Street Raised

by Pearce Hansen

  Speedy did the same, except he only put one hand against the wall as he leaned toward it. He cupped the other hand against the portion of his field jacket the kitten was currently under – it seemed somehow important to keep her from spilling out and smacking her little ass on the hard Oakland sidewalk.

  “Both hands, Speedy,” Louis said in patiently reproving tones.

  “Well, I can do that,” Speedy acknowledged. “But you’ll have to hold my kitty.”

  Louis touched Speedy’s field jacket and felt the kitten squirming underneath his hand. The Cop shook his head, either in disparagement or disbelief.

  “Now he’s an animal lover, is he?” Louis muttered.

  “I knew this would be your first stop,” Louis told Speedy as he commenced a reassuringly cursory pat down. “So, you get rehabilitated in there?”

  Speedy shook his head, keeping one arm pressed against his body under the kitten supporting her. “You thought me going inside was gonna improve me?” he asked the filthy wall a foot from his face.

  Louis snorted as he ran his hand up the inside of Speedy’s leg, politely stopping well short of the jewels. This wasn’t a roust, it was just Louis’s way of saying ‘hi’ without compromising anybody.

  “You think I liked having to do it, white boy?” the cop asked. “Somebody had to get gobbled up to feed the warrant. You’re complaining that I let you pick and choose who went?”

  Speedy shook his head again as Louis moved to Fat Bob and started going through the motions of ‘searching’ him as well. Fat Bob’s face was pinched and livid with unspoken remarks. As Officer Louis laid hands on him, he smiled at Bob’s quivering rage.

  “It was weight,” Louis said. “Someone had to go down for it, and you’re an ungrateful wretch not to kiss my boot for allowing it to be you instead of Willy.”

  Louis finished and stood back away from them. “If I had it to do again I’d pop you again skel boy. Don’t feel bad – I would’ve taken you down another way if Willy hadn’t handed the opportunity to me on a silver platter.”

  “You were safer away from Oakland after what Reseda did, even in a cage.” Louis’s badge reflected a stray dazzle from the street light overhead. “Meaning no disrespect to the dead, but the girl wasn’t worth it you know.”

  Speedy couldn’t think of a witty rejoinder to that one, instead crimping his lips as if trapping thoughts he was as unwilling to share as Bob was.

  Officer Louis keyed his shoulder mike. “Adam Nine Code Four.”

  The mike squawked and hissed: “Nine, Code Four, copy.” The woman dispatcher’s voice was melodious, and Speedy found himself wondering unwillingly just what she looked like, and if she put out.

  Louis winked at Speedy as he continued speaking into his mike. “That’s a negative on the disturbance complaint, both RP and suspects were GOA upon my Four.”

  “Copy that Nine,” the woman dispatcher said. “Advise when no longer Code Six.”

  “Okay,” Louis told Speedy and Bob, rubbing his big calloused hands together with a sound like mating sheets of sandpaper. “I’m cutting you two mutts loose. Go, and sin no more. Or at least as little as possible while I’m in eyeshot.”

  Speedy watched in silence as Louis drove off to continue his patrol. He couldn’t mock too hard on an old war horse like John Louis that was still willing to run patrols alone these days. With a vague feeling of patriotic pride, Speedy knew that Oakland's per capita murder rate was twice that of San Francisco or New York City. He figured he liked that Oakland was consistently listed as being one of the most dangerous large cities in the nation, invariably in the top five for violent crime.

  Those Richmond bloods gave Oakland a run for its money though – the two rival cities went back and forth on the body count contest. Still, as this was a year Oakland had once again earned the distinction of being Murder Capital of America, Speedy figured it would be another busy tour for the fat old cop.

  “Fucking pig,” Fat Bob sneered, but only after Louis was well out of earshot. Bob turned to Speedy. “Did he really cry like a little bitch when those guys got acquitted? Wish I’d been in the courtroom with you to see it.”

  Speedy studied his crime partner. “Give it a rest Bob. Okay?”

  As Speedy and Fat Bob continued west along East 14th away from the Pandemonium, there was a crowd of about a dozen teenage males walking in front of them, clogging the sidewalk from storefront to gutter.

