He flashed on the irony of being a handyman-with the capability of fixing a variety of things-yet being unable to repair his own reputation.
“Son, we had to rob that bank. You didn’t need to steal that soap. We’ve got other soap. And even if we didn’t, you could live dirty. But you can’t live without food. You understand?”
“I needed the soap.”
“No, you wanted the soap.” Could a ten year old comprehend the difference between “need” and “want”?
“No. I needed it.”
MacNally extended a hand. “Give it to me. I’m going to bring it back to Chuck’s.”
“No!” Henry scooted away. “You’re not takin’ it from me.”
MacNally leaned back. What was going on with his son? His body language, the constriction of his pupils-over a bar of soap? “You said you need it. Why? What’s so special about it?”
Henry slowly brought the bar from behind his back, then wrapped it between two hands. He held it up to his father’s face.
MacNally sniffed. And he instantly understood. The scent was nearly identical to the perfume Doris had sprayed on herself every morning. “You smell Mom.”
Henry brought it back to his nose and closed his eyes.
MacNally fought back tears. He composed himself, took a breath and then said, “You can keep it. But we’re going to go over to Chuck’s and pay him for it.”
TWO MONTHS PASSED. ON AN uncharacteristically sunny day, Henry asked if they could go downtown to look at bicycles. Although MacNally had not brought up his birthday promise to Henry, it bothered him and he felt increasing pressure to make good on it.
Money was a daily concern, and the last thing MacNally was planning to spend it on was a bicycle-unrelenting guilt or not. “We move around a lot, Henry. Sometimes we have to get up and go, without a lot of planning. Having a bike isn’t a good idea.”
“But you promised. My birthday present. Remember?”
“We can’t take it with us if we have to leave.”
Henry looked down at his hands, where he was rolling a Bazooka bubblegum wrapper between his forefinger and thumb.
“You won’t be happy if we spend our money on a bike and then have to leave it when we go.”
Henry narrowed his eyes. “Then it’s about the money.”
“No. Yes. It’s both.”
“You didn’t say ‘if’ we had to go. You said ‘when.’ Are we leavin’?”
Henry was a bright kid-smarter than MacNally remembered being at this age. “I don’t know. But I think it’s likely we’re going to have to move on. I will get you a bike, just not now. Maybe when we settle down. When I find steady, good-paying work. We can buy one then. Okay?”
Henry twisted his lips, but did not reply.
Three weeks later, as MacNally and his son were finishing supper at the rickety wood table that served as both a dinner table and desk, MacNally set down his fork. They were going to move again, he told Henry-but before they left town, they needed some traveling money because their savings had nearly been exhausted.
“There’s a bank,” MacNally said. “First National-”
“I’ve seen it,” Henry said. “When?”
MacNally was surprised that his son was keyed in on their needs and the means for obtaining that which would efficiently deliver the solution. Henry was not only smart, he seemed wise-and practical-beyond his ten years. “I have to go by there to check it out. But maybe tomorrow night if it looks good.”
Henry thought a moment, then said, with a shrug, “If that’s what you say we gotta do, we’ll do it.”
MacNally had, indeed, decided that that was what they had to do. They lived and died by his decisions…it was a concept he found frightening. He was responsible for their well-being-for providing food. Money. And shelter.
He cleared the plates from the table, then began planning their next job.
14
Vail sat at the counter in front of monitors in the Photography Lab at the Hall of Justice. On-screen, a static camera angle displayed images of the Exploratorium parking lot. At its upper rightmost edge was the Palace of Fine Arts entrance.
“This gives us a pretty decent view of the area that leads down the path into the rotunda,” Burden said.
Friedberg stuck an unlit cigarette between his lips. “Assuming he came in this way.”
An hour later, Vail rose from her chair. “I used to have more patience for this. Let’s fast forward to the most likely times for him to have come by. If we don’t find anything, we can always rewind.”
“Fine,” Burden said. He pressed the remote and the digital tape sped forward to 2:00 am. “So just curious. Is boots-on-the-ground, grind-it-out police work below your pay grade?”
Vail focused on the screen. “You’re trying to pick a fight with me. Not a good idea. You’ll lose.” She pointed. “Look. One of those ice cream vendors.”
On-screen, a hooded man was pushing the multistickered carts into the entrance to the colonnade.
“Well that’s a bit bizarre, huh?” Friedberg asked.
Just a bit. “Selling ice cream in San Francisco in the frosty cold of summer is strange enough. But at 2 am?”
“I think we got us a suspect,” Burden said.
They watched as the man disappeared off-screen.
“Devil’s Advocate,” Friedberg said. “So the guy’s an oddball, pushing around the ice cream cart at all hours of the morning. How does that make him a suspect?”
“It doesn’t,” Burden said. “Unless he’s got something of interest inside that cart. Like Mr. Anderson.”
“Fast forward,” Vail said. “Let’s see if we can catch him coming back out. Maybe we’ll get lucky with a face shot.”
Friedberg grabbed the remote and seconds later the numerals on the digital readout were morphing faster than the eye could discern. He stopped when the front of the cart appeared again, then backed it up ten seconds.
“What’s the time code?” Vail asked. “How long was he there?”
Friedberg consulted the screen. “Nine minutes forty-nine seconds.”
“Nine minutes. Is that enough time to use that rope to raise the body up to that ledge?”
“Plenty of time-it’s a lot longer than you think. You can get a lot of stuff done in nine minutes.”
Burden gestured with a finger at the screen. “Run it in slow motion.”
Friedberg manipulated the remote. The image slowed to a jerky, nearly frame-by-frame progression.
“Face?” Vail asked. The hood of his sweatshirt covered the man’s entire head, except for the tip of his nose.
Burden leaned back, keeping his eyes on the screen. “I can ask if our guys can clean that up, lighten it. But it’s a grainy image. You know what they say.”
“Garbage in means garbage out,” Vail said. “That what you mean?”
“Right. We can’t create detail and resolution if it wasn’t there originally.”
“Sometimes if you play with the different exposure settings, things that were hidden suddenly pop out at you. I’ve seen it done with that photo software. Light-something.”
“Photoshop?”
“No, it was like Photoshop, but-Lightroom. That’s it. It had all these sliders. When the tech moved them, things appeared in the picture that weren’t there before.”
Burden cricked his neck in doubt. “I’ll see what they can do. This is video, severely compressed and shot in low light. And it’s not a jpeg file. I’m not sure the same image data is there.”
Friedberg backed up the tape to the point where the suspect entered their field of view, then froze the image.