San Francisco Noir 2: The Classics

Deceptions by Marcia Muller[9]

Golden Gate Bridge

San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge is deceptively fragile-looking, especially when fog swirls across its high span. But from where I was standing, almost underneath it at the south end, even the mist couldn’t disguise the massiveness of its concrete piers and the taut strength of its cables. I tipped my head back and looked up the tower to where it disappeared into the drifting grayness, thinking about the other ways the bridge is deceptive.

For one thing, the color isn’t gold, but rust red, reminiscent of dried blood. And though the bridge is a marvel of engineering, it is also plagued by maintenance problems that keep the Bridge District in constant danger of financial collapse. For a reputedly romantic structure, it has seen more than its fair share of tragedy: Some eight hundred — odd lost souls have jumped to their deaths from its deck.

Today I was there to try to find out if that figure should be raised by one. So far I’d met with little success.

I was standing next to my car in the parking lot of Fort Point, a historic fortification at the mouth of San Francisco Bay. Where the pavement stopped, the land fell away to jagged black rocks; waves smashed against them, sending up geysers of salty spray. Beyond the rocks the water was choppy, and Angel Island and Alcatraz were mere humpbacked shapes in the mist. I shivered, wishing I’d worn something heavier than my poplin jacket, and started toward the fort.

This was the last stop on a journey that had taken me from the toll booths and Bridge District offices to Vista Point at the Marin County end of the span, and back to the National Parks Services headquarters down the road from the fort. None of the Parks Service or bridge personnel — including a group of maintenance workers near the north tower — had seen the slender dark-haired woman in the picture I’d shown them, walking south on the pedestrian sidewalk at about four yesterday afternoon. None of them had seen her jump.

It was for that reason — plus the facts that her parents had revealed about twenty-two-year-old Vanessa DiCesare — that I tended to doubt she actually had committed suicide, in spite of the note she’d left taped to the dashboard of the Honda she’d abandoned at Vista Point. Surely at four o’clock on a Monday afternoon someone would have noticed her. Still, I had to follow up every possibility, and the people at the Parks Service station had suggested I check with the rangers at Fort Point.

I entered the dark-brick structure through a long, low tunnel — called a sally port, the sign said — which was flanked at either end by massive wooden doors with iron studding. Years before I’d visited the fort, and now I recalled that it was more or less typical of harbor fortifications built in the Civil War era: a ground floor topped by two tiers of working and living quarters, encircling a central courtyard.

I emerged into the court and looked up at the west side; the tiers were a series of brick archways, their openings as black as empty eyesockets, each roped off by a narrow strip of yellow plastic strung across it at waist level. There was construction gear in the courtyard; the entire west side was under renovation and probably off limits to the public.

As I stood there trying to remember the layout of the place and wondering which way to go, I became aware of a hollow metallic clanking that echoed in the circular enclosure. The noise drew my eyes upward to the wooden watchtower atop the west tiers, and then to the red arch of the bridge’s girders directly above it. The clanking seemed to have something to do with cars passing over the roadbed, and it was underlaid by a constant grumbling rush of tires on pavement. The sounds, coupled with the soaring height of the fog-laced girders, made me feel very small and insignificant. I shivered again and turned to my left, looking for one of the rangers.

The man who came out of a nearby doorway startled me, more because of his costume than the suddenness of his appearance. Instead of the Parks Service uniform I remembered the rangers wearing on my previous visit, he was clad in what looked like an old Union Army uniform: a dark blue frock coat, lighter blue trousers, and a wide-brimmed hat with a red plume. The long saber in a scabbard that was strapped to his waist made him look thoroughly authentic.

He smiled at my obvious surprise and came over to me, bushy eyebrows lifted inquiringly. “Can I help you, ma’am?”

I reached into my bag and took out my private investigator’s license and showed it to him. “I’m Sharon McCone, from All Souls Legal Cooperative. Do you have a minute to answer some questions?”

He frowned, the way people often do when confronted by a private detective, probably trying to remember whether he’d done anything lately that would warrant investigation. Then he said, “Sure,” and motioned for me to step into the shelter of the sally port.

“I’m investigating a disappearance, a possible suicide from the bridge,” I said. “It would have happened about four yesterday afternoon. Were you on duty then?”

He shook his head. “Monday’s my day off.”

“Is there anyone else here who might have been working then?”

“You could check with Lee — Lee Gottschalk, the other ranger on this shift.”

“Where can I find him?”

He moved back into the courtyard and looked around. “I saw him start taking a couple of tourists around just a few minutes ago. People are crazy; they’ll come out in any kind of weather.”

“Can you tell me which way he went?”

The ranger gestured to our right. “Along this side. When he’s done down here, he’ll take them up that iron stairway to the first tier, but I can’t say how far he’s gotten yet.”

I thanked him and started off in the direction he’d indicated.

There were open doors in the cement wall between the sally port and the iron staircase. I glanced through the first and saw no one. The second led into a narrow dark hallway; when I was halfway down it, I saw that this was the fort’s jail. One cell was set up as a display, complete with a mannequin prisoner; the other, beyond an archway that was not much taller than my own five-foot-six, was unrestored. Its waterstained walls were covered with graffiti, and a metal railing protected a two-foot-square iron grid on the floor in one corner. A sign said that it was a cistern with a forty-thousand-gallon capacity.

Well, I thought, that’s interesting, but playing tourist isn’t helping me catch up with Lee Gottschalk. Quickly I left the jail and hurried up the iron staircase the first ranger had indicated. At its top, I turned to my left and bumped into a chain link fence that blocked access to the area under renovation. Warning myself to watch where I was going, I went the other way, toward the east tier. The archways there were fenced off with similar chain link so no one could fall, and doors opened off the gallery into what I supposed had been the soldiers’ living quarters. I pushed through the first one and stepped into a small museum.

The room was high-ceilinged, with tall, narrow windows in the outside wall. No ranger or tourists were in sight. I looked toward an interior door that led to the next room and saw a series of mirror images: one door within another leading off into the distance, each diminishing in size until the last seemed very tiny. I had the unpleasant sensation that if I walked along there, I would become progressively smaller and eventually disappear.

From somewhere down there came the sound of voices. I followed it, passing through more museum displays until I came to a room containing an old-fashioned bedstead and footlocker. A ranger, dressed the same as the man downstairs except that he was bearded and wore granny glasses, stood beyond the bedstead lecturing to a man and a woman who were bundled to their chins in bulky sweaters.

“You’ll notice that the fireplaces are very small,” he was saying, motioning to the one on the wall next to the bed, “and you can imagine how cold it could get for the soldiers garrisoned here. They didn’t have a heated employees’ lounge like we do.” Smiling at his own little joke, he glanced at me. “Do you want to join the tour?”

I shook my head and stepped over by the footlocker. “Are you Lee Gottschalk?”

“Yes.” He spoke the word a shade warily.

“I have a few questions I’d like to ask you. How long will the rest of the tour take?”

“At least half an hour. These folks want to see the unrestored rooms on the third floor.”

I didn’t want to wait around that long, so I said, “Could you take a couple of minutes and talk with me now?”

He moved his head so the light from the windows caught his granny glasses and I couldn’t see the expression in his eyes, but his mouth tightened in a way that might have been annoyance. After a moment he said, “Well, the rest of the tour on this floor is pretty much self-guided.” To the tourists, he added, “Why don’t you go on ahead and I’ll catch up after I talk with this lady.”

They nodded agreeably and moved on into the next room. Lee Gottschalk folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the small fireplace. “Now what can I do for you?”

I introduced myself and showed him my license. His mouth twitched briefly in surprise, but he didn’t comment. I said, “At about four yesterday afternoon, a young woman left her car at Vista Point with a suicide note in it. I’m trying to locate a witness who saw her jump.” I took out the photograph I’d been showing to people and handed it to him. By now I had Vanessa DiCesare’s features memorized: high forehead, straight nose, full lips, glossy wings of dark-brown hair curling inward at the jawbone. It was a strong face, not beautiful but striking — and a face I’d recognize anywhere.

Gottschalk studied the photo, then handed it back to me. “I read about her in the morning paper. Why are you trying to find a witness?”

“Her parents have hired me to look into it.”

“The paper said her father is some big politician here in the city.”

I didn’t see any harm in discussing what had already appeared in print. “Yes, Ernest DiCesare — he’s on the Board of Supes and likely to be our next mayor.”

“And she was a law student, engaged to some hotshot lawyer who ran her father’s last political campaign.”

“Right again.”

He shook his head, lips pushing out in bewilderment. “Sounds like she had a lot going for her. Why would she kill herself? Did that note taped inside her car explain it?”

I’d seen the note, but its contents were confidential. “No. Did you happen to see anything unusual yesterday afternoon?”

“No. But if I’d seen anyone jump, I’d have reported it to the Coast Guard station so they could try to recover the body before the current carried it out to sea.”

“What about someone standing by the bridge railing, acting strangely, perhaps?”

“If I’d noticed anyone like that, I’d have reported it to the bridge offices so they could send out a suicide prevention team.” He stared almost combatively at me, as if I’d accused him of some kind of wrongdoing, then he seemed to relent a little. “Come outside,” he said, “and I’ll show you something.”

We went through the door to the gallery, and he guided me to the chain link barrier in the archway and pointed up. “Look at the angle of the bridge, and the distance we are from it. You couldn’t spot anyone standing at the rail from here, at least not well enough to tell if they were acting upset. And a jumper would have to hurl herself way out before she’d be noticeable.”

“And there’s nowhere else in the fort from where a jumper would be clearly visible?”

“Maybe from one of the watchtowers or the extreme west side. But they’re off limits to the public, and we only give them one routine check at closing.”

Satisfied now, I said, “Well, that about does it. I appreciate your taking the time.”

He nodded and we started along the gallery. When we reached the other end, where an enclosed staircase spiraled up and down, I thanked him again and we parted company.

The way the facts looked to me now, Vanessa DiCesare had faked this suicide and just walked away — away from her wealthy old-line Italian family, from her up-and-coming liberal lawyer, from a life that either had become too much or just hadn’t been enough. Vanessa was over twenty-one; she had a legal right to disappear if she wanted to. But her parents and her fiancé loved her, and they also had a right to know she was alive and well. If I could locate her and reassure them without ruining whatever new life she planned to create for herself, I would feel I’d performed the job I’d been hired to do. But right now I was weary, chilled to the bone, and out of leads. I decided to go back to All Souls and consider my next moves in warmth and comfort.

All Souls Legal Cooperative is housed in a ramshackle Victorian on one of the steeply sloping side streets of Bernal Heights, a working-class district in the southern part of the city. The co-op caters mainly to clients who live in the area: people with low to middle incomes who don’t have much extra money for expensive lawyers. The sliding fee scale allows them to obtain quality legal assistance at reasonable prices — a concept that is probably outdated in the self-centered 1980s, but is kept alive by the people who staff All Souls. It’s a place where the lawyers care about their clients, and a good place to work.

I left my MG at the curb and hurried up the front steps through the blowing fog. The warmth inside was almost a shock after the chilliness at Fort Point; I unbuttoned my jacket and went down the long deserted hallway to the big country kitchen at the rear. There I found my boss, Hank Zahn, stirring up a mug of the Navy grog he often concocts on cold November nights like this one.

He looked at me, pointed to the rum bottle, and said, “Shall I make you one?” When I nodded, he reached for another mug.

I went to the round oak table under the windows, moved a pile of newspapers from one of the chairs, and sat down. Hank added lemon juice, hot water, and sugar syrup to the rum; dusted it artistically with nutmeg; and set it in front of me with a flourish. I sampled it as he sat down across from me, then nodded my approval.

He said, “How’s it going with the DiCesare investigation?”

