“Uh-huh.”
She left the drink on the counter, walked back to the table, and set a plate before him.
Larry looked out the window and addressed silent words to the shed whose door he had spoken to on many nights. The door’s frame was painted park green and could not be obscured by the hypnotic, cool, white, drizzly air filling the back yard, floodlit by the kitchen light. Their house was seven blocks from Ocean Beach, and, depending on the night, the incoming breezes were salty or fishy or odorless, but always left the neck feeling good. He could barely see the shed at the far end of the back yard, the shed he had built when he worked midnights and needed sleep. Inside was a single bed ready to embrace his warm body. Banishment from the bedchamber could happen on any night, and taking orders was easier than arguing. He had memorized the number of steps from the house to the door. Thirty-three steps would take him past a barely visible, single orange calendula, last in a long row, not needing his fatherly love for another day or two.
After he said grace and Lauren listened, he asked, “Did you take your medicine today?”
“Went up to St. Thomas and said a rosary for Mom and Dad.” She stood by the side of the table near his elbows.
“God is taking care of your mother. Why don’t we take a trip to Ireland and visit Kevin in...September or October...before winter?”
“No.”
He pulled out the green envelope and said, “Here.”
While she opened the envelope, he looked out the window again and back at Lauren. He hoped a smile would appear. It didn’t.
“Who gave you these tickets?”
“O’Hara.”
“Well, I’m not going.”
She handed him the envelope, its contents shoved back inside.
He heard scratching on the roof gutter.
Same two doves getting cozy with each other.
Lauren’s rants against the side effects of the medication never stopped. Telling her that she was not responsible for her mother’s choking to death went nowhere. According to Lauren, the meat she was feeding her mother the night she died was not cut in small portions.
She sliced the lemon meringue. “What did you want to tell me? Is it about Mark?”
The slice slid into sauce left by the scalloped potatoes.
“Yes. He asked me to meet Joan. Can you get me another plate?”
“And?”
“It didn’t go well.”
She sat down on the other side of the table, lit a cigarette, and snuffed it out in the pink ashtray. Her eyes were blank. “Call him. You’re his father.”
Larry reached over and turned on the radio.
She got up and turned it off. “Joan isn’t....”
“Don’t bring her up.” Larry looked down at the plate and lifted a fork.
“I told you when you built that home up at Russian River I wouldn’t go. It’s unfinished, and that corner store never has what I need. All I do there is talk to the neighbors on the phone. I could stay at home and do that. I wouldn’t know what to do in Ireland, and I can send letters to the relatives, which I do, when I’m not busy. I think I’m going to die soon.”
She was not going to die.
Lauren rubbed her dull-white forearm scar as if it could be removed and said, “When’s Cornelius’ funeral?”
“Monday.”
“Are you going?” she asked.
“Yes. Father Ralph will say the funeral Mass.” He tasted the lemon and butter. “Do you want to go?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I won’t be feeling well on Monday.” She stood up and moved a few feet away.
The ceiling light, a white bowl with a point and gold paint lining the edge, made him squint. He knew the frailty of existence. He stood quickly, moved forward, and lightly grabbed her shoulders.
Lauren pulled back and complained, “My feet hurt. Watch out you don’t step on them. They hurt all day. For Christ sake, call Mark and tell him you love him and....”
Larry leaned in and kissed her on the cheek.
“What was that for?” she asked.
“You.”
“I’ll be upstairs.”
For the next hour in the living room, Larry read his History of the Roman Empire. A fragile page on the rule of Diocletian drifted back and forth, and he thought about what it would be like to be prevented from going to Mass or confession for an entire year, and which one of Diocletian’s descendants would have warned him to stay away from the Greenwich? Pity crowded out empathy for those with an impediment to the faith.
I’m going to solve this case in one week or else.
Or else what?
Chapter 10
Saturday, July 6
“Can you buy some baby formula? Do you need some money?” Larissa Rey asked.
“No, I got money. I’ll be back later.”
Pablo Morales got off the Muni bus and found a good spot at Eighteenth and Castro while locals patronized restaurant patios and bars. The corner was busy on a Saturday.
Ortiz got arrested at the Greenwich, and Larissa knows.
Hiding essential details was a habit, except on Saturdays outside the corner bank. He looked at his reflection in the window. White wife-beater straps rose and fell as corded trapezius muscles rolled, giving him a private thrill and the idea that what was needed was something to go around his neck.
With tips from the Greenwich in his pocket, he swung the baseball cap around down over his forehead and walked into a leather shop next to the bank. Inside a glass display case was a black cord and a German iron cross. He had seen it before. Where the black-enameled horizontal and vertical pieces intersected, the words, “Cowboy Up,” crowed its first wearer’s status in gold leaf. Barbed wire facsimiles around the top and bottom of the cross matched the barbed wire tats wrapped around his upper arms.
Without looking at the clerk, he handed over thirty-five dollars. The mirror on top of the display case showed two enlarged muscles squeezing the new cross.
The bank’s prominence gave maximum exposure. He took off his baseball cap and saw someone staring at his reflection. Pablo pivoted around and said, “What are you looking at?” The short man hurried across the street, and Pablo felt good that so little effort from him could intimidate a grown man.
