Chapter One1930
Inside an alabaster palace one January afternoon in 1930, a six-year-old girl hiding inside a closed armoire felt truly alone for the first time in her life.
Just seconds earlier, Issy, short for Isabella, had been in that tingly state of anticipation, half-excited, half-fearful, awaiting the moment when the door would be thrown open and she would be found by her sister, Iris.
Issy loved these special Sundays, when she and Iris and Mommy would put on their nicest dresses and go to the White Palace, where Mommy would change into her all-white skirt and stockings and bandeau and play tennis with her best friend, Mrs. von Urban. On those days, Mommy was always beautiful and nervous in a giggly way, and smelled a little different. She would give the girls the whole afternoon off, and while she and Mrs. von Urban had their tennis game, Issy and Iris would have the run of the hotel, which Iris, the older of the two by eighteen months, seemed to know like the back of her hand, yet there was always more to discover—secret stairways, the seven-story spiral slide, hidden turrets, ballrooms that appeared out of nowhere.
Iris with her jet-black curls and Issy with her blond ones did everything together. Issy couldn’t remember a day of her life when she hadn’t been with her older sister, which is why until this moment she’d never felt alone.
But now, suddenly, she did. She was curled up in a ball, arms around her knees, in the bottom quarter of a decorative armoire in a long hallway. It was a clever hiding place, but not her best. Iris should have found her by now. Issy should have been able to hear her sister’s light limping steps, one foot just a little heavier than the other, or her sing-song whisper, “I’m going to find you! I know where you are!” Instead everything was silent. Issy’s legs were starting to stiffen. She didn’t know it, but she’d been in the armoire for almost thirty minutes.
She pushed open one of the doors and, seeing that the hallway was empty, stepped out. The palace no longer felt right. Even the silence sounded different from other silences she’d known.
She made her way back to the hotel lobby and went to their palm tree—the spot they’d designated in case they lost each other. The lobby was bustling as always with men looking smart in their fedoras, bellboys overloaded with suitcases, women in pearls and fur collars—but Iris wasn’t there.
Issy went next to the tennis courts even though she knew her mother wouldn’t be there either. She checked all the courts, with their soft red clay and balls flying through the air and grown-ups running back and forth. There was no Mommy to be found, and Issy felt even more alone.
The little girl returned to the lobby, checked the palm tree again, then decided to go down to the enormous kitchens in the basement. She knew Iris loved the kitchen, its chaotic order, the steaming vats of soup on the stove, the loaves of bread on metal trays sliding in and out of the ovens, and the frenetic brigade that made it all work—chef, sous-chef, and pastry chef; bread bakers and potato peelers; waiters, porters, and dishwashers. Issy saw all of them that day, as well as the egg man delivering his crates, the milkman delivering his jugs, and the hooded man who delivered honey. She didn’t know why, but suddenly she felt a scream welling up inside her.
That’s when she heard the actual scream—a woman’s scream of terror.
For a moment the kitchen froze. Lips and hands stopped moving; no one took a breath. Then the entire staff ran in the direction of the awful sound, overturning carts and knocking plates to the floor, oblivious to their shattering. Issy followed them, dread rising within her.
A crowd had gathered in a low-ceilinged concrete passage near the laundry bins. The air was heavy here, steamy, oppressive. Issy wove her way numbly, without will or thought, past knees and hands; she was so small no one even noticed her. She finally broke through to the front line, where a circle had formed around a pile of soiled sheets and towels on the floor, the effluvium ejected from eight floors of laundry chutes. It smelled carnal, of sweat and other human fluids.
The grown-ups, paralyzed, were staring in horror at that pile of laundry, too frightened to step forward. On top of it lay Iris, like a broken doll, face up, dark curls strewn, one eye open, her bare neck twisted at a terribly wrong angle. My Dy-Dee doll died twice. Once when I snapped her head off … and once under the sun lamp trying to get warm, she melted.
Encircling Iris’s grotesquely bent neck was a laceration, fresh and thin and red and angry.
