‘Somewhere in the City’
MARCIA MULLER

NAME: Sharon McCone, Private Eye 
PLACE: San Francisco 
TIME: 1989

CASES: ‘Edwin of the Iron Shoes’ (1977), ‘There’s Something in a Sunday’ (1989), ‘Wolf in the Shadows’ (1994), ‘Till the Butchers Cut Him Down’ (1995) etc.

DOSSIER: Sharon McCone is crime fiction’s first fully realised and realistically portrayed female private detective and represents the most important new development in the genre of this generation. Armed with her Nikkormat camera, .38 hand gun, and behind the wheel of her red MG sports car, she is as readily identifiable as the toughest hardboiled dick of the ‘thirties-and as such is the pioneer of her kind. Tough, intuitive and philosophical-in a way not unlike Sam Spade or Lew Archer-she works in San Francisco and is single minded about fighting crime and corruption. Sharon has a very special insight into human nature and is at her best when investigating complex relationships wherein she often discovers the motives and means behind a crime. Single (though often falling in and out of love), practical and independent by nature, she carries out most of her cases on behalf of her co-operative firm, often spotting the vital clues that other investigators-including the law-have missed. Sharon is a true multidimensional figure: unorthodox and headstrong, resolute and resilient, scrupulous and sharp, although she can also be compassionate and sensitive. Of her, the San Francisco Review said recently with understandable pride, ‘She’s easily the best of the female detectives.’

CREATOR: Marcia Muller (b.1953), who lives in northern California, took up writing mystery fiction after obtaining a BA and MA from the University of Michigan and received immediate acclaim for her first Sharon McCone novel, ‘Edwin of the Iron Shoes’, published in 1977. This ground-breaking work has subsequently caused her to be recognised by crime writer Sue Grafton as ‘the founding “mother” of the contemporary female hardboiled private eye’ as well as the inspiration for several other ‘gumshoe girls’. (Grafton and Sara Paretsky are acknowledged as the two other writers who effected this revolution in crime fiction.) Marcia has subsequently created two more popular series characters-Joanna Stark, a partner in a California art security firm, and Elena Oliverez, a Santa Barbara museum curator and amateur detective-although it is for private eye Sharon that she is best known. In 1993 she was given a Life Achievement Award by the Private Eye Writers of America, becoming the first and to date only woman recipient. ‘Somewhere in the City’, published in the Armchair Detective in 1990, represents an unusually tense case for Sharon as well as being unique among crime short stories by having as its background the terrifying San Francisco earthquake of 1989.

THE STORY:

At 5.04 p.m. on 17 October, 1989, the city of San Francisco was jolted by an earthquake that measured a frightening 7.1 on the Richter Scale. The violent tremors left the Bay Bridge impassable, collapsed a double-decker freeway in nearby Oakland, and toppled or severely damaged countless homes and other buildings. From the Bay Area to the seaside town of Santa Cruz some hundred miles south, sixty-five people were killed and thousands left homeless. And when the aftershocks subsided, San Francisco entered a new era-one in which things would never be quite the same again. As with all cataclysmic events, the question, ‘Where were you when?’ will forever provoke deeply emotional responses in those of us who lived through it...
Where I was when: the headquarters of the Golden Gate Crisis Hotline in the Noe Valley district. I’d been working a case there-off and on, and mostly in the late afternoon and evening hours, for over two weeks-with very few results and with a good deal of frustration.
The hotline occupied one big windowless room behind a rundown coffee house on Twenty-fourth Street. The location, I’d been told, was not so much one of choice as of convenience (meaning the rent was affordable), but had I not known that, I would have considered it a stroke of genius. There was something instantly soothing about entering through the coffee house, where the aromas of various blends permeated the air and steam rose from huge stainless-steel urns. The patrons were unthreatening-mostly shabby and relaxed, reading or conversing with their feet propped up on chairs. The pastries displayed in the glass case were comfort food at its purest-reminders of the days when calories and cholesterol didn’t count. And the round face of the proprietor, Lloyd Warner, was welcoming and kind as he waved troubled visitors through to the crisis centre.
