Читать книгу The Most Dangerous Animal of All - Susan Mustafa D. - Страница 11

October 1961

Earl Van Best Jr. sat on a bench in front of the bookstore across the street from Herbert’s Sherbet Shoppe. He was waiting while the owner of the store tallied up his earnings for the antique books he had brought back from Mexico City. While he sat there, he watched intently as a beautiful young girl came bouncing off the school bus that had just stopped on the corner of Ninth Avenue and Judah Street. As she walked, her blond hair shimmered, reflecting the afternoon sun. He stood up and stepped directly into her path, stopping her before she could cross the street.

“Hi,” Van said warmly, flashing the charming smile that made him a good salesperson.

“Hi,” she responded, smiling back before turning to walk toward the ice cream parlor.

He followed her.

“I’m Van. What’s your name?”

“Judy.”

Van opened the door for her, and they made their way across the beige mosaic-tiled floor to the glass-framed counter. Judy scanned the selections of sherbet before deciding on a plain vanilla ice cream cone. My father paid for her ice cream and asked if they could share a table. He looked like a nice fellow, very neat and polished, and Judy nodded her agreement, flattered by the attention from such a well-dressed, older man. They walked to a table in the corner, near the black-and-white-checkered wall.

Van sat down and gazed into the clear blue eyes that stared back at him so innocently. He loved beautiful girls, the younger the better, and this one was prettier than most.

Employing the British accent he liked to affect, he asked, “How old are you?” She looked like she was about twenty, but he was aware that she had just gotten off a school bus.

“Almost fourteen.”

Van didn’t believe her. She was much too mature, too pretty to be that young.

“Impossible,” he murmured.

“Yep,” she giggled, licking her ice cream, before adding, “My birthday is October eighth.”

He sat there for a moment, wondering if he should stay, but one look into her smiling eyes convinced him that her age did not matter. Although he was twenty-seven, it was, for my father, love at first sight, total and complete. He had to have her. She was young, innocent, malleable.

To Judy, Van seemed worldly and wise as he told her stories about trips to Mexico, about growing up in Japan. He talked about music and art and literature, things the adults in her life didn’t talk about.

“Where do you live?” Van asked.

“By the park,” Judy replied, “on Seventh Avenue.”

“With your parents?” Van pressed.

“My mom and stepdad, but I don’t like him. He’s mean,” Judy said.

“I have a mean stepfather, too,” Van said, adding softly, “I would never be mean to you.”

Judy giggled and stood up. “I’d better get home before I get in trouble.”

Van followed her out the door and watched her walk up the hill until she was out of sight before he headed back into the bookstore to collect the money owed him. Satisfied with the store owner’s estimation of the value of his books, he headed back to the Castro District, just around Mount Sutro, where he lived with his mother and stepfather.

The next afternoon, Van stood in front of the ice cream shop waiting for the school bus that hopefully would again deliver to him the loveliest girl he had ever seen. He watched as some pedestrians walked out of an Asian market and into a nearby Irish pub. Others stopped at the sidewalk cafés, enticed by the aroma of coffee streaming from their doorways. The Sunset District was always filled with pedestrians, mostly young college and high school students and older locals, businessmen who had helped develop the area, believing America’s promise of a better life for hardworking immigrant entrepreneurs.

My father wanted that entrepreneur lifestyle, and he was smart enough to have it. He had graduated from Lowell High School, a school that catered to gifted children, and attended City College of San Francisco, but his grades belied his intelligence. B’s and C’s lined his transcripts, except in English and ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps), where he excelled. Those were the only subjects that really interested him. He had spent much of his life reading everything he could find, but he especially enjoyed literature – the kind that bores the presumably less intelligent.

He soon spotted the school bus coming up the street and watched as several children climbed down the steps. Then there she was again … beautiful and sweet.

He called out to her when she turned to walk up Judah Street. When she saw him, she smiled a big, happy smile.

“Hey, what are you doing?” she said.

“Waiting for you. Let me walk you home.”

“Oh, no. My mother would be mad if she saw me walking with a boy.”

“Well, then, we won’t let her see us,” Van grinned, taking Judy’s arm and steering her across the street. “We’ll cut through the park.”

Judy felt a quiver of excitement as they walked past her street and into Golden Gate Park. Her experiences with men throughout her life had not been good ones, but this man seemed different. Her mother, Verda, had divorced her father a few years before, because he was a strict disciplinarian and had treated his daughters cruelly. He had spanked Judy and her sister, Carolyn, often, leaving red welts on their backsides that made sitting down unbearable. Those spankings had finally ended with the divorce, but sometimes Judy missed her father.

Verda had moved with her girls to San Jose, where she had tried to pick up the pieces and make a new life, but things had not been much better there. Her first date resulted in rape, and Verda soon discovered she was pregnant with her rapist’s child, and later gave birth to a boy. Verda knew she could not keep the child. He would be a constant reminder of what she had suffered, and she already had two mouths to feed. She put her son up for adoption immediately after his birth.

Rebounding from that experience, Verda moved back to San Francisco and married Vic Kilitzian, a marine electrician who worked at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. An Armenian from Greece, Vic did not speak English well. Judy could barely understand the words he spoke, except when he hurled insults at her mother. Although he did not hit the children, he made sure everyone knew that he thought Verda was stupid. In its own way, that was as bad as the spankings for Judy, who couldn’t bear to see her mother treated that way. For Verda, life had become worse than ever. She worked hard at Crocker Bank to help support the family and then returned home each afternoon for another round of belittling. Depressed and hopeless, she had little affection to give her daughters.

At thirteen, my mother was starving for love, and Van was eager to give the innocent girl the attention she sought. Judy smiled happily, feeling special and grown-up when Van tucked her arm into his. Her smile widened when he kissed her hand before leaving her at the edge of the park, six houses from her home.

She hoped he would be waiting when she got off the bus the next afternoon.

He was.

Van watched as Judy looked around for him. He saw that beautiful face light up when her eyes met his, and he moved toward her, taking her hand.

“Where are we going?” Judy said, not really caring. She had no fear. Van made her feel safe.

“It’s a surprise – one of my favorite places,” Van replied, steering her toward a nearby bus stop.

“We’re going to church?” Judy exclaimed when the bus let them off on California Street and Van pointed to Grace Cathedral.

“Have you ever been inside this church?”

Judy shook her head, staring at the majestic building, with its high towers and tall steeple that jutted up toward heaven.

Once inside, Van pointed out his favorite works of art hanging on the cathedral’s walls, including murals by Jan Henryk de Rosen, and impressed her with his knowledge of the history of various pieces.

Judy was fascinated – not just with the art but with the man who seemed to know so much about the church. No grown-up had ever talked to her like this, like she was an equal, like her opinion mattered. Van proudly showed her the cathedral’s organ, pointing out the long tubular pipes suspended on the walls. “I play the organ here sometimes,” he informed her.

They had made their way to the stained-glass windows depicting Adam and Eve when my father decided it was time for Judy to go home. As they headed back toward the Sunset District, Judy suggested that he meet her mother.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” he said. “It would be different if you were seventeen. She won’t like me. She’ll say I’m too old for you.”

Judy nodded and agreed that they would keep their friendship to themselves for a while. She liked the thought of Van being her very own secret.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” he asked when she turned toward her street.

“Yes,” Judy said breathlessly. “I can’t wait.”

Swinging her book bag over her shoulder, Judy almost skipped up the steep hill. She had never felt so happy. The young girl didn’t question why a man Van’s age would be interested in her. She didn’t know to ask questions about his past. In her mind, their relationship seemed perfectly natural. She felt giddy when he touched her, when he smiled at her. That was all that mattered.

Soon she would discover there was much more to Van than his charming exterior, that he had a dark side, a past cloaked in pain that he kept carefully hidden.

Van’s father, Earl Van Best Sr., was born October 16, 1904, into a loving Christian family. By the time Earl was born, the Best family name had become synonymous with love of God and country. Earl’s ancestors, beginning with his grandfather, John James (J. J.) Best, had fought hard for their beliefs, right or wrong. J. J. had been a Confederate captain in the Civil War, assigned to the South Carolina 9th Infantry Battalion, known as the Pee Dee Rifles. On April 1, 1865, J. J. was shot and captured at the Battle of Dinwiddie Court House and taken as a prisoner of war to Johnson’s Island, Ohio. On June 18, 1865, two days before the last shot of the war was fired, the Confederate captain signed an oath of allegiance to the Union and was released.

Prior to the war, J. J. had been a tobacco farmer and a registered slave owner. After the war, he returned to his farm, in Galivants Ferry, South Carolina, and reunited with his wife, Winnifred, and his two children. Because of the injuries he had sustained in the war, some of his slaves stayed on the farm to help him, despite the fact that they had been freed.

The year after the war ended, J. J.’s third child, Earl Van Dorn Best, was born, named after Major General Earl Van Dorn. Dorn, J. J.’s hero, had fought gallantly in the war but had suffered defeat at the Battle of Pea Ridge, in Arkansas. This battle had been a turning point, because it was here that the South lost control of the Mississippi River to the Union soldiers.

