Hooked

by Matt Richtel

  “Bonds went two for four,” Bullseye said when he saw me. “That’s not the interesting part.”

  Bullseye doubtless had heard what happened at the café. But he couldn’t have known I was there. So the fact that he ignored my torn shirt and shorts was just par for the course for his social skills, not an extraordinary example of the theme. “Division of labor,” I said. “I’ll get the beers and you tell me the interesting part.”

  “He walked in the tenth,” Bullseye explained. “Therefore, his on-base percentage is the highest not just for any player this late in the season, but for any player at any time after the first month of a regular season.”

  I set down a round of beers. “I was at the Sunshine Café.”

  Bullseye didn’t say anything, but I could feel him shrink his head back into his neck the way it did when his left brain was poked with a stick. Samantha put her hands on my knees, studied my face, and then dove into a full-fledged bear hug.

  “I survive the explosion only to be asphyxiated in my local bar.”

  “Breathe through your mouth. It will release the toxins.” She finally released her hug.

  I told them about the explosion and its aftermath.

  “You’re sure it was Annie’s handwriting?” Samantha asked.

  All I could do was shrug. I could have sworn the looping script was hers, but how could that be possible?

  “Isn’t that place in Annie’s old neighborhood?”

  I nodded. “I had a basketball game and an errand in the Marina. I rarely go to that café anymore. We used to have Sunday brunch there.” It came out slightly defensive.

  Samantha knelt in front of me.

  “So maybe Annie was in the back of your mind, sweetie. You were shaken by the explosion and it opened a portal in your memory. It was another level of consciousness.”

  “Mumbo-jumbo,” said Bullseye gruffly.

  I thought I caught a whiff of judgment in Bullseye’s eyes. He had met Annie only once, but professed a dislike of her immediately. I heard from someone else at the bar that he had described her as a “Peace Sign,” seductive, but bigger on symbolism than substance. There was a class distinction Bullseye just couldn’t abide, or maybe he thought my love was a little too intense for his mathematical view of the world.

  The further I got into the story, the less it made sense. If I believed that the explosion was an accident, then I couldn’t possibly explain the warning I’d been given.

  But the idea of someone blowing up a neighborhood café seemed nothing short of insane. What could it possibly have to do with Annie?

  We had two more rounds in virtual silence. At some point, Samantha sat on Bullseye’s lap and fed him peanuts while he watched the game. I finally slinked out. Was someone trying to blow me up? Or was someone trying to save me?

  Or both.

  6

  I got back to my loft sometime after midnight. I toted the laptop to the couch and tried to check e-mail, but somehow I’d left the computer on all day and was without power. I plugged it back in at the desk, and that’s where exhaustion overtook me. Head bobbing at chin, I fell into a deep sleep, and dreamed of Annie, evaporating into millions of tiny computer pixels.

  I awoke with a start to two sounds: a meow and ringing. The meow was a cat. The ringing was a magazine editor calling. Both were hungry.

  Samantha Leary had given me Hippocrates, the black cat sitting on my chest bleating for breakfast. The critter, Samantha said, was designed to teach me to be less of a “dog” and to develop my inner feline. I looked at the cat and barked, causing it to flee toward the kitchen. The phone call was from Kevin. He said, “Got a sec to chat?”

  Somebody should study how editors and writers communicate. A remarkably high number of conversations begin with an editor saying, “Got a sec to chat?” But this doesn’t refer to a short exchange of ideas. It means: Do you have half an hour? I need to tell you precisely how to write your story.

  Writers respond, “Absolutely.” By which they mean: You talk. I’ll ignore you. I’ll write the story the way I want to.

  My dynamic with Kevin—and with other editors—demanded subtler strategies. As a freelance journalist, I needed to be particularly sensitive to editorial demands. If I ticked them off, they wouldn’t hire me and I, by extension, wouldn’t eat, or pay rent.

