The Faculty Gang

By Thomas Turman

Who could have guessed that lonely Meyer Island would be at the center of racist greed, murder, and revenge? The Faculty Gang is the ecological thriller recounting the troubles that arise when the US Navy tries to rid itself of Meyer Island, a former ammunition storage facility in the Sacramento River Delta on the eastern edge of San Francisco Bay.

Meyer Island, a remnant of WWII, is now a natural bird sanctuary often shrouded in fog, muting the ghost ship–haunted memory of what went on there in the forties. It has healed itself with natural grasses and welcomed back birds, where a symphony of birdcalls often freezes visitors to listen.

An agency set up by the government must select the private proposal that will best use the land. This brings into deadly conflict the plan of a group of vicious businessmen who wish to exploit the island and the proposal of the local university’s faculty for a more benign use of the land.

Romance, racial tension, humor, revenge, murder, and ultimate satisfaction dance together in this timely eco-mystery tango.


“This well-timed novel is like Silent Spring, as if written by Rachel Carson, James Lee Burke, and George Carlin with help from Erica Jong.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796029277

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 by Thomas Turman.

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-7960-2929-1

                Softcover        978-1-7960-2928-4

                eBook              978-1-7960-2927-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 04/19/2019

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1    The Faculty Gang

Chapter 2    Trees Die At Night

Chapter 3    Gunpowder Tea

Chapter 4    First Data

Chapter 5    Assembly At The Faculty Gang

Chapter 6    Tea And Sympathy

Chapter 7    Death And Love

Chapter 8    An Offer That Can’t Be Refused

Chapter 9    Ship To Shore

Chapter 10    Sleeping With The Ants

Chapter 11    Tenement Square

Chapter 12    It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over

THE FACULTY GANG

Who could have guessed that lonely Meyer Island would be at the center of racist greed, murder, and revenge? THE FACULTY GANG is the ecological thriller recounting the troubles, which arise when the US Navy tries to rid itself of Meyer Island, a former ammunitions storage facility in the Sacramento River Delta on the eastern edge of the San Francisco Bay.

Meyer Island, now a soft-looking natural bird sanctuary often shrouded in fog, silencing the ghost ship–haunted memory of what went on there in the ’40s. The island is a veteran of WWII. It has healed itself with swaying natural grasses and welcomed-back birds where a symphony of birdcalls often pleasantly freezes visitors to listen in the waving gentle ocean of sea grass.

After requests for proposals, the agency set up by the government must select the proposal that will best use the land. This brings into deadly conflict the plan of a group of vicious businessmen who wish to exploit the island and the local university faculty’s naïve proposal for a more benign use of the land. Romance, racial tension, humor, revenge, murder, and ultimate satisfaction dance together in this timely Eco-mystery.

This well-timed novel is Silent Spring, as written by Rachel Carson, James Lee Burke, and George Carlin with help from Erica Jong.

To my wife

Beebo, daughters Brenna and Laurel and editor Kristin Baldwin.

CHAPTER 1

THE FACULTY GANG

I N THE GROVE of trees on the island side of one of the two-hundred-yard-long bridges to Meyer Island, explosive charges tied to the base of the three tallest trees in that grove detonate. Wood splinters shower out in all directions and splash into the nearby water, separating the San Francisco Bay island and the mainland. Two of the trees fall backward into the island’s marsh, landing with an almost humanlike thump. Dark flashes of night birds flap up into the darkness over the fog just now creeping in over Meyer. The third tree falls sidewise and crashes onto the dirt road with the top just across the northernmost entrance/exit of the bridge.

A mile up the mainland highway, on a slight hill overlooking Meyer Island, Ti Dong smiles at his morning’s work. He exchanges smug looks with his passenger, Win Sung LI, and wrenches his tricked-out Honda Civic back on to the roadway and heads back toward Berkeley.

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Later, Ti’s black Honda with its expensive wheels and tinted windows purrs slowly up along the curvy streets past the smaller houses of the lower Berkeley hills. HONDA is lettered in white along the panels below the doors as if everyone, including the driver, needs reminding what kind of car he is driving.

Ti’s tight grip on the steering wheel shows he’s quietly anxious. Win, in the passenger seat, with his hand on the door handle, can’t wait to deliver his uncle’s warning message to his ivory-tower professor. Both young men, with their Americanized names, are dressed in black.

Ti and Win are invisible through the darkened windows of the Civic, and they’re taking their time checking the street addresses as the engine exhaust burbles softly out of the large chrome exhaust tip. The car coasts to a stop near a fenced-in front yard with the proper numbers displayed in bronze. The engine grumbles impatiently for a few minutes. The street is dead quiet except for the idling engine.

