Diamond in the Buff (5 page)

I drove down Panoramic Way, behind campus and across north Berkeley to Indian Rock.

Indian Rock, basically a three-sided pyramid of a boulder with an apex the height of a two-story house, sits between two two-story houses in the north Berkeley hills. It could have a street address. The front face of the rock is almost vertical and to the unschooled like me looks as sheer as a sheet of window glass. But where I saw only smooth surface, three men must have seen steps and knobs and crannies. They were pressing the toes of their sticky rubber rock-climbing shoes against the rough surface, finding toeholds or magically creating them. They dipped hands in what looked like miniature feed bags that hung from their belts in back, arched their fingers and pressed the chalked tips into handholds visible only to them. Not only did they not fall to the ground, they managed to move sideways. And that was not the most amazing thing.

Two of the climbers wore cutoffs and T-shirts, but the third, a novice, had clearly just exited the climbing-gear store, and despite the heat of the day, he was in full dress. His black rubber-soled shoes boasted turquoise sides and red tongues. His shiny tights outlined less than perfect legs with swirls of red, purple, and orange up to one knee, royal blue and green birds to the groin, and two big red roses on the butt. I had time to note each design because the wearer, two feet off the ground, was not moving. He clung to the side of the rock like one of those stuffed cats suctioned onto car windows. Standing near him, a guy in cutoffs and a world-class tan was barking, “Side-cling hold, Stan. Look for the side cling.”

Above the clinging Stan, a couple sat atop Indian Rock, drinking Cokes, and dangling sandaled feet over the edge. They, clearly, had ascended by means of the steps cut into the rock. When they finished they would trot down the stairs; Stan, on the other hand, would come down with a thud.

I found Beverly Zagoya on the north face, or more accurately, under it. She was clinging, spiderlike, under the outcropping of rock, not to handholds above it but to minuscule protuberances on the underside. I stood back, leaning against a stone ledge that separated Indian Rock from the house next door, and watched her move to the right, pausing briefly to scan the rock for holds, pressing her whitened fingertips against the stone surface, and following with her feet. A series of white smudges on the rock—like photographic negatives of cat paws in the snow—marked the trail of her hands.

I had seen pictures of Bev Zagoya like the poster of her last expedition in Diamond’s living room. Last night at her lecture/slide show she had been narrating mostly in the dark or standing behind a podium looking down at her notes. But now, seeing her close up, I was struck by how much smaller she was than I expected a woman who’d climbed in the Himalaya to be. She wasn’t much taller than I, maybe about five eight. Her brown curly hair hung loose a couple of inches below the neck of her red T-shirt. Her firm shoulder muscles and clearly defined thigh and butt muscles set off a tiny waist, giving her the ethereal look of a ballerina rather than a mountaineer.

She reached flat wall and she swung down. I called her name, and when she turned to face me the vision of ethereality vanished. Close up now, I could see that it was the overhanging eyebrows that gave her face its look of plodding determination. Simian. Thick dark eyebrows had done wonders for Brooke Shields, but one look at Beverly Zagoya told me that she had not let her brows grow unmowed for style. They looked like the grass in a freeway median strip in a year when every bond issue had been voted down. Like they should have glasses and a nose attached. They looked like a feature for which I had better find a more acceptable description before I wrote up a report of this interview. “I’m Detective Smith, Homicide–Felony Assault.”

“Homicide?”

“And
Felony Assault. It’s about the eucalyptus branch.”

She looked back at the rock and shook her head. The multicolored novice was feeling above the overhang for a handhold. When Zagoya turned back to face me her eyebrows had lowered, giving her the look of an unpleasant Neanderthal. “Now you’ve made me lose my spot! He’s going to tie up the rock for half an hour falling on his roses!”

“We should be done in half an hour,” I said as reasonably as I could muster.

“Sunday climbers!” she muttered loud enough for Rose Butt to hear. Then she stomped to the ledge and settled beside me in the filmy shade of a live oak.

“Indian Rock is a safe spot. Where else are people going to start?” I said, more righteously than someone who had just been comparing her eyebrows to a median strip had any business doing. Opening my note pad, I said, “You’re a friend of both Hasbrouck Diamond and Leila Sandoval, right?”

