San Francisco, Sodom by the Bay, was a self-contained miniature of all the
perversities of a world run amok, but in a concentrated from, undiluted by fear
of prosecution, or even the palliative of righteous indignation. It was a city
of equal opportunity miscreants, denying through a sometimes questionable
minority status an equal footing to the normal people who lived among them. It
is a city where the garbage makes the rules, sets the standards, and the rest of
the people pay for it. It’s an in-your-face city, unwilling to let you just
accept, but forcing you to sign on with either a yea or embarrassed silence, but
never condoning your abhorrence, labeling it as racist, homophobic, and the
like. Thus a vast silent minority struggles to ignore the vicious patois of the
city, or they smolder powerless in their homes, praying to some pagan god to
show them a Lot to lead them from their city, or just a piper to lure the rats
to a drowning death.
I lived ten years in Sodom, and in my color-blind world, the flaws stood out
like cankers, walking the streets, infecting like disease, preying like animals.
My moral outrage took me away from a mean landscape revealed all too
clearly by my stark black and white vision. I needed someplace where, when I
looked for evil, it was not all about me as a noise. I hadn’t been back to the city
for eight years, but the bad vibes came through the metal walls as the
aircraft’s wheels touched ground.
But that’s starting in the middle. My story begins in Portland, in fact, at
one of the regional libraries in Washington on the other side of the state line.
In my steady march to a curmudgeonly old age, my Friday routine was pretty well
set; I rose early, tinkered around the house, drove into town for an espresso
mocha and a scone while I read the Wall Street Journal and The Oregonian. After that, I’d spend an hour or so at the Public Library, sometimes talking up my
favorite girl, Marion, a seventy year-old volunteer who re-stacks the shelves
and what not.
Marion is cute in the way that old women who were very beautiful in
their youth can be. They never quite lose that air of confidence they acquired
while moving through a less than pretty world. Still, Marion’s entire being had acquired that gray of age, like a painting where it’s been mixed into every normal
hue of black, white and gray. But Marion didn’t act old. She had a bounce to her
step, a straightness to her thin-boned body, a certain flair to living that
would leave a hole in the world when at last she passed away.
It didn’t hurt any that Marion liked to flirt, in a fifties kind of way. She
liked men and had probably led them on for almost sixty years. It was a habit. I liked to think I was the only object of her
affections, such as they were, but that was self-flattery of the type in which I
seldom engage. Still, Marion was engaging.
Marion volunteered for the library after her husband died, dusting off the
Masters in English she’d never used. She told me she had lived her life as an
entertainer for her husband, cleaning house, preparing meals, planning events,
looking pretty on his arm. It was good work and she loved it, but when he was
gone she realized she’d never done anything in the world that didn’t involve
serving the needs of her husband and their children.
It was a brave new world, and she entered it with all the confidence she’d
shown in her servant role. To keep busy she worked for the school district three
days a week as an administrative aide to the science faculty, filing,
organizing, keeping books on the students. She loved the kids, mostly because
when she was done, they went to their homes and she went to hers. She didn’t
speak much of her own two daughters, only in bits and pieces of conversation.
They hadn’t made her proud. The kids at the school though treated her nice, and
when one day she accompanied a class to the Library, she got to, as only old
ladies can, discussing with the librarian how she might help out with her spare
time.
So, Thursdays and Fridays, Marion worked the books. She took the burden of
the mundane, stacking and filing, packing and unpacking, but what she enjoyed
the most was being the master of the Friends of the Library annual book sale.
So, the first thing every Thursday, she’d take the boxes of books donated to the
library into the little workroom next to the librarian’s office.
Marion had her own routine which she carried out piecemeal throughout the
day. First she shelved the books, then sorted out the usual of Turows and
Kellermans and the like which she stored in a long closet in the large community
room where the sale would eventually be held. For the books that might make it
into the Library’s general circulation, or the few that were valuable, she would
enter the titles, authors and category into the computer. Marion then re-stacked
these books by category and title, moving the books from the shelf on the right
of her small desk to the shelf on the left. The last step, before filing any
book, she’d flip through the pages with the book open side down, looking for the
gems stored within, the non-literary gems.
Bookmarks. Readers used an extraordinary variety of bookmarks. Money was
common, and when there was a name in the book, she’d call the person to try and
return it. If no one claimed it, it went to the Library. The most popular
bookmark was pictures, then letters and documents. She used the local phone
book, even the internet, whenever there was a name, either from the book’s
flyleaf, or from the object itself.