In 1880, J. J. donated some of the Best land for the construction of a new Methodist church and then more land across the dirt road to be used as the church cemetery. That cemetery is known today as Old Zion Cemetery, but back then the locals referred to it as the Best Cemetery.

Like his father, Earl embraced the southern tradition of tobacco farming, and he spent his childhood working the fertile land. As an adult, his knowledge of farming and his business acumen made him one of the wealthiest citizens in the small community of Galivants Ferry. In the late 1800s, Earl served as his pastor’s right-hand man and confidant, and in 1902 he was elected Horry County superintendent of schools.

Earl eventually married Anna Jordan, and the couple had eleven children, among them my grandfather Earl Van Best.

Then tragedy struck.

Earl Van Dorn Best was shot and killed by a former slave in 1907, when my grandfather was two years old, and Anna suddenly found herself a widow with a brood of children to feed.

The stories told to him about his father steered my grandfather into the ministry, and he would remain committed to God for the rest of his life. As a teenager, long before he had any formal training in the ministry, Earl became one of Bishop Francis Asbury’s circuit riders, who traveled from town to town on horseback preaching to anyone in Horry County, South Carolina, who would listen to their message of salvation. Earl later left his family home to attend the University of South Carolina, putting himself through school on a preacher’s meager salary. When he met the pretty Miss Gertrude McCormac, from Mullins, South Carolina, Earl fell in love with the talented girl, who could play the piano so well he knew the angels in heaven must be singing along. But Gertrude was not an easy girl to understand. She said she loved him, and Earl believed her, but when he could not be at her beck and call, Gertrude would replace him without a thought. It was a lesson she would teach him over and over again during the years they spent together.

On November 9, 1929, my grandmother wrote my grandfather a letter, explaining how grateful she was that he had recently traveled to visit her. She mentioned that she would soon be attending an oyster roast and she wished he could be there, but she understood how difficult it was for him to make the long trip to see her every day. “I want you to understand me now beforehand and know that my intentions will always be for the building up rather than the breaking down,” she wrote, before adding a postscript on November 10 that read, “Had a very good time at the oyster roast. Nick was kind. He brought me back. Wish you could have been with me instead.”

Her ploy worked.

Earl hurried back to Mullins to ask Gertrude’s father, Duncan, for her hand in marriage. Duncan gave the earnest young man his blessing.

“Will you marry me?” Earl implored, kneeling gallantly before Gertrude in the parlor as she reclined on a sofa.

Gertrude pouted prettily and thought for a moment. “I would love to,” she said, smiling into her fiancé’s eyes.

Gertrude was impressed by the minister’s intelligence. He was the most motivated and educated man she knew, even if he was a bit boring. The young woman was aware of the respect she would gain as the wife of a minister. It was a very appealing prospect.

Everything had gone well in the marriage for a few years, until Earl’s brother Austin Haygood Best died in 1931, and his wife, Betty Wilmoth Best, died in 1933, both having contracted consumption from the sanatorium where Betty worked. The couple left behind four children – Louise, Mildred, Aileen, and Geraldine (“Bits”). Mildred was sent to live with Earl’s sister Nan. Aileen and the youngest child, Bits, went to live with Earl’s sister Estelle. Gertrude, at Earl’s insistence, unwillingly took in Louise, who was fourteen.

My grandfather didn’t make a lot of money, and my grandmother had to stretch every nickel now that they had another mouth to feed. While moving from college town to college town had seemed exciting at first, being tied down with no money and a child did not fit in with Gertrude’s plans. “Why can’t Nan raise Louise?” Gertrude complained.

Earl, who attended the College of Charleston, looked up from a paper he was writing and sighed. “Because she can only afford to raise one,” he explained again.

“But it’s not right. Mildred is always saying that the Best family split them up like a litter of kittens. Sisters need to be together.”

“Well, maybe we should bring Mildred here,” Earl said, watching Gertrude’s reaction with smiling eyes.

She shut up and stomped out of the room.

Earl laughed as he went back to his writing. Sometimes his spoiled bride begged to be put in her place.

For the next year, Gertrude suffered in relative silence, fearful that Earl would get the notion that raising all the girls together was the right thing to do. But she wasn’t nice to her niece. Earl, who had grown up without a father, was a strict disciplinarian, because he was determined to raise Louise right. As the years passed, Louise came to hate her aunt and resent her uncle for letting his wife treat her like the orphan she was.

Toward the end of 1933, Gertrude missed her monthly cycle and feared she might be pregnant. She and Earl were living in Wilmore, Kentucky, while Earl studied at the Asbury Theological Seminary, on his way to earning another certification that hopefully would bring more income into the family.

“How will we support two children?” Gertrude whined after sharing her news with Earl, hoping this would force him to send the girl away.

“We’ll manage just like we do with one,” Earl reassured her.

Gertrude decided she wanted a girl – a girl of her own. Maybe when Earl held his own daughter, he would realize that the other one didn’t belong. She began sewing dresses for the baby from yards of lace and cloth, never once entertaining the idea that her baby could be a boy. That just wouldn’t do.

On July 14, 1934, Gertrude gave birth to a son, Earl Van Best Jr. Earl decided to call him Van.

When the midwife tried to place my father in Gertrude’s arms, her cheeks turned red and tears streamed from her eyes.

“Look, dear. He’s a fine, healthy boy,” Earl cajoled, trying to get Gertrude to hold her son.

Gertrude wouldn’t look at him. “Take him away,” she insisted, turning over in her bed to face the wall.

Earl didn’t understand. Mothers were supposed to love their children.

A few days later, Gertrude was still in bed when her husband brought the baby to her again.

“I’m not well,” she said when Earl moved toward her with the child in his arms.

“Just look at him,” Earl begged. “Hold him for just a minute. He’s a sweet fellow.”

“No. Leave me alone. I don’t want it.”

Every day for weeks, Earl brought the baby to her, and every day, she refused to hold him. Finally he could take it no more. He was tired of washing diapers, feeding his son every four hours, listening to him cry for the comfort of a mother’s arms, doing all the things Gertrude should be doing. Enough was enough.

“Get up,” he ordered after another sleepless night. “Get out of that bed and take care of your child like a good Christian mother. I will not allow you to act like this. Get up!”

Gertrude knew she had pushed him as far as she could. She got up and reluctantly assumed her role as a mother to the boy. She fed him. She changed and washed his diapers. She bathed him. But she didn’t mother him any more than was absolutely necessary.

Happy that his wife was better, Earl left her to her duty. In a letter to his mother, he explained that he and Gertrude had very definite ideas about rearing a child. “When he cries, we let him whoop it out,” he wrote. “If he is comfortable, we try to forget about him and let him alone. I believe to walk them around and humor them when they get blue from crying is one of the worst things that can be done for them. He will be a fine boy if we don’t coddle and fondle him into being a regular sissy.”

In 1935, my grandfather became an ordained Methodist minister and accepted a missionary assignment to Japan, taking his wife and their one-year-old son with him. Louise happily joined her sisters at Estelle’s house. Earl’s assignment was to help create a universal Christian church in Japan that incorporated all denominations. As a representative of the Methodist Board of Missions, my grandfather had been invited to meet with Emperor Hirohito (the Mikado), along with representatives from other Christian denominations, to discuss bringing more American missionaries to Japan. Earl would later write about his efforts in his master’s thesis. It took five years to accomplish, but in 1941, church union became a reality in Japan.

Earl was very proud to have been a part of this effort, but the highlight of his time in Tokyo was meeting the Mikado, and he liked to impress Van with stories of the meeting. He took his son to see the Gilbert and Sullivan opera The Mikado, among others, and sent the playbills back home to his nieces.

By 1940 Van had grown into a six-year-old who was already showing signs of becoming a polymath, much to my grandfather’s delight. He had picked up Japanese effortlessly, as easily as he had acquired the German that Earl often spoke with him. While other American children were learning to write from the left side of the page to the right, Van was learning to write in three Japanese scripts – kanji, hiragana, and katakana – going from right to left in columns. Earl insisted that Van take advantage of the unique opportunity living abroad afforded him. Gertrude fed his artistic side, teaching him to play piano and organ, teaching him to draw – more to keep herself occupied than out of any affection for the boy. There were no kisses on the cheek or affectionate hugs. There was no sympathy when Van got hurt. “Dust yourself off. You’re a man. You have to be tough,” Earl would say. Perversely, Gertrude would decorate Van’s clothes with lacy collars and ruffles, doing her best to turn him into a “regular sissy.”

Van tried to be tough. He tried to please his father, but Earl’s philosophy of “Spare the rod, spoil the child” resulted in whippings for minor infractions. And when Van cried, the rod became more vicious.

Van understood early on that learning was paramount to his well-being, and so he studied to stay out of trouble. He learned. And he made his father proud.

