“Congratulations. Is it the direction you want? I mean, is it a step in the right direction or—”
“I thought it was.” Sarah blushed. “Cole.” There was a long pause, and Sarah picked at a thread on the hem of her napkin. “I need to say something. It may sound strange. I hope you’ll understand my heart and not my words. In the past few hours, I have felt, I don’t know, a connection. It sounds funny, but I haven’t met anyone in a long time who I felt anything for. I am so very lonely, Cole.” Tears welled up in Sarah’s eyes as she spoke. “What I’m trying to say is, I wish things were different. Oh!” Her eyes burned with the frustration of not being able to say what she felt. “I have never spent $500 on a dress in my life—and shoes! The shoes, $200! I, I—” Sarah looked up at Cole with a lovely smile and a tear running down her cheek. She refocused on the napkin again. “What I mean to say is—” She paused.
“It’s the most beautiful 700 bucks I’ve ever seen,” Cole said softly. “Look, I’ve been alone a long time. Part by choice, part because I wasn’t ready to, I don’t know, be open enough, approachable enough. But this morning, when you came to my house, I saw something in you that I hadn’t seen in a long, long time. It was almost palpable, a sense of—I don’t want to sound like some New Age aura reader or anything silly like that—but I felt like a missing part of me had just been found. We really don’t know each other. I mean, it’s been, what, 10 hours since we met? But I feel like I’ve known you forever.
“I realize the obstacles in our way: 3,000 miles for starters, crazy schedules, and what would you tell your family? ‘Papa, I met this goy newspaperman in San Francisco.’” Cole looked down.
“We’ll always have Paris.” Sarah did a really bad Humphrey Bogart impersonation. “Life’s not very fair, is it? The hard part is, I think we’re old enough to know we’re shot down before we even get started. I’ve seen it, you’ve seen it.”
Cole reached across the table and took Sarah’s hand. “What if—”
“Here we are.” The waiter set a plate in front of Sarah as Cole jerked his hand back. “And for you, sir.”
As the first waiter swept away, a second waiter in a white shirt and apron appeared and set steaming dishes of veal and ravioli on the table. A young woman placed a plate of antipasto and salad on the table, and finally a third waiter placed a soup tureen near the edge of the table.
“Goda il vostro pasto! Enjoy your meal.” Anthony Fabiani returned to the table with a bow and a smile as he tried to find space for a basket of warm bread.
“This is enough for an army!” Sarah giggled.
“Private Sage, ready for duty.”
Cole and Sarah laughed and talked as they attacked the dinner. The smiles were frequent. They kept the conversation light. The breadbasket was refilled twice, and the food disappeared.
Sarah pressed her napkin to her lips and sighed. “I give up.”
“Not yet! The highlight of the evening is about to arrive.” Cole smiled.
“You’re going to sing Puccini?”
“The tiramisu! Special ordered.”
As if on cue, the waiters appeared, cleared the table, and swept the crumbs onto a small silver tray with a soft brush. Fabiani appeared with the luscious creamed desert and two chilled plates. From out of nowhere, he produced two long-tined forks chilled to near freezing.
“Now for Mr. Sage, something special. A little surprise for you and the lovely lady.” Fabiani motioned with his arm and the wait staff all appeared again. The oldest waiter held a beetle-back mandolin and gently began to strum. And, just like in the movies, softly sang “Bella Notte.”
“That’s kind of like you and me, huh? Lady and the Tramp.”
“Beauty and the Beast, more like.” Sarah winked and reached across and took Cole’s hand.
As the valet brought the car around, Cole stood and just breathed in the magic of the city, the warm summer air, and the amazing woman holding onto his arm.
“Is there somewhere we could go for a walk?”
“You got your gun?” Cole teased.
“Maybe,” Sarah said, showing no evidence either way.