  Kevin worked for American Health Journal, for which I wrote three or four times a year. The stories weren’t of particular interest to me, but the magazine paid well—on time. “We’ve got an idea about the cell phone story,” he said. “We want to do an informational graphic mapping the path of the radio wave as it passes through the brain.”

  Editors say “we” when they mean “I.”

  Kevin went on to explain an idea for an elaborate but simplistic illustration. It would show the radio wave taking a path from a phone tower through the major regions of the brain and to its ultimate destination—the phone being held at someone’s ear.

  He stopped talking abruptly and changed directions.

  “We need the story by Friday. You still on track?”

  I looked at the half-foot-high stack of research I’d amassed on the kitchen table. I hadn’t begun to look through it, but I’d told Kevin I’d done the interviews and read the literature. I spent a few minutes trying to manage his expectations. The generally accepted theory is that the effect of radio waves on the brain is small, if not nonexistent, and I told Kevin not to expect any revelations. Still, the paranoia about cell phones is understandable, and not just because the idea of having radio waves crashing against the frontal lobe is disquieting. We harbor a general distrust of machines. Just look at the number of movies that make technology the enemy; wayward computers have replaced Commies, aliens, and Nazis.

  Maybe our fear was a reflection of our growing dependence on gadgets. In every ear, an earpiece. On every belt, a pager—millions of devices connecting us to millions of other devices with streams of data. We’ve come to rely wholly on a bunch of things that most of us couldn’t build or fix.

  “Emphasize the fact that we just don’t know how bad the medical impact could be,” Kevin said. “I’m thinking about two thousand words.”

  Maybe I should have played the sympathy card—and tried to buy some more time to finish the story. The café that had exploded was all over the news. I could have told Kevin I’d come within a double cappuccino of being blown up with it. But he would have just said, “Oh my God. Are you okay?” He would have meant: Get me the story by Friday.

  I tried to focus on the pile of research, but the papers were highly scientific, boring by most standards, and not particularly informative. On any day it would have been tough; on this day, doubly so.

  And, besides, the laptop was beckoning again.

  Home office workers know it is taboo to spend a couple of hours watching TV, but they have no reservations about surfing the Web. TV is deemed sheer entertainment and a waste of time, while monitoring Yahoo! News, catching up on stocks, and checking e-mail every two minutes is barely a misdemeanor. Procrastination under the guise of productivity.

  I called up the San Francisco Chronicle home page, which had three stories related to the café explosion. The main headline read, “San Francisco Eatery Torn by Blast.” The story said that police were frantically hunting down leads, but had no suspects or motives. There was no credible evidence of terrorism. There were five fatalities.

  According to the Chronicle, the blast would have killed more people if the weather hadn’t been so good. A half dozen patrons who might have been inside were sitting at the thick oak tables outside of the café. Those who were inside weren’t so lucky. I read their obituaries.

  Simon Anderson was a thirty-five-year-old aspiring novelist. He left behind a wife and two kids, one adopted and with autism. Andrea Knudson, twenty-five, had just finished law school and was preparing to take the bar exam. Darby Station was a single, thirty-something regional marketing manager for a company based in Texas. And Eileen and
Terry Dujobe were retirees, evidently spending an afternoon sipping their unexpectedly last latte. They were all residents of San Francisco.

  The stories said several people inside the café survived the blast unscathed. At least one was mentioned by name. Police said that a waitress named Erin Coultran had walked into a small employee bathroom milliseconds before the blast. Concrete reinforcements had kept the restroom, and the waitress, virtually intact.

  There was a picture of Erin. She appeared, not surprisingly, frazzled. She was thirty-three and pretty, maybe beautiful. Even in two dimensions, she had eyes that conveyed kindness and depth.

  I felt a surge of adrenaline return. My legs twitched and I bit the inside of my cheek so hard that I winced. With an unsteady index finger, I drew an imaginary circle around Erin.

  I looked at her eyes. Had she seen the woman who handed me the note in the café?