Pablo was in front of the bank for a reason.
Across the street, two police officers, one male and one butch-looking female, strode toward the corner. Their relative closeness convinced him to turn back to the window. He pulled the baseball cap from his back pocket and placed it on his head and pulled down. It was better there than riding piggy-back on one of his best assets.
Standing so close to the bank window was like roasting marshmallows. He risked a look upward to assess the weather situation. Fog was failing to get over Twin Peaks.
The neon-red, polarized sun goggles stayed in place as he pulled the wife beater over his head and stuffed it an inch down his back pocket. Black, tight-fitting twill pants, black high-top shoes, and a black leather wrist band were earning him a predatory reputation to those men who knew. Grooming was a specialty. He liked the worshipping glances of passersby, male or female, and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, hoping to catch a man.
“Are you gay or straight?” a woman asked. Without waiting for an answer, she inquired further, “Can I touch?” Her two female companions giggled as the hand of the thirty-something reached his right pec. Pablo felt pinned to the wall like a poster idol and responded with a pec flex. Standing with both feet wide apart, just as her hand landed on its target, he leaned back on the heels of his running shoes, and, slightly off-balance, tilted his head up and grinned. She got closer and another flex got another squeeze.
“That was nice,” she said. “C’mon girls. Have a go at it.”
Pablo side-stepped the women and started walking. Light footsteps from behind made him stop and then speed up.
After some minutes had passed, he was back at the bank wind
ow. Looking over his sunglasses afforded a better view of who was watching. The butch cop stood directly across the street and was chatting to a store owner. Pablo pulled the wife beater out of his back pocket and scrambled to get it over his head. He knew it was better over his torso than adding cargo to what was already displayed in back. He readjusted the baseball cap to the correct angle, turned back to the window, lit a Marlboro with a cupped hand, and exhaled at the red and white no-smoking sign glued to the wall between the windows.
A few feet away, a dirty-blond, long haired man squatting on the sidewalk with his back up against the bank panhandled passersby.
Damn hippies. They belong on Haight.
He wanted to kick the man into the gutter.
A young Hispanic woman and an older lady, who could be her mother, passed by. He thought briefly about Larissa. Before turning away, a peek let him know they were strangers. Moving the baseball cap from the right side of his head to the left side gave him a better view of the young Hispanic woman’s rear end, which forced him to think about how he was spending his Saturdays.
Jesus, come get me.
Moving around the corner into the shade allowed him to see his reflection in a different bank window. A hand slicked down his hair, and the other hand placed the baseball cap in his other back pocket.
The handsome face looking back made him think, without knowing why, about the MacKenzie affair, which took him around the corner again into the bright sun at the edge of the sidewalk. He cracked his knuckles and inhaled another cigarette with a snap. Glossy whites showed inside a jaw squared by a chin strap beard.
Can’t believe they haven’t connected me with what went down at the Greenwich.
A middle-aged white guy with a paper bag in his hand walked by Pablo and gave him a knowing look.
Cracker. Fatso.
Pablo watched the man jaywalk, stop in front of a bar, and continue a slow walk to an empty spot where he could get a clear view of Pablo. Pablo looked around for the two cops and argued with himself on whether to cross the street.
More men passed by. The cracker seemed to lose interest, and Pablo lost interest.
A man in leather gear, smooth and soft to the touch, stopped. Pablo quickly turned his head and stared. This was the man who had tried to put Pablo in restraints. Pablo remembered that he enjoyed the bondage at first, and he was the first dude Pablo had ever kissed. They had smoked marijuana to get warmed up for the session, and just as the first wrist handcuff snapped shut, Pablo ordered him to stop.
The man’s masculine face reminded Pablo of what was said. “What’s wrong little man? Scared I might rape you?”
Pablo hated being called “little man.” He remembered being a little high, knocking the man off his bed, demanding the handcuff be released, and getting the startled man to submit.
I grabbed his wallet, and his license let me know the bitch was forty-five.
“You’re the one who stole twenty dollars out of my wallet. I want it back, asshole.”
“I gave you the finger then and you’re gettin’ it now.”
The leather man was intimidated, one more time.
Pablo cooled down. Suddenly, he felt lonely, threw the cigarette into the street, pulled out a tic-tac container, and popped some in his mouth. The plastic candy container pinched his thigh, and a fake ID in his money-clip that would get him into any bar rubbed against his butt.
There got to be a better way to make money than this.
The leather man was now across the street talking to a group of other leather men. None of them were seeing Pablo.
They look hot.
If I hook up with that rich man, it would mean an end to prostitution.
If I do, what about the gang, my Mom, my bro?
Pablo’s big brown eyes had failed to regulate the entire street. The middle-aged, white man he had scared away had crossed to Pablo’s side. Pablo hogged the curb and ignored the stares and sounds of displeasure from old and young waiting to cross.
He thought he heard someone say, “Tip slip.” Holes in his pants earned him the nickname in elementary school, but there were no holes in his pants and nothing sticking out, and straight-up confidence incited a desire to thump the first person who scorned his existence.
The middle-aged man approached.
