The McCone Files

by Marcia Muller

  “You didn’t do it consciously?”

  “No. I haven’t thought of that song in years. I…I broke the only copy of the record that I had the day my mother died.” After a moment she added, “I suppose the son of a bitch will want to sue me.”

  “You know that’s not so.” I sat down beside her on the wet bench, turned my collar up against the mist. “The lyrics of that song say a lot about you, you know.”

  “Yeah—that everybody’s left me or fucked me over as long as I’ve lived.”

  “Your grandfather wants to change that pattern. He wants to come back to you.”

  “Well, he can’t. I don’t want him.”

  A good deal of her toughness was probably real—would have to be, in order for her to survive in her business—but I sensed some of it was armor that she could don quickly whenever anything threatened the vulnerable core of her persona. I remained silent for a few minutes, wondering how to get through to her, watching the waves ebb and flow on the beach at the foot of the cliff. Eroding the land, giving some of it back again. Take and give, take and give…

  Finally I asked, “Why were you sitting out here in the rain?”

  “They said it would clear around three. I was just waiting. Waiting for something good to happen.”

  “A lot of good things happen to you. Your career’s going well. This is a lovely house, a great place to escape to.”

  “Yeah, I’ve done all right. ‘It Never Stops Hurting’ wasn’t my first hit, you know.”

  Do you remember a neighbor of yours in Petaluma—a Mrs. Caubet?”

  “God! I haven’t thought of her in years either. How is she?”

  “She’s fine. I talked with her yesterday. She mentioned your talent.”

  “Mrs. Caubet. Petaluma. That all seems so long ago.”

  “Where did you go after you left there?”

  “To my Aunt Sandra, in L.A. She was married to a record-company flack. It made breaking in a little easier.”

  “And then?”

  “Sandra died of a drug overdose. She found out that the bastard she was married to had someone else.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “What do you think? Kept on singing and writing songs. Got married.”

  “And?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “All right. Maybe I need to talk to somebody. That didn’t work out—the marriage, I mean—and neither did the next one. Or about a dozen other relationships. But things just kept clicking along with my career. The money kept coming in. One weekend a few years ago I was up here visiting friends as Sea Ranch. I saw this place while we were just driving around, and… now I live here when I don’t have to be in L.A. Alone. Secure. Happy.”

  “Happy, Steff?”

  “Enough.” She paused, arms tightening around her drawn-up knees. “Actually, I don’t think much about being happy anymore.”

  “You’re a lot like your grandfather.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Here we go again!”

  “I mean it. You know how he lives? Alone in the back of his store. He doesn’t think much about being happy either.”

  “He still has that store?”

  “Yes.” I described it, concluding, “It’s a place that’s just been forgotten by time. He’s been forgotten. When he dies there won’t be anybody to care—unless you do something to change that.”

  “Well, it’s too bad about him, but in a way he had it coming.”

  “You’re pretty bitter toward someone you don’t even know.”

  “Oh, I know enough about him. Mama saw to that. You think I’m bitter? You should have known her. She’d been thrown out by her own father, had two rotten marriages, and then she got cancer. Mama was a very bitter, angry woman.”

  I didn’t say anything, just looked out at the faint sheen of the sunlight that had appeared on the gray water.

  Steff seemed to be listening to what she’d just said. “I’m turning out exactly like my mother, aren’t I?”

  “It’s a danger.”

  “I don’t seem to be able to help it. I mean, it’s all there in that song. It never does stop hurting.”

  “No, but some things can ease the pain.”

  “The store—it’s in the Glen Park district, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I get down to the city occasionally.”

  “How soon can you be packed?”

  She looked over her shoulder at the house, where she had been secure in her loneliness. “I’m not ready for that yet.”

  “You’ll never be ready. I’ll drive you, go to the store with you. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll bring you right back here.”

  “Why are you doing this? I’m a total stranger. Why didn’t you just turn my address over to my grandfather, let him take it from there?”

  “Because you have a right to refuse comfort and happiness. We all have that.”

  Steff Rivers tried to glare at me but couldn’t quite manage it. Finally—as a patch of blue sky appeared offshore and the sea began to glimmer in the sun’s rays—she unwrapped her arms from her knees and stood.

  “I’ll go get my stuff.” She said.

  SOMEWHERE IN THE CITY

  At 5:04 p.m. on October 17, 1989, the city of San Francisco was jolted by an earthquake that measured a frightening 7.1 on the Richter Scale. The violent tremors left the Bay Bridge impassable, collapsed a double-decker freeway in nearby Oakland, and toppled or severely damaged countless homes and other buildings. From the Bay Area to the seaside town of Santa Cruz some 100 miles south, 65 people were killed and thousands left homeless. And when the aftershocks subsided, San Francisco entered a new era—one in which things would never be quite the same. As with all cataclysmic events, the question “Where were you when?” will forever provoke deeply emotional responses in those of us who lived through it

  WHERE I WAS WHEN: the headquarters of the Golden Gate Crisis Hotline in the Noe Valley district. I’d been working a case there—off and on, and mostly in the late afternoon and evening hours, for over two weeks—with very few results and with a good deal of frustration.

