Soon the Rest Will Fall

by Peter Plate

  “Jesus, it’s just reefer,” Slatts wheedled. “It ain’t heroin or nothing.”

  “She’s only seven years old.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “You went too far.”

  “Like you don’t all the time?”

  “This is different. I’m a goddamn parent and everything.”

  “What a saint. I suppose your shit doesn’t stink anymore, right?”

  “Whatever. You’re out of here.”

  Getting rid of a lover was no different than a cell extraction in San Quentin. The guards used dogs, hoses and nightsticks, pepper gas and rubber bullets to remove a prisoner from his cage. The procedure was messy with lots of bloodshed. It was enough to end a romance.

  “Wait a minute.” Slatts was pious. “You’re being unfair.”

  “No one made you smoke weed with her.”

  “Yeah, well, okay, okay.”

  Robert got domineering. “Then whose fault is it?”

  “It was mine.”

  “So there.”

  “But you know what?”

  “What?”

  Slatts emitted a self-righteous falsetto. “You can’t blame all your crap on me.”

  Blustering, Robert spat, “I don’t know what the fuck you’re saying.” That was a falsehood. He knew exactly what Slatts meant. He hadn’t kept his promises. Harriet had him under her thumb. They weren’t dwelling in Pacific Heights.

  “I’m sorry, dude,” he said. “You’d better find yourself another place to crash.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Overnight the heat wave increased its stranglehold on the city. The sun hid behind the transmission tower on Twin Peaks. The clouds in the buttermilk skies over Market Street were tinged with smog that capped the tenements and the downtown office buildings. A bone-melting westerly wind scoured the sidewalks. In the evening the temperature was ninety-eight degrees.

  Newspaper headlines ballyhooed a jewel heist in Union Square. A jewelry shop was knocked off when the employees opened the store, only to be greeted by thieves who’d broken in through the roof. The business’s Christmas merchandise was taken. Losses were estimated at $3 million.

  Robert stayed at home. Twenty-four hours had passed since he’d last seen Slatts. The dudes at the Stevenson Alley methadone clinic said his ex-boyfriend was in San Mateo partying with the Norteños. Other folks gossiped that he was holed up in a Sunset district motel by the beach and was selling crack.

  It didn’t matter. Today was a landmark. Robert had been out of prison for six days. One hundred and forty-four hours. Eight thousand, six hundred and forty minutes. Five hundred and eighteen thousand, four hundred seconds. Slatts and Harriet and Dirt Man and the cops and the parole officer could go to hell.

  “I’m cool,” he said to himself.

  Maybe he’d go hunting in northern California. Just himself and a carload of rifles and ammunition. Deer were plentiful on Mount Shasta. Boar was abundant north of Redding. Wild goats were happening in Mendocino. He could hole up in a shack and shoot bears at Lake Tahoe. Make damn decent paper doing that. Sell the meat to the restaurants in Las Vegas and the hides to collectors. There would be no police, no parole agent breathing down his neck, and no wife harping on him. Robert mused on Slatts. No ex-lover, either.

  Mount Shasta was just a daydream. Like most things, it would never happen. Not until his parole status was straightened out. Thinking about it erased a continent of troubles from Robert’s mind. For a brief second, the unconnected parts in the jigsaw puzzle of his life merged in harmony.

  In the Safeway supermarket at Church and Market, a Muzak version of Charles Brown’s “Merry Christmas, Baby,” bubbled through the speaker system. The famous Motown singer Smokey Robinson had been in the delicatessen signing copies of his new cookbook. The aisles overflowed with shoppers and grocery carts. Refrigerators displayed cartons of eggnog, yogurt and cheese, packages of chicken, holiday turkeys, and cuts of beef. Tables were jam-packed with domestic and imported wines, beer and spirits, bags of oranges, heads of lettuce, apples and carrots.

  Snatching a loaf of pumpernickel bread from a shelf, a homeless Slatts Calhoun gave it a squeeze. He glanced to his left and then to his right. Then he minced past checkout without paying for the item. Slatts was at the store’s exit when he heard footsteps behind him. The hair on his arms stood up. The sound meant one thing. Turning around, he verified his suspicions.