Hank had a personal interest in the case; Vanessa’s fiancé, Gary Stornetta, was a long-time friend of his, which was why I, rather than one of the large investigative firms her father normally favored, had been asked to look into it. I said, “Everything I’ve come up with points to it being a disappearance, not a suicide.”

“Just as Gary and her parents suspected.”

“Yes. I’ve covered the entire area around the bridge. There are absolutely no witnesses, except for the tour bus driver who saw her park her car at four and got suspicious when it was still there at seven and reported it. But even he didn’t see her walk off toward the bridge.” I drank some more grog, felt its warmth, and began to relax.

Behind his thick horn-rimmed glasses, Hank’s eyes became concerned. “Did the DiCesares or Gary give you any idea why she would have done such a thing?”

“When I talked with Ernest and Sylvia this morning, they said Vanessa had changed her mind about marrying Gary. He’s not admitting to that, but he doesn’t speak of Vanessa the way a happy husband-to-be would. And it seems like an unlikely match to me — he’s close to twenty years older than she.”

“More like fifteen,” Hank said. “Gary’s father was Ernest’s best friend, and after Ron Stornetta died, Ernest more or less took him on as a protégé. Ernest was delighted that their families were finally going to be joined.”

“Oh, he was delighted all right. He admitted to me that he’d practically arranged the marriage. ‘Girl didn’t know what was good for her,’ he said. ‘Needed a strong older man to guide her.’” I snorted.

Hank smiled faintly. He’s a feminist, but over the years his sense of outrage has mellowed; mine still has a hair trigger.

“Anyway,” I said, “when Vanessa first announced she was backing out of the engagement, Ernest told her he would cut off her funds for law school if she didn’t go through with the wedding.”

“Jesus, I had no idea he was capable of such... Neanderthal tactics.”

“Well, he is. After that Vanessa went ahead and set the wedding date. But Sylvia said she suspected she wouldn’t go through with it. Vanessa talked of quitting law school and moving out of their home. And she’d been seeing other men; she and her father had a bad quarrel about it just last week. Anyway, all of that, plus the fact that one of her suitcases and some clothing are missing, made them highly suspicious of the suicide.”

Hank reached for my mug and went to get us more grog. I began thumbing through the copy of the morning paper that I’d moved off the chair, looking for the story on Vanessa. I found it on page three.

Strange how routine it all sounded when reduced to journalistic language. And yet how mysterious — the “undisclosed contents” of the suicide note, for instance.

“You know,” I said as Hank came back to the table and set down the fresh mugs of grog, “that note is another factor that makes me believe she staged this whole thing. It was so formal and controlled. If they had samples of suicide notes in etiquette books, I’d say she looked one up and copied it.”

He ran his fingers through his wiry brown hair. “What I don’t understand is why she didn’t just break off the engagement and move out of the house. So what if her father cut off her money? There are lots worse things than working your way through law school.”

“Oh, but this way she gets back at everyone, and has the advantage of actually being alive to gloat over it. Imagine her parents’ and Gary’s grief and guilt — it’s the ultimate way of getting even.”

“She must be a very angry young woman.”

“Yes. After I talked with Ernest and Sylvia and Gary, I spoke briefly with Vanessa’s best friend, a law student named Kathy Graves. Kathy told me that Vanessa was furious with her father for making her go through with the marriage. And she’d come to hate Gary because she’d decided he was only marrying her for her family’s money and political power.”

“Oh, come on. Gary’s ambitious, sure. But you can’t tell me he doesn’t genuinely care for Vanessa.”

“I’m only giving you her side of the story.”

“So now what do you plan to do?”

“Talk with Gary and the DiCesares again. See if I can’t come up with some bit of information that will help me find her.”

“And then?”

“Then it’s up to them to work it out.”

The DiCesare home was mock-Tudor, brick and half-timber, set on a corner knoll in the exclusive area of St. Francis Wood. When I’d first come there that morning, I’d been slightly awed; now the house had lost its power to impress me. After delving into the lives of the family who lived there, I knew that it was merely a pile of brick and mortar and wood that contained more than the usual amount of misery.

The DiCesares and Gary Stornetta were waiting for me in the living room, a strangely formal place with several groupings of furniture and expensive-looking knickknacks laid out in precise patterns on the tables. Vanessa’s parents and fiancé — like the house — seemed diminished since my previous visit: Sylvia huddled in an armchair by the fireplace, her gray-blonde hair straggling from its elegant coiffure; Ernest stood behind her, haggard-faced, one hand protectively on her shoulder. Gary paced, smoking and clawing at his hair with his other hand. Occasionally he dropped ashes on the thick wall-to-wall carpeting, but no one called it to his attention.

They listened to what I had to report without interruption. When I finished, there was a long silence. Then Sylvia put a hand over her eyes and said, “How she must hate us to do a thing like this!”

Ernest tightened his grip on his wife’s shoulder. His face was a conflict of anger, bewilderment, and sorrow.

There was no question of which emotion had hold of Gary; he smashed out his cigarette in an ashtray, lit another, and resumed pacing. But while his movements before had merely been nervous, now his tall, lean body was rigid with thinly controlled fury. “Damn her!” he said. “Damn her anyway!”

“Gary.” There was a warning note in Ernest’s voice.

Gary glanced at him, then at Sylvia. “Sorry.”

I said, “The question now is, do you want me to continue looking for her?”

In shocked tones, Sylvia said, “Of course we do!” Then she tipped her head back and looked at her husband.

Ernest was silent, his fingers pressing hard against the black wool of her dress.

“Ernest?” Now Sylvia’s voice held a note of panic.

“Of course we do,” he said. But the words somehow lacked conviction.

I took out my notebook and pencil, glancing at Gary. He had stopped pacing and was watching the DiCesares. His craggy face was still mottled with anger, and I sensed he shared Ernest’s uncertainty.

Opening the notebook, I said, “I need more details about Vanessa, what her life was like the past month or so. Perhaps something will occur to one of you that didn’t this morning.”

“Ms. McCone,” Ernest said, “I don’t think Sylvia’s up to this right now. Why don’t you and Gary talk, and then if there’s anything else, I’ll be glad to help you.”

“Fine.” Gary was the one I was primarily interested in questioning, anyway. I waited until Ernest and Sylvia had left the room, then turned to him.

When the door shut behind them, he hurled his cigarette into the empty fireplace. “Goddamn little bitch!” he said.

I said, “Why don’t you sit down.”

He looked at me for a few seconds, obviously wanting to keep on pacing, but then he flopped into the chair Sylvia had vacated. When I’d first met with Gary this morning, he’d been controlled and immaculately groomed, and he had seemed more solicitous of the DiCesares than concerned with his own feelings. Now his clothing was disheveled, his graying hair tousled, and he looked to be on the brink of a rage that would flatten anyone in its path.

Unfortunately, what I had to ask him would probably fan that rage. I braced myself and said, “Now tell me about Vanessa. And not all the stuff about her being a lovely young woman and a brilliant student. I heard all that this morning — but now we both know it isn’t the whole truth, don’t we?”

Surprisingly he reached for a cigarette and lit it slowly, using the time to calm himself. When he spoke, his voice was as level as my own. “All right, it’s not the whole truth.” Vanessa is lovely and brilliant. She’ll make a top-notch lawyer. There’s a hardness in her; she gets it from Ernest. It took guts to fake this suicide...”

“What do you think she hopes to gain from it?”

“Freedom. From me. From Ernest’s domination. She’s probably taken off somewhere for a good time. When she’s ready she’ll come back and make her demands.”

“And what will they be?”

“Enough money to move into a place of her own and finish law school. And she’ll get it, too. She’s all her parents have.”

“You don’t think she’s set out to make a new life for herself?”

“Hell, no. That would mean giving up all this.” The sweep of his arm encompassed the house and all of the DiCesares’ privileged world.

But there was one factor that made me doubt his assessment. I said, “What about the other men in her life?”

He tried to look surprised, but an angry muscle twitched in his jaw.

“Come on, Gary,” I said, “you know there were other men. Even Ernest and Sylvia were aware of that.”

“Ah, Christ!” He popped out of the chair and began pacing again. “All right, there were other men. It started a few months ago. I didn’t understand it; things had been good with us; they still were good physically. But I thought, okay, she’s young; this is only natural. So I decided to give her some rope, let her get it out of her system. She didn’t throw it in my face, didn’t embarrass me in front of my friends. Why shouldn’t she have a last fling?”

“And then?”

“She began making noises about breaking off the engagement. And Ernest started that shit about not footing the bill for law school. Like a fool I went along with it, and she seemed to cave in from the pressure. But a few weeks later, it all started up again — only this time it was purposeful, cruel.”

“In what way?”

“She’d know I was meeting political associates for lunch or dinner, and she’d show up at the restaurant with a date. Later she’d claim he was just a friend, but you couldn’t prove it from the way they acted. We’d go to a party and she’d flirt with every man there. She got sly and secretive about where she’d been, what she’d been doing.”

I had pictured Vanessa as a very angry young woman; now I realized she was not a particularly nice one, either.

Gary was saying, “... the last straw was on Halloween. We went to a costume party given by one of her friends from Hastings. I didn’t want to go — costumes, a young crowd, not my kind of thing — and so she was angry with me to begin with. Anyway, she walked out with another man, some jerk in a soldier outfit. They were dancing...”

I sat up straighter. “Describe the costume.”

“An old-fashioned soldier outfit. Wide-brimmed hat with a plume, frock coat, sword.”

“What did the man look like?”

“Youngish. He had a full beard and wore granny glasses.”

Lee Gottschalk.

The address I got from the phone directory for Lee Gottschalk was on California Street not far from Twenty-fifth Avenue and only a couple of miles from where I’d first met the ranger at Fort Point. When I arrived there and parked at the opposite curb, I didn’t need to check the mailboxes to see which apartment was his; the corner windows on the second floor were ablaze with light, and inside I could see Gottschalk, sitting in an armchair in what appeared to be his living room. He seemed to be alone but expecting company, because frequently he looked up from the book he was reading and checked his watch.

In case the company was Vanessa DiCesare, I didn’t want to go barging in there. Gottschalk might find a way to warn her off, or simply not answer the door when she arrived. Besides, I didn’t yet have a definite connection between the two of them; the “jerk in a soldier outfit” could have been someone else, someone in a rented costume that just happened to resemble the working uniform at the fort. But my suspicions were strong enough to keep me watching Gottschalk for well over an hour. The ranger had lied to me that afternoon.

The lies had been casual and convincing, except for two mistakes — such small mistakes that I hadn’t caught them even when I’d read the newspaper account of Vanessa’s purported suicide later. But now I recognized them for what they were: The paper had called Gary Stornetta a “political associate” of Vanessa’s father, rather than his former campaign manager, as Lee had termed him. And while the paper mentioned the suicide note, it had not said it was taped inside the car. While Gottschalk conceivably could know about Gary managing Ernest’s campaign for the Board of Supes from other newspaper accounts, there was no way he could have known how the note was secured — except from Vanessa herself.

Because of those mistakes, I continued watching Gottschalk, straining my eyes as the mist grew heavier, hoping Vanessa would show up or that he’d eventually lead me to her. The ranger appeared to be nervous: He got up a couple of times and turned on a TV, flipped through the channels, and turned it off again. For about ten minutes he paced back and forth. Finally, around twelve-thirty, he checked his watch again, then got up and drew the draperies shut. The lights went out behind them.

I tensed, staring through the blowing mist at the door of the apartment building. Somehow Gottschalk hadn’t looked like a man who was going to bed. And my impression was correct: In a few minutes he came through the door onto the sidewalk carrying a suitcase — pale leather like the one of Vanessa’s Sylvia had described to me — and got into a dark-colored Mustang parked on his side of the street. The car started up and he made a U-turn, then went right on Twenty-fifth Avenue. I followed. After a few minutes, it became apparent that he was heading for Fort Point.

