The McCone Files (6 page)

I turned to face a friendly-looking sun browned youth of about fifteen. He wore dirty jeans and a torn t-shirt.

“Yeah,” another voice added. This boy was about the same age; a wispy attempt at a mustache sprouted on his upper lip. “There's hardly anything left, and it's only been here a few weeks.”

The first boy nodded. “People hang around here and drink. Late at night they get bored.” He motioned at a group on unsavory-looking men who were sitting on the edge of the baths with a couple of six packs.

“Destruction's a very popular sport these days.” Greg watched the men for a moment with a professional eye, then touched my elbow. We skirted the ruins and went toward the cave. I stopped at its entrance and listened to the roar of the surf.

“Come on,” Greg said.

I followed him inside, feet sinking into coarse sand which quickly became packed mud. The cave was really a tunnel, about eight feet high. Through crevices in the wall on the ocean side I saw spray flung high from the roiling waves at the foot of the cliff. It would be fatal to be swept down through those jagged rocks.

Greg reached the other end. I hurried as fast as my bare feet would permit and stood next to him. The precipitous drop to the sea made me clutch at his arm. Above us, rocks towered.

“I guess if you were a good climber you could go up, and then back to the road,” I said.

“Maybe, but I wouldn't chance it. Like the sign says…”

“Right.” I turned, suddenly apprehensive. At the mouth of the tunnel, two of the disreputable men stood, beer cans in hand. “Let's go, Greg.”

If he noticed the edge to my voice, he didn't comment. We walked in silence through the tunnel. The men vanished. When we emerged into the sunlight, they were back with the others, opening fresh beers. The boys we had spoken with earlier were perched on the abandoned truck, and they waved at us as we started up the path.

And so, through the spring, we continued to come to our favorite restaurant on Sundays, always waiting for a window booth. The old Japanese woman exchanged her yellow headscarf for a red one. The abandoned truck remained nose down toward the baths, provoking much criticism of the Park Service. People walked their dogs on the slope. Children balanced precariously on the ruins, in spite of the warning sign. The men lolled about and drank beer. The teenaged boys came every week and often were joined by friends at the truck.

Then one Sunday, the old woman failed to show.

“Where is she?” I asked Greg, glancing at my watch for the third time.

“Maybe she's picked everything there is to pick down there.”

“Nonsense. There's always something to pick. We've watched her for almost a year. That old couple are down there walking their German Shepherd. The teenagers are here. That young couple we talked to last week are over by the tunnel. Where's the old Japanese woman?”

“She could be sick. There's a lot of flu going round. Hell, she might have died. She wasn't all that young.”

The words made me lose my appetite for my chocolate cream pie. “Maybe we should check on her.”

Greg sighed. “Sharon, save your sleuthing for paying clients. Don't make everything into a mystery.”

Greg had often accused me of allowing what he referred to as my “woman's intuition” to rule my logic—something I hated even more than references to my “tracking instinct.” I knew it was no such thing; I merely gave free rein to the hunches that every good investigator follows. It was not a subject I cared to argue at the moment, however, so I let it drop.

But the next morning—Monday—I sat in the converted closet that served as my office at All Souls, still puzzling over the woman's absence. A file on a particularly boring tenants' dispute lay open on the desk in front of me. Finally I shut it and clattered down the hall of the big brown Victorian toward the front door.

“I'll be back in a couple of hours,” I told Ted, our secretary.

He nodded, his fingers never pausing as he plied his new Selectric. I gave the typewriter a resentful glance. It, to my mind, was an extravagance, and the money it was costing could have been better spent on salaries. All Souls, which charged clients on a sliding scale according to their incomes, paid so low that several of the attorneys and support staff were compensated by living in free rooms on the second floor. I lived in a studio apartment in the Mission District. It seemed to get smaller every day.

Grumbling to myself, I went out to my car and headed for the restaurant above Sutro Baths.

“The old woman who gathers wild mustard on the cliff,” I said to the cashier, “was she here yesterday?”

He paused. “I think so. Yesterday was Sunday. She's always here on Sunday. I noticed her about eight, when we opened up. She always comes early and stays until about two.”

But she had been gone at eleven. “Do you know her? Do you know where she lives?”

He looked curiously at me. “No, I don't.”

I thanked him and went out. Feeling foolish, I stood beside the Great Highway for a moment, then started down the dirt path, toward where the wild mustard grew. Halfway there I met the two teenagers. Why weren't they in school? Dropouts, I guessed.

They started by, avoiding my eyes like kids will do. I stopped them. “Hey, you were here yesterday, right?”

The mustached one nodded.

“Did you see the old Japanese woman who picks the weeds?”

He frowned. “Don't remember her.”

“When did you get here?”

“Oh, late. Really late. There was this party Saturday night.”

“I don't remember seeing her either,” the other one said, “but maybe she'd already gone by the time we got here.”

I thanked them and headed down toward the ruins.

A little further on, in the dense thicket through which the path wound, something caught my eye and I came to an abrupt stop. A neat pile of green plastic bags lay there, and on top of them was a pair of scuffed black shoes. Obviously she had come here on the bus, wearing her street shoes, and had only switched to sneakers for her work. Why would she leave without changing her shoes?

I hurried through the thicket toward the patch of wild mustard.

There, deep in the weeds, its color blending with their foliage, was another bag; I opened it. It was a quarter full of wilting mustard greens. She hadn't had much time to forage, not much time at all.

