by John Levitt
Victor gave what passes for a smile with him. “Hardly. A report of a kid over in the Tenderloin casting petty spells on enemies for money.”
“Sherwood? What about you?” Eli asked.
“No, I’ve got things. But you boys have fun.”
Victor looked at his watch. “We need to get over there quickly. Mason. We’ll take your car.”
I found it hard to believe Victor would condescend to ride in my old van, but then remembered we were going to the Tenderloin. Victor wouldn’t take one of his own precious vehicles to that section of town. Even magical protection was no guarantee a homeless person wouldn’t piss all over the tires.
On the way over, I concentrated on driving while Victor and Eli gossiped about their counterparts in other cities. Each major city, and some rural areas as well, has a counterpart to Eli. Or Victor. There’s no true organization in practitioner society; no one is ever “appointed.” Victor and others like him assume the responsibility on their own, primarily because they can. Not many practitioners can carry it off, and even fewer want to. The ones who take charge do it primarily out of a sense of noblesse oblige. If not me, then who, Victor often pointed out. If he hadn’t been a practitioner Victor would have ended up in politics. It wasn’t altogether selfless, though. He enjoyed the power trip way too much to ever give it up.
“So, what happened with Alejandro?” Eli asked, referring to Victor’s counterpart in L.A.
“There was a mini coup. You remember Ricardo?”
“Of course.”
“Well, he apparently felt himself far more capable of running things than Alejandro, so he announced that from now on, he would be in charge.”
“How delightful of him. And what did Alejandro do?”
“What do you think? Told him, ‘Great, good luck,’ and went off for his first vacation in five years.”
I’d met Alejandro a couple of times and didn’t care for him; he made Victor seem like the model of kindness and tact. A particular type of person tends to gravitate toward power positions, and most of them push my buttons. But I could still appreciate his cleverness in defusing the situation.
“How long did Ricardo last?” I asked.
“Longer than I thought he would,” said Victor. “Almost a month. By then he was begging Alejandro to come back and take charge again.”
I believed it. The only thing I could think of worse than working for Victor would be to have the job myself.
I found an open parking space on Eddy Street near Van Ness and edged the van in. Victor slipped a quarter in the meter and put a freeze spell on it so it wouldn’t run out. For someone with such a rigid sense of ethics, you’d think he wouldn’t be using talent to scam a little time, but he claimed it was only because he was working.
“You wouldn’t expect a cop to put money into a meter on a police call, would you?” he said. “On my own time, I pay.” He probably did.
Victor took a moment to cast a delicate sheen over himself and Eli—nothing you could put your finger on—but they both now looked like they belonged in the neighborhood. Not street people, not junkies; it was more subtle than that. They were now just people who fit in. I hate to admit it, but the man is good. He started to do the same for me, then dismissed the idea.
“You’ll do just fine,” he said.
We walked the half block down to the KFC on the corner of Polk Street. Lou stayed by my heels, acting the part of a well-trained dog. Victor told us to wait, crossed over, and approached a man waiting outside the restaurant. I was impressed; I hadn’t thought Victor would ever be able to cultivate street-level informants without me. He spent a few minutes speaking with the guy, a middle-aged man of indeterminate race and few teeth, handed him some folded bills, then rejoined us.
“Okay,” he said. “Here’s the deal. There’s a young girl living at the Eddy Hotel who claims that for twenty bucks she can get revenge on anyone you want by putting a curse on them. Nothing spectacular, just enough to screw up their lives a little. She seems to have had some success, enough so that people take her seriously at least. Somebody had a beef with a liquor store owner, and the girl is going to take care of it for him. Right now she’s sitting inside the restaurant eating chicken wings, but she’ll be on the move as soon as she’s finished.”