When Gottschalk turned into the road to the fort, I kept going until I could pull over on the shoulder. The brake lights of the Mustang flared, and then Gottschalk got out and unlocked the low iron bar that blocked the road from sunset to sunrise; after he’d driven through he closed it again, and the car’s lights disappeared down the road.

Had Vanessa been hiding at drafty, cold Fort Point? It seemed a strange choice of place, since she could have used a motel or Gottschalk’s apartment. But perhaps she’d been afraid someone would recognize her in a public place, or connect her with Gottschalk and come looking, as I had. And while the fort would be a miserable place to hide during the hours it was open to the public — she’d have had to keep to one of the off-limits areas, such as the west side — at night she could probably avail herself of the heated employees’ lounge.

Now I could reconstruct most of the scenario of what had gone on: Vanessa meets Lee; they talk about his work; she decides he is the person to help her fake her suicide. Maybe there’s a romantic entanglement, maybe not; but for whatever reason, he agrees to go along with the plan. She leaves her car at Vista Point, walks across the bridge, and later he drives over there and picks up the suitcase...

But then why hadn’t he delivered it to her at the fort? And to go after the suitcase after she’d abandoned the car was too much of a risk; he might have been seen, or the people at the fort might have noticed him leaving for too long a break. Also, if she’d walked across the bridge, surely at least one of the people I’d talked with would have seen her — the maintenance crew near the north tower, for instance.

There was no point in speculating on it now, I decided. The thing to do was to follow Gottschalk down there and confront Vanessa before she disappeared again. For a moment I debated taking my gun out of the glovebox, but then decided against it. I don’t like to carry it unless I’m going into a dangerous situation, and neither Gottschalk nor Vanessa posed any particular threat to me. I was merely here to deliver a message from Vanessa’s parents asking her to come home. If she didn’t care to respond to it, that was not my business — or my problem.

I got out of my car and locked it, then hurried across the road and down the narrow lane to the gate, ducking under it and continuing along toward the ranger station. On either side of me were tall, thick groves of eucalyptus; I could smell their acrid fragrance and hear the fog-laden wind rustle their brittle leaves. Their shadows turned the lane into a black winding alley, and the only sound besides distant traffic noises was my tennis shoes slapping on the broken pavement. The ranger station was dark, but ahead I could see Gottschalk’s car parked next to the fort. The area was illuminated only by small security lights set at intervals on the walls of the structure. Above it the bridge arched, washed in fog-muted yellowish light; as I drew closer I became aware of the grumble and clank of traffic up there.

I ran across the parking area and checked Gottschalk’s car. It was empty, but the suitcase rested on the passenger seat. I turned and started toward the sally port, noticing that its heavily studded door stood open a few inches. The low tunnel was completely dark. I felt my way along it toward the courtyard, one hand on its icy stone wall.

The doors to the courtyard also stood open. I peered through them into the gloom beyond. What light there was came from the bridge and more security beacons high up on the wooden watchtowers; I could barely make out the shapes of the construction equipment that stood near the west side. The clanking from the bridge was oppressive and eerie in the still night.

As I was about to step into the courtyard, there was a movement to my right. I drew back into the sally port as Lee Gottschalk came out of one of the ground-floor doorways. My first impulse was to confront him, but then I decided against it. He might shout, warn Vanessa, and she might escape before I could deliver her parents’ message.

After a few seconds I looked out again, meaning to follow Gottschalk, but he was nowhere in sight. A faint shaft of light fell through the door from which he had emerged and rippled over the cobblestone floor. I went that way, through the door and along a narrow corridor to where an archway was illuminated. Then, realizing the archway led to the unrestored cell of the jail I’d seen earlier, I paused. Surely Vanessa wasn’t hiding in there...

I crept forward and looked through the arch. The light came from a heavy-duty flashlight that sat on the floor. It threw macabre shadows on the waterstained walls, showing their streaked and painted graffiti. My gaze followed its beams upward and then down, to where the grating of the cistern lay out of place on the floor beside the hole. Then I moved over to the railing, leaned across it, and trained the flashlight down into the well.

I saw, with a rush of shock and horror, the dark hair and once-handsome features of Vanessa DiCesare.

She had been hacked to death. Stabbed and slashed, as if in a frenzy. Her clothing was ripped; there were gashes on her face and hands; she was covered with dark smears of blood. Her eyes were open, staring with that horrible flatness of death.

I came back on my heels, clutching the railing for support. A wave of dizziness swept over me, followed by an icy coldness. I thought: He killed her. And then I pictured Gottschalk in his Union Army uniform, the saber hanging from his belt, and I knew what the weapon had been.

“God!” I said aloud.

Why had he murdered her? I had no way of knowing yet. But the answer to why he’d thrown her into the cistern, instead of just putting her into the bay, was clear: She was supposed to have committed suicide; and while bodies that fall from the Golden Gate Bridge sustain a great many injuries, slash and stab wounds aren’t among them. Gottschalk could not count on the body being swept out to sea on the current; if she washed up somewhere along the coast, it would be obvious she had been murdered — and eventually an investigation might have led back to him. To him and his soldier’s saber.

It also seemed clear that he’d come to the fort tonight to move the body. But why not last night, why leave her in the cistern all day? Probably he’d needed to plan, to secure keys to the gate and the fort, to check the schedule of the night patrols for the best time to remove her. Whatever his reason, I realized now that I’d walked into a very dangerous situation. Walked right in without bringing my gun. I turned quickly to get out of there...

And came face-to-face with Lee Gottschalk.

His eyes were wide, his mouth drawn back in a snarl of surprise. In one hand he held a bundle of heavy canvas. “You!” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

I jerked back from him, bumped into the railing, and dropped the flashlight. It clattered on the floor and began rolling toward the mouth of the cistern. Gottschalk lunged toward me, and as I dodged, the light fell into the hole and the cell went dark. I managed to push past him and ran down the hallway to the courtyard.

Stumbling on the cobblestones, I ran blindly for the sally port. Its doors were shut now — he’d probably taken that precaution when he’d returned from getting the tarp to wrap her body in. I grabbed the iron hasp and tugged, but couldn’t get it open. Gottschalk’s footsteps were coming through the courtyard after me now. I let go of the hasp and ran again.

When I came to the enclosed staircase at the other end of the court, I started up. The steps were wide at the outside, narrow at the inside. My toes banged into the risers of the steps; a couple of times I teetered and almost fell backwards. At the first tier I paused, then kept going. Gottschalk had said something about unrestored rooms on the second tier; they’d be a better place to hide than in the museum.

Down below I could hear him climbing after me. The sound of his feet — clattering and stumbling — echoed in the close space. I could hear him grunt and mumble: low, ugly sounds that I knew were curses.

I had absolutely no doubt that if he caught me, he would kill me. Maybe do to me what he had done to Vanessa...

I rounded the spiral once again and came out on the top floor gallery, my heart beating wildly, my breath coming in pants. To my left were archways, black outlines filled with dark-gray sky. To my right was blackness. I went that way, hands out, feeling my way.

My hands touched the rough wood of a door. I pushed, and it opened. As I passed through it, my shoulder bag caught on something; I yanked it loose and kept going. Beyond the door I heard Gottschalk curse loudly, the sound filled with surprise and pain; he must have fallen on the stairway. And that gave me a little more time.

The tug at my shoulder bag had reminded me of the small flashlight I keep there. Flattening myself against the wall next to the door, I rummaged through the bag and brought out the flash. Its beam showed high walls and arching ceilings, plaster and lath pulled away to expose dark brick. I saw cubicles and cubbyholes opening into dead ends, but to my right was an arch. I made a small involuntary sound of relief, then thought Quiet! Gottschalk’s footsteps started up the stairway again as I moved through the archway.

The crumbling plaster walls beyond the archway were set at odd angles — an interlocking funhouse maze connected by small doors. I slipped through one and found myself in an irregularly shaped room heaped with debris. There didn’t seem to be an exit, so I ducked back into the first room and moved toward the outside wall, where gray outlines indicated small high-placed windows. I couldn’t hear Gottschalk anymore — couldn’t hear anything but the roar and clank from the bridge directly overhead.

The front wall was brick and stone, and the windows had wide waist-high sills. I leaned across one, looked through the salt-caked glass, and saw the open sea. I was at the front of the fort, the part that faced beyond the Golden Gate; to my immediate right would be the unrestored portion. If I could slip over into that area, I might be able to hide until the other rangers came to work in the morning.

But Gottschalk could be anywhere. I couldn’t hear his footsteps above the infernal noise from the bridge. He could be right here in the room with me, pinpointing me by the beam of my flashlight...

Fighting down panic, I switched the light off and continued along the wall, my hands recoiling from its clammy stone surface. It was icy cold in the vast, echoing space, but my own flesh felt colder still. The air had a salt tang, underlaid by odors of rot and mildew. For a couple of minutes the darkness was unalleviated, but then I saw a lighter rectangular shape ahead of me.

When I reached it I found it was some sort of embrasure, about four feet tall, but only a little over a foot wide. Beyond it I could see the edge of the gallery where it curved and stopped at the chain link fence that barred entrance to the other side of the fort. The fence wasn’t very high — only five feet or so. If I could get through this narrow opening, I could climb it and find refuge...

The sudden noise behind me was like a firecracker popping. I whirled, and saw a tall figure silhouetted against one of the seaward windows. He lurched forward, tripping over whatever he’d stepped on. Forcing back a cry, I hoisted myself up and began squeezing through the embrasure.

Its sides were rough brick. They scraped my flesh clear through my clothing. Behind me I heard the slap of Gottschalk’s shoes on the wooden floor.

My hips wouldn’t fit through the opening. I gasped, grunted, pulling with my arms on the outside wall. Then I turned on my side, sucking in my stomach. My bag caught again, and I let go of the wall long enough to rip its strap off my elbow. As my hips squeezed through the embrasure, I felt Gottschalk grab at my feet. I kicked out frantically, breaking his hold, and fell off the sill to the floor of the gallery.

Fighting for breath, I pushed off the floor, threw myself at the fence, and began climbing. The metal bit into my fingers, rattled and clashed with my weight. At the top, the leg of my jeans got hung up on the spiky wires. I tore it loose and jumped down the other side.

The door to the gallery burst open and Gottschalk came through it. I got up from a crouch and ran into the darkness ahead of me. The fence began to rattle as he started up it. I raced, half-stumbling, along the gallery, the open archways to my right. To my left was probably a warren of rooms similar to those on the east side. I could lose him in there...

Only I couldn’t. The door I tried was locked. I ran to the next one and hurled my body against its wooden panels. It didn’t give. I heard myself sob in fear and frustration.

Gottschalk was over the fence now, coming toward me, limping. His breath came in erratic gasps, loud enough to hear over the noise from the bridge. I twisted around, looking for shelter, and saw a pile of lumber lying across one of the open archways.

I dashed toward it and slipped behind, wedged between it and the pillar of the arch. The courtyard lay two dizzying stories below me. I grasped the end of the top two-by-four. It moved easily, as if on a fulcrum.

Gottschalk had seen me. He came on steadily, his right leg dragging behind him. When he reached the pile of lumber and started over it toward me, I yanked on the two-by-four. The other end moved and struck him on the knee.

He screamed and stumbled back. Then he came forward again, hands outstretched toward me. I pulled back further against the pillar. His clutching hands missed me, and when they did he lost his balance and toppled onto the pile of lumber. And then the boards began to slide toward the open archway.

He grabbed at the boards, yelling and flailing his arms. I tried to reach for him, but the lumber was moving like an avalanche now, pitching over the side and crashing down into the courtyard two stories below. It carried Gottschalk’s thrashing body with it, and his screams echoed in its wake. For an awful few seconds the boards continued to crash down on him, and then everything was terribly still. Even the thrumming of the bridge traffic seemed muted.

