The Sourdough Wars (9 page)

“When you think of it, he has the best motive of the four of them. He doesn’t need the starter to stay on top—he just needs to see that no one else gets it.”

“You think he stole it?”

“One of them did.”

As we were crossing the bridge, Chris said, “I can’t get Sally out of my mind. She’s so sad.”

“How do you mean?”

“She wants to be an independent woman so badly—and she has a lot of talent; no question she makes the best bread of them all. But she seems so dependent on men.”

“That’s been bothering me, too. Her husband was a baker, so she became one. Then she couldn’t leave him till she had another man. And now she’s got a backer. You know what’s the saddest part of it? Did you notice the way she kept asking us whether or not we really liked her sourdough? Deep down, she doesn’t really believe in that bread.”

I dropped Chris off, found my parking place taken, and finally managed to get another one (no mean feat in North Beach). Then I stumbled up my stairs, exhausted, and turned on my message machine. What I heard didn’t make me happy.

Rob had called. He was furious that I hadn’t told him about the second starter. The worst of it was, he was right. And he didn’t even know I’d failed to tip him on another hot story. I dialed the familiar number. “I forgot you, pussycat. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t ‘pussycat’ me, you traitor. This is a huge story, don’t you understand? And it’s my story. And you’re my girlfriend, and you forgot me.”

“I’ve been kind of busy. Did you hear about the brawl on Castro Street?”

“Hear about it? I covered it. Some idiot yelled something about a gun and all hell broke loose.”

“Did anyone have a gun?”

“No. But the guy who was supposed to has a broken jaw. And half the pretty boys in the Castro got their noses smashed.”

“I was there.”

“You were
what
! Rebecca, where’s your loyalty? Why didn’t you call me, dammit?”

“Listen, you don’t need me. You got both your stories, right? The second starter and the brawl. How’d you do that?”

“Sources. I’m a reporter, remember? I’m supposed to know how to get information.”

“My point exactly. Now shall I tell you about my day?” Naturally, he was all ears. The part that intrigued him the most was Clayton’s claiming the man in the leather jacket was trying to mug him. The man told police he’d simply asked for the time, and had chased us into the bar because Clayton threw a bag of groceries at him for no reason.

“Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t you if you were a mugger?”

“I guess so. Want to come to dinner tomorrow?”

I said I did. I had to argue a divorce case the next day and I could use a home-cooked meal.

Rob lives on Cathedral Hill in a weird building with a great view. What makes the building weird is that it’s round. Otherwise, it’s just a characterless modern building. But it does have that view, and as for its banality, Rob says a person with an overactive imagination—such as himself—is stimulated by the ordinary. I’m not too sure what he means by that, but I’ll tell you one thing—if we ever decide to formalize our acquaintanceship, it’s not going to be there. I can tolerate it just about long enough for dinner.

We had chicken that night. I happen to remember that because it’s all Rob ever makes. I know he knows how to make at least four or five things, because every once in a while he has. But usually he just pops a chicken in the oven with some potatoes and onions. This he serves on an oak table that also doubles as his desk and fits into a corner of his very masculine living room.

Why do single men always have fake leather sofas? Do they think the Bachelors’ Union will drum them out if they sit on velveteen or corduroy? Rob’s got one just like all the others, and also a lot of books and a terrific painting of kachinas by a Hopi artist. When you turn off the lights and light a couple of candles, it’s quite a cozy place for dinner. If you also open the curtains, it’s one of the wonders of the world.

We had a nice Chardonnay with our dinner, and after coffee I felt a lot like curling up on the fake leather sofa, maybe watching the lights for an hour or two. I am not what you call a night person.

Rob, on the other hand, probably wouldn’t go to bed at all if he could find anyone who’d stay up and keep him company. He gets his second wind after dinner and then wants to dance the night away. I planned to put my foot down tonight. It was going to be a quiet evening or he was going to spend the rest of it alone.

He reached over and tweaked my chin. “Wake up there.”

I closed my eyes and let my shoulders sag. “Uh-uh. Not on your life.”

“Uh-huh. Absolutely. We’ve got places to go and things to see.”

“Rob, honey, I just don’t feel like—”

“Yes, you do. This you’ll like, I promise you. We’re going to a secret hiding place.”

