Half Moon Bay: A Novel (Clay Edison Book 3)

That evening we returned. Anita Giordano answered her door wearing woolen slippers and yoga pants, ash-colored bob damp from the shower.

What’s this about?

Normally that’s the first thing a person wants to know.

Or: Is something wrong?

“Thank you for coming,” she said.

Expecting us.

Relieved.

The apartment’s layout mirrored that of the adjacent bro-dome. Hers was tidy, Ikea furniture and sun-faded Matisse prints and kitschy souvenirs from South America and Asia. Houseplants nodded. Her television measured a third the size of Matt Willis’s and was mounted at a corresponding spot on the wall, as though the monstrosity on the other side had shot roots through the plaster.

A mystery novel with a public library label lay splayed over the sofa arm. Chamomile tea steamed on the end table. She invited us to sit and went to fetch two more mugs.

Uncertain as to the delicacy of her state of mind, we took a little while to circle in, starting with general background questions.

Anita Giordano was sixty-eight years old, a Bay Area native. She’d spent her career as a medical interpreter, Spanish and French. She’d always had a knack for Romance languages, and after spotting an ad for a training course, she moved to Mexico City. She ended up staying for four years. One was hard-pressed to imagine what the country was like in those days. She was there for the big earthquake, in 1985. Thousands died. Restoring power took months. Her family was beside themselves, calling and writing the American embassy.

Other than that, she had always resided locally. You couldn’t beat Northern California for quality of life.

At present she split her time traveling and volunteering at an animal shelter.

I kept waiting for us to hit a nerve.

With utter tranquility she informed us she’d never been married. Never had children.

I said, “Ms. Giordano, you’re probably wondering why we’re here.”

“I assume it has to do with my identity.”

Sibley said, “Your identity.”

“I did what Officer Deng suggested and froze my credit, but it doesn’t seem to be helping. Last night the same collection agency called again at one a.m. I keep telling them that it’s not me, someone’s got my Social Security number.”

“You’ve been the victim of identity theft,” I said.

Confusion began to set in. “Is that not what we’re talking about?”

To most people, a uniform is a uniform. Anita Giordano had recently appealed to the cops. We were cops. Forget the UCPD patch on Sibley’s shoulder or the Coroner’s patch on mine. Probably it gratified her that repairing her credit score had become such a high interagency priority.

Hence her readiness to answer questions about her past.

I found her faith in the system charming.

“I’m sorry to hear about that,” I said. “We’re here on an unrelated matter, though. I don’t know if you’ve been following what’s been going on with the construction at People’s Park over the last few months.”

“Only a little,” she said. Guarded, now. “Why?”

“Back in December, when they first started digging, they uncovered some human remains. Did you hear about that?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You said you’ve always lived in Berkeley?” Sibley asked.

“Yes. Here or Oakland.”

“Late sixties, early seventies, did you hang around People’s Park?”

Anita Giordano spluttered a laugh. “Me? No.”

“Did you know a man named Fritz Dormer?”

“I’ve never heard that name.”

I showed her a picture of the bear. “What about this?”

“It’s a teddy bear.”

“Do you recognize it?”

“I’m sorry, what’s going on here?”

“The bear was taken by someone,” Sibley said. “We’re trying to track it down.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“There’s a locator tag inside it. The signal indicates it’s coming from in here.”

Anita Giordano twisted in her chair, as if we had told her there was a snake crawling up the wall. “Here?”

“Would you object if we had a brief look around?” I asked.

“I…” She fretted. “I mean, if you must.”

“We’ll be quick,” I said.

I took the living room and kitchen, leaving the bedrooms and bathroom to Sibley. We went gingerly. No sense in tossing the place. If Anita Giordano was the mother, she was either the most proficient liar I’d ever met, or else mired in deep denial, in which case the truth was better coaxed out.

She laced and unlaced her fingers, her worry lines deepening. “I have to say, I’m finding this a little troubling.”

“We’ll be out of your hair soon,” I said, reaching for the cabinet above the refrigerator.

With a loud scrape, Anita Giordano stood up from her chair. “Hold on.”

I looked at her. Her eyes were wild.

“I…” she said.

I opened the cabinet.

