Betrayers

22

The owner of the old two-toned van and the DDTDAWG license plate was an ex-con named Joseph Hoffman.

Tamara got me that information on Thursday morning. She also tracked down Hoffman’s felony record. The crime that had landed him in Folsom for twenty-seven months had nothing to do with drugs and was the only blot on his record: receiving and selling stolen property. He’d owned a junk shop out near the Cow Palace, and when the cops raided it they found a storeroom full of small appliances, computers, and other goods taken in various burglaries throughout the city. He claimed he hadn’t known any of the stuff was hot; the judge and jury didn’t believe him. His sentence had been three years, with time knocked off for good behavior. Since his release eighteen months ago, he’d been living in Daly City, working for a reputable salvage dealer in South San Francisco, and apparently avoiding any further trouble with the law.

Nothing in any of that to tie him to a middle school teacher like Zachary Ullman, at least on the surface. There was one potentially interesting fact: the police had found out about Hoffman’s fencing operation not on their own hook but through a tip from a source so reliable that they’d had no trouble getting a search warrant for the premises raid.

The tipster had been Hoffman’s wife, Rosette.

She’d also testified against him at his trial, claiming she’d discovered what he was up to by accident and felt it her duty to “do the right thing” and turn him in. The last honest citizen. But there were other motivations in such cases. One possibility was that she’d known about the fencing or suspected it all along, the marriage had turned rocky, and she’d made up her mind to throw Hubby to the wolves. Another was payback for some offense other than a failing marriage. A third was sheer malice. In any case, she’d divorced Hoffman immediately after he was convicted, taken her seven-year-old son and her share from the sale of the junk shop, and started a new life under her maiden name, Prescott. Current address: 1499 Javon Street, El Cerrito. Current place of employment: Sweet Treats Bakery, Fairmount Avenue, El Cerrito.

She was the person to talk to. Nobody knows a man better than his ex-wife, or is more likely to dish up any dirt she has on him when the relationship ends badly. And that went double for an ex-wife who’d already been instrumental in putting her former hubby away in the slam for twenty-seven months.

Sweet Treats Bakery was located at the outer edge of a massive shopping center that took up three or four blocks along San Pablo and Fairmount avenues. One of those places that dispense coffee and other beverages along with cakes, cookies, pies, fresh breads: windowed display cases and a counter along one wall, a few tables and chairs occupying the rest of the space.

I can’t walk into a bakery without two things happening: the aromas make my mouth water and my stomach growl, and my nostalgia gene kicks in. Bakeries were a consistent draw when I was a kid in the Outer Mission. One in particular, an Italian place near where we lived that specialized in sourdough, focaccia, Pugliese, and anise Easter breads and Ligurian pastries. Nobody who grew up with those aromas in his nostrils can recall them without drooling.

The smells in Sweet Treats were mild by comparison, but even with the Ullman business weighing on my mind, the saliva juices flowed. I hadn’t been hungry this morning, had settled for coffee and a soft-boiled egg before leaving the condo, and I hadn’t had any lunch yet. I wondered if they had Pugliese and if they did, if it was up to my standards. I can eat half a loaf of good Pugliese, warm, without butter or any other topping. Kerry was always after me to limit my carb intake, and usually I obliged her for the sake of my waistline. But Pugliese…

The lunch trade had thinned out and only a couple of the tables were occupied. Two women worked the counter, both around forty, one thin and henna haired, one fat and dishwater blond. The thin one was waiting on a customer. The fat one stood by herself at the other end refilling one of the coffeemakers, so I went down there and smiled at her and asked if she was Rosette Prescott.

She’d put on a smile in response to mine; it turned upside down at the sound of her name. “Yes, that’s me.” Tired voice, tired eyes-the kind of tiredness that has little to do with physical fatigue. Weltschmerz.

“Could we talk privately for a few minutes? A personal matter.”

She glanced over at the thin woman, then out at the remaining customers, before she leaned forward and said in an under-tone, “Look, if you’re here about the car payments, I-”

“No, nothing like that. It’s about your ex-husband.”

She had a round, soft, pale face, like well-kneaded bread dough, but when I said “ex-husband” it reshaped into hard, bitter lines. The hardness and bitterness were in her voice, too: “What about him? Who are you?”

I showed her my license, holding the case up against my chest and shielding it with my body so only she could see it. “He’s involved in a case I’m investigating.”

“I don’t care what he’s involved in.”

“But I do, Ms. Prescott. The case is personal.”

“What do you mean, personal?”

“It concerns one of my family members.”

She hesitated, glancing again at her co-worker. “If you’re gonna make me have anything to do with him, the answer is no.”

“Just a few questions, that’s all. You’ll never see me again afterward.”

“Or him?”

“Or him. He’ll never know we talked.”

“What you want to know… will it get him in trouble? The kind of trouble he was in before, or some other kind?”

“It might.”

“Then all right.” She went over to the henna-haired woman, said something to her that evoked a brief argument. When Rosette came back to where I waited, she made a follow me gesture and waddled through a swing door behind the counter.

I stepped around and through into a big, empty bakery kitchen. Open at the far end was a cell-like enclosure, what’s called a break room-a table, a couple of chairs, a small refrigerator. She sank heavily into one of the chairs, puffing a little, and leaned forward to rub one of her thick ankles.

“I wasn’t always this fat,” she said. “Big, but not fat. He made me this way. Joe, that son of a bitch. Just one more thing he did to me.”

“An abuser?”

“He never hit me, if that’s what you mean. But you don’t have to hit somebody to beat them up and beat them down.”

“No,” I said, “you don’t.”

“He tried to do the same thing to our boy. You know I have a son?”

“Yes.”

“Chuck. He’s nine now. I got him away from Joe in time, I think. He’s doing okay in school; he don’t act out like he used to. He won’t grow up to be like his father, not if I can help it. He-” She broke off, flapped one hand in a weary way. “You don’t want to hear all this. And I can’t take more than ten minutes or Connie’ll throw a fit; it’s almost time for her break. Ask your questions.”

“You may have already answered one of them-why you turned your husband in to the police four years ago. Because of the way he treated you and your son?”

“No. That wasn’t the reason.”

“Did it have anything to do with drugs?”

“Drugs? No, he never had nothing to do with that crap; I’ll give him that much.”

“Duty, then? Moral reasons?”

“Duty’s what I said at the trial, that I did it on account of I found out about the stolen property and it wasn’t right to let him get away with it. I couldn’t tell nobody the real reason. I wanted to, I wanted to tell the cops when I turned him in, but I didn’t have no proof. Not anymore. My own damn fault.”

“Proof of what?”

Flesh rippled as she shook her head. Not in response to my question, at her bitter memories. “It would’ve been my word against his and they couldn’t have done anything to him. And I didn’t want Chuck to know, nobody to know, what kind of man I was married to. Stupid. I was so damn mad when I found out… I went a little crazy, you know? Got rid of it, burned it all up.”

“You’re not talking about the stolen property…”

“No, I knew about that already. Well, I didn’t really know; I didn’t want to know where the money was coming from. We were living pretty good, Chuck didn’t want for nothing except a decent father. No, it wasn’t that.” Her mouth thinned down until it resembled a knife slice in her doughy face. “It was the other goddamn thing.”

“What other thing, Ms. Prescott?”

She told me.

And all the good, warm bakery smells suddenly turned rancid.