The Nitrogen Murder(62)

“Does it make you more social? Uninhibited?” I asked. It wasn’t every day I had a chance to learn firsthand about the wild side. I’d heard about marijuana-laced brownies, which was the only way I’d ever try a drug, if pushed.

“Not more social, though it depends on the particular strain of weed and on the person.” Dana shrugged. “It’s like alcohol in a way. It affects different people differently. But mostly with weed you kind of go into your own space, almost like an anesthetic. You get introspective. If you start out depressed, it could make you more so, depending …”

“Let me see if I have this right. You go to a party, smoke a joint or pass a pipe around, and then retreat into your own separate relaxed or depressed states?”

Uh-oh, I thought, I’m sounding like someone’s old-school parent. Or my cousin Mary Ann. I was relieved to see Dana smile at my borderline sermon.

“That’s about it,” she said.

“Where do you get this stuff?” Elaine asked.

I wasn’t sure if this was still the practice quiz or whether Elaine thought she could use some herself. I had the same question about availability, however. This was Berkeley. Was there a weed section on some supermarket aisle that I avoided, like those full of pet foods or baby products?

Medicinal marijuana was legal in Massachusetts, and Matt’s oncologist had offered the program to Matt to alleviate the effects of his cancer treatments. I wasn’t surprised when he declined.

Matt put his hand on Dana’s. “I’m sure Elaine doesn’t want you to name your sources. We’re just curious, is all.” Matt the mediator.

“You just know someone who knows someone. It’s not that we go down to the docks and meet a boatload from Colombia or anything. Once you’re out of school, it’s harder. The network dries up, but you’ll always find a friend’s friend’s friend who brings it around, you know.”

“Do you have any with you?” Elaine asked.

“I think it’s time to go,” Matt said.



Matt and Dana left for the Berkeley PD. Elaine said she needed to return some work-related phone calls and retreated to her office.

Left alone, what was I to do? It was only three-thirty in the afternoon. The heat wave had broken, and a cool, sunny day awaited me.

I tore off the sheet of paper with Patel’s address and headed for 127 Woodland Road.





CHAPTER TWENTY

Patel’s neighborhood was the posh district off Claremont Avenue in Berkeley. No ordinary Plexiglas bus stop shelter in this affluent locale; here the shelter looked like a tiny villa, built of stone and wood in an attractive design. Enormous stone pillars with large lanterns on top of them led into an area of winding streets and cul-de-sacs.

Even with Elaine’s worn, but correctly folded, Berkeley map on the seat beside me, I had to make a number of U-turns in my search for Woodland Road. Either there were several tennis courts sprinkled through the region or I passed the same one many times.

One of the false streets I started down had a huge eucalyptus in the middle. The trunks of two trees were twisted together like Watson and Crick’s double helix, rising from the middle of the road, spitting it into two narrow lanes just big enough for one car in each direction.

I drove down the right-hand lane, dense with tall trees—eucalyptus and willows were the only ones I could identify—on both sides. The branches of the trees seemed to reach across the road to meet those on the other side, high up in the air, forming a lovely but eerie arch that stretched the equivalent of a long city block. In this area of Claremont, you could hardly tell it was a sunny day.

Fine with me.

“My car is your car,” Elaine had said when she disappeared for her phone calls, but I doubted she had this trip in mind for her Saab and me.

The houses were magnificent, each a different style, but all architecturally complex and interesting. Long sets of multilevel stairs led up and around the backs of the homes. The landscaping reminded me of the Rose Garden in miniature, with rustic terraced designs and colorful blooms.

I finally arrived at Woodland Road, another densely wooded street. I slowed down to check the addresses, discreetly lettered on homes and mailboxes. I knew better than to expect a linear array of numerals when it came to assigning numbers to residences in Berkeley, where a single street could end at one intersection and then pick up half a block away at another intersection with the same name but a new numbering sequence.

Woodland was a short street ending in a wide cul-de-sac that served as a turnaround. I came to the end and breathed a sigh of relief; there was no house with the number Rose had given me as Patel’s address. It dawned on me that I’d been hoping the address was bogus, since I had no plan for the reality of finding (and entering?) Patel’s home. In fact, it was stupid coming here alone, I reminded myself. What had I been thinking? If Matt knew, he’d be irritated beyond argument.