Too Close to the Edge by Susan Dunlap Page A

residential development on the waterfront. The laws are a lot stricter for apartments than hotels. You don’t want to know how long it took dealing with them. You don’t want to know about the variances from zoning I needed to get. Then there were questions about the environmental impact report. For that I had to get back to the guy who wrote the report to begin with, and he was in Guadalajara for three weeks. I wanted to set a date with QuakeChek, the place that runs the computer checks on a structure’s ability to ride out the big one, but everything else was so screwed up.… I couldn’t come to terms with the electrician I wanted— he wasn’t about to commit his men to a schedule that had been changed as many times as mine. Then the union wage went up. And now this! Jesus, it was bad enough when the city was hassling me. Now it’s complete strangers. At least suicides have the decency to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge where they’re supposed to. Who was this woman, anyway?”
    I sat silent a moment, amazed at the totality of Butz’s self-absorption. It wasn’t so much that he was too literal to have any imagination—the rap on him at the station—there was no room left in his head for thoughts not centered on himself. I said, “The murdered woman was Liz Goldenstern.”
    His eyes snapped open. His mouth dropped. He sat staring for a full half minute. “Liz? You can’t be right.”
    “I’m afraid so, Mr. Butz.”
    “But Liz, God, she’s in a wheelchair. What would she be doing down there? The road isn’t even paved, for Chrissakes.”
    I wasn’t surprised he knew Liz Goldenstern. As the contractor for Marina Vista, it would have been odd had he not run across her. I was only surprised by the seeming genuineness of his dismay. I said, “I was hoping you could tell me that.”
    “Liz. She’s dead? But how? She was speaking at the Landscape Development Subcommittee tonight. I called her at ten. She didn’t answer. I figured she was still there. Those things can run half the night. Everyone wants his say, and no one wants to cut it short. Liz was way down the agenda. She knew it could run late … but dead!” He stared at me, still wide-eyed, with that glazed look that people have on the subways. Finally, he said, “How? How did she die?”
    “She drowned.”
    “But she was in a chair. She didn’t swim.”
    “She was murdered.”
    “In the water? Some bastard drowned her?” He grabbed one of the beer cans with his thick hands and twisted the aluminum until it cracked. His incongruously delicate eyes scrunched together in grief, or possibly fear. Staring at the can, he smashed it down on the pizza box. The table bounced; the box jolted to the right and hung precariously on the edge of the table. The mutilated beer can rolled ninety degrees; the box tipped and dropped off the table, flinging the can against the wall.
    “How well did you know Liz Goldenstern?” I asked.
    “She got me the Marina Vista contract.”
    “Liz Goldenstern?” I had only seen Liz in an adversary position. “How did she do that?”
    “Marina Vista will be apartments for people with physical impairments, right?” he asked rhetorically. “The city wanted a consultant who knew what those people would need.”
    “Liz was that consultant?” She would be a likely choice. It was not a new policy in the establishment to draw in a leader of the demonstrators. And Berkeley was quicker than most to see the value of dissenting views and weave them into city policy. “But why did she choose you?”
    He glared at me. “Why not?”
    I sighed. “Look Mr. Butz, I don’t know about your background, or your work experience. The only time I’ve seen you was yesterday morning, when you were upset.” I let hang the implication that no one would hire Butz as he had presented himself then.
    “Yeah, sure,” he muttered, squeezing one of the remaining beer cans. If my implication had gotten through to him, it hadn’t motivated