by Ian Bull
He checks in, then walks the two blocks to the beach, sits on the cement wall and stares at the Pacific Ocean. This is his gift to himself on his first day of freedom. On his worst days in prison, he'd visualize this stretch of beach, a place he'd enjoyed as a boy, and he swore that whenever he got out, he'd come here first.
But after only ten minutes, the vast openness of the sky and water overwhelm him, making him feel like an untethered balloon that might blow away. He hurries back to his room and closes the blinds, trying to make his world small again. He orders a pizza delivered instead, and then watches TV in bed while eating his first true pie in years. It's a luxury to stretch out on a queen size mattress, even if it sags in the middle, and Johnny Carson is still as funny as ever. He almost feels happy.
The sound of squeaking box springs and female moaning and male grunting in the next room wake him up in the middle of the night. The man finally groans and the woman giggles. Sam sighs and stares into the blackness, listening to the sound of distant waves on the beach. He wonders how long it will be before he makes love again. How will they meet? Will she be kind? Warm? Pretty? Will she have a nice smile? Then he gets scared. How would he even start?
In the morning, he takes a shower, then stares at his wrinkled blue suit hanging in the open closet. His brown wallet and Garrett’s black wallet are on the side table, alongside his father’s broken Omega watch. It’s all he has in the world. He exhales and gets dressed.
As he exits his room he transfers all the cash to his wallet, tosses Garrett’s wallet in the dumpster, and looks for breakfast. He finds it two blocks away at Doggie Diner, which has on its roof the gigantic head of a smiling dog wearing a bowtie and a chef’s cap. Sam wolfs down a hot dog on the street, bending forward so the mustard splashes on the sidewalk. A Muni bus roars up, and he tosses the tail end of the hot dog bun to the hovering seagulls as he darts on board.
Sam gets off the Muni bus at the corner of Ortega and 28th Avenue and walks past the green, yellow, pink, and purple houses, then stops at one painted burnt orange, with a black wrought iron balcony and red geraniums on the sill. Sam stares at the house, exhales, and darts up the cement stairs and rings the bell and knocks on the door, but no one answers. He walks down the steps and stares up at the dark windows.
The front window on the neighboring purple house opens and a grey-haired woman in a bright Hawaiian housecoat sticks her head out the window. She has a black patch on her left eye. “They moved away a long time ago,” she says, shaking her head.
“Mrs. Wilkenson, it’s me, Sam Webb!” He touches his chest as proof.
She spits at him. “I know who you are, you hoodlum.”
“I’m looking for Rose, do you know where she went?”
“Are you deaf? I said they moved away!”
“If you know where she is, please tell her I stopped by. It’s important.”
“She and her boy are better off without you, you prison scum. Don’t you dare try to get back to together with her!”
“I’m not, ma’am! We have some unfinished business is all.”
“I don’t believe you! You’re a fake Casanova and you’ll ruin her life!”
“I’ll come back when I’m settled and give you my phone number. That way she can reach me herself. Okay?”
Mrs. Wilkenson shuts the window. Sam backs away and stares at both houses, a big man in a wrinkled blue suit that’s a size too small. The wind blows again, fluttering his suit and pant legs. He flips up his jacket collar and heads back towards the bus stop.
A black Lincoln Town Car, long with straight edges is parked in the bus zone. Sam turns on his heel when he sees it and heads the other way. The Town Car starts up, makes a U-turn, and follows Sam.
Sam grits his teeth and resists looking over his shoulder, but he knows the car is there. He glances at his watch, remembers that it’s broken, then pulls out the business card for his parole officer that McQuade gave him yesterday and swears under his breath. He jogs, then runs. The Town Car keeps paces with him but stays twenty yards back.
CHAPTER THREE
S am exits a yellow taxi in front of the grey cube that is the San Francisco Hall of Justice on Bryant Street. Sam’s blue suit is even more wrinkled, now with sweat stains under the arms. Sam dashes inside, but not before spotting the Lincoln Town Car parked across the street. Two large men sit in the wide front seat.
