Trophies And Dead Things

Fourteen

I seldom visited Berkeley anymore-not because I didn't like the town, but because long ago all my old friends had moved away and I had no real reason to go there. As I drove up University Avenue toward campus that morning I found myself experiencing a keen attack of nostalgia. That dark-haired young woman in jeans who moved past me in the crosswalk could easily have been me, walking reluctantly to my nine o'clock soc class and wondering how I could get through it without a third cup of coffee. That sandwich shop on the corner was where I'd often grabbed a hasty lunch, and I was willing to bet their bread was just as stale and dry as ever. When I crossed the Milvia intersection, I felt a swift wrenching; some two blocks away down a little side street was the apartment building where I had enacted the happy, then disillusioned, and finally painful scenes of my one and only long-term live-in relationship. All about me-and inside me, too- things had changed, and yet they hadn't.

It was odd, I reflected, that part of me didn't feel any older than on the day I'd left here with my diploma. Since then I'd entered a profession I'd never given a prior thought to; I'd dealt with people and situations that would have made that graduate's flesh creep; I'd often been in extreme danger, had coped as best I could with violence and death, had even been forced to kill a man. I was more cynical, more judgmental, more prone to anger. But deep inside there was a wistful, yearning part that still felt twenty-three years old.

The changes in Berkeley were contradictory, too. The old landmarks remained, but interspersed among them were new buildings and a fair number of trendy shops and restaurants. The quiet, somewhat funky town of my memory has become chic these days: home of the Gourmet Ghetto, pioneering frontier of the New California Cuisine. The university, while still a major player, is no longer the only game in town. On the streets where you once mainly saw students on bicycles or in beat-up basic-transportation vehicles, you're now just as likely to spot well-heeled executive types in BMWs. Of course, the direction of progress has not been totally upscale: as I reached the edge of campus and went to turn left on Shattuck, I was momentarily taken aback by an enormous McDonald's. Not everyone in Berkeley, apparently, is a gourmet.

Luke Widdows had told me his house was on a section of Walnut Street a block from a shopping complex called Walnut Square. I found it-two-storied, white clapboard, wrapped by a wide porch-and parked in the driveway as directed. His office, he'd said, was in the carriage house out back. I followed a meandering dirt path through a vegetable garden to the smaller structure-shabbier than the main house, with a steeply canting roof. When I knocked on the screen door, Widdows answered immediately.

He was a slender man with curly brown hair and a fluffy beard, dressed in khakis and a blue T-shirt. There was an openness in his manner that I liked, and he seemed so glad to see me that I guessed my arrival had saved him from some distasteful task. He ushered me into a room with a paperstrewn desk and a pair of comfortable old armchairs, offered coffee, and went to fetch it.

"The nice thing about working out here," he called from the next room, "is that there's a small kitchen. I don't need to go to the main house if I don't want to. Which is a blessing, because I rent a couple of rooms to students who like loud music. Do you take anything in your coffee?"

"Just black."

"Me, too."

Widdows returned and handed me a large mug, then sank into the opposite armchair, eyeing me with frank interest. "Private detective, huh?" he said. "How'd you get into that line of work?"

"I got a degree in sociology from Cal."

He laughed knowingly. "Mine was in journalism."

"I'd say that's a bit more practical."

"Not much. In journalism, there's no teacher like hands-on experience."

"Well, obviously you've acquired that."

"All of it the hard way." He spoke without bitterness or self-pity; whatever his trials had been, they seemed to amuse him. As he slouched in the chair, one leg thrown over its arm, bare foot dangling, I glanced at the chaotic desk and computer setup-reminders of the work I was probably interrupting.

I said, "I don't want to keep you from anything pressing."

"You are-and I'm delighted. This morning I couldn't get any of the Jumble-that word scramble in the paper-so I know this is going to be one of those days when I won't be able to string the parts of a sentence together. You wanted to know about Perry Hilderly?"

"Yes. I understand he worked for you at New Liberty."

"If you could say that any of us really worked. Perry was a reporter. Investigative, I guess you could loosely term it. He couldn't write worth a lick-I had to rewrite most of what he turned in-but he was a Movement figure, had contacts with people who might not otherwise have talked with reporters."

"How long was he at the magazine?"

"He started in sixty-eight, after he left Berkeley."

"And he lived in San Francisco then?"

"Somewhere in the lower Fillmore district, I think. A lot of Movement people did back then-it was cheap, and they could get in touch with the 'real people,' as we were fond of calling minorities."

"And he went to Vietnam in sixty-nine?"

"Spring, it was. He came to me, said he was burned out and disillusioned with the Movement. He wanted to see firsthand what the war was all about. We didn't have the funds to pay him, but we struck a deal that if he paid his way, we'd supply press credentials. So off he went."

"And what did he report on?"

"He hadn't so much as delivered a line of copy by the time the magazine folded." Momentarily Widdows looked regretful. "That was my fault, I'm afraid. My draft board was after me-this happened about a month after Perry left for 'Nam-so I took what I thought was the easy way out and split for Vancouver. The magazine never had strong management after I left."