Earl had equally high expectations of Gertrude, but she needed constant attention and strained against the restrictive bonds of her marriage. My grandfather had suspicions about her activities when he wasn’t around and occasionally voiced them, but Gertrude always assured him that he was being silly. Wanting to believe the best, Earl allowed himself to be consoled. Not many men could resist when Gertrude turned on the charm, and her husband was no exception.

Between his wife’s flirtations and the instability in the region, my grandfather knew it was almost time to send Gertrude and Van home. Japan had formed an alliance with Italy and Germany, and Earl realized that did not bode well for any peaceful resolution to tensions that were building around the world. My grandmother couldn’t wait to go home. She had not bargained for the strict lifestyle she endured as the wife of a missionary in Japan. For five years, she and Earl had lived at Aoyama Gakuin, a university established in 1874 by the Methodist Episcopal Church. Her life might have been more bearable, but she was an artist and musician, a free spirit, and Earl and his Christian ideals were much too rigid for her creative soul. Gertrude liked to have fun. Earl had responsibilities, which he took very seriously – namely, saving heathen souls from the fires of hell.

On October 28, 1940, Earl waved good-bye to his wife and son from a dock in Kobe as they boarded the ocean liner Tatuta Maru, bound for the United States. By January 1941 they would be back in Japan, their return spurred by Earl’s family, who had no problem informing him that he needed to keep a closer eye on his wife.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese Imperial Navy bombed Pearl Harbor. Two thousand four hundred and two Americans lost their lives in the attack, and more than twelve hundred people were wounded. The United States responded with a declaration of war the next day. My grandfather sent my father and grandmother home on the first ship out of Japan. Gertrude and Van anxiously waited for Earl to meet them in San Francisco and were relieved when he finally arrived a few weeks later.

Earl didn’t waste a second thought on the six years he had spent in Japan. His country had been sneak-attacked by the Japanese, and he wanted to pay them back for their treachery. “I’ve decided to attend the U.S. Army Chaplain School,” he told Gertrude. “You and Van can move back to South Carolina and stay with Estelle until I finish. I’m going to join the military.”

Gertrude pleaded with Earl to let her and Van stay in California, but he refused. “No. We don’t know what’s going to happen. They might attack again. I want you with my family, where you’ll be safe.”

The next day, the three of them rented a car and left California, heading for Estelle’s home in Conway, South Carolina. Earl kept up a steady stream of conversation with Van, who relished the attention, while Gertrude pouted the whole way across the country. Her mood worsened a few days later when they pulled into Estelle’s driveway and she saw Bits and Aileen playing outside. It dawned on her that she would have to help take care of them.

“I am not taking care of those brats,” she informed her husband.

“Calm down, Gertrude,” Earl said. “Estelle can’t continue to care for three children by herself. She was kind enough to take Louise while we were gone. We’re Christians. These girls are family. We must behave like Christians and help her.”

“Christians be damned!” Gertrude shouted, marching into the house and slamming the door behind her.

After getting their bags from the car, Earl put his arm around his sister.

“Don’t pay any attention to Gertrude,” he said. “She’ll be fine.”

Estelle wasn’t so sure. She loved her brother and wanted to help, but she was well aware that Gertrude was spoiled and petulant. Louise had often complained that Gertrude had treated her poorly when she lived with her.

Once his family was settled, Earl submitted his application to the Corps and waited eagerly for his acceptance letter. While he waited, Earl acquainted himself with his new parishioners, many of whom were happy to turn to him for guidance and prayer as they proudly and fearfully watched their sons go off to war.

Earl soon received his letter of acceptance and headed off to Williamsburg, Virginia, where he would eventually earn his degree from the U.S. Army Chaplain School. He then joined the Navy as a chaplain, determined to give spiritual guidance and counsel to young soldiers who were putting their lives on the line for America. He moved up quickly, earning the rank of lieutenant, and was assigned to the USS Altamaha, an escort aircraft carrier, under the command of Admiral “Bull” Halsey. His primary role was to give comfort and inspiration through his message of hope and salvation.

When he wasn’t ministering, Earl worked as an intelligence officer, tasked with tracking and deciphering the enemy’s coded messages. Because he could read and write Japanese and German, Earl soon became an asset to his unit. During World War II, the U.S. Navy and Army utilized a complex cipher machine called SIGABA to write American codes. This machine proved to be a valuable asset, because SIGABA codes were unbreakable, whereas Japanese codes, called PURPLE, and German codes, written with a machine called Enigma, could easily be deciphered by the Americans. The U.S. military had another advantage when passing along secret information not meant for enemy eyes: American Indian Code Talkers, comprising Navajo, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Comanche Indians, among others, who used the arcane language of their forefathers to create intricate codes. There were so many dialects in the languages that no one in the Axis forces could crack the codes.

Earl loved serving his country, but back home, angry that her husband had left her with his sister and the children, Gertrude fumed. Like Louise had years before, Aileen and Bits quickly learned to stay out of her way. So did Van. He hid in his small room at the back of the house, wishing that his father would hurry back. He didn’t like his cousins. They laughed at his books, his music.

My grandmother, desperate for some fun, began concocting this reason or that for why she needed to be away from the house in the afternoons. Estelle wasn’t fooled when she saw Gertrude’s hair swept up in a bow and the pretty dresses she wore. Word soon got to Earl that his wife was fornicating with members of his congregation, but he had God’s work to do. He would deal with her as soon as he had fulfilled his obligation to the military.

A few months later, Earl traveled back to South Carolina to straighten out his errant wife.

“Look, Gertrude,” Earl yelled, placing his Bible in front of her, “right there in Hebrews, chapter thirteen, verse fourteen, it says, ‘Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.’ Do you want to be judged as an adulteress?”

Gertrude tearfully shook her head. “I don’t know what comes over me,” she cried.

Earl didn’t know, either.

“I’m a minister, for God’s sake. My wife is supposed to be a pillar of the community.”

He begged and pleaded with his wife to be faithful, and when that didn’t work, he screamed at her. Nothing he did mattered. Gertrude craved more attention than her husband could give her.

Things got so bad that Gertrude would weep when Earl pulled up in the driveway. It was a strange dichotomy. On Sundays, he would stand in the pulpit preaching the gospel, and Gertrude would sit at the piano, playing hymns beautifully, smiling as she praised God. They looked like such a happy family, but no one was fooled. Earl didn’t have to ask which men who sat in the pews of his church had slept with his wife. He knew. He could tell by the way they averted their eyes when he looked at them and spoke about sin. He struggled to forgive Gertrude for her transgressions, but she just transgressed some more.

To take his mind off his problems, Earl focused on my father. Back then, most children did not have a television to occupy their time, so they either stayed outdoors playing ball or inside playing board games, word games, tic-tac-toe, and checkers. When my grandfather was home on leave from the Navy, he began teaching Van how to write and solve simple codes using numbers, Japanese symbols, and German and English lettering. Van was a good student, often deciphering his father’s encrypted messages quickly. Earl was impressed and endeavored to make each new one more difficult than the last. Before long, Van was creating his own codes and asking his father to break them. Van would watch from a corner of the room while Earl worked his way through the letters, numbers, and symbols. What had begun as a learning game became a competition as father and son tried constantly to outwit each other. Van enjoyed the challenge and the attention he received from his father during this pastime.

Earl had no way of knowing that one day Van would employ their game to do the devil’s work and to gain attention on a much larger scale.

After the war was over, when he could take the embarrassment no more, Earl moved with Gertrude and Van to San Francisco, hoping that his wife would be happier there and would mend her ways. But San Francisco offered Gertrude a host of new men with whom to carry on her flirtations, and Earl, well aware that divorce was unacceptable in the Methodist religion, did the unthinkable. He asked his wife for a divorce.

“I want you to file the papers, because I don’t want my son to grow up thinking I abandoned him. I’ll let him stay with you, though,” Earl said. “A boy needs his mother. You can send him to me during the summer months.”

As unhappy as she was, Gertrude did not relish the idea of being a divorced woman. She liked having the best of both worlds – all the men she wanted and the security and respect that came with being a preacher’s wife.

“I’ll be better. I promise,” she cried, as she had so many times before. “Please, Earl, think of the embarrassment,” she said, placing her arms around him.

“I am thinking of the embarrassment,” Earl retorted, removing her arms. “I’ve tried to forgive. I’ve tried to forget. It keeps happening. God forgive me, but I cannot live like this.”

When my grandfather refused to bend, my grandmother filed for divorce.

Van begged his father to let him stay with him, but Earl insisted that it was best he live with his mother. “You’ll be fine,” he told his son.

Van knew he would not be fine. So did Earl, and his heart was heavy as he boarded the train that would take him back to South Carolina, more than two thousand miles away from his nine-year-old son.

