The pictures of Donny kept coming, beckoning to me. Finally, in the early afternoon, I put on my sunglasses, climbed into my pickup truck, and drove the few miles down the hill to La Jolla, home of the Clam.
La Jolla is an eccentric community, geographically and economically isolated, its own enclave. Even though it’s part of San Diego, you have to write “La Jolla” on the envelope for it to get there. Many wealthy people live here, so I’m not much disposed to it, though in the days when I had out-of-town visitors, I was obliged to show them the Cove (site of numerous TV and movie scenes), and if they had a literary bent, take them on the Dead Writers Tour, starting with Raymond Chandler’s home at 6005 Camino de la Costa and ending at Dr. Seuss’s converted observation tower at the top of Mount Soledad. Both of San Diego’s two famous writers lived and died in La Jolla but were born elsewhere. San Diego is not a literary wellspring. You’re much more likely to run into a famous killer here. However, nowhere in its official annals is the city’s most famous and prolific killer, so designated.
La Jolla is Spanish for “parking nightmare.” I wandered around for about half an hour before I finally wedged into a tight spot at the bottom of the hill and walked up under the tall mottled palms. Down below the railed walkway, seals barked and yawped as the ocean waves clapped onto the rocky shore. One seal applauded, and I acknowledged it with a slight bow. An old woman bent from the weight of jewels dragged an ornamental rat of a dog at the end of its leash. A little tyke chased a flock of cormorants into a copse of stumpy cypress trees.
The Clam lies north of La Jolla Cove. Ask a lifeguard and he will pretend not to know where or what the Clam is. He doesn’t want you to know. He doesn’t want people jumping or diving off. He doesn’t want to have to call the paramedics, doesn’t want to have to scramble in himself and drag your broken bones up the smuggler’s tunnel. He doesn’t want helicopters flapping over, blood on his hands, nightmares, angry parents, journalists. He doesn’t want to tell Mom and Dad that Donny is dead.
The notorious cliff was fenced off and NO DIVING signs were posted conspicuously, but it was public beach, legally accessible to all. Against the chain-link fence that symbolically prevented pedestrians from wandering down the treacherous bluff many memorials had been placed — rough crucifixes, baskets of flowers, ribbons, medallions, and crude reliquaries full of photos and postcards. Most salient among these was a large green handmade crucifix wired into the links. It had faded and roughened in the sea air, but the words written in black felt pen across the transverse piece were still clearly legible: JIMMY IS IN GOOD HANDS WITH GOD.
I walked around the fence and strolled down the limestone bluff, its gritty, eroding surface netted with tiny succulents. This promontory was so carved and worn by the endless action of wind and sea that in a few hundred years it would no longer exist. The diving arena was horseshoe- or clamshell-shaped, hence the name Clam. A lone palm stood to the left. The ocean smelled of kelp, fish, sea lion, iodine, and fermenting zooplankton. A yacht puttered far out to the south. A Channel Ten news team was close by to the north, divers jumping backward off the rocks.
I had always been afraid of high places not because I thought I might fall but because I thought I might jump, so it was with extreme reluctance that I moved into the area where Donny must have stood, where all divers must stand, and stared down dizzily into that grotto of sorrow thirty feet below. The shivering mosaic of blues and greens shifted against the coral. The exposed rocks were shiny round and black. The waves rolled in to cover them, then withdrew again.
No one, as far as I knew, had ever jumped with the intention of suicide here. Death would be too complicated, not a certain outcome by any means. The Cabrillo Bridge in Balboa Park (often called Suicide Bridge by the locals) and the Coronado Bridge over San Diego Bay were better, more effective choices for those who wanted to fly for a time before they died. So as shameful or grievous as Donny’s death might’ve been to the family, I didn’t imagine he had intentionally tried to end his life here. It had been all about the thrill, and perhaps the dare.
A diver’s luck will depend on the tide. Thirty feet should be enough of a deterrent, but the jumper must also have good timing, must actually jump as the water has receded and is just returning. The entry point will almost always be shallow. A poorly timed jump or an improper entrance and you’re feet or headfirst onto the rocks. And no number of signs or laconic lifeguards or horror stories can deter the young daredevils from taking their Acapulco chances. Prohibition, on the contrary, makes the risk all the more appealing. Every week in the paper San Diegans will read about some unfortunate child who’s come here for the ecstasy of
