“A social worker.” Eva swallowed a piece of potato. “They don’t make much money, but it’s nice to do that, I suppose.”
My father, who had worked for the WPA as a young man, was winding up, I knew, for a paragraph or two on poverty, welfare, and hard work. He took a swig of diet root beer.
“They don’t know what it is, today, to be poor. All this welfare. They should be out fixing the streets, like I did. They don’t know. I wouldn’t wish another Depression, but they should know what it’s like.”
“Pa, I think some of them do know.”
“People shouldn’t go hungry,” he said. “Not a dog, not a cat should go hungry.” He looked down at Euphrates, who was waiting patiently beside the table for the plates to be cleared, grunting from time to time with food lust. Tigris was sitting on the chair near the fire, glancing our way frequently. Alice was sleeping on the couch. “But a man should have the desire to work.” Was this an oblique criticism of me, I wondered?
Rosie got him talking about the Depression and the WPA. Once, when we’d known each other for only a short time, she had taken me on a tour of all the government-sponsored, Depression-era WPA murals in the metropolitan Bay Area. I think it was my appreciation of those murals that made her decide I could be her friend.
We cleared the table, just Rosie and I, and did the dishes, and then we all had coffee, caffeinated and decaffeinated, and cheesecake. My father was, by now, wild about Rosie.
When she got up to leave, he insisted on walking her to the cottage, despite the fact that she had a canine escort.
Later, after Eva had gone to bed, my father and I sat out on the front steps looking at the stars.
“A beautiful girl, that Rosie,” he said. “But after all…” he nodded sagely. “We have to understand that we are in San Francisco.” My father, man of the world.
I looked at him. He looked back at me slyly.
“Actually, Pa,” I told him, “we’re in Oakland.”
– 6 –
My father was sitting at the kitchen table drinking his morning coffee and reading the paper. Eva was in the bedroom making their bed. I had already made my couch, drunk one cup of coffee, made a phone call, and toured the yard. The ivy was strangling the acacia again. I would have to call someone to take care of that, since I was a busy man.
Eva finished the bed and joined my father in the kitchen. I hung around the living room, thinking about a second cup of coffee.
“What kind of person would do such a thing?” My father shouted. “They won’t bury the dead people!”
Eva clucked. I really wanted that second cup of coffee. I strolled into the kitchen, hoping to avoid conversation.
“People are putting them in their refrigerators, maybe?” he cried. Eva clucked some more. I could tell that she, like my mother before her, was used to his enraged daily commentary on the state of the world, and just let him get through the paper pretty much on his own. Today’s topic number one was a local cemetery workers’ strike that was causing large-scale storage problems.
“Such a thing.” He spoke this last more quietly, passing on to other news.
I got a clean cup. Eva had already washed everything used so far that morning. I poured reheated coffee.
“Who cares about such dummies?” he muttered. I put sugar and milk in my coffee. “If they’re so stupid they shoot themselves full of poison— look at this, Jake, it’s not bad enough they got the real thing, now they’re making heroin in test tubes and they got these dummies getting sick from it. They got a name for it— designer drugs, yet. Such a thing.” I clucked and shook my head. “And look here, in Berkeley, they got some son of a bitch breaking into houses and beating up old people, they think he’s a dope fiend.” I shook my head sadly and made my way out of the kitchen, cup in hand.
“Killing each other at ball games!” he yelled. “Those crazy people in Europe. Grown men kicking a ball, no wonder they kill each other.”
I remembered the routine from my childhood. It was his way of dealing with an insane world. If the news items he raged about were stories of insanity, then there must be some sanity somewhere, even if only in his mind and in the minds of other right-thinking people who could see that these things were insane. He had never explained this to me; in my adolescence, in an attempt to make sense of the apparent insanity that was my father, I had developed that explanation myself.
Rosie was working that day, Friday, and was planning on working Saturday, as well, to hurry along the garage-turned-master-bedroom. On Sunday, she had unbreakable plans with the social worker. She might, she had told me, be available some time on Monday— certainly by Tuesday. I was working alone for a while yet.
I sat on the front step, drinking my coffee, half-tuning out the occasional verbal explosion from inside and laying plans.
I had an appointment to see Joe Durell, Noah’s health food partner, on Saturday. I’d wanted to see him sooner, but he had begged off, saying he had too many appointments. He wanted me to come on Monday, but I pushed until he admitted he would be in his office the next day and agreed to let me come.
So I thought I’d spend some time tracking down information about Marjorie. At this point, that seemed like a good way to begin tracking down Noah. She hadn’t left a spouse and a leaderless cult behind. If they had run off together, after all, I figured he might have covered his trail better than she had.
I finished my coffee and left the cup in the sink for Eva— why should I argue if someone wants to wash my dishes?— and left the folks poring over a map of San Francisco. They had rented a car the day before and were laying elaborate touring plans.
I took a walk down to the corner. Work was going along just fine on the ark. Laborers were hanging all over the hull like barnacles. Arnold was standing around supervising.
“Hi,” I said. “How’s it going?”
