CLIFF AND SURE AREA
EXTREMELY DANGEROUS
PEOPLE HAVE BEEN SWEPT
FROM THE ROCKS AND DROWNED
I stopped, balancing with my hand on Greg’s arm, and removed my shoes. “Better footsore than swept away.”
We approached the abandoned truck, following the same impulse that had drawn other climbers. Its blue paint was rusted and there had been a fire in the engine compartment. Everything, including the seats and steering wheel, had been stripped.
“Somebody even tried to take the front axle,” a voice beside me said, “but the fire had fused the bolts.”
I turned to face a friendly looking, sunbrowned youth of about fifteen. He wore dirty jeans and a torn T-shirt.
“Yeah,” another voice added. This boy was about the same age; a wispy attempt at a moustache sprouted on his upper lip. “There’s hardly anything left, and it’s only been here a few weeks.”
“Vandalism,” Greg said.
“That’s it.” The first boy nodded. “People hang around here and drink. Late at night they get bored.” He motioned at a group of un-savory-looking men who were sitting on the edge of the baths with a couple of six-packs.
“Destruction’s a very popular sport these days.” Greg watched the men for a moment with a professional eye, then touched my elbow. We skirted the ruins and went toward the cave. I stopped at its entrance and listened to the roar of the surf.
“Come on,” Greg said.
I followed him inside, feet sinking into coarse sand that quickly became packed mud. The cave was really a tunnel, about eight feet high. Through crevices in the wall on the ocean side I saw spray flung high from the rolling waves at the foot of the cliff. It would be fatal to be swept down through those jagged rocks.
Greg reached the other end. I hurried as fast as my bare feet would permit and stood next to him. The precipitous drop to the sea made me clutch at his arm. Above us, rocks towered.
“I guess if you were a good climber you could go up, and then back to the road,” I said.
“Maybe, but I wouldn’t chance it. Like the sign says…”
“Right.” I turned, suddenly apprehensive. At the mouth of the tunnel, two of the disreputable men stood, beer cans in hand. “Let’s go, Greg.”
If he noticed the edge to my voice, he didn’t comment. We walked in silence through the tunnel. The men vanished. When we emerged into the sunlight, they were back with the others, opening fresh beers. The boys we had spoken with earlier were perched on the abandoned truck, and they waved at us as we started up the path.
And so, through the spring, we continued to go to our favorite restaurant on Sundays, always waiting for a window booth. The old Japanese woman exchanged her yellow headscarf for a red one. The abandoned truck remained nose down toward the baths, provoking much criticism of the Park Service. People walked their dogs on the slope. Children balanced precariously on the ruins, in spite of the warning sign. The men lolled about and drank beer. The teenaged boys came every week and often were joined by friends at the truck.
Then, one Sunday, the old woman failed to show.
“Where is she?” I asked Greg, glancing at my watch for the third time.
“Maybe she’s picked everything there is to pick down there.”
“Nonsense. There’s always something to pick. We’ve watched her for almost a year. That old couple is down there walking their German Shepherd. The teenagers are here. That young couple we talked to last week is over by the tunnel. Where’s the old Japanese woman?”
“She could be sick. There’s a lot of flu going around. Hell, she might have died. She wasn’t all that young.”
The words made me lose my appetite for my chocolate cream pie.
“Maybe we should check on her.”
Greg sighed. “Sharon, save your sleuthing for paying clients. Don’t make everything into a mystery.”
Greg had often accused me of allowing what he referred to as my
“woman’s intuition” to rule my logic — something I hated even more than references to my “tracking instinct.” I knew it was no such thing; I merely gave free rein to the hunches that every good investigator follows. It was not a subject I cared to argue at the moment, however, so I let it drop.
But the next morning — Monday — I sat in the converted closet that served as my office at All Souls, still puzzling over the woman’s absence. A file on a particularly boring tenants’ dispute lay open on the desk in front of me. Finally I shut it and clattered down the hall of the big brown Victorian toward the front door.
“I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” I told Ted, the secretary.
He nodded, his fingers never pausing as he plied his new Selectric.
I gave the typewriter a resentful glance. It, to my mind, was an extravagance, and the money it was costing could have been better spent on salaries. All Souls, which charged clients on a sliding-fee scale according to their incomes, paid so low that several of the attorneys were compensated by living in free rooms on the second floor. I lived in a studio apartment in the Mission District. It seemed to get smaller every day.
Grumbling to myself, I went out to my car and headed for the restaurant above the Sutro Baths.
“The old woman who gathers wild mustard on the cliff,” I said to the cashier, “was she here yesterday?”
He paused. “I think so. Yesterday was Sunday. She’s always here on Sunday. I noticed her about eight, when we opened up. She always comes early and stays until about two.”
But she had been gone at eleven. “Do you know her? Do you know where she lives?”
He looked curiously at me. “No, I don’t.”
I thanked him and went out. Feeling foolish, I stood beside the Great Highway for a moment, then started down the dirt path, toward where the wild mustard grew. Halfway there I met the two teenagers. Why weren’t they in school? Dropouts, I guessed.
They started by, avoiding my eyes like kids will do. I stopped them. “Hey, you were here yesterday, right?”
The mustached one nodded.
“Did you see the old Japanese woman who picks the weeds?”
He frowned. “Don’t remember her.”
“When did you get here?”
“Oh, late! Really late. There was this party Saturday night.”
“I don’t remember seeing her either,” the other one said, “but maybe she’d already gone by the time we got here.”
I thanked them and headed down toward the ruins.
A little farther on, in the dense thicket through which the path wound, something caught my eye and I came to an abrupt stop. A neat pile of green plastic bags lay there, and on top of them was a pair of scuffed black shoes. Obviously she had come here on the bus, wearing her street shoes, and had only switched to sneakers for her work. Why would she leave without changing her shoes?
I hurried through the thicket toward the patch of wild mustard.
There, deep in the weeds, its color blending with their foliage, was another bag. I opened it. It was a quarter full of wilting mustard greens. She hadn’t had much time to forage, not much time at all.
Seriously worried now, I rushed up to the Great Highway. From the phone booth inside the restaurant, I dialled Greg’s direct line at the SFPD. Busy. I retrieved my dime and called All Souls.
“Any calls?”
Ted’s typewriter rattled in the background. “No, but Hank wants to talk to you.”
Hank Zahn, my boss. With a sinking heart, I remembered the conference we had had scheduled for half an hour ago. He came on the line.
“Where the hell are you?”
“Uh, in a phone booth.”
“What I mean is, why aren’t you here?”
“I can explain—”
“I should have known.”
“What?”
“Greg warned me you’d be off investigating something.”