The Murderer's Daughter

Chapter 39

Grace stopped in Monterey, finding a casual fish restaurant where, surrounded by families and older couples, she fueled up on grilled salmon, steak fries, and a pot of serious coffee. Thirty-five minutes later, she was back on the road.

Refreshed, purposeful, spotting no cops, she sped.

She pulled into Berkeley just before nine p.m., encountering clear, starlit skies and plenty of street life. A welcome sense of familiarity took hold, though she hadn’t been here in years. But back in her twenties, she had flown up fairly frequently, delivering papers, co-authored with Malcolm, at oh-so-earnest symposia.

He had no professional need to do any of that but indulged in occasional scholarly gregariousness. Grace’s purpose had been hanging out with him. She recalled the inevitable after-parties with a smile. Standing on the sidelines, glass of white wine in hand, as Malcolm regaled a generally sour lot of academicians with anecdotes plucked from a life lived well.

He’d been so different from them, a redwood among dry weeds.

In her free time, Grace had explored the university town, always finding it an interesting study in pretense. Berkeley was blessed with gorgeous, rolling topography, bordered by hills where trees and shrubs thrived with little care, graced with stunning views of ocean and bay and bridge, everything centered on the vast emerald spread of a venerable campus.

High-end restaurants abounded — Shattuck Avenue’s sobriquet was the Gourmet Ghetto. And neighborhoods like Berkeley Hills and Claremont sported grand old houses dating from an age when Northern California was the financial hub of the state. Despite all that, the city seemed to cultivate shabbiness, like one of those old-money dowagers pretending they hadn’t lucked into a life of privilege.

Being overrun with students and hippie-anarchist-nihilist alums who refused to leave didn’t help. Nor did a political climate that thrived on class envy and political correctness and welcomed the homeless without elevating them.

Where Berkeley’s unique ethos really hit you was when you got behind the wheel. Five minutes after rolling into town, Grace had to brake suddenly to avoid pulverizing a pedestrian who leaped off the sidewalk into nocturnal traffic.

A kid, probably a sophomore, long hair streaming above his chiseled spoiled-brat face as he grinned and flipped her off and continued sprinting straight into the next lane of autos. More sudden stops, more one-fingered salutes.

Two blocks later, two girls did the same thing.

I walk, therefore I am virtuous and own the streets and fuck you gas guzzlers!

In Berkeley, even basic locomotion was a political statement.

Grace continued to explore from behind the wheel. Even more street life on the main drags of Telegraph and University. She veered into quieter nocturnal territory, cruising toward the building on Center Street where Roger Wetter Senior and his adopted son had established their headquarters years ago.

Too dark to make out details from across the street. The six-story structure faced a flat, sparse park ringed with trees but scruffy at the center. Beyond the grass stood the dark bulk of Berkeley High.

Seeing the school reminded Grace of Roger Wetter Senior’s enlistment of young thugs to intimidate elderly earthquake victims. Had he found his troops right here?

Something else struck her: Knife-wielding Mr. Benn would’ve been a young man back then. The likelihood he’d been part of the scam seemed stronger.

As she idled, a figure skulking through the park caught her eye. Stooped, emaciated man, lurching drunkenly, holding something in a paper bag. She drove on, hung a U, parked close to the building.

Six flat stories of characterless night-gray stucco. Ragged black holes in place of doors and windows, the roof mostly gone, rafters tilting upward like splintered chicken bones.

Blocking entry was a chain-link fence. Behind the diamond-shaped holes of the barrier Grace made out an earthmoving machine.

A white placard on the fence was too far to be legible. Movement to her left made her turn quickly. The lurching guy was getting closer. She prepared to leave but he headed up the block, stumbling drunkenly.

Grace hopped out of her SUV and examined the sign. Demolition notice, some sort of government-funded project.

If Alamo Adjustments still existed, she’d have to look elsewhere to find it.

Or maybe she wouldn’t. Because it was Mr. Venom she really wanted and if he still owned the structure and dropped by to oversee the government-funded transformation of his property...

Shuffling sounds behind her. Hand in her bag, she rotated carefully.

The lurching figure from the park was back, approaching her, hand out.

Old, bent-over guy reeking of booze. She gave him a buck and he said, “Bless you,” and moved on.

She continued driving around, taking her time as she searched for appropriate lodging, was intrigued by a drab-looking place smack in the middle of the University Avenue bustle. Arching green neon letters crowned the entry.

No accommodation of the youth culture? Then she edged closer to the sign and saw the out-of-commission S.

The Olds Hotel occupied a mixed-use building with storefronts at street level and rooms above. A black-painted arrow directing the weary traveler to the top of a grimy flight of concrete stairs.