A few minutes later, Cole pulled into what must have been the only parking space for 10 miles in any direction. The Giants were playing at home, and the sound of the game murmured in the distance. The rejuvenation of the Embarcadero brought new life to the bay front area of the city. Just south of Pier 39 was a new well-lit walkway. The sound of the bay on one side and the Giants playing in their beautiful ballpark on the other gave the area a charm like nowhere else in the world. Cole and Sarah walked arm in arm past couples they didn’t notice and who never noticed them. Cole glanced at his watch; it was nearly 8:30. He smiled, knowing the night was young.
“Cole,” Sarah’s voice took on a serious tone. “What’s going to happen with Reed?”
“I had forgotten all about him,” Cole said, realizing it was true. Since they left San Quentin, he hadn’t given the rest of the world a thought. “I don’t know.”
“Can’t you leave for a while?” Sarah paused. “Come to D.C. with me?”
“It’s kind of funny now, but I asked Ben not to go to work today, to stay out of the city. Nothing happened. Maybe nothing will.”
“You don’t believe that. I can see it in your face.”
“No foolin’ the Feds.” Cole smiled.
“No foolin’ someone who cares.”
They continued their walk until they reached the giant bow and arrow statue at the end of the walkway. They sat and talked at the base of the statue. The air began to cool, and Cole wrapped his leather jacket around Sarah’s shoulders. They felt resigned to the loss of what they had found. Their words did a slow waltz across the tops of their meaning.
For a long moment, they stared into each other’s eyes. Cole reached up and touched her cheek.
His mind raced, trying to remember the Yiddish phrase he needed. “Kish mir? (Kiss me?)”
“Oy, such a mensch. (Oh, what a nice gentlemen),” Sarah whispered as their lips met.
Cole kissed Sarah with a deep longing. It was more of a goodbye than the first kiss of lovers. Sarah took Cole’s face in her hands and stared into his eyes. She had the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. They held the dreams that would leave an ache of what might have been behind as a wispy fading memory.
Sarah wrapped her arms around Cole’s neck and kissed him long and deep. As she pulled back, he saw tears running down her cheeks. She stood and turned her back for a long moment.
“I didn’t know it would be like this. What could dinner hurt, I thought?” Sarah said, wiping her cheeks with her slender fingers. She took a deep breath and said, “I’m booked on the 11:30 flight back to D.C. I should probably get back to the hotel.”
Cole just stared at her. He couldn’t believe the ache he was feeling. He stood and reached out his hand. Sarah rushed to throw her arms around him.
“I feel like such a fool. I don’t know what has come over me.” Sarah put her arm around Cole’s waist and her head against his shoulder as they walked to the car.
At the Pickwick, Cole pulled into the valet parking area and asked the attendant for a minute. Sarah rested her head on Cole’s shoulder all the way back from the Embarcadero, and they held hands.
“Please, can we just say goodbye here?” Sarah said, sitting straight and turning to face Cole.
“You don’t make it easy on a guy, do you?”
“I’m not good at goodbyes,” Sarah said apprehensively.
“This has been a dream, Sarah.” Cole repressed the almost unbearable need to tell her he loved her. “We have to find—”
“Like kids at summer camp that promise to write?” Her voice was somehow steeled to what was about to happen. She was leaving part of her soul. She knew her chance had come and, like twice before, she let it slip away. First, her high school sweetheart she left behind for college, then the handsome attorney who asked her to marry him. She chose the FBI academy. Twice she t
urned her back on love. She knew that this man, this night, was the greatest gift she would ever be given, and now she would turn her back on him, too. And like a suitor too often rejected, love would not come to Sarah Spiegelman again.
“Goodbye, mien teier (beloved).” Sarah kissed Cole on the cheek and slid across the seat and out of the car. She was gone.
CHAPTER 12
Jason Reed walked along Market Street, a sneer of disgust on his lips. Today was the day. All these materialistic leeches attached to the planet would die. Gimme, gimme, gimme, he thought, and then you put it in a plastic bag. As he approached the corner of Fifth and Market, the sidewalk traffic seemed to swell. Just ahead was the San Francisco Shopping Centre, a mecca to the greedy, the wealthy, and the envious. The names of expensive stores beckoned to anyone with money or a charge card.
