SWNOVELS Half Moon Bay: Chapter 24
On my way home I stopped at Codornices Park, site of the kidnapping.
It’s a rolling nook, ten acres in the shape of a taco. There’s a softball field, a basketball court, a thread-worn play area, and—set into the hillside, snaking beneath the arms of a colossal California live oak—a fifty-foot concrete slide.
Everything about it seemed intended to cause injury. The congested staircase, made of packed earth and pavers, that led to the upper platform. The surface of the concrete, nicked and gouged and studded with pebbles, so rough you had to go down sitting on a piece of cardboard, which in turn made for a ride so slick and harrowing that you could easily spin out, skin an elbow, chip a tooth.
Buddy Hopewell was right. Hard to imagine anyone designing such a thing for children, harder still to understand how it had survived into the age of cushioned tot lots and class-action lawsuits.
Yet as I approached, I saw a long line of kids fidgeting with collapsed Amazon Prime boxes tucked under arms or between knees. Mothers, fathers, and nannies waited at the bottom, bellowing encouragement, iPhones set to record in slo-mo.
A little danger, I thought, was precisely the point. To a modern parent—for whom every substance turned out to be toxic and every misstep threatened permanent damage and nullified a child’s chances at college or anything resembling a normal, happy life—willingness to let Avery or Stella or Liam engage in some reckless fun, and then to post that fun on social media, proved: Hey, you’re not that uptight, after all.
The slide’s very nature as a throwback validated it.
It had been there forever. Nobody had died.
From the foot of the slide I could make out cars crawling along Euclid, hunting for parking. Buddy had estimated the distance to the street at a hundred fifty yards. In reality it was about half that. Still too far away to read a license plate, though. Color and general shape was about the best you could do.
But Chrissy hadn’t been here when she saw the sedan.
She’d been up on the platform, getting the tar beaten out of her.
I started for the steps.
The oak tree was an impressive piece of creation, forty feet tall and twice as broad, with coarse grayish skin covered in knotholes and moss. Part elephant, part octopus, it swung its tentacles in search of prey, one thick branch blocking the staircase at chest height. I ducked under and excused myself up through the line of kids, drawing nervous stares. A single man, at the park, taking notes and photos? Charlotte would’ve provided good cover.
Standing at the top of the slide, I imagined the struggle between Chrissy and the two men. A skimpy safety rail made of welded pipe ran along the platform edge. Not much of a barrier: even an adult could fit through the gaps, and the rail ended several feet shy of the steps. She could have gone through or around it. Below, a series of retaining walls, varying between two and four feet high, terraced the hillside. The oak rooted on the second terrace from the bottom. In Buddy’s recollection of Chrissy’s recollection, it was there that she’d crash-landed.
The vertical drop to the tree was about twenty feet, enough to break a leg.
I found it more difficult to account for the horizontal distance she’d covered. There were eight terraces in all, each about three feet deep. A person falling off the platform would land atop the nearest one. Maybe, if they’d been pushed very hard, they’d make it as far out as the second terrace.
The idea that a single shove could have resulted in Chrissy hitting the tree was cartoon physics. She would’ve had to fall and bounce and roll, fall and bounce and roll—six times in all.
Bodies don’t behave like that.
I should know. I’ve handled thousands of them.
Nor did it make sense that her attacker could have picked her up and heaved her through the air.
As to how she’d gotten from point A to point B, I saw two explanations.
One was that she had done the rolling herself.
Or she hadn’t fallen at all and had gotten her injuries some other way.
Did descriptions get any more generic than “one black guy” and “one white guy”?
They hurt her so badly.
It didn’t make any sense for her to…
“Excuse me, mister.”
I stood back, allowing a towheaded kid to squeeze by.
The more I thought about it, the quicker the questions popped up, leaching the substance out of Chrissy Klausen’s account.
Despite getting the tar beat out of her, she’d managed to witness the white guy getting into a dark sedan with Peggy.
I couldn’t see a damn thing. Just like at Maryanne’s house. Too much foliage. Bad angle.
Maybe Buddy was misremembering. Maybe Chrissy had spotted the car from below, after she’d already fallen.
I ducked under the safety rail and clambered down to the base of the tree.
I crouched to simulate the position of a woman writhing with a broken leg.
No dice.
Scores of other trees and a severe rise in the terrain created a total blind.
There was simply no way she could have seen the car. Any car.
—
BILLY WATTS SAID, “Their story: It wasn’t them.”
We stood together on Maryanne’s front lawn. The boarded-up window glared like a rotten tooth. It turned out that while you could replace an ordinary pane that same day, matching a vintage piece of stained glass required a specialty art glazier and a lead time measured in months.