Grace circled the block. The Olds offered an outdoor parking lot in back, mostly empty now and guarded by a flimsy wooden yardarm. Entry was simple: Push a button and drive through. Exit required a token from the management.

Grace returned to the front of the hotel and examined the businesses below. Two stores to the left, a vintage-clothing store might be of use. Not so the cut-rate hair salon next door.

To the right of the hotel entrance was perfection: a photocopy/self-print outlet advertising discounts for theses and dissertations. More to the point: The place was open twenty-four hours a day.

Grace parked illegally and zipped in. Ignored by a student-aged boy engrossed in Game of Thrones, she printed herself a new batch of business cards on cheaper paper than those proffered by M. S. Bluestone-Muller, Security Consultant.

claimed a Boston number that would lead to a long-defunct pay phone in the lobby of the main branch of the Cambridge public library. Back in her student days, Grace had used the booth to phone a boy at Emerson, a would-be theater director whom she’d met in a dive bar. He’d swallowed her story about being an L.A.-based aspiring actress and she’d slept with him three times, barely remembered his face. But the booth’s phone number remained etched in her memory. Funny the things you held on to.

Returning to the Escape, she drove around to the rear of the Olds Hotel and toted her suitcase up the hotel’s rear staircase, also concrete and every bit as grungy.

At the top was a musty-smelling lime-green hallway lined with doors painted to match and carpeted in wrinkled khaki-colored polyester.

At the front of the building was a glassed-in reception desk. The clerk was no older than a sophomore, Indian or Pakistani or Bengali, and like his compadre down in the photocopy shop, he couldn’t have cared less about Grace’s arrival, choosing instead to continue texting manically.

When Grace informed him, plaintively, that her wallet had been stolen along with her credit cards, would he please accept her business card for I.D. and cash as payment, his thumbs barely faltered as he muttered, “Uh-huh.”

“What’s the rate for a room?”

Click click click click. “Fifty a night, five extra for cleanup service. We only have some a floor up.”

“Fine, and no need for cleanup,” said Grace, forking over two hundred dollars.

The kid ignored the fresh new card. “What’s your name?”

“Sarah Muller.”

“Write it down, okay?” Sliding the log book toward her.

She scrawled, he handed her a key attached to a miniature white-plastic milk bottle. “You want orange juice in the morning? We don’t serve breakfast but I can tell them to leave you juice but it’s not fresh or anything, just bottled.”

“Also not necessary. Any coffee?”

The kid aimed world-weary eyes at the front steps while continuing to click away. “Peets, Local 123, Café Yesterday, Guerrilla Café. Want me to keep going?”

“Thanks,” said Grace. “May I assume you’ve got WiFi?”

“Down here it’s okay,” said the kid. “Up where you’ll be it sometimes sucks.” His fingers moved faster. He paused to read a return text. Laughed weirdly.

Grace inspected the milk bottle for a room number: 420.

The kid said, “It’s just Forty-Two, I don’t know why they add a zero.”

“Top floor?”

“There’s only this and one more.” He typed some more. Said, “Clown,” then “Loser,” then “Asshole.”

The room was surprisingly large, smelling of Lysol and stale pizza, with a pair of twin beds covered in garish floral spreads separated by a particleboard nightstand. A Gideon Bible with most of the pages gone filled the stand’s drawer. Two beds but only one pillow, on the right-hand mattress, lumpy as a skin rash, tossed haphazardly.

The walls were stippled green plaster. Floral drapes that matched the bedspreads failed to close completely over a cracked, yellow window shade. Despite that, no annoying light or noise. The window faced the parking lot, shielding Grace from the din on University.

One dresser, of the same flimsy fake wood. Dead silverfish in the top drawer, the others were clean and lined with butcher paper.

The bathroom was cramped, tiled in cracked white hexagons splotched with gray and yellow and rust. A skimpy white towel was embroidered OH. The tub would accommodate a toddler. The shower sputtered brown until it finally diluted to a clear trickle. The lidless toilet hissed.

Perfect.

Grace went to sleep.

She was up at seven thirty the following morning, feeling amazingly refreshed. Trying her laptop, she found the WiFi deficient as advertised. Enduring a lukewarm shower, she dressed in jeans, rubber-soled low-heeled boots, and a charcoal-colored cotton sweater, leaving her wigs in her luggage. Stuffing her little Beretta and its ammo into the center of her suitcase, she swathed both in layers of clothes.

Far from burglar-proof but a lowlife would have to be looking.

The Glock and the laptop ended up at the bottom of her bag.

Time for nourishment.

Nippy morning, University was already filled with foot traffic.

One thing about college kids and self-styled rebels: They loved to eat. The choice of cuisines was staggering and Grace finally settled for a Parma ham, Bermuda onion, and Anaheim chili omelet, thick slabs of sourdough bread imported from across the Bay in San Francisco, a glass of fresh-squeezed mandarin juice replete with pulp and seeds, and decent coffee at a café that claimed to be local, organic, sustainable, and opposed to any form of military activity.