He shook his head. “Okay. We’re moving ahead really fast now. But we won’t be able to go on for long before we run out of money. Our people are getting worried. I’m afraid they’ll lose faith if we don’t find Noah soon.” He spread his hands helplessly. “What should I tell them?”
I had not been hired to do public relations, but I took a stab at it. “Tell them what you think is happening.”
“That there’s been foul play? That we have someone investigating? That we’re going ahead with the project in Noah’s name, with all expectations of his return?”
That was good, standard stuff, I thought, vaguely familiar, slightly pompous, reassuring.
“I guess. Meanwhile, I’m moving right ahead on this, and I need something from you.” He cocked his head, attentive, suspicious, terrierlike. “Everything you can tell me about Marjorie. Her background, her friends, that kind of thing.”
He sat down on a pile of lumber. I joined him. Someone revved up the generator, plugged in a circular saw, and began slicing through two-by-twelves. A dozen hammers continued to whack away at the ark; someone dropped an armload of boards on the half-finished deck.
“Maybe we could go somewhere else?” I asked.
“I don’t have that much to tell you. A few things. But Beatrice was a friend of hers, I think, and you should talk to her.”
I looked around. “Is she here?”
“Not yet, but any time now. Let me think.” He struck a thinking pose. The saw whined and shrieked. “I don’t know much about her friends, except there’s a boyfriend. Beatrice would know more about that. And some relatives here in town. I think she was born in Oakland. I can’t remember whether it was the East Oakland ghetto or the West Oakland ghetto, but I remember her saying something about a ghetto.”
“What does she do for a living?”
“Nursery school? Kindergarten? Something to do with little kids. Child care?” The saw was silent; the hammering seemed to get louder.
“How did she get involved in this?” I waved my hand at the general surroundings.
“Beatrice.” As he said her name, she appeared from aro
und the back of the ark. “Here she is,” Arnold said superfluously, and waved at her. She smiled and walked toward us.
“Jake!” She was glad to see me. That was worrisome.
“Jake needs to know some things about Marjorie,” Arnold explained. “I told him you were the one to talk to here.”
“Of course, whatever I can do,” she said. “I was just going to get some breakfast.”
“Okay then, let’s go,” I said gallantly and with some misgivings. We walked back toward my house, where my car was parked at the curb.
“This is an old car, isn’t it?” she asked uncertainly.
“It’s a 1953 Chevy Bel Air,” I told her proudly, unlocking the passenger side door. She stepped up and in without so much as remarking on the comfort of the seats.
I didn’t wait to close the door after her, but walked around to the driver’s side. I didn’t know about Beatrice, but most of the women I go out with are not flattered by the helpless damsel treatment. Although they may not be prepared to smash the lock and get into the car on their own, they seem to prefer to close themselves in.
I slid behind the wheel. Beatrice was tugging on her door, grunting. “It’s heavy,” she said, managing at last to close it. It wasn’t quite latched. I reached across her lap, awkwardly, reopened the door, and, with more intimacy than I liked, pulled it solidly closed.
“Anyplace in particular you’d like to go?”
“There’s that bagel place on College Avenue,” she said.
“I know it well.” I pulled away from the curb, making a U-turn and heading northeast toward College, a street I think of as the Oakland Trail, over which the Berkeley chic have trekked to create outposts in the wilderness.
There are those who disapprove of this gourmet imperialism. There are purists who insist that Oakland is not Oakland unless it is aggressively unpretentious. And there are some who are afraid that if Berkeley chic is allowed to move in, an intrusive government of the politically self-righteous, like Berkeley’s, will be close behind.
But I grew up in Chicago, and the big-shouldered, ugly, slob-town image just doesn’t appeal to me very much. The East Bay has genuine vitality. It doesn’t need to prove anything by walking around with its fly unzipped and grease spots on its tie.
Miraculously, I found a parking place a block from the restaurant.
There was a line at the counter inside, which meant we had to stand for some time next to the display cases near the door, the ones with the tortes and puddings and cakes sitting all pretty in little dishes with doilies under them. I gazed at the fudge cake until I stared it down, then transferred my gaze serenely to a plate of scones. When our turn came, I ordered one with milk. Beatrice checked out the big menu on the wall and asked for lox and cream cheese on a whole wheat bagel. There is no such thing as a whole wheat bagel; they should call it something else.
We carried our trays into the large, white-painted, squeaky-clean eating area. The place displays the work of local artists of various kinds. At the moment, the south wall was covered with framed needlepoint and the north with photos of people doing physical labor.
Beatrice took her plate and cup off her tray and leaned the tray carefully up against a table leg. I did the same. She fiddled with the alfalfa sprouts that formed a nest in her cream cheese, forked the lox into a more comfortable position thereon, and took a dainty bite.
I ate my scone, noticing too late that it had raisins in it, and drank my milk.
I filled her in on what Arnold had told me.
“West Oakland,” she said. “She’s from West Oakland. Not far from the Amtrak station.”
“Where did you meet her?”
“A computer class. At Vista College.” I’d been tempted once or twice to take a class at one of the community colleges, but had somehow never managed to do it. Beatrice, clearly, managed to do nearly everything.
“What do you do for a living?” I asked.
“I have some money,” she said simply.