The un-homed flotsam and jetsam was tacked up on the cork bulletin board in
the entry lobby of the Library. Each item had a little tracking number attached
with a yellow sticky. A note at the top said, ‘Friends of Library - Items Found
in Donated Books - Please Check With The Librarian Before Claiming.’ Most
of the items just disappeared without notice.
Marion told me some of the largest collections of books came in when there
was a death in a family and no one wanted the lifetime of outdated works. These were often dropped off in the middle of the night on the Library’s
doorstep, the collections sometimes spanning more than fifty years. She jokingly
referred to them as the Dead Friends of the Library.
And that is where the story begins. From our first discussion of my clothing
matching strategies, Marion had parsed out that I was a private investigator.
She’d been writing mysteries for years, quite unsuccessfully, and she said she
was picking my brains. I told her I didn’t know how other detectives worked,
that maybe I was an anomaly, that what I did probably wasn’t standard operating
procedure. Still, over a year she learned everything I knew, and I enjoyed
the experience. Maybe one day she’ll sell one of her masterpieces and I’ll be
immortalized.
As soon as I walked Marion placed the pile of books she was
re-stacking on the nearest table and rushed over. She took my elbow, which she
had to reach up for, and guided me to the back corner behind the stacks. She
waited for me to sit before she took her chair. She pulled a newspaper clipping
from the local weekly from her jacket pocket and smoothed it in front of me. It
was an obituary.
I read it. The local man had died in a running accident, he’d slipped on a
jogging trail and fell into a ravine. "So who’s Jeff Jacobs? Is he someone you
know?"
Marion bent close and whispered, "No, he came in three weeks ago last
Thursday," she paused, "but I’ve seen him before. He was fifty-two, and retired
early." She lowered her voice another notch. I had to turn my head to
hear her. "He saw one of the pictures on the bulletin board." She read the
confusion in my face. "You know, the bookmarks I find in the donated books."
I nodded, "And?"
She covered my large left hand with her two tiny ones. "He asked me where I
got the picture. I told him about the books, but that there was no
identification. He said he knew the four men in the picture. He asked if he
could have it, that he’d get it to one of them. I told him I couldn’t see why
not. He took it, and then I see this in the paper. I recognized him right away,
but I checked the computer because the man had also taken out a book that day.
It was him."
"People die all the time, Marion."
"No," she said a little too loudly, then lowered her voice again, "no, he was
scared by the picture."
I let her lead me on, "So what was the picture?"
"You know those picture booths, four for a dollar, like at the beach?"
I nodded.
"It was one of those. These four college kids were crammed in the booth, and
they all had Cal sweatshirts on. They were holding this dog with a beanie on its
head."
"So?"
She searched left and right looking for some unseen listener. "So, I still
had the book I got the picture from." She tapped her head. "I have a great
memory for an old lady."
I motioned her onward with a circular motion of my right hand.
She said, "Wait," then rushed off, returning thirty seconds later with a
hardcover or Rex Stout’s Alphabet Hicks, in mint
condition, a book I might kill for. She took off the dust jacket, turned it
inside out. The name on the inside left edge was Carter Logan.
She whispered, "Carter Logan died three months ago."
Marion was playing me, but I let her have her way. "And?"
"And," with a note of triumph, "and, he died in a fire that burned down his
house."
I didn’t want to rain on her parade, but, "Marion, it sounds like coincidence
to me."
She shook her head, her lips pursing at my credulity. "No, I found Carter
Logan’s obituary. They were the same age, and both went to the University of
California." She pulled another piece of newspaper from her pocket and flattened
it. The good-looking man appeared to be in his early fifties. "He was one of the
people in that picture."
I let out a sigh. I knew where this was going. Serendipity wrapped in
mystery, but I liked Marion, so I let her take me there. "Okay, you want me to
investigate, right?"
She pushed it all at me. "Yes," and suddenly I had a client.
* * * *
Jeff Jacobs had lived in a modern house at the outskirts
of the small town, overlooking a wilderness preserve on the Columbia. When I was
a young lad in upstate New York, I recalled how the houses of the recently dead
looked sad, but that was another time, when you knew your neighbors, and the
dead were noticed by their absence. That recollection seemed pretty intact at
that instant. This was a dead man’s house, the grass a little long, the shades
down tight. As I pulled around the looping driveway to the garage which faced
away from the front of the house, I saw a woman dressed in a black dress buttoned high up under her chin, swaying softly in her rocking
chair on the covered back deck.