  The majority were dressed in old-school cholo style: wearing fedoras or with bandannas down over their eyes, Pendleton shirts with only the top buttons buttoned, Ben Davis pants or starched razor-creased khaki trousers, with spit-shined Stacy Adams kicks on their feet.

  Most were Latino, but there was one black-skinned mayate and a couple of red-headed hueros. Speedy noted the white and black kids were the most faithful to the cholo style in their dress, perhaps compensating for not being Mexican.

  The Eses were strolling at an arrogant snail’s pace, about half-a-mile an hour. They acted cool and oblivious even as Speedy and Bob piled up on their heels and were forced to slow to the same speed.

  Speedy was in no hurry but Fat Bob was having none of it.

  “Ex-CUSE me,” Bob bellowed in a fruity voice made even more sarcastic by its gargling roughness.

  All the little gangbangers turned their heads to face them, shocked that a group as small as two would get froggy on them. Speedy saw a couple of them reach under their Pendletons, and he stuck his hand in his pocket to grab his foldie. His other hand pressed gently against the patch of jacket the kitten was currently under, as if that could possibly protect her from knife blades or flying rounds.

  None of the Eses pulled any weapons, so Speedy didn’t display his blade either – just a bunch of hands vanished to the wrist, maybe in bluff, maybe grasping iron. But Speedy knew he wasn’t faking at least, even if packing nothing badder than a knife felt gallingly inadequate.

  A subliminal hive mind decision seemed to take place, and, like a school of predatory fish parting to stream around a reef, the crowd of little Eses split to allow them passage.

  Not meeting any of their eyes but not letting go of his foldie neither, Speedy kept his gaze on the pavement the whole way through the group, not wanting to add even a smidgen of confrontation to the mix. Besides, it was always a waste of energy to make eye contact with anyone you weren’t seeking interaction with.

  Bob, however, sneered at everyone and no one as he and Speedy cut through.

  On the other side of the gangbangers the two men picked up speed and quickly left the Eses behind. Speedy snuck one glance back before pulling his hand from his pocket.

  All the boys had resumed their crawl of a parade, none of them looking at him or Bob, none of the crowd even acknowledging the rest of their own pack’s existence. They all looked thoughtful as they strolled along staring at the sidewalk. Speedy figured they were going to put somebody in a major hurt locker before the evening was through.

  Maybe a border dispute? This was the frontier between the Twomps and the Dirty 30s after all.

  “I haven’t changed a bit,” Fat Bob said with a grin, as if proud of his provocative behavior.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Speedy said, looking to see if he could spot Bob’s ride. Cars slumbered in a line, the length of the block. None of them jumped out and grabbed Speedy as being an obvious choice as belonging to Fat Bob. “Which one’s yours?”

  “The green one.” Bob pointed. “It’s Miranda’s, actually.”

  The ’62 Valiant had been green once, a very long time ago. Now the car’s body was rust held together by faded paint and bondo. The tires were bald with cracked sidewalls. It was a bucket, a bomb, even within the lax standards of a throwaway car.

  Fat Bob caught Speedy’s expression. “Hey, it starts, it runs, and it beats walking,” Bob rasped in a hurt tone of voice. “Hell, it got me here didn’t it?”

  Bob clambered in the driver’s side, reached over to unlock Speedy’s d
oor, then turned the key and pumped the gas rapidly a bunch of times. The starter sounded like a pit bull having an epileptic fit. Then, with an asthmatic cough, the engine caught and ran. The fan belt squealed and the car was shimmying until put in gear – but Bob was right: it ran, at least.

  Chapter 8

  “You know I need to find Little Willy, like yesterday,” Speedy said. Bob was silent as he drove and Speedy finally looked at him. “What?”

  “He’s really gone downhill while you been inside, he’s hitting the bat and shit.” Fat Bob paused, flicked a guilty glance at Speedy. “He’s dead meat, man, a degenerate crackhead. He’s base and weak, and the weak deserve no consideration”

  “That’s my little brother you’re writing off,” Speedy pointed out. “It’s me you turned your back on, if you turned your back on him.”

  Bob winced before pursing his lips and trying to appear thoughtful instead of chagrinned. “Dreamer might know where he’s staying now. I surely don’t pretend to.”

