Sudden Exposure by Susan Dunlap Read Free Book Online

“Wife.”
    “You have a wife! With money?” There’s a lid for every pot, they say. But who would have thought Johnson’s pot would be filled with gold? Still, a wife might be a stabilizing factor.
    “My wife inherited money.”
    Not just a wife, but an heiress. “She inherited enough to buy a four-hundred-thousand-dollar house?”
    Johnson shifted his body so he faced the dark windows instead of me. “It’s a long-term loan and I’m doing the work here myself. Me and my friends.”
    Which meant the lot would be torn up for years to come. With the prospect of years of hammering and sanding, Dumpsters and deliveries, it was no wonder the neighbors were furious. And Johnson’s friends, who were neither likely to respect property rights nor show up for work on time, whose goals were to overthrow or undermine the system, weren’t going to endear themselves to anyone on the block. At the rate Johnson was working, maybe he and his wife could keep the operation afloat if they hadn’t used their entire windfall for the down payment. “But the down payment, Sam. Twenty percent is over eighty thousand dollars. Your wife could spare that kind of money?”
    “Not all of it.”
    “Where’d the rest come from?”
    “I got support.”
    “Support? You mean for your work? Your work in the movement?” Behind Johnson, Howard and Murakawa were struggling to keep straight faces, but this kind of bridge burning made me edgier yet about Johnson. “Sam, someone gave tens of thousands of dollars to you as an anarchist and you used it so you and your wife can live in the hills?”
    “I’m not going to be the only one living here,” he insisted, lamely, but not nearly so lamely as I’d expected. “The city’s always squawking about lack of rentals. I’m giving them more.”
    “You’re turning this building into low-cost housing? A shelter for the homeless?” I asked, sure that couldn’t be true. Berkeley is a compassionate city, whose citizens agonize over the plight of the homeless. People are concerned. But if Sam had even considered opening a shelter for the homeless up here in the hills, the neighbors would have had a lawyer here to outflank him before he could get H. Norman off the shelf.
    “Yeah. So? You got a problem with that?” Now he was in his element.
    I turned to Murakawa, and nodded at him to go and pass the word to Levine and Sapolu. This was hardly a five-officer operation anymore.
    “Sam, how long have you been here tonight?”
    “An hour.”
    “Did anyone run through here?”
    “You got a description?”
    “Naked.”
    Johnson laughed, a sound not of humor but of victory. “You lost a bare ass? I wouldn’t turn him in to you on principle, if I had him, which I don’t. I got enough problems with crazies sleeping here, without this becoming a nudist’s dressing room. But look, why don’t you ask her ?”
    The hated her. “Bryn Wiley?”
    “Yeah, maybe she’s recruiting the sartorially challenged to camp out here, too.”
    “Sam, are you saying that Bryn Wiley is harassing you?”
    “Is English your second language?”
    “And what are you doing about it?”
    “I’m telling you.”
    I let a beat pass and looked him straight in the eye. “Since when is your method of handling confrontation calling the police?”
    He didn’t answer. He picked up the bank papers and busied himself folding them and returning them to the desk.
    “Do you own a gun?”
    “Why? Was Wiley shot?”
    “Answer the question.”
    “Yeah, and I’ve got a permit. But before you start celebrating, I haven’t been carrying it around in my pocket. It’s a rifle. For hunting, you know. The American Way.”
    “A rifle,” I said, tensing. “Where is it?”
    “Where? In the Great American Place!” He jerked his head toward the dining room. I walked through the doorway and looked toward the mantel.
    There it was, needing nothing more than a moose head to complete the picture.
    “Take it with you,” Johnson