Inside was a quarter-full bag of CBD/THC gummies.

“I have disc degeneration,” she said. She stuck her chin out. “It’s the only thing that helps with the pain. They’re completely legal. I bought them online.”

I shut the cabinet. “Absolutely, ma’am.”

Anita Giordano grabbed her teacup and downed it.

Sibley emerged from the bedroom. “We’re sorry to have bothered you, ma’am.” She left a card on the end table. “If you do see the bear, can you let us know?”

“What do I do about my Social Security number?”

Sibley said, “Follow up with Officer Deng.”

—

OUT ON THE sidewalk, I said, “I believe her.”

“I do, too.”

Sibley opened the tracking app.

The pin was gone, in its place a red X.

“The crap?” Sibley said.

She tapped the X. A dialogue box appeared.

Device not found (err 4-11)

Sibley smushed the screen with her thumb. “Come on.”

“Can you reset it?”

“Hang on.” She walked off, fiddling with the interface.

From inside the bro-dome came the strobe of the television.

“No, I do not want to live chat with customer care,” Sibley said.

We’d spoken to Matt Willis, instructing him to watch out for a bear. The kind of bizarro disruption to routine you’d mention to buddies at day’s end, over pizza and weed.

“Boyarin,” I said.

“What?”

“Willis’s roommate. The other Matt. His name’s on some of the mail.”

Sibley stopped pacing and looked at me.

“The night of the panel at Zellerbach,” I said. “During the Q and A. There was a woman, a Cal professor, who asked me a question. She wanted to know what we were doing to identify the dead child. That was her name. Boyarin.”

—

MY RECALL FOR names is way above average. I juggle a lot of decedents and families, and it’s poor form to refer to someone’s loved one incorrectly.

In this case, I’d heard the name once, months prior, while in the throes of stress and exhaustion. That was why, I told Sibley, I’d failed to make the connection sooner.

“Yeah, you’re a terrible disappointment,” Sibley said.

It didn’t matter. Only one Boyarin on the UC Berkeley faculty.

Gayle Boyarin, PhD, MPH, professor of epidemiology, school of public health.

In her department headshot she wore a black blazer and a silk scarf mottled purple and blue. Silver hair, close-cropped; a small, disarming gap between the top two front teeth. She listed several areas of research interest.

Maternal nutrition and perinatal health

Sociology of mothering practices

Infant mortality

We pulled her data. Age seventy-three. Known associates: Adam, thirty-four; Matthew, thirty-two; Richard Blumenfeld, seventy-seven. Address on Francisco Street, near North Berkeley BART, a five-minute drive.

En route, Sibley did a quick and dirty on the rest of them. Adam worked for an alternative energy nonprofit. Matthew was a manager at a rock climbing gym. Richard taught linguistics at San Jose State.

We rolled up to a trim Spanish bungalow. The rest of the block consisted of similarly cute homes, built in the twenties, thirties, and forties to accommodate a growing middle class. Today, battled over like meat scraps.

Drought-tolerant landscaping, ornamental plums. Aspirational vehicles piled in the driveways: BMWs and midsized SUVs, My Cartoon Family decals on rear windows. From behind plantation shutters came the thrum of evening routine, dinnertime and bath time, get your homework done and we’ll see about TV.

As a domestic fantasy, it felt far out of reach. No longer could you afford to buy here on an academic salary, even two good ones. Gayle and Richard had likely done it the same way my in-laws had: by getting in early. Now they were accidentally rich.

I thought about my own burgeoning family, filling up every square inch of our space. Despite the beautiful weather, I’d been reluctant to let Charlotte play outside.

I didn’t know who was around or what they might do.

A white-haired man in a gingham shirt answered our knock. “Yes?”

“Good evening, sir. Is Gayle Boyarin home?”

He put on his reading glasses to peer at my badge. “Is something wrong?”

“No, sir,” Sibley said. “We’d just like a word with her.”

He called over his shoulder. “Sweetheart?”

No answer.

“She can’t always hear me from her office,” he said. “Won’t you come in, please.”

