”

“No one. When I asked him about it, he said there was nothing that would interest anyone, least of all me.”

That might have been, what he said, but his actions certainly told a different tale. I said, “I’ll need a written statement from you. You can come in to the station tomorrow.”

She nodded. “The movie’s over. Tell me about Phil. He was married, wasn’t he?”

I nodded. We don’t tell witnesses more than they need to know. This time I was glad. I could have said that I didn’t think marriage per se explained Philip Drem’s behavior, but I didn’t think she needed that black-and-white version. For tonight at least, she was better left with her soft-colored memories.

I
TOOK DOWN
M
ARIA
Zalles’s address and phone number and arranged for her to come to the station at 10:00
A.M.
the next day. When I left her, she was still sitting in the Swallow, her cappuccino cup empty but for the coffee stains.

I started on the route Drem had taken from here. He’d left the Swallow at ten, ridden the half block up Durant (a one-way street), turned right on College Avenue (two-way), cut down either Channing or Haste, and turned left again till he got to Dwight and elected to loop down half a block of Dwight against its one-way eastbound traffic. (In the secondhand report we had, the witness spotted him on that part of Dwight.) Then Drem turned onto Regent Street to die.

The only reason he would have taken that route was to get to Regent. And my guess was he would have chosen Regent as a route to cut across Telegraph (also a one-way, the wrong way) only if he was headed to Carleton and the property owned by Moon, Takai, et al.

Since I had to obey the one-way signs, it took me a bit longer to get there. It was dark now. Deciduous trees already had full complements of leaves, branches hanging low over the streetlights. Sidewalks were empty, street traffic light for a Saturday night. Of course, this was the last weekend before April 15.

Berkeleyans, never ones to pay the government more or earlier than absolutely essential were home sweating over their 1040s. Howard, I suspected, was sitting home with one eye on his charitable deductions and the other on his azaleas. An uncomfortable picture, any way you looked at it.

I hung a U and pulled up across from the group’s property, the fifty-year-old cheap hotel that could have as easily been cheap apartments.
Inspiration Hotel
, the sign said. Presumably the inspiration had yet to be fulfilled. The outside lighting was minimal. I doubted that had been an aesthetic decision, but the result must have pleased the neighbors (and any housebreakers with meager enough standards to bother with this place).

Lyn Takai and her partners had had the Inspiration only a year, and whatever improvements they might have made were clearly not on the facade. What had possessed a pair as indigent as Takai and Moon to invest in a long-term project like this? I walked up the cracked cement path to the door and pushed it open.

The lobby was shaped like the box of a size 15 AAA shoe and decorated about as imaginatively: a pine counter, two elderly flowered sofas, and the staircase that led up from the front door. No carpet, coffee tables, or lamps. The only light was from the overhead fixture. Not that there were any newspapers or magazines to read by it. This lobby was not a place where people would choose to wait.

“Can I help you?” The man behind the desk had an elfin look—curly dark hair caught in a ponytail that disappeared into the collar of his tan shirt, skin a little wrinkly, dark eyes with the twinkle of experiences not taken too seriously. A tan beaked cap sat on the counter, a captain’s cap. Or was that admiral’s?

“Detective Smith, Berkeley Police.”

“Ah, the one who talked to Lyn.” The most innocent of people are usually unnerved by the unexpected arrival of a police detective, particularly one they know to be in Homicide, but this man was not impressed. He was leaning forward over the counter as if he were ready to peruse a trinket I’d brought in. I guessed him to be Ethan Simonov, but I asked anyway. He was.

Simonov had been indicted for tax evasion in Oregon. Had this not been a weekend, I would have gotten the details of that case. I’d heard Simonov’s name around town. It was on Howard’s well-worn “in case of emergency” list of plumbers, electricians, foundation workers, roofers, and so on. The notation beside Simonov’s name had been: “finder.”

I said, “Tell me about the tax-evasion indictment.”

He leaned toward me as if I had laid a pouch of contraband on the counter and was ready to trade. “You don’t mess around, lady.”

“A tax indictment is serious business. You get caught evading, IRS makes you pay. They don’t send you to jail unless there’s a pile of money involved—”

“Or they want to make an example of you,” he said matter-of-factly.

“So what did they get you for?”

“Stupidity. Or more to the point, sloppy business practices.” He stood up and tapped a finger on the counter as if waiting to see what I had to barter. When I didn’t bite, he went on. “It was the kind of stupidity that comes from living in Berkeley too long, then moving away and forgetting where you are. If I’d been the swap king of Berkeley, they’d never have done more than dun me for a few bucks.”

“The ‘swap king’?”

“Yeah, that’s what the papers called me.” Simonov gave a little snort, but he failed to hide a little proud smile. “It was up in southern Oregon. I ran the biggest swap club in the state. A trombone player needed his roof reshingled, he called me. I got him in touch with a roofer who wanted a band for his high school reunion. They swapped jobs.”

“And paid you a fee?”

“Yeah, though sometimes it was work instead of money.”

“Didn’t you pay taxes on it?”

“I did. I wasn’t that stupid,” he said, clearly put out. “It was my clients who didn’t. Not my fault, is it? I tell the people I deal with now, they better pay.”

“You reported every fee, including the work-instead-of-money?”