  The hotline occupied one big windowless room behind a rundown coffeehouse on Twenty-Fourth Street. The location, I’d been told, was not so much out of choice as of convenience (meaning the rent was affordable), but had I not known that, I would have considered it a stroke of genius. There was something instantly soothing about entering through the coffeehouse, where the aromas of various blends permeated the air and steam rose from huge stainless-steel urns. The patrons were unthreatening—mostly shabby and relaxed, reading or conversing with their feet propped up on chairs. The pastries displayed in the glass case were comfort food at its purest—reminders of the days when calories and cholesterol didn’t count. And the round face of the proprietor, Lloyd Warner, was welcoming and kind as he waved troubled visitors through to the crisis center.

  On that Tuesday afternoon I arrived at about twenty to five, answering Lloyd’s cheerful greeting and trying to ignore the chocolate-covered doughnuts in the case. I had a dinner date at seven-thirty, had been promised some of the best French cuisine on Russian Hill, and was unwilling to spoil my appetite. The doughnuts called out to me, but I turned a deaf ear and hurried past.

  The room beyond the coffeehouse contained an assortment of mismatched furniture: several desks and chairs of all vintages and materials: phones in colors and styles ranging from a standard black touchtone to a shocking turquoise princess; three tattered easy chairs dating back to the fifties; and a card table covered with literature on health and psychological services. Two people manned the desks nearest the door. I went to the desk with the turquoise phone, plunked my briefcase and bag down on it, and turned to face them.

  “He call today?” I asked.

  Pete Lowry, a slender man with a bandit’s mustache who was director of the center, took his booted feet off the desk and swiveled to face me. “Nope. It’s been quite all afternoon.”

 
; “Too quiet.” This came from Ann Potter, a woman with dark frizzed hair who affected the aging-hippie look in jeans and flamboyant over-blouses. “And this weather—I don’t like it one bit.”

  “Ann’s having one of her premonitions of gloom and doom,” Pete said. “Evil portents and omens lurk all around us—although most of them went up front for coffee a while ago.”

  Ann’s eyes narrowed to a glare. She possessed very little sense of humor, whereas Pete perhaps possessed too much. To forestall the inevitable spat, I interrupted, “Well, I don’t like the weather much myself. It’s muggy and too warm for October. It makes me nervous.”

  “Why?” Pete asked.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’ve felt edgy all day.”

  The phone on his desk rang. He reached for the receiver. “Golden Gate Crisis Hotline, Pete speaking.”

  Ann cast one final glare at this back as she crossed to the desk that had been assigned to me. “It has been too quiet,” she said defensively. “Hardly anyone’s called, not even to inquire about how to deal with a friend or family member. That’s not normal, even for a Tuesday.”

  “Maybe all the crazies are out enjoying the warm weather.”

  Ann half-smiled, cocking her head. She wasn’t sure if what I’d said was funny or not, and didn’t know how to react. After a few seconds her attention was drawn to the file I was removing from my briefcase. “Is that about our problem caller?”

  “Uh-huh.” I sat down and began rereading my notes silently, hoping she’d go away. I’d meant it when I’d said I felt on edge, and was in no mood for conversation.

  The file concerned a series of calls that the hotline had received over the past month—all from the same individual, a man with a distinctive raspy voice. Their content had been more or less the same: an initial plaint of being all alone in the world with no one to care if he lived or died; then a gradual escalating from despair to anger, in spite of the trained counselors’ skillful responses; and finally the declaration that he had an assault rifle and was going to kill others and himself. He always ended with some variant on the statement, “I’m going to take a whole lot of people with me.”

  After three of the calls, Pete had decided to notify the police. A trace was placed on the center’s lines, but the results were unsatisfactory; most of the time the caller didn’t stay on the phone long enough, and in the instances that the calls could be traced, they turned out to have originated from booths in the marina district. Finally, the trace was taken off, the official conclusion being that the calls were the work of a crank—and possibly one with a grudge against someone connected with the hotline.

  The official conclusion did not satisfy Pete, however. By the next morning he was in the office of the hotline’s attorney at All Souls Legal Cooperative, where I am chief investigator. And a half an hour after that, I was assigned to work the phones at the hotline as often as my other duties permitted, until I’d identified the caller. Following a crash course from Pete in techniques for dealing with callers in crisis—augmented by some reading of my own—they turned me loose on the turquoise phone.

  After the first couple of rocky, sweaty-palmed sessions, I’d gotten into it: become able to distinguish the truly disturbed from the fakers or the merely curious; learned to gauge the responses that would work best with a given individual; succeeded at eliciting information that would permit a crisis team to go out and assess the seriousness of the situation in person. In most cases, the team would merely talk the caller into getting counseling. However, if they felt immediate action was warranted, they would contact the SFPD, who had the authority to have the individual held for evaluation at S.F. General hospital for up to seventy-two hours.

  During the past two weeks the problem caller had been routed to me several times, and with each conversation I became more concerned about him. While his threats were melodramatic, I sensed genuine disturbance and desperation in his voice; the swift escalation of panic and anger seemed much out of proportion to whatever verbal stimuli I offered. And, as Pete had stressed in my orientation, no matter how theatrical or frequently made, and threat of suicide or violence toward others was to be taken with the utmost seriousness by the hotline volunteers.

