I haven’t been faced with that choice in a long time. Maybe that’s something you can do just so many times before the capacity to do it wears out.
I wasn’t interested in falling in love; I wasn’t interested in spending a lot of time with Eva’s probably boring and unattractive relative. And even if this Lee was Aphrodite herself, she lived in Petaluma. I don’t commute.
I had a few minutes. I repaired to my tiny office, which could best be described as a service porch, and started making lists of people to see and questions to ask.
She showed up about ten minutes later. I heard her arrive, and emerged from the back of the house with every intention of being cordial. Maybe even gallant.
If she wasn’t Aphrodite, she could have passed in some circles. She was in her early thirties, I guessed, not too thin, not too fat. About five seven or eight. She had green eyes and red hair, not quite orange, a little deeper on the red side, very fine and soft-looking, cut short sides and back and longer on top. She had the redhead’s pale skin, with a fine dusting of freckles across her nose. A nice nose with a small bump in it. Her mouth was spectacular: full lips and perfect teeth.
She was wearing pearl gray pants and a turquoise knit shirt that didn’t have any animals on it. I have never liked turquoise. Suddenly I was crazy about turquoise, and redheads, and green eyes.
We acknowledged each other with fragile smiles. For one wild moment, I considered breaking my date with Chloe. But no, that wouldn’t do. If you wear your heart on your sleeve, a woman will not let you take off your clothes.
I offered to drive our little expedition up to Berkeley.
Lee turned out to be perfect.
“I noticed this car when I drove up,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”
I couldn’t help myself. I opened the door with a flourish, guiding the older folks into the back seat. Lee stepped up gracefully into the passenger seat. I held the door until she was settled, then I closed it for her. I just couldn’t help myself. I dashed around the gleaming blue hood and climbed in beside her, released the emergency brake and started the car.
“It sounds like it’s in beautiful condition,” Lee said. “And the interior is perfect.”
“Rebuilt engine,” I said. “Nearly original interior.”
“Amazing,” she replied, stroking the dash. That was almost more than I could stand. I shifted into gear and pulled away from the curb, trying not to smile like an idiot.
Eva, especially, was delighted with the street market, several blocks, on both sides of Telegraph, ending at the campus on Bancroft. Booths, tables, displays. I didn’t know when the custom started, but I’d never known Berkeley without it. I also didn’t know how the real stores on the street, the ones that paid rent, felt about the shopless commercial enterprises that flourished on their sidewalks every weekend, but I figured they were probably good for business generally on the street, and as “street artists,” inviolable, essential to Berkeley’s image of itself.
Some of the merchants actually were street artists, actually made the jewelry, cutting boards, little boxes, clothing. But a lot of the displays were run by employees of the business people, many of whom were simply retailers. Right before Christmas, you could barely stumble down the sidewalks for the crowds of purveyors. Not a bad place to buy gifts, some of them handmade.
“Once,” I heard Eva telling Lee, “when I was a little girl, I visited my aunt in New York, and she took me down to the Lower East Side. A marketplace outdoors, like this. Well, not like this, exactly. Same principle.”
“Was a place in Chicago,” my father said, “called Maxwell Street. Same thing. You could find anything. Antiques, even. But no more.”
I reflected that Telegraph Avenue was a pretty sanitized version of either the Lower East Side or, especially, Maxwell Street, which I remembered vaguely from my Chicago childhood as a disintegrating, but still exciting, bazaar.
The expedition took a solid three hours, at which point it became time to go home and prepare for our various evenings. Eva came away with earrings and a scarf. My father bought a maroon tie with a hula dancer allegedly hand-painted on it. I don’t know what stall he found it at; I missed it entirely. I hesitated over a tee shirt with “I Like Ike” printed on it, and decided not to buy. Lee bought a striped tank top that I would have loved to see her in right then and there.
On our way back to the car, I glanced toward the hat shop where Hinks worked, and decided I would stop in there, one day soon, and check out the merchandise.