The San Francisco Adult Parole Department is on the third floor in an open area with rows of metal desks. After ten years of service, you get a cubicle. Twenty years, you get a cubicle next to a window. Thirty years, you get an office with a window. Sam slips past the reception counter, passes the rows of desks, makes a hard right at the cubicles and heads to the first office with a window and leans in. Officer Hal Weinstein, age fifty-nine and rail skinny, sits behind a cluttered desk stacked high with white paper and brown folders, and sips coffee from a Styrofoam cup. He grows his brown hair long on the right side of his head and combs it over his bald white head, then holds it all in place with a dark brown yarmulke. He pats his dome to make sure everything is still secure as he sips and reads. He spills a few drops on the white paper and mops it up with his brown tie.
“Knock knock,” Sam says, and Hal spills the whole cup of coffee on the file.
“Don’t you knock?” Hal asks as he pushes files off his desk to avoid the spreading pool of brown liquid.
“I did. I said, ‘knock knock’ instead of knocking,” Sam says.
“You’re supposed to wait out front,” Hal says.
“I was on time but they made me wait an hour, so I walked back here."
“I walked out front at three and you weren’t there,” Hal says. “I won’t bust you for being an hour late on your first day, don’t worry. What’s worse is that you’re already lying to me. Sit down.” Hal pulls out paper napkins from his Chinese take-out bag and mops up the coffee.
“Sorry, Hal. We’ve done this so often I thought we could do away with the formalities.”
“When you finish your parole, you can tap dance naked in here. Until then, life with me is nothing but formalities. Understand?” He tosses the napkin and sits back down.
“How much time you got left on this gig?” Sam asks as he sits in the metal chair.
“One year until early retirement, and it’s my goal to keep you clean until then. You will be my final project, and proof that my job and the system works, my wiseacre friend,” Hal says as he sits back down behind his desk.
“You are such a Boy Scout, Hal Weinstein. You should run for office. You’d be San Francisco’s first Jewish mayor.”
“Adolph Sutro was San Francisco’s first Jewish mayor, a multi-millionaire who served two terms and built public parks, including Sutro Baths, which he donated to The City. Before you mock my faith, know what you’re talking about. You look silly in that suit, by the way.”
“At least I don’t use my tie as a mop,” Sam says.
“Good one,” Hal says and hands Sam a business card. “Since you didn’t give the parole board a home address, that’s a hotel in the Tenderloin that takes parolees. Pay by the week and don’t move without talking to me first.”
“The Taj Mahal,” Sam says, reading the card. “It sounds exotic.”
“It’s not,” Hal says, then crosses his arms and leans back in his chair. “Now let’s get serious. What are you going to do about getting work?”
“Construction. Maybe work in a warehouse,” Sam says. He leans back and crosses his arms too, trying to mirror Hal. He read in a magazine that copying people’s body language makes them feel more comfortable.
“Warehouse, huh? Where you can pick up some loose merchandise off the loading dock and sell it to a fence?” Hal asks, riding the back legs of his chair.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Hal,” Sam says. He rides the back legs of his chair too, until the legs slip out from under him. Sam lurches forward to keep from falling, then tugs at his jacket.
“You will be t
empted. I’m just being realistic,” Hal says. He pats his head to make sure his yarmulke is still holding his comb-over in place.
“Rose left me, so I lost both my wife and my stepson. I've lost what was left of my youth, plus all my money. All I've got left is my freedom. I'll make it work, Hal. I have no other choice."
Hal slides a piece of paper across the table. "Nice speech. Here's a list of places that hire parolees. There are twenty years of goodwill on that list, and I don't give it to just anybody, so don't blow it for the next guy. Get a roll of quarters, find a payphone and start dialing."
“Minimum wage, here I come!” Sam says, pocketing the paper. “Thank you, Hal.”
The men stand up and shake hands…but Hal doesn’t let go. He’s a smaller man, but he yanks Sam forward until Sam must lean over the steel table. “Stay out of trouble. And stay away from Paul Barnes. He’s the worst thing for you. Promise me.”
“I promise,” Sam says. Hal lets him go and Sam rubs his sore hand. “Damn Hal, you’re intense sometimes. Are you this way with all your parolees?”
