She felt Pam turn and look at her.
“How did you feel when you first knew you were pregnant with me?” she asked.
Bam. Colleen nodded as she drove around a Busvan furniture truck double-parked. “Scared,” she said.
“Scared?”
“Good and scared. Sixteen, I knew your father was bad news, but I was going to keep you. Marrying him was my only way to do that.”
“It was?”
“It was that or get out of the house.” Colleen shrugged as she drove. “Your grandmother wanted me to have an abortion.”
“She did? She wanted you to get rid of it—me?”
Colleen sighed as she shook her head. “Maybe she sensed what your father was.”
“I never knew that.”
“Well, now you do.”
“But you went ahead with it.”
“Not it. You.”
“I always thought Grandma wanted me.”
“She did—once she saw you.”
“Wow.”
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it, Pam. I was full of doubt. I thought about not going through with it, too. But something told me you were going to be worth it.”
Pamela looked away, laughed, hard and brittle. “Guess I had you fooled on that one.”
“Not by a long shot.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“Well, I am.” Colleen focused on the busy street. “The worst is behind you. I feel it. Just like when I felt you kick that first time. Take my word.”
Pamela turned back. “You want me to keep it?”
She had only thought of herself when she killed Pam’s father. “My feelings aren’t what counts, Pam. Yours are.”
“I hate him,” Pam said. “That bastard.”
Her father. “Oh,” Colleen said. “Now there’s something I didn’t know. I always thought …”
“Why? Because I was angry at you? For taking him away from me? After what he did to me?”
“What he did was wrong.”
“Wrong is an understatement, Mom. He was a monster. But even so, there are worse things.”
“Like killing him.”
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t your decision.”
“I know that, Pam. But I didn’t then. I couldn’t see anything but anger. And I had to make sure he didn’t do it again.”
“I know. But you eclipsed me.”
Colleen felt her throat catch. “I know I did. I know. That’s why I’m saying that this is your decision. That I’m here to help. Financially. As a mother. Whatever you want. As little or as much as you want. Whatever it takes.”
“What if I don’t want any of that?”
Colleen felt tears pulling at her eyes. No. Please. Not this. I can’t lose her again.
She cleared her throat. “Then you need to decide, Pam. I’m done interfering.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I don’t feel it one hundred percent. But I mean it.”
“Do you really want a grandson with that madman’s genes?”
Colleen shrugged. “Not a granddaughter?”
Pam gave a sad smile. “It feels like a he.”
“I want what you want, Pam. But I would love to be part of it. If I get in the way, I want you to tell me.”
They drove past Polk, Sukkers Likkers. Pre-lunchtime traffic snarling.
“I’m going to keep it,” Pam said.
Yes, Colleen thought. Yes!
“That’s what I would have done,” she said.
“No—that’s what you did.”
Yes, she did.
“And I do want you to be part of it,” Pam said.
A huge wave of relief washed over her. Who would have thought a sick individual like Adem Lea would bring the two of them together? Like Pam’s father, who brought them together in the first place.
“I can’t tell you how happy that makes me, Pam,” Colleen said, swallowing tears of joy.
“Oh, I think I might.”
And then she saw something she did not expect to see.
Mr. Philanderer. With Blondie. Holding hands, if you please, as they turned the corner on Polk. Big stupid grin on his face. Cool bored look on hers.
“Whoa, Nellie!” Colleen said, hitting the brakes right then and there, on Geary; the hazard lights too. A dissonance of horns erupted behind her. She ignored them, popped the trunk lever, hopped out, left the door open. Horns honked. She flipped a hand in dismissal.
“What on earth are you doing, Mom?”
“Back in a jiff, sweetie.”
She clattered around to the trunk in her white platforms and black suit. Mr. Philanderer was just across the street, still holding the bimbo’s frigging hand. Perfect.
Colleen found her camera bag, rummaged out her Polaroid camera.
She clip-clopped across the street, one arm up to stop traffic, which responded with more honking.
Onto the sidewalk, she maneuvered up in front of Mr. Philanderer. And his squeeze.
Here they came. Looking at her oddly as she raised her camera.
“Say cheese,” she said.
They didn’t.
It didn’t matter.
She took the shot.
“You two have a nice day now,” she said, stepping back across the street in her heels, arm up to stop traffic again, Pamela looking at her out of the car window like she’d lost her mind.
AUTHOR’S NOTES
November 1978 was a dark month for San Francisco.
Peoples Temple, headquartered in the city, suffered the tragedy of Jonestown when 918 members in Guyana drank Flavor Aid (not Kool Aid as commonly believed) laced with cyanide. And a new phrase entered our vocabulary: “to drink the Kool-Aid.”
The shooting of Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk blemished the city’s tolerant image. Former Supervisor Dan White received what many thought was a lenient sentence of seven years for two murders after his lawyer pleaded the infamous “Twinkie Defense,” citing junk food for White’s mood swings. White committed suicide himself shortly after release from prison.
Although Bad Scene is a work of fiction, the reader will see the two events mirrored.
Of interest: a 1983 FBI file contains statements that the shootings were part of a larger conspiracy. In addition, the FBI spoke to one individual who claimed he tried to warn the city about Dan White prior to the shootings. Whatever the truth is, San Francisco was forever changed.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to my stalwart writing group for shaking out Bad Scene over the course of a year. They are, in no particular order: Barbara McHugh, Eric Seder, Dot Edwards, and Heather King; all talented writers whose tolerance of rough drafts and creative typos is more than appreciated.
Special thanks to Stan Kaufman, friend and doc, who helps keep me straight on the medical details.
And John Cadigan for his knowledge of the history of SF’s port and the finer points of shipping.
A shout-out to Jeff Guinn’s Road to Jonestown, a fascinating account of one of the blacker events of 1978 that played a key part in Bad Scene. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
And thanks, most of all, to you, dear reader, for reading Bad Scene. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did writing it. You are, after all, the reason I do this.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Dear Reader,
We hope that you have enjoyed Bad Scene and suggest that you read Max Tomlinson’s prior Colleen Hayes mystery novels; that is, if you haven’t read them already.
In Vanishing in the Haight, author Max Tomlinson introduces Colleen Hayes. Colleen is struggling as an off-the-official-radar private investigator, working night security at a warehouse in 1978 San Francisco. She’s an ex-con, having spent a decade in prison for killing her husband. Her struggling life changes dramatically when she is hired by a wealthy industrialist, desperate to solve the eleven-year-old murder of his daughter in Golden Gate Park during the “Summer of Love.” Colleen has little to go on o
ther than her criminal mind and her fearless approach to search San Francisco’s dark underbelly. And during every high and every low point in that search, Colleen never loses sight of her ultimate goal: to find and reunite with her estranged daughter.
Max Tomlinson’s second book in the series is Tie Die. Colleen is hired by a 1960s rock star to find his kidnapped teenaged daughter. This search takes her to 1970s London, where she discovers a thread that traces to the death of a forgotten fan, connected not only to a music industry rife with corruption and crime, but to the missing teen. The search for another person’s missing child is especially poignant for Colleen as she never ceases her search for her own estranged daughter.
We hope that you will read the entire Colleen Hayes Mystery Series and will look forward to more to come.
Oceanview Publishing
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