  A quartet of cops in black security uniforms was on his heels. Slatts sent a message to his legs. Run fast. Or go to jail. Giving his pursuers the slip, he fled the store, scrambled over the tangled rosemary bushes in the parking lot, and sprinted like a maniac ten blocks down Market Street.

  To the apartment of the only friend he had in the city.

  Robert was in his underpants on the living room couch, sipping at a can of Budweiser. Harriet was next to him in a bra and a pair of gym shorts. Diana was at the table in the kitchen drawing in a coloring book. Sinatra was on the radio doing “Mistletoe and Holly.” The Christmas tree had been dolled up with an assortment of blue, green, and red bulbs, strands of popcorn and tinsel. It posed by the coffee table.

  The screen door opened with a bang. Slatts darted into the apartment. Crashing into the coffee table, he toppled the tree, scattering the fragile ornaments on the rug. He pogoed on one leg and mewled. “The cops are after me! Help me, please!” Slatts wasn’t a tough ex-con. He wasn’t adjusting to street life. He was a sinking ship. “God, what am I going to do?”

  A master at dealing with crisis, Robert went into remote control. Moments like this were when he operated at his best. He was the iceman. The guy you went to when the chips were down. He flung his head back, had a lusty gulp of beer and handed what was left in the can to Harriet. Rising to his feet, he ambled over to Slatts and enveloped his homeboy in a hug. Asking low so that his wife couldn’t hear, he hissed, “What the fuck happened?”

  Slatts was tremulous. “They busted me in Safeway. For this.” He showed him the pumpernickel bread. The loaf was soggy. “The police are a minute behind me.”

  That gave Robert sixty seconds to solve things. The first thirty seconds were lost in senseless rumination. Slatts was one dumb rabbit. He was a boat without a rudder. No wonder their relationship was fucked. Slatts just couldn’t cope with nothing.

  The next thirty seconds were used more constructively. Robert evaluated Slatts’s chances. The dude was in a bind. Slatts could surrender to the police. That meant he’d go to jail. Spend weeks in the felony tanks. Then he would languish in court and return to the pen for violating parole. Maybe get another two years up in San Quentin.

  The other possibility was for Slatts to do an exodus. Make like an Olympic sprinter. Leave through the back door, hop the fence, and vanish into the lot behind the Trinity Plaza Apartments. Leg it to Mission Street and catch a bus to San Jose. But that wouldn’t cut it. The police would set a dragnet and trap him. It was inevitable.

  Five seconds were left. A gong went off in Robert’s brain. “I’ve got the solution. You go hide in the bathroom. Get into the tub and pull the curtain around you. I’ll keep the cops busy in the living room. I’ll wear their shit down with my smooth talk.”

  Robert reviewed his strategy, running it through the pathways of his mind. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that it would succeed. Cops were stupid, dumber than him. That was the key. He’d beaten them in the past with his strategies and he’d do it again. All he had to do was charm them with his silver tongue.

  Slatts was doubtful. The bathroom didn’t sound so smart. Once he was in it, there was no easy way out. The percentages sucked. “You think it’ll fly?”

  “Hell, yes. It’s so fucking obvious they won’t even look. Transparency is the way to go, homes.”

  “For sure?”

  “You bet. That’s the first level. At the same time I’ll be talking a line of shit so intense, it’ll deflect the motherfuckers, and they’ll leave.”

  Hustli
ng Slatts into the bathroom, Robert got him comfortable in the tub. The bottom was thick with the dog’s hair. Bottles of shampoo and trays of soap lined the rim. The deerskin took up most of the curtain rod. Robert exclaimed, “This is just great. Nobody can see you in here.”

  Slatts was deathly pale and held onto the curtain like it was a life preserver. “Robert?”

  “What is it, sweetie?”

  “I’m worried.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re going to pop me.”

  “Those bozos won’t get you.” Robert gave Slatts the third degree. He didn’t look so hot. Hair was bad. Clothes were filthy. Untied shoes. The homeboy was going down the tubes. “Trust me. Just sit tight and don’t make a peep. But if you’ve got to split, go out the window.”

