Trick of Light Read online

  Trick of Light

  Kay Farrow 02

  by

  D a v i d H u n t

  Part One

  The Camera

  1

  I'm standing by the seawall just inside the entrance to San Francisco Bay, near the old Fort Point Coast Guard station, long since relegated to other use.

  It's past midnight. The sea fog clings to the water like black smoke. There's little wind. No breakers splash against the wall. Bells ring gently on the buoys, and foghorns moan from ships entering the Bay. My friend Joel Glickman stands beside me. We listen to the mournful symphony, just the two of us alone, waiting for something to happen... we know not what.

  I'm wearing a black sweatshirt, black jeans, black high-top sneakers, and have two black Contax cameras strung around my neck. Joel too is dressed dark, head to foot. We're here on a tip he received by phone this afternoon from an anonymous source who spoke swiftly, then hung up. This informant, Joel tells me, had a thick Chinese accent. Joel didn't recognize his voice and thinks the accent was phony.

  "Like he was doing an imitation of one of those just-off-the-boat Chinese waiters," Joel says. "But he spoke clearly so I'd be sure to get the message." Joel offers an imitation of the imitation: "'Wait tonigh' Presidio near ol' Coas' Guar' station. Sometin' velly interestin' gonna happen down there.'"

  "Which means he knows you're working on a series about crime on the waterfront."

  "Not uncommon knowledge," Joel says.

  "Which means this could be a set-up."

  "Yeah, I suppose." He shrugs. "I doubt it though."

  Well, thanks, Joel, I think. Thanks for inviting me to the ambush.

  Joel titters. "Not scared, are you, kiddo?"

  "Me?" I ask with mock surprise.

  Joel gives me a brotherly pat on the shoulder. He's fifteen years older than me, nine inches taller. "No, not you. You're an Amazon warrior. No one messes with Kay Farrow if he knows what's good for him. Mess with her you're likely to get a kick in the butt." He smiles at me. "That is what you do in aikido class, isn't it?"

  "Sure, Joel — we just kick ass."

  Which, of course, is not at all what we do in aikido class, but such banter is typical of the way we've been carrying on this evening, waiting here in the open air with nothing better to do than practice ironic ripostes. Joel's a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for the alternative weekly Bay Area News. I'm a former News colleague turned fine-art photographer. Whenever he needs pictures he gives me a call, and because I enjoy his company, I usually tag along.

  "It's always the same on stakeouts," he says.

  "What's that?"

  "The way you stand and wiggle your toes. Or sit on your ass till some part of you gets tingly and falls asleep. You munch potato chips or chew gum and make tough-guy/tough-girl talk with your partner. You bitch and moan and glance at your watch. Most times nothing happens. When something does, you usually miss it since you've fallen off to sleep.

  "A real dog's life."

  "You got it, kiddo."

  He's fifty-one, gray-haired, gray-bearded, wears granny glasses and is thin as a rail. A former hippie who came out here for the Summer of Love in 1967, he's become a famous Bay Area personality by virtue of a string of news exclusives sniffed out by a prying instinct not to be denied.

  Lightly he touches my arm. "Something coming in."

  I gaze across the water. The Golden Gate Bridge looms above; not much traffic on it at one a.m. this warm April night. But from this angle its architecture, the powerful arrangement of its girders and cables, moves me. It was here that Hitchcock shot the scene in Vertigo in which Kim Novak jumps into the Bay.

  The fog has thinned. I hear water lapping against the seawall, then the low-pitched moan of a powerful foghorn, so low and deep its vibrations resound within my ears. The fog parts a little more; then something massive blocks my view of the north tower of the bridge. I make out lights, then the prow of an enormous ship.

  "Supertanker," Joel says. "Down from Alaska. You know how dangerous it is to come in here in heavy night fog?"

  I have no idea, wait for him to explain as I watch the huge ship slip silently into the Bay.

