The Breakers

by Marcia Muller

  “Where’s Habiba?” Their adopted daughter, whom I’d rescued from an abusive family on a remote Caribbean island.

  “In her bedroom in Anne-Marie’s apartment.”

  Anne-Marie and Hank were—had been—one of those couples who couldn’t live together—neat freak and slob—but for years they’d coexisted very well in a two-flat house in the Noe Valley district. Until now.

  “How’s she taking the breakup?”

  “Quietly. You know her: so much disruption and deception in her life. I’m not sure it’s too good that she’s learned to handle it in silence.”

  Maybe, maybe not.

  I asked, “Would it help if I talked to her?”

  “Definitely. You’re her hero. She often reminds us of how the two of you took your ‘big swim.’”

  “I’ll call her, then. We can reminisce about the big swim.”

  “Thanks, Shar. Love you. But about the Curleys—”

  “Don’t worry about them. I’ve decided to send someone who speaks the language to locate them.”

  6:10 p.m.

  “I’ll be glad to go,” Julia said when I explained what I wanted her to do.

  “Good. Leave for Costa Rica as soon as possible.”

  “First flight out.”

  I hadn’t asked her any of the crap questions too often fired at women when they’re asked to travel for business purposes: Will your husband mind? Will the kids be okay? Have you put up enough casseroles so the family won’t starve? Has the laundry been done for the week? Are you sure you won’t mind being all on your lonesome?

  Of course most of them didn’t apply to Julia’s situation: she had no husband; she had only one precociously independent son who went to a great school three blocks from home; her sister took excellent care of the household duties; and Julia was never lonely in a strange place, because she wasn’t shy about striking up conversations with interesting people she met.

  “I’ll be in touch when I have anything to report,” she said.

  “Vaya con Dios.”

  7:20 p.m.

  I moved from my desk to the armchair under Mr. T. and stared out at the lights of Marin. Mr. T. was my schefflera tree, named in honor of Ted, who had procured him from the Flower Mart. Darkness was gathering quickly, and I thought of the nights in mid-November, when we would go off daylight saving. Initially those nights were always grim, but they brightened when the holiday lights appeared. For the last two weeks in December, the dark seemed a cozy blanket wrapped around the season’s events. But then came January, February, and March: either cold and rainy or hot and parched. Nobody can predict the weather patterns now, and I’ve given up trying.

  A call from Rae brightened my mood.

  “Your mother was a little more scattered than usual today,” she said, “but cheerful and pleasant. She gifted me with a scarf she made.”

  I breathed out a sigh of relief, balancing the phone receiver between my shoulder and my ear.

  “I was right about the doc,” Rae went on. “He’s shilling for a very expensive nursing home. I’m looking into home care for her.”

  “How did I get a friend like you?”

  “Lucky, I guess.”

  “Did you tell her I’ll visit her soon?”

  “Yep. She says for you not to bother. And not to worry so much about her, she’ll be fine.”

  “That’s what she always says. A good sign.”

  “I thought so too.” Rae paused, then chuckled. “Wait until you see the scarf. Purple with little yellow dots. Maybe I should pass it on to Ted. It’d go well with one of those Botany 500 jackets of his.”

  “Good idea.”

  When we ended the call, I was smiling—for the first time that day.

  8:44 p.m.

  “Hey, Shar,” Habiba said when I called her cell. “What’s up?”

  “I’d like to hire you as an expert witness for one of my investigations.”

  “How much you paying?”

  “Two slices of pizza at Gina’s.”

  “Cool.”

  “And a Coke.”

  “This one must be a biggie.”

  “Yes, it is. Remember when you told me during our big swim how desperately you wanted to escape that island where your dad was holding you?”

  “Not something I’m ever gonna forget.”

  “Well, what if you were in trouble here in the city and wanted to get away without anybody knowing—where would you go?”

  “Why would I? I love it here, and I love Anne-Marie and Hank—both of them, in spite of the breakup. Do you know—?”

  “We’ll talk about that in a minute. But for now, considering you’re older and more mobile than you were in the Caribbean, how would you manage it?”

  “Ummm…Let me think.” Long pause. “Would I have a car?”

  “No.” Chelle owned a truck, but it had broken down, so she had been borrowing from friends while saving for a new one.

  “Would I have a friend who would lend me one?”

  “Probably not for a very long time.”

  “Not even a boyfriend?”

  “Not even.” Except for the swinish one Chelle had recently booted out of her life.

  “Okay,” Habiba said, “that means public transit. Not great or fast, but easy to hide on. Nobody ever looks at you on a bus or a train or even on a plane. You’d have to wear a weird costume or do something gross to make them turn their heads. One time this drunk guy threw up on my foot on Muni. It was awful, and everybody was horrified, but the driver refunded my fare.”

  That I didn’t need more detail on.

  “You wouldn’t hitchhike?”

  “Not with all the weirdos on the road.”

  “Bicycle?”

  “If you want to go any distance, they’re too slow, and even if you lock one up, it’s likely to get stolen.”

  “How else, then?”

  “Well, there is one way, but if you ever tell Hank or Anne-Marie I know about it, I’ll unfriend you.”

