Waiting by Frank M. Robinson Read Free Book Online

most of the hippies and the rock groups had left the Haight-Ashbury to the students and young singles. There had been a group of them who used to hang out at a coffee shop on Irving near Ninth, and one night they’d decided to form a club. You had to have been there, Artie thought wryly, and most of all you had to have been young and stupid.
    That first night they’d voted for a group initiation and decided on doing something really daring: They’d climb the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. It had been a moonless night, the tower had been wreathed in fog, and at the top the wind had been chill and so strong it would have blown him off if he hadn’t held on for dear life. He’d been scared shitless.
    Mitch Levin had taken one look at the tower and immediately elected himself as lookout. He hadn’t been a very good one. A driver in a passing car had spotted them and called the police. When they finally climbed down, the cops were waiting for them. The story had made the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle and the fine had been a hundred dollars each, a lot of money back then. All of them had framed the clipping—Artie’s was somewhere on a shelf in the bedroom closet—and prevailed on their parents to pay the fines.
    Schuler had been the arresting officer.
    A month later they’d climbed the wall and paid a nocturnal visit to the San Francisco Zoo. The animals hadn’t been happy to see them, and the uproar woke the neighborhood. That time they’d spent the weekend in jail in addition to paying a fine. After that, they scaled down their adventures and became more cautious. Or so Artie had heard. Two weeks after the animal act, he decided to do something positive about his education and joined the army; later, he heard that most of the others had done the same. It had been an education, but not quite the kind he’d been hoping for. He’d been in time for the last year of the war in ’Nam and still had nightmares about the three months spent in a Charlie prison camp before escaping.
    Schuler was looking at him with a bemused smile on his face, probably remembering when they all had been a bunch of hippie kids and he had been the Establishment Pig. Christ, had they ever called him that?
    “I’ve always wondered,” Schuler said. “Why’d you call it the Suicide Club?”
    “It was from a story by Robert Louis Stevenson. We started meeting in a coffee shop and the owner suggested it—I think he might have collected Stevenson. At the time, it seemed appropriate.”
    “I heard later that most of you wound up in Vietnam. Decorated—all of you, right?” There was a note of respect in Schuler’s voice.
    Artie nodded without saying anything. Schuler put down the yellowed forms and shifted gears.
    “Do you know why Dr. Shea was in the Tenderloin?”
    Artie shook his head. “No—he was supposed to meet us at the restaurant. He was the speaker for the night.” Schuler looked curious and Artie explained what the Suicide Club had turned into.
    “Any idea what he was going to talk about?”
    “He’d phoned Susan—my wife—earlier in the afternoon and sounded excited about the meeting, but he didn’t mention the topic.” Schuler looked thoughtful and Artie asked, “Do you have any idea who did it?”
    Schuler surprised him. “We have them in custody right now.”
    Them.
    “I still don’t understand why Dr. Shea was wandering around the Tenderloin. Your club doesn’t have some kind of oddball ritual …” Schuler looked embarrassed for even suggesting it.
    Artie stiffened. “We’re a little old for that, Lieutenant.”
    “My apologies for asking. It’s just that I suspect there are no straight answers to any of this.”
    “You said ybu have somebody in custody?” Artie tried to sound strictly professional. He was a long way from being a kid and he wanted to remind Schuler of that.
    “Do you know where Shea’s wife might have gone?” Schuler suddenly asked. “She was scheduled to come in