Back at work Monday morning, I sent a text message to Gary Manville, letting him know I was back in town. I worked at my desk until nine-thirty. I had a ten o’clock meeting with a new client in Berkeley and I wanted to give myself plenty of time to get to her office. I had just locked my door, heading for the back entrance and the parking lot, when my cell phone chimed. The text was a response from Gary. It read, “Lunch, 1 p.m., Zacky’s?”
I responded, “See you there,” sent the message and headed for my car. I returned to the office a couple of hours later and spent some time making notes on the meeting, determining how I would proceed with the new client’s investigation. At a quarter to one, I locked my office again and left the building, this time to walk the few blocks to my lunch destination.
The pace of change in Oakland over the past few months was breathtaking. Despite the efforts of preservationists, the old round building on the corner of Twenty-seventh and Broadway that had for years housed Biff’s Coffee Shop was gone. Now the whole block was a construction site, just like the surrounding area. Buildings were going up all over the Valdez Triangle, and there was more construction all along Broadway between downtown and the Oakland hills. Down on the waterfront, the Brooklyn Basin project on the Embarcadero was rapidly rising from what had once been abandoned industrial land.
The pattern of development was retail on the first floor, with apartments on the upper floors. We certainly needed more housing. Places to live were in short supply and rents, both commercial and residential, were skyrocketing. Before moving into my garage apartment, Madison, like many of the students at Cal, had been paying an enormous sum to rent a room in an apartment.
A couple of years ago there had been a huge fire at one of these sites, a building under construction at Twenty-fourth and Valdez. The fire had gutted the partially constructed building, known as the Alta Waverly project, destroyed nearly 200 apartment units and over 30,000 square feet of retail space. Residents of neighboring buildings, some 700 people, had been temporarily displaced. The fire had poured ugly black smoke, full of soot and ash, into the air. It took days to extinguish the hot spots. As far as I knew, it was still under investigation, by local police and fire departments as well as the ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The prevailing opinion was that the fire had been arson. So had several other fires, here in Oakland and over in Emeryville. The fires had hit construction sites, destroying buildings in progress and causing grief not only for developers and investors, but residents of nearby apartment buildings who had to evacuate due to the danger of the fires, many faced with damage to their own buildings.
As far as I knew, investigators had not yet determined who had started the fires, or why. There was a theory, one I’d read many times, that the fires had been set by people who were upset about ongoing gentrification. If that was the case, it was an extreme tactic, one that endangered people and, as far as I could see, was ineffective. I wasn’t convinced that was the reason.
Due to all the construction, I had to take a circuitous route. I walked over to Broadway, where I saw another sign of changing times. A young woman in a business suit, with a short skirt and sensible but stylish shoes, wearing a backpack and a helmet, zipped past me in the bike lane, riding one of the electric scooters that were taking over the city streets.
Zacky’s Tavern was a new addition to the area, located on Twenty-third Street, a block or so from the Oakland YMCA building. It was also just a few blocks from the Manville Security office on Telegraph Avenue. The place had good food, along with lots of beers on tap, many of them brewed locally.
I went inside and looked around, spotting Gary at the bar. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man in his mid-forties, with pale blue eyes in a square face and short blond hair. He was dressed in his usual uniform of gray slacks and a knit shirt, green today. The word uniform suited, since Gary still had what people call military bearing. He’d spent two decades in the Navy, retiring a few years ago to start his own business. We met last fall, when I was looking into the death of Cal Brady, Madison’s father. Cal and Gary had served in the Navy together and when Cal, an alcoholic, had sobered up, Gary had given him a job as a security guard at his new firm. Gary didn’t like me at first, but he’d thawed and now he called on my services from time to time.
Gary waved at me, then spoke to one of the servers as I walked over to join him. The server grabbed a couple of menus and led us to a booth near the back, somewhat secluded. Gary had something on his mind, I guessed, given his phone calls to me while I was in New Orleans.
I was tempted to get a beer to go with my grilled chicken on focaccia. But I had another client meeting later in the afternoon, so I decided against it. Gary opted for non-alcoholic as well. After the server brought us a round of iced tea, he asked where I’d been.
“New Orleans, with my father,” I said. “I stayed a bit longer than I’d planned.”
“It’s a great town,” Gary said. “I spent some of my Navy time in Pensacola, over in the Florida panhandle. Used to head over to the Big Easy on weekends. I love the music. And the food.”
We chatted about New Orleans until the server brought our lunches. After a few bites of my sandwich, I wiped my hands on a napkin and said, “What’s on your mind, Gary?”
He eyed me over his Reuben sandwich, then set it on the plate. “Arson.”
Fire. It seemed to be an ongoing theme, this week and last.
“What happened?”
“Another fire at another construction site,” Gary said. “One that Manville Security was guarding. A couple of my guards were injured and someone died. A homeless guy who’d put up a tent on the back side of the site.”
“I hadn’t heard about that,” I said with a frown.
“No reason you would, you being out of town. There was a lot of news coverage, of course. You can look it up when you get back to the office.” Gary paused and drank some tea. “The building was about halfway done. Four stories, with retail on the bottom, apartments on the other three floors. It was located on San Pablo Avenue near Forty-seventh, in that area near the Oakland–Emeryville border.”
