licked her lips to give them a moist look.
“I am pretty, don’t you think? Everybody always says I’m pretty.”
The assistant DA said, “Yes, Star Lotus, you’re pretty. Is that your real name, Star Lotus? That isn’t your real name, is it?”
Star Lotus shook her head. “Moonflower changed my name. It used to be Anna Mae Jenkins. Moonflower said, if I was going to work at Woodstock West, I had to have the right kind of name, and wear the right kind of clothes, and act kind of—kind of like one of those old, uh, I think she called them hippie chicks. That’s what she said I had to be, a hippie chick.”
The assistant DA said, “How old are you, Anna Mae?”
“Twenty-one. I have ID. I showed it to the waiter at Caffe Brasil, didn’t I, Sergeant Plum? Right? It’s still right here, right?”
The assistant DA turned the card over. She squinted at it, turned it over again. “Nice job. How old are you really, Anna Mae?”
“I’m really—”
“Please, dear, we want to help you.”
The PD looked as if she was about to pop a blood vessel.
“I’m fifteen.” Beneath the bright interrogation-room light, Anna Mae Jenkins’ face took on a peculiar look; she might be fifteen or she might be twice that age. “I was always big for my age, and I matured early. There were always boys after me and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t like it, but they always said, Yes, I really did like it, I didn’t know what I really liked. I got so confused. And my father used to—he used to—back in Tennessee, I’m originally from Tennessee, did you know that?”
She looked up and smiled, showing her teeth.
The assistant DA and the PD exchanged a few quiet words. Then the assistant DA said, “This is all wrong. This child belongs with the juvenile authorities, not here. My God, but she needs help.”
Dorothy Yamura said, “Come along, Anna Mae. You can sit in my office. You can wait there and we’ll get somebody to take you someplace safe.”
Anna Mae said, “Really?”
Dorothy Yamura nodded.
Anna Mae said, “Really safe? Really?“
“Really safe, Anna Mae.”
And a little later, Lieutenant Yamura talked with Sergeant Plum. “Marvia, I don’t know what to say. I should be furious, you let a 15-year-old child fool you into thinking she was 21. But she fooled me, so I guess I can’t be too hard on you.”
“I feel rotten about it.” Marvia put her fingertips against her temples and rubbed, trying to ease a sudden headache. “But I know what we have to do.”
“You bet. Back to Woodstock West. We’ve got a date with—what did you say Mistress Moonflower’s real name was?”
“Myrna Gersh.”
“Myrna Gersh.”
Mistress Moonflower had wasted no time in replacing Star Lotus. Marvia Plum went through the front door of Woodstock West while a couple of uniforms stationed themselves at the back door.
A new hippie chick was behind the counter, waiting on a customer while Mistress Moonflower supervised. The new hippie chick had long, glossy hair parted in the middle and hanging down the back of her floor-length, Hindu-patterned dress. She wore yellow-tinted, Janis Joplin glasses, a nose-ring, and brass bangles up one arm.
Incense rose from a hammered-brass burner on the glass counter, as if carrying prayers past the Jimi Hendrix icon on the wall behind.
The new hippie chick look startled when Marvia entered the shop, but Mistress Moonflower smiled her sour smile at Marvia and said, “Sergeant Plum, this is my new helper, Amber Glow.”
Marvia said, “Okay, Amber Glow, shoo the customer out and lock up. I’m afraid Woodstock West is closing. Myrna, you have the right to remain silent. You are not required to say anything.…”
Myrna Gersh’s first reaction was to brazen it out, but by the time the assistant DA had finished playing Anna Mae Jenkins’ tape for her she was willing to cut a deal. She wasn’t in it alone. Joanna Moreira, Cora Kelly, half the merchants on Telegraph Avenue were in it with her.
The drug dealers, the panhandlers, the crazies and the child molesters in the park, the doorway squatters and the sidewalk campers and the common thugs were destroying business on the avenue. They were ruining the town, and the town would pay an even greater price when its already slipping commercial tax base shrank to zero.
Then who would pay the police officers’ salaries?
Then who would pay for the politicians’ perks?
The government refused to clean up the city, the politicians practically invited vagrants and parasites to join the party.
The merchants had to act, and they had hired hitters, one by one, to come to town and removed the most flagrant nuisances. There was no one Tallyman. The Tallyman had been Parker Tice, he had been Ceejay Harker, he had been Fredi Muhammad. It was true that using poor bewildered Anna Mae Jenkins, a.k.a. Star Lotus, to remove Imaculata Martinez had been a serious mistake, but if they had it all to do over again.…
Within days, not only Myrna Gersh but half a dozen other entrepreneurs were in custody. The charges ranged from conspiracy to capital murder. Bail was denied to each defendant.
Two weeks later the assistant DA sat in Lieutenant Yamura’s office along with Sergeant Plum. The DA said, “I don’t know what we’re going to do about this. Have you been following the public reaction to the Tallyman case?”
Lieutenant Yamura closed the lid on a palmtop computer she’d been consulting and placed it carefully in a desk drawer. “You bet I have. Most of the editorials were on our side.”
“At first,” the assistant DA put in.
“At first, yes. Then the talk shows started going nuts all over the area. And the letter columns. Have you looked at the Oakland Trib lately, or the Berkeley Voice? Even the East Bay Express is starting to come around.”
“Come around against us, you mean.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“There’s a Tallyman Society on the university campus. There are at least a dozen people going around town claiming to be the Tallyman, and everybody wants to buy ’em a meal or a drink. On my way over here today I saw four or five cars with Tallyman for Mayor bumper stickers, and one that said, Honk if you love the Tallyman and people were honking, believe me.”
“What are you going to do?” Dorothy Yamura asked.
The assistant DA shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. Maybe go for a change of venue.”
Marvia Plum asked, “Isn’t that usually a defense tactic?”
The DA nodded. “Usually, sister, that’s right. Usually.”
“I
