Betrayers

18

Zachary David Ullman lived in Daly City, in one of the houses that march in long, close ranks up and down across the spines of the hills overlooking Candlestick Park, the bay, SFO. Ticky-tacky houses, Malvina Reynolds called them in her sixties song “Little Boxes.” Ullman’s was exactly like all the others on his street except for its color, dark brown with pale blue trim, and a couple of stunted yew trees along the front wall next to the garage.

It was after five when I pulled up in front. Fog rolled sinuously along the winding street, up and around the houses, blotting out the bay view. Three hundred days a year it would be either foggy or windy up here; the people who bought these homes on one of the few clear days and expected to enjoy regular sunny vistas would always be disappointed.

I sat in the car for a couple of minutes, looking over at Ullman’s house. A not very new Hyundai sat on the cracked concrete driveway and there was a light on behind a curtained front window above the garage, so he was home. He apparently lived alone; the only blot, if you could call it that, on his exemplary record was a divorce nine years ago. He was thirty-five, had no children of his own.

Anger had ridden with me on the drives to the condo to pick up the tin box and then on up here, but I had it tamped down now. Mostly. I wanted to be sure I was in complete control before I went over there and had my talk with Ullman. Getting in his face, hurling accusations, figured to be counterproductive. The situation called for a more subtle approach. I had no real proof that the tin box belonged to him; the fact that he was the only Z.U. at Whitney Middle School was circumstantial at best. You had to be very careful in a case like this, where a man’s livelihood and reputation were at stake. The last thing I could afford was a lawsuit.

Still, I had a feeling he was the right Z.U. Emily always responded to authority figures; I should have remembered that. She was more likely to believe and let herself be talked into protecting a teacher than one of her classmates. It wasn’t the probable fact that Ullman was a recreational coke user that had me so upset; it was the way he’d used and manipulated Emily. That and bringing cocaine onto school grounds, as he must have done, and then being careless enough to lose the box there. Where else would she have found it?

Okay. I got out and crossed the street, hunching against the bite of the wind-driven fog. The entrance to Ullman’s house was on the side away from the garage, up a short, inclined path and a short flight of concrete steps. A few seconds after I rang the bell, a dead-bolt lock clicked and the door swung inward.

He was slightly built, with regular features and thinning caramel-colored hair, wearing slacks and a tan sweater with suede elbow patches. He did a mild double take when he saw me, his eyes widening and blinking-soft brown eyes, like a melancholy hound’s, eyes that could melt the heart of a naive thirteen-year-old girl. Expecting someone else, I thought, and caught off balance to see a stranger standing here instead. None too pleased about it. And suddenly nervous.

“Yes? May I help you?”

“Zachary Ullman?”

“Yes? If you’re selling something-”

“I’m not.” I told him my name, nothing more. It didn’t seem to mean anything to him. “My daughter is a student at Whitney Middle School.”

“Is she? In one of my classes?”

“That’s right. Her name is Emily.”

It took him about three seconds to put that together with my last name. His expression didn’t change, but his body language did; you could see him drawing up tight, so tight that his posture straightened into a stiff vertical line. He made an effort to keep his voice even and polite when he said, “Yes, of course-Emily,” but it didn’t quite come off.

“Mind if we talk inside? Pretty cold out here.”

“I… no, I’m sorry.” He moved forward half a step, widening his stance, as if he were afraid I might try to push my way inside. “I really don’t have the time right now. If you’d like to make an appointment for a consultation at the school-”

“Now, Mr. Ullman. It won’t wait.”

“What won’t wait? Why are you here?”

I took the tin box out of my pocket, held it up in the palm of my hand. He had to look, but only for a couple of seconds before his gaze shifted. He was holding on to the edge of the door and I saw his fingers clench, the tendons in his wrist stand out like cords. The pressure made the door move slightly from side to side.

He said, “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“Yours, isn’t it?”

“It is not. Did Emily tell you it belongs to me?”

