Best known for her detective Sharon McCone, MARCIA MULLER’s sixteenth novel with the San Francisco sleuth, A Wild and Lonely Place, was published in August 1995. Besides writing mysteries, Muller is also an accomplished Western storyteller. A winner of the Anthony and American Mystery awards, Muller was also awarded the Life Achievement award by the Private Eye Writers of America. She was born in Detroit and received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Michigan.
Marcia Muller
I’m leaning against my mailbox and the sun’s shining on my face and my pigeons are coming round. Storage box number 27368. The mail carrier’s already been here—new one, because he didn’t know my name and kind of shied away from me like I smell bad. Which I probably do. I’ll have him trained soon, though, and he’ll say “Hi, Gracie” and pass the time of day and maybe bring me something to eat. Just the way the merchants in this block do. It’s been four years now, and I’ve got them all trained. Box 27368—it’s gotten to be like home.
Home …
Nope, I can’t think about that. Not anymore.
Funny how the neighborhood’s changed since I started taking up space on this corner with my cart and my pigeons, on my blanket on good days, on plastic in the rain. Used to be the folks who lived in this part of San Francisco was Mexicans and the Irish ran the bars and used-furniture stores. Now you see a lot of Chinese or whatever, and there’re all these new restaurants and coffeehouses. Pretty fancy stuff. But that’s okay; they draw a nice class of people, and the waiters bring me the leftovers. And my pigeons are still the same—good company. They’re sort of like family.
Family …
No, I can’t think about that anymore.
I’ve been watching the homeless woman they call Gracie for two years now, ever since I left my husband and moved into the studio over the Lucky Shamrock and started to write my novel. She shows up every morning promptly at nine and sits next to the mail-storage box and holds court with the pigeons. People in the neighborhood bring her food, and she always shares it with the birds. You’d expect them to flock all over her, but instead they hang back respectfully, each waiting its turn. It’s as if Gracie and they speak the same language, although I’ve never heard her say a word to them.
How to describe her without relying on the obvious stereotypes of homeless persons? Not that she isn’t stereotypical: She’s ragged and she smells bad and her gray-brown hair is long and tangled. But in spite of the wrinkles and roughness of her skin, she seems ageless, and on days like this when she smiles and turns her face up to the sun she has a strange kind of beauty. Beauty disrupted by what I take to be flashes of pain. Not physical, but psychic pain—the reason, perhaps, that she took up residence on the cracked sidewalk of the Mission District.
I wish I knew more about her.
All I know are these few things: She’s somewhere in her late thirties, a few years older than I. She told the corner grocer that. She has what she calls a “hidey-hole” where she goes to sleep at night—someplace safe, she told the mailman, where she won’t be disturbed. She guards her shopping cart full of plastic bags very carefully; she’d kill anyone who touched it, she warned my landlord. She’s been coming here nearly four years and hasn’t missed a single day; Deirdre, the bartender at the Lucky Shamrock, has kept track. She was born in Oroville, up in the foothills of the Sierras; she mentioned that to my neighbor when she saw him wearing a sweatshirt saying OROVILLE—BEST LITTLE CITY BY A DAM SITE.
And that’s it.
Maybe there’s a way to find out more about her. Amateur detective work. Call it research, if I feel a need to justify it. Gracie might make a good character for a story. Anyway, it would be something to fool around with while I watch the mailbox and listen for the phone, hoping somebody’s going to buy my damn novel. Something to keep my mind off this endless cycle of hope and rejection. Something to keep my mind off my regrets.
Yes, maybe I’ll try to find out more about Gracie.
Today I’m studying on the cracks in the sidewalk. They’re pretty complicated, running this way and that, and on the surface they look dark and empty. But if you got down real close and put your eye to them there’s no telling what you might see. In a way the cracks’re like people. Or music.
Music …
Nope, that’s something else I can’t think about.
Seems the list of what I can’t think on is getting longer and longer. Bits of the past tug at me, and then I’ve got to push them away. Like soft summer nights when it finally cools and the lawn sprinklers twirl on the grass. Like the sleepy eyes of a little boy when you tuck him into bed. Like the feel of a guitar in your hands.
My hands.
My little boy.
Soft summer nights up in Oroville.
No.
Forget the cracks, Gracie. There’s that woman again—the one with the curly red hair and green eyes that’re always watching. Watching you. Talking about you to the folks in the stores and the restaurants. Wonder what she wants?
