Hooked (4 page)

10

T
he paper said Simon Anderson’s funeral and memorial service would be held graveside in Colma. The City of Souls. More than one million people are buried in cemeteries on a lush hillside setting just south of San Francisco. The only thing more crowded than life in the Bay Area is the afterlife.

The obituary said the deceased was a former investment banker focusing on technology who had done well enough to take on his dream of becoming a writer. He’d published a children’s book through a vanity press.

A crowd was gathering. A woman next to me pulled out a bottled water and a pouch of raw mixed nuts. She told her friend she’d brought her own snacks in case the funeral food wasn’t organic.

A tent had been set up over the gravesite and a woman I took to be Anderson’s wife sat underneath, with her daughter and autistic son, who bounced excitedly, seemingly oblivious to the solemnity. Surrounding us were tombstones big and small, death’s haves and have-nots. The Silver family mausoleum was big enough to fetch $3,000 a month without renovations if rented as a one-bedroom apartment in Noe Valley.

I had come to the funeral looking for a place to start, maybe someone who had been at the café to whom I could show the picture in my breast pocket. I pulled it out and looked at Annie.

Our second date took place two weeks after our first. We’d had little contact because she’d been on a work trip to New York and relatively unresponsive to e-mail. But when I got to her apartment to pick her up, we immediately launched into a kiss, which threatened to get heavy, until a little girl from across the hallway opened the door.

She told Annie that her cat had again crawled behind the stove and had been there for hours. Annie promised to help, went inside her own apartment for a second, slyly showed me a bag of catnip, and then we went over to retrieve Edmund. Annie knelt beside the stove and made a show for the girl of coaxing out the cat with a fantastical plea about how everyone involved would be better off by its appearance.

When Edmund emerged it set off genuine joy from the girl, and also Annie, who wiped cobwebs from the cat’s face and scratched the base of its ear. Annie, the cat whisperer. I’d always been a sucker for a woman who could nurture a pet, figuring if she could love something that habitually puked on the carpet she could cope with whatever hair balls I brought up. Annie startled me by reading my thoughts.

“If you run behind the stove, you’re on your own.” She smiled.

“I’m not easy. I’ve had sex with only three people,” Annie said.

“You mean at once?”

“Pig.” She paused. “This is going to be something special.”

She pulled me into her apartment. At a glance, not much registered. I could tell one thing, though: The place was neat. Hospital corners all around.

“Nat, this whole thing is freaking me out,” Annie said. She lowered her voice, like she was too embarrassed to finish her thought. “Is this real?”

I laughed. “I was wondering the same thing.”

She led me to the bedroom. I noticed that tacked neatly around the edges of the ceiling were Christmas lights—blue, red, yellow, and green—but unlit.

“I should have removed them six months ago,” Annie said. “I’m better at putting things up than taking them down.”

“Sure, putting things up is exciting—it means holidays and vacation and presents are coming. Taking things down means it’s over. Hibernation.”

“Very deep,” she said. “I don’t know where their box is.”

She giggled and her eyes shone joy, and desire. I dove into them.

Afterward, I looked at her bedside table. It was bare, except for a tick-tock clock with metallic black hands, and two hardbacks:
Heart of Darkness
and
Horton Hears a Who.

“Nat, have you ever saved a life?” Annie asked. “You know, in the line of duty.”

I told her the story from two years before when I’d seen an SUV back over a pregnant woman outside a mall. I administered CPR, as anybody with basic training would have done. The woman died, the baby survived. The woman’s husband sued me for failing to stabilize his wife’s cervical spine. His case was tossed out, but not before it made the experience even more painful.

“I would have wanted that man’s head on a platter,” Annie said, then added after a pause, “Why are you smiling?”

It was true. She was right. In a millisecond, my mood had shifted.

“I haven’t felt angry about that for a long time,” I said. “The thing is, I haven’t felt much of anything for a long time.”

From the bedside table, I picked up
Horton Hears a Who
. It was autographed, inscribed to “Annie, A Wondriferous Girl, Who Someday Could Rule The World.”

“Why did you ask me if I’d ever saved a life?”

“Why, Doctor,” Annie responded playfully, “you never know when a girl will need saving.”