It is Tuesday morning, the first of March, and the sun is just splintering through the trees along the top of the hills separating the San Francisco Bay Area from the flat central valley.

The early morning fog, which has crept across the bay in the night, lies trapped in the cool air, billowing and burrowing into the trees just below the crest of the sunlit hills. As it struggles up against the hills in the faint glow of the sunrise, the fog hovers just above the street as if the soft gray sea’s breath is being held up by the dark, wet leaves. The pungent smell of dew-wet foliage and grass burdens the air.

Finally, Win gets out and stands scrutinizing the recently renovated residence. Typical American architect’s house, he thinks to himself. It sticks out from all the rest on the street. It’s a typical ’50s Berkeley stucco one-story two-bedroom house, but the paint job and the remodeled entry shout out, Designer lives here. Win crosses the sidewalk, silently unlatches the front gate in the five-foot-high wood fence, and creeps up the entry path and steps where he forces his uncle’s expensive envelope under the rubber weather stripping at the bottom of the front door. He straightens, looks around nervously, and, seeing no activity in the neighboring houses, hurries back through the ornate covered redwood gate, closing it softly. The Civic’s engine growls once as Win slips back in, and HONDA slinks off down the empty street, disappearing toward the west side of San Francisco Bay.

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At the same time, inside the architect’s house, a Bach sonata rising softly from the Bose clock radio finally seeps into Andrew Jenson’s subconscious enough to wake him. He blinks his eyes a couple of times to focus then smiles. He’s lying on his right side next to Sarah Chow who, after weeks of dating, has finally agreed to spend the night.

Sarah, the first professor of Chinese/English literature at the University of California, is the thirty-one-year-old sought-after scholar who studied in China then at Yale who has chosen to teach at UC Berkeley because her family has settled in San Francisco. She had not budgeted time for dating in her rapid rise in the academic world.

The music hasn’t reached into her dreams yet. Her silky black hair frames a tiny smile as she sleeps on her left side, legs curled, facing him. She wears one of Andrew’s T-shirts and is covered only by the sheet from the waist down. Her calm, serene face always amazes Andrew and makes his heart jump. He is dying to touch her, but doesn’t want to wake and alarm her, so he just stares.

Slowly, Sarah reaches down for the edge of the down comforter and pulls it and the sheet up over her hip to her shoulder so that now all he can see is a bit of her smooth, slender neck as it disappears under her hair.

Up until last night, Sarah has said that staying the night with his fifteen-year-old daughter Ellie just down the hall makes her feel uncomfortable and embarrassed. But she and Ellie have been getting along really well lately, and last night, as Ellie went off to bed, she had casually said to them, See you guys tomorrow morning. It was as if Ellie had felt the tension and had given them permission to spend the night together here in the house. Ellie is sharp.

Remembering Ellie’s comment, Andrew reminds himself to not let his daughter get away from him too fast.

Bach’s sonata livens up a bit at the full wake-up volume, and the fluffy cover begins to move as Sarah slowly extends her legs out straight, stretching like a cat. Then from her lengthened position, her eyes pop open. She looks straight at him. A flat animal panic shows in her eyes as if she isn’t sure where she is. Sarah has never spent the night with a man before, exploratory foreplay and such yes, but nothing as serious as this.

Without moving her head, Sarah looks past him at as much of the room as she can see, searching for clues. The first thing she sees clearly is a stark yet beautiful sepia photo of a dilapidated building on a deserted beach. The photo hangs next to the bedroom’s window, which is covered with a folded paper shade glowing in the fog-smothered morning sun. To the right, an old-fashioned draftsman’s T square hangs on the warm gray wall with a well-worn Special Forces beret hooked casually to one side of the head of the T square. She can also see what she recognizes as a leather-and-wood Eames lounge chair, which finally reminds her where she is. Her face relaxes, and she reaches for him under the covers. That hint of her smile never leaves her mouth.

Good morning, they say at the same time.

Sarah laughs nervously as Andrew slides his hand up her arm and catching in the sleeve of the T-shirt that she had put on in the middle of the night.

Seeing the slight disappointment on his face upon finding her covered up in an improvised nightshirt, she simply explains, I got cold, and she rolls back slightly so that his hand comes to rest gently on her right breast.

