I didn’t know, not right now. I couldn’t answer. I just knew I wanted to keep going.
It wasn’t until I got onto Interstate 5, heading south, that I realized where I was going. I drove for an hour, dodging heavy traffic and trucks, before pulling over at another stop and calling my sister.
“You busy?” I asked Gwen.
“Just running errands. It’s my day off,” she said. She sounded like she was outside somewhere, maybe heading for her car. “What’s up?”
So I told her, as briefly as I could, that I had been thrown down the stairs last night, and today I’d quit my job, borrowed—stole, sort of—Devon Wilder’s Mercedes, and left town. When she was done shouting at me (“Holy shit, what’s the matter with you? Why didn’t you call me? Are you all right?”) she finally got around to asking me where I was going.
“I just pulled off I-5,” I told her. “I think I’m going to LA. To see Mom.”
There was a moment of quiet. “You haven’t been back to LA since art school,” Gwen said.
“No,” I replied. “I think I owe her a visit.”
“She’ll be happy to see you.”
“I hope so.” I’d always felt so clearly that I’d let my mother down when I failed art school; she’d paid for it out of her own pocket, and I hadn’t even finished. I’d told myself ever since that I felt bad letting Mom down, but now I was starting to see the truth: I’d felt bad letting myself down. And it was time to let it go. “I’ll tell her you said hello.”
“Sure,” Gwen said with dark humor in her voice. “If she asks.”
I bit my lip. Gwen was going to have to work out her own problems with Mom; I had to focus on mine. “I’ll be in touch.”
“Drive safe,” she said. “And don’t talk to strangers.”
After I hung up and got back on the interstate, I made a decision. I pulled off and headed for Highway 1 instead—taking the longer, winding scenic route down to LA, instead of the fastest route straight down the interstate. I’d never seen Salinas or any of the towns along the coast. Maybe now was the time.
I had a beautiful car, a little money, a road ahead of me, and nowhere to be. I should have been blissed out.
There was no reason I should feel so empty.
Twenty-Seven
From the San Francisco News:
Largest Drug Bust in San Francisco History Underway
Police have begun the largest drug bust in San Francisco history, according to Police Chief Mark Sanders in a press conference today.
“This is an extraordinary occurrence,” he said. “We fight the drug war every day, but today we have been given the opportunity to execute a clean sweep.”
He was referring to the unusual way the current round of arrests began. At three o’clock this morning, a boat was spotted by the Coast Guard, drifting in the bay off the shore of Alcatraz. It was a hundred-foot yacht with no lights or crew aboard. When the Coast Guard boarded the boat, they found a massive quantity of heroin, roughly estimated as at least fifty million dollars’ worth, packaged and ready for delivery into the harbor. However, there were no crew aboard the boat and no signs of foul play.
Police Chief Sanders would not verify it, but our sources inside the department state that there was also a typewritten letter aboard the ship, listing who had sold the massive shipment, who had bought it, and named every dealer that was waiting for delivery in order to sell the drugs on the street. “It was an entire map of the heroin business in the Bay area,” the source said, on condition of anonymity. “There were names, relationships of who works for who. Where shipments are stored before being distributed. Where and how the money is kept. Addresses, full names, everything. Basically, someone just handed us the entire industry and gave us the power to shut it down.”
It is not known who wrote the letter, or how it came to be aboard the ship. It also is not known how the ship came to be adrift in the harbor instead of docked for unloading by its intended recipients.
“It’s as if someone left it there for us,” our source told us. “Just adrift in the bay like that. Like a gift.”
Police have called up all available staff, as well as reinforcements, to handle the resulting warrants and arrests. Police Chef Sanders stated today that nearly thirty-five arrests have been executed, as well as over a hundred suspects brought in for questioning. Some of those questioned and arrested were already known to the police, but some were not.
The primary arrest, according to police, is Craig Bastien, a local drug dealer who apparently arranged the shipment. “This man was the instigator of the entire operation,” Chief Sanders said. “It was due to him that this level of heroin was about to hit our streets. He stood to make millions in profit if this ship had docked—millions off of the misery of drug dealing and drug addiction in this city. We have a very strong case to put him away.”
Bastien has been placed in protective custody, he said, due to the high level of risk that another in the prison population could harm or kill him. “He is not popular with the local drug dealers right now,” Chief Sanders said. “Since it was his deal that went sour and caused so many to be arrested, he’s already received threats. These are very bad enemies to have. But we are committed to making sure he stays alive long enough to stand trial.”
Asked how he thought the ship ended up in the harbor, Chief Sanders said, “I have no idea. It almost looks like someone, somewhere, had a conscience.”
Two Days Later, from the San Francisco News: