Soon the Rest Will Fall

by Peter Plate

  “To be honest, employment has been slow.”

  “How come?”

  “I had a little spate of trouble with the police. No big deal.”

  “Were you arrested for a crime?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever been convicted?”

  “Yup.”

  “For a misdemeanor?”

  “Nope.”

  “A felony?”

  “Once.”

  Her eyes went dead. “You’re not eligible for food stamps.”

  Robert looked at the floor and didn’t say anything. What was there to say? He had no cash. He was a felon. His wife thought he was a schmuck. He got up from the chair and shambled out of the cubicle. Then he retraced his steps through the waiting room and trudged from the building into the sun-drenched street. On the way out, one of the Samoan guards hooted at him. “Dumb ass white boy.”

  Breaking into a client’s residence wasn’t a parole officer’s usual modus operandi. Athena Diggs was willing to make an exception for Robert Grogan. She picked the lock to his door with an implement from her tool kit and stepped inside the apartment.

  All the windows in the living room were closed. The curtains were drawn. The wallpaper was perspiring from the heat. The coffee table was burdened with beer cans and three overpopulated ashtrays. The rug was slathered with dog biscuit crumbs.

  She ventured into the kitchen. A mound of dirty dishes was stacked head-high on the counter. Self-satisfied flies dive-bombed the pots and pans on the stove. A box of cookies was on the table. A dried-out orange and a bowl of cold cereal kept it company. There was no sign of Christmas anywhere.

  Sneaking into the bathroom, she had a collision with the deerskin. It was stretched over the curtain rod in the bathtub. Then she heard a muffled sound from the bedroom. Bingo. That was it. The white boys were hiding in the closet. Thought they were cunning. Thought they were tricky. It was all over for their shit. Robert Grogan and Slatts Calhoun had fucked up. Athena reached in her purse for the stun gun and the handcuffs.

  In the hall, she met the dog. There was an immediate standoff. An electric current washed against the black woman’s skin. Was the mutt going to bite her? She had visions of rabies. Her fears multiplied when the shepherd hippety-hopped over to her and rammed his snout in her crotch. She warned him. “Get the fuck away from me.”

  The dog’s hypnotic amber eyes drank her in. Flies caroused over the shepherd’s tormented head. Drool hung in stalactites from its muzzle. A red-tipped erection nestled between its furry legs. Athena gave the pooch a shove with her hand. “Move off.” Fleas settled on her arm. Gripping the handcuffs, she said, “Stop it.”

  Nobody was at the pad except the dog. The parole officer withdrew to the front door. The shepherd pursued her. His stiffened penis trailed across the shag carpeting, attracting lint. As she left the crib, he bayed with sorrow.

  At the corner of Eighth and Market, near the Ramada Inn, outlined by the hotel’s Christmas lights, a cavalcade of green-headed parrots skirted the power lines. They dipped through a parking lot and disappeared into the fog. Holiday lighting sparkled deliriously in the Walgreens drugstore. It was hotter than it had been all week.

  TWENTY

  The noontime sun blitzed the Trinity Plaza Apartments. In the parking lot two sea gulls bullied a one-legged pigeon. The sidewalk teemed with homeless women and men selling books and cassettes, clothes, shoes and boots, frying pans, toasters, hammers and screwdrivers, extension cords, and bicycle tires. A crow feasted on a cast-off box of KFC chicken wings in the gutter.

  Robert and Slatts roosted on the hood of the Hillman and shared a fag. Robert yakked about his most recent adventures. “So the kid kept firing. I thought she was going to shoot me.” Slatts was in a pair of tangerine cotton slacks and a cream tank top. In sympathy, he put his arm around Robert’s waist and kissed him on the forehead. Robert leaned into it, needing comfort. “That brat is serious shit,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell to do about her.”

  Harriet reconnoitered the two men from the apartment’s cramped balcony. She wore pink cotton panties, a blue knit jersey, and flip-flops. Her pert nose was red from sunburn. Her waxed legs glistened in the light. Her breasts trembled with indignation. What in the fuck were Robert and Slatts doing?