We spent the next two days prone. Not necessarily in the throes of passion—we talked constantly—but there were a lot of throes. It was a bit surprising, given the relative lack of contact between our dates. She dismissed my questions about her inattentiveness on her work trip by noting that she had been overwhelmed. Her father had sent her to size up a small technology company in upstate New York. The work was all- consuming. She told me that she’d thought about me all the time.

All in all, it was two days of great conversation, take-out food, and Strawberry Too, her Labrador retriever, named after her first childhood dog. We took a crash course in each other. Annie got nervous when people touched her neck; she preferred watching television with the light on because it reminded her that what was happening on the screen wasn’t real; she once had a “little brother” from East Palo Alto from whom she learned Spanish to better communicate with; she had a high tolerance for liquor but not beer; she monthly wrote handwritten letters to her mother, who had divorced her father several years ago and moved to Washington State. She liked writing letters, and theorized that her handwriting changed slightly depending on who they were written to; with her mom the script was a little rounder, bespeaking sympathy.

It wasn’t one single thing that inspired me about Annie, one accomplishment or trait I could point to that summed up her allure. It was how she made me feel—that she was clearheaded and passionate but waiting, like me, and I could be the thing she was waiting for. When I woke up Monday morning, I was truly hooked—until we had our first fight.

I was sitting in an antique chair in her living room a few weeks later. I leaned my head back over the back of the chair, reveling in the greatness of the moment. I over-reveled. The chair fell over backward and a leg snapped. Annie rushed over. To the chair.

“Can I get you a sledgehammer?”

“Don’t worry about me,” I said, holding up my bleeding hand.

I walked into the kitchen, turned on the faucet, and ran warm water over the cut that ran inside the webbing of my thumb. I’d need a butterfly bandage. Behind me, I could hear Annie trying to put the wood pieces back into place. Finally, she walked over and inspected the wound, but she remained cold.

“That’s the first thing I ever bought myself,” she said.

I held my tongue. I left in a dark silence and spent the night replaying the event. Maybe it was just a function of upbringing; Annie was Prada, I was Levi’s. Then with the light of day came a delivery on my doorstep. It was a baby snapping turtle in a terrarium. There was a note. It read, “I am so horribly sorry for snapping. Please forgive me. A.”

In the coming months, when one of us lost track of our priorities or blew things out of proportion, that person was deemed “turtle.” Our first pet name. As time passed, it became our singular term of endearment.

But I didn’t give in immediately. Following our fight, I slowed the engine. I started peeking around corners. One night, we were about to climb into my car after going to a movie. Annie asked for the keys and told me she was driving. I sat in the passenger seat, she put a finger to my lips, encouraging silence. Then she pulled out a black scarf, wrapped it across my eyes, and tied it behind my head. I laughed as we drove in circles around town for half an hour. She was trying to confuse me as to our destination. I was imagining we would wind up in a hotel bed, with me wearing only the blindfold.

We finally parked. She led me into a building and up a set of stairs. It felt familiar. I remember the smell of cinnamon cookies coming from somewhere nearby. She leaned in close and whispered, “Please trust me . . . again.”

I heard her put a key in a lock and open the door. She undid the blindfold and held my gaze.

“I’m getting there,” I said.

I realized we were standing in the doorway of my apartment.

“Surprise,” Annie said, pointing me to a pile of gifts: a quill pen, a stack of crepe stationery with my initials, and a new Mac with a big, dazzling screen, all of it sitting on an antique mahogany desk. Annie said she wanted to share the wealth of a deal that had yielded her father’s firm tens of millions of dollars. I ran my hands over the carved side of the desk.

“I can definitely be bought,” I added, mostly joking.

“No you can’t,” she said, taking my face.

“They’re a writer’s rocks and sticks—his tools.
Your
tools,” she whispered into my ear. “Keep creating. Keep building.”

From then on, I wrote Annie poems, and left goofy messages on her answering machine, and put notes on her car, and I never doubted her again.

