Muller, Marcia - [11] Trophies and Dead Things(v1.0)(html) (27 page)

But even as I thought about it, I
knew I wouldn't stop. Tom Grant had been murdered, and my gut-level
feelings told me that the forces leading up to his killing had been set
in motion by something in that past. True, Grant had been a poor excuse
for a human being, but when it comes to murder, an investigator doesn't
establish an A List and a B List. I would keep going simply because it
was a valid line of inquiry that McFate seemed unwilling to pursue.

My pages of notes quickly piled
up: a chronology of events, key phrases from the trial testimony,
addresses, names. Hilderly was only mentioned once, in a list of people
suspected of being former members of the collective; the names Andy
Wrightman and Thomas Y. Grant appeared nowhere at all.

After I finished with the first
batch of films, I went out to the reference room and rechecked the
indexes for articles in radical and alternative publications. Then I
returned to the microfilm room and checked out a few reels containing
the coverage in the
Berkeley Barb
—an acerbic, muckraking paper
that had achieved national
prominence in the sixties. While the establishment press had not
attached any particular significance to the fact that four guns had
been seized from three people at Port Chicago—Taylor had been carrying
two at the time of his arrest—the
Barb
viewed this with
suspicion. One reporter wrote of rumors (possibly created by himself)
that there had been a "mysterious fourth person" at the weapons
station, who had handed Taylor his or her gun and walked away from the
scene when the federal agents appeared. "A Setup!" the
Barb's
headlines
proclaimed. "An informant in the midst of our courageous brothers and
sisters," an editorial insisted.

"Jenny Ruhl, Traitor" was the
title of the profile that appeared immediately after she'd testified at
the trial. Ruhl was described as "the pampered daughter of rich Orange
County pigs, who was too soft to stand with her brother and sister
during their persecution." Another reporter, less kind, said she was
"seriously fucked up, had probably fed information to the enemy all
along." By contrast, Ruhl's obituary some weeks after the trial
categorized her as "a martyr to the Movement" and a "victim of
bourgeois values." It was also posited that she had been "murdered by
the pigs." At that point I decided that the
Barb
hadn't been
able to make up its mind about Ruhl any more than I could.

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.

No, she wasn't Rhonda Wilson. She
and her husband had bought the store from her back in the
mid-seventies. Rhonda had moved to Nevada, but she wasn't sure she was
still there. No, she didn't recall anything about the people up the
street who'd been arrested by the FBI—she'd still been living in Texas
then and had never even heard about the case. Anyone in the
neighborhood who might remember? Well, there was old Cal. Cal had
gotten busted up in an accident at the shipyards back in the early
sixties. On good days he sat out on the sidewalk in his wheelchair and
passed the time of day with whoever came by; on foggy days like this
you could usually find him in the family Dodge that his wife kept
parked at the curb
 

"Cal's a do-gooder," the woman
added. "Writes letters, takes up things that're wrong in the
neighborhood with the folks at city hall. People like him; even the
junkies and the cops on the beat like him. That car? It hasn't been
moved in years, that I know of. But it just sits there and the street
cleaners go right around it and nobody ever gives it a ticket."

When I heard things like that, it
restored my faith in a city that often struck me as increasingly cold
and indifferent. I thanked the woman, bought a Hershey bar—the
emergency chocolate supply in my purse was probably running low— and
went out to see what Cal could tell me.

The faded maroon-and-white
Dodge with swooping tailfins was parked three or four doors from the
collective's last address. A pair of old men stood next to it, their
arms propped on its roof, talking with someone inside. Both men were
bundled in overcoats against the chill fog; one even wore a knitted cap
with earflaps. I walked down there and loitered on the sidewalk behind
them, waiting for them to conclude their conversation. It was about the
possibility of the new downtown stadium to replace Candlestick Park.
The men on the sidewalk were all for it; the man in the car—whom I
couldn't as yet see—wasn't opposed to the idea, but he considered it
evidence of the prevailing "two-faced attitude" at city hall.

"They tell you one thing during
the campaign," he said in a gravelly voice, "and after you vote 'em in,
you got something else entirely."

The man with the knitted cap
said, "Well, why don't you just write a letter, Cal, let the mayor know
what you think?"

"I might at that."

I was about to interrupt during
the brief lull in the conversation, but the other
man on the sidewalk stepped back a little, and the car's occupant saw
me. "Move aside, boys," he said. "Here's a young lady come to see me. I
got better things to do than shoot the breeze with a couple of old
farts."

"You just too popular, Cal." The
man in the knitted cap motioned for me to step up to the Dodge, and he
and his companion turned away. "Catch you later," he added.

Old Cal was perhaps in his
mid-sixties, with white hair and the kind of dark skin that has an
almost purple tinge. His upper body was powerful, with heavily muscled
shoulders and biceps; in contrast, his crippled legs, covered by a
green plaid blanket and extending from the car so his feet rested on
the curb, looked deflated. One glance into his lively eyes told me that
the ability to walk was the only faculty this man was lacking;