Damage

26

By Sheila Marrenas The tendency of the San Francisco Police Department to overreact, harass, and brutalize the citizens of our town has been well-documented over the years in this column. Mayor Leland Crawford's appointment of Vi Lapeer, an African American woman, as chief of police raised hopes that these practices would not be tolerated any longer under his administration. These hopes were for the most part dashed over the past couple of weeks, most notably in the police treatment of Ro Curtlee, the son of this newspaper's publishers.

As readers of this column already know, Mr. Curtlee was recently released from prison by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal. Then, here in the city, Judge Sam Baretto ordered Mr. Curtlee freed on bail while awaiting his retrial, a decision that did not sit well either with District Attorney Wes Farrell, or with the head of homicide, Lieutenant Abe Glitsky. Within days of Mr. Curtlee's release, Glitsky presented a new set of spurious charges against him and, in a widely publicized incident, arrested him after first beating him seriously enough that he required hospitalization.

And again, a superior court judge-Erin Donahoe-ruled that Mr. Curtlee posed no danger to the community. She again released him on bail.

But in our town, it doesn't seem as though the regular workings and procedures of the criminal justice system apply once prosecutors and police, even contrary to judges' rulings, have preconceived notions about a person's guilt. And this is why, yesterday morning, Mr. Curtlee again found himself facing yet another bit of gratuitous harassment from the police, an interrogation-fortunately this one did not turn violent-for the murder last Friday of a woman named Janice Durbin. This interrogation, in which Mr. Curtlee voluntarily and cooperatively participated, unearthed a solid alibi for Mr. Curtlee for the time of the murder. Beyond that, the inspector who conducted the interview, Darrel Bracco, told this reporter that there was no evidence implicating Mr. Curtlee in the crime. Hearing this, one might be tempted to ask, as this reporter was: "Well, then, if there is no evidence, upon what criteria did you decide to interrogate Mr. Curtlee? How could this be viewed as anything but harassment?"

In reply, Inspector Bracco had no comment.

However, police have determined that Mrs. Durbin was in fact a murder victim. Since someone did kill her, and Mr. Curtlee has demonstrated that it could not have been him, why are the police still fixated on his possible involvement? Might not the solution to this mystery, as it most always does, lie closer to home, among Mrs. Durbin's intimates? A cursory investigation by this reporter has already determined that Mrs. Durbin's husband, Michael Durbin, for example, cannot account for his whereabouts at the time of his wife's death. Moreover, sources at his place of business told this reporter that Mr. Durbin may be romantically involved with another of his employees.

This is specifically not to accuse Mr. Durbin of any wrongdoing, but merely to indicate possibilities in the murder investigation that, to date, the police seem to be willfully ignoring as Glitsky and Farrell continue their personal and extralegal vendetta against Ro Curtlee. "You've got to sue her," Chuck Novio said. "Her and her newspaper and the Curtlees personally. This is the most appalling libel I've ever read."

It was a few minutes after seven A.M. and they were all sitting around the dining room table, Michael and Chuck and the three Durbin children. Kathy and the twins were in the adjoining kitchen making eggs and bacon and toast. They would be cremating Janice today at eleven o'clock and so the kids and Chuck were all taking the day off from school. Durbin's second son, Peter, had been the first one up and hence the first to read the article, and he'd barely gotten through it before he went running up the stairs to wake his father and show it to him.

"But she says she's specifically not accusing me of anything," Durbin said.

"That's BS, pure BS," Peter said. "She's saying you did it, Dad. That you killed Mom."

"You're not going to let her get away with that, are you, Dad?" Jon asked. "You don't go after her hard, you're basically admitting that she's right." The elder son slumped back in his chair with his arms crossed, staring out into nothing with a sullen eighteen-year-old malevolence.

"I agree with Jon, Mike," Chuck said. "You've got to go after her."

Allie, the thirteen-year-old down the table, barely holding back her tears until now, had been silent all morning, and she finally spoke in a tremulous voice. "You didn't though, did you?"

Durbin reached out a hand across the table and covered his daughter's with his own. "No, sweetie. Of course not. I loved your mother and I miss her so much."

"Me, too. I already miss her so much." And Allie's tears broke.

Kathy-her own eyes bloodshot and teary with grief and lack of sleep-swooped in from the kitchen and put her arms around her niece. "Nobody thinks your father did anything wrong at all," she said. "You just don't even have to think about that."

"Marrenas thinks it," Jon said. "And now maybe half the city. And now Dad's got to deny it, plain and simple."

"I don't have to dignify what she wrote by responding to it. That's lowering myself to her level and I'm not going to do it."

"You gotta do it, Dad. You've got to say loud and clear you didn't do it, if you didn't…"

Michael slapped his palm flat against the table, cutting Jon off. "Of course I didn't do it, goddamn it! I hope we haven't gotten to that."