Back at Cypress Lawn, I was shaken from my memory by the voice of a minister delivering a by-the-book eulogy. Simon Anderson, loving father and husband, charitable man, passionate in his pursuits, taken from us too soon. Anderson’s brother spoke next. He was strikingly attractive, as were many of those in attendance. The kind of gene pool drawn to San Francisco, but even more so. Many men wore ties, a fashion relegated to weddings and funerals. Anderson’s brother described his sibling as a wicked-quick study, who would have struck it rich even without help from the dot-com boom; a pilot and adventurer with an effortless charisma, and a husband and father who cherished his family.

“I know things got a little rough at the end,” he said, looking at the widow. “He wouldn’t have wanted pity from anybody. You know Simon. He would’ve wanted a proper wake. So let’s drain one more keg.”

The crowd began to disperse, and I noticed a hundred hands reach into pockets to extract cell phones. It was like the airplane had just landed. I looked for an in-person conversation. I saw one mourner in a dark suit hobbled by a leg cast. His face was scabbed. I started walking toward him just as he was approached by two serious-looking gents, one bearing a notepad. Cops. I turned in the other direction and took a stroll on the giant lawn, which reminded me of the setting of Annie’s memorial service, with hundreds mourning a tragic death at sea. By then, there was little hope her father’s no-holds-barred search effort would yield a miracle, or even a body.

A line of Anderson’s mourners began an orderly exit. In one of the nearby cul-de-sacs of the massive cemetery I noticed one car staying put, and out of the way—a beat-up green Honda with a ski rack and its driver slunk behind the wheel.

Erin Coultran was lurking.

11

I
expected Erin to hit the throttle when she saw me, but she didn’t. She did start rolling up her window. Then she paused and stared at me through dark glasses with purple frames, seemingly lost in analysis.

“Get in,” she said, with a sudden sense of purpose.

We drove in silence away from the procession. She didn’t like a crowd—certainly not this one. We parked by a tombstone proclaiming “Frisky” to be a “cat above.”

“When you mourn, you really like your privacy,” I said.

“So how did you first learn that the cop had nearly killed the Malaysian girl?”

I’d done it enough times myself to know when I’d been Googled.

I reached into my breast pocket. I felt the small square picture. Maybe it would jog Erin’s memory. Then again, maybe Annie was all in my imagination and there was no jogging to be done.

I kept the picture tucked. And, seeing no harm in it, I told Erin the Aravelo story from the beginning. I had friends from medical school who worked at San Francisco General, a take-all-comers urban triage center. They often gave me tips about interesting health issues that they felt (1) wouldn’t be of interest to the mainstream press, or (2) wouldn’t be fully understood and explained by someone without a medical background.

Erin said, “So are you a doctor?”

“I’m a nonpracticing, ill-qualified, not-up-to-date, medical school graduate.”

“So you are a doctor.”

Signs of life. She seemed to smile without moving her lips. She’d removed her glasses, revealing eyes deep brown and magnetic.

I explained that my doctor friends started seeing a spate of young Asian women with HIV. It was clear they were prostitutes. The trick was finding where they worked. It turned out that the brothels were actually advertised under various euphemisms in the neighborhood papers. I called for an escort, and was given an address in the Sunset District. From there, I did the basic grunt work of journalism. I met several prostitutes, including Azlina Hathimar, also known as Daisy. They’d been shipped over from Malaysia and Vietnam and were essentially buying freedom through the sex trade.

“So why didn’t they go to the police?” Erin asked.

“Some of their johns were cops and they didn’t know who to trust.”

“Fucking police,” she said, looking away.

I had planned to go to the cops myself, but events overtook us. I’d gone back to the brothel to do more reporting, arriving not long after Patrolman Aravelo had dealt out his beating. I’m not sure Azlina would have survived if I hadn’t gotten there and begun treating her; her pimps might not have bothered to call for an ambulance.

“So now you’re investigating the café explosion? You’re looking for another project?”

She started the car.

“Where are we headed, Erin?”

“Cole Valley. I’ll take you back to your car later.”

It was a different Erin than the one who’d fled at the tutoring center. This one was driving, literally and figuratively. This one seemed highly capable.

Erin held out a ballpoint pen. It looked like it had been chewed in half.

“What do you make of this?”

“I diagnose you with raccoons.”

