Normal in Every Way

NORMAL IN EVERY WAY

I n 1954, the San Francisco Police Department was as good or as bad as any other large urban force in the nation. Which is to say it was mixed. It was part noble, part diligent, part grudgingly dutiful, part lazy and defensive, part absurdly corrupt, and abusive, and violent. In other words normal in every way. Including in the extent of its resources. Now they seem pitifully few. Then they were all there was. Manual typewriters and carbon paper, files in cardboard boxes, and old rotary dial telephones, sitting up straight and proud on metal war surplus desks.

It goes without saying there were no computers. There were no databases. No search engines. No keywords or metadata. No automatic matching. All there was were men in a room. With fallible memories. Some of them drank. Most of them, in fact. Some put more effort into forgetting than remembering. Such were the times. The result was each new crime was in danger of standing alone, entire unto itself. Links and chimes and resonances with previous crimes were in danger of going unheard.

All police departments were in the same boat. Not just San Francisco. Every one of them evolved the same de facto solution. Separately and independently, fumbling blind, but they all ended up in the same place. The file clerk became the font of all wisdom. Usually a grizzled old veteran, sometimes confined to a desk due to getting shot or beaten, presiding over a basement emporium packed with furred old file folders and bulging old boxes on shelves. Usually he had been there many years. Usually he chatted and gossiped and remembered things. Sometimes he knew a guy who knew a guy, in another part of town. He became a database, as imperfect as it was, and the guys who knew guys became a network, even though partial and patchy. Carbon-based information technology. Not silicon. All there was. The same everywhere.

Except in one station in San Francisco the file clerk was not a grizzled old veteran. He was a misfit rookie by the name of Walter Kleb. He wasn’t much more than a kid at the time. He was shy and awkward and strange in his mannerisms. He didn’t stutter or stammer but sometimes he would need to try out a whole sentence in his head, maybe even to rehearse it on his lips, before he could speak it out loud. He was considered odd. Retarded for sure. A screw loose. Nuts, psycho, spastic, crazy, loony, schizo, freak. In 1954 there was no better vocabulary for such things. He struggled through the academy. He was hopeless in most ways, but his paper grades were sky-high. Never been seen before. No one could figure out how to get rid of him. Eventually he was assigned to duty.

He showed up wearing an overstarched uniform too big in the neck. He was an embarrassment. He made it to the file room in record time. No long previous career. No shooting or beating. But he was happy in the basement. He was alone most of the time. With nothing to do except read and learn and alphabetize and arrange in date order. Occasionally people came to see him, and they were politer than most, and kinder, because they wanted something. Either to return a file, or take one out, maybe without anyone knowing, or to find something that had been accidently lost, or to lose something that had been inadvertently found.

What none of them did was ask database questions. Why would they? How could a retard rookie who had only been there five minutes know anything? Which was a shame, Kleb thought, because he did know things. The reading and the learning were producing results. True, he had no network of guys who knew guys. That strength was certainly deficient. He wasn’t a boy who could call up a grizzled old veteran a precinct away and gossip for twenty minutes on the phone. Or ask a favor. Or do one. He wasn’t that boy at all. But he was a boy who made lists and liked connections and enjoyed anomalies. He felt they should have asked him questions. Of course he never spoke up first. Well, except for once. Late in January. And look what happened after that.

A detective named Cleary came down and asked for a file nearly a year old. Kleb knew it. He had read it. It was an unsolved homicide. Thought likely to be political. Conceivably at the secret agent level. There were certain interesting factors.

Kleb asked, “Has there been a break in the case?”

Cleary looked like he had been slapped. At first Kleb thought not slapped as in insulted, but just astonished, that the retard spoke, and showed awareness, and asked a question. Then he realized no, slapped as in rudely jerked from one train of thought to another. Cleary’s mind had been somewhere else. Not thinking about breaks in the old case. The only other reason for getting the file was therefore a new case. With similarities, possibly.

In the end Cleary took the file and walked away without a word. Kleb was forced to reconstruct its contents in his head. Homicide by gunshot, apparently at very long range. The victim was an immigrant from the Soviet Union. He was thought to be either a reformed communist gunned down as a punishment by an actual communist, or the reform was fake and he was really a sleeper agent, taken care of by a shadowy outfit with a deniable office close to the inner ring of the Pentagon. In 1954 either theory was entirely plausible.

As always at lunch Kleb sat alone, but that day one table closer to the crowd, to better hear what they were saying. The new case was a baffler. A Soviet immigrant, shot with a rifle from far away. No one knew why. Probably a spy. Then someone said no, State Department back channels were reporting no sensitivity. Therefore no spies involved. Just regular folk, doing whatever regular folk do, with deer rifles in Golden Gate Park.

Kleb went back to the basement, and back inside his head. He read the first file all over again. He checked every detail. He weighed every aspect. The date of the crime, January 31, 1953, exactly 361 days earlier, the location, also Golden Gate Park, a lonely time of day, few potential witnesses, zero actual witnesses. Bullet fragments suggested a medium caliber high-velocity rifle round. A disturbed patch of dirt behind a tree five hundred yards away was thought to be where it was fired from.

Cleary came back again early in the afternoon.