On that Tuesday afternoon I arrived at about twenty to five, answering Lloyd’s cheerful greeting and trying to ignore the chocolate-covered doughnuts in the case. I had a dinner date at seven-thirty, had been promised some of the best French cuisine on Russian Hill, and was unwilling to spoil my appetite. The doughnuts called out to me, but I turned a deaf ear and hurried out.
The room beyond the coffee house contained an assortment of mismatched furniture: several desks and chairs of all vintages and materials; phones in colours and styles ranging from standard black touchstone to a shocking turquoise Princess; three tattered easy-chairs dating back to the fifties; and a card table covered with literature on health and psychological services. Two people manned the desks nearest the door. I went to the desk with the turquoise phone, plunked my briefcase and bag down on it, and turned to face them.
‘He call today?’ I asked.
Pete Lowry, a slender man with a bandit’s moustache who was director of the centre, took his booted feet off the desk and swivelled to face me. ‘Nope. It’s been quiet all afternoon.’
‘Too quiet.’ This came from Ann Potter, a woman with dark frizzled hair who affected the ageing-hippie look in jeans and flamboyant over-blouses. ‘And this weather-I don’t like it one bit.’
‘Ann’s having one of her premonitions of gloom and doom,’ Pete said. ‘Evil portents and omens lurk all around us-although most of them went up front for coffee a while ago.’
Ann’s eyes narrowed to a glare. She possessed very little sense of humour, whereas Pete perhaps possessed too much. To forestall the inevitable spat, I interrupted. ‘Well, I don’t like the weather much myself. It’s muggy, and too warm for October. It makes me nervous.’
‘Why?’ Pete asked.
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but I’ve felt edgy all day.’
The phone on his desk rang. He reached for the receiver. ‘Golden Gate Crisis Hotline, Pete speaking.’
Ann cast one final glare at his back as she crossed to the desk that had been assigned to me. ‘It has been too quiet,’ she said defensively. ‘Hardly anyone’s called, not even to inquire about how to deal with a friend or a family member. That’s not normal even for a Tuesday.’
‘Maybe all the crazies are out enjoying the warm weather.’
Ann half-smiled, cocking her head. She wasn’t sure if what I’d said was funny or not, and didn’t know how to react. After a few seconds her attention was drawn to the file I was removing from my briefcase. ‘Is that about our problem caller?’
‘Uh-huh.’ I sat down and began rereading my notes silently, hoping she’d go away. I’d meant it when I’d said I felt on edge, and was in no mood for conversation.
The file concerned a series of calls that the hotline had received over the past month-all from the same individual, a man with a distinctive raspy voice. Their content had been more or less the same: an initial plaint of being all alone in the world with no one to care if he lived or died; then a gradual escalating from despair to anger, in spite of the trained counsellors’ skilful responses; and finally the declaration that he had an assault rifle and was going to kill others and himself. He always ended with some variant on the statement, ‘I’m going to take a whole lot of people with me.’
After three of the calls, Pete had decided to notify the police. A trace was placed on the centre’s lines, but the results were unsatisfactory; most of the time the caller didn’t stay on the phone long enough, and in the instances that the calls could be traced, they turned out to have originated from booths in the Marina district. Finally the trace was taken off, the official conclusion being that the calls were the work of a crank-and possibly one with a grudge against someone connected with the hotline.
The official conclusion did not satisfy Pete, however. By the next morning he was in the office of the hotline’s attorney at All Souls Legal Co-operative, where I am chief investigator. And half an hour after that, I was assigned to work the phones at the hotline as often as my other duties permitted, until I’d identified the caller. Following a crash course from Pete in techniques for dealing with callers in crisis-augmented by some reading of my own-they turned me loose on the turquoise phone.

After the first couple of rocky, sweaty-palmed sessions, I’d gotten into it: become able to distinguish the truly disturbed from the fakers or the merely curious; learned to gauge the responses that would work best with a given individual; succeeded at eliciting information that would permit a crisis team to go out and assess the seriousness of the situation in person. In most cases, the team would merely talk the caller into getting counselling. However, if they felt immediate action was warranted, they would contact the SFPD, who had the authority to have the individual held for evaluation at the SF General Hospital for up to seventy-two hours.