This situation was unusual, but not rare. It’s a necessary part of the job. Occasionally, young kids with true talent are blithely walking around unaware of practitioner society. It wasn’t that Victor was concerned with petty curses, any more than the cops would spend time and effort tracking down a simple shoplifter. But if the girl was really able to do what she claimed, it meant she had some untrained ability. If so, she’d need to be taken off the streets and paired up with a mentor, someone who could keep an eye on her and show her the ropes. Otherwise, she might eventually grow strong enough to cause real trouble. And, depending on circumstance, that might lead to a mundane investigation that could cause trouble for us all.
Eli had established a group home for just such individuals, a combination home for troubled teens and school to develop talent. Sherwood spent a lot of her time working with the kids there. Her empathy and kindness makes her perfect for the job; the girls idolize her as a role model and the boys, naturally enough, fall all over themselves to gain her approval. All the boys have a crush on her and a few of the girls as well, but she never has a problem with any of them. She makes it clear what the boundaries are, and no one who knows her ever dreams of crossing them. That includes me.
We waited for the girl to come out, standing a couple of doors down from the corner. A few doors farther down from where we stood, an older street person swerved off the sidewalk and, with no self-consciousness, dropped his pants, squatted down between two parked cars, and made a large deposit in the street next to the curb. I’d forgotten the special charm of the Tenderloin. Lou wrinkled his nose and looked up at me with disdain.
“Right,” I said. “Like you’ve never taken a dump in the street.”
The door to the KFC opened. “That’s her,” Victor said.
She was your typical gutter rat: no more than seventeen, spiked hair, nose ring, a motorcycle jacket and oh-so-cool demeanor. Her hair was red and green with black roots, springing up over a pale face covered with pimples and sores either from untreated acne or drug abuse. She was carrying a skateboard under one arm, and a small backpack completed the street uniform. We were going to have trouble following her if she got on the skateboard, but she kept it tucked it under her arm as she strolled toward us.
We moved unhurriedly away, keeping about a half block ahead of her. When she passed the spot where the homeless guy had squatted, she paused. Grabbing a couple of pieces of cardboard from the gutter, she maneuvered the man’s deposit on top of the first cardboard section, using the other to scrape the stuff onto it. A paper bag that had blown up against a car wheel provided a handy container. She transferred the mess, and holding the bag carefully away from her body, continued down the street. Odd, certainly, but not magical.
Halfway down the block, she stopped in front of a liquor store, then turned back and began to walk in the other direction. We trailed behind, weaving through pedestrian traffic. The girl stopped a couple of times as if unsure where she was going, took a few tentative steps each time, then strode along, never looking back. She reminded me of something, but I couldn’t put my finger on it until Lou brushed up against my leg. That was it; she was like Lou on the trail of a scent.
Eventually she cut through an alley and stopped next to a gray Toyota parked in a red zone. She quickly scanned the surrounding area, but didn’t appear concerned about being seen. In the Tenderloin, people mostly ignore anything not directly affecting them.
The first thing she did was to carefully shake out the human waste onto the street next to the driver’s door. Next, she opened the backpack, pulled out a squirt bottle, and walked around the car, trying each door. The left rear door had been left unlocked, so she opened it, unlocked the d
river’s door, reached in, and popped the hood release. Finally, she walked to the front, raised the hood, looked into the engine compartment for a second, and then sprayed something inside with the squirt bottle. From where we were standing I couldn’t see exactly what she was doing, but wetting down the distributer was a good bet. She closed the hood and put the bottle back in her pack. After walking a ways farther on, she crossed over to the other side of the alley and hunkered down on her skateboard to watch and wait.
“Seen enough?” I asked. This run was a bust. The girl was clever, no doubt. She’d come up with a convincing scam to showcase her supposed powers, but she was no practitioner.
“Let’s wait awhile,” said Eli.
In no more than fifteen minutes, a well-dressed Middle Eastern gentleman appeared, stepping carefully over the accumulated filth of the alley. Our girl straightened up against the wall, showing interest, so it looked like this might be her target. The man walked directly to the car, stepping squarely on the pile of crap that had been left by the driver’s door. He cursed loudly and spent the next five minutes trying to scrape the residue off his shoe.