“You asked me a question,” he said.

Kleb nodded, but didn’t speak.

Cleary said, “You knew it was an unsolved case.”

Again Kleb nodded, but didn’t speak.

“You read the file.”

“Yes,” Kleb said.

“You read all the files.”

“Yes,” Kleb said again.

“We got anything else like this?”

A database question.

His first.

“No,” Kleb said.

“Pity.”

“But the two cases are very like each other.”

“Why I hoped there might be a third.”

Kleb said, “I think the five-hundred-yard range is important.”

“You a detective now?”

“No, but I notice patterns. There have been many gunshot homicides in the park. Almost all of them have been close range. Easier to walk right up to someone on a twisty path. Long-distance rifle fire is a large anomaly. It would suggest a strong preference. Or familiarity. Or possibly training. Maybe that’s the only way he knows how to do it.”

“You think he’s ex-military?”

“I think it’s likely.”

“So do I, Einstein. Between World War Two and Korea, half the population is ex-military. That would cover everyone from a hobo living under a bridge to the hot boys working for the back offices in the Pentagon. The President of the United States is ex-military. Ex-military gets us precisely nowhere. Keep thinking, genius. That’s what you’re good at.”

“Is there a connection between the victims?”

“Other than being commies?” Cleary said.

“Were they?”

“They claimed not to be. They spoke out from time to time. They had nothing else in common. They had never met and as far as we can tell never knew about each other.”

“That’s how it would look, if they were spies.”

“Exactly,” Cleary said.

“Also how it would look if they weren’t.”

“Therefore this line of inquiry gets us precisely nowhere, either. Keep thinking, brainbox.”

“How would you describe being a Soviet immigrant and a reformed communist?”

“How would I describe it?” Cleary said. “Smart.”

“But difficult,” Kleb said. “Don’t you think? You would have to work at it. Frequent reaffirmations would be expected. As you said, they spoke out from time to time. They must have achieved a small degree of local notoriety.”

“Does this matter?”

“I wondered how the shooter identified them as Russians from five hundred yards.”

“Maybe being Russians was a coincidence. Maybe they were just walkers in the park. Targets of convenience.”

“Not a well-represented national origin here. The odds are against it. But it’s certainly possible. Although I feel somehow it shouldn’t be. It’s almost a philosophical inquiry.”

“What is?”

Kleb tested a sentence in his head, and then on his lips. Out loud he said, “There’s a second issue that might or might not be a coincidence. Is it too big of a coincidence that two other things might or might not be coincidences also? Or do all three things reinforce each other and make the implication more likely to be true than false? It’s an existential question.”

“Speak English, loony boy.”

“I think the dates might be important. They might explain the Russians. Or not, of course, if it’s all just one big coincidence. Then my theory collapses like a house of cards.”

“What dates?”

“The dates of the shootings. January 31, 1953, and today, which is January 27, 1954.”

“What do they have in common?”

Kleb tested another sentence in his head, and on his lips. It was a long sentence. It felt okay. Out loud he said, “I think you should look for a German national in his thirties. Almost certainly a local resident. Almost certainly an ex-prisoner of war, detained back in Kansas or Iowa or somewhere. Almost certainly an infantryman, likely a sniper. Almost certainly married a local girl and stayed here. But he never gave up the faith. He never stopped believing. Certain things upset him. Like January 31, 1953.”

“Why would it?”

“It was the tenth anniversary of the Germans’ final surrender at Stalingrad. January 31, 1943. Their first defeat. Catastrophic. It was the beginning of the end. Our believer wanted to strike back. He found a Red in the neighborhood. Maybe he had heard him speak at the Legion Hall. He shot him in the park.”

“The date could be a total coincidence.”

“Then today would have to be, too. That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Does the fact that the dates could be significant together mean they must be?”

“What’s today?”

“The tenth anniversary of the lifting of the siege of Leningrad. Another catastrophic retreat for the Germans. Another huge symbolic failure. Stalin, Lenin. Their cities survived. Our believer didn’t like it.”

“How many more anniversaries are coming up?”

“Thick and fast now,” Kleb said. “It was Armageddon from this point onward. The fall of Berlin comes on the second of May next year.”

Cleary was quiet a long moment.

Then he winked.

He said, “You keep thinking, smart boy. That’s what you’re good at.”

Then he walked away.

Late the next day Kleb heard Cleary had ordered a sudden change of direction for the investigation, which paid off almost right away. They made an arrest almost immediately. A German national, aged thirty-four, a local resident, an ex-prisoner of war who had been held in Kansas, previously a sniper with an elite division, now married to a Kansas woman and living in California. Cleary got a medal and a commendation and his name in the paper. Never once did he mention Kleb’s help. Even to Kleb himself. Which turned out to be representative. Kleb worked forty-six years in that basement, shy, awkward, strange in his mannerisms, largely ignored, largely avoided, and by his own objective count provided material assistance in forty-seven separate cases. An average of more than one a year, just. He was never thanked and never recognized. He retired without gifts or speeches or a party, but nevertheless it was a happy day for him, because it was the anniversary of the moon landing, which meant, same day, different year, it was also the anniversary of the first vehicle on Mars. Which was the kind of connection he liked.