During the past two weeks the problem caller had been routed to me several times, and with each conversation I became more concerned about him. While his threats were melodramatic, I sensed genuine disturbance and desperation in his voice; the swift escalation of panic and anger seemed much out of proportion to whatever verbal stimuli I offered. And, as Pete had stressed in my orientation, no matter how theatrical or frequently made, any threat of suicide or violence towards others was to be taken with utmost seriousness by the hotline volunteers.
Unfortunately I was able to glean very little information from the man. Whenever I tried to get him to reveal concrete facts about himself, he became sly and would dodge my questions. Still, I could make several assumptions about him: he was youngish, reasonably well educated, and Caucasian. The traces to the Marina indicated he probably lived in that bayside district-which meant he had to have a good income. He listened to classical music (three times I’d heard it playing in the background) from a transistor radio, by the tinny tonal quality. Once I’d caught the call letters of the FM station-one in the Central Valley town of Fresno. Why Fresno? I’d wondered. Perhaps he was from there? But that wasn’t much to go on; there were probably several Fresno transplants in his part of the city.
When I looked up from my folder, Ann had gone back to her desk. Pete was still talking in low, reassuring tones with his caller. Ann’s phone rang, and she picked up the receiver. I tensed. Knowing the next call would cycle automatically to my phone.
When it rang some minutes later, I glanced at my watch and jotted down the time while reaching over for the receiver. Four-fifty-eight. ‘Golden Gate Crisis Hotline, Sharon speaking.’
The caller hung up-either the wrong number or, more likely, someone who lost his nerve. The phone rang again about twenty seconds later and I answered it in the same manner.
‘Sharon. It’s me.’ The greeting was the same as the previous times, the raspy voice unmistakable.
‘Hey, how’s it going?’
A long pause, laboured breathing. In the background I could make out the strains of music-Brahms, I thought. ‘Not so good. I’m really down today.’
‘You want to talk about it?’
‘There isn’t much to say. Just more of the same. I took a walk a while ago, thought it might help. But the people out there flying their kites, I can’t take it.’
‘Why is that?’
‘I used to... ah, forget it.’
‘No, I’m interested.’
‘Well, they’re always in couples, you know.’
When he didn’t go on, I made an interrogatory sound.
‘The whole damn world is in couples. Or families. Even here inside my little cottage I can feel it. There are these apartment buildings on either side, and I can feel them pressing in on me, and I’m here all alone.’
He was speaking rapidly now, his voice rising. But as his agitation increased, he’d unwittingly revealed something about his living situation. I made a note about the little cottage between the two apartment buildings.
‘This place where the people were flying kites,’ I said, ‘do you go there often?’
‘Sure-it’s only two blocks away.’ A sudden note of sullenness now entered his voice-a part of the pattern he’d previously exhibited. ‘Why do you want to know about that?’
‘Because... I’m sorry, I forget your name.’
No response.
‘It would be a help if I knew what to call you.’
‘Look, bitch, I know what you’re trying to do.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah. You want to get a name, an address. Send the cops out. Next thing I’m chained to the wall at SF General. I’ve been that route before. But I know my rights now; I went down the street to the Legal Switchboard, and they told me...’
I was distracted from what he was saying by a tapping sound-the stack trays on the desk next to me bumped against the wall. I looked over there, frowning. What was causing that...?
‘...gonna take the people next door with me...’
I looked back at the desk in front of me. The lamp was jiggling.
‘What the hell?’ the man on the phone exclaimed.
My swivel chair shifted. A coffee mug tipped and rolled across the desk and into my lap.
Pete said, ‘Jesus Christ, we’ve having an earthquake!’
‘...The ceiling’s coming down!’ The man’s voice was panicked now.
‘Get under the door frame!’ I clutched the edge of the desk, ignoring my own advice.
I heard a crash from the other end of the line. The man screamed in pain. ‘Help me! Please help-‘ And then the line went dead.