Gertrude and Van moved to 514 Noe Street, located on a steep hill in the heart of the Castro District. Their home, a two-story, turn-of-the-century Victorian, was divided into two apartments – one upstairs and one downstairs. Gertrude and Van occupied the first floor. The house was one of the few that had not been destroyed during the 1906 earthquake. Noe Street, unlike many streets throughout San Francisco that were built on sand dunes, had a solid rock foundation, which spared all of the houses on the hill from destruction.

Van’s room soon became his refuge and his prison. He filled it with his beloved books, and when he wasn’t in school, he hid there while his mother gave piano lessons to the neighborhood children. He could hear the sounds of the children laughing in the living room beside him and his mother laughing with them as they banged away on the keys of the piano.

Gertrude did what she had to do for Van – she made sure he ate and went to school. Other than that, she ignored him. She embraced her newfound freedom, and soon a bevy of men were steadily making their way to her home.

Van could hear, sometimes, the banging of the headboard, the moans and gasps permeating the walls. He let the sounds of his music – flutes and violins and clarinets – swirl around him as he turned up the volume of his phonograph to drown out the banging. As he listened to The Mikado, the tale of lust and deceit captured in the opera mimicked his own life, and he listened over and over, memorizing every word.

Other times he occupied himself with writing codes, wishing his father were sitting across from him trying to decipher the meaning. Van missed his father. Even though he was strict, my grandfather had given him attention, had challenged him, had made him feel like he was important. In San Francisco, Van felt like he was nothing more than a nuisance, invisible.

Nobody.

Earl would spend the rest of his life regretting his decision to allow his only son to live with his ex-wife, but at the time, he had been convinced that a child was better off being raised by his mother.

On the day his divorce from Gertrude became final, Earl married Eleanor “Ellie” Bycraft Auble, a widow twelve years his junior. He had met Ellie two years earlier, when he was tasked with informing her that her husband, George Coleman Auble, had been killed in an explosion while loading depth charges on the USS Serpens on March 10, 1943. Ellie had appreciated the comfort the chaplain had given her, and when Earl returned from San Francisco, these two souls searching for comfort in an unfair world were drawn to each other immediately. Neither of them had deserved their fates, but together their wounds could heal. Earl fell in love with Ellie’s genteel manners and steadfastness. She was a woman who would be faithful, a woman who would be a role model for Van.

After they married, the couple moved to Indianapolis so that my grandfather could teach military intelligence and business at the U.S. Army Finance School at Fort Benjamin Harrison. He had been excommunicated from the Methodist Church because of his divorce, but the preacher was soon welcomed into the Disciples of Christ ministry in Indianapolis.

The following year, Earl flew Van from San Francisco to Chicago for summer break. When he got off the plane, Van ran into Earl’s arms, excited to see him after so long.

“Van, this is Ellie, your new mother,” Earl said, prying Van’s arms from around his neck. “She’s my wife now, and you are to listen to her and give her the respect you give me.”

Van turned slowly and looked at the pretty young woman standing next to his father. The smile that had lit up his face when he saw Earl disappeared into a trembling frown.

Ellie reached out her hand.

Van hesitated, then shook it when Earl urged him forward.

“Hi, Van. It’s so nice to meet you. Your father has told me so much about you.”

Van didn’t respond.

“Are you ready for the beach?” she asked.

Van nodded and turned to walk with them to the waiting car. Each year, all of the Bests gathered in the family-owned beach house at 302 Ocean Boulevard in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for summer vacation. Van had looked forward to this trip for months, and now this woman had ruined everything. Van slumped into the backseat and stared out the window, occasionally stealing glances at the woman who held his father’s attention.

“How do you like San Francisco?” Ellie inquired.

“I don’t,” Van said.

“Watch yourself, young man,” Earl warned.

“Well, she asked. I don’t like it.”

“Why not?” Ellie pressed.

“Mother has too many boyfriends,” Van said, hoping the shock value of his words would make them leave him alone.

It worked.

Ellie gave up and spent the next fourteen hours on the road ignoring Van, who spoke to his father in Japanese so Ellie couldn’t understand him. When Earl insisted he speak in English, Van stopped talking.

By the time they reached the beach house, the animosity my father felt for his new stepmother had reached a fever pitch. Grabbing his bag, he stomped up the stairs into the house, ignoring Louise, Aileen, and Bits when they said hello. He ran into his usual bedroom, slammed the door, threw himself on the bed, and cried. He was still crying when Earl walked in.

“I had hoped you would have grown up some and learned how to behave yourself properly, but apparently your mother has not been disciplining you,” Earl said, pulling off his belt. “You will treat my wife with respect. Now bend over,” he added sternly.

Aileen and Bits were listening and giggling down the hall. “He just got here. What do you think he did?” Bits said.

“I don’t know, but it must have been bad. Uncle Earl sounds real mad,” Aileen replied.

The next morning, Aileen was waiting for him in the hall. “How’s your backside?” she said, laughing. Van punched her in the arm. Hard.

It didn’t take long for Van’s cousins to pick up where they had left off when he moved. At breakfast, the girls began making fun of him for reading a book at the table. When Aileen accidentally spilled milk on his book, Van exploded.

“Don’t cry over spilt milk,” his cousins jeered.

“You have no idea. This is a first edition,” Van cried, grabbing his book and running into the kitchen to tenderly dry each page.

The girls spent the summer teasing him mercilessly. One afternoon, as Van sat alone on the handrail of the second-floor porch, reading, Ellie asked him to go to the car and fetch her sunglasses. Startled from his book, Van fell over the railing, landing on his head in front of the whole family. Ellie screamed when Van hit the sandy ground with a thud. For a moment, everyone thought he was dead. Embarrassed, my father lay there stunned for a moment, then got up, brushed the sand from his clothes, and disappeared into a far room in the back of the house to cry. He knew this was more ammunition for his cousins. He was different and could not fit in. And he didn’t care enough to try. He preferred rummaging through an old trunk he’d found in the attic, looking at the crinkled papers and yellowed christening gowns someone had tucked away years ago, rather than playing silly games. He didn’t want to run on the beach with them or swim in Withers Swash. He wanted to be left alone with his books, his escape from his family.

As the summer wore on, Van began longing for San Francisco. His dark, lonely bedroom was more tolerable than this.

Earl realized early on that it was fruitless to try to force Van and Ellie’s relationship. Van made no bones about his hatred for his stepmother, and he constantly tried to make Earl see that she was mean to him, hoping his father would send her away.

On the way home from the beach, things finally came to a head. Ellie was talking with Earl, and Van interrupted, smiling because he knew it would make her mad.

“Van, has anyone invited you to this conversation?” Ellie said.

“I didn’t need an invitation to speak before you came along,” Van said smartly.

Earl slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the side of the road. He grabbed Van, yanked him from the car, and spanked him in front of his cousins and everyone driving by. Humiliated, Van huddled in the corner of the backseat, ignoring his laughing cousins, staring daggers into the back of Ellie’s head. He dreaded the coming weeks he would have to spend with his stepmother and cousins, who Earl had decided should spend the remainder of their summer vacation in Indiana.

Once back on the road, my grandfather stopped in every state along the way – North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana – and let each of the children drive a few feet, just so they could tell their friends they had driven in different states. Van wanted to refuse to participate, but one look at Earl’s face when his turn came convinced him otherwise. He drove slowly, sitting in the driver’s seat next to Ellie, his knuckles white on the wheel.

From the backseat, Bits watched Van and almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

After that first miserable summer with Ellie, Van was almost happy to see his mother when he returned to San Francisco. He ran into the bedroom that housed his most precious possessions, feeling lighthearted for the first time in months. Here he was safe from the outside world, safe from the teasing of other children. His feelings of happiness were fleeting, however.

Gertrude had met a new beau while Van was away. Within months, she married John Harlan Plummer, a man who had little tolerance for Van and who was jealous of any attention Gertrude paid to her son. Van learned quickly to stay out of Harlan’s way. The only times Van saw his mother were at the dinner table and when he played the piano. Sometimes when she heard him playing, she would come into the living room, sit beside him, and give him pointers. It was during these times that Van felt a bond with her, but then Harlan would call her name and she would disappear. Left alone again, Van pounded his heartache into the piano keys.

Then he met William Vsevolod Lohmus von Bellingshausen and everything changed.

Fear had raced through Van’s body when he first walked through the double doors of Lowell High School. He observed the pretty girls laughing and joking with boys who seemed unconcerned with the enormity of high school, knowing it wouldn’t be long before they uncovered his secrets, their whispers reverberating down hallways between classes. His mother’s a whore. Did you see those glasses he wears? What’s wrong with him, anyway? He thinks he’s so smart.

“Guten Tag,” Van said in German when a boy sat next to him in the cafeteria on the first day of school – his way of saying hello and establishing superiority with anyone he met.

“Guten Tag,” the boy unexpectedly responded. “Wie heißt du?”

“My name’s Van. You speak German?” Van said, stunned that this ordinary-looking kid had caught him at his game.

“My name is Vsevolod von Bellingshausen, and I am German. And Chinese. Half and half. But in the States, I go by William Lohmus. Just makes it easier,” the boy informed Van, smiling at the look on his face.

