A Grave Talent (30 page)

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Alcatraz is a rock. It is a bare, ugly, pale, oversized rock dropped down into the water off the San Francisco peninsula like an inadequate dot atop an upside-down exclamation mark. Had the rock been closer to the mouth of the Golden Gate it would have been dynamited as a hazard to shipping, or perhaps been used as the foothold for another bridge, a very different bridge from the dramatic orange spiderweb so beloved of tourists.

However, the rock was not actually a hazard. It was too small, too barren, too far from the mainland to be useful, yet too large, too close, too tantalizing to ignore. It was--it is--a jutting, bald pile, where seagulls nest and a foghorn groans, that commands an incomparable view of one of the world's few beautiful cities and the sweep of bay and hills into which it has been set.

So they built a prison there.

As a place to torment the most incorrigible of men, its choice was brilliant: ugly walls, no privileges, nothing to do but think of the surrounding barrier of water and the unreachable beauty and renowned freedom of "Frisco." It took its first military prisoner in 1861; it transferred its last federal one in 1963; it sat vacant; it was taken over by Indian rights activists, who shivered nobly in the fog and burned down some buildings. When they left, the parks department took over, and it is now, until such a day as it is made into a gambling resort or amusement park, a place of crumbling walls and tourists with earphones following the prerecorded tour through the cell blocks, their faces preoccupied as they contemplate the room where Al Capone ate his corn flakes; the closet where Robert Stroud, the Birdman of Leavenworth, lived; and the scorches and holes in the cement walls where the great escape attempt failed.

Vaun's day out was choreographed with minute attention to detail. At no time would there be fewer than three plainclothes watchers on hand. The goal was to show Vaun in public, to the reporter Tom Grimes and to any of his colleagues who might show up, and then to spirit her away. If all went according to plan, by tomorrow noon Andy Lewis would know that Vaun was well, was free to take a day sightseeing with friends, was in San Francisco, and planned on talking to reporters on Tuesday.

Lee drove, to leave Kate's hands and eyes free, and a couple of motorcycles followed them discreetly all the way. She pulled into a parking spot on the street that a moment before had been blocked off by orange traffic cones. Kate put money in the meter and then opened Vaun's door. Lee came around and, with Vaun between them, they strolled casually to the ticket booth. A young couple with their arms around each other fell in behind, their eyes hidden behind black sunglasses, and gave a close semblance of romantic interest as they eyed the other boarding passengers.

Lee led, as prearranged, through the cabin and up to the top deck, which had benches and open sides. The intertwined couple stayed below, but after a minute an interracial one appeared up the stairs. The hard-looking black man in the slick leathers and impenetrable sunglasses and the harder-looking pale blond woman, also poured into leathers, attracted glances, but nobody would look at them long enough to remember their faces, and apart, in normal clothes, they would be unrecognizable. As he turned to sit down, Bob Fischer eased the twin mirrors down his nose with a long forefinger, winked at Kate, and pushed them back into place before sitting and taking possession of nearly seven feet of bench with his outstretched arms. The blond woman, who was the only person in the department to make Kate feel tall, was an expert in one of the more obscure varieties of martial arts. She looked like an anorectic heroin addict.

It was a glorious day, San Francisco at her spring finest. The smattering of off-season tourists along Fisherman's Wharf looked stunned at their fortune, having expected fog or rain, but the rains were nearly over for the year, and fog is a summer resident. The sky was intensely blue and clear, with an occasional crisp white cloud to cast a shadow across water and buildings for contrast. A fresh breeze raised white-caps, but the sun warmed the bones even on the top deck. Berkeley looked about ten feet away, Mt. Tamalpais was at her most maternal, and a sprinkling of triangular sails studded the blue waters where Northern California's more successful computer wizards and drug importers took a day at play.

Kate casually appraised their fellow passengers while Lee nattered on to Vaun about a boat trip she'd taken as a child. Kate had always envied Lee her ability to enjoy life even when the future held something unpleasant, whether the threat was the oral defense of her dissertation or the approaching death of one of her clients. Today Lee's pleasure in the day and the outing and the company was if anything sharpened by her awareness of the incongruity of the reason for the trip, and her pleasure was contagious. At least, Vaun seemed to be finding it so, and Kate made an effort to relax physically so as not to disturb the two of them. Nobody had recognized Vaun yet, and if someone hadn't done so by the time the group broke up on the island, it would be up to Bob Fischer to plant the suggestion in the mind of some passenger bound for shore. Meanwhile, she would do all she could to encourage Vaun to enjoy her moment of fresh air and freedom. God knew she'd had few enough of them lately, and would have no more for some time.

Lee was now telling Vaun about the Native American occupation of the island, a year and a half at the end of the sixties. Kate listened with half an ear. The boat was cast off and began to reverse out of the pier, and as it cleared and started its turn, a small movement near the ticket booth caught her eye. Half a dozen permed and rinsed tourist types were staring up at them, one woman's outflung arm pointing at Vaun, whose tipped head and intently listening face were full in the sun. The boat pulled away from the mooring, and Kate glanced to see if Bob had noticed. He nodded at her over a blond head. She sat back and sighed. Poor Vaun. Her public would soon alert the media. The day had begun.

They would have perhaps an hour on Alcatraz before anyone caught up with them, and Kate decided not to tell Vaun. She dug an extra pair of sunglasses out of her purse and gave them to Vaun, who put them on absently.

They disembarked, heard the ranger's lecture, bought postcards, and set off up the hill, the two couples at their heels. Through the tunnel, past the rusting, glass-enclosed guard tower, they zigzagged along beside the long-empty homes of the guards and their families, the anonymous chapel, the burnt shell of the warden's house. A handful of spring flowers waved among sparse weeds, the few hardy survivers of some gardener's suburban dream. Dirt had been transported from the mainland in the last century, back when Alcatraz was a cannon-ringed garrison defending the entrance to the goldfields. The soil was laboriously brought in with an eye to absorbing the explosive power of incoming cannonballs; what remains now grows spindly weeds.

At the island's peak they entered the prison itself, and the cold dampness of it shut off the sun behind them, although it occasionally worked its way in through dirty, high windows. They wandered along the rows of cells, into the barbershop and out to the exercise yard. It was like being inside an immense concrete and steel machine that had been turned off but not yet completely dismantled. Only a few of the more extraneous decorations had been stripped away, with the essential prison unaffected. If this were a volcano, Kate thought, looking up into the tiers of cells and walkways, it would be classified as dormant rather than extinct. It felt distant, but watchful. She wondered how it was affecting Vaun, and whether the ex-inmate might hesitate at coming too close to the cells, but she did not. She even walked into one and ran her fingertips over the walls, where for thirty years the cell's occupants had leaned against the concrete and worn it smooth with their rough shirts. She would not, however, go near the dark, solid holes of the solitary confinement cells.

Finally they stood in the mess hall, where the last day's breakfast menu was still mounted on the wall for the tourists to photograph. Long windows on either side let in the light, and from one side stretched out the view of San Francisco that tantalized and taunted. Lee and Vaun stood there, heads together, Lee talking still, Vaun absorbing and reflecting Lee's vivacity.

"--fed them a bit too much, kept them a bit too warm, gave them very little exercise, and of course no visitors, no privacy, either physical or mental, no goal, no change in the routine. It turned men who were accustomed to action and power into soggy cabbages. They thrived at other prisons, but this place broke them. Look at Al Capone, for ex--"

Lee's voice was cut off by a sharp, nasal exclamation from the doorway.

"There she is, I told you, it's Eva Vaughn!"

Kate had seen her coming and moved in front of the two women, who whirled around at the voice. Bob Fischer and his partner stood apart on the other side of the room, looking mildly interested at the disturbance. Kate took Vaun's arm and propelled her firmly out past the group of chattering gawkers. The central figure, the woman Kate had seen at the pier, raised her voice and turned to follow but was pulled to a sudden and unexpected halt by her elbow, upon which a very large and utterly immovable hand was laid. Her face looked up, and up, into the smiling teeth and invisible eyes of Bob Fischer.