Lee went back to her friend’s house— who was this friend, anyway?— to change, and our little household took turns with the bathroom. I had to leave for San Francisco before Lee came back to get the folks, but Eva let me know that they, too, were going to The City to eat and see a show. “A musical,” Eva explained, “because Lee knew we would like that. Such a wonderful girl.”
I couldn’t have agreed more, but I didn’t say so.
Rosie was arriving home as I was leaving.
“I may be ready to start helping you on Monday,” she said.
“Good. I need you.”
“Yes, you do. Got a date?”
“Meeting Chloe.”
“Say hi.”
Less than half an hour later I was saying hi to Chloe at her Noe Valley apartment. A hug, a kiss on the cheek. Mutual murmurings of “It’s been too long.”
“Got any ideas about dinner?” I asked.
She had Haydn on the stereo; we were drinking a warm-up glass of wine, sitting on her blue overstuffed couch. Over in the corner was the rocking chair I remembered from her place in Novato, up in Marin County, where I’d first met her.
“I can’t decide. I feel ethnic, but then again, sushi would be nice.”
“What kind of ethnic, I mean besides Japanese?”
“My kind, dolt.”
Greek food sounded terrific to me. It always does. “Know a place with belly dancers?”
The restaurant was out in the Sunset District, where the fog shows up earlier and stays longer than in other parts of San Francisco. I’d left Oakland in warm sunlight, wearing a lightweight shirt and sport jacket, carrying a pullover. The fog got to the restaurant ahead of us; I put on the sweater as I stepped out of the car. Once the sun goes down, it’s chilly everywhere. Occasionally, I still feel a twinge of nostalgia for those hot mid-western summer nights. But not often.
We passed through a door with a plaster relief of some Greek god, with fig leaf, stuck to it, entering a white-painted room with muted, varnish-heavy paintings of Greek scenes. A goatherd here, an Aegean harbor there. A Greek key design along the tops of the walls. We ordered retsina, salad, avgolemono soup, stuffed grape leaves, moussaka.
I asked her about work at the magazine, she said it was terrific, that she was expecting a promotion, that my friend Artie Perrine, who had helped her get the job, was the “doll of the universe.”
“He’s married,” I said. “He’s got a kid.”
“Not that kind of doll of the universe,” she laughed. “What’s new in your life?” I told her about the folks visiting. I didn’t mention Lee, since there wasn’t much to talk about yet. I told her about the ark people and the mystery of the disappearing Noah. She was intrigued.
“Sounds like it could make a story, depending on what’s happening. If it’s all a scam. Are there any investors? So-called little people?” I shrugged in ignorance. “Can you find out?” I told her I planned to.
“And then there’s his disappearance. With his own money? I wonder. What about this health food business, anything there? Or Marjorie Burns and her G.A. friends?”
I informed her that I had some ideas developing, and that Probe Magazine would certainly hear all about it, if there were anything to interest Probe Magazine.
She poked away at me about the case, promising there’d be nothing in the magazine until I cleared it. If anything was ever printed at all.
The salad was good, especially the cheese and olives. The egg-lem
on soup was a little thin, the stuffed grape leaves not stuffed enough, the moussaka the best I’d ever eaten. There was a belly dancer, all right, and she was good. And when she bumped and writhed her way over to our table, I stuck a dollar bill in her bra. She was even pretty, but she just couldn’t match up to Lee.
Chloe and I spent a nice evening together, the kind of evening two good friends can have. I still thought she was pretty sexy, but she seemed, oddly enough, to be perfectly happy to be my friend.
On the way home, tired, overfed, wine-depressed, the five-mile limbo of the Bay Bridge’s lower deck seemed too much of a price to pay for getting home. The bridge was built to emphasize the glory of San Francisco and the degradation of the East Bay. First of all, you have to pay to cross into San Francisco. No charge the other way. Implication: who’d pay to go to Oakland? Second, and even more significant, you drive the upper deck west to San Francisco, the lower deck to Oakland. The significance doesn’t lie only in the class distinction between upper and lower. The upper deck provides a view. You see magnificent S.F. in the distance, pass through the tunnel at Treasure Island, come out the other side to see magnificent S.F. suddenly closer, sprouting out of the Bay, coming on like an overstaged, overwritten Broadway musical. On the lower deck you see girders.