“Emily didn’t tell me anything.”

“Then what makes you think it’s mine?”

“It has your initials on it.”

“ My initials?”

“Z.U.”

“Yes, well? They’re uncommon, but I’m sure quite a few other people have them.”

“Not at Whitney Middle School.”

“… Just why are you here?”

“I think you know.”

“I don’t know. How did you find out where I live?”

I just looked at him.

“I tell you, that box isn’t mine,” Ullman said. “I’ve never seen it before. Anyone could have scratched my initials on it.”

“On purpose, to implicate you?”

“Implicate me in what? What are you implying?”

“Not implying, stating. I think the box is yours.”

“I’ve just told you-”

“The box, and what was inside it.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The hell he didn’t. He was so twitchy inside that rigid body you could almost see him vibrating, like sensitive machinery whirring away within a pliant casing. The door kept wobbling, as if he were struggling against the urge to slam it shut in my face.

The sound of an approaching car grew out of the fog behind me. Ullman heard it and his gaze slid away from mine again, past me to the street. Headlights crawled through the wet mist, brightening as the car drew abreast of the house. When it went on past without slowing, he tongued his upper lip, his Adam’s apple working, and then looked at me again.

“Cocaine,” I said.

“… What?”

“Inside the box. A little tube of cocaine.”

He said, “What?” again, trying to sound surprised; that didn’t come off, either.

“Emily found it at your school,”

I said. “Then it must belong to one of her classmates. I’m a teacher, for heaven’s sake-”

“Teachers have been known to use cocaine recreationally. But the smart ones use it in the privacy of their own homes. They don’t bring it to school and then lose it where kids can stumble on it.”

“… Did she tell you she found it at Whitney?”

“Didn’t I just say she hasn’t told me anything? She honors her promises, particularly those she makes to adults.”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

I could feel my blood pressure rising. “Deny and stonewall, right, Ullman? If Emily does admit what she knows and what you made her promise, it’s her word against yours-a kid’s word against an adult’s.”

“… What do you intend to do?”

“What would you do if you were me?”

“I’d be very careful of my facts before I accused someone of using illegal drugs. Very, very careful. Otherwise…”

“Otherwise what?”

“I’m not a litigious man,” he said, “but if you try to sully my name and my reputation with the school board, I’ll sue for slander and defamation. I mean that; I-”

Another car appeared on the street, this one going faster than the last one. Ullman’s gaze went to it, magnetically. Stayed fixed on it until it passed on by and out of sight.

He was really vibrating now. The brown hound’s eyes showed an odd mix of emotions-melancholy, anger, fear. Hunted eyes, I thought, haunted eyes.

“What’s got you so upset, Ullman?”

“What do you think? You coming here, making accusations…”

“Is that all?”

“Isn’t it enough? You have no right-”

I said, “I wonder if there are fingerprints.”

“… What?”

“On the box. Or on the tube.” There wouldn’t be-the surfaces were too rough on one, too smooth on the other, and they’d both been handled too much anyway for clear latents-but I wanted to see what he’d say.

“That’s… ridiculous,” he said. “What do you know about fingerprints?”

“Quite a bit. It’s my business to know about things like that.”

“Your business? I don’t… Who are you?” The obvious answer smacked him and made him jerk, turned him a little white around the gills. “You… you’re not a policeman?”

“I was once. Now I’m a private investigator. And I still have contacts in law enforcement.”

“A private-” He shook his head a couple of times, hard, the way you do after you’ve just come up out of a particularly frightening nightmare and you’re not quite sure yet it wasn’t real. “I have nothing more to say to you. Just… leave me alone. You understand? Leave me alone!”

This time he went ahead and slammed the door in my face.

I moved down to the sidewalk and on to my car, taking my time in spite of the night’s chill. The one time I glanced up, I spotted a gap at one corner of the curtained front window, Ullman’s face framed there: watching to make sure I left or looking for whoever he was expecting, or maybe both.