“I am with you. And you want to know why? Because you have an IQ of 125. It’s in your file,” Hal says. “They tested you in prison.”
“I had no idea. Is that good?” Sam asks.
"It's not genius, but it's up there. It means you could amount to something if you tried. It also means you may be a little too smart for your own good. You did devote your 20s to being a burglar." Hal leans across the desk and pokes Sam in the chest.
“Maybe I’ll be your campaign manager when you run for Mayor,” Sam says and winks, then backs toward the door.
“Not so fast, I’m not done,” Hal says as he darts from around his desk. He blocks Sam before he can get out of the office. “Your jokes are the dust that blinds you from the truth about yourself. God wants you to make yourself clean, remove the evil of your deeds from his sight, cease to do evil, and learn to do good.”
Hal is too genuine for Sam to have a snappy response. Sam tries to slip out, but Hal puts out his arm and blocks the door.
“In the Talmud, the Rabbis write that if a man truly repents for his sins, he will be so completely transformed that in heaven his sins will suddenly count as good deeds. That could be you, Sam,” Hal says, touching Sam’s chest. “That could be you.”
Sam blinks at this skinny middle-aged religious guy with the bad comb-over who’s an inch away from his face. His eyes are wide and intense, like a prophet who knows he can save you, and doesn’t worry about how dumb he looks as he tries. Even more intense, however, is his breath, which smells like the Moo Goo Gai Pan he had for lunch.
Sam stares at his shoes and tugs at his dirty clothes. The fact that Hal cares so much embarrasses him. “Okay, okay, I’ll clean up,” Sam says.
Hal drops his arm and slaps Sam on his back. “Good! Stay in touch! Maybe we’ll go see a Giants game and watch Vida Blue pitch. He’s a great comeback story. Just like you.”
“Sounds good. Thanks, Hal," Sam says. He finally squeezes past and runs for the exit.
CHAPTER FOUR
T he Tenderloin is a crappy neighborhood, where the denizens of the soft underbelly of The City live in single occupancy hotel rooms and studio apartments. At night, the streets are wet and the air is cloudy with fog. As Sam walks along Turk Street looking for the Taj Mahal Residence Hotel, he notices that the Tenderloin is black and white with shades of grey, just like the black and white classic, The Maltese Falcon, which has some scenes set in the Tenderloin. Sam imagines he’s like Humphrey Bogart, cool and tough, and it makes him feel like he can handle this place.
Vietnamese immigrants are moving to these sad 50 square blocks. They’re bringing their laughing children in bright colored clothes, and they’re putting flowers pots on window sills. But in 1980 it's still mostly drunks buying hip flasks of Thunderbird fortified wine, disabled Vietnam Vets with PTSD before we gave their trauma a name, and male and female prostitutes selling their bodies to feed their heroin habits. Sam trades friendly smiles with them as he walks past, but there is no chance of anything happening with any of them, despite his two years in prison. He wonders again how long he must wait before meeting the warm woman with the kind smile who entered his imagination in the middle of the night.
Sam finds the Taj Mahal. It’s a narrow three-story grey residence hotel with a big picture window on the ground floor. A small pink sign juts out from above the door with a gold and white image of the Taj Mahal outlined in red neon.
The lobby feels big as he walks in, but that's because it's painted glossy white and the only furniture is two green sofas and an easy chair by the big window. Three retired Merchant Marines in their 80s sit there in their blue wool pea coats – one is Irish, one is Filipino, and one is Chinese, and Sam can tell that this spot is theirs, all day and night, where the aging buddies watch the world go by.
“Hey guys,” Sam says and salutes the group, and they salute back.
Sam walks up to the counter. Mr. Amit Pavel stubs out his Beedi cigarette and stares at him from bloodshot eyes, with sockets puffy and black from lack of sleep. Mr. Pavel lives in a cloud of tobacco smoke that stains his teeth, his fingers, and seeps into his curly black hair. He’s five feet two inches tall, but he gazes up at you with a silent disdain that announces that you’re beneath him.
“I’m Sam Webb. I’d like to check in.”
“I’m Mr. Pavel. I own this hotel, as well as The Blue Sapphire on Ellis Street. Show me your identification, and fill out this form,” Amit Pavel says, and hands over a check-in form and a pen. “Did Hal Weinstein send you?”