Not my cart—it better not be my cart. My gold’s in there.
My gold …
No. That’s at the top of the list.
By now I’ve spoken with everybody in the neighborhood who’s had any contact with Gracie, and only added a few details to what I already know. She hasn’t been back to Oroville for over ten years, and she never will go back; somebody there did a “terrible thing” to her. When she told that to my neighbor, she became extremely agitated and made him a little afraid. He thought she might be about to tip over into a violent psychotic episode, but the next time he saw her she was as gentle as ever. Frankly, I think he’s making too much of her rage. He ought to see the heap of glass I had to sweep off my kitchenette floor yesterday when yet another publisher returned my manuscript.
Gracie’s also quite familiar with the Los Angeles area—she demonstrated that in several random remarks she made to Deirdre. She told at least three people that she came to San Francisco because the climate is mild and she knew she’d have to live on the street. She sings to the pigeons sometimes, very low, and stops right away when she realizes somebody’s listening. My landlord’s heard her a dozen times or more, and he says she’s got a good voice. Oh, yes—she doesn’t drink or do drugs. She told one of the waiters at Gino’s that she has to keep her mind clear so she can control it—whatever that means.
Not much to go on. I wish I could get a full name for her; I’m not even sure Gracie is her name. God, I’m glad to have this little project to keep me occupied! Disappointments pile on disappointments lately, and sometimes I feel as if I were trapped in one of those cracks in the sidewalk that obviously fascinate Gracie. As if I’m being squeezed tighter and tighter …
Enough of that. I think I’ll go to the library and see if they have that book on finding people that I heard about. Technically, Gracie isn’t lost, but her identity’s missing. Maybe the book would give me an idea of how to go about locating it.
Not feeling so good today, I don’t know why, and that red-haired woman’s snooping around again. Who the hell is she? A fan?
Yeah, sure. A fan of old Gracie. Old Gracie, who smells bad and has got the look of a loser written all over her.
House of cards, he used to say. It can all collapse at any minute, and then how’ll you feel about your sacrifices? Sacrifices. The way he said it, it sounded like a filthy word. But I never gave up anything that mattered. Well, one thing, one person—but I didn’t know I was giving him up at the time.
No, no, no!
The past’s tugging at me more and more, and I don’t seem able to push it away so easy. Control, Gracie. But I’m not feeling good, and I think it’s gonna rain. Another night in my hidey-hole with the rain beating down, trying not to remember the good times. The high times. The times when—
No.
What a joke my life is. Three thanks-but-no-thanks letters from agents I’d hoped would represent me, and I can’t even get the Gracie project off the ground. The book I checked out of the library was about as helpful—as my father used to say—as tits on a billygoat. Not that it wasn’t informative and thorough. Gracie’s just not a good subject for that kind of investigation.
I tried using the data sheet in the appendix. Space at the top for name: Gracie. Also known as: ? Last known address: Oroville, California—but that was more than ten years ago. Last known phone number: ? Automobiles owned, police record, birth date, Social Security number, real estate owned, driver’s license number, profession, children, relatives, spouse: all blank. Height: five feet six, give or take. Weight: too damn thin. Present location: divides time between postal storage box 27368 and hidey-hole, location unknown.
Some detective, me.
Give it up, Cecily. Give it up and get on with your life. Take yourself downtown to the temp agency and sign on for a three-month job before your cash all flows out. Better yet, get yourself a real, permanent job and give up your stupid dreams. They aren’t going to happen.
But they might. Wasn’t I always one of the lucky ones? Besides, they tell you that all it takes is one editor who likes your work. They tell you all it takes is keeping at it. A page a day, and in a year you’ll have a novel. One more submission, and soon you’ll see your name on a book jacket. And there’s always the next manuscript. This Gracie would make one hell of a character, might even make the basis for a good novel. If only I could find out …
The cart. Bet there’s something in that damned cart that she guards so carefully. Tomorrow I think I’ll try to befriend Gracie.
Feeling real bad today, even my pigeons sense it and leave me alone. That red-haired woman’s been sneaking around. This morning she brought me a bagel slathered in cream cheese just the way I like them. I left the bagel for the pigeons, fed the cream cheese to a stray cat. I know a bribe when I see one.
Bribes. There were plenty: a new car if you’re a good girl. A new house, too, if you cooperate. And there was the biggest bribe of all, the one they never came through with.…
No.