  “Then what should I do?”

  “Lay low and meet me tomorrow night.”

  “Where?”

  “That wino bar at Ninth and Mission.” He grabbed Slatts by the wrist and kissed him on the mouth. Robert’s lips were flavored with alcohol and cigarettes. “Keep your shit together, buddy.”

  Circling back to the living room, Robert repositioned himself on the couch with Harriet and waited for the policemen. He didn’t say anything to his wife. No point in it. She was going to kill him if the cops didn’t do it first.

  Thirty seconds later the police kicked in the door. The living room became as lively as a strip club at happy hour. All the cops had their guns out. The first cop crushed the Christmas tree underfoot. The second officer walloped the television. A third cop aimed a high-powered flashlight at Robert and yipped, “All right, where is he?”

  Before he got an answer, the dog jumped him. The mutt didn’t care for anything in a uniform. The shepherd bit the officer in the thigh and wouldn’t let go of his pant leg. Employing their batons, the other policemen throttled the cur.

  Robert extended his arms in a diplomatic gesture. His face was a smorgasbord of worries about life and money. He didn’t have a talent for dealing with the law. Nor did he have the gumption to admit it. “What the hell is going on?”

  A red-cheeked cop sniggered. “We’re pursuing a suspect.”

  “So?” Robert balked. “You can’t come in here and do that.”

  “That’s a moot point, you fucking dunce. We just did.”

  “Let me see your goddamn search warrant.”

  “We don’t need one, asshole.”

  Bare-chested with hairy chicken legs, Robert was no threat to the cops. His knees quavered from nervousness. He knew his plan wasn’t working. The police moved about the apartment. They searched high and low for their quarry. The four officers stormed into the john waving their billy clubs—no one was in there. Slatts had smashed the window, shinnied down the drainpipe to the garbage bins in the back, and escaped.

  The dog was placed in handcuffs, hog tied, carried out of the crib by the cops into the parking lot. It was chucked inside a paddy wagon at the curb.

  A shooting star flared in the livid sky above Market Street.

  Robert was afraid the lawmen would search the Hillman. It was in the lot and had enough guns inside it to start a war. Some of them were visible in the backseat. The police didn’t see the rifles. They hopped in their van. The German shepherd was whisked off to the SPCA on Sixteenth and Bryant.

  The bust left the apartment in shambles. Chairs were upside down in the kitchen, dishes broken in the sink. The couch cushions had footprints on them. The coffee table’s glass top was fractured. The Christmas tree was cracked in two. The linens and towels in the hall closet had been thrashed. Holes were gouged in the walls. In the bathroom, shaving cream had been sprayed across the tub. The deerskin was unceremoniously wadded in the toilet bowl.

  Harriet propelled her daughter into the bedroom. The chamber was smoky with pinewood incense, illuminated by a lamp on the nightstand. Slacks, blouses, panties, hose, and shoes were strewn over the floor. She bade Diana to sit with her on the unmade bed. “I have to tell you something, sweet pea,” she said. “You might not like it.”

  The kid was queasy with anticipation. Her head was in a whirl. “What is it?”

  “You have to listen to me very closely.”

  “Okay.”

  “I have to go.”

  “Go where?”

  “I don’t know yet. But this is too much for me.”

  “What is?”

  “Your daddy. I can’t do it with him anymore. We can’t be together.”

  “Is it because of him and Slatts?”

  “You knew about that shit? My god, honey, I’m so sorry.”

  Harriet’s brown eyes were alien planets from a science fiction novel that hadn’t been written yet. She measured her flesh and blood, as if the girl were a looking glass that she could walk through and by doing so arrive in another, safer world. “If I stay here,” she said, “somebody is going to get hurt. I have to get away from your father.”

  “What about me?”

  “You?”

  “Yeah, me.”

  Lamplight dappled Harriet’s pale skin. She touched her daughter’s head, rubbing the girl’s hairless dome. “You’re just like your dad. It’s frightening.”

  That was all Diana needed to hear. “You want me to stay with him?”