I straightened slowly and looked down into the courtyard. Gottschalk lay unmoving among the scattered pieces of lumber. For a moment I breathed deeply to control my vertigo; then I ran back to the chain link fence, climbed it, and rushed down the spiral staircase to the courtyard.

When I got to the ranger’s body, I could hear him moaning. I said, “Lie still. I’ll call an ambulance.”

He moaned louder as I ran across the courtyard and found a phone in the gift shop, but by the time I returned, he was silent. His breathing was so shallow that I thought he’d passed out, but then I heard mumbled words coming from his lips. I bent closer to listen.

“Vanessa,” he said. “Wouldn’t take me with her...”

I said, “Take you where?”

“Going away together. Left my car... over there so she could drive across the bridge. But when she... brought it here she said she was going alone...”

So you argued, I thought. And you lost your head and slashed her to death.

“Vanessa,” he said again. “Never planned to take me... tricked me...”

I started to put a hand on his arm, but found I couldn’t touch him. “Don’t talk anymore. The ambulance’ll be here soon.”

“Vanessa,” he said. “Oh God, what did you do to me?”

I looked up at the bridge, rust red through the darkness and the mist. In the distance, I could hear the wail of a siren.

Deceptions, I thought.

Deceptions...

The King Butcher of Bristol Bay by Oscar Peñaranda[10]

Manilatown

Who knows?

Some say he escaped from a jail in California. The “captain,” a small, weather-beaten, battered, mousy old man, said that the guy was wanted by the law somewhere. That was one thing about the cannery community and life in general in the small villages along the Naknek River in Bristol Bay, Alaska: Talk traveled fast. He may have looked like a man who was running away from something, yet to others he looked more like one gathering resources to get back to something. But who was going to ask? For the man in question was the King Butcher himself, the man who handled the biggest blade in the cannery.

From the outside window, two young onlookers disappeared in the flash that the glint the sun and blade had made when Kip Benito, the King Butcher, slashed the big king salmon’s guts, the conveyer belt still moving, cleaning the enormous fish with one swift, smooth stroke upward; and then, after flipping it over, a downward stroke to scrape and cut the rest of the clinging entrails. And he would tap the fish and the table each time he completed a fish, as people from all around the cannery, including the two young spectators, would shove each other, edging to get a better look at Kip working his magic with the terrifyingly beautiful King Butcher knife.

The foreman now walked past the docks outside, framed by that same window that held the onlookers. “That,” he told the two boys, for they were college students, “you won’t find in the books. Guaranteed,” he said. “Heh, heh. Guaranteed.”

At dusk sometimes, a veil of mist lingers in the twilight over the city. Coming home from the Golden Gate Fields racetracks in the winds of March, a loser in many more ways than just playing the horses, driving over the Bay Bridge, Kip Benito, an American citizen for two years now, mused over that delicate gauze curtain clinging over the jagged gray skyline of San Francisco. On the hills behind and beyond, a penciled, wispy line of cloud pointed at rows of houses and buildings baring their teeth. Windows goldened in the fading twilight, streaks of pink and magenta glowing in the darkening sky.

He was on his way to Blanco’s to down a few beers and bullshit a bit with Rudy the bartender. He was worried about Nena’s pregnancy and their planned elopement this Saturday. He was going to borrow money from Rudy. A lot of money.

He was down two thousand: He had lost his cousin Mando’s fifteen hundred dollars that he needed for Nena’s “going away” money, for she was starting to show.

But he couldn’t lose, he had said to himself. He couldn’t lose. Hard-luck stories he only liked in books, not in real life. He’d lost so many times before. “Just this once, God, let me win,” he pleaded in Cebuano. “And after this, you can let loose on me as much as you want.” He did not know whether he was bargaining with God or the devil.

Just yesterday, less than twenty-four hours ago, his wallet was comfortably padded with eighteen hundred-dollar bills that he had accumulated from various winnings here and there. Will, discipline, nerve, stamina, and smarts were ingredients for winning in that crucible of poker, dice, and horses that helped him get by in those past few months. But it still had not been enough. If he paid back Mando the fifteen hundred, that would only leave three hundred for him and Nena and Seattle and Alaska and a new life — maybe. That was their original plan.

Preparing himself to be satisfied with winning two or three hundred, he had instead lost it all, all of the eighteen hundred-dollar bills. He had borrowed five hundred more from friends at the tracks and lost that too. That day, everything fell through. And that was when he decided to go to Blanco’s and see Rudy.

Nena had been going to stewardess school and had decided that upon finishing she would head to the main office in Denver where there were more opportunities. But when she missed her period, she started to worry and told Kip about it — and he began to worry.

This money situation really started some time back when Mando was talking to him in a small Pinoy hangout on Kearny Street called the Palate of Fine Arts — right beside Mike’s Pool Hall across from Ramona’s Café, and beside the Bataan Restaurant in Manilatown. Mando was talking about money. He had tried to persuade Kip to join up with him. He would be a perfect collector, Mando urged him.

“Collector?” Kip had laughed. “Mando, I hate those guys! The blood of champions runs in my veins — and yours too,” he told his cousin in Filipino.

“Is that why you accepted three thousand dollars to marry?” Mando answered curtly in English, before softly adding: “C’mon, Kip. Everybody is stained. We’re just people.”

Shortly after the conversation, Kip accepted a loan of fifteen hundred dollars from Mando.

I can’t lose now, he had said to himself as he crossed the Bay Bridge to go into the Golden Gate Fields racetrack that morning and remembered the feeling. Everyone else had already lost. His friends had all lost, his relatives, his sometime opponents in the ring, everyone had already lost. He approached the ticket window to put in his first bets on Comes the Dawn and The Seventh Sun. “Box it,” he told the man at the window, and handed him a hundred dollars.

Well, Comes the Dawn came in around midnight and The Seventh Sun, a seven-to-one shot, came in seventh. Everyone had already lost; he couldn’t lose now. But he did.

And he was down two thousand dollars when he took the Broadway exit at the end of the bridge to head for Blanco’s. It was a good bar and a good location — two blocks down from Broadway, the tourists’ Sin City attraction, and nestled cozily between Chinatown on one side and North Beach, the Italian section, on the other. Though Kip Benito was not a regular at the bar, he understood the feeling of the place, a little corner of the world with your seat and your place and yourself. It was a refuge, he admitted — a haven, yet a battlefield. Once in a great while, when he’s had too much to drink, he felt this. Kip tried to express it in words many times, in both English or Filipino, but he just couldn’t do it. Only Nena understood the unspoken inside of him. If blades or fists were words, he would be a poet. He thought Rudy the bartender might be a poet in his own way. He did not falter with words, and Kip envied and admired that.

When Kip sat down at one end of the counter, several stools beside him empty, Rudy was already explaining something to several tourists complaining about the hills.

“But the city is hills,” he said. “That’s just another part of her sex appeal. See, you can’t drive in this town, no. You gotta ride it, up and down, in and out of alleyways, hard and soft turns, and then up and down again. All the time up and down, you see...?” Without looking down, Rudy pulled a towel from under the counter and wiped his forehead and neck quickly but gracefully, not skipping a beat, then stuck it right back under and continued: “Hills are nothing but mounds and curves...” Hidden behind the towel rack was a bolo, a long blade similar to the Mexican machete, a souvenir that he had bought from a pawnshop in Reno. It hung terrifyingly beautiful against the back panel under the counter.

Kip didn’t know exactly what the hell Rudy was telling the tourists this time, but it sounded like another one of his dirty jokes. Kip was getting drunk and horny.

“She’ll dictate the rhythm,” Rudy said carefully, “by which you must get to your destination.” And he dropped a fist firmly on the counter just as Kip downed his fourth beer. Rudy quickly turned to Kip all the way on the other end and said, “Be right with you, champ,” and continued regaling his audience of five or six tourists. “You see, Coit Tower, for those of you who don’t know, is supposed — or was supposed — to have been the phallic symbol of San Francisco. Some rich old lady named Coit, what a name, built it because she had a thing for firemen, see.”

“Firemen?” one of the tourists said.

“Yeah, the hose, you see. The nozzle, you know?” And his right hand dove under the counter, swept his brown mustached face with the towel, and disappeared again under the bar. From the jukebox, Sam Cooke was wailing “... It’s been a long, a long time comin’, but I know, a change gonna come, oh yes it will...”

Kip looked at Rudy from the other end of the counter.

“Sure,” Rudy said, sniffing and touching his nose as he looked around, “I live by there, below and behind. And in front of it is the bay, with its vessels of ferries and ships and tankers and tugboats and sailboats and cruise liners. On light windy days like this, it’s like a big parade out there.” Rudy was getting carried away with his descriptions again.

“Right, Rudy, hey?” Kip laughed from the other end of the counter.

“You’re chuckling over your glass again. You’re getting drunk, my man,” Rudy said, walking toward Kip, and as he got closer, whispered in his ear, “C’mon inside, man. I gotta show you something. Harry!” Rudy called, and a man approached the bar. “Harry, I know you’re the wrong man to put behind a bar, but what the hell. I got no choice. You got seniority.” And the men sitting at the table where Harry came from exploded in laughter and derision. “Take over for a few minutes, will you?” Rudy said.

Kip got up quickly, too quickly, but, graceful to the end, he managed to keep his balance by bending his knees slightly. He lifted the split board at the end of the counter and followed Rudy to a narrow hallway and into a small room. Rudy switched the light on.

“What is it?” Kip asked the bartender.

“Nothing,” Rudy said. “I just wanted to get you outta there. What’s up, my man? What’s eating you, champ?”

“Rudy,” he said, “I need some money.”

“I knew I asked a stupid question.”

“I gotta borrow some money, Rudy. You gotta help me out.”

“How much do you need? I’m afraid to ask.”

“Two thousand.”

“Dollars?”

“No, pesos. Of course, dollars!”

“Jesus Christ, who’d you kill? Two thousand dollars, Jesus Christ!” After a moment, a change came over the bartender’s face. “It’s that bad, huh?”

“It’s bad, Rudy. You know me. I never asked you for nothing...”

“I know. I know that, champ. Maybe I can come up with some of it, but...”

“Whatever you can, Rudy...” And he told the bartender about Nena and himself and the racetracks that afternoon.

Kip, the son of a blacksmith in the Philippines, had arrived about seven years ago. Rudy had put him up for a while to help him get started because, as he said, “I believed in the kid. He had potential.”

Some years back, Kip had doffed his blades of burning steel for a pair of leather gloves and became the champion of four divisions of boxing in the Philippines. Now only in his thirties, he had whirlpooled into calamity after calamity, disaster upon disaster, bad luck upon bad luck.

“Sometimes I feel I have degenerated into something untouchable. In my prime, Rudy. In my prime!” he told the bartender in Filipino. Rudy spoke no Filipino, but he understood enough of it.

Rudy’s cousin, who visited the Philippines frequently, had told him that he had seen Kip fight. According to him, Kip would sing and cry after winning each championship title. The Crooning Champion from Cebu, they called him. He was a sight to behold. Blood streaming from cuts on his face and sweat glistening, he would belt out a mushy love song from his heart... and weep right there in the ring. He was the only fighter in the history of Philippine boxing who had held four titles simultaneously. He had lost them all, of course, one by one. Bad management, age, and time, the most corrupt of all handlers, drove and sucked him into the nightlife of fast women, drinking, and gambling, and those were not really in his nature. When he came to Rudy five years ago, he was sleeping by the benches and sidewalks and enclaves of Howard Street and the Tenderloin district. After Rudy got him the job as a cab driver two years ago, Kip became pretty stable. During this time he married a woman from a prominent family from the Philippines, for papers only. Her people had given him some money.