Chapter Two1944
FRIDAY, MARCH 10
1
When I was a kid—before they took my dad away, in 1931—we used to play ball on a patchy field next to the municipal dump. Home plate was across the road from the three-mile-long Berkeley Pier, where trucks and autos would line up for the ferry to San Francisco. I always looked out for the cars with New York plates, weather-beaten and mud-crusted because they’d been on the road for weeks. These were people who had crossed the country on the Lincoln Highway.
The Lincoln Highway was the first coast-to-coast road in America. It started at the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street in Times Square, New York, and from there intrepid motorists in their Fords and Studebakers would set out on the three-thousand-mile journey to San Francisco, guided by rough maps and by red, white, and blue signposts along the way. The highway—really a series of interconnected country byways—traversed the nation in the shortest possible route, avoiding big cities like Chicago or Denver in favor of smaller towns like Fort Wayne and Cedar Rapids, Omaha and Cheyenne. People had to get out of their cars when they came to streams or river crossings, so they could wade in first to make sure the water wasn’t too deep. They also had to bring camping gear: in the deserts of Wyoming and Utah and Nevada, they’d likely pass more than a night or two without a roof over their heads. My dad used to say that someday he’d take us all on the Lincoln Highway, in the opposite direction, to see New York City and the Statue of Liberty. Never happened.
Before there were any bridges crossing the San Francisco Bay, the Lincoln Highway ended in the reclaimed marshland of the lower East Bay, passing by what must have been some of the unsightliest spots of the entire journey, like industrial Richmond or the swampy lowlands of El Cerrito, where I grew up in a tenement house across the street from a tannery and a slaughterhouse. Soaring San Francisco lay just across the water, but it might as well have been a universe away.
I used to watch the overdressed Easterners get out of their cars to stretch their legs, grimacing at the heavy odor of the cracking plant and the stink of fish. Sometimes they’d point at the shoeless, shirtless brown-skinned little boys casting their poor fishing lines into the water. I could tell they felt like they were in a foreign country. English wasn’t prominent down by the pier. In fact, few white people lived in the East Bay lowlands. Instead there were Italians and Greeks and Portuguese (on their way to being white), Chinese and Japanese, Mexicans and Blacks, all poor, all living in their own separate enclaves, all dreaming dreams of a better life.
Often the Easterners, on discovering that the next ferry wasn’t leaving for a few hours, would get back in their cars, pull out from the ferry line, and tool around a bit. If they headed off toward Oakland, they would probably have seen Miseryville, where, in the wake of the Crash, hundreds of homeless men were living in surplus concrete sewer pipes, one man each to a six-foot section of pipe, subsisting on produce discarded by local vegetable wholesalers boiled into a communal stew, larded with lint or sawdust to make it more filling.
Sometimes I felt like a foreigner too. But not at the pier; it was when I took the Key train that ascended the Berkeley Hills, which I did whenever I could, that I felt like a stranger. The train took people to the white neighborhoods dotted with middle-class homes and small shopping streets, past the university with its famous campanile, climbing up and up until the air smelled of sage and eucalyptus with hints of honey and mint and sweet oleander. High up in the hills, the train came to its terminus at the foot of the splendid, many-winged Claremont Hotel. The Claremont was the largest hotel on the West Coast, and its entire exterior—not only walls and shutters, but tower and gables and even the roof—was painted dazzling white, so that the structure seemed to float cloud-like in the fresh and fragrant air, an alabaster palace in the sky.
The Crash of 1929 hadn’t been an equal opportunity wrecking ball. Like the Spanish flu epidemic only ten years earlier, it hit those on the lower rungs incalculably harder than those at the top. At the bottom, millions went hungry; children scavenged garbage cans for potato peelings, fresh meat trimmings, or other lucky finds to contribute to a family dinner that might otherwise consist of ketchup sandwiches or a single loaf of bread and a can of beans; during rough spells siblings took daily turns eating; countless families were put out on the street, unable to make rent or pay their mortgage; within a few years after the Crash, half of all Black Americans were unemployed. But at the top, it was a different story. While a few gaudy fortunes were lost, for the most part those with a million in the bank before the Crash still had it after.