Same thing on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge from the East Bay to Marin. The Golden Gate Bridge is a different story. Since it spans the Bay from Magnificent S.F. to Marvelous Marin, it has only one level: the upper. But should anyone try to forget what’s what around here, you still have to pay to go from Marin into San Francisco.
I slithered across the Bay on the lower deck.
Ten minutes later, yawning, I pulled up in front of my house. Stretching, I stepped out of my car. A good night’s sleep in the steel trap, that was what I needed.
Then, from somewhere up the driveway, came an eruption of shouting, snarling, and barking. The floodlight on the side of the cottage, suddenly on, backlighted a large, deformed, many-legged creature racing down the drive, tearing up gravel, followed by Rosie, yelling, running, and waving a poker.
The monster broke apart with a yowl. Alice fell back for a second, slowed by a blow or a kick, and the man, still large and on his own, crashed through the gate and through me. I caught him with a glancing punch, almost stopped him with a tackle that skinned my belly, and took off after him, hearing Rosie still yelling, “Stop the bastard!”
He raced across Cavour; I was maybe three yards behind him and halfway down the block before I realized I’d lost Alice because I’d neglected to give her permission to cross the damned street.
I expected him to jump a fence, cut through a yard, pull some kind of diversionary tactic, but he just kept running in a straight line toward the next corner, where the sudden start of an engine and glare of headlights confused me, momentarily, on the dark and quiet street.
“Stop him!” I yelled optimistically, just before the passenger side door flew open and my quarry leaped inside. I grabbed hold of the door handle and nearly had my arm ripped off when the driver pulled a fast U and cut around toward College Avenue. I sat in the street, massaging my shoulder, saying foul things softly, catching my breath. A couple of porch lights came on. A woman in a long plaid robe asked, from halfway behind a door, if I was okay. I said yes. A man called out from an upstairs window of another house— did I need help? No, but thanks. Had something happened? Should he call the police? The woman said she had. I said I thought the people down at my house probably had, too. I thanked them and started trotting home.
I heard a siren. I arrived just as an ambulance pulled up, followed by a squad car. I felt the blood drain out of my head, then rush back in.
“Is somebody hurt?” I blurted.
The ambulance guys ignored me. The cop told me to take it easy and who was I, anyway. I told her, as I dashed up the driveway beside her. Rosie was there, and Alice, and Eva, on the path beside the cottage. So was my father, but he was on the ground, half sitting up, leaning on one elbow.
Eva was crying. Pa was telling her not to cry. The ambulance guys checked him over, put him on their stretcher, and started carrying him away.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Looks okay,” they told me. “But he’s got a head injury and he needs to be checked.” They were going, they said, to Merritt Hospital. Eva went with him. The cop asked me to stay.
Rosie told her part of the story. She’d been asleep. Alice had growled, then barked, then hurled herself at the door just as Rosie heard someone cry out, heard a scuffle on the path. She grabbed a poker and opened the door, and she and Alice came upon the big intruder, kneeling over my father, his hands gripping the old guy’s collar. Alice had gone for one of those hands, and as the man jumped to his feet, Rosie had swung at his head and missed. That was about when I’d arrived.
I told the cop about my pursuit and loss of the mugger, giving her a description of him that wasn’t too useful. He’d been wearing jeans and sneakers and a dark sweater. He was white with medium hair, medium brown, medium length. He was big. The car? Old, big, dented on the passenger side door. Early seventies, I guessed. A General Motors car, I thought, dark blue. No front plate, but when it did the U, throwing me down, I caught an initial letter C. The rest was unreadable, smeared with something.
The driver? All I saw was a flash of blond hair.