Zagoya was still looking toward the rock. Her right foot was poised on its toes, the muscles of that leg taut, as if ready to sprint forward and knock Rose Butt off the bulge on which he appeared to have impaled himself. He lay on the top, arms and legs spreadeagled so that even if he had holds he was too splayed out to pull them off. I started to rephrase my question, when Zagoya said, “Leila introduced me to Hasbrouck, way before their squabble. Three or four years ago. Anyway, Leila and I weren’t really friends. She was just someone I met here one day. She was trying the rock.”

“Leila climbs?”

“She gave up after a month. Look, the thing with Leila is she’s flightly. She can’t stick to anything.”

“What else has she abandoned?”

Zagoya shook her head. “I really don’t know her anymore. But look how she got carried away with this feud with Hasbrouck and all her harassing. She’s even called you guys, right?” Zagoya didn’t wait for an answer. “But she did do one good thing that will have a long-range effect.” Now she did wait till I dutifully asked what. “She introduced me to Hasbrouck, and Hasbrouck has become a real supporter of mountaineering. He’s going to do it a lot of good.”

“Like?”

“Like bringing Kris Mouskavachi over here. Kris is going to be a big plus for mountaineering. Like organizing my presentation for the expedition. Like underwriting the filming. He’s invited a lot of influential people tomorrow. Some media. We need to have the public know what goes into mountaineering, that it’s not just trotting up the Himalaya while Sherpas or Hunzas carry your tent.”

“Were you worried about your lecture last night or the presentation tomorrow?”

She tensed slightly, then shook her head. “I leave the worrying to Hasbrouck.”

“Does Hasbrouck Diamond climb, too?”

“No. He’s smart enough to realize he’s in no shape for it, not even rock climbing.”

“Even
rock climbing?” I asked, amazed.

She turned toward me. The brows lifted. And I had the sense that she had shifted into her public persona. “I don’t mean to suggest that rock climbing doesn’t take a lot of skill. You’ve got to be in good shape for class-five or better climbing.” Watching my reaction, she added, “A class-five slope is one that is dangerous enough that a fall could kill you, one that most climbers should use support on. Above that you’ll have to put your full weight on the rope, and you’ll find yourself hanging from your harness and swami belt,” she said, touching a two-inch-wide sash that had been circled four times around her waist and knotted.

When my expression still didn’t satisfy her, she lowered the brows a millimeter—unintentionally, I guessed—and said, “Climbs are graded. Class one is a sidewalk, flat and easy. When you go to the store you’re doing class one. Class two is a slope, maybe tree roots or debris on it. No harder than walking down a dune to the beach.” She smiled automatically. What she was giving me was a line from her public presentations. I could feel my neck tighten. It was ridiculous, but I was insulted. Cops do not feel insulted when interviewing. I couldn’t decide whether I was put off by her rote delivery, or by her assumption that I didn’t realize it for what it was. But I did know this wasn’t the time to ponder
that.
“Class three’s a steep slope, which you can manage without equipment, but you should keep a rope handy if you’re not experienced. For four—”

“Where were you when the eucalyptus branch fell?”

The deep creases in her forehead exposed her anger at the interruption, or the wresting of control. I wished I knew just how much experience she had doing public presentations. Probably more than her public demeanor suggested. Either that or she was more nervous about her appearances than she was willing to let on. Of course, she would have had good reason to be worried about tomorrow’s presentation.

“I was downstairs,” she said, her voice revealing nothing. “My room is beneath the main floor. I heard the bang when the branch dropped. I ran upstairs. Hasbrouck was still in the chair.”

“Did you look up in the tree?”

“Of course, but if you’re asking was there anyone there with a chain saw, the answer is no. No saws, no ropes, no felonious woodpeckers,” she said, exasperated. “Look, I know Hasbrouck thinks Leila had it in for him. Maybe she did, maybe she still does. She’s a middle-aged woman with nothing to do with her life; she has a lot of time to nurse a silly vendetta. But there’s no way she could engineer a ten-foot eucalyptus branch to fall at the time Hasbrouck was out airing his parts.”

In front of us there was a thud, followed by a yelp. The novice climber had landed on his roses. Before he could push himself up and dust off his colors, Bev Zagoya was up and at the rock.

I walked up next to her before she could get her foot planted. Even if I hadn’t had a question, I wouldn’t have let her decide when the interview was over. “One more question,” I said, pausing long enough to make my point. “Are you allergic to bees?”

She turned around. “Why?”

“Are you?”