For them the Depression was a time of lavish spending. Maybe even more lavish than before, if only to distract themselves from the general unpleasantness out on the street—the panhandlers, the homeless, the mass labor protests. In the wake of the worst financial collapse in the nation’s history, the California rich spent like there was no tomorrow. They threw ever more extravagant parties. They dined on Russian caviar and Hungarian goose liver. And they packed into luxurious hotels like the shimmering white Claremont, hobnobbing with Barrymore and Garbo, dancing to Count Basie’s orchestra and Louis Armstrong’s trumpet.
When I was a boy, I wouldn’t have dared set foot in the Claremont Hotel. The first time I went inside I was already a cop—not a detective yet, just a patrolman—called in because some rich kid had walked out on a massive bill. After I found the kid and made him pay up, I became something of a regular. I learned a ton at the Claremont Hotel. I learned how the rich drink their cocktails, how they sit—a rich man on a sofa or armchair always crosses his legs—what they say by way of small talk, how they smoke. I guess for me it was like finishing school.
And now, by complete accident, I happened to be at the Claremont again on the night Walter Wilkinson was murdered twice.
2
The maître d’, Julie, with his affected French condescension—the condescension was real enough, it was the French part that was fake—glided over to my table and asked me quietly if I could “assist” with a “matter” in one of the guest rooms. I knew Julie wouldn’t interrupt a customer in the middle of a drink if it wasn’t important, so I told the young woman I was with I’d be right back and followed him.
Julie handed me off to the Claremont’s night manager—a young sallow-faced guy I didn’t know—who lacked the maître d’s aplomb and instead looked like he was so nervous he was going to throw up.
“It’s Walter Wilkinson,” he whispered to me while we were waiting for an elevator. “Do you know who that is?”
“How could I not know who Wilkinson is?” I asked him back. “What about him?”
The elevator door opened, and the manager put his finger to his lips, meaning he didn’t want to talk in front of Pounds, the elevator operator. Pounds and I said hello.
Everybody knew Wilkinson was in town. An industrialist who’d made a fortune in Midwestern power and light, Wilkinson had come in second to FDR for president in 1940. Some people said he was going to beat him for sure this time. They were dreaming.
“Shots were fired in his room a half hour ago,” whispered the manager as we hurried down a long corridor on the sixth floor. He was so nervous his mouth kept moving even when he wasn’t talking. “He hasn’t answered his door since.”
“Who says shots were fired?” I asked.
“Guests. Three different guests. They heard the shots and called down to the front desk.”
We stopped at room 602, and the manager gave a tentative knock at the door. “Mr. Wilkinson? Are you there, Mr. Wilkinson?”
No one answered. The manager turned to me in despair.
“Open the door,” I said to him.
“I can’t. Mr. Wilkinson left specific instructions not to disturb him under any circumstances. If something’s happened to him, it will be a calamity.”
I took it he wasn’t expressing a political opinion. He meant a calamity for the hotel—or maybe for him personally. “I’ll tell you what’ll be a calamity,” I said. “The man bleeds to death in his room because you’re so solicitous of his privacy. Open the goddamn door.”
The manager nodded, swallowed hard, and used a skeleton key to open the door.
Walter Wilkinson was sitting on the edge of his bed, motionless but unhurt. He was dressed for a formal dinner: black three-piece suit, bowtie, shoes polished to a high shine, hair impeccable, but his face was as white as his cuffs. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man so ashen. He didn’t speak; he didn’t even look at us. I could smell his expensive cologne—Penhaligon’s. The bed he was sitting on was nicely made, and the room showed no signs of disturbance—except for a bullet hole in a wall near a standing lamp.
“Please pardon the intrusion, Mr. Wilkinson,” said the manager abjectly. “The detective ordered me to. Thank heavens you’re all right. We thought you’d been murdered.”
“I have been,” said Wilkinson, his voice deep and low, still without moving.
I introduced myself and asked him what happened.
His reply was to stand up, walk into the bathroom, and start running water in the sink. It sounded like he was splashing it on his face. The manager glanced at me, nervous as ever.
After keeping us waiting a couple of minutes, Wilkinson returned, ready for business and toweling off his cheeks as if we’d simply caught him shaving. He wasn’t ashen anymore; now he looked more like his pictures. A lot of people said he was the handsomest man ever to run for president. He was fifty-nine, over six feet in height, solidly built, with a broad chest, Brylcreemed salt-and-pepper hair, dark eyebrows, and a commanding demeanor.