"No," Chuck put in, "don't be ridiculous."

"Then just deny it," Jon said. "Come right out with it."

Michael was shaking his head, his fury building, when one of the twin's voices came from the kitchen. "Hey! There's somebody in a TV van pulling into the driveway."

"Damn." Chuck stood up, craning to see out the dining room windows. "How'd anybody know you were staying here?"

"Somehow I just bet Marrenas knows," Michael said. He was getting up, too. "And if she knows, the word is out. Maybe I'd better go see what they want."

"You know what they want," Peter said. "You're right, Dad. I wouldn't tell them anything."

"Wrong, Peter," Jon said. "What have we been talking about here? He's got to deny it or it sounds like he did it. That's why Allie's crying. It sounds like it to her, too. It would to anybody."

His voice notching up in volume, Durbin whirled on his older son. "What are you saying? Don't talk like that."

"I'm just saying…"

And the telephone rang.

"Christ, what a circus," Chuck said. "You want to get that, Les?"

Leslie, one of the twins, picked it up in the kitchen. "Just a minute," she said. "Uncle Mike, it's for you. He says it's Jeff Elliot from the Chronicle."

"Jesus," Peter said.

"I'll get these clowns out front," Chuck said.

"I'm not talking to anybody from the Chronicle."

"They might get it right, Dad," Jon said.

"There's nothing to get. I keep telling you."

"So tell him that if that's what it is," Jon said.

"I wouldn't," Peter said. "Don't tell 'em nothing."

"Jon, wait a minute. Look at me," Durbin said. "What do you mean, 'if that's what it is'? I don't like your tone or the implication. I didn't have anything to do with your mother's death."

"That's what you keep saying. So what's that thing Marrenas said about you getting it on with somebody at work, too? Why'd she say that if there's nothing there?"

"Jon!" Kathy snapped. "Stop talking like that. Right now. That's ridiculous!"

"Yeah, sure, right." The lanky kid suddenly pushed his chair back with an obscenity and stomped out of the room and up the stairs.

"Jon!" Durbin called after him. "Son!"

But the sound of steps continued until a door slammed upstairs.

"What's his problem?" Peter asked.

And Durbin just shook his head, his hands outstretched in a supplicating gesture.

"Uncle Mike!" Leslie's voice, calling from the kitchen again. "He's still waiting."

"Let him wait. No, tell him I can't talk to him. No, wait, I'll tell him."

"Don't get roped in, Dad," Peter said.

"Don't worry, I won't. Christ."

Allie, her face wet and blotched, turned away from her aunt's embrace. "I don't want this to be happening anymore," she sobbed. "I just want my mommy back. I want my mommy." Eztli was up early that Thursday morning, too.

Ro had kept up the press on Tiffany from MoMo's, and by the time Eztli had left on his own at around three thirty, Tiffany had finished her shift and Ro had stood her to a couple of Cuervo shots with-it looked like-a whole lot more to come.

Which was all good as far as Eztli was concerned. The more-than-obvious plainclothes cops parked on the street by the Curtlees, even though they'd lost the trail yesterday, looked like they were going to stick around. So the longer that Ro stayed away from home, the more mobility he'd have, at least until they caught up with him again.

Fortunately, and Eztli didn't really understand why this should be, they weren't following him. Maybe it was because yesterday he'd driven off, apparently alone, and then returned all by himself as well. Did they think Ro was still in the house, holed up? Well, whatever, it wasn't his problem. They weren't on his tail, and that was the main thing.

By a little before eight, the day clear and chilly, he'd driven the Z4-he loved that car!-down to Haight Street and found a parking space diagonally across from the glass storefront that announced the location of the Rape Crisis Counseling Center. Getting out of the car, he crossed the street and walked by the front of it. A heavy-looking wood-and-metal park bench was chained and padlocked along the front of the building. The Center didn't officially open for about another half hour, but there was a light on and some movement inside.

The glass front, he thought, presented some promising possibilities. He could come back later tonight, when it was dark, and shoot out the window, but he wasn't convinced that this would be the kind of unambiguous message that he was trying to deliver to Farrell through his girlfriend, Sam. Anyone could have a grudge with the policies or personnel of the Center and it wouldn't be as clear a signal as Cliff Curtlee would want to send.

Eztli walked down to the end of the block, then crossed the street and came back the other way, familiarizing himself with the lay of the land. It was typical Haight Street-almost exclusively small business storefronts. When he got back to his car, Eztli checked his watch and saw that the Center would be opening in another twenty minutes. While he was here, he might as well wait. Then he could go in and ask for Sam Duncan, telling her that it was important that Wes Farrell abandon his plan to bring Ro to the grand jury. As it had many times before, he knew that his simple presence could work magic.