William and my father became fast friends, and they soon began scheduling their classes together. In ROTC, they befriended Bill Bixby, who would later rise to fame for his work in the television series The Courtship of Eddie’s Father and The Incredible Hulk. The three boys went through drills three times each week, and on Mondays and Fridays they studied military history, tactics, and theory. During summer maneuvers, they were Company C and took on the role of the enemy, hiding under brush until the single guard passed by and then swooping in like lightning to claim the flag and victory. Van occasionally called Earl to discuss what he was learning, confident that his gaining military knowledge would impress his father.

After school, Van volunteered at the de Young Museum, in Golden Gate Park. In the Ancient Arms room, he honed his skills cleaning, maintaining, and preserving medieval weapons. It was in that museum filled with relics from the past that Van became fascinated with weaponry and the art of killing.

William and Bill realized that Van was different, but that he was also very intelligent, and they enjoyed listening to him pontificate on this topic or that. He knew a little something about almost everything. They were also impressed with his musical talent.

“Where did you learn to play like that?” William asked one afternoon when Van was showing off on the piano in his living room.

“Mother taught me,” Van replied. “I also listen to a lot of classical music and operas. I’ll show you.”

Van introduced William to Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca, another tale of lust and murder that Van particularly liked. “Puccini adapted ‘Miya Sama, Miya Sama’ from Act II of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado,” Van explained. Before long, William became a fan, and the two boys spent their evenings reciting the words from The Mikado to each other until William knew them as well as Van.

At school, they mostly spoke to each other in German, which annoyed and alienated the other students. But when Van joined the English-Speaking Union, an organization with the charter to preserve the language and culture of the motherland, he began to cultivate a proper English accent and called everyone by their surname, which was similarly annoying to his classmates.

“You know, Bellingshausen, my family roots trace back to England and royalty,” Van bragged. “My father told me I am a distant relative of Queen Elizabeth.”

William didn’t know whether to believe him, but he let him have that one, because you never really knew with Van. And when his friend’s assumed accent sounded like someone caught in the middle of a conversation between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, William just smiled. He let Van have that, too.

But whenever Van turned the conversation to an Asian slave box, a four-inch cube made of dark wood that William had once shown him, William got a little nervous. Van believed that some cultures collected the souls of their slaves for the afterlife in boxes like that one, and Van had become fascinated with the notion of killing one to put in the box. Walking together down the hallway between classes, Van would often point out a pretty girl. “She’d make a good one, don’t you think?” he would say, and laugh.

William knew what he meant and worried sometimes that Van wasn’t joking.

After graduation, in 1953, William left San Francisco to spend several months in Mexico, sailing away on a sixty-eight-foot yawl. Van had other plans. He had befriended Alexander Victor Edward Paulet Montagu, a member of British Parliament, at an English-Speaking Union meeting. Montagu, commonly known as the Viscount of Hinchingbrooke, had been impressed by Van’s knowledge of England and amused by his stiff British correctness. He took a fancy to Van and invited his young American friend to England for a stay at his father’s home, Hinchingbrooke House, with the promise of meeting the queen. Excited about the prospect, Van convinced my grandfather to buy his passage to England as a graduation present.

On May 4, 1953, the RMS Ascania safely sailed into the port in Liverpool, England, and Van disembarked to begin his adventure.

The viscount had arranged for a car to bring Van to the family estate, just outside Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, some three hours southeast of Liverpool. Although Victor maintained a residence in London, he had arranged for Van to have the pleasure of experiencing high country living. Originally, the massive house had been built as a church, around 1100. It had later become a nunnery before coming into the possession of Richard Williams (also known as Richard Cromwell) in 1536. Cromwell and his sons added numerous rooms, a medieval grand entrance, and the Great Bow Window that gave Hinchingbrooke House its distinct character. Debt forced the Cromwells to sell their prized possession to the Montagu family in 1627. The Montagus continued with improvements, and when it came into the possession of the fourth Earl of Sandwich, John Montagu, Hinchingbrooke House became known for its lavish parties, hosted by the earl and his mistress while his wife lived her life tucked away in a sanatorium.

When they pulled onto the grounds of the manor, Van noticed the family’s coat of arms. The words Post tot naufragia portum (“a haven after so many shipwrecks”) served as the family motto.

Once inside the majestic home, my father was struck by the smell – a mustiness that had seeped for centuries into every crack and crevice of the dwelling. Immense portraits lining walls, elaborate draperies, exquisite furnishings, scented candelabras – nothing could overcome that first impression. Van sniffed and covered his nose.

“My American friend,” Victor Montagu said when he greeted Van as he emerged from a shadowy hallway. “How was your trip?”

“It was good, Sir Montagu,” Van said, looking up at the man approaching him.

At forty-six years of age, the viscount was a striking figure – tall, with broad shoulders and a slender build. “Welcome to my family’s home,” he said, instructing the manservant to show Van to his room.

Over the next few weeks, Van received a thorough education in English history and politics as he and the viscount alternated their time between Hinchingbrooke and London. Victor Montagu had become very involved in politics as a young man and had a wealth of knowledge to bestow upon his guest. He had served as the private secretary to Stanley Baldwin, a well-respected lord president of the council, and had written several books by the time Van met him. He had also served in World War II before being elected to Parliament. Van absorbed every word the viscount said, storing each new bit of information in his memory, to be revisited later with William, especially the fact that Queen Elizabeth and King James I had slept within these walls.

But Van had trouble sleeping within those walls. Each night, he listened intently to the sounds of old boards creaking, cracking, as if someone or something was walking the halls. The sounds would get closer and closer, louder and louder, until Van huddled under a blanket in the corner of his room. Watching.

Waiting.

For hours.

And then morning would dawn and the sun would cast its reassuring light across the room. Van would finally close his eyes and sleep until breakfast was served, where he usually ate only a piece of bacon or two with his tea.

“Aren’t you hungry?” Victor asked as he wolfed down baked beans, sausage, bacon, eggs, and fried bread.

“Mother rarely cooks breakfast, so I’m not used to eating a lot in the morning.”

“Americans,” Victor said, laughing. “You don’t know what you’re missing. Well, at least the tea will keep you going.”

Van nodded. He liked English tea, if for no other reason than that it was part of the culture he so desperately wanted to adopt.

“I’ve got something special in store for you,” Victor announced. “We’re going to London for the queen’s coronation.”

Van was delighted. The Montagu family, through its royal connections, fed his Anglophile appetite and emboldened him to model the walk, talk, and style of dress of his blue-blooded hosts. And on June 2, 1953, my father stood in Trafalgar Square, amid the throngs of fawning people who had gathered to watch Elizabeth II ride by in the spectacular horse-drawn coach that would take her to Westminster Abbey, where she was crowned in the coronation theater in the same chair in which kings had been crowned since Edward, in 1274. For Van, this was the thrill of a lifetime, but he would later express his displeasure to William that he had been stuck outside with the commoners instead of seated with the viscount’s family. After all, he was related, he insisted.

Upon their return to Hinchingbrooke House the following month, Montagu resumed his tutelage of his American friend.

“I need to sort through some of the old letters and documents that my father stored away. Would you like to help?”

“Yes, sir,” Van said. “I’d love to.”

Van followed the viscount into an office furnished with heavy wooden desks and bookshelves lining the walls. He reverently searched the titles, drawn to the bound leather covers and the parchment paper inside.

“You can touch them,” Victor said, noticing Van’s expression.

Van pulled one from a shelf. Carefully, he opened it, letting his fingers run across the texture of the pages. He noticed everything – the print, the binding, the yellowing. Victor let Van browse while he placed stacks of letters on a desk and began looking through them. “Look at this,” he said.

Van walked over and took the letter Victor handed him. It was written by Captain James Cook and addressed to John Montagu.

“John was the fourth Earl of Sandwich. You know, they named the sandwich after him,” Victor said, with a laugh. “He was a nefarious fellow, but it was his sponsorship of Captain Cook’s explorations that brought him the most notoriety. Do you know there are islands named after this house and John Montagu off the Australian coast?”

Van nodded. He had read everything he could about the family before he arrived.

“Was he really a member of the Hellfire Club?” Van ventured, turning the conversation to the subject he most wanted to discuss. He had come across this tidbit in his readings.

Sensing Van’s interest and enjoying his fascinated audience, Victor stood up and closed the door. He and Van talked for hours, discussing the club’s history and the rumors that had swirled around its members. “No one really knows what is true and what is not,” Victor said.

Over the next two months, Van learned everything he could about the club, and grew excited about sharing his newfound knowledge with William when he returned home. He quizzed the viscount relentlessly, tucking away each detail to be savored later. Amused, Montagu fed Van’s fantasies, unwittingly inspiring in his young friend a greater interest in the occult. The club allegedly comprised eighteenth-century English gentlemen who made sacrifices to Venus and Bacchus, animals, and sometimes nymphs. Van loved the rumors of orgies, debauchery, and sacrifices by noblemen such as Sir Francis Dashwood and the fourth Earl of Sandwich. Their motto, Fais ce que tu voudras (“Do what you will”), meant nothing was off-limits. Everything Van heard was the antithesis of his father’s teachings, and Van knew that Earl would have been none too pleased had he known how his son was utilizing his time in England.