  Bob turned right on Fruitvale and headed toward the water, passing Elmwood – where the Kid had dropped Speedy off – before turning right on East 7th into Jingletown, the 94601: a tiny patchwork of back streets nestled within the larger Fruitvale neighborhood; a chaotic mix of residential and industrial; of auto shops, tool & die firms and postage-stamp-sized frame homes that once housed workers from the local Del Monte Cannery.

  Graffiti covered the industrial buildings by the train tracks – by guys like Dream and Vogue; Phresh and Kemrexx; the TDK Crew – guerilla murals owning warehouse walls along the tracks as far west as 17th Avenue. Not just scribbles, but high end East Bay art: large, wall-sized blockbuster murals done with paint-rollers; pieces made up of the interlocking letters and connecting points of ‘Wildstyle;’ or just quick stuff ‘pissed up’ on the walls with paint-filled fire extinguishers.

  As one of Little Willy’s books explained, Jingletown got its name because all the Portagee and Latino Cannery workers used to jingle their pocket change at the girls on payday. Speedy couldn’t say for sure if that were true. All he knew was, he doubted if women got excited at the sound of rattling quarters, dimes and nickels anymore outside of the Third World.

  You could always tell when you entered J-Town proper, cuz it had its own personality completely separate from the rest of Oakland. There were chickens free ranging the yards, many of which were filled with cacti and tropical plants. Avocado pits hung suspended on toothpicks in shot-glasses on a lot of kitchen window sills, the smell of menudo filled the air, along with the aroma of frijoles and tortillas that were never bought in a store. The eclectic choices in house paint colors were another clue you were in the J-T: purple, daiquiri, aqua . . . and more than one house painted a color not even to be found in nature.

  Bob approached Ford Street. Down the block next to La Iglesia De Dios Pentecostes, a trio of B-boys was break-dancing on a sheet of linoleum unrolled onto the sidewalk, wearing matching baggy tracksuits and Adidas shell toes with phat laces. They weren’t battling each other; they were just practicing their moves to Herbie Hancock’s ‘Rockit,’ which was playing on a huge duct-tape wrapped boom box – even from a distance the scratchy notes of ‘Rockit’ hit with the impact of a muffled rubber hammer.

  Fat Bob turned right on Glascock, in the direction of 29th Avenue. There lay Dreamer’s house, nestled between those three big old sheds on the Jingletown shores, and the lofts at Peterson.

  “Hola, Dreamer,” Speedy murmured as they approached the casa.

  The house’s thick curtains were closed, but light, music, and occasional yelps of excitement spilled out the open front door – Santana’s ‘Evil Ways’ was playing inside. About a dozen people were standing on the front lawn talking, drinking beer, and passing around a joint or three. Two partiers were rolling around on the grass biting and walloping each other whilst a few onlookers bawled encouragement. A couple leaned against the garage door necking enthusiastically.

  A row of Harleys was parked on the lawn next to the porch. Several black bikers were milling about next to the hogs flying their colors (East Bay Dragons MC – OAKLAND in red on yellow, with the green dragon slithering in the middle). Speedy didn’t see any Oakland Angels around, up from their headquarters at the El Adobe.

  There was a bunch of people visible inside through the open front door; this was definitely the party house tonight.

  Bob had to drive half a block past Dreamer’s before he could find a parking spot, as the cars of the other guests crowded the curb directly in front of the pad: hotrods, a couple low riders, and a few customized pimp Cadillacs for good measure. Dreamer was a gregarious guy and he’d always had a wide and diverse circle of friends.

  Speedy climbed out and pulled the kitten from his field jacket; her claws snagged on the material as he dragged her forth. She mewed plaintively when he left her in the car, and Speedy felt something strangely like guilt as the two men walked back toward the party.

  As for Fat Bob he had a grin plastered on his round face. He couldn’t get there fast enough.

  A tight group of little kids sat on bicycles, blocking Speedy and Bob’s path on the sidewalk. There were about ten of them – mostly brown, but with some black, Asian and white thrown in for good measure. The kids ranged from maybe eight to thirteen.