But then suddenly a black Town Car turned into the street, pulled up, and stopped directly in front of the Center. After a second or two, the back door opened and Wes Farrell himself stepped out, followed by the yellow Labrador that he'd been walking with the other night out in front of his home. As Eztli watched, the two of them went up to the front door of the Center. Farrell knocked and a dark, attractive woman opened the door, then took the leash. After only a few seconds of conversation-obviously they'd already discussed leaving the dog, and therefore she must be Sam-Farrell walked back to the limo and it drove off.

Eztli sat thinking in the driver's seat of the Beemer, ideas dancing around in his mind, until after a couple more minutes, the door to the Center opened again and the woman came out onto the sidewalk with the dog on its leash, which she then attached to one of the legs of the park bench. When she patted the slats of the seat, the dog obediently hopped up and settled itself on the bench.

Eztli waited and watched for a few more minutes. The street was slowly waking up. The woman in the Center turned the CLOSED sign over to OPEN, then came out and put two large red dishes-food and water-on the sidewalk under the bench. The dog hopped down, ate, and drank some water. Then, as dogs do, it sniffed around and anointed the leg of the park bench before it went back to its place up on the bench and stretched out to sleep in the morning sunshine. If Glitsky's three-bedroom flat had a characteristic feature, it was that the thirteen hundred square feet of it always felt crowded. When he'd first moved in here with Flo thirty-some years before, they'd already had two boys, Isaac and Jacob, and within the next year added Orel. After Flo had died of ovarian cancer, the three boys filled up the two bedrooms off behind the kitchen, and a housekeeper, Rita, had taken up nearly full-time residence behind a screen in the barely serviceable living room. By the time Treya and her daughter, Raney, moved in with Abe and Orel, the household reverberated with the noise of the two teenagers, and now they, too, had gone only to be replaced by Rachel and Zachary, who were themselves not exactly monklike in their habits.

Now there was no trace of any of the children, nor of Treya for that matter, and Glitsky sat drinking his morning tea at the table in his tiny kitchen, experiencing the unaccustomed silence as a palpable and ominous presence.

When the telephone rang, he had just picked up his cup and the brrring was loud and jarring and unexpected enough that he twitched and spilled some tea over the cup's edge and into his lap. Jumping up, furious at himself, brushing his pants to get the liquid off, he finally made it over to where the phone hung on the wall and picked up the receiver, growling his name into it.

"Abe. It's Vi. Sorry to call you at home, but you weren't at the office yet and I thought I'd take a chance."

The implied rebuke did nothing to elevate Glitsky's mood. "No problem," he said. "What's up?"

"I wondered if you happened to see the 'Our Town' column today."

"Not yet, no."

"Well, then it's lucky I reached you so I could give you a heads-up. She's pretty much all over you about your handling, or mishandling, I should say, of this Janice Durbin thing. I got a call from Hizzoner first thing this morning-and yes, if you're wondering, at home-and he read me the riot act about what's going on and I must say this wasn't the way I envisioned spending my first month or so on this job, defending myself and my chief of homicide every time I turn around."

"She's an irresponsible lunatic," Glitsky said.

"That may be true, but she's got Leland's attention in a big way, and he's all but screaming for your head."

Glitsky let out a deep sigh. "You know, Vi, at this point, I'm almost tempted to say give it to him. Who needs the aggravation? If you ask me to, I'll resign right now."

"Don't tempt me, will you? I don't want you to resign, especially over this, which strikes me as you just trying to do your job. Not to mention, imagine my future if I cave to this kind of idiocy the first time it rears its ugly head. But I've got to have some answers for Leland and for the public before this gets any further out of hand."

Again, Glitsky blew out heavily. "What's she say? Marrenas."

"Basically it's the same old. In your zeal to get Ro Curtlee back behind bars, you're ignoring a far better suspect who's right under your nose."

"And who's that?"

"The Durbin husband, who doesn't have an alibi and is also evidently having an affair with one of his employees."

"She printed that?"

"To that effect. And of course then the question is, why aren't you concentrating on him instead of picking on Ro?"

"Maybe because Ro did it. Although, for the record, you should know that I've interviewed the husband at least twice already and plan to do it again because it's such a good time. Meanwhile, you'll notice I haven't arrested anybody yet-Ro or Michael Durbin or anybody else-and that's usually a clue that I don't have a viable suspect."

"Well, if that's the case, it might be in your best interest to prepare some kind of statement to that effect, and I'll do the same."

"It should go without saying."

"Yes, well, that's not how it seems to be playing this time."

"How about just saying we can't comment because the investigation is continuing?"

"How'd that fly last time you tried it? I think we've got to be a little more forthcoming. I'm serious here, Abe. I don't know how long I'm going to be able to keep my own job if this keeps up. I'm on thin enough ice as it is. Let's try a little proactive appeasement, how's that sound? Put on a little show for the home team."