The days passed by rapidly, and Van hated the thought of returning to the United States.

But then one night, as Van lay in his bed, unable to sleep once again, he listened to whispers of the past echoing through his room. Chilled by the damp air that pervaded the house and fearful of spirits that he was sure lurked nearby, he pulled his blanket tightly around him. When he heard the ominous sound of boards creaking in the hallway, he tensed. It sounded louder this time, more defined. He jumped from his bed and ran into the corner of the room. Using his blanket as a shield, he sank to the floor, hoping the sound would stop.

It did. Right outside his door.

Van watched in terror as the door opened slowly. An eerie orange glow from the lantern on the wall in the hallway spread into the room, illuminating a shadowy figure.

The next morning, he abruptly decided to cut his trip short and return home.

Before he left, Victor showed Van his family’s collection of ancient weaponry. He presented Van with a bronze mace, shaped like the head of a bull. Its mouth opened into a menacing grimace, and Van detected a pungent odor when he tried to look inside. My father politely thanked the viscount for the unusual gift and for inviting him to stay at Hinchingbrooke, but he couldn’t wait to get away from the castle and its dark secrets.

In early September, my father boarded the RMS Franconia, bound for Quebec, with mixed emotions – sadness at leaving behind a royal lifestyle he enjoyed and relief at being away from the ghosts that haunted him at night.

In 1962, upon his father’s death, Victor Montagu sold Hinchingbrooke to the Huntingdon and Peterborough County Council, ending five hundred years of private family ownership, and in 1964 he renounced his position as the tenth Earl of Sandwich, after only two years. In the ensuing years, Victor would lose his prominence in government and earn a reputation for being eccentric.

Back in San Francisco, William noticed a change in Van. His friend had become obsessed with spirits. Van talked incessantly about the fourth Earl of Sandwich and the Hellfire Club. “A lot of devil worshipping and satanic ritual went on in those meetings. I heard they also sacrificed slaves. I wish I could have been there for just one meeting, just to get one slave.”

“Your father would have a heart attack if he heard you talking like that,” William said.

Van laughed. “Yes, he would. And he paid for the trip.”

“Have you heard from Montagu since you’ve been back?”

“No, and I don’t think I will.”

“Why not?”

Van looked uncomfortable, hesitating before he spoke. “He made a move on me while I was there,” he confessed.

“What did he do?” William asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Van said.

William didn’t ask him about the incident again, but he didn’t quite believe his friend. Van had a way of twisting the imagined into reality.

“What happened to your head?” William asked, suddenly noticing a large bump protruding from Van’s forehead.

“That damned mace,” Van said, shifting his weight from foot to foot uncomfortably. He had shown William the mace earlier. Van had hung it over his bed at an angle, supported by a metal bracket, the handle resting in a makeshift support. “Last night, while I was sleeping, something hit me in the head. It hurt like hell, and when I sat up, the mace was in the bed. This isn’t the first time it’s happened. I’m telling you, William, there’s something evil about that mace. It’s possessed by medieval spirits. I know it is. Here, look at it and tell me what you think,” Van insisted, handing the offending weapon to his friend.

William gave the mace a thorough inspection, then lifted the bull’s mouth to his nose and grimaced at the foul odor. “Smells like old blood,” he said.

“I have to get rid of this thing. It’s going to kill me,” Van said, fear evident in his eyes. “Do you want it?”

“No, thank you,” William said adamantly.

Van spent the next months searching for someone, anyone, who would take the mace off his hands. Finally he found a collector and rid himself of the evil spirit that had attacked him at night.

The Korean War had provided a disturbing threat during my father’s high school years. While William, Van, and Bill had enjoyed playing make-believe war in the ROTC, none of the boys had any interest in heading overseas after graduation to fight in a real war. They had decided early on that they would enroll in City College of San Francisco, a two-year preparatory college that did not offer ROTC but would keep them out of the draft if their names were to be called. Fortunately for the boys, the war ended in 1953, but they enrolled in the school anyway. Van and William opted for criminology, while Bill pursued drama – he had already decided he wanted to become an actor and was determined to achieve that goal. William wanted to become a private investigator, while Van simply liked the idea of studying forensics. His real interest was music, but he was already far beyond what a college could teach him and found music classes boring and repetitive. Gertrude had made sure of that.

By this time Van was an accomplished organist and a classical music aficionado, partial to Bach. He sometimes spent his spare time playing the pipe organ at Grace Cathedral, a French Gothic Episcopalian church on California Street. It had taken thirty-six years to build the church, but when it was complete, an architectural masterpiece awaited sinners who walked through its doors.

Stained-glass windows, depicting Jesus and his disciples, Mother Mary, and other biblical characters, radiated a spectrum of color across the arched ceiling over Van’s head as he sat at the organ, caressing the keys. To his left, a circle with a cross in the middle graced the marble floor.

When Van played, passersby would stop, lured into the beautiful church by the magical sounds echoing from the vast open space. Built in 1934, the organ featured approximately 7,500 pipes, each contributing to the magnificent sound of the instrument. Even Van felt humbled when he heard the music his fingers created.

Although he had asked her more than once, Gertrude refused to come to the church to hear him play, and she no longer allowed him to play the piano in their living room, because Harlan no longer wanted Van in the house. Eager to be rid of Gertrude’s son, Harlan was doing everything he could to make Van’s home life as miserable as possible.

In need of an outlet other than the church, Van discovered the Lost Weekend tavern, at 1940 Taraval. The bar itself seemed ordinary enough, long and cylinder-shaped, with tables and chairs that lined the walls to the right. A mirrored bar surrounded by deep mahogany dressed the wall to the left. The blond-and-black mosaic-tiled floor, so common in buildings built in 1930s San Francisco, gave the bar a familiar appeal. But it was the Wurlitzer organ jutting out from the center of the bar that caught Van’s attention. Raised on a platform, the organ’s pipes stretched upward to the edges of a circle of wood on the ceiling.

“Do you need an organ player?” he asked the bartender one afternoon, eyeing the massive organ appreciatively.

“Got one,” the bartender said. “Some guy named LaVey. You should come by and hear him on Friday nights. It’s a different scene, man.”

The following Friday, Van and William sat at the end of the bar, nursing a drink, waiting to hear how the Wurlitzer would sound. Van’s fingers itched to touch the ivory keys. When the bar began filling with people, he guessed he wouldn’t have long to wait. He watched curiously when patrons began gathering in a circle on the floor around the organ while the tables and chairs remained empty. He could feel an air of excitement building in the room.

And then he walked in.

The organist bowed slightly to the crowd before taking his place behind the Wurlitzer.

“Welcome. I’m Anton Szandor LaVey,” he said, his voice reverberating through the microphone. “Remember, evil backwards spells live.”

His minions, crowded together on the floor, clapped enthusiastically.

Van listened intently as the first notes began flowing through the pipes. Modern classical. Not what he had expected. LaVey was good. Van knew he was better.

He sat quietly through the first set, hearing every chord breathing through the pipes.

He hoped to meet LaVey when he took a break, but that didn’t happen. When the music stopped, the organist began speaking, and Van observed as the room became deathly silent except for the sound of LaVey’s voice. His audience was mesmerized.

Van was impressed. This unusual man, dressed all in black, held the crowd in the palm of his hand as he explained that they should indulge themselves in all things.

Van listened and watched for what seemed like hours. No one left the bar.

Finally LaVey stood up, the mirrors behind the bar replicating his image as he bowed before stepping down from his throne.

Van flagged the bartender.

“Do you mind if I play for a minute?” he said, handing him a five-dollar bill.

The bartender shrugged. “Go ahead, but I don’t think anyone will pay attention. They come for him.”

Van waited for the crowd to thin before he moved toward the organ. LaVey, sitting at a table along the wall, was surrounded by the remainder of his admirers, each trying to get closer to him. No one paid attention when Van sat down in front of the organ. The crowd didn’t turn when he launched into Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.

But LaVey did.

Van could feel LaVey’s eyes staring, questioning. When the final note trailed away, Van got up and returned to his seat at the bar.

LaVey stood up, pushing the crowd aside as he walked over to Van and William.

“Who are you?” he said, looking at Van.

“Van.”

“Where did you learn to play like that?” LaVey queried.

Van smiled. “My mother.”

LaVey laughed, his dark eyes crinkling under his pointed brows. “I’m Anton LaVey.”

“I heard,” Van said.

LaVey handed him a card. “Come by and see me sometime, but call first.”

Van looked at the card after LaVey walked away. It listed 6114 California Street as the address.

