The Most Dangerous Animal of All Read online

  Van ordered an exotic German beer on tap and watched as the bartender tried to stem the head. He handed William a cigar. Unwrapping it carefully, William noted its Cuban insignia. “I’m going to enjoy this one,” he said. Van often brought him cigars and other gifts from Mexico.

  Van smiled, lighting his own. “This is the life, huh?” he said in German. Usually he and William were the only two in the bar who could speak German, and they liked the feeling of superiority they experienced from speaking the language there.

  “Yes, it is,” William said. “Did you find anything of value on your last trip?”

  “A few things. Some seventeenth-century letters that might be of interest,” Van replied, omitting the fact that he had created them in his bedroom. William was a private investigator, a moral man. He wouldn’t understand.

  “When are you going back?” William asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe next month. I’m getting bored around here. I need some excitement,” Van said.

  And then my father met Judy Chandler.

  11

  Van waited impatiently behind a tree at the edge of Golden Gate Park, his eyes trained on Hugo Street. Judy lived about six houses down on Seventh Avenue, where the road dead-ended, and from his vantage point at the top of the hill, Van could see when she came outside. He hoped her mother wouldn’t follow her. Judy had told Verda about their relationship, and her mother had been doing everything she could to keep her daughter from seeing him. Judy liked the excitement of sneaking around and met Van whenever she could, mostly for hamburgers after school or an occasional movie.

  He watched as the front door opened and his girlfriend walked outside. Judy liked it when he called her his girlfriend. It made her feel grown up. When he saw the suitcase in her hand, he let out the breath he had been holding. He hadn’t been sure she would go through with it. He wanted to run down and help her carry it up the hill, but he couldn’t risk Verda spotting him, so he waited until she reached him.

  “Come on. We’ve got to hurry,” he said, kissing her quickly before grabbing the suitcase from her hand.

  Skirting the edge of the park, the couple half-ran to a nearby street where William had parked his car, waiting to drive them to the airport.

  “Get in,” Van said, throwing her suitcase on the backseat.

  “She looks kind of young, Van. She’s not like the other one, is she?” William asked, referring to Van’s former wife.

  “Oh. No. She’s nineteen,” Van said, lying.

  “I’m so excited,” Judy said, bouncing up and down in her seat, unaware that William was looking at her suspiciously. “I can’t believe we’re really going to do it.”

  They had planned it a few days before. Van had been walking her home when he pulled her behind a tree. “I don’t want you to go home,” he said. “I hate every minute you’re not with me.”

  “Me, too,” said Judy, “but I don’t want to get in trouble.”

  Van wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close. “Kiss me,” he commanded.

  Judy snuggled closer and did as she was told.

  “Run away with me,” Van said. “Let’s get married.”

  Judy pulled away, stunned.

  “Are you serious?” she said.

  “Dead serious. I love you. We should be together, and once we’re married no one can stop us. Will you marry me, Judy?”

  “But when? How?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything. Meet me Friday morning about seven. I’ll be waiting in the park. Pack a suitcase with a pretty dress and as many clothes as you can fit into it. We’re going on an adventure. Are you in?”

  Judy thought about it for a moment and then threw her arms around his neck. “I’m in. I’m in,” she said, laughing. “Oh, my mother is going to be so mad. She doesn’t like you.”

  “Don’t worry about her,” Van said. “I’ll see you Friday?”

  “Yes,” Judy nodded.

  Van had kissed her soundly one more time and then watched as Judy skipped down the hill.

  Early on the morning of January 5, 1962, nervous but even more excited, Judy tucked her favorite dress into a suitcase and headed off for her adventure. She had known Van for only three months, but she was sure he loved her. She wasn’t sure if she loved him, but she enjoyed the feeling of being in his strong arms, of being protected. He was nicer to her than any man had ever been, and the young girl had no doubt she was leaving her family for a better life.

  At the airport, excitement and anticipation fluttered in Judy’s stomach as Van guided her up the steps to the plane. After takeoff, Judy stared in amazement at the fluffy clouds, first above her, then below. She had not flown before and could barely sit still, because she did not want to miss a thing. Van laughed at her antics, enjoying her excitement.

  When they landed in Reno, Nevada, he whisked her off to the church, eager to be joined in holy matrimony to this delightful girl who had brought such beauty and light into his life. When they arrived, Judy excused herself and went into the bathroom to change into her bright pink dress and brush her hair, while Van filled out the marriage certificate and other necessary documents, lying about Judy’s age, as they had planned.

  “How old are you, young lady?” the minister asked.

  “Nineteen,” the fourteen-year-old informed him, just as Van had instructed her.

  The Reverend Edward Fliger did not question her again. She looked old enough, and he had no reason to be suspicious.

  The witnesses Van had hired—Birdie M. Nilsson and A. S. Belford—stood silently as my father and my mother said their vows in St. Paul’s United Methodist Church on January 5, 1962.

  “Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?” the reverend said.

