Street Raised

by Pearce Hansen

  “You like it back there white boy?” Officer Louis asked. “That where you want to keep spending your life?”

  “We leading up to a sermon here?”

  Louis’s reflected gaze left Speedy’s in the rear view, and the cop looked down the block toward the Mexicans.’

  “You like that house,” Louis said, not asking. “It has you written all over it. It’s a dirty house, and its dirty people living there. They ought to burn it down and sow the ground with salt.”

  Louis’s reflection was looking at Speedy again. “You know why I never stepped on you white boy? Because I liked when you took off all the other scumbags. I can admit it now, that make you happy?”

  Louis snorted. “I’ve got enough on my plate babysitting these Citizens anyway, I don’t have time to worry about every rat that gets his nose bloodied.”

  “But you did step on me, Louis, that last time,” Speedy pointed out.

  “Oh, that,” Louis said with an airy wave of his big mahogany hand. “You know the deal we made, you’re a big boy and you took it voluntarily, with your eyes wide open. Little Willy walked away clean, don’t you even try to say I didn’t keep my end of it. Besides, that was a bad time for both of us. My boy’d just died, Reseda'd just done the things she did to you.”

  ‘Died’ was a euphemistic description of what had happened, in Speedy’s opinion. Actually, Louis’s son Philip had been murdered, and in an especially heinous fashion. Some bitch asked Philip to help her move. When he’d showed up at her place the girl’s two boyfriends bound him, took his plastic, tortured him until he surrendered his PIN numbers and then killed him. And of course, being stupid, the dirt bags got themselves busted fast.

  Their trial was the only time Speedy ever sat in a courtroom voluntarily. He remembered feeling shock and dismay watching the old black cop crumple in on himself like a deflating balloon when the judge intoned his declaration of acquittal on a ‘tainted fruit’ technicality. Officer John Louis, brought low, sitting powerless and friendless as his son’s three killers embraced, laughed and waved at the news cameras on their way out the courtroom to enjoy the light of day while Louis’s son Philip rotted in the ground . . .

  “I saw you at the trial,” Louis said. “Did you enjoy having a ringside seat? Was it funny to see them walk? You left town about then if I recall.”

  “Yeah. Camping trip or something.”

  “That’s you, the nature boy,” Louis said with a bleak chuckle. “Surprised you had the patience to squat around a campfire – you were getting pretty reckless about then. Those three monsters that killed my boy, they dropped out of sight about the same time if memory serves.”

  “I forget. Maybe they left town too.”

  “Sure.” Louis looked at the Mexicans’ house again. His gaze pinned Speedy’s in the rear view mirror. “Why’s a rehabilitated Citizen like you sitting here outside this place, just watching it like you want to go up and knock on their door?”

  “Want to hear about a small world?” Louis asked without waiting for an answer, his reflection still looking at Speedy’s.

  “We got nothing but time here.”

  “Those Mexicans in that house, they’re the same dealers those bastards sold Philip’s credit card to, after they . . .” Louis stopped speaking.

  “It’s a small world for sure,” Speedy agreed quickly, not wanting the silence to rule.

  “Why’s it have to be like this, white boy?” Louis asked, voice raised.

  “What else do you expect out of me?” Speedy countered. “What else am I supposed to do?”

  “Do?” Louis pointed his forefinger up in the air. “See all those stars in the sky overhead? Count ‘em, that’s how many options you got in this world.”

  Speedy snorted. “Kind of difficult to see the stars through the roof of a cop car.”

  “My point exactly,” Louis said, mild exultation tinging his voice at the success of this feeble conversational gambit. “This is a miracle we’re living in Speedy. There’s purpose to it all, no matter what you think.”

  Speedy’s jaw started to drop but he clenched his mouth shut tight over the bray of contempt he would have let loose if anyone but Louis had said something so stupid. The ‘miracle’ line rang a little feeble anyways, as if it was himself Louis was trying to convince rather than Speedy. Speedy simmered and stewed, waiting for Louis to finish.

  Louis sighed as if in acknowledgment of defeat. “Why couldn’t you have just towed the straight and narrow, Speedy? You would’ve been a hell of a cop.”

  Speedy’s face relaxed even if the meanness didn’t leave his eyes, knowing he had the upper hand once more. He considered Louis’s bloodshot eyes reflected in the mirror, considered the eternal stale smell of unassimilated whiskey exuding past Louis’s overworked liver, from drinking himself to sleep every night after he got off watch.

  “It’s too late for that,” Speedy said, still feeling the reflexive need to defend himself against Louis’s blandishments, to riposte. “And besides, I’ve seen what wearing the badge has done for you.”

  “Get the fuck out my car,” Louis said, popping the latch on Speedy’s door. “Next time I see you I frisk you for real white boy. And by the way – tell Fat Bob he isn’t near as sneaky as he thinks he is. I made him five minutes ago.”

  Speedy got out and waited while Officer Louis pulled away in his roller. Fat Bob crept from the shadows of the alley to join Speedy.

  “What was that all about?” Bob asked.

  “I’m not sure. He was either siccing us on them or telling us to keep our hands off.” Speedy shrugged. “He don’t know for shit, he’s just fishing I think. But just in case, we’re moving up our schedule. Looks like tomorrow night is D-Day, we can’t dawdle here.”

  “I don’t know what you see in him,” Bob said.

  “I still remember what Louis tried to do for me after my dad died. And you know as well as I do what Louis did for Willy the night I went down.” Speedy looked away in the direction Louis had gone. “Anyway, you may have noticed he didn’t make our conversation optional.”