  "I've been talking to the bar pilots. Great guys. They meet the big ships twelve miles out, climb on board, take control. They know these waters cold. Often on a long sea voyage the greatest peril's in the last hundred yards. A full tanker like that — if it hits a shoal the ecology of the Bay could be ruined. Look at that thing: ten stories high, two football fields long, forty million tons of crude in her hold. Boat like that, she goes a mile before you can bring her to a stop. She's not what we're waiting for though. Tankers come in here all the time." Joel glances at his watch. "Must be something else, like somebody's going to dump something illegally, commit an environmental crime."

  "What about that?" I point to a small boat trailing the supertanker.

  Joel stares at the vessel, dwarfed to insignificance by the tanker, which is heading toward the oil wharfs of Richmond. The small boat is turning. It looks like a fishing boat, and now it's heading straight for us.

  "Look!"

  Joel points to a man swinging a lantern from the end of the abandoned Coast Guard pier a hundred yards to our right.

  "This is it. Haul ass, kiddo," he says, trotting toward the beach.

  I race to keep up with him. The fishing boat's rapidly closing in.

  "I don't think we're being too smart," I tell him when I catch up.

  He nods. "If they're smuggling we're going to be toast."

  He pulls me down behind one of the pilings that support the rotting pier where it crosses the beach. My nostrils fill with the rich aroma of seaweed, mollusks, wet black sand.

  "Of course they're smuggling, Joel. Let's get out of here."

  But Joel wants to stay. He's waited half the night for this; moreover, his tip is proving out.

  "Sure, go," he says. "Just leave me a camera, okay?"

  Better two pieces of toast than one, I think.

  We crouch down, then watch as the fishing boat swoops in. A man jumps onto the pier while another on board throws him a line. Within a minute they have the vessel secure.

  "Came in right behind the tanker so she wouldn't be spotted. Pretty smart," Joel whispers.

  We can hear the men talking. They're speaking Chinese. I pick up a few words and their sense of urgency: Move fast, do what we've come to do, get out quick.

  We watch as a stream of human beings, men, women and children, emerge from the hold, line up on deck, then, prodded by the crew, leap to the pier.

  "It's not drugs they're smuggling, it's people," Joel says, "probably from Fujian province. That's where most Chinese illegals come from these days."

  I watch amazed as the stream of human cargo continues to emerge, twenty... thirty... forty Chinese souls... and still they keep coming. I can' t imagine how so many people could have been packed into so small a boat. Sixty... seventy... the stream continues — old men with wispy beards, young mothers with mewing infants in their arms, boys and girls with identical bowl-style haircuts — clinging to one another in what I assume are familial groups.

  "I count over a hundred," Joel whispers. "Must've been packed in like sardines."

  Lots of shouting now. The crew members are impatient. People hesitant to jump are prodded till they do. Old women are pushed. Two young girls are dragged out of the hold, heaved toward the outstretched arms of relatives already on the pier.

  As the last illegals jump and the crew prepares to cast off, the man who swung the lantern leads the horde toward us on the beach. Just then a ragtag armada of vehicles appears out of the fog — jalopies, pickups, campers and panel trucks, even an old hearse from one of the traditional funeral par
lors in Chinatown.

  "This is incredible! Gotta get pictures!" Joel says.

  He's right, this is a great scene. But what's going to happen when I stand up and start firing off my strobe? Will this army of illegals smash my camera? Beat me up? A lot of hopes and dreams are at stake tonight. After a cruel voyage these people have arrived at the promised land, huddled masses yearning to breathe free. So who am I to stand up and take their pictures at the illegal golden door?

  Daring myself to take the risk, I rise and start to shoot.

  Perhaps my size makes me appear nonthreatening; I'm all of five two, 114 pounds. Whatever the cause, the illegals grin at me as they pass; some even wave. They wear identical dark cheap-fabric tracksuits with racing stripes down the legs. Their vessel has already disappeared into the fog. It will sneak back out to open sea as stealthily as it snuck in. Meantime, drivers of the vehicles are ordering them aboard for the final leg to town.

  I lose track of Joel as I follow the illegals to the cars. Then I spot him talking to one of the drivers. The young man looks frightened. Joel, intent on his story, won't let him go. I don't blame him. It's a terrific story. I've heard of illegals landing from small boats on beaches south of the city, but never anything so bold, so organized or on such a scale as this — a vessel, with over a hundred aboard, actually swooping into San Francisco Bay, landing at a U.S. government-owned pier, met by a convoy that will transport its passengers to Chinatown, where they will merge into the clogged streets and disappear.