She glanced around nervously, moved a step farther from the climbers on the rock before she spit out, “Yeah, I am. So?”

“Why are you loath to admit it?”

Again she seemed to struggle with herself before answering. It was a power thing, I was willing to bet. “Look, I’m in a very competitive sport, a business in a sense. Any weakness makes me less salable,” she said, her voice lower. “And it means I have to work that much harder. So I don’t want this spread around.”

“Does Leila Sandoval know about it?”

I could see the fear taking hold as she nodded and said, “Why are you asking?”

“Because Leila Sandoval ordered bees to be delivered to her address tomorrow.”

She slammed her fists together. Leila Sandoval was fortunate not to be between them. “Tomorrow!” She slammed the fists harder. “God damn her!” Another slam. Her face was crimson under the tan, and all her muscles were taut.

Another person might have reacted to the physical danger of anaphylactic shock, the possibility of her own tissues swelling up till they blocked off the oxygen and suffocated her. But clearly, Bev Zagoya was focused on the threat to her presentation. It was a statement of her commitment, and of her priorities. I waited a moment, then motioned her back to the stone wall we’d been sitting on and said, “Now tell me what’s behind this bee order.”

“Leila’s a lunatic—”

“I already heard that from Dr. Diamond. Why the bees? Why tomorrow?”

“To destroy me. Destroy my chance to get backing for my expedition. Look,” she said glaring at me, “no one’s going to be interested in filming a climb led by a woman they’ve seen running away from an insect. It’s hardly heroic, is it? You satisfied now?” Her face was even redder.

“Would you be in danger climbing? You could carry adrenaline.”

“I do. Chances of me getting stung when I can’t get to it are slim. I know that, but try to convince the backers. Backers aren’t charities, you know. What they want to make is an adventure film in which they themselves take no chances, however remote. Suppose I was stung on the way to the mountain, in some squalid, unphotogenic location. It would ruin their story line. More to the point, if these guys saw my presentation ruined by a swarm of bees, they’d start viewing the whole project differently. Instead of an epic, in their minds it’d be Laurel and Hardy.”

I sighed. My shirt was sticking to my back and my hair felt clammy against my scalp. On the wall in front Rose Butt had reclaimed Bev’s spot and was peering around for holds; Bev gave no sign of noticing. I said, “So this bee issue is a devastating threat. Why would your old friend Leila Sandoval do this to you?”

She gave a little snort of disgust. “Because of Hasbrouck.”

I sighed; Diamond, of course. Diamond and Sandoval must have the biggest blinders in the entire pasture. They would not only not see the fence, they wouldn’t see the knolls, the streams, or the other horses. They would see nothing but each other. “To get to him, because he’s your friend?”

She looked down at the path, and I had the feeling she could hardly make herself go on. “Because,” she forced out, “Hasbrouck is, well, enamored of me. He loves being part of the climbing world, but he came to that love because I love it, and because”—she swallowed—“because Hasbrouck loves me. I don’t encourage that,” she said quickly, “but I can’t help how he feels, can I?”

I could have commented that staying in Diamond’s house was not an act likely to dim his ardor. Instead I studied Zagoya. There was no pretense in her humiliation. Her face was nearly as red as it had been in anger. But all that seemed an excessive reaction for one who denied her own involvement in this infatuation. I said, “I have the feeling you’re protesting too much.”

She didn’t reply, but the tightening of her body told me I was right.

“Let me remind you,” I said, “that you are dealing with the police. You have been threatened; I’m trying to protect you. And I’m also getting fed up with having to pull the truth out of you.” I paused to let the unspoken threat sink in. “Why is it that Leila Sandoval would aim to harm you because Diamond is attracted to you?”

She didn’t reply.

Atop the rock, the couple sitting there laughed. I looked up in time to see them kiss. The memory of Howard’s kiss as he hoisted himself out of bed this morning flitted through my mind, followed by a pang of disappointment at our lost day. I looked back at Bev, and suddenly I saw a possibility I hadn’t considered, which seemed hardly imaginable. A soap opera possibility. “There’s a lid for every pot,” my mother had said, an unintentionally backhanded compliment when an amply endowed cousin had announced her engagement. To Bev Zagoya I said, “Leila introduced you to Diamond. And Diamond turned his attention to you. Was Hasbrouck Diamond involved with Leila Sandoval before?”