She turned her head when she heard my car. She was in her late forties, and
very pretty. She returned her gaze to the marshland below.
I knocked on the upright column at the top of the stairs and she brought her
reddened eyes to mine. She didn’t say anything, so I filled the vacuum, "Mrs.
Jacobs, I’m sorry to hear about your husband. I was wondering if I could talk to
you for a few minutes."
She nodded with her head to the rocker across from her. I took the seat. It
seemed like the right thing to do, to rock and say nothing. I waited for her.
"Jeff worked really hard to get to this place." She dabbed her eyes. "Twenty
years building up the company, living on credit, cajoling workers to keep at it
while we waited for the checks we were told were in the mail. Twenty years." She
turned her pleading eyes to me. "It wasn’t worth it. Was it?" she asked, a soft
edge of hysteria tinging her voice.
"I don’t know," was all I could muster.
Suddenly a small smile changed her pretty sad face, like she was laughing at
the person she thought I was looking at. "Don’t mind me, I’m just a new widow."
"I think it takes time to get used to it."
She shook her head. "I’ll never get used to it, I’m just going to have to get
by it."
I repeated myself, "It takes time."
She nodded. "I’m taking that time, in bits and pieces, I’m putting Jeff in
the grave in my mind. I’ll know when it’s done, then I’ll stop." Then, as if
recognizing for the first time that she didn’t know me, she said, "I’m sorry, a
bit too public with my widow’s weaves." She reached out a hand. "I’m Jessica
Jacobs."
I shook the firm grip and gave her my name. I didn’t want to alarm her, but I
didn’t have a choice. "Mrs. Jacobs," she tried to correct me but I persisted,
"Mrs. Jacobs, I’m a private investigator and I’ve been hired by an interested
third party to investigate the death of your husband."
She leaned forward, the expression on her face hardening. "My husband died in
an accident?" Her voice made it a question.
I was guarded. "There was an incident a couple of weeks ago that this third
party felt may have been connected with his death." I held up a hand. "It’s very
likely just a coincidence, but she was quite adamant."
"Who is she?" Fearful jealousy?
I allayed her fears. "She’s an old woman who saw something. She did a
little research and came up with some loose ends."
"Such as?"
"The death of Carter Logan three months ago."
A look of distaste crossed her face. "He died smoking in bed, and, as far as
I know, friendless except for Jeff."
"This woman thinks the deaths were connected."
A look of wonder crossed her face. "Who is she? Why should she care?"
I waited for her eyes to refocus on me. "I can’t tell you who she is, but she
cares because she’s that kind of person, the same kind of person you’d be."
She shook her head. "Don’t count on that." She didn’t mean it.
"I need to ask some questions. Are you up to it?"
I saw her decision in her transparent gray eyes. She nodded and I took her
through the paces. She didn’t know about the picture Jeff had found, but he had
seemed excited a few weeks earlier. Then, out of the blue he flew to San
Francisco to visit two of his fraternity brothers, Bob Brandle and Canby Morton.
Brandle owned a large chip manufacturing business in Fremont. Jeff stayed with
her sister Marsha in the city. When he returned he was in a down mood
and told her he had an important decision to make, and once he made it, he would
tell her about it. That time never came.
About Carter Logan, she had less than nice things to say. Logan had been born
in the area, and ten years earlier had convinced Jeff to relocate his business
away from the stifling tax burden of California. It was a good decision for
them, but the friendship with Logan had long since passed out of existence.
They’d see him in town, talk about old times, then part unchanged by his
presence. Logan didn’t, in fact hadn’t in twenty years, worked for a living. He
told them he’d gotten an inheritance, but they didn’t believe it. Carter Logan
was mean, and they figured he made his money being mean.
I left her swaying on the deck and made my way home to pack for the airport,
and fill my head with facts from the Internet. Jeff Jacobs was a good man, and
by every one of my definitions of good, they were a good couple. Someone was
going to pay.
* * * *
I’ve always wondered which came first, San Francisco or Berkeley, they’re
ideologically too close together for coincidence. But I knew when it happened,
in the sixties when an unholy alliance of the disaffected wrested the system
from the hands of the people who ran things. In the process they convinced those
same people they were racists, homophobes, misogynists, that is, they were to
blame for the sorry state of the world. So the population went into hiding from
a world gone mad. The Bay Area was now so entrenched in its abnormality that
through its skewed glasses the rest of the world is mad.