"Pardon me, ma'am, I couldn't help overhearing, but could you tell me please who you thought that was?"

His words were faultlessly polite; his stance and dress were definitely, well, big; and the thumb and forefinger grasping her arm were like a clamp. She looked into her own face staring down from his glasses, and quailed.

"I, well, Eva Vaughn, the painter, you know, down on that Road, the little girls----" Her voice drifted off as she realized that her quarry was rapidly getting away from her. She plucked at his fingers with nervous little jabs and looked desperately over her shoulder. Her husband hugged his big video camera bag to his chest and began to protest weakly. The other three ladies and two men in the group faded back a step or two and eyed each other as their leader explained valiantly about artists and pictures and maybe an autograph, for her granddaughter, who was such a clever little artist herself, you know?

After several minutes of this Bob bared his teeth hugely and loosed his clamp.

"Oh, yeah, I see, the artist, she was in the paper, I remember. You remember, Lily, down on that Road where they kept finding them little girls?"

The pale woman nodded and dropped her purse, and by the time the last errant lipstick had been rounded up by the gallant gentleman from Schenectady, Kate had called ahead on her walkie-talkie to have the boat held for them and had taken two precipitous shortcuts across the Road. The pursuers never had a chance.

Kate hustled her two charges aboard, followed closely by the other "couple" who had dawdled behind Bob and the pale "Lily" during the morning, and by a solitary older Japanese man who had been sitting on a bench at the landing with a booklet on the history of San Francisco until Kate had spoken into her radio. Kate shoved Vaun into a corner seat as the door swung shut behind them. Ropes were cast off, the engines began to work, and they were well away by the time the cluster of art lovers burst from the tunnel and slowed to a disappointed walk. She smiled grimly and turned to the man with the history booklet.

"Hello, Inspector Kitagawa. Is Tom Grimes waiting for us, then?"

"Oh, indeed, with about five hundred others."

"What!"

"Word got out," he said laconically.

"We won't be able to land, then."

"It's all right, half the department is there, too. Hawkin has a car there; he wants you to take your ladies right into it. If we let her stop to talk there'll be a riot, so he's arranged to meet Grimes later. Somebody'll take care of your car, if you'll give me the keys."

She unhooked Lee's ignition key from her ring, gave it to him, and stood up.

"I'd better go talk to the captain or the pilot or whatever he is and let him know what's going on."

"He knows."

Half of San Francisco knew, it appeared. Every tourist from Ghirardelli Square to Pier 39 must have heard, and added their numbers to the professional voyeurs. An alarmingly narrow line had been cleared by the uniformed police, a gauntlet of lenses and microphones to be run. Kate looked at Vaun to see how she was taking it and saw the same face she had met all those days ago: achingly beautiful, pale as death, and without the slightest expression or hint of life within. Vaun's hand reached up and removed the sunglasses, folded them, handed them to Kate. Even without them there was no sign of her thoughts about the chaos before them.

"Are you going to be okay?" Kate asked her.

"Probably never again," she replied calmly.

The boat bumped into the berth. Ropes were made fast, the door opened, and the gangway stretched out towards the crowd, and Vaun stepped out to meet her fate.

She walked slowly through the mayhem of shouted questions and outthrust microphones and the swell of clicking and whirring cameras, looking only at the equipment-laden belt of the chunky policeman who led their small procession through the crowd. She seemed completely oblivious to the uproar, looked only like a woman preoccupied with a minor personal problem, and allowed herself to be guided to the waiting police car and pushed in. Hawkin was there, and while Lee and Kate got in on either side of Vaun in the back seat he raised a bored and authoritative voice to inform the assembled media of their opportunity Tuesday to ask all the questions they might want, but not until then, sorry, no more comments, and with that he climbed into the front next to the driver and off they drove.

The driver spent the next few minutes shaking off several pursuing cars and vans while Kate gave Hawkin an account of the trip onto Alcatraz, Vaun stared unseeing through the front window, and Lee touched Vaun's hand lightly and watched her. The driver was good, and in ten minutes they were on the freeway going south, free of followers.