Pablo looked away.
“Hey, stud. How are you?”
What a lame-ass, dumb-shit way to greet me.
Pablo said, “Okay. How are you?”
“Great. Um, can we walk somewhere?”
“Where you wanna go?”
“My car is parked a couple blocks away.”
“You got a place?”
“No, I thought we could do it...it will be real quick.”
“In the car?”
“Yeah, is that okay?”
Pablo looked away. He looked back and said, “Yeah, whateva.” They started walking. “Where’s your car?”
“On Diamond, next to the rec center.”
“Damn, dude, you wanna do it there?
“Just a few minutes...I swear.”
“One hundred dollars, nothing less.”
“Sure. Not a problem. How old are you?”
“Why you asking?” but Pablo didn’t want to lose his pick-up and answered, “Twenty.”
Pablo’s sunglasses shielded him from the bright midday sun baring down on sidewalks and windshields they passed. Moving cooled his sweat. He tried putting his hands into his pockets, but they wouldn’t fit. The money-clip poked at his butt.
The pitter-patter of the man next to him was annoying and comical.
“You got any poppers?”
“No.” He wished he had. The smell was going to be sour no matter how brief.
His heart pounded even though the pace was steady. He lifted the baseball cap and placed it facing backward.
“Give it to me now,” Pablo ordered.
The man pulled out his wallet. He handed Pablo five twenty-dollar bills. The bills crumpled as Pablo pushed them into his pocket. His heartbeat increased. The man’s short legs moved quickly and with every step he tried to stay at Pablo’s side. Pablo didn’t feel a need to change his long strides as they moved him away from his buyer.
“You married?” Pablo asked, looking back at the man.
“Divorced.”
“Got kids?”
“Yes.”
“Sons?”
“Yes.”
“Ever fool around with them?”
“God, no!”
“My uncle used to fool around with me.”
“Did he?”
“No, just wanted to see what you’d say.”
Pablo looked at the black Cadillac SRX parked on the street next to the rec center. Un-tinted glass made the whole idea risky.
“What’s the tattoo on your fingers?”
“Bang.”
“What’s the dice tattoo on your arm mean?”
“Life’s a crapshoot. Now, shut up.”
Twenty minutes later, Pablo looked in the rear-view mirror, slicked his hair into place, wiped his lips, then wiped his hands on his pants.
“Can I kiss you?”
“What? Hell, no, I don’t kiss dudes.”
“Well, thanks.”
Pablo felt for the baseball cap in his back pocket, leaned over, touched the rubbery ridges of the floor mat, and found it. It wouldn’t look good to be driven anywhere. The man yelled, but Pablo didn’t look back.
The J Church streetcar was five blocks away. Fog whipped down the street. He pulled down hard on the baseball cap until it rested on his sunglasses as he ran and wiped his sweaty armpits midblock with the wife beater.
Just before a more calculated sprint to the Muni platform, the kid bellhop stepped out of a shop on Eighteenth, three blocks from the Castro corner. Josh Hawkins was alone. Pablo nearly ran into him. When they were face-to-face, Pablo hoped he might be mistaken for someone else and raised a hand to the bill of the cap. It seemed possible. Josh acted as
if he hadn’t seen him.
Images of the Greenwich flooded Pablo’s brain, and he swore, wishing it was his day off. He had twenty minutes to get to work.
•••
Pepper watched Josh Hawkins approaching the front desk. He was a boy and knew nothing of what had left her feeling as if she needed to see a doctor. Her feminine needs and being fired and told to come back left her head achy.
Josh dropped a bag at the counter, which elevated her unease.
“Pepper, I heard you were fired.”
She drew her hand to her mouth and coughed. “A misunderstanding.”
“Can I take my dinner break?”
“I guess. I’m your boss until a replacement is found...for Mr. MacKenzie.”
“Oh. No one’s said anything to me about that. Only Father Ralph.”
“What time did you start today, Josh?”
“Three thirty.”
“It’s seven, so that’s fine.”
She was glad to be back and now it seemed she had another duty, supervising the bellhops. She felt good about that, mostly.
I wonder who will replace Cornelius. I hope it’s someone other than a Greenwich employee. They’re too young and inexperienced.
“I’m glad to be back at work,” she whispered.
“Me, too. I’ll be in the break room. Oh! I saw Larissa there, and she asked about some cufflinks. Do you know who they belong to?”
Her body shook. She had taken the eighteen carat cufflinks out of her purse and placed them on the table to admire.
She offered an explanation. “I saw them, too, but when I looked at my cell phone, I realized I had gone past my break time by five minutes and forgot to take them to Lost & Found.”
After patting her white blouse into place under the medium-wide, black belt, she said, “Doris, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Pepper got out in front of Josh as he walked down the main hallway.
A young man passing by winked, and Pepper noticed that Josh got closer to her.
She had a strange premonition just before opening the door and said, “Stay here.”
Pablo sat at the table, but she entered anyway, hoping to overcome her anxiety. He looked delirious, his forearm lying on the table. When he saw her, he hurriedly pulled his uniform jacket sleeve to his wrist.
Pretty City Murder Page 16