  They were all sitting on custom low-rider bikes: gold forks, pin-striped frames, tuck-and-roll banana seats, and frames chopped so low they could barely ride without scraping the ground. Their bikes represented a lot of money – whatever scam these Jingletown kids were running, it was pulling them down the spending loot.

  A skinny black girl, maybe twelve years old, sat astride her bike in front of her swarm of satellites mad-dogging at Speedy and Bob. She was the alpha, the leader. Speedy also noted she had a beeper clipped to her belt, which suggested to him that she was either an on-call physician or a drug mule.

  “Who do you claim?” she demanded of Speedy and Bob, throwing down the gauntlet right off. She flashed a few quick gang hand signs that Speedy didn’t even bother pretending to follow.

  Bob appeared amused, ready to blow them off and stroll past, but Speedy liked to at least by showing fellow children of the dark common courtesy when he could.

  “East Bay,” Speedy said, hoping that was the right secret password with this little rat pack. Or should he claim E.S.O.: East Side Oakland?

  The black child shook her head. “No, I mean what colors?”

  Speedy could say yellow and black, Jingletown’s colors – most of the kids here were wearing some variation of those two shades on their clothing and accessories. Or maybe he should mess with her head, give her a history lesson and claim classical-style Oakland Orange, as introduced when a bunch of Golden Gate Bridge paint fell off the back of a truck and the Angels started using it to paint their Harleys.

  But Speedy didn’t want to disrespect this kid’s seriousness so he wasn’t going to claim any false allegiances. Red and Blue was an LA thing anyways – the Crips and Bloods had come up to Oakland before and tried to throw their weight around, to no avail. Oakland didn’t play that shit – they were big boys and girls, they didn’t have to pose with rags like chumps.

  “I guess I can only claim myself,” Speedy confessed.

  She kicked her bike a few feet closer, her crew following tight behind, ready to flow around the two strangers on command.

  “Give me a cigarette,” she demanded, giving Speedy one more chance to justify himself, one last opportunity to pay some kind of toll.

  “That would stunt your growth,” Speedy replied, and the black girl frowned even harder than before, if that were possible.

  Fat Bob had been almost beside himself this whole time, ready to bust with the effort to keep from laughing.

  “We’re here to see Dreamer,” Fat Bob said, eyes gleaming. He pointed a stubby forefinger at the party raging behind the low-rider bike kids.

  The black girl turned to look furtively at the house. “Oh, you mean Hector’s.�
�

  “Well, that is his real name,” Speedy allowed.

  The black girl pedaled on past Bob and Speedy without another word, her little rat pack of bikers streaming past the two men on either side as they followed their leader to whatever business she had schemed up for them tonight.

  “What do you think would’ve happened if we weren’t here to see Dreamer?” Fat Bob asked.

  “I wasn’t in the mood to find out,” Speedy said. “Something you’d find amusing, I’m sure.”

  The two men hit the steps to the porch and walked through the front door into the party proper. Malo’s ‘Suavecito’ was playing on the turntable, to a background of conversation and raucous laughter. Speedy was relieved to see that old disco ball rotating slowly on the ceiling, spilling flecks of light to crawl across everybody in the large front room.

  A yearning reminiscence overcame Speedy – the last time that disco ball’s light had washed over him he’d been here with Reseda, on their first stop in a night of bar hopping shortly before his arrest. Speedy and Reseda had danced in the middle of Dreamer’s front room amidst half a dozen other couples, groping each other to the music with their crotches ground together hard, swaying with no space between them.

  The breakup had loomed in their future like an iceberg, but that had still turned into a good night of clubbing: John Travolta had had nothing on Speedy – he’d successfully teetered around on the three inch platform shoes Reseda twisted his arm into wearing, and the bell bottoms on his Angel Flight suit pants had been wider than any other dude’s at the disco when Gloria Gaynor played. . .

  Directly ahead of Speedy, a wide archway opened off Dreamer’s front room and into the kitchen. A smaller arch on the right, next to the kitchen, framed the opening to a red-lit hallway leading back into the inner depths of the house.

  Several mismatched couches were shoved back against the walls of the front room, each sofa with a coffee table parked in front of it. The couches were wedged full of people talking over the music and getting high, smoking hash pipes or passing joints, swilling alcohol or bowed over the tables tooting lines.