Trick of Light

by Bayer-William

  "Club officers were pretty pissed," he tells me, "Carson especially. When I told him me and Pris were planning to take over a bed-and-breakfast in Fort Bragg, he said that sounded like wimpy work, and if I ever wanted another job in the security field I shouldn't expect a recommendation."

  "Like you'd really want a recommendation from a convicted felon, right?"

  Vince laughs. "G.G.C. security's in bad shape these nights, what with Chipper and Buckoboy quitting, and now me." Vince looks at me closely. "This would be a good time to break in, assuming someone wanted to. They keep some pretty nice guns in there, you know . . . including the one you're interested in."

  I decide to let that pass, though it does spark off a couple of ideas.

  "Any other creature pits not marked on the security map?"

  He shakes his head. "Mrs. Fontaine gave you her husband's map, didn't she?" Again I don't respond. "Well, figures." He sniffs. "We couldn't reckon how you got in far as you did without inside help."

  "Something else I've been meaning to ask you, Vince. These safaris you mentioned—how do they persuade the vagrants and drifters to play?"

  "The players weren't vagrants and drifters, Kay. They were illegal aliens," he says, "Asians all of them. Carson knows this Chinatown racketeer who's like a contractor—he supplies whatever kinds of humans you need. Party girls like the ones upstairs. Men to run through the woods like game. And if someone gets hurt in the process, it doesn't matter. The people are expendable. If they get damaged it's built into the price."

  "Jesus! Are these guys totally evil?"

  "Yeah, I think so, pretty much," he says.

  Just then a convoy of four law enforcement vehicles pulls up, two S.F.P.D. prisoner-transport wagons, a squad car full of Mendocino County deputies and a lead car holding Lampone along with a female San Francisco ADA acting as local liaison.

  This is my first look at the straight and righteous Jules Lampone, who doesn't look at all as I expected. I had in mind a big Italian type with mustache and football player build. Lampone, it turns out, is balding, narrow-shouldered, scrawnily built, with a slender, clean-shaven face, slightly crooked smile and rasping high-pitched voice.

  "Happy to meet you," he says, lightly shaking my hand. "Heard a lot about you from Vince."

  I thank him for exclusive access to tonight's "perp walk."

  He smiles. "Yeah, I love a good old-fashioned dog and pony show. Favorite part of the job. Something biblical about it, checking out the suspect's demeanor, searching for remorse or lack thereof." He winks. "Always helps the prosecution when they pull their jackets over their heads . . . like Adam and Eve covering up . . . sort of."

  I like the guy. He's got the killer instinct it's going to take to put Carson away. I wish him good luck as he, his deputies and counterpart enter the building across the street.

  It feels strange standing here tonight, just where Maddy stood four months ago, waiting, as I imagine she did, for the orgiasts to troop out. She wanted to photograph their faces, with the intention, I believe, of tracking them down later and confronting them. I can't help but think how much she'd love to be standing here with me waiting to photograph those same men at the depth of their disgrace.

  It's been years since I've covered a real perp walk, not since I worked as a staff photographer for the News. It's a ritual of the news business: the shackled suspect(s) marched out for full display to the press, still photographers scrambling for position, reporters yelling queries ("Did you do it, Jack?"), each perp sending his particular message by the way he handles the ordeal:

  Head held high, expression proud ("I got nothing to be ashamed of");

  Big smile, rapid-fire repartee with favorite reporters ("These monkeys'll never put me away! See you all in court");

  Head ducked or hands held in front of face to conceal features ("I can't see you, therefore you can't see me");

  Suspect in tears ("I'm contrite as I stand before you broken upon the wheel of my shame").

  It's barbaric, also quite wonderful, I think, integral to the criminal justice system, the public's right to see the accused, read his or her face, essential to our sense of urban theater. I've looked at old engravings of French aristocrats driven in carriages to the guillotine, observed the blankness in their faces as they pass through the mob howling for their blood. I saw that same lostness when I was part of the pack, the look that says: This isn't, can't be happening to me. Back then I developed my own techniques for covering a perp walk, techniques I'm eager to employ tonight. Tonight's different too from those Hall of Justice stakeouts. Tonight I've got the perp walk to myself, and it's personal. I want to nail a certain son of a bitch.

