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Helen used to tell Hashem to save his money so he could visit his children and grandchildren in the Middle East. Clarke remembers that the cook talked about doing that soon, and Hashem would occasionally send money home to his family. But money was a problem. Hashem loved to gamble.
He was a regular in the shadowy world behind what most people see when they go downtown. He frequented the caffenios, the unnamed Greek coffeehouses where men gather to swap stories and play cards. For most of the men, the ritual is a social activity of limited consequence. In fact, Peter and Hashem played cards together some years ago.
But Hashem had long since graduated to more serious games of cards and dice, games that take place later in the night, games where only known faces are allowed to play. The stakes in some of these games could climb as high as $1,000 a hand, and Hashem won and lost a lot of money on a fairly regular basis. Some who know Hashem claim he won, and then lost, something on the order of $12,000 in the days before he attempted to poach eggs for a good-looking female patron of the Pinecrest Restaurant. Of course, Hashem's losses are not recorded anywhere, but it is known that the day before the fateful breakfast order, Helen loaned Hashem $300 and told him not to gamble, because he would lose it. Hashem did not listen to her. He lost the money.
"In my mind, he thought Helen brought him a jinx," says Foundas. The owner of the Pinecrest hated Hashem's gambling. In fact, three years ago, Foundas asked Hashem to leave the restaurant. He felt that Hashem was too tired to work after staying up all night gambling. But Helen stepped in. She called Hashem and told him to come back, that she would speak to Foundas on his behalf. It is a painful memory for the boss to recount.
"Helen felt bad for him. She came to me and said, 'We know his weakness. He needs this job. He's a good worker. Bring him back,' " says Foundas, who did.
"He never would have been here if it were not for her."
Bill Foundas has missed perhaps five weeks of work since opening the Pinecrest in 1969. "If you're going to run a restaurant, you have to be there," he likes to say. But on July 24, Foundas was not there. He was in the hospital for some relatively minor tests.
At about 6:50 a.m., Helen came into the diner for work and sat down at the counter, in the seat closest to the cash register -- and the door -- with a cup of coffee. Minutes later, Hashem got up from his seat at the opposite end of the counter and walked over to Helen. He told her that he didn't like what she'd said to him the day before about the poached eggs. He was upset, he told Helen, and had not slept all night. (In fact, Hashem had been gambling that night.)
Helen tried to reason with him. This was not a big deal, she said. The restaurant had never served off-menu food. But, according to the accounts of those who were there, Hashem would have none of it. He told Helen he was not going to work that day, and headed for the door. About halfway there, Hashem stopped. He turned around and pulled out a semiautomatic handgun from his jacket. Some people remember him saying, "I'm going to shoot you." Whether he said anything to her first or not, Hashem then shot Helen, the woman he had worked with for 20 years, in the right arm.
There were screams and people scrambling this way and that. Helen got out of the chair and ran behind the counter. But it was no use. Hashem shot her again in the back, and she fell to the floor. Then he walked closer and fired another shot into her neck, leaving Helen Menicou lying in a pool of blood on the floor.
As the diner erupted into full-scale pandemonium, someone called 911. Someone else held Helen's hand and told her to hang on. Hashem walked to the front of the restaurant and waited for the police.
Soon, firemen and paramedics rushed in and began trying to make Helen's body function, for even a few more minutes. Officer Richard Benjamin had started his shift at the S.F. Police Department's Central Station less than an hour before. Like most of the folks assigned to the station, he knew Hashem, and he knew Helen. The call was surprising. The scene was dumbfounding. On another morning, there might have been a cop or two sitting at the counter. An officer disarmed Hashem and took him away from the restaurant kitchen for the last time. More officers and detectives came. There was mounting dismay. Every one of the responding officers, it seemed, knew Helen and Hashem.
An ambulance whisked Helen from her beloved Pinecrest to the sterile world of the San Francisco General Hospital Emergency Room. Doctors put an air tube down her throat and stuck an IV in her neck, but it was too late. Helen was pronounced dead at 7:22 a.m.
On a sunny September Friday, Peter Menicou opens the door of his Millbrae home to usher in a visitor. From the front door of the house, you can see out the back window all the way to San Francisco International Airport and the bay.
"I've been cleaning the house. How did I do?" he asks, as though this home had ever been anything short of immaculate -- every ceramic teacup in place, every corner of glass glimmering, every photograph dusted.
"My wife used to clean the house on Friday afternoons," he adds. "I want to keep that up."