“They didn’t come anywhere near here,” Watts said. “They don’t know where you live. They don’t know what you’re talking about. They’d never do a thing like that.”
“Sure they would. They’ve done tons of shit precisely like this.”
“You don’t need to tell me that. I read their sheets. What do you want me to do? There’s no prints on the brick. None of your neighbors saw anything. Nobody’s got a security camera. The nail polish is nail polish. You want to call Quantico, be my guest.”
I already had several unanswered calls and emails in to the FBI. I did not want to call Quantico.
Watts said, “I went out there. I talked to them. Maybe that’ll be enough. And—by the way, let’s you and I take a moment to acknowledge my doing that, because I am definitely the first person of color to cross that fence and make it out alive.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s the inbreeding Olympics over there,” Watts said.
“Appreciate your doing it.”
“White Trash Disneyland.”
“I deeply appreciate your taking the time.”
He grinned. “Brady Brunch on meth. How’s your landlady doing?”
“Okay, I think. She was nice enough not to evict us.”
“You pay for her window?”
“I keep trying. She won’t let me. I asked her what it cost and she quoted me a number that’s gotta be a tenth of the real price.”
“So write a check for ten times that.”
“That’s what my wife said.”
“How’s your wife?”
For the past couple of weeks, I’d been monitoring Amy for signs of disquiet. She was subtle, but I had no doubt she was doing the same for me, both of us working overtime to conceal our distress from each other.
“She’s a trouper,” I said. “Billy, I really am grateful for what you did.”
“Don’t even trip. It’s my pleasure. You can’t do that shit to a cop. Now, about that.”
I looked at him.
“You want me to help you out,” he said, “you got to do the same.”
“Meaning?”
“I spoke to Dale. He was pretty worked up about you paying them a second visit. Hold up. Hold up,” he said, putting out his palms. “I’m not saying I’d feel differently in your shoes. It’s your family and your home. But you called me. It’s my problem now.”
“All I did was take a drive.”
“Find somewhere else to do that.”
“I didn’t go on the property.”
“Don’t go anywhere near them. Okay? Your sake and mine.”
“I honestly didn’t think he noticed me.”
“Oh, he noticed you all right. He said—lemme see, how’d he phrase it.” Watts pretended to consult his notes, rubbing his chin comically. “Ahem, yes. ‘You let that turd-sniffing piece of shit know he has an open invitation.’ ”
“Poetry,” I said.
Maryanne’s bedroom light came on.
I said, “You think I made things worse?”
“I don’t think you calmed them down any. Don’t underestimate these assholes. But at least they know we’re paying attention to them. They’d be real fuckin stupid to move now. So do me and you and everyone a favor and don’t throw any more fuel on the fire. I know you got your image to uphold.”
“What image.”
“The vigilante cowboy thing. Listen, it’s action you want, we got tons of openings.”
Berkeley PD was in the midst of a staffing crisis that had cut its ranks by a third, as officers fled for other municipalities, the private sector, retirement.
I said, “We could do an exchange program. You become a coroner.”
“Disgusting,” Watts said. Then he reconsidered. “How’s your benefits?”
—
ALL ACROSS PEOPLE’S Park, the earth coughed up a bumper crop of brambles and weeds. The free food cart was back. You could get free socks on Free Sock Saturday. Concerts had been scheduled. Reggae All-Stars and a Joan Baez tribute. There was still no stage, but the items in the Free Speech Pit had broken loose of their confines, the buildup creeping over the lawn in concentric circles.
Lamps and carpets and rocking chairs; tents, tarps, sleeping bags; an extension cord superhighway.
The blue bear continued to sit there, untouched.
For a second time, Judge Sharon Feeley of the Alameda County Superior Court declined to lift the injunction prohibiting construction. But this time there was a catch, one that provided a glimmer of hope for UC: The judge called for an archaeological site survey to be performed by a qualified and independent expert. Said expert must be chosen by mutual agreement between the university and the Defenders of the Park, with costs split evenly between the two parties. The survey must be completed within six months, or else work would be permitted to resume.
However slowly, she’d set the clock ticking, sowing disorder among the numerous grassroots organizations who had never given consent for Trevor Whitman, Sarah Whelan, or Chloe Bellara to speak on their behalf.
The Defenders announced, via Instagram, the receipt of five thousand dollars toward the expert’s fee. Almost immediately they had to give the money back, when it emerged that the anonymous donor was a coalition of NIMBYist property managers who had previously lobbied against construction of the dorm.