  Waiting below, I hear no screams of denial issuing from the windows of the second floor, nor do I see silhouettes of club members resisting arrest. As I well know, the bedroom of apartment 5 fronts on Cypress Alley. The Wongs, I'm certain, have long since gone to sleep. But I have a sense that many neighbors are watching now, aware that something important is happening in the neighborhood. I hope they're watching, I hope everyone is. I would like everyone to see the coming parade of shackled fools.

  Movement in the building lobby. I make out figures heading for the door. I glance at Vince. He's nervous; I understand why. I think it's brave of him to show himself tonight to those he has betrayed. Of course he was never one of them, was merely their servant, and a servant offering evidence against his masters is in the great tradition of bearing witness.

  I race across the street. With my lens set on autofocus, I'm prepared to hold my camera wherever necessary to nail Carson hard.

  Lampone appears first, grin of triumph on his face. Whap!whap! Got him good! Let's see who's next.

  Four handcuffed G.G.C. flunkies, deputies' arms looped in theirs, try to do a classic cover-up. Whap!whap! My strobe burns through to expose their shame.

  Next come four Chinese girls, makeup messed and hair askew, complaining shrilly that they didn't do anything, don't know anything, they're just waitresses catering a private party.

  When they spot me they start to beam. Whap!whap!whap! I fire away at them. Right, that's it! Make pretty for the picture!

  Carson's next. I'm all worked up for him. The momentum's built, the adrenaline's pumping. Whap!whap! Whap!whap! I blast him in quick bursts, the way Maddy taught me trained assassins do. He peers at me through the blinding light, trying to make me out.

  "Hi, Mr. Carson!" I yell at him. Whap!whap!

  "Who's the bitch?" he mutters to his deputy escort.

  "Over here, Mr. Carson, sir!" I coax. "Come on, sir! Say cheese!"

  He turns away in disgust, but still he won't bow his head. I hold my camera low, walk alongside of him shooting up to catch his face from beneath. Whap!whap! He tries to ignore me. That's fine. Whap! I want to catch his entire repertory of expressions. Already I imagine a full page in the News, a dozen mug shots splashed across in even rows, all of the same man, Mr. Big Shot.

  "Get away from me," he growls.

  Whap! "Great!" I tell him. "Keep it up! Come on now—let's see more emotion!"

  "Who brought in this cockroach?" he demands of his escort.

  "Special arrangement by the DA's office," the deputy replies deadpan.

  Carson looks at me curiously. Whap!whap!

  "Oooh, niiice," I tell him.

  "I've seen you before. It was at the auction. You were sitting in my row."

  "You got it!" Whap!whap!

  "Who are you?" he demands.

  I move in close, so close I can smell him, feel the warmth of his breath upon my face. He glares at me. I glare back. Then I hose him mercilessly: whap!whap!whap!whap!whap!

  He squints, then cowers before my assault.

  "My eyes!" he cries. "You're hurting my eyes!"

  Whap!whap!whap!whap!

  "Just one more," I tell him. "Come on now—show me the cold dueling stare, the one that unnerved Tommy Dunphy and Chap Fontaine."

  "Who are you?" he demands again. />
  Whap!

  "That one's for Mandy Vail!"

  At that his features contort. If only for a moment he appears to wince, then hardness again fills his face. No chance, I know, to break a man cold as this, but it's nice to think I may have opened him up a crack.

  "And these are for me!" I tell him. Whap!whap!whap!whap!whap!

  Thirty-six exposures shot. The roll's finished. I drop my Contax, let it hang loose about my neck.

  "I want to come see you when you get bail," I tell him. I stick my business card into the breast pocket of his shirt, then turn my back and walk away.

  Russian Hill, two A.M.: I become aware of her as I'm pulling my key ring from my pocket . . . a furtive movement behind, then an elongated shadow on Hyde cast by the streetlamp at the corner. If it weren't so late, I wouldn't hear her. The cable that carries the Hyde Street cable cars shuts down around one in the morning, eliminating the low-grade whirring beneath the street that blots out most subtle sounds above.