My eyes came open. He was already up and putting on his coat. “Beg your pardon? Did you say secret hiding place?”

“I did. We’re going to have an adventure.” He held out my new charcoal-gray suede jacket, which I’d gotten half price for $150 and which I loved so much I put it on automatically.

“I thought only kids had secret hiding places.”

He turned out the lights and held the door open. “Kids and some grown-ups.”

We were in the elevator before I thought to ask, “Why do we need to hide?”

“We don’t. At least I don’t think so.”

“Then why are we going there?”

“I told you. To have an adventure. It’s somewhere neither of us has ever been before.”

“Don’t be too sure. I’m a Bay Area native.”

“Here’s a hint: It’s near China Basin.”

In that case, he was almost certainly right about my not having been there—it’s not the sort of place a lady lawyer goes unless she’s lunching at Blanche’s, an eccentric but much-favored restaurant in the warehouse district. Which is what the area around the China Basin is. All of a sudden I had it: “It’s where the second starter is.”

He tapped his nose. “On the schnoz.”

“How’d you find out?”

He shrugged. “Sources.”

“Come on. What sources?”

“Well, actually, I just kept asking around until I found someone who had a friend who works at Fail-Safe. One of the copy boys.”

“And?”

“And it turns out it’s no big-deal secret at all—they have two warehouses, and some things are stored in one, some in another. If the control starter wasn’t in the main building—which it wouldn’t have been, because then it wouldn’t have been a control—it had to be in the other. The company’s just being tight-lipped because they figure they’ve got a security problem.”

I thought about that for a moment. “Something tells me,” I said, “that I didn’t get a full and complete answer to one of my previous questions. So I repeat: Why are we going there?”

“Well, I’m doing a little story about cryogenics—sort of a sidebar to run with the ongoing sourdough saga—and I thought I’d like to see what the place looks like.”

“Why don’t you just ask for a tour?”

“I did. No dice.”

“So you’re going to describe it from the outside—‘in a rundown warehouse near China Basin’ sort of thing?”

“If that’s all we get, sure. I thought we might check out the security, maybe—who knows? At least we can see what’s around it and I can describe that.”

“Are you going to publish the address?”

He didn’t answer for a while. When he spoke, it was in kind of a clipped way, designed to discourage further probing: “I haven’t decided yet.”

I wasn’t sufficiently discouraged. “What purpose would it serve?”

He sighed with the air of a person who has explained a thing to a child a hundred times. “Credibility, Rebecca. If I give the address, I really saw
it
, not just any rundown warehouse in China Basin.”

“But maybe the thief will see it and get the control. Or maybe he’ll try and some innocent guard will interfere and get killed.”

“That’s not a journalistic problem.” He spoke in the same clipped tone, and I wanted to shake him. Reporters never seem to care what kind of chaos is unleashed as a result of their handiwork; every day they open a new and different Pandora’s Box and don’t give a damn about the consequences. It was the main problem I had with Rob; if he weren’t a reporter, he’d be perfect.

I kept my mouth shut until we pulled up in front of a properly rundown warehouse. It’s a hideous neighborhood, that one, a place of things, not people. There’s a spooky old railroad switchyard there, and the San Francisco RV Park, where the old Southern Pacific Station used to be. Also, there are two bridges across China Basin itself, which is a little finger of the bay. The Peter R. Maloney Bridge, hard by Blanche’s, is really part of Fourth Street, and my personal favorite, the Francis “Lefty” O’Doul Bridge, is part of Third.

Mostly, there are a lot of warehouses of varying sizes and conditions of decay. The place always seems dead, even in the daytime, when occasional human beings and dozens of cars dot the landscape. At night, it can oppress you like a paper bag over your head. What little light there is gets swallowed up by a large and mighty blackness.

So we couldn’t see much after Rob turned off his headlights. “Is this it?” I said.

Rob shook his head.

At first I thought he was making fun of me for asking such a dumb question, but no—he pointed down the block to our left. “I don’t want to alert the guard if there is one. Let’s walk over quietly.”

We both had on jogging shoes, so quiet was easy. We were a couple of cats slinking on fog feet, and suddenly I was having fun again.