He left us in the living room. Walnut built-ins were chockablock with books and candids. Gayle Boyarin’s transition from dark hair to silver, luxuriant to practical, took place in five-year increments. Richard was absent from the older photos, already gray in his first appearance. The boys had their mother’s surname, not his. Second marriage.

Adam and Matthew shared the same pointy chin, one ruddy, the other bronze-skinned. They knelt on a soccer field; flexed with El Capitan in the background; rode camels in the desert. They were close enough in age that I couldn’t decide who was who.

People used to have the same trouble with me and my brother. Not anymore.

“Hunh,” Sibley said.

She’d bent to examine an étagère. The shelves held an assortment of delicate objects in silver, ceramic, or crystal, adorned with Stars of David. Most of the items I could not identify. While Amy’s father was born into a Jewish home, he and Theresa are staunch atheists, and he’s retained very little of his upbringing, materially speaking. One notable exception is a sweeping silver menorah, inherited from his grandmother and occupying a place of prominence on the den mantel.

Gayle Boyarin and Richard Blumenfeld’s menorah was humbler, webbed with tarnished filigree. Wax crusts around the cups indicated it still saw use.

I understood Sibley’s bafflement: how to square the paraphernalia and symbols of Judaism with the tapestry of hatred that was Fritz Dormer’s body of work.

“Maybe they’re his,” Sibley whispered. “The husband.”

“Maybe.”

“Boyarin? Is that a Jewish name?”

“Beats me.”

Richard Blumenfeld returned, trailed by the lighter son. He’d grown up but not out, rangy and fox-like, chestnut hair cut in a high fade. Sockless canvas slip-ons exposed nubby ankles; black jeans rode low on his hips. Wu-Tang Clan tee.

“Hi Matthew,” I said. “We need to speak to your mother.”

“It’s about the bear,” Sibley said. “You got it back there somewhere?”

Richard Blumenfeld’s lips parted. He re-donned his reading glasses, as if Sibley and I were a troublesome piece of syntax.

A bear? In my house? Stuff and nonsense!

Matthew said, “It’s okay, Dad.”

To us: “This way.”

—

TWO MISMATCHED ORIENTAL runners stretched the length of the hall. The theme continued into the office itself, a cozy ten-by-twelve furnished with desk and divan and a flaking leather pouf. A patchwork of prayer rugs covered the parquet. Smooth walls and recessed lighting suggested a later addition, or a bedroom reclaimed in recent years as Professor Boyarin’s personal sanctum. Hadn’t she earned the right to a little peace and quiet?

Gayle Boyarin was slope-shouldered and pear-shaped, wearing linen drawstring pants and a drape front cardigan that fell open as she rose from her desk chair.

Just as Anita Giordano had, she thanked us for coming, her gaze steady and clear.

She shook our hands, rewrapped herself, and sat. “Please.”

Sibley and I squeezed onto the divan.

Matthew hoisted the pouf, made as if to place it next to his mother.

Gayle stopped him with a kindly smile. “Go with Dad, please.”

He frowned. He set the pouf down and glanced at us. “You don’t have to talk to them.”

She pulled him in to kiss his cheek. “I’ll be fine.”

He hesitated, then followed Richard out. The door shut softly.

“He’s a sweet boy,” she said. “His brother’s the same. And Richard. Three wonderful men. I’m very fortunate.”

I nodded. “We’re hoping you might be able to clear some things up.”

“That’s what I want, too,” Gayle Boyarin said.

She opened a desk drawer and brought out the bear.

Torn open along a seam, its structural integrity lost, it drooped when she set it on the desk, belching out a tuft of fluffy white viscera. The surviving eye hung from a single thread, pointing toward the ceiling, as if to consult the heavens.

Gayle Boyarin reached down for the wastebasket and handed it to me. At the bottom of the liner lay the smashed remains of the tracking device. From one piece curled a label: PROP. OF UCPD, along with a departmental inventory code.

“We didn’t get to it fast enough, I guess,” she said.

I told her I remembered her from the night of the panel.

She chided herself with a half smile. “I knew I shouldn’t’ve gotten up there.”

“The fact that you did tells me it still matters to you.”

“Of course it does,” she said.

She regarded the bear, its gashed blue belly leaking stuffing. “It’s always mattered.”