Soon after, Chloe Bellara announced on her personal Instagram that, due to irreconcilable visions, she had severed ties with Trevor Whitman and Sarah Whelan and was leaving the Defenders to form a new group, the People’s Park Alliance. A number of former Defenders joined the exodus. Follow us on Instagram.
The Alliance’s first move was to file for a separate injunction in federal court. The second move was to occupy the steps of University House, the chancellor’s residence, barricading her front door with sandbags and cinder blocks and playing 24/7 Justin Bieber.
Trevor Whitman posted on his personal Instagram that Chloe had “allowed her ego to wreak immeasurable damage.”
An anonymous Redditor revealed that Whitman’s uncle worked as an engineer for a petroleum conglomerate. Sarah Whelan, also a child of privilege, had attended Stanford.
The infighting began to erode morale. There had never been a clear leader in the cleanup efforts; no discussion about what a rebuilt People’s Park ought to look like. Everyone claimed to prefer a more hands-off approach. These things happened organically. That had been true in 1969, as well. But whatever corny sense of unity had prevailed back then was less attainable for tribes of the digital age.
What arose, organically, was conflict.
A fight broke out between some parkies and a group of volunteers clearing rubble from the basketball courts, ending with one woman being carted off to the hospital with knife wounds. Someone set fire to the flower beds. One of the two remaining tree-sitters slipped and fell to the sidewalk, fracturing his cervical spine and inducing the final tree-sitter to desert her post.
A sixteen-year-old girl attending a summer enrichment program at Cal was groped and had her laptop snatched as she stood by the Maybeck Church, shooting footage of the homeless encampment for Introduction to Documentary Film and Video.
Florence Sibley called me. “The company that manufactured the teddy bear. I found them.”
I scrolled through my phone, bringing up the photo I’d taken of the bear’s tag. “ ‘Marjorie’s Menagerie.’ ”
“That’s the distributor. Look below that.”
Kuwagong Happiness Co. (H.K.) Ltd.
Kowloon, Hong Kong
Reg No. PA-2739 (HK)
The owl and owlet logo.
“They’re defunct,” Sibley said. “However. You ever hear of the Consumer Product Safety Commission? They’re the ones who issue product recalls.”
“I think my wife has them bookmarked.”
“They started operating in ’72. ’Seventy-three, there’s a press release. One guess who it’s about.”
“The Kuwagong Happiness Company.”
“Gold star for you.”
The text of the release was archived on the agency website, way back on the nine hundred forty-fifth page of results. Sibley had come across it while attempting to track down the distributor.
CPSC Warns of Choking Dangers from Kuwagong Happiness Co. Stuffed Animals
For immediate release
August 28, 1973
Release # 73-038
Washington, D.C. (August 28)—Citing the potential for suffocation hazard, the Consumer Product Safety Commission today warned consumers to discard stuffed animals and dolls manufactured by the Kuwagong Happiness Company, which is based in Hong Kong.
The toys are distributed nationwide by Marjorie’s Menagerie, San Francisco, Calif., and Anderson Far East Imported Goods, New Haven, Conn., two mail-order firms.
The toys incorporate glass and plastic elements such as eyes, ears and noses. CPSC Chairman Richard O. Simpson said that shoddy stitching can cause these pieces to come loose, particularly when chewed on by infants, small children, or pets. The shape and size of the pieces create a risk for swallowing or asphyxiation.
In the last year, Simpson said, nine children have been hospitalized due to injuries sustained from the toys. In May, a six-month-old child died after inhaling a plastic eye that became lodged in his airway.
Simpson criticized the manufacturer as well as their United States distributors for failing to withdraw the products, even after numerous warnings and reports of injury. The products, he said, are imminently hazardous.
A complete list of the affected products follows.
“I’m not gonna say, ‘There’s your cause of death,’ ” Sibley said. “But.”
The mother walking in, finding the baby gray.
Freaking out.
Needing to be rid of it.
Each year, six thousand children under the age of one die in accidents.
“Fantastic work,” I said.
“Aw, shucks.”
“I’m going to show this to my sergeant,” I said. “I’ll give you credit.”
“Well, whatever. I just feel better knowing. Obviously, it ain’t good what she did. But in a way it makes me want to find her even more. All this time she’s been living under a cloud. She deserves to know it wasn’t her fault.”
“How’s that going?” I asked. “Any traction?”
“Zip. The bear’s still there. Every day I get a text with a map and a pin. Anything changes, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Thanks.” I paused. “I’m trying to decide if I should tell Fritz Dormer. Anything beyond notification would be a courtesy, and I’m not feeling that courteous. On the other hand, once he knows it was an accident, he might stop worrying about being charged with a crime and give up something on the mother.”
“Probably a waste of time,” Sibley said. “I could send Tom out.”