  7

  Highly skilled journalists learn techniques for finding people. Like using the phone book and the Internet. That’s why we’re so handsomely paid.

  It turned out that Erin Coultran belonged to a performance art troupe in the Mission District, the Heavenly Booties. The troupe’s Web site described the group as committed to socially conscious women’s free-form improv dance style. It left a lot up to the imagination, though I could at least surmise that if I ever had a chance to dance with Erin, I wouldn’t be the one leading.

  I doubted anyone would be staffing the headquarters of a performance art troupe. If they were, some other entrepreneurial journalist had probably gotten there first, but the key to unraveling a story was to muster the energy to start somewhere.

  When I got there, a handful of journalists were indeed out front on the sidewalk, lingering or, rather, fidgeting. That’s what reporters do. It’s a product of the attention deficit disorder that is a prerequisite in the profession. A journalist not involved in a moment of intensity is seeking one out.

  I walked to the dance troupe’s modest storefront. A crème-colored blind hung halfway down the window. I knelt and peeked through the bottom, but could see only two wooden tables on a linoleum floor.

  I turned around and found myself looking into the sun. And felt a dull ache where the adrenaline had worn off.

  Two months earlier, I’d written a story about how the vending machines in San Francisco’s schools were stocked with high-calorie crap sold by the same companies sponsoring extracurricular sports programs. To call it investigative journalism would have been an impossible stretch. It, like most of what I did, just involved noticing connections. Nothing cloak-and-dagger about my trade. I was a guy with a pen, curiosity, and deep thanks for the First Amendment. This quest was already demanding a different kind of grit.

  I stopped at a Mexican grocery store two doors down from the dance center. Varieties of jalapeños, plantains, and tomatillos on the outside produce stand catered to the neighborhood’s concentration of Spanish-speakers, but inside the place smelled thinly of the barbecued duck I could see behind the deli glass. Many of the local stores had been purchased of late by Chinese, a demographic shared by the young man who sat behind a counter watching Wheel of Fortune.

  “I’ve got a strange question.”

  “Condoms are over there, bro,” he responded, pointing to aisle three.

  “Good. Now where are your inflatable dolls?” I said.

  I pulled out a newspaper clipping of Erin’s picture. “I’m trying to find someone.”

  “Are you a pig?”

  “Reporter. She survived an explosion the other day. I want to ask her how she’s feeling.”

  Suddenly, that seemed like enough information. He picked up the photo and whistled. “Legs”—he held his hand three feet in the air—“up to here, bro.”

  “So you’ve seen her. Today?”

  No, but he’d seen her. She came in all the time, shepherding hungry kids from a tutoring center that was a block away. He pointed me in its direction.

  A block away, I stood outside a storefront with its window covered with colorful and haphazard crayon drawings. A sign read, “Guerrero child-care and tutoring.”

  I made my way through the sea of rug rats. I found her sitting in the back, huddled over a cup of coffee. I got ten feet away and stopped, just as she looked up.

  Erin’s eyes widened. I saw her look to the left. I followed her gaze—to the back door. Over its top was a banner drawn in thick purple, green, and yellow markers with the words “Adios Amigos.” By the time I turned back toward her, Erin was already standing and heading full stride toward the exit, dangling a pair of keys from her left hand.

  “Erin!”

  She wasn’t stopping to look back.

  8

  My view of Erin was a ponytail poking through a baseball cap, heading purposefully in the other direction. I flashed for a moment on whether I might tear my hamstring again, then gave chase into the alley where she was putting a key into the lock of an aging green Honda with a ski rack.

  Even without having time to think, I knew on some level I didn’t like what I was about to do. I stepped forward, put out my hand, and pushed her driver’s side door shut so she couldn’t open it.

  “Leave me the fuck alone,” she said, with a mix of terror and anger, and a touch of resignation. I played on it.

  “I was at the café. Please, I need your help.”