Funny, things keep misting over today, and I’m not even crying. Haven’t cried for years. No, this reminds me more of the smoky neon haze and the flashing lights. The sea of faces that I couldn’t pick a single individual out of. Smoky sea of faces, but it didn’t matter. The one I wanted to see wasn’t there.
Bribes, yeah. Lies, really. We’ll make sure everything’s worked out. Trust us. It’s taking longer than we thought. He’s making it difficult. Be patient. And by the way, we’re not too sure about this new material.
Bribes …
The wall between me and the things on my list of what not to remember is crumbling. Where’s my control? That wall’s my last defense.…
Deirdre’s worried about Gracie. She’s looking worse than usual and has been refusing food. She fed the bagel I brought her to the pigeons, even though Del at Gino’s said bagels with cream cheese are one of her favorite things. Deirdre thinks we should do something—but what?
Notify her family? Not possible. Take her to a hospital? She’s not likely to have health insurance. I suppose there’s always a free clinic, but would she agree to go? I doubt it. There’s no doubt she’s shutting out the world, though. She barely acknowledges anyone.
I think I’ll follow her to her hidey-hole tonight. We ought to know where it is, in case she gets seriously ill. Besides, maybe there’s a clue to who she is secreted there.
The pigeons’ve deserted me, guess they know I’m not really with them anymore. I’m mostly back there in the smoky neon past and the memories’re really pulling hard now. The unsuspecting look on my little boy’s face and the regret in my heart when I tucked him in, knowing it was the last time. The rage on his father’s face when I said I was leaving. The lean times that weren’t really so lean because I sure wasn’t living like I am today. The high times that didn’t last. The painful times when I realized they weren’t going to keep their promises.
It’ll be all right. We’ll arrange everything.
But it wasn’t all right and nothing got arranged. It’ll never be all right again.
Gracie’s hidey-hole is an abandoned trash Dumpster behind a condemned building on 18th Street. I had quite a time finding it. The woman acts like a criminal who’s afraid she’s being tailed, and it took three nights of ducking into doorways and hiding behind parked cars to follow her there. I watched through a hole in the fence while she unloaded the plastic bags from her cart to the Dumpster, then climbed in after them. The clang when she pulled the lid down was deafening, and I can imagine how noisy it is in there when it rains, like it’s starting to right now. Anyway, Gracie’s home for the night.
Tomorrow morning after she leaves I’m going to investigate that Dumpster.
Rain thundering down hard, loud and echoing like applause. It’s the only applause old Gracie’s likely to hear anymore.
Old Gracie, that’s how I think of myself. And I’m only thirty-nine, barely middle-aged. But I crammed a lot into those last seventeen years, and life catches up with some of us faster than others. I don’t know as I’d have the nerve to look in a mirror anymore. What I’d see might scare me.
That red-haired woman was following me for a couple of nights—after my gold, for sure—but today I didn’t see her. How she knows about the gold, I don’t know. I never told anybody, but that must be it, it’s all I’ve got of value. I’m gonna have to watch out for her, but keeping on guard is one hell of a job when you’re feeling like I do.
It must be the rain. If only this rain’d stop, I’d feel better.
Checking out that Dumpster was about the most disgusting piece of work I’ve done in years. It smelled horrible, and the stench is still with me—in my hair and on my clothing. The bottom half is covered with construction debris like two-by-fours and Sheetrock, and on top of it Gracie’s made a nest of unbelievably filthy bedding. At first I thought there wasn’t anything of hers there and, frankly, I wasn’t too enthusiastic about searching thoroughly. But then, in a space between some planking beneath the wad of bedding, I found a cardboard gift box—heart-shaped and printed with roses that had faded almost to white. Inside it were some pictures of a little boy.
He was a chubby little blond, all dressed up to have his photo taken, and on the back of each somebody had written his name—Michael Joseph—and the date. In one he wore a party hat and had his hand stuck in a birthday cake, and on its back was the date—March 8, 1975—and his age—two years.
Gracie’s little boy? Probably. Why else would she have saved his pictures and the lock of hair in the blue envelope that was the only other thing in the box?
So now I have a lead. A woman named Gracie (if that’s her real name) had a son named Michael Joseph on March 8, 1973, perhaps in Oroville. Is that enough information to justify a trip up to Butte County to check the birth records? A trip in my car, which by all rights shouldn’t make it to the San Francisco county line?