  To her cybergeneration, the most dire threat in the universe. Even though I don’t use any of the social networks, I said, “I promise.”

  “Okay. There’s this guy named Billy Clyde who runs a company called the Young Freedom Line. Cheap fares and no questions asked, to other cities and different airports. Most of the kids who use it are trying to escape their homes. My friend Ursula, her mother was dead and her father beat on her something bad. She took the bus and sent me a postcard from Denver. Just the one, saying the trip was fine and she was happy there. I never heard from her again, though.”

  Habiba’s voice was sad and reflective. She was thinking similar things as I: the bus had dropped off its young and naïve riders in a bad neighborhood; without much money, both the girls and the boys had been dragged down into a human cesspool; even the ones who were able to send a postcard to a friend back home had probably not survived the undertow.

  “Okay,” she said, “about the breakup…”

  “Yes. What happened?”

  “Not all that much at first. They just kind of stopped being together or talking with each other. It was like she’d be up here and he’d be down there, but they didn’t visit back and forth, and the three of us never had dinners or watched TV together, or went out anyplace. Then, the other night, she came downstairs with her suitcases all packed. She travels a lot for business and I knew she had a trip scheduled for Chicago, so I didn’t think much of it. But then he asked me to go to my room, and I did, and they started in on each other.”

  “You didn’t happen to hear any of it?” I asked.

  “Well, it’s hard not to hear anything in this house.”

  “Especially when you know all the places to listen in from.”

  “Okay, my ears were flapping.”

  “What did they say?”

  “He asked her to stay. She said no. He asked her why she was leaving. She said she couldn’t believe how thick he was. He said she should tell him why he was ‘so thick.’ She to
ld him all the life had gone out of their relationship, the comradeship, the adventure. I kind of cringed, thinking it was maybe because of me, a kid weighing them down. But then she said, ‘The best memories I’m taking away from here are our times with Habiba.’ And she left.”

  I felt hollow inside. The things we do to our children…And the things we do to one another…

  Habiba said, “I can’t talk about this any more.”

  “I understand.”

  “Shar, I won’t lose you too, will I?”

  “I’ll always be here for you, my big swimmer.”

  She sighed, a little contented sound, and broke the connection.

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10

  7:35 a.m.

  A great day to be alive. The sun was shining, and through the bedroom windows that faced the backyard I heard mourning doves cooing. A lot of people think they’re creepy, but I find their gentle sounds soothing. To me, if they’re out in their nest in our apple tree, it’s a sign that things will go right during the coming day.

  I looked over at Hy. He was deeply asleep, his arms wrapped around an oversize pillow as they’d been wrapped around me last night. After I came home, I’d been surprised that he wasn’t already there, but he appeared an hour later while I was curled up on the couch reviewing files that I’d neglected all week because of my concern for Chelle.

  “Stuck in a holding pattern at SFO,” he said, stopping to pat Alex, who had run downstairs when he heard Hy’s car pull into the garage. “Flight ahead of mine was at the five hundred level on twenty-eight R when a drone almost clipped its nose. I was in the cockpit of my flight—first officer is a buddy of mine, let me sit in—and I tell you, it was scary even from there.”

  I let the files slide to the floor and went to hug him. “Something’s got to be done about those drones.”

  “I’ll say.” He kissed me, then held me tight, smoothing back my hair. “The FAA’s trying to work on the problem, but”—he sighed—“you know bureaucracy.”

  Now, as I watched him sleep, I considered how much danger was factored into our combined lives. Any case could end badly. Any flight in our plane too. And then I thought of other people who went about their days quietly, who had no intimation of disaster until it struck: the secretary exiting her cubicle just before a berserk coworker ran down the aisle with a semiautomatic weapon; a crowd crossing the street when a drugged-up driver appeared out of nowhere and mowed them down; people praying in their church when a disaffected, crazed parishioner opened fire.

  The world was getting edgier, scarier; good sense had been eroded; since the last election day, megalomania had spread like the Black Plague.

  It no longer seemed like such a great day to be alive.

  And then the phone rang. Alex levitated from my feet. Jessie stuffed her head under Hy’s pillow. Hy moaned and made a make-it-go-away gesture. I picked up.

  Chelle’s voice said, “Hi, Sharon, it’s me.”

  Only it wasn’t Chelle’s voice. Close to, but clearly an imitation.

  What the hell was this? The only way to find out was to play along with the caller’s game.

  “Where have you been?” I demanded.

  “I had to get away.”

  “Why?”

  “Damon. He was terrorizing me.”

  “How?”

  “Geez, Sharon, you sound so hard.”

  “Geez”: she never used that expression. And “Sharon”: she always called me Shar.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m scared they’ll kill me if I do!”

  The melodramatic pitch of her voice made me want to laugh.

  “Who are ‘they’?”

  “I can’t tell you. Please, Sharon, I need money!”

  “How much?”

  “Five thousand in cash.”

  As if I would simply supply that amount without question. “Why? What for?”

  “I said I’m afraid they’ll kill me if I don’t pay them!”

  Bullshit. I hit the Disconnect button.

  The bogus Chelle didn’t call back.