My car was parked some distance upstreet and he couldn’t have had a clear look at it through the churning mist. My advantage. I didn’t waste any time getting in and driving away, but I only went a couple of blocks, around a long curve to where I couldn’t be seen from Ullman’s place. Then I made a U-turn and parked and sat in the darkened car with the engine running. After three minutes by the dashboard clock, I rolled back around the curve, slow, with the driver’s window down and my lights off-not too smart on a foggy night, but the street remained deserted. Fifty yards or so from Ullman’s house, I had a misty view of the front entrance and the lighted front window. He wasn’t looking out now; the curtain was drawn tight at both corners.

There was room to park at the curb on my side. I drifted over, killed the engine. And sat there waiting.

Trust your hunches. The one I had about Zachary Ullman was strong enough to warrant some more of my time. His edginess was only partly due to my unexpected arrival and the conversation we’d had. He hadn’t wanted me inside the house, for one thing. And he hadn’t wanted me there when his visitor or visitors showed up. Why? The only reason I could think of was that he had something to hide, something he didn’t want a stranger and especially a detective to know about.

Time passed. Crept, rather, the way it always does on any kind of stakeout. Passive waiting has never been my long suit. As far as I’m concerned, Ambrose Bierce had it right in his Devil’s Dictionary definition of patience: a minor form of despair disguised as a virtue.

I kept shifting around on the seat, huddled inside my coat, because of incipient leg cramps and because my lower back was giving me trouble again. Getting too old for this kind of thing, sitting alone in cars on cold nights. I was supposed to be semiretired, wasn’t I? At home in the evenings, in the warm condo with my family?

Sure, but this was something that threatened a family member and by extension threatened me. And made me suspicious as well as angry. I didn’t like that son of a bitch in the house across the street; at the very least he was a liar and a cokehead. I’d sit here, never mind the cramps and lower back pain, for as long as it took to see if my hunch panned out.

Not long, fortunately. Not much more than fifteen minutes.

Headights appeared around the curve behind me, the fourth set I’d seen since I’d been here, but this vehicle was going more slowly than the others; and as soon as it passed me, it coasted over to the curb just up ahead. Old, beat-up van, light and dark two-tone in color.

The lights flicked off, and a stick of a man wearing a sleeveless down jacket got out and came around to open one of the rear doors, take something out. Two somethings-a two-foot-long cardboard mailing tube, looked like, and a package about the size of a shoe box. I’d been thinking Ullman was waiting for the Man, but cocaine doesn’t get transported in mailing tubes, or in shoe boxes unless the buyer is stocking up by the kilo.

I watched the stick figure cross the street with his two parcels. In the foggy darkness I couldn’t tell much about him except that he seemed middle-aged and had stringy shoulder-length hair that the wind whipped around his head. Nothing furtive about him-just a guy on his way to somebody’s house, invited guest or deliveryman.

Ullman opened up right away, as he had with me. Let the long-haired man inside, poked his head back out to look up and down the street-if he noticed my car, it didn’t hold his attention-and then quickly shut the door.

For a minute or so I kept my eyes on the window curtain. Neither corner moved. I reached up and unscrewed the dome light, waited another minute, and when Ullman’s door stayed shut I got out and walked up close enough to the van to read the license plate. Personalized: DDTDAWG. Easy to remember, even with a porous memory like mine.

Back in the car, I rolled the window all the way up; I’d done enough freezing for tonight. I thought about following DDTDAWG when he left, but why bother? The license number was enough for me to find out who he was. But I waited anyway, out of curiosity as to how long he’d stay with Ullman.

Too long to be an average deliveryman, not long enough to be an invited guest. A little less than ten minutes. The door opened, out DDTDAWG came, the door closed. He climbed into his van without a glance in my direction, drove away into the fog.

Two minutes later, when the light in Ullman’s front window went out, I took myself out of there, too, with the heater going full blast. I was almost warm by the time I got home.