Swept along by the flow of shoppers and tourists, Reed found himself entering the building. He couldn’t breathe. Around his vision, he saw the sparkle and colors of his peyote vision. He bent over and put his palms on his knees. He gasped for air. For a moment, he thought he was going down.
In front of him rising to the heavens was the sign. His sign, his vision. His mission was not his imagination. The DNA helix that floated above San Francisco was standing in front of him. Its golden color and polished glass was a sign from God. This is where he would detonate the bomb.
In the fall of 2002, the San Francisco Shopping Centre opened, and to the delight of its planners, turned into a major shopping and tourist destination. One of the most remarkable features of the Centre was the double helix spiral escalator that carried shoppers to Nordstrom heaven. It was the only one of its kind in the United States and moved the tens of thousands of people who visited the Centre each year.
Reed stood tall and approached the first step. As he placed his foot on the curving spiral he leaned his head back and imagined he was within the DNA of the Universe. He began to laugh, and tears rolled down his face. He was where he was born to be. Mel Lyman was wrong; Jason Reed was the Christ, the Chosen one. Lyman was his John the Baptist, a voice crying in the wilderness to herald the coming Messiah. As he reached the top, Reed wiped his eyes. Tomorrow he would bring on the revolution that would save the planet.
* * * * *
Cole awoke on the sofa with a deep crease on the right side of his face and a sharp pain in his neck. He dropped off to sleep about 2 a.m., thinking about Sarah. Within the span of 24 hours, he had fallen completely in love and then been totally denied the hope of a future with her. Cole sat up and rubbed his face. He shaved so close the afternoon before that it was still smooth.
He untwisted the tangled material of his shirt. The sweet fragrance of Sarah’s perfume floated up, bringing back the vision of her laughing at dinner. Cole pulled the shoulder of his shirt around and took in a deep sweet lungful of Sarah one last time. Standing, he took off the shirt and tossed it into the clothes hamper as he crossed the bedroom to the bathroom. He showered to wash away the clouds of sleep.
He dressed in a pair of corduroy trousers and a short-sleeved plaid shirt. A bit casual, but he needed the freedom of movement today. No tie, no jacket. Comfort was the order of the day. In the kitchen, he made café mocha and toasted an onion bagel. He didn’t get the paper, and he didn’t turn on the TV news. He sat quietly at the kitchen table sipping his coffee. The phone rang, startling Cole from his free float of thought.
“Yeah,” he said softly.
“Mr. Sage, Cole Sage?”
“Yeah.”
“This is Carl Klauss, Warden at Corcoran State Prison. I have a call for you from Charles Manson. Are you willing to take the call?”
“Charlie Manson wants to talk to me? You got to be kidding.”
“No, this is legit. He has asked to talk to you as a member of the press. He wants to make a statement regarding Jason Reed.”
“Charlie knows Reed?”
“That I don’t know. I do know he has the right to make outside calls. Since the Department of Corrections has certain restrictions on his activities, it is my responsibility to place the calls and verify that the party he wishes to speak to is not on the restricted list. Can you please verify your place of employment?”
“I’m a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.”
“Do you have any previous relationship with Mr. Manson outside of your position with the Chronicle?”
“I interviewed Manson back in about ’83 or ’84, if I remember right. Other than that, no contact wanted or needed.”
“He has 10 minutes. Have fun.” For the first time, Klauss didn’t sound like he was reading.
“Hello?” Cole said after several seconds of listening to the phone hum softly.
“Hey, brother!” The voice on the phone had that quaky, slightly Southern timbre he knew as Charles Manson’s.
“It’s been a long time, Charlie. How am I so honored?”
“This guy Reed? He’s not right. He talked to you, right? You were righteous with me, so I figure you were righteous with him. Let me tell you, you need to set him straight.” Manson’s staccato speech showed both signs of his excitement and obvious aging since Cole last spoke with him.
“So, what are you thinking Charlie?”
“Hard to find anyone who’ll say what’s right is right.”