Seriously worried now, I rushed up to the Great Highway. From the phone booth inside the restaurant, I dialed Greg's direct line at the SFPD. Busy. I retrieved my dime and called All Souls.

“Any calls?”

Ted's typewriter rattled in the background. “No, but Hank wants to talk to you.”

Hank Zahn, my boss. With a sinking heart, I remembered the conference we had had scheduled for half an hour ago. He came on the line.

“Where the hell are you?”

“Uh, in a phone booth.”

“What I mean is, why aren't you here?”

“I can explain—”

“I should have known.”

“What?”

“Greg warned me you'd be off investigating something.”

“Greg? When did you talk to him?”

“Fifteen minutes ago. He wants you to call. It's important.”

“Thanks!”

“Wait a minute—”

I hung up and dialed Greg again. He answered, sounding rushed. Without preamble, I explained what I'd found in the wild mustard patch.

“That's why I called you.” His voice was unusually gentle. “We got word this morning.”

“What word?” My stomach knotted.

“An identification on a body that washed up near Devil's Slide yesterday evening. Apparently she went in at low tide, or she would have been swept much further to sea.”

I was silent.

“Sharon?”

“Yes, I'm here.”

“You know how it is out there. The signs warn against climbing. The current is bad.”

But I'd never, in almost a year, seen the old Japanese woman near the sea. She was always up on the slope, where her weeds grew. “When was low tide, Greg?”

“Yesterday? Around eight in the morning.”

Around the time the restaurant cashier had noticed her and several hours before the teenagers had arrived. And in between? What had happened out there?

I hung up and stood at the top of the slope, pondering. What should I look for? What could I possibly find?

I didn't know, but I felt certain the old woman had not gone into the sea by accident. She had scaled those cliffs with the best of them.

I started down, noting the shoes and the bags in the thicket, marching resolutely past the wild mustard toward the abandoned truck. I walked all around it, examining its exterior and interior, but it gave me no clues. Then I started toward the tunnel in the cliff.

The area, so crowded on Sundays, was sparsely populated now. San Franciscans were going about their usual business, and visitors from the tour buses parked at nearby Cliff House were leery of climbing down here. The teenagers were the only other people in sight. They stood by the mouth of the tunnel, watching me. Something in their postures told me they were afraid. I quickened my steps.

The boys inclined their heads toward one another. Then they whirled and ran into the mouth of the tunnel.

I went after them. Again, I had the wrong shoes. I kicked them off and ran through the coarse sand. The boys were halfway down the tunnel.

One of them paused, frantically surveying a rift in the wall. I prayed that he wouldn't go that way, into the boiling waves below.

He turned and ran after his companion. They disappeared at the end of the tunnel.

I hit the hard-packed dirt and increased my pace. Near the end, I slowed and approached more cautiously. At first I thought the boys had vanished, but then I looked down. They crouched on a ledge below. Their faces were scared and young, so young.

I stopped where they could see me, and made a calming motion. “Come back up,” I said. “I won't hurt you.”

The mustached one shook his head.

Simultaneously they glanced down. They looked back at me and both shook their heads.

I took a step forward. “Whatever happened, it couldn't have—” Suddenly I felt the ground crumble. My foot slipped and I pitched forward. I fell to one knee, my arms frantically searching for a support.

“Oh, God!” the mustached boy cried. “Not you too!” He stood up, swaying, his arms outstretched.

I kept sliding. The boy reached up and caught me by the arm. He staggered back toward the edge and we both fell to the hard rocky ground. For a moment, we both lay there panting. When I finally sat up, I saw we were inches from the sheer drop to the surf.

The boy sat up too, his scared eyes on me. His companion was flattened against the cliff wall.

“It's okay,” I said shakily.

“I thought you'd fall just like the old woman,” the boy beside me said.

“It was an accident, wasn't it?”

He nodded. “We didn't mean for her to fall.”

“Were you teasing her?”

“Yeah. We always did, for fun. But this time we went too far. We took her purse. She chased us.”

“Through the tunnel, to here.”

“Yes.”

“And then she slipped.”

The other boy moved away from the wall. “Honest, we didn't mean for it to happen. It was just that she was so old. She slipped.”

“We watched her fall,” his companion said. “We couldn't do anything.”

“What did you do with her purse?”

“Threw it in after her. She only had two dollars. Two lousy dollars.” His voice held a note of wonder. “Can you imagine, chasing us all the way down here for two bucks?”

I stood up, carefully grasping the rock for support. “Okay,” I said. “Let's get out of here.”

They looked at each other and then down at the surf.

“Come on. We'll talk some more. I know you didn't mean for her to die. And you saved my life.”

They scrambled up, keeping their distance from me. Their faces were pale under their tans, their eyes afraid. They were so young. To them, products of the credit-card age, fighting to the death for two dollars was inconceivable. And the Japanese woman had been so old. For her, eking out a living with the wild mustard, two dollars had probably meant the difference between life and death.

I wondered if they'd ever understand.

DAWN WAS breaking when I returned to the Diablo Valley Pavilion. The softly rounded hills that encircled the amphitheater were edged with pinkish gold, but their slopes were still dark and forbidding. They reminded me of a herd of humpbacked creatures huddling together while they waited for the warmth of the morning sun; I could imagine them stretching and sighing with relief when its rays finally touched them.

I would have given a lot to have daylight bring me that same sense of relief, but I doubted that would happen. It had been a long, anxious night since I'd arrived here the first time, over twelve hours before. Returning was a last-ditch measure, and a long shot at best.