He finally got most of it, climbed into the driver’s seat, and put his key in the ignition. The engine turned over strongly but wouldn’t catch. After a fruitless couple of minutes, he opened the hood and peered inside hopefully, the way people do when they have no idea what they’re looking for. He got back in the car and tried again, without success. When he got out again he slammed the car door hard enough to make the car rock and pulled a cell out of his pocket. He leaned against the car and spoke loudly into it for a while. Across the alley, the girl sprang to her feet, flipped her board over, and pushed off down the street. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought she was smiling.
“Well, that was fun,” I said. “Can we go now?” I noticed both Victor and Eli looking at me with tolerant amusement. I was used to it from Victor, but not Eli. “What?” I said.
Victor got that condescending look on his face. “You have been out of the game for a while, haven’t you, Mason?” He motioned toward Eli. “You want to explain it to him?”
Eli nodded. “You have lost a step, Mason. Think about what you just saw. This girl finds the fresh ahh…deposit, right as she comes out of the restaurant. A piece of cardboard and a paper bag are conveniently available where she needs them. When she finds the car, she puts the stuff down in plain sight, but guess what—our victim, who has been walking carefully down the alley through a minefield of dog poop, somehow doesn’t notice until he steps right in it. And then, further luck! The door to the car has been uncharacteristically left unlocked. Who, I ask you, forgets to lock his car in this neighborhood?”
“And if you knew anything about cars, you’d know that simply spraying water on the distributer won’t keep it from starting,” Victor added. “Oh, it’s possible, but you have to take off the cap and spray inside the distributer if you want to be sure it has any effect.”
I was out of practice. I’d just accepted a whole string of “coincidences” without examining them for a minute. If I was going to be doing any investigating on my own I’d have to start paying closer attention.
“So she is using talent, then?”
“Of course. She just doesn’t realize it. We’ll have to get her into the Home. She shouldn’t be allowed to run around loose much longer. Sherwood will take her on, I’m sure. Hopefully this girl will turn out to be a worthy lost soul and not just an obnoxious street kid with talent.”
“You didn’t mention the most interesting part,” Victor said.
“How did she find the car,” I said, finally getting it.
“Exactly.”
“You think she could be a Finder?”
“She could well be. Or, she could have scoped out the location beforehand. We’ll have to wait and see.”
A Finder is a practitioner with a minor but rare talent. A Finder can locate anything, any person, any object. It has nothing to do with power or depth of talent; the ability is more along the lines of an idiot savant. Lou can do something similar, but with more restrictions. It’s a useful talent to possess.
We wandered back to my van and spent the drive back speculating about the source of the gems, but without any further information it wasn’t very productive, so conversation wound down after a while. I dropped them both off at Victor’s, then headed back to my place. About halfway home I realized I never did get any coffee.
Four
I stopped on my way home to get a veggie burrito at La Taqueria on Mission. When I got home I shared with Lou, who wasn’t happy about the lack of beef, but since he’d pretty much eat anything I didn’t worry.
I did some hard thinking about who would be my best source of information. Rafael Ramirez was the obvious choice. Music was one of his many talents, but he had others less respectable. As an occasional fence, he knew as much about precious stones as did most jewelers. He might not be able to tell me what my stone was, since it wasn’t a normal gem, but might well know if there were any more like it floating around.
But I hadn’t seen him in a year, and considering his lifestyle, it was about fifty-fifty whether he was even still among the living. It might be difficult to track him down. Usually I relied on Lou to locate people for me but he couldn’t help me this time. He has to know a person or at least have met them before he can locate them, and he’d never run across Rafael.
I spent the early part of the evening hitting various bars, mostly in the Mission, trying to get a line on him. The Make Out Room. Elixir. Galia. I even drifted up to Jerry’s in Bernal Heights, a place I hadn’t frequented for a spell. Jerry’s clientele is sketchy at best, one bare step up from street people, but a lot of odd people drift through there and you can pick up some interesting info from time to time. But no one had seen Rafael in a couple of months and no one was much interested in talking about him anyway. Apparently Rafael had burned a lot of bridges in the last year or so.