  She wore a sweatshirt with a Tsingtao logo. She was tall and thin, with smooth, pale skin. Her face was mildly round, suggesting cheeriness in some circumstances, but at that moment just as if it had been slightly overinflated with air.

  When she spoke again, it was less with venom and fear and with more than a little confidence. “Are you going to let me go? Or am I going to start screaming and kicking?”

  I pulled my hand away from the door.

  “I don’t know who you think I am,” I said. “But I just need your help. I mean you no harm.”

  Even as I said it, I had to wonder whether I meant it entirely. After all, she was aggressively fleeing the scene.

  “You’ve got the wrong person.”

  I shook my head. Wrong person? She wasn’t Erin, the café waitress? Then I realized that wasn’t what she meant. What exactly she did mean wasn’t clear. I didn’t figure I’d get a chance to ask, not without a subpoena. But instead of closing the door, she put her hand over its top, curling her fingers down over the window. For the first time, she seemed to study me.

  “There are reporters everywhere,” she said. “I came here to think, and to . . . clear my head.”

  It struck me she could be suffering from a muted version of post-traumatic stress disorder. She was highly alert and sensitive, her responses exaggerated.

  “Give me five minutes of your time.” I tried to affect my least threatening tone. “I saw your picture in the paper. I needed to talk to a fellow café survivor. I . . . I lost someone . . . ”

  I launched into a concise version of what had happened to me at the café.

  “This woman saved my life. I thought maybe you’d seen her too.” I didn’t bother to mention Annie. I did say, “I know it sounds insane.”

  She listened. She closed her eyes, seemingly concentrating, but part of me wondered if her pause was affect. “I didn’t see a woman leave the café. I didn’t see anyone hand you a note, but I do remember you,” she finally said. “You ordered at the counter then sat by the rack where we keep the magazines. I was trying to figure out if and when you’d need a refill or something to eat. Maybe the person you’re talking about never sat down. I tend not to notice people unless they’re sitting at a table.”

  I clenched my teeth and spoke with an edge. “She had long hair. You’re sure you didn’t see her?”

  “I was on my break in the back, checking e-mail. I went to the bathroom just before the explosion. Maybe that’s when she showed up.”

  I couldn’t repress the confrontational question bubbling from my gut. “Why did you pick just that moment to go to the bathroom—right be
fore the explosion?”

  “This conversation is over.”

  “Erin . . . ”

  She opened her car door. She looked at me intently.

  “What’s your sin?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Please, I need to go. Let’s continue this later,” she said.

  She scribbled her cell phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to me. As she pulled off, I realized she’d written down only six digits. Just then, my own phone rang. I answered, and heard an unfamiliar voice.

  “Nathaniel, it’s Danny Weller.” The policeman from the café.

  “Sergeant,” I said.

  I could hear traffic in the background. “Listen, I’m wondering if you have a few minutes to get together,” he said. “I thought you should know about some interesting developments.”

  9

  When I got to the Bus Stop Bar, Sergeant Danny Weller was already there. He was seated in a booth near the back, wearing a button-down shirt, and looking more like a dentist than a cop. He was nose deep in a newspaper. Beside him sat a dark-skinned cop in uniform who was at least a head taller and thick, scrawling on some paperwork.

  I neared the pair. “I need a three-letter word for ‘organism,’” Danny said without looking up from a folded-in-half Chronicle. “Zoa,” he added, mostly to himself.

  Danny introduced the other cop as the Big Samoan, Officer Edward Velarde. He had a vise-grip handshake and he looked vaguely familiar. Near his left ear, by his hairline, was a red rash, the flaky scales indicative of psoriasis. As a medical student, you learn to identify people by their pathologies. I couldn’t place where I’d seen him before—maybe after the explosion. He asked for Sergeant Weller’s signatures on the paperwork he’d been working on, stuffed them in a briefcase. “See you back at the fruit farm, sweetie,” he said to Weller with a pronounced mock lisp, and excused himself.