And then he met Nena. That is, he met Nena again. They’d met in the Philippines before, in Cebu City, at some party. But she was very young then. She was nineteen and he, the multidivision champion, was twenty-three. Her older sisters and their friends had thrown Kip Benito a party; Nena was just a tagalong. They hardly noticed each other. That was years ago. Kip was still the champion then, and Nena, who knew nothing of boxing, could not have cared less about his athletic prowess. But Nena, now in her mid-twenties in San Francisco, probably cared even less. All she saw in him was a soft-hard man, quick and graceful in some ways, but awkward at times. Later on, and above all else, she saw in him a man who did not quite know how to lie.

Kip was not a frequenter of Blanco’s. He was not a drinking man to begin with, though he always kept a bottle of Jack Daniel’s around. Even in his days of debauchery and squandering, he had never acquired a taste for hard liquor, and beer just made him full after two or three bottles. Crowds often made him uneasy, though he enjoyed people and company. He did not feel comfortable drinking liquor and he did not feel comfortable drinking with a crowd. And the crowd at Blanco’s, well... it was Rudy that really prompted him to visit Blanco’s every now and then. But not this time. This time it was for something else.

He told Rudy everything: that he needed the money for Nena’s “going away,” that they planned to go to Seattle but he had lost it all at the racetrack. She would rent a place near a relative of Kip’s in Seattle. He would go to Alaska and work, then, after a couple of months, return to her in Seattle. And from there, with money in hand, they could make more permanent plans together.

They wouldn’t get married even if they could, not right away. For Kip was already married, and his wife’s family had paid him two thousand dollars, and were giving him an additional five hundred every three months until their divorce. It had now come to the end of the third year and Kip was going to collect his last five-hundred-dollar installment of the marriage deal. For such an arrangement, he’d had to do some things that inconvenienced him, and probably his wife, too, now that he thought of it. They’d had to see each other a couple of times a month, spend a weekend with each other, and be seen together in public every now and then. But that had not become a chore for Kip until he met Nena again.

“Call me after you get the five hundred from your wife,” Rudy told him. “I’ll see what I can come up with.” And they both headed out of the little room and back into the bar. The tourists were now sitting down at a table, talking and drinking.

Kip sat back down on his stool and said, “Bartender,” wiping the counter in front of him, “one more for the road.”

When Rudy came with his drink, there were two white men sitting beside Kip. They were drunk and harassing him. Kip had had a few drinks too many, this he knew, but he did not allow the two men to bother him much. His mind was on more important things. He managed to wiggle his way out and leave. He caught Rudy’s eye as he did so, and they gestured each other goodbye.

Out in the night and under the garish lights from streetlamps, Kip stopped by a phone booth near the City Lights Bookstore and called Nena.

“Hello?” Her voice sounded a bit hoarse.

“You still up, Mahal?”

“I’m waiting for you.”

“Don’t wait up for me. How are you feeling?”

“Okay, I guess. Well, not really.”

“Okay, I’m coming home now. Want me to get you something to eat?”

“God no. Don’t bother. There’s food here for you.”

“All right. Be right there.” He would visit Nena briefly before going to see his wife’s people for the five hundred dollars. And he would not tell her about the loss at the racetracks. Yet.

Nena had moved out of her parents’ house two weeks before, telling everyone that she was going to Colorado for the stewardess program. Kip had gotten her a room at the International Hotel for forty-two bucks a month, a nice one too, a curtain-partitioned space with a bedroom and a bathroom. “The bridal suite,” Manong Freddie had said to Kip. “Espesyal por you two.” And for those last two weeks, Kip had been biding his time by going around making and taking bets.

At the hotel, he entered her room and removed his jacket while fumbling for the light switch. He could faintly see Nena through the half-drawn bedroom curtain sitting upright on the bed.

“Don’t get up,” he said. “I’ll be right there.” He accidentally kicked one of her shoes as he entered. He picked it up and put it back in place as he put his coat on a hanger by the door. “I thought you might have fallen back to sleep.” Through the open window, he felt a slight breeze puff up a fresh tide of mist. “Aren’t you cold?” he asked.

“It’s good for you,” she replied pleasantly.

“You sounded tired over the phone,” Kip said as he sat down on the bed. “I was just going to sleep on the floor.”

“I’d never let you sleep on the floor. What’s the matter with you? What are you talking about?” Then she added flatly, “Not without me.”

“Well, I mean, just to rest — for a while. I gotta go get my money from her people,” he said without looking at Nena.

“Tonight?”

“Why not? Get it over with and out of the way — so we’ll have plenty of time to prepare to leave here Saturday. I got the tickets already,” he lied. “Pan Am. 4:50 p.m.” He had to cover the lie with two or three more because he didn’t know how to lie very well.

“That’s good,” she said.

“I gotta get everything done before Saturday.” They looked at each other for a while, then embraced.

“Ay, I don’t know anymore. If things should happen — if things should fall apart, Kip, let’s make a pact now. I don’t know anymore. Do you?” Then she lapsed into Filipino: “It’s such a crazy world out there... it’s such a fucked up, crazy world. I don’t know anymore. We’ll have to put some sense, some meaning into it. Let’s make a pact.” She got up from the bed and walked to the couch in the TV room.

“What do you mean?” he laughed lightly. He tried to remember the last time he had heard her swear.

“Lovers always make a pact,” she said.

“Wow, you’re starting to talk like Rudy. What kind of beatnik shit talk is that?” Kip got up and went to the bathroom cabinet. When he returned, Nena had switched on the little TV in the living room. He poured each of them a double shot of Jack Daniel’s. “But I like the idea,” he smiled.

“Me too,” she said.

“Let’s do it.”

And they drank to that, emptying their glasses.

“Is it okay for you to do this?” he asked, just barely swallowing.

“It’s still early on; and that’s all I’ll be drinking, anyway, so why not?... Okay, then, if anything should happen, if things don’t work out, we’ll contact each other somehow... no matter how late it is in our lives. But just once. Because once,” she continued, “we were each other’s one and only.” She raised her drink. “Without any notice?” she asked.

“With or without,” said Kip, taking another swig in celebration.

“With or without,” echoed Nena. And she took the remainder of Kip’s glass and downed it. She looked at him and almost shrugged a shoulder but caught herself, smiled softly, and raised her own drink.

“Even in her silence,” said Kip, placing his arms around her shoulders, “she says something.”

“Salamat,” she said.

Nena had a small mole on her left cheek that many people called her beauty spot. But for Kip, her beauty spot was something else. For Kip, her smile was shelter in silence. Her smile was a shelter from both the noise outside and the silence inside him. And she smiled effortlessly, with body and soul.

“I got a right to depend on you; you’re the man I love. The others I never took nothing from them, because I didn’t love them. But you’re the man I love. I expect that from you. It’s okay if you help take care of me. But I can take care of myself, too, thank you.”

“I know, I know,” he stammered. “But only a couple more months. Babalikan kita. I’ll be back with some cash from Alaska to take care of all this crap. And we can start again.” His face flashed a quick glow, then died again when he added, “Just a couple more months. Pumayag ka na, mahal.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

He could tell her anything and she still would be afraid. He offered answers, encouragement, tender touches, anything and everything, and still she would be afraid.

And she asked again, “Are you sure?” She slowly raised her eyes to him. “What kind of life are we going to live?”

“The best,” he answered quickly, erasing everything, almost jokingly, with a mystery of casualness. “The best.”

“What about the money, Kip? You’re still a couple hundred short.” She stood, picked up a brush, and started drawing it through her hair.

“I got it all in the bank already,” he lied. This time he did not have to worry about whether she was going to believe him or not. She was no dummy, that was one thing. He had to laugh a little.

“You’re laughing again, eh? At me?”

“Why the hell do you get up and brush your hair at midnight, just so you can go to sleep and mess it all up again?”

She thought for a while and answered, “I never looked at it that way. You’re the weird one. Who would look at it that way?” When she laughed, Kip was already holding her nodding head in his arms. “Happy ending, tayo,” he said, “ha?”

“Oo,” she answered softly, “yes.”

Kip looked at his hands and he thought of all the things they once held — the anvil when he was a boy, leather gloves in a square ring in adolescence and youth, and now, with manhood, the texture of chips and cards, torn tickets from betting on horses and ball games.

“You’re an old soul,” Nena told Kip from the couch where they were watching TV.

“Everybody’s odd, right?” he retorted quickly.

“I said old, darling. Not everyone is an old soul, but you are.”

“I like this,” he said, touching the top of her forehead.

“That’s my widow’s peak. You like that?” she replied, getting up from the couch.

“Scary name for it, isn’t it?”

“For you, maybe.” And they both laughed.

“Maybe I better not divorce my wife, then,” he said. And the two laughed some more, but they both quieted down awkwardly as they remembered what Kip had to go do.

“You should go,” said Nena. “We all have our obligations.”

“I’m going right now.”

“Okay. Good, get that over with.”

“Get some sleep.”

“I will, my happy, married man.”

“I am. I truly am,” he said in Filipino, and walked out into the city night.

Kip had a small apartment on California Street near his wife’s place in Pacific Heights. He decided to stop by his apartment and call them from there. He’d get a chance to pack a little bit and put things away for the upcoming trip.

In his room, looking outside at the delicatessen’s neon sign across the street, Kip decided not to ask for an additional loan from his wife. The five hundred dollars that her family owed him would be enough. Rudy would hopefully get about a grand together by Saturday. That would only make him five hundred short and he should be able to raise that before he left.

The phone rang. He looked at it, and after the second ring, he bet himself five hundred dollars that it would be a woman calling. Then he picked it up.

“Hello?”

“How much did you come up with?” It was Rudy.

“I had five hundred, but I just lost it,” he said jokingly. “I thought you were my wife.”

“Say what?” Rudy sounded as if he were in a hurry.

Kip looked at his watch; it was 1:30 a.m. How in the hell was he going to call his wife’s people at 1:30 in the morning? “Sorry, I was just thinking out loud. I made a bet with myself, and I lost.”

“Well, anyway, all I could come up with was a grand.”

Kip did not know what to say but, “Talaga? All right!” and breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Rudy. You’ll get it when I come back from Alaska in the next month or two. You’ll get all your money back. Pare, that was pretty fast. You could come up with a quick thousand, just like that, you son of a bitch? I thought it would take you till at least tomorrow night.”

“I caught them at the right time,” said Rudy. “I got ’em running when they should have been fightin’, and fightin’ when they should have been running. Walang marupok na baging sa magaling maglambitin, right? Isn’t that what you use to tell me?”

“That’s right. There’s no brittle vine for the person who knows how to swing.”

Rudy’s voice suddenly faded away from the receiver. “Good night, gentlemen. And remember, ride her on your way home.” Kip could hear some weak laughter in the background.

“Don’t tell me you played some cards.”

“Yeah, tourists. They wanted to play. So I obliged. I closed the bar right after you left. Slow anyway.”

“Same ones you were talking to when I was there, those tourists?”

“I don’t remember.” After a pause, Rudy asked, “How much did ya get?”

“I’m just going out to get the five hundred from my wife’s family right now.”

“Pal, I’m holding onto this money till the day you leave.”

“But I got to pay for the tickets before that,” Kip pleaded.

“Then get your ticket from that five hundred. I’ll hang onto this till I drop you off at the airport.”

“Thanks, Rudy. You’re all right.”

“I’ve spent money on worse things. But right after Alaska—”

“I’ll pay the whole thing right here.”

“Right where is that?”

“I mean right there, at Blanco’s.”

“Okay.”

“Thanks,” said Kip again, and hung up.