For a second or so I merely sat there-longtime San Franciscan, frozen by my own disbelief. All around me formerly inanimate objects were in motion. Pete and Ann were scrambling for the archway that led to the door of the coffee house.
‘Sharon, get under the desk!’ she yelled at me.
And then the electricity cut out, leaving the windowless room in blackness. I dropped the dead receiver, slid off the chair, crawled into the kneehole of the desk. There was a cracking, a violent shifting, as if a giant hand had seized the building and twisted it. Tremors buckled the floor beneath me.
This is a bad one. Maybe the big one that they’re always talking about.
The sound of something wrenching apart. Pellets of plaster rained down on the desk above me. Time had telescoped, it seemed as if the quake had been going on for many minutes, when in reality it could not have been more than ten or fifteen seconds.
Make it stop! Please make it stop!
And then, as if whatever powers-that-be had heard my unspoken plea, the shock waves diminished to shivers, and finally ebbed.
Blackness. Silence. Only bits of plaster bouncing off the desks and the floor.
‘Ann?’ I said. ‘Pete?’ My voice sounded weak, tentative.
‘Sharon?’ It was Pete. ‘You OK?’
‘Yes. You?’
‘We’re fine.’
Slowly I began to back out of the kneehole. Something blocked it-the chair. I shoved it aside, and emerged. I couldn’t see a thing, but I could feel fragments of plaster and other unidentified debris on the floor. Something cut into my palm; I winced.
‘God, it’s dark.’ Ann said. ‘I’ve got some matches in my purse. Can you-‘
‘...Oh, right.’
Pete said, ‘Wait, I’ll open the door to the coffee house.’
On hands and knees I began feeling my way toward the sound of their voices. I banged into one of the desks, overturned a wastebasket, then finally reached the opposite wall. As I stood there, Ann’s cold hand reached out to guide me. Behind her I could hear Pete fumbling at the door.
I leaned against the wall. Ann was close beside me, her breathing erratic. Peter said, ‘Goddamned door’s jammed.’ From behind it came voices of people in the coffee house.
Now that the danger was over-at least until the first of the aftershocks-my body sagged against the wall, giving way to tremors of its own manufacture. My thoughts turned to the lover with whom I’d planned to have dinner: where had he been when the quake hit? And what about my cats, my house? My friends and my co-workers at All Souls? Other friends scattered throughout the Bay Area?
And what about a nameless, faceless man somewhere in the city who had screamed for help before the phone went dead?
The door to the coffee house burst open, spilling weak light into the room. Lloyd Warner and several of his customers peered anxiously through it. I prodded Ann-who seemed to have lapsed into lethargy-towards them.
The coffee house was fairly dark, but late-afternoon light showed beyond the plate-glass windows fronting on the street. It revealed a floor that was awash in spilled liquid and littered with broken crockery. Chairs were tipped over-whether by the quake or the patrons’ haste to get to shelter I couldn’t tell. About ten people milled about, talking noisily.
Ann and Pete joined them, but I moved forward to the window. Outside, Twenty-fourth Street looked much as usual, except for the lack of traffic and pedestrians. The buildings still stood, the sun still shone, the air drifting through the open door of the coffee house was still warm and muggy. In this part of the city, at least, life went on.
Lloyd’s transistor radio had been playing the whole time-tuned to the station that was carrying the coverage of the third game of the Bay Area World Series, due to start at five-thirty. I moved closer, listening.
The sportscaster was saying, ‘Nobody here knows what’s going on. The Giants have wandered over to the A’s dugout. It looks like a Softball game where somebody forgot to bring the ball.’
Then the broadcast shifted abruptly to the station’s studios. A newswoman was relaying telephone reports from the neighbourhoods. I was relieved to hear that Bernal Heights, where All Souls is located, and my own small district near Glen Park were shaken up but for the most part undamaged. The broadcaster concluded by warning listeners not to use their phones except in cases of emergency. Ann snorted and said, ‘Do as I say but not...’
Again the broadcast made an abrupt switch-to the station’s traffic helicopter. ‘From where we are,’ the reporter said, ‘it looks as if part of the upper deck of the Oakland side of the Bay Bridge has collapsed on to the bottom deck. Cars are pointing every which way, there may be some in the water. And on the approaches-‘ The transmission broke, then resumed after a number of static-filled seconds. ‘It looks as if the Cypress Structure on the Oakland approach to the bridge has also collapsed. Oh my God, there are cars and people-‘ This time the transmission broke for good.
It was very quiet in the coffee house. We all exchanged looks-fearful, horrified. This was an extremely bad one, if not the catastrophic one they’d been predicting for so long.
Lloyd was the first to speak. He said, ‘I’d better see if I can insulate the urns in some way, keep the coffee hot as long as possible. People’ll need it tonight.’ He went behind the counter, and in a few seconds a couple of the customers followed.
The studio newscast resumed.’...fires burning out of control in the Marina district. We’re receiving reports of collapsed buildings there, with people trapped inside...’
The Marina district. People trapped.
I thought again of the man who had cried out for help over the phone. Of my suspicion, more or less confirmed by today’s conversation, that he lived in the Marina.
Behind the counter Lloyd and the customers were wrapping the urns in dish towels. Here-and in other parts of the city, I was sure-people were already overcoming their shock, gearing up to assist in the relief effort. There was nothing I could do in my present surroundings, but...
I hurried to the back room and groped until I found my purse on the floor beside the desk. As I picked it up, an aftershock hit-nothing like the original trembler, but strong enough to make me grab the chair for support. When it stopped, I went shakily out to my car.
Twenty-fourth Street was slowly coming to life. People bunched on the sidewalks, talking and gesturing. A man emerged from one of the shops, walked to the centre of the street, and surveyed the facade of his building. In the parking lot of nearby Bell Market, employees and customers gathered by the grocery carts. A man in a butcher’s apron looked around, shrugged, and headed for a corner tavern. I got into my MG and took a city map from the side pocket.

The Marina area consists mainly of early twentieth-century stucco homes and apartment buildings built on fill on the shore of the bay-which meant the quake damage there would naturally be bad. The district extends roughly from the Fisherman’s Wharf area to the Presidio-not large, but large enough, considering I had a few clues as to where within its boundaries my man lived. I spread out the map against the steering-wheel and examined it.
The man had said he’d taken a walk that afternoon, to a place two blocks from his home where people were flying kites. That would be the Marina Green near the yacht harbour, famous for the elaborate and often fantastical kites flown there in fine weather. Two blocks placed the man’s home somewhere on the far side of North Point Street.
I had one more clue: in his anger at me he’d let it slip that the Legal Switchboard was ‘down the street’. The switchboard, a federally funded assistance group, was headquartered in one of the piers at Fort Mason, at the east end of the Marina. While several streets in that vicinity ended at Fort Mason, I saw that only two-Beach and North Point-were within two blocks of the Green as well.
Of course, I reminded myself, ‘down the street’ and ‘two blocks’ could have been generalisations or exaggerations. But it was somewhere to start. I set the map aside and turned the key in the ignition.
The trip across the city was hampered by near-gridlock traffic on some streets. All the stoplights were out; there were no police to direct the panicked motorists. Citizens helped out; I saw men in three-piece suits, women in heels and business attire, even a ragged man who looked to be straight out of one of the homeless shelters, all playing traffic cop. Sirens keened, emergency vehicles snaked from lane to lane. The car radio kept reporting further destruction; there was another aftershock, and then another, but I scarcely felt them because I was in motion.
As I inched along a major crosstown arterial, I asked myself why I was doing this foolhardy thing. The man was nothing to me, really-merely a voice on the phone, always self-pitying, and often antagonistic and potentially violent. I ought to be checking on my house and the folks at All Souls; if I wanted to help people, my efforts would have been better spent in my own neighbourhood or Bernal Heights. But instead I was travelling to the most congested and dangerous part of the city in search of a man I’d never laid eyes on.

As I asked the question, I knew the answer. Over the past two weeks the man had told me about his deepest problems. I’d come to know him in spite of his self-protective secretiveness. And he’d become more to me than just the subject of an investigation; I’d begun to care whether he lived or died. Now we had shared a peculiarly intimate moment-that of being together, if only in voice, when the catastrophe that San Franciscans feared the most had struck. He had called for help; I had heard his terror and pain. A connection had been established that could not be broken.