  I turn, spot her coming toward me. I wonder: Has she been waiting for me in the shadows of the bushes that line the perimeter of Sterling Park? I go on guard, wondering who she is and what she wants. Then, as she moves closer, I see she's no taller than me. A moment later, I recognize her.

  Actually it's double recognition. I identify her first as one of the four Chinese girls escorted by the cops out of the Capp Street apartment. But as she comes closer I realize tonight was not the first time that I've seen her. There's something unmistakably familiar about her face. It's her eyes, I think, much larger than normal in a face so small. Then my second act of recognition: she's the girl I discovered hiding in the Presidio months ago, the night Joel and I covered the landing of illegals near Fort Point.

  Her hair's long now, her expression no longer fearful, her body language no longer furtive. She looks older, less naive. And now she speaks some English too.

  "I dream of you many nights," she tells me in a throaty singsong whisper. "I want to find you to say thanks you. I do not know where to find."

  She's smiling at me, holding out something in her hand. It takes me a moment to figure out what it is—my black sweatshirt, the one I gave her off my back so she could escape without being spotted by the I.N.S.

  "You made it, I'm so glad," I tell her.

  She grins, holds my sweatshirt to her heart. "Thanks to you," she says. "When tonight I see you it is my dream." She embraces me. "You save my life."

  She kisses my sweatshirt, presses it forward to return it, then starts bawling in my arms. I hold her close. This meeting, so unexpected after such a stressful night, moves me so much I begin to bawl myself.

  "My American name—Lucky," she says in her lilting singsong, grinning through her tears.

  I invite her upstairs. In the elevator I ask how she found me.

  "Chinese man," she replies.

  It seems that after the arrests, the four girls were interviewed in a paddy wagon by a Chinese-American cop. Deciding there was no reason to hold them, he released them at the Hall of Justice. But Lucky refused to leave. She begged the cop for the name of the white woman who was taking pictures at the scene of the arrests. She told him that I had aided her and now she needed to find me to thank me properly. Fortunately the cop was softhearted. He got the information from the DA's office, including my address.

  I offer her coffee. She asks instead for tea, accompanies me to the kitchen, insists on preparing it herself. Watching her, I can't help but feel pride for my role in her escape. That night, touched by her plight, I did what I could. Now, to my surprise, I learn that my small act of kindness may have helped her survive.

  Or did it?

  As we sip tea in my living room, Lucky describes her life since the night she landed. She recounts her saga in broken English, how she found her way out of the Presidio, changed the twenty-dollar bill I gave her at a Chinese laundry in the Richmond, then, asking directions, learned how to take a bus to Chinatown. Once there, she found the address the illegals on her boat had been told to memorize in case of separation. Of her group of 130 souls, only fourteen made it into the city.

  Within a day she was put to work as a dishwasher in a busy Chinatown restaurant. She soon graduated to trainee waitress, then to full waitress, probably, I decide, on account of her appearance, her large, heartbreakingly beautiful almond eyes.

  Over the last few months she's moved from restaurant to restaurant, employer to employer, her contract changing hands each time, sometimes as often as once a week. But these promotions have had no effect upon her lifestyle. She continues to reside in a bare room with nine other girls, all illegals, sleeping on the floor.

  Still she's managed to learn some English and the customs of her new country. Her hope, the hope harbored by all the girls she lives with, is to attract a Chinese man with American citizenship wealthy enough to buy out her contract, wed her, then pay whatever it costs to regularize her situation.

  Though I nod to show her I understand her words, I can't help but wonder if she's telling me the truth. If she's only a waitress, what was she doing tonight at the G.G.C. party apartment?

  Perhaps she anticipates my question, for suddenly she goes silent. Then, after a pause, it pours out of her, a mixture of English, Chinese, sobs and wails.

  I can't make much out of what she's telling me beyond her feelings of desperation and shame.

  "I no street girl!" she repeats emphatically. "No comfort girl. No!"

  Then amidst the flurry of moans and whimpers I hear the name "Jimmy" repeated several times—Jimmy this, Jimmy that, a bad man, she makes clear, a man who frightens her, a man she doesn't like.

  I'm trying to calm her, to get her to explain herself more clearly, when she utters the words "Tan Yuet"—and then I sit up straight.

  "Tan Yuet restaurant?" I ask.

