Being overrun with students and hippie-anarchist-nihilist alums who refused to leave didn’t help. Nor did a political climate that thrived on class envy and political correctness and welcomed the homeless without elevating them.
Where Berkeley’s unique ethos really hit you was when you got behind the wheel. Five minutes after rolling into town, Grace had to brake suddenly to avoid pulverizing a pedestrian who leaped off the sidewalk into nocturnal traffic.
A kid, probably a sophomore, long hair streaming above his chiseled spoiled-brat face as he grinned and flipped her off and continued sprinting straight into the next lane of autos. More sudden stops, more one-fingered salutes.
Two blocks later, two girls did the same thing.
I walk, therefore I am virtuous and own the streets and fuck you gas guzzlers!
In Berkeley, even basic locomotion was a political statement.
Grace continued to explore from behind the wheel. Even more street life on the main drags of Telegraph and University. She veered into quieter nocturnal territory, cruising toward the building on Center Street where Roger Wetter Senior and his adopted son had established their headquarters years ago.
Too dark to make out details from across the street. The six-story structure faced a flat, sparse park ringed with trees but scruffy at the center. Beyond the grass stood the dark bulk of Berkeley High.
Seeing the school reminded Grace of Roger Wetter Senior’s enlistment of young thugs to intimidate elderly earthquake victims. Had he found his troops right here?
Something else struck her: Knife-wielding Mr. Benn would’ve been a young man back then. The likelihood he’d been part of the scam seemed stronger.
As she idled, a figure skulking through the park caught her eye. Stooped, emaciated man, lurching drunkenly, holding something in a paper bag. She drove on, hung a U, parked close to the building.
Six flat stories of characterless night-gray stucco. Ragged black holes in place of doors and windows, the roof mostly gone, rafters tilting upward like splintered chicken bones.
Blocking entry was a chain-link fence. Behind the diamond-shaped holes of the barrier Grace made out an earthmoving machine.
A white placard on the fence was too far to be legible. Movement to her left made her turn quickly. The lurching guy was getting closer. She prepared to leave but he headed up the block, stumbling drunkenly.
Grace hopped out of her SUV and examined the sign. Demolition notice, some sort of government-funded project.
If Alamo Adjustments still existed, she’d have to look elsewhere to find it.
Or maybe she wouldn’t. Because it was Mr. Venom she really wanted and if he still owned the structure and dropped by to oversee the government-funded transformation of his property...
Shuffling sounds behind her. Hand in her bag, she rotated carefully.
The lurching figure from the park was back, approaching her, hand out.
Old, bent-over guy reeking of booze. She gave him a buck and he said, “Bless you,” and moved on.
She continued driving around, taking her time as she searched for appropriate lodging, was intrigued by a drab-looking place smack in the middle of the University Avenue bustle. Arching green neon letters crowned the entry.
OLD HOTEL
No accommodation of the youth culture? Then she edged closer to the sign and saw the out-of-commission S.
The Olds Hotel occupied a mixed-use building with storefronts at street level and rooms above. A black-painted arrow directing the weary traveler to the top of a grimy flight of concrete stairs.
Grace circled the block. The Olds offered an outdoor parking lot in back, mostly empty now and guarded by a flimsy wooden yardarm. Entry was simple: Push a button and drive through. Exit required a token from the management.
Grace returned to the front of the hotel and examined the businesses below. Two stores to the left, a vintage-clothing store might be of use. Not so the cut-rate hair salon next door.
To the right of the hotel entrance was perfection: a photocopy/self-print outlet advertising discounts for theses and dissertations. More to the point: The place was open twenty-four hours a day.
Grace parked illegally and zipped in. Ignored by a student-aged boy engrossed in Game of Thrones, she printed herself a new batch of business cards on cheaper paper than those proffered by M. S. Bluestone-Muller, Security Consultant.
claimed a Boston number that would lead to a long-defunct pay phone in the lobby of the main branch of the Cambridge public library. Back in her student days, Grace had used the booth to phone a boy at Emerson, a would-be theater director whom she’d met in a dive bar. He’d swallowed her story about being an L.A.-based aspiring actress and she’d slept with him three times, barely remembered his face. But the booth’s phone number remained etched in her memory. Funny the things you held on to.
Returning to the Escape, she drove around to the rear of the Olds Hotel and toted her suitcase up the hotel’s rear staircase, also concrete and every bit as grungy.
At the top was a musty-smelling lime-green hallway lined with doors painted to match and carpeted in wrinkled khaki-colored polyester.
At the front of the building was a glassed-in reception desk. The clerk was no older than a sophomore, Indian or Pakistani or Bengali, and like his compadre down in the photocopy shop, he couldn’t have cared less about Grace’s arrival, choosing instead to continue texting manically.
When Grace informed him, plaintively, that her wallet had been stolen along with her credit cards, would he please accept her business card for I.D. and cash as payment, his thumbs barely faltered as he muttered, “Uh-huh.”
“What’s the rate for a room?”
Click click click click. “Fifty a night, five extra for cleanup service. We only have some a floor up.”
“Fine, and no need for cleanup,” said Grace, forking over two hundred dollars.
The kid ignored the fresh new card. “What’s your name?”
“Sarah Muller.”
“Write it down, okay?” Sliding the log book toward her.
She scrawled, he handed her a key attached to a miniature white-plastic milk bottle. “You want orange juice in the morning? We don’t serve breakfast but I can tell them to leave you juice but it’s not fresh or anything, just bottled.”
“Also not necessary. Any coffee?”
The kid aimed world-weary eyes at the front steps while continuing to click away. “Peets, Local 123, Café Yesterday, Guerrilla Café. Want me to keep going?”
“Thanks,” said Grace. “May I assume you’ve got WiFi?”
“Down here it’s okay,” said the kid. “Up where you’ll be it sometimes sucks.” His fingers moved faster. He paused to read a return text. Laughed weirdly.
Grace inspected the milk bottle for a room number: 420.
The kid said, “It’s just Forty-Two, I don’t know why they add a zero.”
“Top floor?”
“There’s only this and one more.” He typed some more. Said, “Clown,” then “Loser,” then “Asshole.”
The room was surprisingly large, smelling of Lysol and stale pizza, with a pair of twin beds covered in garish floral spreads separated by a particleboard nightstand. A Gideon Bible with most of the pages gone filled the stand’s drawer. Two beds but only one pillow, on the right-hand mattress, lumpy as a skin rash, tossed haphazardly.