I knocked off the search early and decided to make a quick stop at Pascal’s party. If I left his place by nine-thirty I could still make it to the last night of the gig on time. There were always a few practitioners at his parties, ones that didn’t move in the same circles as Victor or Eli. Maybe I could pick up something there.
I took Lou with me. He loves parties. He runs his cute dog routine and snarfs up enough tidbits of cheese, pâté, and whatever else he can beg to feed himself for a week. Shameless is not the half of it.
Pascal lives on Stockton, just down from Washington Square Park. Finding a legit parking space in North Beach big enough for a van would involve magic far beyond my capabilities, something along the line of restructuring the universe. But I did have a trick. Right where Columbus crosses Greenwich a fire hydrant guards a prime spot near the corner. I parked next to the hydrant and then spent some time weaving an illusion which made the hydrant appear to be a nondescript electrical junction box. Usually I don’t like to use talent the same day I’m playing a gig. It uses some of the same reserves, and makes me feel like I’ve already played a set even before I start. But making one thing look like another is a lot less taxing than a spell which causes people not to notice it in the first place. The tricky part is providing a comfort level so that no one will question the substitution. If I just left the illusion unprotected, the first traffic cop who knew the neighborhood would stop to see what the hell had happened to the hydrant he knew was there yesterday. And it wasn’t an illusion that could stand up to much scrutiny.
I watched the people passing by and picked out the ones who obviously lived in the neighborhood, reaching out and taking a bit of familiarity from each one. Then I layered each piece of comfortableness into the illusion until it felt like something which had always been on that corner, familiar and unremarkable. Satisfied, I walked down the sidewalk toward Pascal’s.
The giant edifice of St. Peter and St. Paul’s Church loomed over me as I strolled along, spires and turrets layered on top of each other like weddin
g cake tiers. Over the front entrance, resting in niches, sit four large sculptures: a lion, an angel, and two ferocious winged creatures. I regarded them warily, remembering the alley, but they remained reassuringly immobile.
The entrance to Pascal’s flat is a five-feet-tall grillwork gate that accesses a tunnel, burrowing under the streetside building. You have to stoop to walk through it, and water pipes and tangled electrical conduits hang festively from the ceiling. It wasn’t a problem for Pascal, who barely clears five feet, if that, but most others have to use a shuffling crouch to pass through. The tunnel opens onto an interior courtyard, enclosed by three-story buildings, each with a wooden porch and stairs leading down to the courtyard. Lines filled with clothes in various states of dryness crisscross overhead. Jazz and rock and salsa echo off the sides of the buildings. It’s like being transported back to the fifties, when all of North Beach was like that, a bohemian casualness that’s all but disappeared. Or so I’ve been told.
Pascal’s flat is on the top floor of the largest building. He owns not only the flat but also the entire building, and most of the surrounding ones as well. And a few more around the city. As a young man he had arrived in San Francisco with money—some say from drugs, some say smuggling—from points unknown, and had bought up as many buildings on the cheap as he could. Now he’s a very rich man. He speaks French, Spanish, and Arabic, and English with a slight, indefinable accent. For all I know he speaks another ten or twenty languages as well, and nobody is sure what his mother tongue might be. He never talks about anything before his arrival in San Francisco. There’s definitely a story there.
There were already a lot of people at the party, even though it was early, and someone I didn’t know let me in. I threw my jacket in a small front room with a bunch of others, stuffing it in a far back corner where I could locate it later. It’s scuffed up more than the usual ubiquitous black leather jacket of the San Francisco yuppie/hipster scene, but it was still fair game. Go to any party these days, throw your leather jacket in the bedroom among twenty or so others, and your chances of retrieving it are fifty-fifty at best. I know people who have gone through four jackets in a year—if theirs are gone, they simply take one that looks close. And there’s always the chance of things coming full circle at some other party and them eventually ending up with their original jacket.