  She watched her husband and his friend and brooded. Was Robert two-timing her with that pompous asshole? The thought made her heart stop. When it started again, she heard a voice in the basement of her mind. It said loud and clear: he’s cheating on you.

  The first night Harriet and Robert ever made love, it was in her room at the Jefferson Hotel on Eddy Street. Junkies fought in the alley beneath her window. There were holes in the ceiling. The sink dripped. The floor was buckled. Robert didn’t have any rubbers. In bed, he said to her, “Let’s get married.” Nine months later their daughter was born.

  After the chat with Slatts, Robert wobbled into the apartment. The kitchen curtains jiggled in the breeze. The radio was loud in the living room—Lee Morgan and his group demolished “Search for the New Land.”

  The first time Robert and Slatts had sex was during a riot. The Aryan Brotherhood and the Norteños were clashing in the big yard. Guards in combat gear let off barrages of wooden bullets. Slatts and Robert stayed in their cell and balled. Slatts was in a starched jumpsuit, the apparel of a long-term offender. The garment’s sleeves were too long for him. The legs were too short. The pants seat rode up his crotch. A veteran of penal clothing, he wore the suit like a fashion model. In making love, his body language was strictly jailhouse. Legs wide, shoulders out, neck in, eyes down, head up. The act had been awkward; the bunk bed was uncomfortable. But the need for affection was stronger. It always is in prison.

  The Lee Morgan melody did a fade-out and jarred Robert from his torpor. He strode into the bedroom. Harriet was beached on the pillows in a pair of pleated cotton slacks and a chamois halter. Browsing through the holiday edition of Elle magazine. She put aside the fashion glossy. “Robert?”

  Icicles of sweat stung his armpits. “Yeah?”

  “I want the truth. Are you on the down low with Slatts?”

  That she would ask this was murder in the first degree. It proved the entire world was against him. The police. The streets. The weather. Even the dog. Harriet’s accusation was the end. It said how low her opinion of him had sunk. To depths he’d never dreamed of. “No.”

  “Then what are you doing with him?”

  “Nothing, sweetheart.”

  “You’re doing something.”

  He was nettled. Her tone of voice left teeth marks on him. “No, I’m not.”

  The one time Robert had been shot was when he’d burglarized a Victorian on Jackson Street. The owner had trapped him in the cellar and plugged him in the nose with a pellet gun. Robert escaped through the garage, bleeding on everything. Hearing his wife ask him if he was gay hurt more than being shot in the nose.

  On the radio Dinah Washington sang “This Bitter Earth.”

  Harriet filibustered. “Are you messing around with him?”

  Robert stonewalled her. “Huh?”

  “Do you guys have a thing going on?”

  “God, no. Like, we were in the joint together, that’s all.”

  “Robert?”

  Every time she said his name it was an denunciation. “What?”

  “You’re a lying punk.”

  Being called a liar was nothing. Everyone lied. That was the way of the world. But a punk was something else, the bottom rung in the prison pecking order. Down in the mire with the short-eyes. A punk was an untouchable. A punk lived inside an arctic circle of misery. He was public property, everyone’s butt boy. Being labeled one was a death warrant. Hard-core cons snuffed them on principle. Robert was sick with mortification. A rictus of longing bent his mouth. “Listen, everything is cool,” he said.

  “No, it isn’t, daddy. You’re getting strange on me.”

  Talk about a tragedy. His dirty laundr
y was being laid out. It was distressing and gave him heartburn. “Honey,” he remonstrated. “It ain’t all that.”

  The dog traipsed out of the bathroom, swinging its balding tail. It crossed the hall into the bedroom and barged over to Harriet. She said something derogatory to the animal, swatting it on the head with her magazine, and the German shepherd woofed in sadness.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Lawyers harbor no love for parole officers. It isn’t personal. It’s commerce. In the food chain of law enforcement, there isn’t any money in liking parole officers. Making allowances for the holiday season, Roy Wonder was polite to Athena Diggs on the telephone anyway. “Listen, lady, nobody fucking asked you to call my ass. Let me get this straight,” he said. “You’re looking for Robert Grogan?”

  “That’s right.”