  Suddenly — a whine in the air, a sound of meshing gears! A helicopter appears out of the gloom. It drops from the sky, hovers just above us, rotor wings whirling, beating aside the mist. A powerful searchlight shines down, creating a column of swirling dust. The light cuts through the fog, harshly probing, prying, pinning us where we stand.

  I no longer need my strobe. The brilliant raw cone of light creates fantastic highlights and shadows on the ground.

  A disembodied voice issues from the craft.

  "ATTENTION! THIS IS THE UNITED STATES COAST GUARD. YOU ARE UNDER ARREST! LIE FACEDOWN ON THE GROUND, LEGS SPREAD, ARMS APART. REPEAT: YOU ARE UNDER ARREST!"

  But the illegals don't comprehend. Terrified, they scurry, seeking escape from the storm of sound and light.

  I switch on my motor-drive, fire off my camera as they scatter. Whap! whap! whap! whap! whap! I want to catch their confusion and panic as they attempt to flee this new tyranny bearing down upon them from the sky.

  At the sound of sirens, the drivers desert their vehicles, join the illegals in the frenzied attempts at flight. Whap! whap! whap! My motor-drive hums. Caught up in the hysteria, I fire away, picking out figures in mid-flight, freezing them against the nightscape. I'm excited, know I'm getting great stuff. I shoot by instinct, and when the roll is finished, bring up my spare camera and continue firing with that.

  Joel's at my side. "Go for it, kiddo!"

  Oh, I go for it! Swept up, feeling the rush, I strive to merge with the action. Finally, both my cameras out of film, I pause briefly to reload.

  Sirens scream! Brakes squeal! Patrol cars screech in! Uniformed people leap out. Suddenly the area's crawling with cops, customs officers, assorted Feds and Coast Guard personnel, rushing to cut off escape.

  But there's no way they can contain this multitude of desperate illegals, now widely scattered across the terrain. Only young mothers and the elderly remain riveted to the beach, eyes enlarged by terror. The rest are scrambling over fences, then dashing off in different directions, defying the shrill whistles and shouted commands.

  Joel and I surrender to a freckle-faced MP. Though he totes a submachine gun, he's as frightened as any refugee. He takes us to his commander, who sniffs disdainfully at our press credentials. Then Joel is recognized by a senior immigration official, a man he interviewed just a week ago.

  "How'd you hear about this?" the official demands.

  "Tip," Joel says, "Same as you, right?"

  The man grins. Plump, middle-aged, sporting a buzz cut and brush mustache, he wears a vinyl jacket with I.N.S. stenciled in block letters on the back.

  Since we're accredited, can't be held or expelled, he beckons us aside for an impromptu briefing.

  "It's like this," Buzz Cut says. "These human cargo smugglers get cockier by the week, but this is the first time they've dared enter the Bay. Next thing you know, they'll be landing illegals at high noon on Fisherman's Wharf."

  He gestures toward the women and elders being marched to a police van.

  "Look at 'em! Those folks are going back to China to spread the word getting here isn't enough. Doesn't matter what the smugglers promise you, you don't get a free ride just for scrambling up the beach. We catch you, we ship you back — that's the message tonight."

  The meanness of the guy turns me off. I let him preen, take his picture, then wander off to cover the roundup.

  Night's my time, when my vision's at its best. Being a complete achromat means I lack cone function in my eyes, and am thus completely color-blind. But for me color-blindness is more of an aesthetic issue than a problem. The other symptoms of achromatopsia — poor visual acuity and photophobia — are serious. Like most achromats, I don't see well, and can be snow-blinded when bright light saturates the rods in my eyes. During daylight hours I try to control this problem with extremely dark red wraparound shades. At night my rod function, which is normal, takes over, and then, perhaps because of my keen hearing and sensitivity in matters of sight, I see better than most vision-normals.