After twenty minutes and little progress, I cut west and took a less-travelled residential street through Japantown and over the crest of Pacific Heights. From the top of the hill I could see and smell the smoke over the Marina; as I crossed the traffic-snarled intersection with Lombard, I could see the flames. I drove another block, then decided to leave the MG and continue on foot.
All around I could see signs of destruction now: a house was twisted at a tortuous angle, its front porch collapsed and crushing a car parked at the curb; on Beach Street an apartment building’s upper storey had slid into the street, clogging it with rubble; three bottom floors of another building were flattened, leaving only the top intact.
I stopped at a corner, breathing hard, nearly choking on the thickening smoke. The smell of gas from broken lines was vaguely nauseating-frightening, too, because of the potential for explosions. To my left the street was cordoned off; fire-department hoses played on the blaze-weakly, because of damaged water mains. People congregated everywhere, staring about with horror-struck eyes; they huddled together, clinging to one another, many were crying. Firefighters and police were telling bystanders to go home before dark fell. ‘You should be looking after your property,’ I heard one say. ‘You can count on going seventy-two hours without water or power.’
‘Longer than that,’ someone said.
‘It’s not safe here,’ the policeman added. ‘Please go home.’
Between sobs, a woman said, ‘What if you’ve got no home to go to any more?’
The cop had no answer for her.
Emotions were flying out of control among the onlookers. It would have been easy to feed into it-to weep, even panic. Instead, I turned my back to the flaming buildings, began walking the other way, towards Fort Mason. If the man’s home was beyond the barricades, there was nothing I could do for him. But if it lay in the other direction, where there was a lighter concentration of rescue workers, then my assistance might save his life.
I forced myself to walk slower, to study the buildings on either side of the street. I had one last clue that could lead me to the man: he’d said he lived in a little cottage between two apartment buildings. The homes in this district were mostly of substantial size; there couldn’t be too many cottages situated in just that way.
Across the street a house slumped over to one side, its roof canted at a forty-five-degree angle; windows from an apartment house had popped out of their frames, and its iron fire escapes were tangled and twisted like a cat’s cradle of yarn. Another home was unrecognisable, merely a heap of rubble. And over there, two four-storey apartment buildings leaned together, forming an arch over a much smaller structure...
I rushed across the street, pushed through a knot of bystanders. The smaller building was a tumble-down mass of white stucco with a smashed red-tile roof and partially flattened iron fence. It had been a Mediterranean-style cottage with grillework over high windows; now the grilles were bent and pushed outwards, the collapsed windows resembled swollen-shut eyes.
The woman standing next to me was cradling a terrified cat under her loose cardigan sweater. I asked her, ‘Did the man who lives in the cottage get out OK?’
She frowned, tightened her grip on the cat as it burrowed deeper. ‘I don’t know who lives there. It’s always kind of deserted-looking.’
A man in front of her said, ‘I’ve seen lights, but never anybody coming or going.’
I moved closer. The cottage was deep in the shadows of the leaning buildings, eerily silent. From above came a groaning sound, and then a piece of wood sheared off the apartment house to the right, crashing on to what remained of the cottage’s roof. I looked up, wondering how long before one or the other of the buildings toppled. Wondering if the man was still alive inside the compacted mass of stucco...
A man in jeans and a sweatshirt came up and stood beside me. His face was smudged and abraded; his clothing was smeared with dirt and what looked to be blood; he held his left elbow gingerly in the palm of his hand. ‘You were asking about Dan?’ he said.
So that was the anonymous caller’s name. ‘Yes. Did he get out OK?’
‘I don’t think he was home. At least, I saw him over at the Green around quarter to five.’
‘He was home. I was talking with him on the phone when the quake hit.’
‘Oh, Jesus.’ The man’s face paled under the smudges. ‘My name’s Mel; I live... lived next door. Are you a friend of Dan’s?’
‘Yes,’ I said, realising it was true.
‘That’s a surprise.’ He stared worriedly up at the place where the two buildings leaned together.
