There's Nothing to Be Afraid Of (14 page)

Similar black thoughts pressed down on me as I made my way along the wet sidewalk. The rain had started in earnest now, and I passed bums sheltering themselves in doorways or, in a couple of cases, under the benches that had been part of the Market Street beautification project. What few pedestrians there were hurried along, umbrellas or rain-hats tilted against the downpour. Trolley buses and taxis sped by in the curb lane, tossing up waves of water. When I got to the old office building that housed the Refugee Assistance Center I rushed into the lobby, pulling off my floppy red hat and brushing at my suede jacket, which now resembled part of an old spotted cow.

A security guard at the lobby desk took my name and called upstairs, then motioned at the bank of elevators. Relieved that Carolyn was still in her office, I rode to the third floor and followed the corridor to its end. The reception room of the Center was cheerful—each wall painted a different bright color and covered with posters—and children’s toys were scattered on an oval rug. I’d been here before during business hours and had watched the refugee children crawling around, happily at play while their parents conferred with the Center’s social workers on such life-and-death matters as food, shelter, and medical care.

Carolyn’s voice called out to me from one of the doors off the reception area, and I went over there. She sat at her desk, feet propped on a pulled-out drawer, delicate oval face drawn and weary. “I’d about given up on you,” she said.

I took off my jacket and hung it over a chair to dry. “I hope you didn’t stay here on my account,” I said. “If you hadn’t been in your office, I would have called you at home.”

“No, like I said on the phone earlier, I had work to catch up on anyway.”

I looked at my watch and was surprised to see it was almost nine. And then I remembered the note I’d left for Hank. “Good Lord! May I use your phone?

She pushed it across the desk to me.

Quickly I dialed All Souls. Someone whose voice I didn’t recognize answered and went away to fetch Hank. When he came on the line, he sounded as unconcerned as if I’d been off on a Sunday School picnic.

“I just wanted to tell you I was okay,” I said.

“Huh?”

“I’m okay. You don’t have to notify the sheriff.”

“About what?”

“I left you a note—”

“What note?”

“You didn’t get it? I slipped it under your office door around four-thirty.”

“Oh. I wasn’t in the office then, and I haven’t gone back there since.”

Even though I knew it was unreasonable, I felt little hurt and neglected. “Where the hell were you?”

“The Remedy Lounge.” It was Hank’s favorite sleazy bar.

“Great. I could have been getting killed because you were guzzling Scotch with a bunch of barflies.”

“I don’t guzzle.” Hank was used to my small but dramatic fits of pique; he didn’t sound alarmed, much less offended by my aspersions upon his watering hole. “Who was going to kill you?”

“No one. Never mind. I’ll check with you tomorrow.” I replaced the received and glanced at Carolyn, expecting at least a quizzical look. She was staring off into space, apparently not having heard a word of my conversation.

“Bad day?” I said gently.

She rolled her eyes and put her fingertips to her forehead. “Bad is not the word. I was closeted with our board for hours. Do you know anything about nonprofit organizations?”

“Well, I guess I work for one, since All Souls seldom makes a profit. But, no, not in the formal sense.”

“Their boards can be ineffectual and nit-picking, to say the least. Often the members are appointed because they’re the only ones willing to serve. Ours is particularly bad; those people know nothing of the real world, and they can’t comprehend what we’re up against.”

Realizing she needed to talk it out, I said, “You’re trying to cope with some pretty bad problems, aren’t you?”

“The problems are enormous. We’ve had an influx of thousands of people in this city that will affect us for decades to come. How we deal with it now determines how positive or negative their impact will be. They are people who have no assets, who don’t know the language, who don’t understand the way we live. They have to be fed, housed, and eventually acculturated. The one thing we have going for us is that they’re ambitious and willing to learn. They
want
to make a way for themselves. But that’s about all we’ve got going.”

“I guess the language barrier is the biggest problem?”

“It’s one of the biggest. With the educated refugees, it’s merely a matter of getting them into intensive classes; in a short time they’re ready to resume their former professions, run a business, or acquire some technical training. But then you have the other—the Hmong, for instance.”

“Who?”

