The McCone Files (27 page)

The official conclusion did not satisfy Pete, however. By the next morning he was in the office of the hotline's attorney at All Souls Legal Cooperative, where I am chief investigator. And a half an hour after that, I was assigned to work the phones at the hotline as often as my other duties permitted, until I'd identified the caller. Following a crash course from Pete in techniques for dealing with callers in crisis—augmented by some reading of my own—they turned me loose on the turquoise phone.

After the first couple of rocky, sweaty-palmed sessions, I'd gotten into it: become able to distinguish the truly disturbed from the fakers or the merely curious; learned to gauge the responses that would work best with a given individual; succeeded at eliciting information that would permit a crisis team to go out and assess the seriousness of the situation in person. In most cases, the team would merely talk the caller into getting counseling. However, if they felt immediate action was warranted, they would contact the SFPD, who had the authority to have the individual held for evaluation at S.F. General hospital for up to seventy-two hours.

During the past two weeks the problem caller had been routed to me several times, and with each conversation I became more concerned about him. While his threats were melodramatic, I sensed genuine disturbance and desperation in his voice; the swift escalation of panic and anger seemed much out of proportion to whatever verbal stimuli I offered. And, as Pete had stressed in my orientation, no matter how theatrical or frequently made, and threat of suicide or violence toward others was to be taken with the utmost seriousness by the hotline volunteers.

Unfortunately I was able to glean very little information from the man. Whenever I tried to get him to reveal concrete facts about himself, he became sly and would dodge my questions. Still, I could make several assumptions about him: he was youngish, reasonably well-educated, and Caucasian. The traces to the Marina indicated he probably lived in that bayside district—which meant he had to have a good income. He listened to classical music (three times I'd heard it playing in the background) from a transistor radio, by the tinny quality. Once I'd caught the call letters of the FM station—one with a wide-range signal in the Central Valley of Fresno. Why Fresno? I'd wondered. Perhaps he was from there? But that wasn't much to go on; there were probably several Fresno transplants in his part of the city.

When I looked up from my folder, Ann had gone back to her desk. Pete was still talking in low, reassuring tones with his caller. Ann's phone rang, and she picked up the receiver. I tensed, knowing the next call would cycle automatically to my phone.

When it rang some minutes later, I glanced at my watch and jotted down the time while reaching over for the receiver. Four-fifty-eight. “Golden Gate Crisis Hotline, Sharon speaking.”

The caller hung up—either a wrong number or, more likely, someone who lost his nerve. The phone rang again about twenty seconds later and I answered it in the same manner.

“Sharon. It's me.” The greeting was the same as the previous times, the raspy voice unmistakable.

“Hey, how's it going?”

A long pause, labored breathing. In the background I could make out the strains of music—Brahms, I thought. “Not so good. I'm really down today.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“There isn't much to say. Just more of the same. I took a walk a while ago, thought it might help. But the people, out there flying kites, I can't take it.”

“Why is that?”

“I used to…ah, forget it.”

“No, I'm interested.”

“Well, they're always in couples, you know.”

When he didn't go on, I made an interrogatory sound.

“The whole damn world is in couples. Or families. Even here inside my little cottage I can feel it. There are these apartment buildings on either side, and I can feel them pressing in on me, and I'm here all alone.”

He was speaking rapidly now, his voice rising. But as his agitation increased, he'd unwittingly revealed something about his living situation. I made a note of about a little cottage between the two apartment buildings.

“This place where the people were flying kites,” I said, “do you go there often?”

“Sure—it's only two blocks away.” A sudden note of sullenness now entered his voice—a part of the pattern he'd previously exhibited. “Why do you want to know about that?”

“Because…I'm sorry, I forgot your name.”

No response.

“It would help if I knew what to call you.”

“Look, bitch, I know what you're trying to do.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. You want to get a name, and address. Send the cops out. Next thing I'm chained to the wall at S.F. General. I've been that route before. But I know my rights now; I went down the street to Legal Switchboard, and they told me…”

I was distracted from what he was saying by a tapping sound—the stack trays on the desk next to me bumped against the wall. I looked over there, frowning. What was causing that…?

“…gonna take the people next door with me…”

I looked back at the desk in front of me. The lamp was jiggling.

“What the hell?” the man on the phone exclaimed.

My swivel chair shifted. A coffee mug tipped and rolled across the desk and into my lap.

Pete said, “Jesus Christ, we're having an earthquake!”

“…The ceiling's coming down!” The man's voice panicked now.

“Get under a door frame!” I clutched the edge of the desk, ignoring my own advice.

I heard a crash from the other end of the line. The man screamed in pain. “Help me! Please help—” and then the line went dead.

For a second or so I merely sat there—longtime San Franciscan, frozen by my own disbelief. All around me formerly inanimate objects were in motion. Pete and Ann were scrambling for the archway that led to the door of the coffeehouse.

“Sharon, get under your desk!” she yelled at me.

And then the electricity cut out, leaving the windowless room in blackness. I dropped the dead receiver, slid off the chair, crawled into the kneehole of the desk. There was a cracking, a violent shifting, as if a giant hand had seized the building and twisted it. Tremors buckled the floor beneath me.

This is a bad one. Maybe the big one that they're always talking about.