“So, what is it you think I should tell Reed?”
“That is not my responsibility. I don’t tell people what to do.”
“But you think I can set him straight.” Cole tried not to show his amusement by this noncommittal directive from Manson. “Hey, you’re the leader of radical thought and thinkers, right? Tell me what to say.”
“No, I am not responsible for you. Your karma is not mine.” Manson slowed his speech for the dramatic effect.
“Truth is, I talked to him and didn’t get anything from him that made any sense. I mean, how can a person threaten to kill thousands of people because they won’t listen to his ranting about the world and the truth that he has that can save it? What makes what he has to say ‘the truth’?”
“The truth is now; the truth is right here; the truth is this minute, and this minute we exist.”
“Oh bullshit, Charlie! And how did you come up with that jewel? Divine inspiration? Or did you come up with it this minute? What is your concern? You reject his scorched-earth kind of revolution? Sounds like a 21st century Helter Skelter to me. You know, you’re not the first person that people come to when looking for a moral compass. So, what do you know about Reed?”
“The only way that I’ve been able to live on that side of the road was outside the law. I have always lived outside the law. When you live outside the law, it’s pretty hard. You can’t call the man for protection. You have got to pretty much protect your own.” Manson sounded pleased with himself.
“Like Dylan said, ‘To live outside the law, you must be honest’? Come on, Manson, step up to the plate. Some people still listen to you, the last living outlaw radical murdering philosophizer of the ’60s. If I were you, I would make a statement that (a) makes sense and (b) will help the situation. Help me, help the children who might die, I don’t know, but instead of this stream of soap bubbles, give me something to work with here. Who knows? He might listen to you.” Cole was trying not to completely lose his temper, but he’d had enough of the fun and games.
“You assume what you would do in my position, but that doesn’t mean that is what I did in my position. It doesn’t mean that my philosophy is valid. It’s only valid to me. Your philosophies, they are whatever you think they are, and I don’t particularly care what you think they are.”
“So, you have nothing to offer.” Cole sighed.
“Wrong is, wrong is, wrong is, you keep on, you pile it in your mind. I have just been sitting in jail thinking nothing. Nothing to think about.”
“I’m confused,” Cole interrupted. “If you aren’t thinking, what’s this all about? You wasted your call on me, and you have nothing to say? Same ol’ same o
l,’ huh, Charlie? I can’t tell you what to do but—”
“You can say everything is the same, but it is always different. It is the same, but it is always different. You can ‘but’ it to death. You can say, ‘You are right, but, but, but.’” Manson’s voice was taking on a defensive tone.
“Okay, so words won’t work. So, I’ll just hunt Reed down and shoot him. Survival of the fittest, law of the jungle? That’s the reason you’ve spent your whole life behind bars. There has to be a means of protecting without sinking to that level.” Cole realized he was talking to Manson but arguing with himself.
“You can’t live within the law and protect yourself. You can’t knock the guy down when he comes over and starts to rape one of the girls, or starts to bring some speed or dope up there. You can’t enforce your will over someone inside the law.”
“Charlie, did you read what this guy wrote? All this ‘blow up the SUVs, save the planet’ crap? It isn’t real. A bunch of losers and dopers sitting around listening to music getting stoned and stumble on the key of the universe. It didn’t work in ’69, and it won’t work now.” Cole was nearly shouting into the phone.
“It is not my conspiracy. It is not my music. I hear what it relates. It says, ‘Rise!’ It says, ‘Kill!’ Why blame it on me? I didn’t write the music. I am not the person who projected it into your social consciousness, that sanity that you projected into your social consciousness, today. You put so much into the newspaper and then you expect people to believe what is going on. I say, back to the facts again.” Manson spoke slowly and softly. He was trying to communicate, Cole had taken him seriously, and he wanted to be heard.
“The fact is, there is a God. He’s in control. He guides the universe. It isn’t all that “Stars That Play with Laughing Sam’s Dice” stuff! We need order. After all these years, you still don’t get it.” Cole’s voice questioned as if pleading.
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