It was drizzling the next evening when he drove up into the the lamp-lighted hills of Pacific Heights where his wife’s people lived, one of their houses, anyway. After parking his car, he crossed the street under a billowing lamp whose beam fought fiercely to ward off the uneven mist surrounding it.

He did not stay long at the house. A few hellos and goodbyes and very-good-working-with-you and all that, and by the time he walked out of the house, everybody was happy. He had taken his last five hundred from her.

When he entered Blanco’s, he embraced Rudy. “I got the five hundred,” he said softly, and discreetly showed his friend the roll of bills.

“Terrific,” Rudy replied quickly, covering the wad and pushing it away at the same time. He headed for the back, while Kip moved toward his usual place at the counter. There were two white men near the barstool as Kip sat down. He couldn’t remember whether or not they were the same men who had been there the night before. Immediately, however, they started harassing Kip. Of all the times in the world, Kip said to himself. Of all the times in my life, these clowns gotta show up now. So he tried to ignore them.

There were some people like that, Kip thought, hasslers, not necessarily hustlers, just hasslers. If you ignored them or got aggressive with them, they stopped or moved on to their next victim. But tonight, somehow, it seemed that these two just did not, could not, leave Kip Benito alone. When he couldn’t take any more of it, he started to leave. He left his unfinished beer on the counter and walked out the door, signaling Rudy goodbye. The two quickly followed.

Less than ten seconds had passed when the people in Blanco’s all heard a violent scream outside. In a flash, Kip Benito came running back into Blanco’s, the two white men close on his heels, across the floor, around and behind the counter, and, within seconds, back again into full view, rushing back out into the street. Everyone at Blanco’s hurried out after Kip, who now had a wide metal knife tucked along his forearm, blade pointing straight up but mostly hidden. For a moment, the night swallowed the three men. They seemed to have completely disappeared. But only for a moment. The fighters emerged into the blinking neon light as one solid mass of heaving and weaving, with bursts of grunts and groans. The rush of onlookers slowed down when they saw all three slump over and fall to the ground. Then, only one got up. Kip Benito. Rudy dashed forward, but he was too late. The deed was done. Just a fraction of a moment and people’s lives are changed forever. Yet Rudy didn’t have much time to dwell on this thought. He saw Kip Benito leaning against the alley wall, bloody, clothes tattered, disheveled. He was gripping something tightly in his left fist. From his right hand, with a weakening hold, dangled the sharp blade. The other two men lay motionless in a pool of moonlight beneath the streetlamps of the city.

“They tried to rob me, Rudy,” Kip explained. “Thought I was drunk and tried to rob me. But this is not just about money, Rudy. You know that.” He stuck out his left hand — rolls of bills began to unfold from his grip.

“I know that, champ,” Rudy said as he scooped up all the money that sprung from Kip’s fist. Rudy felt the crowd gathering behind him.

Kip quickly turned and sliced the blade across his own forearms, shoulders, and thighs. When Rudy looked back to check the crowd, he couldn’t tell whether or not they had seen Kip cut himself.

“They tried to rob me!” Kip repeated to the stunned audience. “They tried to kill me!” He looked around slowly and menacingly, seeming to absorb everyone’s features. Then he said, as if spitting out a piece of phlegm, “No one saw what happened tonight. No one. I will remember all of you.” Then he fled into the night.

Kip Benito was going to Alaska that summer for the salmon canning season in Bristol Bay, anyway. He was just leaving a little sooner than planned.

It was during the afternoon of the next day, just before work, that Rudy decided to go see Nena at the International Hotel. He parked his car in the small employee lot of Blanco’s and walked over. The sky was overcast, gray and drizzly, and the news he was about to bring Nena was no different. Rudy was the only person other than Kip who knew about Nena staying in this place.

“He’s going to Alaska, and from there to Seattle. Too hot here, if you know what I mean. He gave me some money for you.” Rudy handed her an envelope and a note: Come to Seattle. After Alaska, I’ll meet you there. We will renew our sumpaan there, our vow. Write me. Alaska Packers Assoc., South Naknek, Alaska.

“You are still my guardian angel, Rudy,” Nena said in Filipino. “Maraming salamat, kuya. I don’t know what else to... what we could have done without...”

“It’s nothin’,” Rudy answered casually, and with a white man’s accent continued, “wala yan.” The strumming of a guitar floated up from the street outside Nena’s window. “I’d give my right arm to play guitar like that,” Rudy added, turning to go, “but then, of course, what would I play with?”

The King Butcher always slept with his blade. It was a tradition that went along with the job in Alaska. And during the day he was next to the butchering machines in the Fish House, out in the open, unlike most of the other workers, the regular butchers and the slimers, who were always cooped up in noise and wet and slime and stink. The King Butcher was the only person who worked with the king salmon. And he cut them by hand. They were too big for the machines. The machines catered to the much more numerous and expensive red sockeye. There is always a story about these characters. They say this King Butcher used his own blade to slice the king salmon, instead of using the one that the company supplied. But he got the job done. So no one asked.

Nena, alone in her room at the International Hotel, looked at the newspaper spread out on her small table. It was the previous week’s Chronicle. She was wondering if she should go to Seattle and have the baby there, or wait for word from Kip. Maybe if she waited she would hear from him and receive more precise directions. As it was, it had already been a week and she had not heard a word. Kip should be leaving Alaska after a month, so she decided she’d better go there now. She had a Seattle number that Kip had left her, so she was sure his people would take care of her there. She got up and brushed aside the newspaper and scrambled for some pad with numbers, tore off the top piece, and left the rest on the newspaper itself, not far from the small article, a filler:

Invisible time by Janet Dawson[11]

Union Square

Greta watched the front door of the bakery on Geary Street, choosing her moment. When it came, it was brought by a middle-aged woman who wore a business suit and running shoes.

The woman stopped at the window, eyed the tempting display of cakes, cookies, and breads, then moved toward the door. Greta slipped up behind the woman, a pace back from the leather briefcase that swung from her left hand. The woman pushed open the door, her entry ringing the bell above the door.

The bakery clerk was a gangly young man wearing a silly white paper hat perched on his brown hair. He looked up from his post behind the counter and smiled at the woman. He didn’t see Greta.

Fine. That’s what she had in mind. Now that she was inside, Greta hovered near the door, keeping one eye on the grown-ups and the other eye on the bakery’s wares. Picking a target was tough. The goods were piled alluringly on counters and shelves and stand-alone displays. Finally she spotted her best shot, bags of day-old cookies mounded high in a basket at the edge of a low table, just a few steps from the door that led out to the busy sidewalk.

The bakery clerk’s head was down. He was busy boxing up a cake for a customer, a big man with a fat belly. Looked like he got plenty to eat, Greta told herself as she edged closer to the basket. Unlike some people she could name.

The customer Greta had followed into the bakery stood on the other side of the table, examining the loaves of dayold bread stacked there as she waited her turn at the counter. She hummed to herself and tapped one finger on the edge of the basket that held the cookies. Greta kept her head down, her blue eyes constantly shifting as she observed the bakery’s occupants. The woman moved closer. Greta thought she smelled good, like flowers, but she didn’t smell as good as the combined perfume of what came out of the bakery’s ovens.

Handing the clerk a twenty, the big man put a proprietary hand on top of the box containing his cake. While the clerk looked down at the drawer of the cash register, Greta snaked her hand toward the cookies. She grabbed two bags, whirled, and made for the door.

“Hey, little girl,” the woman in running shoes said, sounding surprised and shocked as she moved to stop this theft in progress. The little girl shoved the woman hard, knocking her into the table, and kept going, darting past a trio of teenagers who’d just opened the bakery door wide, giving Greta an open shot to freedom.

Once she was out on the sidewalk, she dodged to the right and ran up Geary Street, against the tide of pedestrians heading down toward Market Street, where BART and the San Francisco Municipal Railway would take them home. Intent on their own destinations, they took no notice of the skinny little girl in baggy blue jeans and a red sweatshirt, her dirty blond hair spilling to her shoulders.

Hank was waiting for her in Union Square, on the side close to the entrance to the Saint Francis Hotel and the cable cars that clanged up and down Powell Street. At his feet was a brown nylon bag with a zipper and a shoulder strap. It contained everything they owned — clothes, a couple of beat-up stuffed animals, and a picture of Mom.

“You get something?” he asked eagerly, brown eyes too big in his pinched face. He looked far more streetwise than a five-year-old boy should.

“Yeah. Cookies. Two bags. Looks like one of ’em is chocolate chip and the other is maybe oatmeal raisin. Did you get anything?”

“Pizza,” he said triumphantly, displaying a dented cardboard box. “With pepperoni. Some guy was sitting on that bench over there eating it, and he didn’t eat it all. He was gonna throw it in the trash. But he saw me watching him, so he gave it to me. Look, there’s two whole pieces left.”

“All right!” They high-fived it.

Then they hunkered down on the bench to eat their booty. People hurrying through the square paid no mind to the two children, any more than they did to the pigeons congregating around the statue of Victory atop the column in the center of the square. As she ate, Greta watched shoppers laden with bags scurry from store to store. Hank focused on the food with the single-minded appetite of a little boy who never gets enough to eat.

The store windows in Macy’s and Saks were full of glittering decorations, red, green, gold, and silver, signaling the approaching holiday season, and there was a big lighted Christmas tree in the square. But the passage of time meant little to Greta. She only knew that the days were shorter than they had been. The sunshine, what little there was of it, had turned thin and weak. Nights were longer and it was harder for her and her brother to stay warm. Today the wind had turned cold. From what little she could see of the late afternoon sky, it was dark gray.

It was going to rain, she was sure of it. She didn’t know what they’d do if it rained. They’d been sleeping in doorways and alleys all over the downtown area, constantly moving so the cops wouldn’t find them during their periodic sweeps to rid the streets of human litter.

If it rains we’ll have to go inside somewhere, Greta told herself. But it wasn’t safe to go down inside the BART station to spend the night. The BART cops would catch them. And there were too many weirdos down there already. Mom had always told Greta to take care of her little brother and to stay away from the weirdos.

She was doing the best she could, but she didn’t know how long she could keep it up. She was careful to limit their range to the Union Square area, north of Market Street. That’s where the nice stores, restaurants, and hotels were. Greta felt safer where the people were better-dressed. Sometimes those people gave them money, or food, like Hank’s pizza benefactor. South of Market and the Tenderloin were different, full of run-down buildings and scary people who would take their stuff, even during the day, though it was more dangerous after dark.

Greta couldn’t remember when Mom left. A few weeks, a month, two months, it didn’t matter. After a few days, the hours all ran together, like a stream of dirty water chasing debris down the sewer grate. She only remembered that it didn’t used to be like this.

Once she’d had a father, though lately it was hard to recall what he’d looked like. They’d lived in a nice apartment, two bedrooms so Greta had a room of her own. She had a baby doll and a crib her dad had made for her, pretty dresses. She remembered all of this. Or maybe she thought she remembered, because Mom had told her.

She knew that one day her father hadn’t come home. Although it was a long time ago, she remembered that day and the days afterward quite clearly. Mom crying, people bringing food to the apartment. They talked about God’s will and a car crash. Greta didn’t understand how or why God could have fixed it so that her father never came home, but no one bothered to explain it to her. She only knew that Mom missed him something terrible.

That was about the time Greta started kindergarten. Mom had a job working a cash register at some store, but it didn’t pay much. Not enough to make ends meet, Mom told Greta. At the time Greta wasn’t sure what that meant, but now the ends didn’t meet at all, she knew. That was when she and Mom went to live with Grandma.

Greta didn’t much like Grandma. The old woman seemed as ancient as a dinosaur, and not even half as cuddly as the stuffed stegosaurus her mom had given her. Grandma coughed a lot and smelled bad, puffing on foul-smelling cigarettes even if she did have some sickness with a long name. She had a sharp tongue on her, too, one she used to peel layers off Greta’s mom, until Mom didn’t have much spirit left.