Now it’s Andrew’s turn to smile. He moves his hand slightly until he feels her nipple harden and then slides his hand down her side to find the bottom of the T-shirt bunched up just above her warm hip. He caresses her hip, gently guiding her more onto her back, letting his wrist brush lightly over her feathery pubic hair. He can’t quite tell what this is doing for her, but it sure as hell is exciting for him.

Just as Sarah lays her left hand on his arm pressing his wrist down into her soft mound, a door slams, and bare feet pad down the hall and into the bathroom between the two bedrooms of the small house. Sarah lurches up in the bed, gathering the covers around the front of her, giving him a wonderful view of her narrow back, hips, and rear end just below his T-shirt.

They listen to everything that’s going on the other side of the wall next to them. She looks back down at Andrew with a kind of shocked but guilty gaze, like a frightened but pleased kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

Don’t worry. She won’t come in here, Andrew whispers.

The toilet flushes, and the bare feet thump away down the hall and disappear behind the other bedroom, door slamming.

Sarah burrows down further under the soft cover, pulling the sheet over her head, curling into a ball again. From her safe place, she speaks into her knees, sounding far away, "Andy, I grew up in a very old-fashioned Chinese household. My sisters and I have never seen one another without clothes on. And I’ve never heard them in the bathroom. There is more burrowing down in the bed. This is very new to me, and I am embarrassed, comes from the bundle of bedclothes. My life in China and even in New Haven was very sheltered. I was a protected Chinese scholar, and as such, I was not given the freedoms most American students take for granted."

Andy sits up and puts his arms around the comforter package she had made of herself. He pushes his face under the sheet and into the sweet, clean smell of her hair and whispers, I know this is tough on you. The smell of her hair keeps him from speaking for a few moments. Trust me, it’ll get better.

She just shrugs her shoulders, pushing him away.

He wraps her up again and then wrestles her over on top of him.

Come on, what do you suppose Ellie thought we’ve been doing these last few weeks? She’s fifteen going on twenty-three.

You don’t get it, do you, Andy? It’s not about her. It’s about me. I’ve never done anything like this before. She curls up into an even tighter ball.

Andy gazes at the warm ball of woman, smiling. I’m sorry. You’re right. I’ll just wrap you up and lower you out the window in a basket like the only access to that northern Chinese mountain monastery I just read about so you won’t have to lose face.

Wide-eye devil, she hisses at him from the soft prison of the bedclothes and his arms. He can’t see it, but the smile is back on her lips.

I can just see it now, he continues. Prominent Chinese scholar seen leaving local professor’s house through back window to avoid—

Sarah gets an arm free and jabs him in the ribs, stopping his attempt at humor. She rolls off him, stretching both arms straight up, saying in a sleepy voice, Do you feed the women of this house, or are we left to fend for ourselves?

Oh, do we ever feed the women around here. Wait until you see the breakfast I put on.

Before they can say anything else, Andy’s sturdy yellow house cat, Frank Lloyd Cat, leaps from the nearby dresser onto the moving people under the covers, like the lion he thinks he is. Frank Lloyd is batting and clawing anything that moves. Andy is used to this stalking wake-up call, but Sarah shrieks and retreats into her ball again. Andy kicks the cat off onto the floor and tries to grab Sarah again, but she’s too quick.

She slides off the bed, out from under the big comforter, standing up next to the bed pulling his T-shirt as far down over her rear end as she can, glaring down at Frank Lloyd who scuttles under the bed. Andy can now see that in the middle of the night she had put his shirt on backward with the quote It’s not that I can and others can’t, it’s that I did and others didn’t now facing him. Some vets like Andy wear these with pride. Luckily for Andy, as she moves across the room toward her clothes, the shirt springs up to reveal her hips and perfect round butt.

Which is more than he can stand. He rolls out of the bed limping on his bad knee over to hug her from behind, letting her feel his lengthening reaction to seeing her naked from the waist down.

No, not now. Ellie will be up. She’ll hear us. Put some clothes on.

That didn’t bother you last night.

That was different. Everything was dark. Things are different at night. Certain demons and most people sleep at night.

Andy lets her go, extending his arms high in the air like an NBA center trying to show the referee and the crowd he hasn’t committed any foul. She begins gathering up her clothes under his treelike limbs.

They get dressed to Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 with him sneaking looks at her whenever he can as he takes time to put on the awkward knee brace he wears to support his right knee injured in the army. He loves watching her get dressed almost as much as he enjoys watching her undressing. It is so secretive, precise, and graceful, yet very enticing the way she stands on one foot to put on her panties and then shrugs off his T-shirt to capture her breasts in the bra he keeps telling her is so unnecessary.