“The Hmong. They’re a primitive Laotian tribe. ‘Free People,’ the name means. They’re great fighters; fought fiercely against the Communists. The U.S. Government allowed fifty-eight thousand of them to emigrate in 1978, in recognition of their anti-Communist activities. Fortunately for me, most of them have been resettled in rural communities—there are twelve thousand of them in Fresno County alone. But you know what? The Hmong don’t even have a written language.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not. It’s difficult enough to teach English to educated Asians. But can you imagine how it is when you can’t even start from such a simple basis as
writing
?”

“No, truthfully, I can’t.”

Carolyn sat up, facing me, gesturing in short, clipped motions. In spite of her obvious weariness, I sense she was tightly wound. “So there’s a language barrier,” she went on. “Then you’ve got housing. Where do you
put
these people? They have no money; we don’t have much either; rents in San Francisco are high. Where you put them is in the Tenderloin. If you’re lucky, the building is as nice as the Globe Hotel. But you’re not always lucky. I
hate
having to locate my people in the Tenderloin. It’s like throwing a baby into the lions’ den.”

I thought of the Globe Hotel. By Tenderloin standards, it
was
nice. People there—the Caucasians like Sallie Hyde and Mary Zemanek—genuinely cared for the refugees. But the rest of the Tenderloin was not like that; it was full of people who preyed on the culturally innocent Vietnamese, people like Otis Knox . . .

Carolyn seemed to have sensed what I was thinking, because she said, “It’s not just the drug pushers or the pimps. You’ve also got the lunatics—”

“Like Brother Harry, the street preacher.”

“Yes, like Brother Harry. He’s acting out what psychologists call ‘grandiose behavior.’ He thinks he has instructions from God to save souls, and he does it in bizarre ways, such as random preaching to crowds.”

Involuntarily, I thought of Jesus Christ.
He
had preached randomly to crowds, and you certainly couldn’t say those loaves and fishes weren’t bizarre.

“So far,” Carolyn said, “Harry’s behavior has merely been strange, not dangerous. But there’s always the chance it will take a turn for the worse. And there are plenty of others like him. That man in the military uniform who marches up and down the sidewalk, saluting and giving orders. The old lady with the umbrella that’s just spokes. Have you seen her? She keeps it open, rain or shine. And then there’s the man with the chisel who chips the mosaics off the façade of the Taj Mahal Bar on Turk Street. He chips them off, the owner eventually replaces then, and the he chips them off again.”

She paused, a little calmer for saying her piece. “The newspapers are always writing features about those people. They call them ‘colorful characters.’ They sure are—but what happens when they cease to be merely colorful and become dangerous?”

“What indeed?” I said. “There’s not a great deal that
can
be done.” The police code 800 signifies “insanity in the streets,” and summons officers to the scene of such incidents. However, unless a person appears to be an immediate threat to himself or others, he cannot be detained. If he
does
seem dangerous, he can be held for observation for only seventy-two hours; most persons are released at the end of the period with only a referral to a mental health center. And few make use of the referral.

“Carolyn,” I said after a moment, “do you consider Brother Harry dangerous?”

‘He’s a hater. But dangerous? I don’t know.”

“What about Jimmy Milligan?”

“Who?”

“He’s a bearded man who recites poetry. Sort of elfin in appearance.”

“Oh, him. I’ve seen him around the Globe. Mary Zemanek gives him odd jobs occasionally. Why don’t you ask her?”

I had, and Mary had seemed to think highly of Jimmy. “What about the others who live at the Globe?”

“I can only speak for the people we’ve placed there, and they’re all good citizens—or, I should say, would-be citizens. Of course, there
is
the fat woman.”

“Who?”

“That flower seller who brought you up to the Vangs’ apartment the other day. Sallie Hyde.”

“What about her?”

“She’s a murderess.”

“What!”

Carolyn held up a cautioning hand. “Well, it happened a long time ago. I only know of it because her former parole officer is on our board. But Sallie Hyde spent seven years in prison for killing a child she was babysitting. You’d have to ask the parole officer—she’s retired now—for particulars.”

