“What about the sharks?” someone asked.
“No man-eating sharks in this water,” the guide answered.
“The water isn’t that cold,” Jonathan told me as we walked up the path to the prison gate. “Jack LaLanne swam it, and some triathletes make it every year, but the prisoners weren’t in very good shape.”
“A terrible diet and no exercise. Was that the problem?”
Jonathan nodded, and I vowed to reset my exercise program. Not that I was afraid of being incarcerated. I just wished the police would catch MarySue’s murderer before he struck again. Whoever he or she was, they wouldn’t be housed at Alcatraz. It was closed as a prison in the sixties. Whoever killed MarySue would have it easy compared to those times. “Nowadays prisoners can take classes,” the guide told us, “and work on-site jobs where they can earn money and play sports to keep in shape.”
They were probably in better shape than I was, I thought. I was determined to get serious about exercising. Tai chi was too tame, kung fu too strenuous. I turned for one last look at the city in the distance. Our tour boat was on its way back to pick up another group. What if they didn’t make it back for some reason? An earthquake, a tidal wave, or the boat ran out of gas? We’d be stuck on the island. For how long? What would we do? It would get cold at night and we had no food. At least the prisoners had shelter even if they were in solitary confinement.
Jonathan saw me shiver, and he put his jacket over my shoulders. I gave him a grateful smile.
“When we get a chance to look around the prison, we can actually go into the little dark cells in the place they call ‘the hole,’ ” he said.
“The hole?” I repeated. Now I was shivering despite the warmth of his jacket. I almost wished we hadn’t come here. There were so many other interesting places to visit on a Sunday afternoon, like the Palace of Fine Arts, that relic from the Pan Pacific Exposition of 1915 or the zoo or . . . I didn’t think this prison tour would freak me out if I weren’t up to my knees in the MarySue murder case. I knew prisons weren’t like Alcatraz anymore, but I still didn’t want to go to one for any length of time.
But determined to be a good sport with a positive attitude, I said, “How cool. I can hardly wait.”
A guide in a green uniform stepped forward to take over from the one who came on the boat with us. “Welcome home. Welcome to Alcatraz,” she said with a smile. “That’s the way the prisoners were greeted. We try to keep things as authentic for you as possible.”
“Excuse me.” A woman in the back of the crowd had raised her hand when the guide stopped. “Have there been any vampires incarcerated here?”
There was a smattering of light laughter, and the guide said not as far as she knew. I turned to see who’d asked the question, and there was Nick’s aunt, Meera, in her usual black outfit with black boots and a shawl over her shoulders.
I turned quickly, hoping she hadn’t seen me. That’s all I needed was for Meera to say hello and for Jonathan to think I hung out with vampire wannabes. Fortunately, at that moment we were all given earphones for the audio tour, which featured actual guards and prisoners speaking about their experiences. Now was the time we could proceed at our own pace, and hopefully I could avoid running into Meera.
The narration was so good I got caught up listening to the voices of real people and was startled when Jonathan nudged me. I took off my earpiece.
“Have you noticed, there’s a woman who keeps staring at you,” he said.
“Oh no,” I muttered. But he was right. Meera in her flowing black dress had her gaze fixed on me. She smiled and waved to me, and I had to say hello, though I hoped Jonathan would resume the tour without me. Imagine trying to explain the presence of a one-hundred-twenty-seven-year-old vampire to your doctor.
“It’s good to see you again,” she said. “So we are both history buffs. Who is your handsome friend?” she asked, standing on tiptoe for a glimpse of Jonathan, who’d stopped to read an account of the Native American occupation of the island in the sixties.
I could just imagine her telling Nick that I had been seen with a man at Alcatraz. Would he care? Probably not. He was meeting plenty of admiring women at his gym, along with their au pairs. Even though I appreciated his friendship and the soup he brought me, I wasn’t ready to settle down with anyone.
I should have known someday there would be a clash of at least two of my several lives, and it happened there at the prison. Jonathan came up to tell me he’d found Al Capone’s cell, and I had to introduce him to Meera. I could tell she was just dying to meet him by the way she was staring at him and batting her extra-long eyelashes. If only she didn’t say anything about being a you-know-what.
We chatted briefly about the prison and the prisoners, and I was just about to break away when Meera mentioned her old friend Al Capone. “I’m the one who picked him up when he was released from prison in 1939. They got him on tax evasion, you know. How ironic.”
“How very interesting,” I said. “Well, we have to be moving along.”
“Wait,” Jonathan said to her before I could take a step toward the solitary cells. “Did you say you knew Al Capone?” I could tell by his puzzled expression he was trying to figure out how that could be.
“Oh yes, we go way back, the Capones and I. I didn’t always live in San Francisco, you know. I spent a few years in Chicago in the twenties. What a time that was.” She shook her head with a nostalgic smile. “But originally I am from Eastern Europe, and I know something about prisons. This place is a palace compared to some I’ve been to in my country.”
I sent Jonathan a silent message. Please don’t ask why or where she’s been imprisoned. Or how old she is or how she got here or how I know her.
“Do you know what happened to the missing and presumed drowned inmates who tried to swim their way to freedom?” she asked, putting her icy fingers on my shoulder. “I do.”
Before she could say they’d turned into vampires and were haunting the island, I said we were behind schedule and had to catch up. “Nice to see you, Meera,” I said and took Jonathan’s arm to nudge him along.
“Who was that?” he asked when we’d turned the corner to face the solitary cells.
“Just a friend of a friend. She leads tours of Nob Hill, which is how I met her.”
“How old is she?” he asked, looking puzzled.
Good question. I couldn’t say she was one hundred twenty-seven or he’d think I was crazy or naïve or both, so I just said I wasn’t sure but she looked younger than she was.
Just to get the complete Alcatraz experience, I had to go into one of the solitary cells; even though I didn’t really want to, I also didn’t want Jonathan to think I was neurotic. But when I pulled the door shut, I had a panic attack. Especially when Meera came by and looked in at me like she was the warden and I was Public Enemy Number One.
“Why haven’t you called my nephew?” she asked, pressing her face against the narrow bars. “He is all alone, far from home. He needs a friend.” Her voice echoed off the concrete walls.
“I will,” I said, my heart pounding erratically. “Definitely. It’s just that I’ve been busy at work.” Where was Jonathan? Where was the tour guide? Where were the other visitors?
I looked through the bars at Meera. Her eyes were like deep black holes. Her face suddenly looked as old as she said she was. I knew she wasn’t really a vampire, but up close and personal, I could see the resemblance between her and the pictures of Vlad the Impaler. The same sharp cheekbones, the hooked nose, the same dark eyes and the same pointed chin. I decided there were worse things than being charged with murder. One of those things was being trapped by a crazy woman in an old prison.