A few weeks later, Van knocked on the door of the inconspicuous house at the address LaVey had given him. Later, the house would be painted black, its windows shuttered and its interior turned macabre, but LaVey had not progressed to that point yet.

The door opened, and a young woman directed Van down the hallway, into a sitting room. Van’s gaze was immediately drawn to two bookcases that stood against deep purple walls. He walked toward them, then stopped, noticing a sign that threatened amputation if the books were disturbed. Van laughed.

He understood.

His eyes scanned the titles housed on the shelves.

“Not bad,” he said aloud.

“Glad you approve,” LaVey said, walking into the room.

Van turned to find the organist again dressed in black.

“I enjoyed your show,” he said.

“Care to sit in with me sometime?” LaVey offered.

“Yes,” Van replied, pleased.

That afternoon, the two men discussed music, literature, even criminal behavior when LaVey learned that Van was studying forensics. At the time, LaVey’s philosophy was still developing, but Van appreciated his rebellious attitude toward societal and religious norms. LaVey enjoyed the fact that Van’s father was a preacher, and Van liked that everything about this charismatic man was the antithesis of his father’s ideology. Each was attracted to the other’s mind and talent. While Van never really became a member of the Magic Circle – a group of LaVey’s core followers, many of whom would later form the Church of Satan – he came to understand the man’s teachings better than most and would often sit in with him at the Lost Weekend. Van would relate these conversations to William, who would caution my father to be wary of such unorthodox thought.

While he was attending college, Van decided to pursue a new interest. His experience in the library at Hinchingbrooke had fueled his appetite for old books, and he made a trip to Mexico to see if he could find anything of historical value from book dealers there. The bookstores he visited, many located in outdoor markets in Mexico City, were filled with precolonial documents and books dating back centuries, and Van reverently ran his fingers across their thick, yellowed pages. He chose several that he could afford and returned to San Francisco eager to discover what kind of profit he could make from his purchases.

He contacted a man named Henry von Morpurgo, who, being an alumnus of Lowell High School, promised to help Van sell his books.

Van called William to tell him about Morpurgo.

“This guy is hiding from the law,” he told William. “He was indicted for embezzling funds from the Sister Kenny Foundation and charged with federal mail fraud. He has assured me he can sell some of my books and wants me to meet him in Los Angeles. Do you want to come along?”

“Sure,” William said. “I’m not real comfortable with you dealing with this guy by yourself. He sounds like a shyster.”

Van and William drove to Los Angeles a few days later and checked into a room Morpurgo had booked for them at the Roosevelt Hotel, where many celebrities of that era stayed. When they met with Morpurgo that evening, he informed Van that he had been unable to generate interest in the books.

“Let me make it up to you,” Morpurgo said, handing Van a piece of paper. “She’ll take care of you.”

William went back to his room, and Van went to another room in the Roosevelt, listed on the paper Morpurgo had given him. A high-priced call girl, paid for by Morpurgo, awaited him.

The next morning, noting his friend’s disheveled appearance, William asked Van what had happened.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Van said, obviously upset.

William, taken aback by Van’s demeanor, did not dare broach the subject again.

The following year, 1956, Gertrude, desperate to rid herself of her son, decided it was time for Van to get married. She enlisted the help of her best friend, Ruth Williamson, whose daughter, Mary Annette Player, was beautiful, meek, and impressionable. Ruth agreed that Van and Annette would be a perfect match.

Ruth and her husband had divorced when Annette was a young child, and Annette had spent her life being shuttled back and forth from her mother’s home, in San Francisco, to her father’s home, in Stockton. Her parents fought constantly, and Annette was often caught in the middle of their disagreements. She wanted to live with her father, but Ruth was a domineering woman who refused to turn over control of her daughter to her ex-husband. As a result, seventeen-year-old Annette suffered from bouts of melancholy brought on by the disharmony in her life. By the time Ruth and Gertrude decided to introduce her to Van, Annette was ripe for the picking.

Gertrude and Ruth arranged the first meeting carefully. Gertrude knew that if she told Van she was bringing home a girl for him to meet, Van would refuse to be there. Instead she waited for the right moment, finally deciding that she would invite Ruth and Annette over on a night Van had to play at the Lost Weekend. She wanted him to look his best, and Van always dressed sharply when he had a gig.

The two women picked the date, and Ruth showed up promptly with her daughter, who had no clue that she was being set up. Gertrude and Ruth chatted with Annette in the living room, waiting for Van to emerge from his room. Finally they heard his door open.

Van stopped abruptly when he walked into the room. Sitting on the sofa was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. He stared for a moment at her thick, dark eyebrows, arching high over deep brown eyes that were slanted to perfection. He noticed the hint of red tinting the wavy brown hair that framed her sculpted face. She looked like Audrey Hepburn.

Annette fidgeted under Van’s bold inspection but smiled shyly while Gertrude made the introductions.

On August 19, 1957, Earl Van Best Jr. and Mary Annette Player were married. The plan had worked.

Ruth had insisted that Annette’s father not be told about the wedding, and he was livid when he discovered that his underage daughter had married without his consent, but he held his tongue, because his daughter seemed so happy.

Van spent the first few months courting his young bride. They rented a small one-bedroom apartment at 415 Jones Street, on Nob Hill, and set about furnishing it using money Annette had saved. Van made a little money playing the organ but did not make enough to pay all of the bills. He convinced Annette to invest the rest of her savings – $1,090 – in a trip to Mexico.

“When I was in England, there were all of these old books at Hinchingbrooke that had to be worth a fortune,” he told her. “I know I can go down to Mexico, find old books and documents, buy them cheap, and bring them back here to sell for a profit. I’ve done it before. All I need is capital to get me started.”

At first Annette resisted, but eventually my father wore her down.

He went to Mexico City and found an old book dealer who would sell him precolonial documents by the pound. Van sorted through them, choosing this one and that, and bought as many as his funds allowed. When he returned to San Francisco, he walked into Holmes Book Company, on the corner of Third and Market Streets, and sold some of his books for a substantial profit. Pleased with himself, he hurried home to tell Annette.

Before long, Van began making frequent trips to Mexico, his love of old literature suddenly becoming a successful business venture. He bought everything he thought could turn a profit – British first editions, rare comic books, old scrolls. He enjoyed not only hunting for rarities, but also haggling for the best prices he could get. He was finding his marriage, however, not so rewarding.

Upset by the tension the marriage had caused with her father, Annette had become more melancholy than ever, but Van had little sympathy for her emotional state. She was ignoring him just as his mother had ignored him all of his life, and to him that was a betrayal. Instead of comforting his wife, he belittled her, screamed at her, and eventually began physically abusing her.

Over the next year, any minor infraction was rewarded with a slap, a punch, and soon beatings that would leave the young girl bruised for weeks. Fearing for her life, Annette finally told Ruth and Gertrude what was happening, but they, too, were unsympathetic and insisted that she should try harder to make her marriage work.

Annette tried to be brave. She tried to please Van. Nothing worked. Van had so much anger buried inside of him, and she was available.

Annette toughed it out for as long as she could, but after a particularly brutal fight on New Year’s night in 1959, her fear of dying became greater than her fear of disappointing her mother. Annette called her father when Van left to go play music at one of his familiar haunts.

H. S. Player was furious when he saw the bruises and cuts on his daughter’s face. He helped her pack her things and hurried her from the apartment. The next day he called the law office of Felix Lauricella and arranged for a meeting.

On January 4, Mary Annette Best filed for divorce on the grounds of extreme cruelty and inhuman treatment. Her marriage to my father had lasted one year, four months, and sixteen days. She had barely escaped with her life.

Van was enraged when he found her gone, but there was nothing he could do.

The divorce was granted April 8, 1960, and Annette was awarded the furniture and the money she had invested in Van’s business. He was ordered by the court to pay her seventy-five dollars each month until his debt was repaid.

Annette remarried in 1961.

Van moved back to his small bedroom on Noe Street.

Van sipped on a Zombie while he waited for William at the Tonga Room, in the Fairmont Hotel. The bar, famous for its exotic drinks as well as its unusual decor, had become one of his favorite hangouts.

As the orchestra set up its instruments on a barge that floated back and forth across a seventy-five-foot lagoon in the center of the bar, Van stared at the document he had brought with him.

“Sorry I’m late,” William said, pulling out a chair. “Where’s LaVey?”

“Couldn’t make it,” Van said, flagging a waiter. “He can’t seem to get away from his flock these days.”

“So how have you been?” William asked, wondering what Van wanted to show him. He had sounded excited on the phone and insisted that they meet that day.

“Wait until you see this.” He held up the document for William to see. “Look, it’s the Spanish coat of arms. And look here,” Van said, pointing to the signature. “King Philip II.”

“Where did you get that?”

“Mexico City. There’s a run-down bookstore in La Lagunilla Market, near the old Santa Catarina Church. The owner is an old man who sits outside all day waving customers in. I walked by one day, and we started talking. He brought me into the back room of his store and let me go through everything he had. I got this for a pittance.”