Well, why not? I collected yet another rejection letter yesterday. I need to get away from here.
I could tell right away when I got back tonight—somebody’s been in my hidey-hole. Nothing looked different, but I could smell whoever it was, the way one animal can smell another.
I guess that’s what it all boils down to in the end: We’re not much different from the animals.
I’ll stay here tonight because it’s raining again and I’m weary from the walk and unloading my cart. But tomorrow I’m out of here. Can’t stay where it isn’t safe. Can’t sleep in a place somebody’s defiled.
Well, they didn’t find anything. Everything I own was in my cart. Everything except the box with the pictures of Mikey. They disappeared a few years ago, right about the time I moved in here. Must’ve fallen out of the cart, or else somebody took them. Doesn’t matter, though; I remember him as clear as if I’d tucked him in for the last time only yesterday. Remember his father, too, cursing me as I went out the door, telling me I’d never see my son again.
I never did.
I remember all the promises, too; my lawyer and my manager were going to work it all out so I could have Mikey with me. But his father made it difficult and then things went downhill and then there was the drug bust and all the publicity—
Why am I letting the past suck me in? All those years I had such good control. No more drink, no more drugs, just pure, strong control. A dozen years on the street, first down south, then up here, and I always kept my mind on the present and its tiny details. My pigeons, the people passing by, the cracks in the sidewalk …
It’s like I’ve tumbled into one of those cracks. I’m falling and I don’t know what’ll happen next.
Here I am in Oroville, in a cheap motel not far from the Butte County Courthouse. By all rights I shouldn’t have made it this far. The car tried to die three times—once while I was trying to navigate the freeway maze at Sacramento—but I arrived before the vital statistics department closed. And now I know who Gracie is!
Michael Joseph Venema was born on March 8, 1973, to Michael William and Grace Ann Venema in Butte Hospital. The father was thirty-five at the time, the mother only sixteen. Venema’s not a common name here; the current directory lists only one—initial M—on Lark Lane. I’ve already located it on the map, and I’m going there tomorrow morning. It’s a Saturday, so somebody’s bound to be at home. I’ll just show up and maybe the element of surprise will help me pry loose the story of my neighborhood bag lady.
God, I’m good at this! Maybe I should scrap my literary ambitions and become an investigative reporter.
I miss my Dumpster. Was noisy when it rained, that’s true, but at least it was dry. The only shelter I could find tonight was this doorway behind Gino’s, and I had to wait for them to close up before I crawled into it, so I got plenty wet. My blankets’re soaked, but the plastic has to go over my cart to protect my things. How much longer till morning?
Well, how would I know? Haven’t had a watch for years. I pawned it early on, that was when I was still sleeping in hotel rooms, thinking things would turn around for me. Then I was sleeping in my car and had to sell everything else, one by one. And then it was a really cheap hotel, and I turned some tricks to keep the money coming, but when a pimp tried to move in on me, I knew it was time to get my act together and leave town. So I came here and made do. In all the years I’ve lived on the street in different parts of this city, I’ve never turned another trick and I’ve never panhandled. For a while before I started feeling so bad I picked up little jobs, working just for food. But lately I’ve had to rely on other people’s kindnesses.
It hurts to be so dependent.
There’s another gust of wind, blowing the rain at me. It’s raining like a son of a bitch tonight. It better let up in the morning.
I miss my Dumpster. I miss …
No. I’ve still got some control left. Not much, but a shred.
Now I know Gracie’s story, and I’m so distracted that I got on the wrong freeway coming back through Sacramento. There’s a possibility I may be able to reunite her with her son Mike—plus I’ve got my novel, all of it, and it’s going to be terrific! I wouldn’t be surprised if it changed my life.
I went to Mike’s house this morning—a little prefab on a couple of acres in the country south of town. He was there, as were his wife and baby son. At first he didn’t believe his mother was alive, then he didn’t want to talk about her. But when I told him Gracie’s circumstances he opened up and agreed to tell me what he knew. And he knew practically everything, because his father finally told him the truth when he was dying last year.
Gracie was a singer. One of those bluesy-pop kind like Linda Ronstadt, whom you can’t categorize as either country or Top 40. She got her start singing at their church and received some encouragement from a friend’s uncle who was a sound engineer at an L.A. recording studio. At sixteen she’d married Mike’s father—who was nearly twenty years her senior—and they’d never been very happy. So on the strength of that slim encouragement, she left him and their son and went to L.A. to try to break into the business.