Then Mom met Hank’s dad and got some of the sparkle back in her eyes. Of course, Grandma kicked them out because Mom took up with Hank’s dad. He was a different color than Mom, and Grandma said bad things about him, but Greta liked him a lot. He drove a cab and brought her chocolate, her favorite. And when Hank was born, a year or so later, she thought the baby was beautiful. She loved him and swore she’d always take care of him, no matter what. She just didn’t think it would be this soon.

Hank didn’t remember his dad much. He was not quite three when the cabdriver was shot to death. Greta heard one of the other cabbies at the funeral say Hank’s dad should have given the money to the punk who pulled a gun on him late one night. But Greta figured maybe the punk would have shot him anyway.

Hank’s dad had left something called life insurance, which was kind of strange to Greta, seeing he was dead. She’d have rather had Hank’s dad instead of money. It hadn’t been much anyway, and after a while there wasn’t any left.

She was nine and in the fourth grade when Hank’s dad got killed. She liked school, but the rest of her life was hard. She had to take care of Hank and Mom both. Hank because he was just a toddler, and Mom because she was drinking cheap, sweet-smelling wine in big bottles. Greta would come home from school and find her passed out on the bed of the tiny apartment, Hank roaming around on the floor with soiled pants.

Greta stayed home from school more often, missing classes. No one ever seemed to notice she was gone. Mom got fired from her job at the store and didn’t bother to get another job. She said she’d rather die than go back to live with Grandma, but as it turned out, Grandma had died by then and left all her money to some cousin.

They were evicted from that apartment. They moved to a run-down rickety hotel in the Tenderloin, where all three of them shared one room and a bath. Greta stopped going to school altogether, because looking after Mom and Hank was a full-time job. She’d cook their meager meals on a hot plate, put Mom to bed when she drank too much, and read to Hank so he could at least learn his letters. Then she’d put Hank to bed and try to get some sleep herself, which was hard to do. Down on the street, music spilled from the bars, and the hookers called to men cruising by in cars. The hookers worked for a tall man called a pimp, who hung out on the corner and kept an eye on the girls. Sometimes he hit them, and Greta would hear screams and shouts. She’d cover her ears with her hands, trying to keep the sounds out.

Then Mom started bringing men home, men who gave her money. Did that make her a hooker, too? Greta didn’t like to think about that. All she knew was that Mom would shut Hank and Greta out of the ugly room. They’d huddle together on the stairs that stank of urine, dodging the other residents of the hotel, those scary-looking weirdos Mom had warned Greta about in those few times when she wasn’t giggly and woozy from that stuff she was drinking.

One day Mom left. She said she was going to the store on the corner to get a bottle. But she never came back.

The manager of the hotel told Greta he was going to call social something to come and get the two children. But social something sounded like cops to Greta. She didn’t want to go to jail or wherever the cops would take them. She packed what little they had in the nylon bag and they left. Now they lived on the streets and it was getting harder to find food and stay warm.

Hank, his stomach filled by the pepperoni pizza and the cookies Greta had stolen from the bakery, drowsed next to her, leaning on her shoulder. Greta put one arm around him as she savored the last bite of her chocolate chip cookie. Then she felt someone’s eyes on her and looked quickly around, her senses honed by weeks of surviving on the urban landscape.

There he was, a man, staring at them across Union Square. She’d seen the man before, staring at them like this. He wore shapeless green coveralls, and stood hunched over the handle of a metal shopping cart. Inside the cart was a black plastic bag that clinked and clattered. Greta knew it was full of cans and bottles. The man had a black beard and a brown knit cap that didn’t quite disguise his long black hair.

Greta didn’t like the way he was always watching them. Then the man pushed his shopping cart toward them, the wheels squeaking. She jumped to her feet and shook Hank awake.

“Invisible time,” she whispered.

That meant it was time for them to disappear into the shadows. She picked up the nylon bag and slung it over her shoulder, then took Hank’s hand. The two children darted down the steps that led out of the square, across Geary Street, just as the green “walk” signal changed to a flashing amber “don’t walk.” As they angled to the left, Greta glanced back. The man in coveralls was following them, pushing his shopping cart into the crosswalk, ambling slowly as though he didn’t care that the light had changed to red and the people in the going-home cars were honking at him.

Greta tugged Hank’s arm and the two children rushed along Geary, dodging pedestrians. They turned right on Stockton, heading toward Market. Finally they pushed through a pair of big glass double doors and entered the first floor of the Virgin Megastore, sound pulsating around them.

They were in familiar territory now. The store was one of their favorite hangouts. It was brightly lit and full of loud music, where customers bought CDs, tapes, videos, and books. It was open late, and the children frequently spent the evening here, walking the aisles, riding the escalator up and down, and using the restroom on the third floor. Greta figured they’d lost the man with the shopping cart, but even if they hadn’t, he wouldn’t be able to follow them in here.

“I’m sleepy,” Hank told her on their fourth trip up the escalator. “Can we find a place to spend the night soon?”

Greta was tired, too, but she didn’t like to admit it. Watching and moving all the time took its toll, but she was afraid to let her guard down. She wished they could find a spot somewhere in this bright, warm store, but she knew that was a bad idea.

“Let’s go to the bathroom first,” she said. “Then we’ll find a place.”

They detoured to the third floor, past the videos and into the bookstore. The restrooms were located down a short hallway near the store’s café. Greta watched Hank dart into the men’s room, then pushed open the door marked with a woman’s silhouette. Sometimes, if they didn’t know the place, she’d take him with her into the women’s side, where they’d barricade themselves into the larger stall usually reserved for handicapped people. But they’d been here before and hadn’t had any problems. Greta felt as safe here as she felt anywhere, which wasn’t saying much.

When she came out of the restroom Hank was waiting for her, bouncing in time to the music that blared from the overhead speakers. Greta shifted the nylon bag from one shoulder to the other and they walked toward the café.

“You kids okay?”

The speaker was a young woman, wearing thick, clunky shoes and black tights under a short black skirt. Above that she wore a tight black T-shirt with the store’s name printed across her tiny round breasts. Her hair was cut short and dyed an odd bright pink. She had little gold rings arrayed up and down both ears, and a glittery jewel in her nose. Greta had seen her before, once working behind a cash register on the second floor and another time waiting tables in the store’s café.

Hank stared at her, transfixed. Greta started looking around for the quickest and shortest way out.

“I’ve seen you before,” the young woman said, talking quietly as though she were afraid they would bolt. “You come in and wander around for hours. Don’t you have any place to stay?” When neither of the children answered, she continued, her voice low and seductive. “I’ll bet you’re hungry. Would you like something to eat? Come back to the café. I’ll give you some gingerbread.”

From the corner of her eye, Greta saw something move, a skinny form in a T-shirt that resolved itself into another store employee, this one a young man with white hair. Trap, she thought. They wouldn’t be able to come in here again. If they ever got out.

“Invisible time,” she said with a hiss.

She grabbed Hank’s arm and ran straight at the young woman, who held out her arms as though to catch them. Greta shoved her hard and the young woman fell back against a bin full of CDs. The young man who’d come to her assistance looked startled as the children darted past him. As they ran toward the down escalator, Greta heard voices behind her, all jumbled as the two sales clerks spoke together.

“... Almost had them.”

“... Told you... bad idea. Shoulda called the cops.”

“Poor little things... back tomorrow night... try again.”

Won’t be back, Greta told herself as she and Hank hurried down the escalator, heedless of bumping the customers who stood still on the moving stairs. Not safe anymore. Too bad. She hated to lose any shelter, however temporary.

It had started to rain while they were inside the store. Hand-in-hand, Greta and Hank rushed along the wet pavement, until they found themselves heading up Market Street, pushed along with a tide of people. At Sixth they crossed Market, wet and cold, and headed farther away from the bright holiday glitter of the city’s main shopping area and into the dingy, neon-pierced blocks where the Tenderloin collided with the area south of Market. Here were lots of people sitting in doorways, bundled up against the rain. Music blared from bars. Hookers, some of them barely older than Greta, called to the passing cars.

These grown-ups scared Greta, and she quickly detoured down a side street where it was much quieter. She found a wide doorway, recessed from the street. It looked like a good place to spend the night. She set the nylon bag down to use as a pillow. But then she spotted the man in green coveralls, back the way they’d come and moving toward them. He was close enough so that she was sure she could hear the clink and clatter of the bottles and cans in his garbage bag, the squeaking wheels of his shopping cart.

They kept moving, Hank stumbling along sleepily at her side. The nylon bag seemed as heavy as lead, and Greta was so tired she thought she couldn’t put another foot in front of her. Still she thought she could hear the shopping cart following them, squeaking and rattling as they fled through the wet curtain of rain.

Then she saw something flicker. Was she imagining it? No, it came from inside a big, dark two-story building with broken glass windows. Greta crept closer and peered through the nearest window. But she couldn’t see much, just something red and gold glowing farther back in the dark building. She squinted and could just make out some figures nearby.

A fire, she thought. Just the word sounded like a sanctuary, warm and inviting. But there were people, and they could be bad people.

She heard a squeaking noise somewhere back the way they had come, and made her choice. Quickly she boosted Hank up to the window, then followed him through, dragging the nylon bag with her. She held her finger to her mouth and tiptoed forward, trying not to make any noise as she moved closer to the fire.

She saw three grown-ups, two men and a woman. They’d spread big pieces of cardboard on the concrete floor of the empty warehouse to cut the chill. On top of these the grownups had constructed their nests of sleeping bags and blankets. In the center they’d built a fire with whatever fuel they could find. Now it danced, red and gold, crackling and popping and hissing. The grown-ups talked in low voices, occasionally laughing as they drank from a bottle, its neck visible at the top of its brown paper bag wrapping. They passed it among themselves, and one of them leaned toward the fire to stir something that was bubbling in a big, shiny kettle, something that smelled rich and savory like the soup Mom used to make.

Greta’s foot encountered a piece of broken glass and sent it skittering across the concrete. The resulting tinkle heralded their arrival. The grown-ups grouped around the fire turned, seeking the source of the noise.

“Well, what have we here?” a voice boomed at them. It belonged to a big man with a white beard, bundled up in several layers of clothing, his eyes glittering in the firelight. “A couple of little angels with very dirty faces?”

“More like a couple of pups looking for a teat and a warm place to sleep.” The woman who spoke had a hard face and hard eyes, but she reached for a tin mug and the ladle that protruded from the kettle on the fire. She spooned some of the hot liquid into the mug.

“Don’t be feeding strays,” complained the second man, a pale, skinny fellow dressed in a dirty gray sweater. He reclined on a gray duffel bag and folded his arms in front of him.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she snapped. Then she held out the mug and beckoned at the children. “Come here. It’s vegetable soup. We made it ourselves and it’s damned good, if I do say so myself.”

Hank and Greta stared, mesmerized by the smell and the sight. Then they moved into the warm circle around the fire and sat at the foot of the woman’s sleeping bag. Greta reached for the mug, felt the warmth on her hands, smelled the broth. Then she held the mug out to Hank. He drank noisily, hungrily. Yet he was careful to leave half the soup for his sister. He handed her the mug and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

“You take care of him, don’t you,” the woman said, as Greta sipped warm soup from the mug. “Bet you do a good job, too. My name’s Elva. This here’s Wally.” She pointed at the big man with the beard. “And this bag of bones is Jake.”

Jake snorted, and sank farther into the folds of his sleeping bag. He took a long pull from the bottle, then passed the libation to Wally. “What the hell you kids doing out here all by yourselves?”