  Unfortunately I was able to glean very little information from the man. Whenever I tried to get him to reveal concrete facts about himself, he became sly and would dodge my questions. Still, I could make several assumptions about him: he was youngish, reasonably well-educated, and Caucasian. The traces to the Marina indicated he probably lived in that bayside district—which meant he had to have a good income. He listened to classical music (three times I’d heard it playing in the background) from a transistor radio, by the tinny quality. Once I’d caught the call letters of the FM station—one with a wide-range signal in the Central Valley of Fresno. Why Fresno? I’d wondered. Perhaps he was from there? But that wasn’t much to go on; there were probably several Fresno transplants in his part of the city.

  When I looked up from my folder, Ann had gone back to her desk. Pete was still talking in low, reassuring tones with his caller. Ann’s phone rang, and she picked up the receiver. I tensed, knowing the next call would cycle automatically to my phone.

  When it rang some minutes later, I glanced at my watch and jotted down the time while reaching over for the receiver. Four-fifty-eight. “Golden Gate Crisis Hotline, Sharon speaking.”

  The caller hung up—either a wrong number or, more likely, someone who lost his nerve. The phone rang again about twenty seconds later and I answered it in the same manner.

  “Sharon. It’s me.” The greeting was the same as the previous times, the raspy voice unmistakable.

  “Hey, how’s it going?”

  A long pause, labored breathing. In the background I could make out the strains of music—Brahms, I thought. “Not so good. I’m really down today.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “There isn’t much to say. Just more of the same. I took a walk a while ago, thought it might help. But the people, out there flying kites, I can’t take it.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I used to…ah, forget it.”

  “No, I’m interested.”

  “Well, they’re always in couples, you know.”

  When he didn’t go on, I made an interrogatory sound.

  “The whole damn world is in couples. Or families. Even here inside my little cottage I can feel it. There are these apartment buildings on either side, and I can feel them pressing in on me, and I’m here all alone.”

  He was speaking rapidly now, his voice rising. But as his agitation increased, he’d unwittingly revealed something about his living situation. I made a note of about a little cottage between the two apartment buildings.

  “This place where the people were flying kites,” I said, “do you go there often?”

  “Sure—it’s only two blocks away.” A sudden note of sullenness now entered his voice—a part of the pattern he’d previously exhibited. “Why do you want to know about that?”

  “Because…I’m sorry, I forgot your name.”

  No response.

  “It would help if I knew what to call you.”

  “Look, bitch, I know what you’re trying to do.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. You want to get a name, and address. Send the cops out. Next thing I’m chained to the wall at S.F. General. I’ve been that route before. But I know my rights now; I went down the street to Legal Switchboard, and they told me…”

  I was distracted from what he was saying by a tapping sound—the stack trays on the desk next to me bumped against the wall. I looked over there, frowning. What was causing that…?

  “…gonna take the people next door with me…”

  I looked back at the desk in front of me. The lamp was jiggling.

  “What the hell?” the man on the phone exclaimed.

  My swivel chair shifted. A coffee mug tipped and rolled across the desk and into my lap.

/>   Pete said, “Jesus Christ, we’re having an earthquake!”

  “…The ceiling’s coming down!” The man’s voice panicked now.

  “Get under a door frame!” I clutched the edge of the desk, ignoring my own advice.

  I heard a crash from the other end of the line. The man screamed in pain. “Help me! Please help—” and then the line went dead.

  For a second or so I merely sat there—longtime San Franciscan, frozen by my own disbelief. All around me formerly inanimate objects were in motion. Pete and Ann were scrambling for the archway that led to the door of the coffeehouse.

  “Sharon, get under your desk!” she yelled at me.

  And then the electricity cut out, leaving the windowless room in blackness. I dropped the dead receiver, slid off the chair, crawled into the kneehole of the desk. There was a cracking, a violent shifting, as if a giant hand had seized the building and twisted it. Tremors buckled the floor beneath me.

  This is a bad one. Maybe the big one that they’re always talking about.

  The sound of something wrenching apart. Pellets of plaster rained down on the desk above me. Time had telescoped; it seemed as if the quake had been going on for many minutes, when in reality it could not have been more than ten or fifteen seconds.

  Make it stop! Please make it stop!

  And then, as if whatever powers-that-be had heard my unspoken plea, the shock waves diminished to shivers, and finally ebbed.

  Blackness. Silence. Only bits of plaster bouncing off the desks and the floor.

  “Ann?” I said. “Pete?” My voice sounded weak, tentative.

  “Sharon?” It was Pete. “You okay?”

  “Yes. You?”

  “We’re fine.”

  Slowly I began to back out of the kneehole. Something blocked it—the chair. I shoved it aside and emerged. I couldn’t see a thing, but I could feel fragments of plaster and other unidentified debris on the floor. Something cut into my palm; I winced.

  “God, it’s dark,” Ann said. “I’ve got some matches in my purse. Can you—”

  “No matches,” I told her. “Who knows what shape the gas mains are in.”