  “I do,” Van said, holding Judy’s hand tightly.

  “Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?”

  “I do,” Judy said, taking a deep breath and smiling up at Van.

  “By the power vested in me by the state of Nevada, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss your bride.”

  Van pulled Judy into his arms.

  With their arms still wrapped around each other, they left the church, anticipation growing as Van hailed a taxi.

  Van and Judy spent that night consummating their marriage—the twenty-seven-year-old man initiating his innocent teen bride in the art of lovemaking.

  They spent the next day in Reno—Judy enjoying her newfound freedom, and Van enjoying Judy—before flying back to San Francisco to face the music. Judy was very relieved when she called her mother to tell her she was married. Verda, for some reason, seemed unusually understanding.

  The couple moved into an apartment on Clay Street, excited about the prospect of sharing their lives together, but on January 9, Judy awoke with severe stomach pains. Unsure what to do, Van called her mother.

  “Call an ambulance,” Verda said furiously, hurriedly jotting down the address of the apartment. As soon as she hung up the phone, Verda dialed the number for the San Francisco Police Department, to file a complaint against the man who had married her underage daughter.

  “You could get into a lot of trouble for being with a minor,” an officer warned Van after Judy was settled into the back of the ambulance. “Her mother has filed a complaint against you.”

  “We’re married,” Van informed him before climbing into the ambulance. “We’ve got to go. Can’t you see she’s sick?”

  The officer let him go.

  While Judy was having her appendix removed, Van moved to 765 Haight Street, hoping Verda wouldn’t be able to find him there. Verda kept a watchful eye on Judy while she was in the hospital, and as soon as her daughter recovered she had her placed in the Youth Guidance Center—a section of the Juvenile Justice Center on Woodside Avenue—hoping to teach her wayward daughter a lesson.
>
  “Mother, you can’t do this. I love him!” Judy wailed when she was given the privilege of a phone call. “He’s my husband.”

  “He is not your husband. He’s a child molester,” her mother countered.

  On Valentine’s Day, Verda had the marriage annulled.

  Van was furious, but Verda had the law on her side.

  Judy was desolate. She curled up in a ball on her bed and cried hysterically, like only heartbroken teenage girls can cry.

  A week later, an unsuspecting Van was arrested for the rape of a female under the age of eighteen.

  He soon posted bail, packed a bag, and took off for Mexico City, determined to make some quick cash. He was successful this time, and when he returned to San Francisco, he snuck into the Youth Guidance Center to visit Judy. She giggled as he told her his plan.

  “I can do it,” she assured him.

  On the evening of April 28, 1962, Judy tied her bedsheets into a makeshift rope, climbed out of her upstairs room, and shimmied down to the ledge below. Van was waiting to catch her when she jumped the remaining few feet. Together the couple fled undetected into the gathering darkness.

  “Where are we going?” Judy asked, once they were settled in Van’s car.

  “To the airport to catch a plane to Chicago,” Van said, taking her hand in his. “My father’s a minister in Indiana. I’m going to ask him to meet us there to marry us.”

  Judy giggled. “My mother is going to be so mad.”

  “We’re not going to worry about that. You’re mine, and I’m not going to let her take you away from me.”

  My mother snuggled closer to the man she was about to marry for the second time.

  When they reached Chicago, Van called his father, but Gertrude had beaten him to the punch, informing Earl on the telephone that Van had been arrested for marrying the fourteen-year-old and warning him that they had run away again.

  “Take her back to her parents,” Earl barked into the phone before Van could say anything.

  “But Father, I need you to marry us. We’re in Chicago.”

  “That is not going to happen. She’s fourteen. Have you lost your mind?” Earl yelled.

  Earl had spent the past twenty years building a reputation and career of which any man could be proud, and he wasn’t about to let his misguided son mess that up because he had taken a fancy to a young girl. As national chaplain of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, Earl was accountable to the government and to the public, and he was acutely aware that Van’s actions could reflect badly on him.

  “Please, Father. I don’t want to live in sin,” Van said, hoping the mention of sin would persuade the reverend.

  “Take her home, Van. Now. Before it’s too late,” Earl urged.

  “That’s not going to happen. I love her, and I’m going to marry her with or without your help,” Van retorted.

  “What happened to you?” Earl said quietly. “You know this is wrong.”

  “I love her. What’s so wrong with that?”

  “She’s fourteen!” Earl yelled. “That’s what’s wrong with it.”

  “As usual, I can count on you,” Van said, knowing the effect his words would have on his father.

  “Take her back,” Earl begged, “before you get into more trouble.”

  “No. I won’t.”

  “Please, son. Nothing good will come of this.”

  Van hung up the phone.

  “Let’s go grab a bite to eat,” Van told Judy. “I know a place,” he said, ushering her out of the airport and into a taxi.

  “What happened?” Judy said when they were on their way.

  Van shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Seeing the tears welling in her eyes, he patted her leg. “It’ll be okay. We’ll figure it out.”