“Which is where some of the other fires have occurred,” I said.
He nodded as he picked up his sandwich again. “Yeah. The fire happened eight days ago, late Sunday night. Fire department got the call around midnight. I had two security guards on the site at the time. One of them was Nathan Dupree. The other was a guy named Cisco Fernandez. Nathan called in the fire around midnight. Then he and Cisco tried to do what they could with the equipment they had. Then they had to let it go. They both wound up with some smoke inhalation and minor burns.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I like Nathan. He’s a good guy.”
“One of my best guards,” Gary said. “They’re both gonna be all right but they’re off work for now. The homeless guy that died, last I heard he hadn’t been identified. There have been a handful of suspicious fires in the past few years. Not the only fires, of course. There’s the Ghost Ship, but that’s in another category altogether.”
Neither of us said anything for a moment. Memories were still raw concerning the Ghost Ship fire in the Fruitvale neighborhood a few years back. That conflagration broke out during a concert in a warehouse that had been illegally converted to a live-work artists’ collective. Thirty-six people died at the Ghost Ship. It was Oakland’s deadliest fire ever.
The construction site fires Gary was talking about were troubling as well, especially now that they had claimed a life. All of them were arson, deliberately set. All of them had occurred in Oakland and Emeryville. The Alta Waverly project on Valdez, near my office. And before that, two fires in Emeryville, at the same location. That project, with 105 apartments and 21,000 square feet of retail space, had burned in midsummer and again ten months later. In one of the Emeryville fires, I recalled seeing grainy video footage of a man in a hoodie climbing over a fence.
All of these fires had been at partly constructed buildings, and at a time when construction was most vulnerable. Studs, joists and rafters—all wood—piled the sites, and fire protections, such as flame-resistant Sheetrock and sprinkler systems, were not yet installed. Empty stairwells became chimneys, funneling the hungry flames.
I brought up the theory that the fires were being set by people who were opposed to gentrification. “I’m not sure I buy into that one,” I told Gary. “At least not all the way. It seems like such a drastic thing to do. Besides, there’s also the theory that someone is benefiting financially from the fires.”
“I could believe the gentrification thing, but not sure about the financial benefits,” Gary argued. “This latest fire, for example. Bay Oak Development is the outfit that was bankrolling this project that just burned. They are upset, big time. Millions of dollars up in flames.”
“Insurance,” I countered. “Who gets the payout from the insurance company, and how much?”
“Early days on insurance. The fire was just last week and it’s under investigation. I’ll bet they don’t see a penny for a long time.”
I went into devil’s advocate mode, taking the other side of the question. “On the other hand, I know a lot of people don’t like all the changes happening in Oakland, on the waterfront and along the Broadway corridor. It’s changing the character of the city. A lot of what’s being constructed is housing, but it’s not affordable housing. It’s market rate. People who can afford an apartment in an older building aren’t going to be able to rent a place is one of these new buildings. So yes, there’s a lot of resentment. And we do have a lot of people in this area who I’d say are capable of torching a building because of gentrification.”
Gary sighed as he finished off his sandwich. “Whether it’s anti-gentrification radicals or guys out for insurance money, what I will say is that it feels methodical. I think there’s a plan, some sort of agenda. It’s sure as hell making people jumpy. Raising construction costs, making investors think twice about putting their money into developments. I hate to say it, but it’s been good for my business. Developers are increasing their spending on security. They’re outfitting construction sites with video cameras, fencing, alarms, lots of lighting and security guards, round the clock. But none of that helps if I’ve got two guards off the job because they’ve been injured in a fire.”
“And the man who died.”
“Believe me,” he said, his expression grim, “I’m not forgetting that.”
I had finished half my sandwich and decided to take the other half with me. I wiped my hands with a napkin and looked at Gary. “So why am I here?”
“I want you to take a look at the situation,” he said.
“Surely the fire department and the cops are all over this one. And I’m sure they have information they aren’t sharing with us civilians.”
“I want another pair of eyes. And I want you to come to a meeting with me.”
“What meeting is that?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper, a printout of an article from the San Francisco Chronicle. The headline read reward targets east bay construction-site arsons. I read through the article. A group of developers and local business people had joined forces, announcing a reward leading to the conviction of the person responsible for the fires.
“This group is having a meeting on Wednesday. With a task force that includes law enforcement from Oakland and Emeryville. I’d like you to come with me. Another pair of eyes, another set of ears.”
I wasn’t yet convinced that I could offer anything to the investigation that was already going on, but it might be worth attending the meeting. I pulled my phone from my bag. “Wednesday, where? And what time? I have another meeting that day, at one.”
“This one’s at three o’clock,” Gary said. “It’s in a conference room at Bay Oak Development. They’re located in that office building at Broadway and Grand.”
He rattled off the street address as I put the information on my calendar. “My one o’clock is in North Berkeley so if I’m a bit late, don’t worry, I’ll be there.”
“Thanks. I really appreciate it. And to show my appreciation, I buy lunch.”
I grinned at him. “Thanks, I’ll let you.”