I myself put the blame on Berkeley, where the disease probably festered for
years before its deadly spore alighted on the unsuspecting city. If San
Francisco is Sodom, then Berkeley is its evil twin, a testing ground for
absurdity before it goes downtown. But the real culprit is the university, an
agar-culture cauldron of good intentions gone wrong, some of which escape into
the human population, to flourish in a fertile but diseased soil of miscreants
and idiots.
I’ve been away awhile, but I remembered how slippery slope morals are contact
borne, so I had low expectations of Mr. Brandle. It was hard to live there and
not be infected with the decay, and its supercilious counterpart, hubris. Yes, I
had a whole set of biases I was waiting for Bob Brandle to reinforce.
I’d called ahead, told Mr. Brandle that Jeff Jacobs had asked me to stop by
and say hi. He’d hemmed and hawed, then told me to come to the company. I told
him it was confidential, I’d meet him at his house. He said it was Saturday,
there’d be no one at the company. I said I’m meet him at his house.
The beautifully restored three story Victorian overlooked Lake Merritt where
I used to run a monthly Sunday ten kilometer race too many years ago. The paint
job was new, and there was an army of black guys trimming the hedges, blowing
the sidewalk clean. I was an hour early and sat on the bench across the street
watching the front door. When the garage opened, a pretty gray-haired - young
gray hair - woman backed out with her full-sized black and gray Mercedes. The garage
door closed behind her.
Ten minutes later a tall man in a gray suit parked in Brandle’s driveway and
opened the front door without ringing the bell. He appeared to call in, and then
entered. He was still there when I rang the bell, but nowhere to be seen.
Brandle let me in. No smile. No handshake. He led me to the living room. "So,
how can I help you."
I started down the path I’d charted on the flight to the city. "Mr. Brandle,
I’ve got a copy of a picture at home that I thought might interest you?"
He laughed. "What could you
have of interest to me."
I gave him a tight smile.
He made a threat, "Do you know who I am? I can make your life miserable."
I stood up and flattened out my smile. "Mr. Brandle, you’re going to have to
go some to scare me. You talk to Mr. Morton there in the other room, then you
give me a call at this number." I put a checkmark next to my cell phone number on
my card. "Up to you." I closed the door and didn’t look back.
I got into my car after pocketing a parking ticket. I drove around the
block, then waited for Morton to come out. He didn’t come out, so I crossed the
Bay Bridge into Sodom.
* * * *
Marsha Aldus lived in an upscale gentrified block around the park at the top
of Scott. Her name was on the third bell. I rang. I announced myself and she
buzzed me in. I took the stairs up to the top floor. She had a pot of coffee
brewing, and the smell of just-ground beans filled the air with hazelnut.
Marsha was a short thin woman with a boyish build, bobbed thick black hair,
transparent gray eyes, pretty features. She looked thirty-five, but she had to
be fifty.
She read my face, or maybe my mind, "I was fourteen when I started at
Berkeley. A bit of a child prodigy." She suddenly frowned. "Never was much of a
prodigy with my private life though." She poured me a cup of coffee, pointed me
to the couch.
I discounted it for her. "Everybody makes mistakes."
She shrugged. "Yeah, well I’ve made some doozies. The only good choice I ever
made was Jeff Jacobs, but I was too young, so I set him up with my older sister,
just to keep him in the family." She blushed a little, then talked into her cup,
"Jeff was a good man."
She dismissively waved her hand. "But then that’s not why you’re here." She
refreshed her cup and sat down catty corner from me. "Sis said you have some
questions about what Jeff did when he was here."
I nodded and she went into her story without a preamble. Jeff spent
the morning discussing their two overlapping years at Cal, picking her brain
about Bob Brandle, Canby Morton and Carter Logan, but she never knew them that
well, only as Jeff’s friends.
"Then he asked me if I remembered when Jack Arnold died."
I said, "A new name. Who was he?"
"Jack was another of the fraternity brothers, like me, a sophomore while the
others were seniors. He was a gofer kind of guy, but sort of sweet. He had a
crush on me, but he was too much of a gentleman to say anything. Bob Brandle
used to pick on him unmercifully, but Bob was always a real ass."
"What happened to Jack?" I asked.