I forgot I was mad at Rob. I forgot everything except being in that great, black, quiet place where nothing moved and nothing ever would—or so it seemed. Rob ought to be getting lots of colorful details for his sidebar—a desolate crisscross of railroad tracks; a pitiful thicket of neglected buildings, shabby, uninhabited, squat, full of things that would leave soon; a quiet that was thicker than blood. I almost giggled at that one, knowing Rob would die before he’d put his byline on a phrase like that. But I didn’t because it would have been such a travesty to shatter the quiet.

Something else had other ideas. The quiet didn’t shatter exactly, but as we got closer to the old corrugated metal warehouse, we heard something chipping away at it. Little shuffling sounds, the sounds of things being moved about. Rather clumsily. The sounds were coming from the back of the building.

“Wait here,” said Rob, and started trotting toward the noise. I was right behind him.

As we rounded the corner, we saw a dark figure leap from a pile of stacked-up debris and take off away from us. One glance told the story; the debris—mostly boxes—was piled up under a window, which was clearly the target of an amateur burglar—who was even now disappearing around the opposite corner of the building.

“Go back, Rob,” I hollered. “Head him off.”

I figured that way we’d have the guy trapped—I’d be behind him and Rob could make it back to the front of the building before the intruder could. We’d have a finger-lickin’ good burglar sandwich. But Rob wouldn’t play. He kept on coming behind me, and passed me in about a second, so I turned and went back to head the guy off.

Rob stopped a minute, apparently not knowing what to do, started to turn toward me, then changed his mind and started chasing the burglar again. I’m a slow runner, and Rob had just illustrated once again the sad fate of he who hesitates—the burglar was already running down the street by the time we got to the front of the building. We rounded our respective corners at about the same time, huffing, puffing, and feeling silly. At least in my case. I was also mad. We’d lost the burglar, and the way I looked at it, it was Rob’s fault. I’d had a perfect plan and he’d messed it up.

But the fact that we’d lost the burglar didn’t stop us. We kept chasing him, all the way to the end of the block, then into a sort of never-never land where there were a lot of railroad tracks. And a train bearing down, fast. But not too fast for the burglar to get across in front of it. For a moment, Rob looked as if he might try it, too, but I grabbed him. I didn’t want him hesitating and waiting too long with a train coming at him.

We didn’t speak for a moment, just tried to get our breath back while the train passed. Then Rob apparently had an idea. He couldn’t tell me about it because the train was making so much noise. He just grabbed my arm and mouthed, “Come on.” And led me back to the car.

“Let’s wait,” he said finally. “Maybe he left his car around here. As soon as the train noise dies down, it’ll be completely quiet again and we can be pretty sure any car we hear is his.”

I could see it was a good idea, but I wasn’t about to say so. “Okay,” I said grudgingly. “But I don’t see why you won’t listen to any of my ideas. He wouldn’t have gotten away if you had.”

He put a hand on the back of my neck. “I was afraid you’d get hurt.”

“I’m a big girl.”

He rubbed my shoulder fairly convincingly. “Look. If I’d gone back to head him off and he’d had any sense, he’d just have stopped and waited for you to run into him. Then he’d have had a hostage.”

“He
didn’t
have any sense. Nobody does when someone’s chasing them.”

“Babe, I was just—” He stopped and listened. Sure enough, someone had just started a car up. Rob’s was already warmed up and ready to go, so we had a slight advantage—if we could find the other one. We slipped into Seventh Street with our lights off, and followed the noise. Then we saw it—on King Street, its lights just coming on. It took off.

We were right behind it, lights still off. After a zig here and a zag there, it turned onto Third, going south, and Rob had to hit his lights to follow. Third is the main thoroughfare in the neighborhood and there’d be traffic. So there was no choice but to turn the lights on. But when the burglar saw us do it, he must have caught on to who we were, because he floored his accelerator. We hadn’t quite completed the turn yet, so the burglar’s car zoomed ahead—a piece of awful luck, because we might have gotten his license number if we’d been a little closer.

But Rob wasn’t giving up yet. He hit the gas, too. Third is a long, long street, and it will take you straight to Hunters Point, San Francisco’s meanest ghetto, if you let it. I wasn’t thrilled at that prospect, but it beat losing the burglar—I wanted to get him if we had to cover the city like Steve McQueen in
Bullitt
.