“What are any of us doing out here?” Wally boomed, his voice echoing in the dark recesses of the warehouse. “Trying to stay warm, dry, and fed.” He tipped back the bottle and grinned at the two children across the glowing heat of the fire. “Look how skinny these little angels are. Stick with us, kids. We’ll fatten you up.”

Wary as she was after weeks of living on the streets, Greta was also tired. She felt exhaustion creep over her as the warmth of the soup and fire crept over her body. Already Hank was asleep, his little body burrowed into her side, like a puppy pillowed on its mother’s belly.

“Look at ’em,” Elva said. “Just babies. What you got in that bag, girl?”

“Clothes.” Greta’s tongue was getting tangled up in the word.

“Not even a sleeping bag, and winter coming on.” Elva shook her head. She pulled a raggedy square of cloth that looked like a piece of an old blanket from the depths of her sleeping bag. Then she scooted forward and used it to cover Hank, fussing with the edge as she tucked it around his neck, just the way Mom used to. “Where’s your folks?”

“Gone,” Greta said, and the word seemed to echo around the warehouse.

Elva frowned and looked at her companions. “All alone? How long you been out here, girl?”

Greta found that she didn’t have strength enough to answer. She felt all her caution fall to the onslaught of sleep.

“We can’t be baby-sitting a couple of kids.”

Greta’s eyes were shut, but she identified the voice. It belonged to Jake, the skinny one.

“No one’s asking you to look after ’em. They can go with me.”

That was Elva, the woman. Greta opened her eyes just a little bit. It was morning, cold gray light filtering into the warehouse. The fire was out, cold gray ashes swirling along the concrete floor. Greta felt warm, though. The children were tucked into Elva’s sleeping bag. Hank was next to Greta, curled up in a ball and still asleep.

“Just slow you down,” Jake growled as he rolled up his sleeping bag. “Make you a target for the cops. They don’t even look like they’re yours.”

“What the hell do you know?” Elva scowled at him. “All anybody’s gonna see is some poor homeless woman with a couple of kids she can’t feed. Which ain’t far from the truth. With Christmas coming on, people feel generous and guilty. I’ll just park the three of us out in front of San Francisco Centre where all those rich people ride that fancy curved escalator up to Nordstrom. You just see how many handouts I get. Take my word, these kids’ll be worth their weight in greenbacks.”

“More trouble than they’re worth, you ask me,” Jake grumbled as he tied his sleeping bag with rope.

“Nobody asked you,” Elva shot back.

“Now, friends, friends. Let’s not come to blows, whether with words or fists.” That was Wally, the big guy with the beard. “I agree with Elva. We should care for these little angels. I’m sure we’ll be handsomely rewarded. Yes, indeed.”

Wally laughed. He was pretending to be nice, Greta decided, but he wasn’t. She didn’t like the way his eyes glittered when he looked at her and Hank. She abandoned all pretense of sleep and sat up. The nylon bag was no longer beside her, but next to Elva, who had rummaged through its contents. Greta snatched up the picture of Mom and hugged the frame to her chest.

“That your mama?” Elva asked. “She was real pretty.” The woman reached over and shook Hank awake. “Let’s put another layer of clothes on you, ’cause it’s cold out there this morning.”

The three grown-ups stashed their sleeping bags in a small room in the bowels of the abandoned warehouse and set out with the two children. In the bleak daylight the south of Market neighborhood didn’t look as scary as it had last night, just dirty and down at the heels.

Jake set off on his own, heading up Mission Street, but Wally stayed with Elva and the children until they reached Market. Then he bid them an elaborate and flowery farewell, lingering until Elva told him to get the hell on with it. He bowed, crossed the street, and headed for the Tenderloin.

Then Elva took Hank and Greta another block down Market and did just what she’d said she’d do. She took a position in front of the San Francisco Centre and started cadging handouts from well-heeled shoppers. Soon she had enough money to send the children across Market to the fast-food burger place. Hank ate two cheeseburgers and a big order of French fries all by himself.

“I like Elva,” he declared, wiping ketchup from his mouth.

He doesn’t know things the way I do, Greta thought. He’s just a baby, not experienced, like me. I’m not so sure but what we’re better off on our own.

She brooded as she finished her hamburger. Then she cleared off the table and stepped up to the counter to buy another one, for Elva.

But even if Greta had her doubts about staying with the trio from the warehouse, it was easy to slip into the routine, the next day and the day after. They worked the streets with Elva during the day, going from store to store, hotel to hotel, then met Jake and Wally back at the warehouse. Wally found a sleeping bag for the two children to share, and each day the three grown-ups managed to find enough food to put into the kettle. It was so easy to feel comfortable and safe, huddled in the warm circle of the fire on the warehouse’s concrete floor. In the morning they’d roll up their sleeping bags and stash their gear in the little room, then head out for a day on the streets.

The two children had been staying at the warehouse for a couple of weeks when Greta saw Wally talking with the tall man from the Tenderloin, the pimp who had all those hookers working for him. She and Hank and Elva were working the Geary Theatre that day. It was a natural, Elva told them. Theater patrons left the comfortable confines where they’d seen a seasonal matinee of A Christmas Carol, and stepped onto the dirty city streets and came face-to-face with a couple of contemporary urchins.

“Guilt and generosity,” Elva said confidently. “It’ll do it every time.”

After the matinee Elva led them down Taylor toward Market Street, through the Tenderloin, where Greta saw Wally. He spotted the children and waved. Why was Wally talking to that awful pimp man? Why did Wally’s eyes glitter like that, above his white beard? She didn’t like it. Especially since Wally came back to the warehouse that night with a big bottle of brandy, evidently the kind Jake and Elva liked a lot, because they drank the whole bottle that night, laughing loudly and acting silly, so drunk they finally passed out and Greta had to finish making dinner under Wally’s watchful eyes.

When she woke up the next morning, her head pillowed on the nylon bag, Jake and Elva were still asleep, a couple of lumps in their sleeping bags, snoring like they were sawing logs.

But Wally was gone. So was Hank.

Greta kicked her way out of the sleeping bag and put on her shoes. “Hank?” she called. There was no answer. She darted around the bottom floor of the warehouse, looking for her brother, getting more frantic as she looked in all the shadowy places.

On her third circuit she encountered Wally, who was making his way back into the warehouse with a bag and a large container that smelled like coffee. “What’s the matter, little angel?” he asked jovially.

“Hank’s gone,” she cried.

“I’m sure he’s just wandered off.” Wally waggled the bag at her. “Doughnuts, little angel. Jelly doughnuts and chocolate bars. I know you like chocolate. Want one?”

“He wouldn’t wander off,” Greta said stubbornly. “He knows he’s supposed to stick close to me.”

Greta ran back to where Jake and Elva still lay snoring. She shook Elva, but the woman wouldn’t wake up.

“Oh, I wouldn’t bother,” Wally said, placing a heavy hand on her shoulder. “When those two get a snootful of brandy it would take an earthquake to wake them. Maybe two earthquakes. Have a doughnut. We want to fatten you up.”

Fatten me up for what? Greta glared at him. “I don’t want a doughnut. I have to look for Hank.”

“Have you looked on the second floor? Maybe he went exploring up there.”

“How would he get there?” Greta knew there was another floor above this one but she hadn’t seen any stairs or an elevator, not that an elevator would work in this place.

“Why, there’s some stairs down at the other end, next to what used to be the elevator shaft.” Wally laughed and pointed into the dark bowels of the warehouse. “Wait, I’ll come with you.”

Greta ran ahead, frantic with worry about Hank. She found the stairs and clambered up them, calling for her brother. She heard Wally behind her, chuckling to himself as he climbed the stairs.

Hank wasn’t on the second floor of the warehouse. Or if he was, he wasn’t answering her. Greta felt tears prickling behind her eyes as she searched the big empty space, skirting the hole near the stairs, where Wally said there used to be an elevator.

“Why, look at this,” Wally said. She looked in the direction he was pointing. There was a doorway, open, with blackness beyond. “There’s rooms back there. Maybe that’s where your brother’s gone.”

She didn’t trust the bearded man, but she had to find Hank. She walked toward the doorway and peered into the dimly lit chamber, her eyes adjusting, picking out shapes. This part of the warehouse had been used as offices, about a quarter of the floor carved up into cubicles by partitions. There was a door on the far side next to a dirty window.

“Hank?” she called, her voice echoing against the walls.

Was that a voice she heard, just a whimper? Maybe he had wandered in here and gotten hurt or something. She moved into the divided-up room, heard Wally step in after her, then whirled in alarm as she heard the door shut. Wally laughed. A few seconds later this portion of the room was brightened by the circular glow from a big flashlight.

In that instant she saw Hank. He was under an old metal desk, his hands tied to one of the legs with a length of rope. He’d been crying, but he stopped when he saw Greta.

She ran to Hank and scrabbled at the rope with her fingers. It wasn’t tied very well. If she had enough time, she could get it loose. But did she have enough time?

She turned and shouted at Wally. “What have you done to him?”

Wally laughed, a nasty sound. “Caught me a pair of plump little partridges, that’s what. You and him both.”

“What are you talking about?” Greta demanded.

“Been talking to a man. The kind of man who’ll pay good money for a couple of fat little angels like you. Oh, yes. The kind that likes little boys will have a good time with your little brother. Then there’s the kind that likes sweet little virgins like you.”

Wally shifted the flashlight from his right hand to his left. Greta saw his right hand go into his pocket and pull out a handful of greenbacks. “This is just seed money. I get the rest when I deliver the goods, when the man comes through that fire escape door in a few minutes.”

A few minutes. That’s all the time she had. Wally was between her and the door. Greta squatted and tugged at the rope securing Hank’s hands, her fingers working the knot. There, it was loosening. Just a little bit more, that’s all she needed.

“Look at him,” she cried, making her voice teary. “You got it so tight it’s cutting his hands. That’s why he’s been crying.”

Hank didn’t need to be told twice. He started to wail. Greta joined in, still fumbling with the rope.

“Shut up, both of you,” Wally said, shoving the money back into his pocket. “Shut up, I tell you.”

Wally walked to the desk and knelt, setting the flashlight aside so he could adjust the rope. Quick as lightning, Greta scooped up the flashlight and brought it down hard on Wally’s head. He bellowed and grabbed for her as he tried to get to his feet. She slithered from his grasp, then hit him again, and he went down. She hit him a third time, and he moaned. Then she turned to Hank and helped her little brother pull free of his bonds.

She seized her brother’s arm and tugged him toward the door. When they reached it, she jerked it open and they ran for the stairwell. Hank had just reached the top step when Greta was caught from behind. Wally was cursing in her ear as he lifted her off the floor. She wriggled in his arms, almost gagging at the smell of him, and sank her teeth into one of the hands that held her. He screamed as she tasted blood. He dropped her.

She regained her balance and turned to face him as he came at her again, aiming her fist at the crotch of his baggy pants, at the place Mom said it would hurt if you hit a man. He screamed again when she hit him, falling backward. But he didn’t fall onto the floor. He kept going back, and down, into the open elevator shaft.

“He went splat,” Hank said when she found him at the bottom of the stairwell.

“Good. I hope he broke his damn neck.”

Greta looked dispassionately at the motionless body lying on top of the rusted metal at the bottom of the elevator shaft, about three feet below the first floor of the warehouse. Blood trickled from his mouth. When he didn’t move, she climbed down and reached into his pocket, pulling out the folding money he’d been showing off. He wouldn’t be needing it anymore.

Greta shoved the money into her own pocket, climbed out of the shaft, and took Hank’s arm. They ran through the warehouse, back to where Jake and Elva were still sleeping it off next to the gray ashes of the fire. Greta scooped up the bag of doughnuts and zipped them inside the brown nylon bag. No sense letting food go to waste.

“Where we going now?” Hank asked.

She slung the bag over her shoulder and headed for the street. “Invisible time.”