“Yes,” Sam says. He smiles as he hands over his driver’s license, but Pavel doesn’t smile back. Instead, he studies Sam license as if it might be a forgery, while Sam fills out the form.
“You pay in cash. A hundred fifty dollars a week,” Mr. Pavel says as Sam finishes.
Sam takes out six hundred dollars. “I’ll pay for four weeks,” Sam says, handing it over.
“You will want a roll of quarters too,” Mr. Pavel says.
“Why is that?”
“There are two payphones and vending machines with sodas and snacks behind you and coin-operated washers and dryers in the basement, Magic Massage units on the beds, and you can buy cigarettes and candy at the front desk,” Mr. Pavel says.
Sam writes Mr. Pavel off as a slum lord who makes money coming and going, and sighs and as he hands over another ten dollars for his roll of quarters.
“Don't sigh at me,” Mr. Pavel says, as he slaps the roll of quarters on the table. “I am not a criminal like you. I came here with nothing, but I worked. Now I own two residence hotels. I paint, clean, and repair everything here. I am putting two daughters through Stanford. I have no patience for Americans who commit crimes and squander their birthright. If you screw up here, I tell all the other hotels and you can’t move anywhere else in this neighborhood. No more attitude. You behave, understand?”
“I understand,” Sam says. “I’m sorry.”
Mr. Pavel hands over the room key. “You clean. No food, no pets…”
Sam grabs the room key off the white counter and holds it like it’s a microphone. “I ain’t got no cigarettes! But two hours of pushing broom buys an eight-by-twelve four-bit room. I’m a man, of means by no means…King of the Road!” He backs away, shimmying back and forth across the green shag carpet. “I’ll be good, Mr. Pavel, I promise!”
Pavel blinks in shock but still doesn’t smile. Sam darts up the stairs.
The uppers floors of the Taj Mahal have two long hallways that cross in the middle, and every twenty feet there’s a door to another residence room. Each room has a queen-size bed, a small desk, and a chair. There’s a closet, and a small bathroom with a sink, toilet, and a bathtub with a shower. Glossy white exterior paint is slathered on all the walls and there’s a strong smell of bleach, but it doesn’t quite cover the smell of cigarette smoke, take-out food and body odor that has seeped into the walls and floorboard
s over the decades.
Sam finds that the door to Room 222 is already open, and two men are inside working. A Latino worker in blue overalls screws a box to the headboard of the bed, while a fat white man in blue polyester slacks supervises him. The fat man cinches his belt so tight he looks like a sack of potatoes tied in the middle. His name is Hiram Valosek, he’s twenty-eight years old, and he is the sales director for the Magic Massage Corporation. He’s also putting himself through grad school at night and is getting a master’s degree in a new subject called “computer programming.” Valosek can command an IBM computer to follow his orders, using stacks of cards with holes punched in them, which he feeds into the machine, like bills into a money counter. He has written several programs for the Magic Massage Corporation, and each program has over a hundred cards each. The programs he writes can do time-consuming clerical work instantly, like arranging all his clients on a list by their zip codes. Each stack of cards, which represents a program, is held together with rubber bands and stored in his briefcase.
“Excuse me, you’re in my room,” Sam says.
“We’re replacing the Magic Massage unit you vandalized,’ Hiram says.
“This is my first night here. Ask the manager.”
Wires coming out of the mattress run up into a coin-operated box screwed tight to the headboard of the bed. “She’s finished,” the worker says.
Hiram points at the unit. “This is a luxury item. It costs ninety-eight dollars to repair and install, which you now owe me.”
Sam puffs up his chest, stretching his blue suit. “I am not paying. I just moved in.” “You pay me now, or I will have Mr. Pavel throw you out,” Hiram says.
Sam ponders the situation. Mr. Pavel already has it in for him, and with the song and dance routine he just pulled, drawing more attention to himself may not help. Plus, he got more cash from Garrett's wallet than he ever expected, and these problems that he's experiencing may just be cosmic payback. Accept and move on, he thinks, and hands over a hundred-dollar bill.