Sustained gastronomically, she checked out the used-clothing store near her hotel, found a navy peacoat that didn’t smell too bad for thirty bucks. Shifting to a bin of hats, she found the odor test tougher to pass but finally came up with an oversized, soft wool gray ski cap that had bypassed mold and must. Her nose did pick up the faintest nuance of hairspray, and she hoped her predecessor had been a stylish, meticulous girl. Inspecting the interior nap for nits or anything else remotely disturbing, she found nothing untoward and bargained the cashier down to five bucks.

The cap slipped over her head, totally concealing her cropped hair. Devoid of makeup and newly clad, she was Berkeley Anonymous.

Leaving the Escape in the hotel lot, she picked up the Examiner from a street stand and walked to Center Street. In daylight, the park across from the condemned building wasn’t half bad, the grass greener than she’d expected, the trees at the periphery huge and lush and decently shaped. In the background, kids streamed near the high school, making predictable adolescent noises.

No activity behind the chain-link fence. Grace took a close look at the construction notice. The building had been condemned and permits had been granted for a project titled Municipal Green WorkSpace. Lots of official stamps, city, county, and state. Handwritten additions in blue marker listed the contractor as DRL-Earthmove. Date of completion was eighteen months in the future but given the lack of progress that seemed fanciful.

Modifications included “seismic retrofitting.” Like a too-easy punch line, the irony was unsatisfying.

Grace crossed the street to the park. Only three benches in the entire acreage: a pair under the trees now occupied by snoozing homeless men, and one, unused, with a slightly oblique view of the building site.

She sat down, hid behind the newspaper, took occasional, unfruitful peeks.

Nearly an hour passed and she was about to leave, fixing to return later in the afternoon, when a voice behind her said, “Help a friend?”

She turned slowly. The man hovering behind the bench was dressed shabbily and his skin bore the rare-steak glaze that typified life on the street.

His hand was out, no subtlety there. But not the lurcher who’d scored her dollar last night, returning for an encore.

This guy was much shorter, maybe five three or four, and slightly hunchbacked with cottony white chin whiskers, equally skimpy muttonchops, and a milky left eye.

Grace gave him a buck.

He looked at the bill. “Thank you profoundly, daughter, but that won’t even purchase coffee in this foodie burg.”

Grace tried to stare him down. He smiled, did a little jig. Winked with his good eye. Surprisingly acute eye, the color of a clear Malibu sky. On closer inspection, she saw that his frayed, baggy outfit had once been high-quality: gray herringbone jacket, brown Shetland sweater vest, white-on-white shirt, droopy olive twill pants, cuffs dragging in the dirt. Even this close, no booze reek.

And his nails were clean.

He stopped dancing. “Not sufficiently impressive? Care for a tango?” Bending low, he dipped an imaginary partner and, despite herself, Grace smiled. He was the first person to entertain her since... in a long time.

She gave him a ten.

He said, “Indeed! For that, I’ll fetch both of us coffee!”

“I’m fine, treat yourself.”

He took a deep bow. “Thank you, daughter.”

Grace watched him scurry off and decided to stick it out on the bench for a while. As if the old tramp had revved up her endurance.

After another thirty-five minutes with nothing to show for her patience, she was folding up her paper and making sure her Glock hadn’t shifted awkwardly in her bag when Little Mr. One-Eye returned and thrust something at her.

Fresh-baked croissant, the aroma was wonderful. Set neatly on waxed paper in a small cardboard box. A bakery called Chez something.

She said, “Thanks but I’m really not hungry.”

“Tsk,” said One-Eye. “Save it for later.”

“It’s okay, enjoy.” She began to rise.

The bent old man said, “Why are you studying that hellhole?”

“What hellhole?”

He pointed to the condemned building. “The boondoggle, the scama-rama, the suck-on-the-public-teat extravaganza. You’ve been watching it since you got here. Or am I mistaken?”

“It’s a con, huh?”

“May I?” He pointed to the bench.

Grace shrugged.

“Not much of a welcome,” said the little man, “but beggars-choosers-and-such.” He plopped down as far from her as possible, got to work on the croissant, nibbling daintily and constantly brushing away crumbs.

A fastidious bum. His shoes were battered wingtips, resoled countless times.

When he finished eating, he said, “What was your major? You did go to college?”

“I did.”

“Here?”

“No.”

“What did you study?”

Why bother lying? “Psychology.”

“Then you know about the Hebbian synapse, Friedrich August von Hayek.”

Grace shook her head.

“Kids today.” One-Eye laughed. “If I told you I studied economics with Hayek, you wouldn’t believe me so I won’t waste my breath.”