I could feel the recollection make her sad. "There was a football game coming
up, I don’t remember which college, but the fraternity wanted to steal the
school’s mascot which was housed at their brother fraternity. So Jack was picked
to do the dirty deed. The next morning he was found dead in San Francisco, the
damn mutt still leashed to his hand. His neck had been broken. Some drunks saw
the car that dropped him off, but what do drunks know?"
* * * *
I called Marion to catch the morning flight, then went to the main Library. I
found the fiche for the right period and spooled the Examiner into the machine.
I printed the page with a picture of the dead Arnold.
I got to my hotel, then checked my messages.
The first one was Brandle’s. "Hello," there was some muffled sounds,
then a voice in the background said ‘leave a message,’ and Brandle continued,
"We have to talk." He left a number.
The second message was from Marsha. "Hi, it was nice meeting you today. I
hope when you find whatever it is you’re looking for, you can come and tell me
about it." There was a long pause. "I know you’ve got my number."
The last message was from Marion, and she was arriving early at SFO.
I slept like a baby, well as much as a six-four, two-hundred-and-ten pounder
can sleep like a baby in a too-short hotel bed. The next morning I arose early,
ran ten miles to and around Land’s End, foraging in my better memories of the
city. When I got back, there were two more messages from Brandle.
Marion got off the plane that Sunday morning looking bright and chipper, like
she was on a field trip. I put her in the car and we drove to Oakland. I parked
illegally again, but this time we stayed in the car. I showed her the photograph
of Jack Arnold and she said he was one of the four boys in the picture. While I
was considering how I could prod Brandle to make an appearance, he exited the
house dressed in running shorts. He looked a little out of shape. The young
gray-haired young woman I’d seen in the Mercedes gave him a kiss.
Marion said, "He’s one of them, I think." Then she turned her head and
pointed at an approaching runner. "And him, he’s one. He still looks the same."
Canby Morton stopped at the bottom of the steps to wait for Brandle. He was in
much better shape.
I said, "Marion, I can take you back to the airport ..."
She cut me off. "No, I hate to fly, but now that I’m here, I’m going to take
advantage of it. Just drop me in downtown San Francisco. I’ll take the train
home."
After letting her off, I drove to the Sunset district and went to the
diner-like restaurant above Cliff House. The thick fog hid Seal Rock, and even
the Sutro Baths were just a faint outline. There were new waitresses, a new
atmosphere. I missed the four-foot octogenarian who always said I’d love her
coffee. I ordered a sausage and cheese omelet, then smothered it in tabasco and
mustard. I concentrated on the fog, and then my food, but the back of my mind
was working.
The proof was gone, and the memory of a seventy year old woman
wasn’t going to send anyone to jail. Sure, maybe they’d left some clues when
they killed the blackmailing Logan, and now that we knew Jacobs was no longer an
accident, there might be a way to find his killer, but it was a bit dicey to
me. I wanted justice to be certain, in my black and white world the guilty don’t
run free.
It’s why the cops hate me. It’s why the cops love me.
On the ride to the airport I called Brandle’s number. He wanted to meet, I
told him that wouldn’t be safe for me. I said I wanted a hundred thousand in
cash sent to my office address, and I wanted it there by Tuesday, or the picture
of them with Jack Arnold would go to the police, as would a lot of well-founded
suspicions. I finished with, "Brandle, don’t you ever call me. When I need more
money, I’ll call you."
* * * *
I have a friend, Dennis Doyle, a homicide cop I’ve crossed paths
with a couple times. A lot of people might not describe it as a friendship, but
it was probably as close as two loners could get to it. I didn’t know him as
well as a hundred other good acquaintances, but if I was killed, he’d find the
killer, and I’d do the same for him.
I called Doyle from San Francisco and discussed what I’d done. He tsked,
tsked me, said if I was a cop, this would be entrapment, or worse. I said, lucky
me, lucky him. He said he’d have to clear it with the captain.
He was waiting with two large suitcases when I got to my office. He was with
a squirrely little electronics technician I’d met in the past, but didn’t
remember where. They followed me in.
Doyle shook his big head, the thick, two shades of gray hair a half beat
behind. "You know, the captain is still burning up from that trick you pulled on
the mayor. He said we’re in big trouble if it comes out we saved your life."
"Such are the quandaries of serving and protecting."
Doyle, all six-nine two-sixty of him, chuckled. "Yeah, but you shouldn’t act
so happy about it. The brass really has a soft spot for you, it’s just too bad
it’s lining the bottom of a coffin."