It gave me pause, and also a sense of sadness, because I liked Sallie Hyde. Still, murderers sometimes
did
repeat their crimes, if the killings grew out of some deep-rooted inner disturbance. “What’s the parole officer’s name?”

Carolyn opened her address book and read of the woman’s name and number. Then she looked at her watch. “I’m starved. Have you eaten?”

“No,” I said, realizing I’d had nothing all day but the beer with Otis Knox. Originally I’d felt too choked up because of the murder to eat; now I was famished.

“Good,” Carolyn said. “Let’s walk over to Lan’s Garden. It’s a good restaurant and I can guarantee the Vangs will provide us with a feast. Also, you’ll have a captive audience for any questions you might want to ask.”

Lan’s Garden was small, with about ten tables constructed of a natural blond wood. A single carnation in a chunky glass vase sat on each table, and the walls were covered with grass mats. Airline posters tacked at regular intervals depicted scenes of Southeast Asia.

Lan Vang stood behind the cash-register counter next to the door, adding up a stack of guest checks. Although she looked tired, she wore a royal blue dress that complemented her pale complexion in a way that made me realize how pretty she was. When she saw Carolyn and me, her expression brightened and she ushered us to a table with great ceremony. Then she went through the swinging doors at the back of the restaurant, clapping her hands together and calling out in Vietnamese.

Although it was late, there were several parties at other tables, all of them Orientals. I said to Carolyn, “This looks like a popular place.”

“When you taste the food, you’ll know why.”

“How long have the Vangs been in business?”

“About three years. When they came to this country, they got started by going out and getting jobs—all of them except the little ones, full-time, part-time, anything anybody would let them do. Then when they had a little capital, they borrowed from their friends, in the Asian way, with no interest and no payback date. The restaurant is now turning a profit, and most of those loans have been repaid.”

Lan returned with a pot of tea, two cups, and menus. When she had gone back to the kitchen, Carolyn continued, “Of course, the Vangs have been lucky. This is a good location, on a well-lighted corner, and the landlord doesn’t seem interested in raising the rent. That’s been a problem for many businesses here—their success hampers them.”

“How so?”

“Normally Tenderloin commercial space is considered so undesirable that it doesn’t even rent by the square foot. Our people are able to get their business places cheap—for instance, the Vangs pay only three hundred and seventy-five dollars a month for this restaurant. But then they fix the places up and start turning a profit, and the landlords realize their property is worth something after all. So they either raise the rent or evict the tenants who did the fixing up, in order to rent to someone who can afford to pay a great deal more.”

“Aren’t there laws against that?”

“You’re thinking of rent control; that doesn’t apply to commercial property.”

“Well, can’t something be done about it?”

Again Carolyn looked weary. “In a small way. One of our sister organizations, the Center for Southeast Asian Resettlement, has brought a fourteen-thousand-square-foot building on O’Farrell Street as its headquarters, as well as for medical services, community space, and refugee shops. That will keep rents stable for the few businesses they can accommodate. It’s a drop in the bucket, but I’m hoping someday we’ll be able to do something similar, and then maybe other groups will follow suit. Until then . . .”

One of the Vang daughters—Susan—came up to the table, order pad in hand. I reached for the menu, but Carolyn waved my hand. “Let me order.” She spoke rapidly in Vietnamese, and Susan smiled and scribbled on the pad. As she was about to go back to the kitchen, I said, “Susan, is Dolly here tonight?”

“No. She has a test in her class tomorrow and went home early to study.”

I thought of the other ‘test’ Dolly had taken recently. “What is she studying?”

“Shorthand, at the business college. She wishes to become a secretary.”

Obviously Dolly was keeping her real ambitions to herself. “What about Duc? Is he working tonight?”

“No, not Duc either. The sadness over his friend’s death is still very much with him, and our father decided he should have some time to himself.”

I nodded, and Susan left for the kitchen.

“Why are you so interested in Dolly and Duc?” Carolyn asked.

“Duc is an interesting person. We had a good talk earlier today, and I’d like to continue it.”

“And Dolly?”

Briefly I debated telling Carolyn about Otis Knox, but then decided against it. She had had a bad day, and I didn’t want to burden her further. “Same reason.”