The sound of something wrenching apart. Pellets of plaster rained down on the desk above me. Time had telescoped; it seemed as if the quake had been going on for many minutes, when in reality it could not have been more than ten or fifteen seconds.

Make it stop! Please make it stop!

And then, as if whatever powers-that-be had heard my unspoken plea, the shock waves diminished to shivers, and finally ebbed.

Blackness. Silence. Only bits of plaster bouncing off the desks and the floor.

“Ann?” I said. “Pete?” My voice sounded weak, tentative.

“Sharon?” It was Pete. “You okay?”

“Yes. You?”

“We're fine.”

Slowly I began to back out of the kneehole. Something blocked it—the chair. I shoved it aside and emerged. I couldn't see a thing, but I could feel fragments of plaster and other unidentified debris on the floor. Something cut into my palm; I winced.

“God, it's dark,” Ann said. “I've got some matches in my purse. Can you—”

“No matches,” I told her. “Who knows what shape the gas mains are in.”

“…Oh, right.”

Pete said, “Wait, I'll open the door to the coffeehouse.”

On hands and knees I began feeling my way toward the sound of their voices. I banged into one of the desks, overturned a wastebasket, then finally reached the opposite wall. As I stood there, Ann's cold hand reached out to guide me. Behind her I could hear Pete fumbling at the door.

I leaned against the wall. Ann was close beside me, her breathing erratic. Pete said, “Goddamned door's jammed.” From behind it came voices of the people in the coffeehouse.

Now that the danger was over—at least until the first of the aftershocks—my body sagged against the wall, giving way to tremors of its own manufacture. My thoughts turned to the lover with whom I'd planned to have dinner: where had he been when the quake hit? And what about my cats, my house? My friends and my co-workers at All Souls? Other friends scattered throughout the Bay Area.

And what about a nameless, faceless man somewhere in the city who had screamed for help before the phone went dead?

The door to the coffeehouse burst open, spilling weak light into the room. Lloyd Warner and several of his customers peered anxiously through it. I prodded Ann—who seemed to have lapsed into lethargy—toward them.

The coffeehouse was fairly dark, but late afternoon light showed beyond the plate-glass windows fronting on the street. It revealed a floor that was awash in spilled liquid and littered with broken crockery. Chairs were tipped over—whether by the quake or the patrons' haste to get to shelter I couldn't tell. About ten people milled about, talking noisily.

Ann and Pete joined them but I moved forward to the window. Outside, Twenty-Fourth Street looked much as usual, except for the lack of traffic and pedestrians. The buildings still stood, the sun still shone, the air drifting through the open door of the coffeehouse was still warm and muggy. In this part of the city, at least, life went on.

Lloyd's transistor radio had been playing the whole time—tuned to the station that was carrying the coverage of the third game of the Bay Area World Series, due to start at five-thirty. I moved closer, listening.

The sportscaster was saying, “Nobody here knows
what's
going on. The Giants have wandered over to the A's dugout. It looks like a softball game where somebody forgot to bring the ball.”

Then the broadcast shifted abruptly to the station's studios. A newswoman was relaying telephone reports from the neighborhoods. I was relieved to hear that Bernal Heights, where All Souls is located, and my own small district near Glen Park were shaken up but for the most parts undamaged. The broadcaster concluded by warning listeners not to use their phones except in cases of emergency. Ann snorted and said, “Do as I say but not...”

Again the broadcast made an abrupt switch—to the station's traffic helicopter. “From where we are,” the reporter said, “it looks as if part of the upper deck on the Oakland side of the Bay Bridge has collapsed onto the bottom deck. Cars are pointing every which way, there may be some in the water. And on the approaches—”

The transmission broke, then resumed after a number of static-filled seconds. “It looks as if the Cypress Structure on the Oakland approach to the bridge has also collapsed. Oh my God, there are cars and people—” This time the transmission broke for good.

It was very quiet in the coffeehouse. We all exchanged looks—fearful, horrified. This was an extremely bad one, if not the catastrophic one they'd been predicting for so long.

Lloyd was the first to speak. He said, “I'd better see if I can insulate the urns in some way, keep the coffee hot as long as possible. People'll need it tonight.” He went behind the counter, and in a few seconds a couple of the customers followed.

The studio newscast resumed. “…fires burning out of control in the Marina district. We're receiving reports of collapsed building there, with people trapped inside…”

The Marina district. People trapped.

I thought again of the man who had cried out for help over the phone. Of my suspicion, more or less confirmed by today's conversation, that he lived in the Marina.

Behind the counter Lloyd and the customers were wrapping the urns in dishtowels. Here—and in other parts of the city, I was sure—people were already overcoming their shock, gearing up to assist in the relief effort. There was nothing I could do in my present surroundings, but…

I hurried to the back room and groped until I found my purse on the floor beside the desk. As I picked it up, an aftershock hit—nothing like the original trembler, but strong enough to make me grab the chair for support. When it stopped, I went shakily out to my car.

Twenty-Fourth Street was slowly coming to life. People bunched on the sidewalks, talking and gesturing. A man emerged from one of the shops, walked to the center of the street and surveyed the façade of his building. In the parking lot of nearby Bell Market, employees and customers gathered by the grocery carts. A man in a butcher's apron looked around, shrugged, and headed for a corner tavern. I got into my MG and took a city map from the side pocket.