“Why wouldn’t I believe you?”

“Well, I did, daughter,” he said, grinning. Intent on a monologue. “Had no problem with the man’s accent — Friedrich the Great. Though others did. Try to disprove that fact of nature, daughter, and you’ll come out on the losing end, I’m telling you nothing but truth. You may be cagey about your alleged education but I have nothing to hide. I took courses in a swirl of eclecticism down in La La Land, the sixties, before Leary and Laing made madness socially acceptable.”

He tapped his own head. “Born too early, by then they were talking to me in here, forcing me to ignore them. I eschewed food and water for stretches, I went without female companionship for a century, I traversed campus wearing paper bags on my feet and avoiding the I Ching. Despite a closet full of haberdashery and an Anglican mother. Nevertheless, I learned my social science.”

He waited. Grace said nothing. “Oh, bosh,” he finally said. “Ook-la. Palm trees and pedagogy?”

Grace stared.

One-Eye exhaled in frustration. “Ookla? Numero Two campus? Predicated on this place being Uno.”

It took a moment for Grace to decode that. “UCLA.”

“Finally! Sí, sí, the wilds of Westwood, back before the hippies and the libertines took over. Before everyone talked about social justice but no one did anything about it. More like so-called justice. Or should I say SoCal justice and we all know about the morality of manipulative movie moguls.”

A withered hand gestured toward the construction site. “Case in point. Green. Ha. So is snot.”

“You don’t approve.”

“It’s not up to me to approve, daughter, the die is cast.”

“For the project.”

He shifted closer to her, brushed away nonexistent crumbs. “It’s perfidy grounded in hypocrisy, mendacity, and two-facedness. The prior owner of that rather homely pile of mud was a villain who had the good graces to die but also the poor judgment to sire a second-generation villain who trumpets social justice and greases the palms of forward-leaning politicians. Same old story, no? Caligula, Putin, Aaron Burr, name any petty alderman of Chicago at random.”

“Politics corrupts—”

“Think about it, daughter: You inherit a decrepit pile of bricks, what should you do with it... hmm, shall I ponder — I know, let’s sell it to the city at an inflated price then propose a snot-green project to build cubicles for yet more bureaucrats and manage to insinuate ourself as the builder.”

Now Grace was on full alert. “One-stop shopping, huh? Doesn’t look as if much has been done.”

He frowned. “Was a time a man could find refuge in there.”

“In the building?”

Three hard nods. “Was a time.”

So the place had served as a squat. Grace said, “When did that stop?”

“When the family tradition recommenced.”

“What tradition?”

“Have you not been paying attention?”

Grace shot him a helpless look.

He said, “All right, I’ll slow down and enunciate — where did you say you went to college?”

Grace said, “Boston U.”

“Not Harvard-grade, eh? All right, you’re too young to remember this but once upon a time an unpleasant shifting of tectonic plates wrought devastation upon the land upon which we now sit. Bridges crumbled, a baseball game was interrupted, and if that’s not spitting in the eyes of all that is patriotic and sacred, I don’t know what is—”

“The Loma Prieta quake.”

The old man’s single functional eye widened. “A student of history. At BU, no less.”

Grace said, “It’s not exactly ancient history.”

“Daughter, nowadays anything prior to five minutes ago is ancient. Including the messages transferred into here by the powers that be.” Tapping his forehead again.

He stood, smoothed his trousers, sat back down. “So... the plates shifted and the dishes shattered. Heh heh! Then the second disaster ensued, villains profiteering as they always do when collectivism and the collective unconscious collude to triumph over the will of man and by man I mean both sexes so please no whinnying about sexism, daughter.”

Grace looked at the construction site. “The people involved with that profiteered from the quake?”

“Insurance,” he said. “Essentially, a game of chance with infrequent payoffs. But even in Vegas machines pay off occasionally.”

“They didn’t.”

He crooked a thumb in the direction of the high school. “The young are essentially unsocialized savages, correct? Lords, flies, et cetera, if anyone should qualify for capital punishment it’s fourteen-year-olds. But one villain easily sniffs out another and those Fly Lords were entrusted with the task of pressuring the common folk not to pursue recompense.”

“The guy in charge of that project hired students to intimidate—”

“They might as well have worn suicide vests. These were terrorists, nothing more, nothing less, and they enabled the villain to buy up distressed properties for an off-key song and sell them back to the you-know-who.”

“The government,” said Grace.

“Agency A, Agency B, Agency Zeta — that one implanted an iridium electrode right here and attempted to convert me to Islam.” He tapped his right temple. “Fortunately, I caught on and managed to deactivate it.”

He yawned, dropped his head, began snoring.

Grace said, “Nice talking to you.”

She was a few yards away when he said, “Anytime.”