  “The last I heard the dickhead had an address on Market Street.”

  “I can’t find him there.”

  “So what? Write him off. He’s a scumbag.”

  Athena examined Robert’s jacket in her office. She’d spilled coffee on his mug shot. The photograph was ruined. “I need your assistance in finding him.”

  The shyster didn’t respond. The silence ripened into a prolonged and uncomfortable gulf between him and the parole officer. A void that was as deep as the Grand Canyon. Athena could hear his raspy breathing, the saccharine Christmas Muzak in his office, and the clink of glasses in the background. After a minute he became vulnerable and yielded his darkest secret to her. “That goddamn son of a bitch owes me six grand.”

  “Then let’s get him. We’ll put the pig behind bars.”

  “Forget it.”

  “But he’s violating parole.”

  “Tough titty.” Roy Wonder slurred the words. He was drinking, and it wasn’t even dinnertime. Getting a head start on the holidays. “You’ll never catch him.”

  She was in no position to dispute his claim. “What the fuck should I do?”

  “Is that a joke?”

  “No.”

  “Then don’t ask me, girlfriend. It’s a hot day, too hot to think about this shit.”

  The parole agent had a rank taste in her mouth. The business with Robert Grogan reminded her of the Guatemalan poet Otto René Castillo. A guy she’d read about in junior college. In the 1960s the military authorities arrested Castillo. They buried him in the ground up to the chin and set his head on fire. Barbecued his skull until he was dead. That’s what she was going to do to the white boy when she got her hands on him.

  As the sun waned a foghorn bleated near Point Bonita. Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill was impaled against cloudless pewter blue skies. The forests in Presidio Heights were lush green. Baker Beach was pristine and white. Point Lobos was gray and rocky. The skyscrapers in the financial district were dusted in fog. Chinatown’s alleys were sunless. The restaurants in North Beach crawled with tourists.

  A shooting in Hunters Point had left two men wounded, one critically. A tenement in the Mission was in flames; plumes of magenta smoke gyrated over the city’s skyline. The Golden Gate Bridge’s southbound lanes were backed up to the Sausalito exit. The traffic expert on the radio said it would be like that until New Year’s Day.

  When the apartment’s doorbell chimed, Slatts double-timed it to the spy hole. He looked into it, and his jaw dropped an inch. No goddamn way. What a bummer. Two police officers were in the patio. One was a black dude, stout and bald in a mustache and Chanel sunglasses. Carried a riot nightstick. His partner was an obese peckerwood with a flattop hairdo and a Remington shotgun.

  The black officer tapped the door frame with the butt end of the baton and jabbered, “Grogan, we know you’re in there. Get the fuck out here.”

  This was one of the hazards of staying in a felon’s household. The cops. They were like the earth and the mountains. They never went away. Slatts focused on his options. If he opened the door, the bastards might beat him. Leave some welts on his pretty face. It didn’t matter if Robert wasn’t home. That didn’t matter at all. The fuzz was into supply and demand. If he weren’t around, Slatts would fit the bill. The officers could take him to jail.

  The white cop croaked, “Come on out, asshole.”

  The pair of lawmen lobbed insults at the closed door for several minutes. Then, defeated by the mind-bending heat in the Trinity Plaza Apartments, they skulked off to Market Street.

  Beginning tomorrow, once and for all, Slatts had to stop getting high. Parole demanded sobriety. That left tonight wide open. Since Robert and Harriet were out Christmas shopping, he helped himself to a beer from the fridge. Then clicked on the radio in the living room; the mellifluous trumpet of Miles Davis purred in the dimly lit apartment. The kid was in her pajamas, engulfed by pillows on the couch. Slatts scoped her out and asked, “What’s with you?”

  “I don’t feel right.”

  “How come?”

  “How come?”

  “I ate too much deer meat.”

  “Where does it hurt?”

  “My tummy.”

  “That’s not good. Scoot over.”

  Kicking off his boots, Slatts laid down on the squishy cushions next to Diana. He draped a well-muscled arm around her neck. Instinctively, she wiggled against him, pushed her nose into his armpit. “Not bad, huh?” he said.