  After they were seated at Gene & Georgetti, one of Chicago’s finest steakhouses, Judy tried again to get Van to tell her what his father had said, but he ignored her.

  “Use this fork for your salad and this one for your entrée,” he said, placing her napkin in her lap. “I’ll order for you. You’ve got to have the beef. There’s only three places in the world where you can get beef of this quality—Chicago, Kansas City, and Kobe, Japan.”

  Throughout dinner, Van was quiet, contemplating his next move.

  “We’re not going back,” he said. “They can’t take you away from me.”

  “Where are we going?” Judy inquired nervously.

  Van smiled.

  “Mexico. We can get married there.”

  12

  Mexico City was everything Van had promised. Judy followed along happily when he dragged her from one market to another, searching for books and documents he could resell, taking in the sights, sounds, and smells of a world that was foreign to her. Van seemed quite at home as he skimmed through stacks of paper and scrolls of writing, seeming to understand the hieroglyphs from the precolonial period of Spanish occupation of the great city on the island in the lake.

  When he wasn’t working, Van took her to visit the Catedral Metropolitana, on the Zócalo, where Judy watched in awe as a boys’ choir raised their heavenly voices in praise, emitting the most beautiful sounds she had ever heard. And when Van brought her to see the Teotihuacán pyramids, constructed around A.D. 300 just north of Mexico City, my mother thought she had never seen anything so amazing.

  “Look at the way they are laid out,” Van said, pointing from one pyramid to the next. “The Aztec people who came later believed that the gods were born here. There’s the Pyramid of the Sun, and look, there’s the Pyramid of the Moon. The Teotihuacáno warriors hunted people, sacrificing them to the gods because they thought the end of the world was coming. They hoped their sacrifices would save them from the earthquakes they feared would kill them all.”

  “What happened to them?” Judy asked.

  “They just disappeared one day. The whole city. No one really knows why.”

  “How do you know this?” Judy asked.

  “I know lots of things,” Van said, smiling.

  The next morning, Van decided it was time to get married.

  “Pack your bags,” he told her. “We’re going to Acapulco. There’s a resort there, the Las Brisas, where they pick you up in pink jeeps and take you around the city. You’ll love it. I know a little church nearby where we can get married.”

  Judy, enjoying the adventure of it all, quickly packed the few items of clothing Van had bought her and was soon ready to go.

  When they got to Acapulco, Van rushed Judy to the church but was disappointed to learn that he could not marry her without parental consent.

  “What do we do now?” Judy asked.

  Undeterred, Van said, “We go on our honeymoon.”

  Because the Las Brisas was fully booked, they had to settle for a high-rise complex nearby on Acapulco Bay. They spent the next few days acting like they were on their honeymoon—sunning on the beach during the day, making love at night.

  On May 11, 1962, a slight shaking stirred Van and Judy from their slumber. It was a little more than the usual early-morning rumble of the city buses, to which they were already accustomed, having lived their lives in San Francisco. As Van reached for his glasses on the nightstand, it happened. A 7.1-magnitude earthquake knocked him off balance. Judy screamed as Van fell onto the floor, and the bed began to move on the rolling tile. Pictures on the walls crashed to the floor. Judy tried to reach Van as the building swayed for what seemed like an eternity but was actually less than a minute.

  When it was over, they walked onto their balcony and surveyed the damage. Some of the balconies above them swayed dangerously, hanging on by only a piece of rebar. Van hurried Judy back into the room, lighting a candle so she could see. While Van went out again to assess the damage, Judy cleaned broken glass from the floor.

  For the next few days, they were forced to stay at the hotel, because the rubble covering the city’s streets made travel impossible. While Van sorte
d through the documents he had bought in Mexico City, Judy sat on the beach, gazing at the beautiful bodies of the bronzed young men surfing and playing volleyball. There was nothing else to do. Van, distracted by the thought of Judy being alone at the beach, watched jealously from a window high above.

  On May 19, an aftershock with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the city. My father decided it was time to return to the States. He needed no more signs from the gods. He and Judy packed their things and boarded a plane, blissfully unaware that the seed of their undoing had been planted in Mexico.

  13

  Shortly after they arrived in Los Angeles, Van became ill and checked into a hospital for treatment. He was diagnosed with infectious hepatitis, a virus that was common in Mexico and frequently spread through the consumption of contaminated food or water.

  “I’ll be okay,” he reassured Judy, who sat by his bedside, refusing to leave.

  “Do you want me to call your parents?” she said, worrying.

  “No. Absolutely not,” he said. “The doctor said I won’t be here long.”

  When Van recovered, they headed back to San Francisco and rented an apartment in a five-story building at 585 Geary Street, on the southern slopes of Nob Hill. The one-bedroom apartment featured a big bay window that overlooked the Hotel California, across the street. A fire escape climbed up all five stories on the front of the building. On either side of the entrance, a circular white light fixture trimmed in black depicted the shape of a cross in the center.