  "Yes! Same same!" She leans forward, nodding excitedly. "Tan Yuet!"

  I sit back. Is this Jimmy she's been talking about, who, I've gathered, is the man who sent her to the G.G.C. party tonight—is he, I ask her, the same restaurateur with sharp features and precision-cut black hair introduced to me by Dad as ex-cop Jimmy Sing?

  "Same same!" Lucky seems as amazed as I that I know the man she's talking about.

  "Jimmy sent you tonight?"

  "Yes! See, Jimmy bad. I no like. I try leave job. He say, 'No! Now for punish you go fuckhouse!' He make me go. I cry, but he no care. He make me."

  Jesus!

  But even as I try to comfort her, assure her I'll try and find a way to help her out of the exploitive cycle in which she's been enmeshed, the implications of her story ricochet within my brain. And then, suddenly, like a handful of loose iron filings abruptly patterned by the presence of a magnet, all my disparate notions lock into a scheme so clear and overarching that even as I'm frightened by the revelation, I'm exhilarated by it too.

  Joel and I are standing at the base of a ladder of iron rungs built into the concrete wall of a warehouse. We're in the commercial waterfront area of Sausalito, just across the Golden Gate from the city—a district of boatyards, dry docks, ship's chandlers and storage buildings, all near the huge structure that houses the San Francisco Bay Model.

  There's no one around. The area's dead quiet, and now the night fog's coming in, heavy summer fog filling the air like thick black smoke. It chills me to the bone.

  I secure my camera to my belt and start up the ladder, shivering as I climb. "This is it, kiddo," Joel mutters. "We're at the endgame now."

  The ladder we're climbing was built into the wall as a convenience for workmen servicing the roof. The only problem, seems to me, is that if we run into trouble, this ladder's going to be our only way back down.

  Actually, it feels good to scale the side of a building like I'm Spider-Woman. Cold as the fog is, I'm glad it's around me blanketing me from view.

  When I reach the top, I step over the building parapet, then vault down lightly onto the gravel-on-asphalt roof. I jounce on the roof a couple of times
, checking it for safety, then go back to the edge to see how Joel's doing.

  He's not happy. His eyes are bugged out, reminding me of the Jimmy Stewart character in Vertigo. If he's scared of heights, I think, the descent will be even tougher for him than the climb.

  He's breathing hard when he reaches the top, grasps the parapet, then heaves himself up. He shakes his head, mumbles, "I'm really out of shape." He sits down on the asphalt to regain his breath.

  Ever since I told him Lucky's story, he's been hot on the trail of Jimmy Sing. An ex-cop who deals in illegal immigrants—that in itself would make Jimmy suspicious. But the fact that he's also Rusty's brother-in-law, and Rusty tried to warn me off our story, put us both on high alert.

  Joel has discovered that years ago Jimmy worked in a police intelligence unit whose mission was to penetrate Chinatown gangs. He ended up part of a crew of corrupt cops all caught and sent to prison. Jimmy served five years. Now it looks like he's up to the same old stuff.

  Lucky, meantime, has been installed in a spare bedroom in Joel's house, where she's live-in nanny to little Roland. She has sanctuary, Roland Glickman has a loving caregiver and ice-goddess Kirstin now has more time for her runes—a perfect arrangement all around.

  I leave Joel to check out the skylight, a low hut shaped like a huge coffin, with a pitched roof composed of safety glass with wire hexagons embedded within. The inner surfaces of the panes have been painted black, giving the glass a dull matte finish. But there're patches which have escaped the brush, large enough to allow me to peek through.

  I bring my face close, stare down. A few seconds later I feel Joel come beside me and do the same.

  There're lights on below, the kind of strong directional spots you'd expect to find in a photographer's studio, illuminating the area directly beneath. I estimate the distance to the floor at thirty feet. I can easily make out a half-dozen men moving about. They wear dark tracksuits with white racing stripes down the legs, the same kind worn by Lucky and the other illegals the night they landed at our feet. I hear conversation, a mix of English and Chinese, which reaches us clearly or fades off depending on the position of the speaker. I also hear the sound of pry bars splitting wood as the men break open several of the dozen or so wooden crates spread out on the warehouse floor.