  Fortunately, in our house, we have a highly sophisticated phone system, designed by my nephew Mick and his fellow operative Derek Frye. It records all incoming calls, whether we answer them or not; forwards them to our other devices; provides information on the numbers where the calls originated and the owners of the numbers, if available; records all calls we originate; keeps logs; provides call frequency and percentages and mostly useless other data. It doesn’t have voice identification yet, but I’d told Carolina Owens I’d like to have her set it up.

  The fake call from Chelle had originated from a number in the 916 area code—Sacramento. When I dialed it, a machine answered, “Capitol City Café,” and went on to describe the menu, which didn’t sound too appetizing.

  I logged on to the Internet and looked up the café. Nothing about it indicated any possible connection with Chelle. I couldn’t recall an instance in which any of the Curleys had mentioned Sacramento—except to bitch about our state government.

  At nine o’clock I reached Carolina Owens at her office and played the recording for her to copy for testing. She got back to me within the hour.

  “It was definitely not your girl,” she said. “For one thing, it originated from a landline, unlike a cellular unit like the earlier recording you brought to me; those are the most difficult to pin down. I can tell you much more detail about this one: The speaker’s not one of the pros who make these kind of calls for a living. She’s trying too hard to control the tension in her voice. Breathing’s off too—again, nervousness. I’d put her in her midtwenties, and because of the little puffs between some of her words, I’d say she’s a smoker. There’re some barely detectable background noises—could be somebody prompting her on what to say, or maybe just traffic. If they are traffic noises, she was pretty high above street level.”

  I wrote down, “Sacto/high traffic/tall building.”

  “That’s good information,” I said.

  “We aim to please.”

  Next I placed a call to Eric Lopez, owner of a Sacramento agency that sometimes took on work for us.

  “Capitol City Café?” he said. “Sure I know it. It’s the rooftop restaurant of the Twenty-First Century Grand Hotel on N Street.”

  “A woman there placed a threatening call to me this morning.”

  “Not good. I assume your phone system picked up on the exact number?”

  “It was the general number, the one that recites the menu.”

  “Uh-huh. What time did the call come in?”

  “Seven thirty-five.”

  “Too early for anybody but staff to be in; they don’t open till noon. Give me a while, and I’ll get back to you.”

  I was puzzled and worried. Chelle’s disappearance had originally seemed a case of a parent’s or a young person’s lack of communication. Now, with the bogus call from Sacramento, the situation felt ominous. The ransom demand made me wonder what kind of people had latched on to the case in the hope of profit.

  Time to get moving. I decided to first look up Billy Clyde, the man Habiba had told me about.

  11:30 a.m.

  Billy Clyde was an emphatic talker and a spitter. Each pronunciation he made was accompanied by a fine spray of saliva that made me edge back from him. If he continued in this manner, I’d eventually end up three city blocks away. His appearance wasn’t too good either: wild blond hair that stuck out in all directions; a mustache that had grown too long and kept getting into his mouth; crazed electric-blue eyes that hinted at substance abuse.

  I’d been surprised to reach him this early at his office in the Young Freedom Line garage on Folsom Street near Bernal Heights. When I asked if we could talk about the buses he said sure, we could talk, but not on the phone. “They’re all tapped,” he added.

  “They are? By whom?”

  “Them. You know—them.�
��

  Oh, Lord, I was dealing with a paranoiac.

  “You come here,” he told me.

  I couldn’t resist feeding his paranoia. “How do you know your office isn’t bugged?”

  “It isn’t. I guarantee it.”

  He sounded like a television huckster trying to sell me a deal on a bad used car.

  The garage was cavernous, its concrete floor stained and oil slicked; a battered Toyota was pulled up near the corner that was glassed off as an office. The only other vehicle was a panel truck that might seat ten people max. No identifying logo on it, but then why would you want to advertise that you were aiding young people who wanted to escape their lives?

  I showed Billy Clyde Chelle’s picture and he nodded. “Not likely I’d forget her. She wanted to go to SFO last Saturday. Or was it Sunday? Don’t remember, but it doesn’t matter ’cause she didn’t get there. She asked me to take the long way around, on Evans Avenue, on account of she had a friend near there who might loan her some money. But when we crossed Nelson Street she yelled for me to pull over. Got out of the bus and ran.”

  “Ran where?”

  “Right on Nelson.”

  I pictured the neighborhood: it is close to the former naval shipyard, and there’s not a lot there, just boatyards and marine supply firms, with modest dwellings scattered in between. But if Chelle had a friend there, why had she taken Billy Clyde’s shuttle to the airport? Why not a regular bus or cab? Or why not call the friend and ask her to meet her someplace? Something wrong, maybe with Billy Clyde’s story?

  “She have any luggage with her?” I asked.

  “Just one of those backpacks like they all carry.”

  “Did she say anything to you?”

  “Not a word till she yelled for me to stop.”

  “Okay, Mr. Clyde. Thanks for the information. By the way, does your bus line extend to places like Reno or Utah or Denver?”

  “Sure does. Where the kids wanna go, we take them.”

  “Hmmm. Do you know the federal statutes about transporting minors across state lines?”