“What’s its significance?” William asked.

Van put his drink on a nearby ledge and wiped the table off with his napkin before spreading the document across it. “It authorizes a young lieutenant to go to Nueva España to recruit soldiers from the native Mexican Indians in the sixteenth century. Apparently this lieutenant was of noble lineage, judging by his name and the care with which the scribe prepared this order. And look here: the king’s own coat of arms in addition to the Spanish coat of arms. You don’t come across documents like this every day. I can sell this for a tidy sum.”

William was impressed. He had thought my father was crazy when he first started foraging in Mexico. “It’s no way to support a family,” he had informed Van then. “It’s not stable income.” William had developed a lucrative business as a private investigator and had hoped Van would join him. Van had refused, preferring to traipse across Mexico searching for treasure.

“I’m happy for you,” William said.

“Thanks. I need this right now.”

William sensed something was wrong. “How’s Annette?” he said.

“Gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yes. She took off to her father’s months ago and filed for divorce. Said I was cruel to her. Can you imagine?”

William could, but he shook his head. “She was a little too young for you anyway.”

Van smiled. “That’s the way I like them.”

The two men ordered their dinner as the orchestra struck its first notes. As the evening progressed, rain poured into the lagoon, and thunder and lightning accompanied the band. It was all part of a show designed to transport guests to the South Seas. Menacing totems towered over guests, creating an ambience of mystery and excitement in the room as couples danced to the music in the orange glow of lanterns and hanging globes.

Van enjoyed the Tonga Room because of its Asian cuisine, the menu reminding him of the succulent dishes he had eaten in Japan as a child. He and William talked as they ate, catching up on what had happened while Van was in Mexico.

“Have you noticed what’s going on in North Beach?” William asked.

“What?”

“The beach is filling up with beatniks. They’re everywhere. I hear they’re coming from all over the country.”

“Oh, yes. I remember Herb Caen wrote an article about them in the Chronicle a few years back. He seemed to be making sport of them.”

“I think it’s interesting,” William said. “These kids are spouting poetry and quoting Kerouac like they know what they’re talking about. I can see where this is going, but at least they’re reading something. And the music there has gotten better. Lots of jazz being played in the bars.”

“We’ll have to check it out one night,” Van said.

William nodded his agreement as Van flagged their waiter again.

“I’ll get this,” Van said when the waiter brought the check.

“Big money,” William joked.

“I’ll let you know how it goes.”

Van would eventually collect a tidy sum for his document. He wasn’t as fortunate on other trips, though, and soon found himself in dire straits, his bedroom cluttered with old papers and books that had no value in San Francisco’s antiquities market.

Van decided he should branch out and began traveling up and down the California coast, stopping at libraries along the way that might be interested in purchasing his books. He was able to make a living of sorts, but it wasn’t ever enough.

Seeking an alternative way to make money, he bought some ink and a quill and set about copying the handwriting from one of the documents in his collection onto some old parchment paper he had lying around. He dated it 1629. When he got to the signature, he pulled an old book from his personal collection and flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for. He practiced for a few minutes before signing the document: King Philip IV.

He sold it the next day, and my father was back in business.

He continued his travels to Mexico looking for authentic documents, but when he couldn’t find anything of value, he became adept at forgery. Bookstore owners trusted him; his finds had always been good before, so they didn’t check what he brought them as carefully as they might have otherwise.

By the fall of 1961 things were looking up for Van. He had taken a job as an IBM clerk but was still selling legitimate antiquities and some forgeries on the side. He met up with William at Schroeder’s Restaurant, on Front Street, in late September for lunch. Established in 1893, the restaurant had a menu that included staples of traditional Bavarian cuisine, such as Wiener schnitzel, bratwurst, sauerbraten, and potato pancakes, and it appealed to William’s German side. Van liked it because no women were allowed inside during the lunch hour. It was a gentlemen’s restaurant, where men were free to laugh and talk without the restrictive presence of ladies. Businessmen, dressed in business suits, would sit at the rosewood bar and smoke big cigars. Van felt important when he walked into Schroeder’s, like he belonged at the bar with these fine gentlemen. He often stared over the lip of his tall beer stein at the Hermann Richter murals that dominated the walls, admiring Richter’s use of color. In one, a tasty blond wench with an overflowing bosom playfully sat on the lap of an eager young man clad in shorts, a white-collared shirt, and a red vest. In another, a group of gentlemen sat around a table, gesturing grandly as they argued the politics of the day.

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.

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.

From left: Anna Jordan Best and her husband, Earl Van Dorn Best, with their children in 1905. Earl Van Best Sr. is sitting on his father’s lap.

From left: A business card showing my grandfather Earl Van Best Sr.; my father, Earl Van Best Jr. (known as “Van”); and my grandmother Gertrude Best when they were missionaries in Japan.

My father, Van, as a boy in Japan.

From left: Carolyn Best, Katherine Broadway, Geraldine “Bits” Best, Bob Best, and Van on summer vacation at Myrtle Beach in 1948.

Van and his friends William Lohmus and Bill Bixby in an ROTC photo in their high school yearbook.

The house at 514 Noe Street in San Francisco, where my father grew up.

Judy Chandler as a teenager, at about the time she met Van.

Van and Judy’s apartment in New Orleans when I was born.

The first in a series of articles by San Francisco Chronicle reporter Paul Avery, mocking my father.

Van holds up one of his swords in another Chronicle article by Paul Avery.

Paul Avery reports the end of the “Ice Cream Romance.”

My baby picture, taken at Southern Baptist Hospital, February 12, 1963.

The apartment building at 736 North Boulevard in Baton Rouge where my father abandoned me.

The stairwell on which I was found.

My baby picture, as it appeared in the Morning Advocate.

A report in the local newspaper of the wreck that took the life of Sheryl Lynn Stewart.

“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.

In St. Paul’s United Methodist Church on January 5, 1962, my underage mother and my father said their vows.

“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.”

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 sorted 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.

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.

Van didn’t bother to tell Judy that he had lived a block away on Jones Street with his last wife. He simply led his lover through the foyer and up the steps to their new home.

They spent the next month pretending they were married and hoping Verda would not find them. In July, Judy became ill, too. Worried that she had contracted hepatitis from him, Van brought her to San Francisco General Hospital on July 30.

Judy was diagnosed with hepatitis, but the physician also informed the fourteen-year-old that she was pregnant.

When she was released from the hospital, she nervously called Verda.

“Mother, I have to tell you something,” she said.

“What now?” Verda snapped, irate that Judy had not contacted her since she had run away. “Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick.”

“We went to Mexico, but there was an earthquake and we had to come back,” Judy said nervously. “And I’m pregnant. Three months. Mother, I’m scared.”

Verda’s tone became reassuring, persuasive, as she asked Judy to come home so they could talk about it. “Bring some things for an overnight stay. We have to figure out what to do.”

“Okay,” Judy said. “I’ll have Van drive me.”

When Judy and Van pulled up to the house at 1245 Seventh Avenue, Verda was waiting. Although Van had scanned the area, he had not seen the police cars hidden around the corner from the house. The officers waited until Van got out of the car before they confronted him.

“Earl Van Best, you are under arrest for child stealing,” one officer said, grabbing Van and pulling his arms behind his back. Judy struggled with the officer as he clamped the handcuffs tightly around my father’s wrists.

Crying, she watched the police take him away.

“How could you do this?” she screamed at her mother as Verda herded her into the house.

“How could you?” Verda answered.

My mother was sent back to the Youth Guidance Center.

My father was placed in a cell on the sixth floor of the Hall of Justice. He was sitting on his bunk, contemplating his next move, when a handsome young man walked up.

“Mr. Best, might I have a word with you?”

Van looked at him questioningly, wondering if he was a lawyer. “I’m Paul Avery, with the San Francisco Chronicle,” the man said. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

Van shook his head.

Avery pulled out his notebook. “Where did you meet Judy?” he asked.

“At Herbert’s Sherbet Shoppe. She was there … beautiful and sweet,” Avery would later quote Van as saying.

“But she was only fourteen,” Avery said.

“That didn’t matter.”

Over the next half hour, Van told Avery the whole story.

“He Found Love in Ice Cream Parlor,” read the headline of the San Francisco Chronicle on August 1, 1962. Pictures of Van and Judy were splashed across the page, accompanied by an article depicting their romance. “At the moment, several sets of steel bars and more than a mile in distance separate Van and his one-time wife, Judy Chandler,” Avery wrote before describing how the now twenty-eight-year-old man had fallen in love with a teenager.

When Van saw the article, he was furious. He didn’t like the way Avery had portrayed him as if he were some old, balding child molester. Avery would later dub their love affair “The Ice Cream Romance.” Van would never forgive him for mocking his love for Judy.

Other newspapers followed suit.

The San Francisco Examiner reported that “the mild-mannered, bespectacled son of a Midwest minister sat in his cell at city prison yesterday and wept for his bride – blonde, 14, and pregnant.”