Simonov shrugged. “IRS would never have gone after me for that alone. They got me because I was too dumb to check out my clients and find that a bunch were growers and were paying their share in marijuana. Then one of the growers
didn’t
pay up. There’s nothing worse than a reneger, particularly a stupid one. The other client got pissed and called the sheriff. Sheriff couldn’t find the crops, so he went after him for tax evasion. And I got caught in the cross fire. And once they had my books, they dug through them till they found the rest of the growers.” He shook his head in disgust. “They dunned me for everything I had. I got out with my shoes and Jockey shorts but not much else. Never would have happened in Berkeley.”

Simonov was right. Marijuana is a very low priority here. The citizens passed a nonbinding referendum to remind us. “But you’re still doing swaps here?”

Simonov grinned. “For the law-abiding only. I guess I like knowing everyone, being in the middle of things, being the swap king. Maybe I’ll get one of the guys to make me a crown of hammers and ladles and bronzed taxi receipts.”

I had the feeling that he’d picked up my pouch and tested the biggest diamond, or toughest question, and was satisfied with the deal he’d made. I walked around to join him behind the counter. “Looks like you’ve got the crown around your waist,” I said, indicating his tool belt.

“Be prepared. I learned as a boy. A concierge never knows when he’ll have to fix a lock or unplug a toilet.”

I leaned back against the counter. Simonov, I recalled, had netted a bit of fame a couple of years ago when he brought together an unemployed environmentalist campaign manager and a city-council candidate who became a champion of Berkeley’s Bay shoreline. The two had parlayed their trade into an effective campaign, and Simonov had endeared himself to locals by virtually refusing to share the newspaper publicity.

I asked, “Were you manning the desk here Friday night?”

“When Drem bought it?”

I let a beat pass. “From, say, seven to eleven.”

“I just fill in.”

“Who was here?”

“At the desk? Scookie Hogan—she’s one of us owners. But you know that, don’t you.”

“Don’t worry about what I know, Mr. Simonov. Did you fill in then?”

He wasn’t taken aback by that either. “Maybe I should worry more about you.”

“Or just answer honestly.”

He shrugged. “Or that. But it’s so much less interesting.” Noting my irritation, he said, “Okay. I was here. From four to eleven—seven long hours if you haven’t brought anything to read.”

I could imagine. The room with its one window way at the front was cell-like. And Simonov was the last man who looked likely to be comfortable in emptiness. He’d probably been one of those kids who’d spent hours on the jungle gyms or organized gangs of little boys to hike through imaginary deserts over chimera mountains to battle great blue dragons or eels from outer space. How had he survived being imprisoned? I wondered if the trades he arranged now—a kitchen painted in return for six hours of massage, four sessions of emergency therapy swapped for a weekend at a Lake Tahoe cabin—satisfied his need for fantasy.

“Is there any reason Philip Drem would have been headed here Friday night?”

“God forbid! The IRS is bad, but they don’t send their agents like Drem out on Friday nights!”

“Could he have been coming on his own, maybe not on business?”

“Socially? Hardly.” Simonov laughed.

I still felt the odds were Drem had been headed here, but whatever the reason, it was going to take some digging. “So what’s your arrangement here? How many rooms?”

“Twelve,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. I couldn’t imagine he had trouble remembering that. “Ten rooms, the honeymoon suite, and the room with a view of the boiler. Truth in advertising.” He grinned and looked as if with the slightest encouragement he’d leap the counter and start pointing out the earthquake cracks in the lobby. That bratty quality would make him a nuisance as an interview, but it was also an outlook I’d always found appealing. The old Howard had it. Brattiness was what made the sting artist.

“And your guests?”

“Our guests are your guests, Detective, at least for the moment. As you can see”—he gestured to the empty lobby with a sureness I’d seen Howard use when he was diverting attention—“we’re still renovating. We’re doing the work ourselves—more love than money. And this way we don’t have to worry about renegers.” He spit out the word. Clearly the swap king aimed at his renegers the same loathing the rest of the world felt for Drem. “We’ve started the foundation work. Now we’re dealing with the termite and water damage. Renting a room with a torn-up wall isn’t every traveler’s dream. Till things are in better shape, we take in whoever’s willing to pay twenty-five a night.” He paused and stretched farther across the counter. “Now you’re asking yourself how I know we’ve got guys who’ve spent time in your nice pink jail, right? When they bitch about the cost here, that’s what they throw up to us—‘the fucking city provides a single room with bath and breakfast for free!’”

“The one night we provided guests with keys, it cost them fifty bucks.”

He threw back his head and laughed. He was one of those little guys who seemed to burst into everything in a big way. “That was the night it opened, right? When you had the special offer for nonfelons?”

“Right.” It had been a public-relations move that had paid off. Our new pink jail had been a hit with most of the citizens. And for many of our regulars, those clean, quiet, safe cells were better than they got in their SROs.

As if reading my mind, he said, “We’re doing our best here. Tonight every room is full, so I guess that says something.”

Overconfident sting artists can be sloppy. They forget what script they’ve been using. I said, “Don’t you keep an emergency room for Social Services?” Occasionally the department had had to find a place for a witness or a family out of funds overnight. A hotel like this—bare bones but safe—was the economical type to use.

“Oh that. The one next to the boiler right behind me—it’s empty. I don’t even think of it when I’m talking about bookings.”

Mediocre save. He was skirting something, but I couldn’t figure out what. I glanced at the yellowed plaster. There was a draft that reminded me of the cold night outside. In here it carried a fetor of mildew. “Anything unusual happen here Friday night?”

He stroked his chin, pulling his fingers together as if over an invisible goatee. “Nothing happened at all. The big event was Scookie arriving with dinner at eight.”

“She made you dinner when she should have been here at the desk?” I asked, amazed.