“Andy did that. With his teeth.”

I had no idea who Andy was, or why Erin was telling me about him.

“Andy killed himself two weeks ago,” she said. “They say he walked off the bridge. He’s the last person on earth I would ever have expected to do that.”

“Who’s ‘they,’ Erin?”

She just shook her head.

“Andy was your boyfriend?”

“Not exactly. He was so kind, and funny. He . . . Two months ago, he . . . started getting these terrible headaches.”

I had seen water bottles on the backseat. I twisted my body around to grab a couple. On the seat and spilling onto the floor were a jumble of clothes, discarded food wrappers and balled-up paper, and a worn Bible. Unlike Annie, Erin apparently didn’t gravitate to order.

“Back up,” I said. “Can you give me some basics?”

I wasn’t asking because I particularly cared, but I realized the best thing I could do was to keep Erin talking. Maybe she’d say something that would help me get closer to understanding the café’s connection to Annie—if there was one.

Maybe I could just get a better handle on Erin.

She said she’d been working at the café for two years when she met Andy Goldstein, tall and lanky with a glob of sandy blond curly hair that some days looked like an overfertilized plant. He taught fifth grade at a private school. During the school year, Andy would occasionally stop by after the final bell to put the day—and the brats—behind him. He joked that he believed in the healing power of root beer.

Erin and Andy grew extremely close. They used to go to the skateboard park and talk above the background noise of boarders testing their courage against the pavement, though sometimes Andy earnestly told the kids he was a scout for MTV to see which ones got more courageous and focused and which were more mistake prone. Andy had theories about everything; he swore to Erin that you could tell the quality of a Chinese restaurant by its rice. He also insisted that the world could be broken down into two groups of people based on their elevator-riding habits—there are those who press the button of the floor they want only once, and those who press it again each time the elevator makes a stop. Andy was strong, and centered, and made her laugh and feel calm. “When I was with him, it always felt like it was Sunday afternoon,” Erin said.

“Meaning?”

“Safe enough to nap.”

Andy had planned to spend summer break from school traveling in Vietnam and Thailand, but decided instead to finish up a master’s thesis. Waitress and patron grew very close, until Andy started acting strange.

“Andy became . . . excitable for a few weeks, and then tired. He turned irritable, and mean,” she said. “He freaked at me for screwing up his latte.”

He knew something wasn’t right. He said he was having restless sleep and strange, vivid dreams. “He was almost relieved when the headaches came,” she said. “It gave him something more concrete to talk to the doctors about.”

The initial tests didn’t show cancer, but they were inconclusive. Then he went to see a neurologist who’d used some sophisticated tests that found something weird. Erin never got a full explanation, but there was at least reason for hope.

Two days later, he jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge.

I tried to recall my basic training in psychology and neurology. Andy was irritable. He had vivid dreams. Suicidal ideation. Evidence of a psychotic or schizophrenic break? I remembered that it did typically happen to people in their thirties. But it didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the story.

What didn’t seem unusual was that his death took place at the bridge. The spot has one of the highest concentrations of suicides in the world, a fact that has inspired intense debate over whether San Francisco should erect a guardrail that would make leaping more difficult. Critics said it would be a costly eyesore, which made me wonder whether my fellow San Franciscans had any right to claim, as they often did for sport, that they were less superficial than the fine people of Los Angeles.

I asked Erin if she’d told the police about Andy.

“I talked to them just after the explosion.”

“Lieutenant Aravelo?” I asked.

“You too?”

“Yeah.” I grimaced. “It’s tragic, Erin, and I’m sorry. But I don’t see what this has to do with the explosion, or anything else.”

She shook her head. “It’s a strange coincidence.” Her voice was distant, but resolute. “Something went wrong at that place—I mean, at the café.”

I let the proposition run over me. Her tone implied a certainty lacking from her substance.

“Erin, when I first ran into you—ran after you—back at the tutoring center, you said, ‘You’ve got the wrong person.’ Then you asked me what my sin was. Why would you say those things?”

Erin shrugged. “I guess I felt guilty.”

“Guilty?”

“That I survived,” she said softly.

Then she said, “There’s something I want to show you.”