  “Please, bunny.”

  Her mother was asking for permission to leave. Diana knew what she had to do. She was the priestess of family secrets. Clasping Harriet’s icy fingers in her small, warm hand, she repeated the mantra to all successful journeys. “Go. Everything will be cool.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  A nighttime candlelight vigil was held every Christmas at city hall. The annual event honored the homeless that had died in the last year. Buddhist priests from the Zen Center on Page Street conducted the rituals. The names of the deceased were read aloud from a scroll. Bells tolled for each and every one. Two hundred and seven men and women had lost their lives during the preceding twelve months. The lighted candles carried their spirits to a nicer vista than the streets of San Francisco.

  In the Trinity Plaza Apartments a possum rummaged in the garage dumpster and unearthed a plate of day-old Chinese take-out. Winos covered in newspapers slept in the bushes that bordered the parking lot. Rats scampered in the patio. Eviction notices were scattered like autumn leaves in the hallways. The owner wanted everyone out of the building. The Trinity Plaza was getting razed on New Year’s Day.

  Harriet paraded from the bedroom into the living room. She was tricked out in a high-necked red and black woolen shift, buckled shoes with low heels. Rouge, mascara and lipstick varnished her face. Her hair was taut in a rigid ponytail. Her jewelry was sparse: a silver bracelet, feathered earrings. She plowed through the overturned furniture, past the damaged Christmas tree.

  Robert sat cross-legged on the rug. The dog was at the pound. Slatts was god knows where. Diana didn’t have her science fiction books; the German shepherd had eaten them. Now his wife was walking out. Like good wine, unhappiness made him loquacious. “You’re booking?” he said to Harriet. “Where to?”

  She refused to look at him. “My mother’s.”

  “You planning on coming back here or anything?”

  “No.”

  “What about the kid? You taking her and shit?”

  “Nope.”

  He wasn’t sure what he’d just heard. It had to be a gross misunderstanding. Maybe he was going loco. Hearing words that weren’t being said. But what if it were true? God help him. He was in no shape to take care of the girl. It would wipe him out. He was more of a brat than she was. “Pardon me?”

  “I’m not taking her.”

  “You’re leaving her with me?”

  “That’s right. She belongs with you.”

  This was a revelation. He chewed it over, figured out nothing, and thought about parole. It was necessary to maintain an address. “So what about the apartment?”

  “I called the landlord. Told him I was moving out.”

  “And what did
he say?”

  “He wants you gone by morning.”

  Robert was floored. “Uh, like, how are you getting to your mom’s house?”

  “Zap is taking me. I just called him.”

  The Mexican’s name on his wife’s lips was a knife in the head. The news would’ve killed a lesser man. Robert was intellectual about it. It wouldn’t be the first time a woman ran off with a speed dealer. The fact was he’d been waiting to hear it. Had started waiting for it in prison. Anyway, he had worse things to think about.

  The downstairs neighbors were having a holiday fiesta. The guests danced up a storm. The soothing vocals of Frank Sinatra on “Silver Bells” percolated through the walls. Harriet walked out of the living room, unlocked the front door, and, without saying good-bye, plodded into the patio on her way down to the street.

  In the nights ahead Robert Grogan would experience a recurring nightmare. He was handcuffed to a chair and watched his wife go through the side door of a decrepit theater. The stage had collapsed. The curtains were in rags. There were gaps in the floor. She looked back at him. Her eyes were glazed with disappointment. The dream happened often, and he began to think of it as a memory.

  It was too hot in the apartment, even with the door open. Mosquitoes did sambas against the window screens. The air conditioner made a sick noise as Robert drifted into the bedroom. His daughter was awake in bed, hugging a pillow. A frown was etched on her wee face. He asked, “You okay?”

  She was crestfallen. “Mommy and the dog are gone.”

  “It’s some fucked-up shit, ain’t it?”

  “What should we do?”

  He pulled her into his arms and offered hope. “Let’s go hunting.”

  That perked her up. “For deer?”

  “Hell, yeah.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “This is the best time. We’ll take the critters by surprise.”

  “Where will we find them?”