They quietly walk down the hall toward the kitchen, bumping hips as they go. Andy knocks on his daughter’s door as they pass and gives his typical morning greeting, Up and at ’em, kid. Come help me make breakfast.

There is no response.

As they reach the kitchen though, loud music bursts from behind Ellie’s door. This Andrew knows signifies his daughter’s getting-ready-for-the-day process.

OK, lady, since this is your first time eating breakfast at this establishment, you will sit at the counter there, drink coffee, and watch the Jensons at work.

Tea, please, Sarah whispers, looking nervously down the hall toward the even louder music now coming from Ellie’s room. Doesn’t she have to get to school?

Actually, not today. This is some kind of teacher training or staff development day, but she is going off to study with a friend. Berkeley is going to be flooded with an occupying army of high school kids.

The music stops as abruptly as it began, the door lurches open, and Ellie comes bounding down the hall into the room. Her tall, thin frame is covered in a combination of clothes that defies style or at least defies her father’s idea of style. Ellie’s ensemble begins with some kind of fuzzy knit 1930s hat clamped tightly on her head, moves on to a green short-sleeved shirt on top of a black long-sleeved one, with orange shorts over bright-blue leggings and finishes off with black-and-white high-top tennis shoes. This riot of color goes straight to the refrigerator without even looking at Sarah.

Then with most of her body hidden by the door of the icebox, she says, Morning, Sarah. Do you like crepes?

Nervous and taken by surprise, Sarah jerks around to look at the talking icebox. Uh, yes … Then she adds, Um, what do you guys put on them?

Ellie extracts herself from the fridge, clutching a carton of milk, two eggs, and a jar of something.

Anything but syrup. We do not put syrup on crepes, do we, Dad?

With his nose in the air like an imagined French maître d’, Andy responds with, "No, no, that es for zee thick American pancakes only. We are so very continental. Aren’t we, mon cheri?"

Ellie, now showing the posture of a snooty waiter, puts her nose in the air, with a dishtowel draped over her arm, and with an exaggerated bad French accent, bows to Sarah, asking, Will ze madam require bacon this morning?

Smiling and signaling with a negative wagging of her index finger, Sarah says, Non, non, je ne mange point le cocleon de persoune.

Ellie sets her ingredients down and puts her hand to each side of her exaggerated O-shaped mouth, looks at her father in mock astonishment, and then twirling an imaginary mustache, says, Uh-oh, we got a smart one here. Watch your table manners, old man, and don’t wipe your nose on your sleeve. Maybe we can keep this one longer than the others.

Andy, embarrassed by this reference to others, turns toward the duties of preparing the breakfast.

Sarah thinks, I love Ellie for trying to break the first-morning tension. I love being included in this family so quickly, but what if my family found out about my American night? What would my sisters say? Worse, what would Father say?

They eat breakfast for over an hour in the humorous atmosphere started by Ellie and continued by Andy’s cooking. This is a great relief to Sarah who thinks, I’m sixteen years older, but Ellie could be a friend if this relationship with her father continues. The much bigger adjustment will be with my own traditional family. I can’t dwell on that right now.

Gotta go, studying with Sylvie. And with that terse announcement, Ellie bounces up off her stool at the counter, puts her dishes in the sink, and tears down the hall and into her room. The music blares again, but lasts for only a few minutes before she emerges, bounding over to her father for a kiss on the cheek. A wave to Sarah, and she is gone.

The two adults just stare down the now-quiet hall for a few seconds. It’s as if all sound and color has been sucked out of the little house.

Wow, is she always like that? I mean, she’s a dynamo. How do you keep up with her?

I don’t, Andy says as he begins cleaning up the dishes. I just pay the bills. I will eventually scowl at boyfriends when that starts for real. She’s had a couple of group dates, but nothing serious yet. I just try to remember her friends’ names at this point. Her mother died when she was one. Ellie took over about then. I never had a chance and don’t know how to explain it. She is mature and confident beyond her age.

That’s an understatement, Sarah says, thinking, In my own teen years in Northern China, I was never allowed to address my parents in such a casual way, but Ellie has a closeness with her father that I’ve never known with my own father. How does she do in school?

Breezes through the advanced classes and teachers with straight As and tolerates what she and her friends think is their faculty’s unhipness.

Suddenly, Ellie comes bouncing back into the kitchen holding out an expensive envelope between thumb and forefinger as if it smelled bad. Found this on the floor at the front door. No stamp. With a pointed look at Sarah, she continues, Some admirer from afar, no doubt. Watch out, you may have competition. Ellie speeds off again before either of