  Nobody had ever touched Diana like this before, just holding her. Just letting her be. Harriet never held her. She didn’t know how. Neither did Robert. They were as cuddly as icebergs. It was different with Slatts. It was safe with him. Time wasn’t moving forward or backward. There were no cops and no parents. Nobody wanted anything from her. It was peaceful. That scared her shitless.

  Slatts was aromatic with cologne, cinnamon, and tobacco. He had calloused gladiator’s hands; his knuckles were a patchwork of old, white scars from prison fights. “You awake?” he asked. “I have to talk to you about something. I need some help.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s about your mother.”

  “What about her?”

  “I think she hates me.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “She hates everyone. It makes her happy.”

  “Yeah, but like, the chick is losing it, and she ain’t even twenty-five. And what about your old man? He’s losing it, too, ain’t he?”

  “Yeah, he is.”

  “That’s a bring down.” Slatts did his tabulations. “I depend on Robert, and I can’t have him blowing it. Not now. I need him to act correctly, especially under stress. Robert has to be strong and levelheaded. If he isn’t, we’re fucked.”

  “Are you his wife?”

  Slatts waited before answering. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  She gave it some thought. “That makes you my mom.”

  The girl and the parolee were allies. United against the tyranny of Robert and Harriet. The couch was their private kingdom, faraway from the tedium of adulthood. Buoying her against his chest, Slatts said, “I’ve got some weed. Might as well get toasted.”

  Producing a three-papered reefer, he torched it with a lighter. He sucked in the fumes, quickly exhaled. The dog got wind of the dope and sidled out of the kitchen over to the couch. Flipping the joint around, Slatts put the lit end in his mouth, and shot-gunned a funnel of blue smoke at the German shepherd’s nose. The beast inhaled and spluttered. Wagging its tail, it collided with the coffee table.

  “This is fantastic shit.” Slatts had another drag and proffered the spliff to the girl. “Here,” he said, tucking it in her mouth. “It’ll make you relax.”

  Diana had a toke, imitating how Robert and Harriet did it. Drawing the weed in and then letting it out, watching the vapor slip from her mouth. It hit her like a ton of bricks. The room changed color and became a rectangle of black. A green line passed down the middle of it and a yellow border held up the bottom. In the center was a pulsing white light.

  The front door swung open, and Robert crossed the threshold with Harriet in tow. He had a t
hree-foot-tall Christmas tree in his arms. She had a half-empty jug of Boone’s Farm wine and a box of tinsel. Husband and wife moved slowly through the arabesque of pot smoke into the living room. The dog was overjoyed to see them and leaped on Robert.

  Plunking the tree onto the coffee table, Robert surveyed the living room. The place reeked with weed. The shepherd was red eyed and loaded. So was Slatts. The kid was stoned, too. Incredible, he thought.

  “Is something wrong?” Harriet didn’t understand what was happening.

  Robert held her hand. “Yes, mama, everything is.”

  He instructed Diana to get away from Slatts. “Make tracks, baby.” The kid was evacuated into the bedroom with her mother. The dog was so high it couldn’t walk and sprawled in a heap on the rug. This is heavy, Robert decided.

  The devil was at the crossroads. There was no avoiding him. Robert had to choose between his two wives. If he maintained his allegiance to Slatts, it guaranteed a divorce from Harriet, a parole violation, and another bus ride to San Quentin.

  In the pen, he’d be put into segregation. It would be months before he even saw the general population. The Aryan Brotherhood would put a contract on his life. Harriet would also deny him legal rights to see his daughter. He flexed his bad hand. “Slatts?”

  The younger man was slumped on the living room carpet. A sweetish brown pot cloud swirled around his leonine head. “Say what?”

  “Getting high with the kid. That was shitty of you.”

  “Yeah, I fucked up.” Slatts was rueful, self-effacing. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “Too bad for your ass.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’ve got to go. Now.”

  “What?”

  “You have to leave. What you did was fucking unacceptable.”

  “You’re putting me on, ain’t you?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  A telegraph signal of hostility whizzed between them. The dog whimpered and gnawed on the coffee table’s legs.