‘Why?’
‘I thought Dan didn’t have any friends left. He’s pushed us away ever since the accident,’
‘Accident?’
‘You must be a new friend, or else you’d know. Dan’s woman was killed on the freeway last spring. A truck crushed her car.’
The word ‘crushed’ seemed to hang in the air between us. I said, ‘I’ve got to try to get him out of there,’ and stepped over the flattened portion of the fence.
Mel said, ‘I’ll go with you.’
I looked sceptically at his injured arm.
‘It’s nothing, really,’ he told me. ‘I was helping an old lady out of my building, and a beam grazed me.’
‘Well-‘ I broke off as a hail of debris came from the building to the left.
Without further conversation, Mel and I crossed the small front yard, skirting fallen bricks, broken glass, and jagged chunks of wallboard. Dusk was coming on fast now; here in the shadows of the leaning buildings it was darker than on the street. I moved toward where the cottage’s front door should have been, but couldn’t locate it. The windows, with their protruding grillework, were impassable.
I said, ‘Is there another entrance?’
‘In the back, off a little service porch.’
I glanced to either side. The narrow passages between the cottage and the adjacent buildings were jammed with debris. I could possibly scale the mound at the right, but I was leery of setting up vibrations that might cause more debris to come tumbling down.
Mel said, ‘You’d better give it up. The way the cottage looks, I doubt he survived.’
But I wasn’t willing to give it up-not yet. There must be a way to at least locate Dan, see if he was alive. But how?
And then I remembered something else from our phone conversations...
I said, ‘I’m going back there.’
‘Let me.’
‘No, stay here. That mound will support my weight, but not yours.’ I moved toward the side of the cottage before Mel could remind me of the risk I was taking.
The mound was over five feet high. I began to climb cautiously, testing every hand and foothold. Twice jagged chunks of stucco cut my fingers; a piece of wood left a line of splinters on the back of my hand. When I neared the top, I heard the roar of a helicopter, its rotors flapping overhead. I froze, afraid that the air currents would precipitate more debris, then scrambled down the other side of the mound into a weed-choked back yard.
As I straightened, automatically brushing dirt from my jeans, my foot slipped on the soft, spongy ground, then sank into a puddle. Probably a water main was broken nearby. The helicopter still hovered overhead; I couldn’t hear a thing above its racket. Nor could I see much: it was even darker back here. I stood still until my eyes adjusted.
The cottage was not so badly damaged at its rear. The steps to the porch had collapsed, and the rear wall leaned inward, but I could make out a door frame opening into blackness inside. I glanced up in irritation at the helicopter, saw it was going away. Waited, and then listened...
And heard what I had been hoping to. The music was now Beethoven-his third symphony, the ‘Eroica’. Its strains were muted, tinny. Music played by an out-of-area FM station, coming from a transistor radio. A transistor whose batteries were functioning long after the electricity had cut out. Whose batteries might have outlived its owner.
I moved quickly to the porch, grasped the iron rail beside the collapsed steps, and pulled myself up. I still could see nothing inside the cottage. The strains of the ‘Eroica’ continued to pour forth, close by now.
Reflexively I reached into my purse for the small flashlight I usually kept there, then remembered it was at home on the kitchen counter-a reminder for me to replace its weak batteries. I swore softly, then started through the doorway, calling out to Dan.
No answer.
‘Dan!’
This time I heard a groan.
I rushed forward into the blackness, following the sound of the music. After a few feet I came up against something solid, banging my shins. I lowered a hand, felt around. It was a wooden beam, wedged crosswise.
‘Dan!’
Another groan. From the floor-perhaps under the beam. I squatted and made a wide sweep with my hands. They encountered a wool-clad arm; I slid my fingers down it until I touched the wrist, felt for the pulse. It was strong, although slightly irregular.
‘Dan,’ I said, leaning closer, ‘it’s Sharon, from the hotline. We’ve got to get you out of here.’
‘Unh. Sharon?’ His voice was groggy, confused. He’d probably been drifting in and out of consciousness since the beam fell on him.
‘Can you move?’ I asked.