“It was a Communist,” he said. “A young man. Shabbily dressed. Foreign accent.” Wilkinson shot a furious look at the manager: “How does a ruffian like that get into one of your guest rooms?”
The manager was in agony: “It’s a terrible breach, Mr. Wilkinson. We’re so sorry.”
“He was waiting for me. I came in, shut the door, and started toward the lamp. Before I got there, I felt a gun between my shoulder blades. He told me to stand against the wall. Called me a blood-sucking capitalist—an enemy of the working man—the usual rot.”
“What’d he look like?” I asked.
“I didn’t get a good look at him. It was dark, and he had a flashlight pointed into my eyes. He was shaking. He could barely keep the light trained on me. He may have been drunk.”
“Height—weight—hair color—age—facial features—anything you can remember would help, Mr. Wilkinson.”
“I told you, I couldn’t see him. Because of the flashlight.”
“All right. What happened next?”
“I went to the wall, as he’d told me to. He took a few steps backward until he was at the door. He said I deserved to die and fired right at me. Then he fled. That’s the whole of it.”
“You’re a lucky man, Mr. Wilkinson,” I said.
“There’s no such thing,” he replied. “Men make their own luck.”
I nodded to avoid having to disagree with him. “You mentioned a foreign accent. What kind?”
“If I had to say,” said Wilkinson, “I’d say Russian.”
I turned to the manager: “Put Mr. Wilkinson in a different room. Don’t tell anyone where he is. Not anyone, you hear me?”
“Understood,” said the manager.
I told them I’d station a uniform outside Wilkinson’s new room for the night and have some boys come by first thing in the morning to pull the bullet out of the wall and dust for prints. In the meantime, I would interview staff and the other guests on the floor to see if anyone saw anything.
Which I did, but only after first returning to the bar to tell the woman I’d been having a drink with not to wait for me. I didn’t have to; she was already gone. Next I called Chief Greening to give him a heads-up. He told me to come to his house and brief him when I finished, no matter how late.
3
Three hours later, having learned exactly nothing more, I drove to Chief Greening’s house. The only thing still playing on the radio was the news, and the news was bad. The Japanese had invaded India and were supposedly about to make their move on Australia. The Germans were pounding Anzio. Another battered hospital ship had heaved into the Port of San Francisco, carrying home three hundred boys with blown-off limbs. Meanwhile down in the Tenderloin, shore patrol had tried to arrest a couple of drunk and disorderly marines, which ended up sparking a riot between cops and servicemen that left a dozen injured and twice that many in military jail.
It was almost midnight when I got to Greening’s house on Shasta Road, but the Chief had on his usual double-breasted suit. He was a short, portly, friendly man with a shiny bald head, glasses, and two ballpoints always sticking out of his jacket pocket. He’d had the misfortune of taking over from the legendary August Vollmer, who’d been chief of the Berkeley PD since before I was born. Vollmer practically invented forensic science; he practically invented the lie detector; his methods were copied all over the country, and folks were already calling him “the father of modern policing.” You had to sympathize with Greening; nobody could have filled Vollmer’s shoes. He poured me a cup of coffee and offered me a piece of his wife’s Lazy Daisy cake, which I accepted even though I didn’t feel like eating because I didn’t like the way his house smelled—like cat litter and stale candy. We sat down at his kitchen table, and I gave him a full report.
“A Communist with a Russian accent—obviously a Jew,” said Greening with distaste. “Tell me how a single race can both control the banks and be behind all the Reds? I despise Hitler and everything he stands for, of course, but sometimes one understands the outrage.”
Like a lot of senior officers, both military and police, Greening had been an admirer of German efficiency and had opposed going to war with them. He thought banker Jews were pushing FDR into a war that was none of our business; it was only when Hitler started bombing London that he turned. He didn’t know I was a quarter Jewish myself, which was just as well, given the other strikes against me. My dad was from Mexico, and mom was an Okie from the Dust Bowl, the very bottom of it. I ended up taking my mom’s last name, but that’s a long story.
Copyright © 2023 by Amy Chua
Copyright © 1928, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company. Copyright © 1956 by Robert Frost
Copyright © 1974 by Anne Sexton