“I gather Marjorie did not? Have money?”
“No.” She licked a dangling sprout off her lower lip. “Things were pretty rough for her, growing up. Poor. Rough neighborhood. Rough childhood.”
“Tell me.” I finished off the spotted scone.
Beatrice was not comfortable with open-ended challenges. She looked pained.
“Parents? Brothers? Sisters?”
“Her parents were killed when she was eight or nine. She told me they were just starting to get somewhere, her dad had a good job, they were thinking about moving somewhere nice. That’s what she said, somewhere nice. But they were walking down the street one day, and they walked near the wrong man. A dope dealer. A couple of other dealers in a big car drove by, shot at the rival dealer, and hit her parents.”
“Shit,” I said. They were calling them drive-by killings now. Every so often you’d hear about one. People shooting into the wrong car. Recently, in East Oakland, they’d managed to kill a little girl. The least they could do was get it right and kill each other. I noticed that Beatrice was looking startled, even a little disgusted, by my language. “Sorry. It just p… ticks me off.”
She smiled. That was much better, she seemed to be saying. Jakie play nice.
“What happened to Marjorie after that?”
“She went to live with her grandmother. Not any money there, either, but a little house. A couple of years ago the two of them opened a daycare center in the house. They’re doing well, Marjorie said.”
“But she was taking a computer course?”
Beatrice finished off the last strip of lox, sipped her tea. “She wanted to help her grandmother, but she wanted a good job, too. And she wanted to move them into a better neighborhood.”
“Did she get a job?”
“She only took the one course. She was going to take more, but she got involved in the arks. Noah’s been paying her for some of the work she’s been doing, kind of an administrative assistant, I guess you’d call it. She did some assignments.”
“Like what?”
“Oh…” She looked vague. Since she was pale, with blurred features and long light hair, her vague look turned her very nearly invisible. “She did some liaison with the Sonoma ark, and she talked to people who wanted to join us. All kinds of things.”
“Want some more tea?” She nodded and smiled shyly. I got her some more tea, and a glass of water for myself. It still seemed early for beer, but I was beginning to want one.
“When did you last see her, Beatrice?”
“I saw her last Friday, the day before Noah left that note. I saw her at the ark. We didn’t have much chance to talk, though. She said she had a bunch of things to do.”
“Did she say what they were?”
“Oh…” The vague look again. “Some bookkeeping— something about listing some supplies that would have to be ordered. And some liaison work, talking to people.”
“How did she seem? Pretty much as usual? Upset?”
“Normal. Happy. She likes keeping busy.”
“Have you got her grandmother’s address or phone number?”
“Uh huh. At home I do, not on me.” She was looking in her teacup, smiling slightly.
“Great. You’ll be working on the ark tomorrow, won’t you?” She nodded. “Maybe I can just drop by there and pick it up?”
She raised her eyebrows and looked at me coolly. “Of course.”
I smiled warmly. I didn’t want to lose her yet. “Arnold said there was a boyfriend. Do you know him?”
She relaxed again; she must have decided I was just playing hard to get. “I don’t exactly know him”— she made the “know” sound carnal— “but I have met him. Carl Hinks. Carleton. Nice guy. But he isn’t her boyfriend any more. She’s more or less broken up with him.”
I’ve had one or two of those more-or-less breakups. They’re usually terminal.
“When did that happen?”
“Gee, it’s been a good month now. She just got busy with
other things, you know, and she didn’t have so much time for the things they had in common.”
“Like what?”
“Like the Guardian Angels.”
“You mean those Robin Hood gangs?”
“Well…” She looked doubtful. “I guess. You know, they try to protect people, clean up neighborhoods, scare off crooks. They don’t steal or anything. Didn’t Robin Hood steal? Marjorie would never steal. We wouldn’t have anyone on the arks who stole.”
“What happened between her and her boyfriend, exactly. Do you know?”
“Well, it’s like I said. See, Carl’s a Guardian Angel. So is Marjorie. But even though she’s still one, she doesn’t do a lot of that any more, because of the arks. There was some trouble about that. Carl said all she ever did was work on the arks, and he thought she should be doing what she was doing before. Helping protect the neighborhood. Fighting crime. He said that was where her duty lay, not with the arks. They used to argue about it.”
I was on Carl’s side. “She was a Guardian Angel. Her boyfriend was a Guardian Angel. Together they fought crime and injustice. Working side by side they made the city streets safe for you and me. And she gave all that up to build an ark? Was she involved with Noah?”
Beatrice’s hopeless passion for me was fading fast. She just didn’t appreciate my humor, not to mention my prose. She was indignant.
“No, she was not. She believed in the ark. Carl wanted her to patrol West Oakland. We’re trying to save the whole human race.”
I was beginning to feel cranky. Zealots can be very boring. “You don’t have room for the whole human race.”
“We have room for some of the best, and then we can reproduce.”
“What about animals?”
“We’re not taking those. God says humans can’t be trusted with animals. He’ll take care of that end of things.”
I started to go after that interesting thought, but decided it could wait. The crawling roots of ark-people philosophy could go off in a thousand directions, none of which had much to do with the problem at hand.
Full House: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 3) Page 4