‘...Something on my legs.’
‘Do they feel broken?’
‘No, just pinned.’
‘I can’t see much, but I’m going to try to move this beam off you. When I do, roll out from under.’
‘...OK.’
From the position at which the beam was wedged, I could tell it would have to be raised. Balancing on the balls of my feet, I got a good grip on it and shoved upwards with all my strength. It moved about six inches and then slipped from my grasp. Dan grunted.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yeah. Try it again.’
I stood, grasped it, and pulled this time. It yielded a little more, and I heard Dan slide across the floor. ‘I’m clear,’ he said-and just in time because I once more lost my grip. The beam crashed down, setting up a vibration that made plaster fall from the ceiling.
‘We’ve got to get out of here fast,’ I said. ‘Give me your hand.’
He slipped it into mine-long fingered, work roughened. Quickly we went through the door, crossed the porch, jumped to the ground. The radio continued to play forlornly behind us. I glanced briefly at Dan, couldn’t make out much more than a tall, slender build and a thatch of pale hair. His face was turned from me, toward the cottage.
‘Jesus,’ he said in an awed voice.
I tugged urgently at his hand. ‘There’s no telling how long those apartment buildings are going to stand.’
He turned, looked up at them, said, ‘Jesus’ again. I urged him toward the mound of debris.
This time I opted for speed rather than caution-a mistake, because as we neared the top, a cracking noise came from high above. I gave Dan a push, slid after him. A dark, jagged object hurtled down, missing us only by inches. More plasterboard-deadly at that velocity.
For a moment I sat straddle-legged on the ground sucking in my breath, releasing it tremulously, gasping for more air. Then hands pulled me to my feet and dragged me across the yard toward the sidewalk-Mel and Dan.
Night had fallen by now. A fire had broken out in the house across the street. Its red-orange flickering showed me the man I’d just rescued: ordinary-looking, with regular features that were now marred by dirt and a long cut on the forehead, from which blood had trickled and dried. His pale eyes were studying me; suddenly he looked abashed and shoved both hands into his jeans pockets.
After a moment he asked, ‘How did you find me?’
‘I put together some of the things you’d said on the phone. Doesn’t matter now.’
‘Why did you even bother?’
‘Because I care.’
He looked at the ground.
I added, ‘There never was any assault rifle, was there?’
He shook his head.
‘You made it up, so someone would pay attention.”
‘...Yeah.’
I felt anger welling up-irrational, considering the present circumstances, but none the less justified. ‘You didn’t have to frighten the people at the hotline. All you had to do was ask them for help. Or ask friends like Mel. He cares. People do, you know.’
‘Nobody does.’
‘Enough of that! All you have to do is look around to see how much people care about each other. Look at your friend here.’ I gestured at Mel, who was standing a couple of feet away, staring at us. ‘He hurt his arm rescuing an old lady from his apartment building. Look at those people over by the burning house-they’re doing everything they can to help the firefighters. All over the city people are doing things for one another. Goddamn it, I’d never laid eyes on you, but I risked my life anyway!’
Dan was silent for a long moment. Finally he looked up at me. ‘I know you did. What can I do in return?’
‘For me? Nothing. Just pass it on to someone else.’
Dan stared across the street at the flaming building, looked back into the shadows where his cottage lay in ruins. Then he nodded and squared his shoulders. To Mel he said, ‘Let’s go over there, see if there’s anything we can do.’
He put his arm around my shoulders and hugged me briefly, then he and Mel set off at a trot.

The city is recovering now, as it did in 1906, and as it doubtless will when the next big quake hits. Resiliency is what disaster teaches us, I guess-along with the preciousness of life, no matter how disappointing or burdensome it may often seem.
Dan’s recovering, too: he’s only called the hotline twice, once for a referral to a therapist, and once to ask for my home number so he could invite me to dinner. I turned the invitation down because neither of us needs dwell on the trauma of October the seventeenth, and I was fairly sure I heard a measure of relief in his voice when I did so.
I’ll never forget Dan, though-or where I was when. And the strains of Beethoven’s Third Symphony will forever remind me of the day after which things would never be quite the same again.