Now I eyed him with interest. Strangely enough, I'd never met anyone who had moved to Canada to avoid the draft. "From the way you phrase it, I take it the 'easy way out' wasn't?"

"Not really. Draft resisters weren't all that welcome up there. There were simply too many of us, and not enough jobs. Not enough commitment to the country for the Canadians to accept us. And a lot of us got homesick-I know I did. I came back here under the amnesty program. Wrote a book about my experiences that did well enough that I could buy this house. I'm pretty apolitical these days; mainly what I write is gardening books and articles. You saw my vegetables?"

I nodded, thinking that Luke Widdows was as much of a victim of the turmoil of the war days as those who had gone to Asia and fought.

"Where did you first meet Perry?" I asked.

"Here in Berkeley. I interviewed him for a couple of articles in the Daily Cal."

"Can you tell me something about the people he was close to?"

"You mean like the other leaders of the FSM?"

"Let me give you some names, see if they were friends of his. Thomas Y. Grant?"

"Where have I-isn't he the attorney who was murdered in the city last night?"

"Yes."

Widdows's eyes widened. "You're working on that?"

"A related matter."

"I see." He seemed intrigued by my reticence. "Well, as near as I recall, the first time I ever heard of Grant was when I unfolded the paper this morning."

"What about David Arlen Taylor-D. A. Taylor?"

"Oh, sure. He was a close friend of Perry's, probably his closest."

"And Libby Heikkinen?"

"Taylor's girlfriend."

"What about Jenny Ruhl?"

"Ruhl. Ruhl. Yes, I remember her. Tiny girl, long black hair."

"And chance she was romantically linked with Perry?"

"Oh, I don't think so. Perry liked women, but he was basically shy around them. He wouldn't have taken up with someone like Jenny."

"Why not?"

"How can I put this without-Jenny liked men, in quantity. For a while, around sixty-four or five, she was living with a guy, a real sleazebag hanger-on. One of those guys who was just in Berkeley for the sex and drugs and rock and roll, as they used to put it. Then he disappeared from the scene about the time she turned up pregnant. She had the baby, and I guess she put it up for adoption. After that she just drifted from guy to guy, never staying with anyone very long."

"What was her connection to Hilderly, then?"

"Just as one of a group that hung out together. Very involved with the protests."

"This… sleazebag Ruhl was living with-what was his name?"

"I don't think I ever knew."

"Can you describe him?"

"Other than as a typical drifter, no. You remember the type-long unkempt beard, the same with the hair, generally grimy-looking, a little older than most students."

"Nothing at all memorable about him?"

"Not that I remember. Those people were all of a kind, and not too many of us trusted them. Their motives weren't pure, you see." Widdows laughed-both amused and self-mocking. "We had a long list of people who weren't to be trusted. Anyone over thirty, of course. The university administration and most of the faculty. Politicians, if they were of a major party. The military-industrial complex, including scared second lieutenants in the National Guard. There were spies lurking behind every tree: the Berkeley cops, narcs, the FBI, the campus police, and-when bombing became the thing-the ATF, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms."

"A hotbed of paranoia?"

"Right. And not totally drug-induced. But one thing about the spies: not too many of them worked out, no matter what agency they were from. Button-down collars and cordovan shoes did not go down too well at SDS meetings. And the ones who did manage to worm their way into the counterculture usually went over to the other side-got hung up on drugs or women. The FBI, I've heard, had to periodically call them in from the field for a sort of deprogramming. It was a bizarre time, all right."

"What happened to Perry's group of friends, do you know?"

"Either got kicked out or dropped out of school. I think he told me that a bunch of them had moved to the city, set up as a commune. Political action shifted around sixty-eight or -nine-to S.F. State. Perry was in contact with them, that much I know. Once he said they might make a good story for us, but nothing came of it."

"What kind of story?"

"Who knows? Perry was very independent-minded; I never knew what he was going to turn in until it was on my desk. But by then communes were a dime a dozen, and when he thought it over, he probably decided it was a story whose time had gone."

I was silent, reviewing what Widdows had told me. Finally he asked, "Have I helped?"

"Yes, you have. I didn't come to Berkeley until years later, and you've given me a feel for those times. And now I won't keep you from your work any longer."

"I'm not sure you're doing me a kindness."

Widdows walked me to my car, pointing out the prize tomato plant of his vegetable garden. I confessed to having a black thumb even when it came to houseplants, and he smiled and suggested that it helped if one watered them. After I got into the MG, he leaned on its doorframe, looking down at me through the open window.

"Would you like to go out sometime?" he asked.

I hesitated, thinking I preferred men who lived more in the real world than he seemed to. Then I thought, what the hell. "Yes, I would."

"Great. I'll call you soon, or you call me. We could see a play or take in a concert. Go on a picnic, whatever. Or," he added, "I could always pay a house call on your plants."