The tech drilled holes and installed three pencil thin wireless cameras in my
walls, plus two mikes, another camera in the hallway, and a fifth camera to the
parking area behind the office. I own the building, and I have an apartment in
the upper two floors, but we didn’t wire it since no one could know about it.
Doyle asked if I wanted to wire the house in Washington, but I said it wasn’t
necessary.
We sat up in my apartment. The three of us played cutthroat euchre for a
dollar a point. The tech was taking us both to the cleaners when, at three in
the morning, Canby Morton saved us from further embarrassment.
Doyle saw it first. The BMW pulled up behind my car, and inside I saw Canby
checking a piece of paper. He then backed away. Ten minutes later he came
walking up to the car, purposefully, like it was his. He had a black and white
shopping sack which he placed in front of the car, against the wall away from
the street. He pulled out a thick blanket and laid it on the ground, then picked
a pistol from the bottom of the bag and put it in his belt. He carefully lifted
a eighteen inch long, five inch thick pipe bomb with two long wires sticking out
from one end. He pulled out a thick magnet and pushed it up under the driver’s
side, then stuck the steel bomb to it. He got under the car and worked for ten
minutes, then attached the wires and stuffed everything out of sight.
Morton was folding up the blanket when Doyle said, "Police, hold it right
there."
Morton turned, reaching for his gun and Doyle said in his best John Wayne
imitation, "Don’t even think about it, pilgrim."
* * * *
According to Doyle, Canby Morton sang slowly, but completely, and by seven
a.m. Brandle was in custody in Oakland. It took him only a few minutes to
explain it all to me, but I drew it out a little longer for Marion.
Thirty-one years ago the four fraternity brothers stole the opposing team’s
mascot, all good clean fun. They used the picture booth to record the event for
posterity. Each kept his own copy of the picture. Well, Brandle and Arnold were
taking the mascot back when they got into an argument, Morton didn’t know about
what, and Brandle killed Arnold. Said it was an accident, but poor Arnold was no
less dead. He tried to get the pictures back from Morton and Logan, but they
held onto them.
Turned out Brandle’s family was rich, and they figured he could help them
start their careers, no big hits, just a little spending money. Then Brandle
started a company that got really hot in the late eighties and he bought Morton
off with a vice-president’s position. Logan just wanted the money, but when the
company went public the last December, he put a big move on, he wanted five
million dollars. Now Brandle could afford it, but he wasn’t willing to pay,
trusting Logan was only a ratcheting up for the future. He awarded Morton stock
options to kill Logan. Then Jacobs found out about Arnold. He confronted Brandle
and Morton who told him about the accident and how they’d covered it up. He said
he’d give them a week to turn themselves in, else he would go to the cops. If
he’d known they’d killed Logan, he’d have been more careful. By the time I made
my appearance, killing was getting easier.
Marion frowned sadly as the story came to an end. She looked at me with wet
eyes. "I knew he was a good man, that Mr. Jacobs."
"It cost him his life."
"Being good is worth dying for, don’t you think?"
I said it was.
She twisted the Logan’s first edition Alphabet Hicks in her thin
hands, then pushed it at me. "The librarian agreed we could give this to you."
She was searching for words, I waited. "Jacob’s widow brought in his books this
morning." Another pause. "You know, I see these books come in, from the living
and the dead, they’re like markers to a changing world, and I have trouble
seeing a bright future for the next generation. You know people through their
books, what they read, what they save, what they read over and over. I came from
a time before throwaway books, the two hundred thousand words of mind candy,
when words had to be important enough to justify good paper. Jeff Jacobs read
good books." She pointed to the boxes by the door. "I’m going to take them home,
read or reread them. Maybe I can find the man within."
I said I hoped she could too. She said she’d like to read my books when I
died. I said I’d like that.
* * * *
The plane touched down at SFO with barely a bump. I read the Examiner on the
flight down, it was the same old town. But maybe it was me, maybe my colorless
world view was too harsh, too much for the city to live up to. There’s a whole
level, maybe a colored level, where the evil noise I heard might be only a
whisper, not even evil, just there. Maybe I had drawn too much from my bowels
eye view. I’d try to raise my sights.
Marsha waved as I exited the gate. She wore a smile, an enigmatic, fearful
smile, wondering about me as I wondered about the city. But I knew she believed
I was a good man.
I am.
-the end-
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