My library researches done, I turned in the microfilms and went out to delve further into the past. But first I found a phone and called the hospital for a report on Hank's condition. Again there had been no change. After some calling around I reached the nursing station at intensive care; Anne-Marie was there, and I convinced the woman on the desk to let me talk to her. She sounded tired and distant, and when I offered to come over and keep her company later, she said she'd rather I didn't.
"His lung was collapsed, and there was other internal damage as well. They may have to operate again, and if they do, it'll take every bit of control I have not to fall apart. Seeing a face that's more than professionally sympathetic would about do me in. Besides," she added, "his parents are here. And you know how they can be."
"By that I take it you mean they blame me for him getting shot."
"Well, it's a long list. I think perhaps God has been absolved, but I wouldn't even count on that."
It was more or less the reaction I would have predicted. The Zahns had spent too many years insulated by their affluence and social position to know how to cope with real adversity. Since their only son had been shot, it was necessary that blame be affixed; accusations and recriminations were excellent weapons against fear and powerlessness, and they both wielded them like pros. I'd often wondered how two such closed and insecure people could have produced someone as open and confident as Hank.
"Well, hang in there," I said, talking to myself as much as to Anne-Marie. "I'll check back with you later on."
Often when I'm working a case I find myself drawn to the places where its key events have occurred, even if it's a long time after the fact. The urge to view these physical settings is more or less instinctive on my part; half the time I'm not even aware of why I'm going there until I arrive. But unscientific and illogical as such behavior might seem, I've come to trust the impulses that prompt it. And while I rarely stumble upon some overlooked clue or receive a blinding flash of insight, just being there gives me a better sense of the individuals involved and their possible motivations. So, in lieu of any better way to pass the time until I could pick up Wolfs case file at All Souls, I decided to see what remained of the landscape of twenty years ago.
There was no point in driving all the way out to Port Chicago; I wouldn't be permitted inside the weapons station and, besides, the scene of the arrest didn't seem relevant. Nor did I need to return to Berkeley; I knew that territory, and it wasn't where the story really centered. The Federal Building, where the trial had been held, was only two blocks from the library, but I knew what courtrooms looked like and could easily imagine the dry proceedings.
The government's case, according to the newspaper accounts I'd just read, had been impressive: physical evidence, including the guns, pipe bombs, detonating devices, maps of the military installation, and diagrams of where the bombs were to be placed; eyewitness testimony of the arresting agents; and the apparently unshakable testimony of Jenny Ruhl. The chief government witness, according to one reporter, "never once looked at her former comrades. While on the stand she betrayed neither guilt nor nervousness, speaking in a flat, uninflected voice. When she left the courtroom, she did not look back." And in the face of her testimony, what little case the defense had built crumbled.
I could understand what had probably driven Ruhl to testify against her former friends. Like many of the would-be revolutionaries of the sixties, her involvement with the collective had been a rebellion against a conservative upbringing, but once arrested, the specter of years in a federal penitentiary had most likely been more than she could bear. In addition, she had a daughter dependent upon her-one whom she might not see for a long time if convicted. The federal prosecutors would have realized Ruhl was the weakest of the three and plied her with offers of a deal.
Yes, I could easily understand why Ruhl had testified for the prosecution. But what puzzled me was her suicide, some weeks after the trial. If Jessica had been one of the reasons for sacrificing her loyalty and twisted code of honor, why had she then left her daughter motherless, with no means of support?
No answer for that-not now, maybe not ever.
The lower Fillmore district-just the other side of Van Ness Avenue from the Civic Center-is one of the city's neighborhoods in transition. Gone are the pig farms of the late 1800s, the jazz clubs of the World War II era, the blighted ghetto of more recent years. Gone too is Winterland-the former ice-skating rink that became a mecca for stoned, music-loving hippies in the sixties. What you have now is an uneasy mixture of urban cultures: luxury condominium complexes next to shabby three-story Victorian houses; trendy restaurants across the street from greasy spoons; a wine shop on one corner, a cut-rate liquor store on the other.
The house on Hayes Street where the members of the collective had lived immediately after their move to San Francisco was no longer there; that block had been cleared to make way for a high rise. But down the street I spotted Jude's Liquors, where D.A. Taylor had taken on odd jobs from time to time. I parked the MG and followed a plywood-covered walkway around the construction site to the store. There were bars over its plate-glass windows, and the neon signs and faded posters displayed there advertised at least two kinds of beer that were no longer brewed. When I entered, I spotted a young Asian man taking bottles of vodka from a carton and setting them on a shelf behind the counter. I showed him my license, said I'd like to ask him a few questions.
How long had he worked here? He was the owner, had had the store three years now, since the former owner died. No, he didn't know anything about the people who used to live in the neighborhood, didn't know much about those who lived there now. He commuted from the Richmond. This wasn't a good place to raise kids.
I went back to the MG and drove a few blocks to Page Street. The collective had had some kind of dispute with the landlord of the building on Hayes, and after only a few months had found another place not too many blocks away. That building still stood: three-storied, with a pink concrete-block facade and a sagging front stoop. Again I parked and crossed the street, studying the building. Climbed the steps and examined the mailboxes. There were no names on any of them; one of their doors hung open on broken hinges; a bell push dangled on exposed wires; the steps were littered with newspapers and advertising circulars. The building gave me no sense of the past. I could feel no connection between it and the violent plans that had been formulated within its confines.
I went back down the steps, looked toward the eastern corner of the street. A dry cleaner where Libby Heikkinen had occasionally picked up extra cash by clerking had turned into a too-cutely-named bakery-You Knead It. A young white woman emerged, pushing an infant in a stroller, a baguette protruding from her net shopping bag. But on the opposite corner was the grocery store whose owner had allowed the members of the collective to scrounge through the dumpsters for salvageable food-Rhonda's Superette. Rhonda Wilson had testified as a character witness for the defense. I hurried down there.
The grocery was the same as corner stores the city over: full of dusty boxed and canned goods that had been too long on the shelves, with narrow aisles, cracked linoleum, and antiquated, wheezing refrigerator cases. A middle-aged black woman sat behind the counter, going over some invoices.