And she did, under the name Grace Ventura. The interesting thing is, I remember her first hit, “Smoky Neon Haze,” very clearly. It was romantic and tragic, and I was just at the age when tragedy is an appealing concept rather than a harsh reality.
Anyway, Mike’s father was very bitter about Gracie deserting them—the way my husband was when I told him I was leaving to become a writer. After Gracie’s first album did well and her second earned her a gold record, she decided she wanted custody of Mike, but there was no way his father would give him up. Her lawyer initiated a custody suit, but while that was going on Gracie’s third album flopped. Gracie started drinking and doing drugs and couldn’t come up with the material for a fourth album; then she was busted for possession of cocaine, and Mike’s father used that against her to gain permanent custody. And then the record company dropped her. She tried to make a comeback for a couple of years, then finally disappeared. She had no money; she’d signed a contract that gave most of her earnings to the record label, and what they didn’t take, her manager and lawyer did. No wonder she ended up on the streets.
I’m not sure how Mike feels about being reunited with his mother; he was very noncommittal. He has his own life now, and his printing business is just getting off the ground. But he did say he’d try to help her, and that’s the message I’m to deliver to Gracie when I get back to the city.
I hope it works out. For Gracie’s sake, of course, and also because it would make a perfect upbeat ending to my novel.
It’s dry and warm here in the storage room. Deirdre found me crouched behind the garbage cans in the alley a while ago and brought me inside. Gave me some blankets she borrowed from one of the folks upstairs. They’re the first clean things I’ve had next to my skin in years.
Tomorrow she wants to take me to the free clinic. I won’t go, but I’m grateful for the offer.
Warm and dry and dark in here. I keep drifting—out of the present, into the past, back and forth. No control now. In spite of the dark I can see the lights—bright colors, made hazy by the smoke. Just like in that first song … what was it called? Don’t remember. Doesn’t matter.
It was a good one, though. Top of the charts. Didn’t even surprise me. I always thought I was one of the lucky ones.
I can see the faces, too. Seems like acres of them, looking up at me while I’m blinded by the lights. Listen to the applause! For me. And that didn’t surprise me, either. I always knew it would happen. But where was that? When?
Can’t remember. Doesn’t matter.
Was only one face that ever mattered. Little boy. Who was he?
Michael Joseph. Mikey.
Funny, for years I’ve fought the memories. Pushed them away when they tugged, kept my mind on the here and now. Then I fell into the crack in the sidewalk, and it damn near swallowed me up. Now the memories’re fading, except for one. Michael Joseph. Mikey.
That’s a good one. I’ll hold on to it.
Gracie died last night in the storeroom at the Lucky Shamrock. Deirdre brought her in there to keep her out of the rain, and when she looked in on her after closing, she was dead. The coroner’s people said it was pneumonia; she’d probably been walking around with it for a long time, and the soaking finished her.
I cried when Deirdre told me. I haven’t cried in years, and there I was, sobbing over a woman whose full name I didn’t even know until two days ago.
I wonder why she wasn’t in her hidey-hole. Was it because she realized I violated it and didn’t feel safe anymore? God, I hope not! But how could she have known?
I wish I could’ve told her about her son, that he said he’d help her. But maybe it’s for the best, after all. Gracie might have wanted more than Mike was willing to give her—emotionally, I mean. Besides, she must’ve been quite unbalanced toward the end.
I guess it’s for the best, but I still wish I could’ve told her.
This morning Deirdre and I decided we’d better go through the stuff in her cart, in case there was anything salvageable that Mike might want. Some of the plastic bags were filled with ragged clothing, others with faded and crumbling clippings that chronicled the brief career of Grace Ventura. There was a Bible, some spangled stage costumes, a few paperbacks, a bundle of letters about the custody suit, a set of keys to a Mercedes, and other mementos that were in such bad shape we couldn’t tell what they’d been. But at the very bottom of the cart, wrapped in rags and more plastic bags, was the gold record awarded to her for her second album, “Soft Summer Nights.”
On one hand, not much to say for a life that once held such promise. On the other hand, it says it all.
It gives me pause. Makes me wonder about my own life. Is all of this worth it? I really don’t know. But I’m not giving up—not now, when I’ve got Gracie’s story to tell. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if it changed my life.
After all, aren’t I one of the lucky ones?
Aren’t I?