  The illegals, routed and with no knowledge of the terrain, have been drawn to the wooded hills of the Presidio where pines and brush offer natural shelter. I follow their pursuers, purposeful men and women wielding radios and high-beam lanterns, as they try to cut off a quarry that has nothing to lose but its dreams.

  I want to use my camera to capture the awful thrill of this manhunt, this game of stalkers and prey. The odds are skewed so sorely in favor of the trackers that I find my neutrality bent as well. It's the illegals I root for, not my fellow salt-of-the-earth Americans; after all, I saw the dreams dancing in their eyes.

  I pick out one law enforcer, a strapping blond cop in his twenties, six feet two, purposeful eyes, scowl of determination on his face. I follow him. It takes him a while to notice me.

  "Hey, who're you?" he demands, as we pant together up a bluff toward the woods.

  "New photographer. Mind if I tag along?"

  He looks me over. "Just doin' my job, ma'am. Don't mess with me, I won't mess with you."

  Fair enough.

  He turns back to the chase. He and his fellow hunters have the advantage; they're organized, know the Presidio well, while the illegals don't know it at all.

  I catch sight of a pair of male refugees in the woods, poised, trying to decide which way to run. My blond companion spots them too, pins them with his flashlight, pulls out his side arm, charges forward ordering them to halt.

  They stare at him, baffled. Suddenly all the pep goes out of them. Whap! whap! whap! I strive to catch the moment — the gloating triumph of the cop, the cornered looks on the illegals, grimaces of defeat. I document the cuffing and then the prodding as their captor marches them back down to the beach. I haven't the heart to follow them.

  Standing there on the bluff, looking around for something else to shoot, I hear a moan. Turning, I notice movement in a nearby clump of bushes. Moving closer to investigate, I come upon another cowering figure, this one a young Chinese woman who looks to be no older than seventeen.

  Her hair's bowl-cut, she's wearing the same dark cheap fabric tracksuit as the others, but there's something distinctive about her — her oversize almond-shaped eyes. They're much larger than normal Asian eyes, and since she's weeping, they shadow her face with a particular pathos.

  In an instant my heart goes out to her. Rather than photograph her and risk revealing her position with my strobe, I kneel beside her to try to give her comfort.

  She speaks barely
ten words of English: "please," "thanks you," "yes," "no," "me," "you" and the one that strikes at me most poignantly, "mercy."

  "Please mercy please," she moans.

  No way I can resist an entreaty like that. I take her face in my hands, wipe away her tears, gently stroke her hair, tell her she'll be all right, then pull out my wallet, extract a twenty-dollar bill and press it into her hand.

  She gazes at me, querying expression on her face. I pull of my black sweatshirt and indicate to her that she should put it on. After she does I point the way to the nearest exit from the Presidio. She nods to show me she understands.

  "Go," I tell her. "Go on! Scoot!"

  She takes several steps, then turns, meeting my eyes once again.

  "Thanks you," she whispers.

  "Yes, yes. Now go!" I Implore her, gesturing for her to run. She smiles, then dashes off into the woods.

  God, I hope you make it!

  * * * * *

  Back on the beach I find Joel still interviewing his friend from I.N.S.

  "Okay, we got a tip," Buzz Cut admits. "So we went to level-A alert and watched our radars. Soon as that boat turned up, we had her in view. Once she unloaded, we flew in.

  "What's happening with the boat?"

  "Coast Guard's tracking her. When she connects with the mother ship, they'll seize them both."

  "Tell me something," Joel says. "You do a pretty good Chinese accent, right?"

  Buzz Cut cups his ear.

  "It was you called me, wasn't it, passed the tip?"

  Buzz Cut smirks. "Still don't get it, do you, Joel? We don't like the press."

  To show our appreciation, we hang around till just before dawn, watching the illegals as they're brought in, made to squat on the ground, hands cuffed behind their backs with plastic strips. Under the harsh lamps of the squad cars, they appear a forlorn bunch.

  "Aren't you cold?" Joel asks. "What happened to your sweatshirt?"

  I tell him I gave it to a refugee.

  "That's beautiful," he says. "I wish I could do stuff like that. Unfortunately I have this block about getting involved. You know, 'stay out of the story; — the hard-ass journalist's code."