She let us go to the hospital. Eva saw us walk into emergency and waved us to seats beside her. “I think he’s all right,” she said. “That’s some neighborhood you live in.”
They poked around a little and turned Pa loose. A bruise on the forehead, a grazed elbow from being knocked to the ground. He came out smiling. I drove everybody home.
“We live in Chicago so many years, and we have to come to California to get mugged,” Eva grumbled, furious with him, now, in her relief.
I was wondering why someone attempting a burglary— the crime of choice in that neighborhood— would have an accomplice waiting a block away. Kind of far to carry the TV and stereo.
Rosie said goodnight. Eva said goodnight. I wanted to get into the bathroom and have a look at some of my own wounds, but my father signaled that he wanted a word with me. We went back out onto the front steps. He explained that he’d gone into the yard to get some air before he turned in and that’s when the man had come over the fence from the yard next door and jumped him.
“I didn’t want to say with the women around,” he whispered. “And I didn’t know whether to say to the cops, either, without having talked to you first.”
I nodded, not having any idea of what it was he was going to finally say.
“That guy, he was no mugger.” A dramatic pause. “He said, ‘Okay, Samson,’ and then he knocked me down. Then he was staring at me when your tenant and Lassie came running out.”
I didn’t say anything.
“So he was after you, big shot. You steal his girl or something?” I could tell by his tone of voice he didn’t believe that.
“Not exactly,” I said.
“You know, I been wondering about these articles that never get printed.”
“There’s nothing to wonder about, Pa. Nothing to worry about, either.”
“Maybe you do something you can’t talk about?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Sure, sure. It’s okay, Double-O-Seven. Just be careful. And I told Eva we don’t need to say anything to Lee. She’ll worry. And she don’t need to know you got funny business.” Not knowing what else to say, I said goodnight.
– 10 –
Eva and my father, despite the excitement of the night before, were up at their usual seven A.M. Sunday morning, which of course meant that I was up as well.
I heard my father leave the house and come back moments later. I opened my eyes. He was carrying the Sunday paper, which he’d picked up at the front gate. He took it into the kitchen and dropped it on the table. Eva ran water into the tea kettle for about an hour. The toaster ka-chun
ked down to On. I got up.
Lee, Eva informed me, was arriving at nine.
I drank some coffee. They ate a couple of slices of toast. My father grunted briefly through the news section of the paper. Then he invited me to take a walk. “Just a little one, maybe around the block.”
“Doesn’t your head hurt?”
“Nah. A little bump.”
We had barely hit the gate when he looked at me slyly and said, “I suppose you can’t talk about your work?”
“Pa, I’m not a spy.”
“So what are you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“It’s that bad? I should call you Mr. Capone?”
I gritted my teeth and shook my head.
“So who wants to bump you off, huh? Tell me that, big shot?”
“Nobody wants to bump me off. He was a mugger. Forget it.”
We had gotten as far as the corner. My father stopped, and, in the way of all sidewalk superintendents, planted his feet firmly, stuck his hands in his pockets, and gazed at the ark workers and their work from under the brim of his cowboy hat.
“You want to change the subject? Okay. I’ll change the subject. The neighborhood’s always this noisy?”
I denied it. “Just a little building project. You know, a boat.”
He cocked his head at me. “Little. Hah. Houses I’ve seen. Office buildings I’ve seen. Condominiums I’ve seen. Boats I’ve seen. They say it’s a boat. Your friend Rico says it’s a boat. You say it’s a boat.”
“It’s a boat. You’ve met Rico?”
“Sure. He comes to watch. We talk. Nice fellow. He likes you.”
“Does that surprise you?”
He shrugged. “What’s not to like? So, this boat, they’re going to put wheels and a motor and drive it to the ocean?”
I gave up. I told him, in the most general terms, about the ark project.
He nodded soberly. “I have heard that people do things like this in San Francisco.” He turned back to look at the ark, nodding in a way I knew well, a way that meant something was about to be set right, corrected, explained. At that moment, Arnold saw me and waved. I waved back.
Full House: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 3) Page 7