  Fat Bob grunted. “People see – they might talk.”

  Speedy glanced at him, eyes merry. “You think I’m a snitch, Bob?”

  Bob looked down. “He’s pork, brother. And all pork can die screaming.”

  “I know who my friends are,” Speedy said. “And I know what I owe Louis.”

  Louis was wrong about one thing though, Speedy reflected as he tipped his head back and looked up toward the heavens. Here at street level, the brimstone illumination blazing from the San Francisco Bay basin was so strong that it filled the night sky with an almost impenetrable orange light smog. Speedy couldn’t see a single star up there from where he stood down here in the gutter, so if Louis expected Speedy to hinge his life choices on those star’s astronomical numbers they were both out of luck.

  Chapter 31

  Everyone but Little Willy was sitting at Carmel’s table sharing a nightcap of her wine. Fat Bob clutched his wine-filled Pebbles glass in an over-sized ham of a hand.

  “I been thinking about it,” Bob confessed to Carmel. “Maybe you are good for Speedy.”

  “I’m glad I meet your approval,” she said with a straight face. “Your opinion has always been so very important to me.”

  Fat Bob almost spewed wine out his nose before giving her an admiring smile, his green eyes twinkling. But then Bob’s smile disappeared as he studied the Tarot deck lying next to Carmel on the table.

  “You got to let me and Miya come with you guys to Humboldt,” Fat Bob blurted, staring down at his wine so as not to look at those devil cards and acknowledge his lack of power over this witchy woman. “I don’t want Miya growing up here anymore.”

  “I sure can’t disagree with you bro,” Speedy said, nodding understandingly.

  But Speedy noticed that Carmel looked at him askance. After Bob hurriedly finished his wine and left them to their privacy, Speedy didn’t have long to wait before C
armel spoke what was on her mind.

  “That’s a big decision to make without asking me,” Carmel pointed out.

  Speedy held both hands up as if in placation. “If you met his sister you’d understand his position.”

  “Fat Bob,” Carmel said, as if verbally weighing the name. “He doesn’t like me very much, does he?”

  Speedy made a noncommittal grunt, and Carmel pressed her point: “I don’t need that kind of triangle,” she stated unequivocally. “It would be bad for you and me.”

  But Speedy just snorted, wondering to himself who was more possessive: Carmel or Fat Bob?

  “You and Bob are both grownups,” Speedy said, refusing to let himself be put in the middle. “You’ll reach some kind of understanding.”

  Chapter 32

  For Speedy and Carmel that evening, the lovemaking was better than ever. Crazily, it just kept improving instead of jading them more and more with the contempt of familiarity. Neither Speedy nor Carmel were fresh young creatures, but this was something neither of them had experienced before.

  Still, they didn’t talk about the connection they felt when they were together, or about all the holes and voids they might be able to fill within each other. It was as if this relationship they were inventing as they went along was fragile, and that words could somehow destroy it.

  After this latest bout of love play Speedy and Carmel lay together waiting to get their breath back, waiting for their hearts to stop jackhammering.

  “I’ve never met anyone like you before. I’m not going to let you go,” Carmel said. “The Psychic Dragon thing, it’s just a job, mostly a scam. But sometimes I see things for true, energies and auras and such. I can tell you, it wasn’t coincidence us coming together like this.”

  She turned her head to study Speedy’s profile. “If you stay here in Oakland much longer you will die Speedy. I see it like it’s already history, I don’t even need the cards to know.”

  “I’m not going to Humboldt broke,” Speedy said, not leaving it subject to debate. “I’m no beggar, I told you that. I have one last thing to do, then we’re in the wind, we’re out of here.”

  “But yeah,” he allowed, “I figure it’s time to hang it up. I never really expected to survive as long as I have. Oakland? I’ll always do my best to keep it Bay, but she’s changed too much. And a beat-up gunslinger like me? My days gotta be numbered.”

  “Have you ever felt this way with another girl?” Carmel asked, running her hand across his chest.

  “There was another but it was nothing like this.” Speedy laid his own hand on top of Carmel’s, as if to reassure her she was foremost in his thoughts over women from his memory banks.

  “Her name was Reseda,” Speedy said, as if reluctant to even speak the name. “We came together when I robbed her boyfriend. Maybe ‘boyfriend’ isn’t quite the right word – her mom traded her to the neighborhood dealer for a steady supply of drugs when she was fourteen or so. Reseda was seventeen when we took her latest fella off and, what the hell, she tagged along when we left. Her and me were together for a little while.”

  “So what happened to her?” Carmel asked.

  “We broke up,” he said, trying to make the event sound mundane. “It was pretty messy. She mixed with the wrong people after, got her fool head blown off in a drug deal gone bad down Tijuana way.”

  “Did you love her?”

  Speedy’s fingers rippled on top of Carmel’s hand. “I don’t know,” he confessed uncomfortably. “I’m not a good judge of the ‘L’ word, I’m afraid.”

  Had he loved Reseda? Even now he didn’t know.

  What could he say to Carmel, to make her understand Reseda? He knew he wasn’t about to describe the way Reseda’s eyes lit up with avid hunger whenever she witnessed any act of violence; her penchant for public, dangerous sex; or how especially wet she got when other people’s blood flowed.

  He wasn’t going to speak of their first ‘date,’ that night at the carnival in the old White Front parking lot on Hegenberger, next to Malibu Grand Prix and the Coliseum Drive-In. A hand-job on a ferris wheel gone horribly wrong (‘involving’ a Mexican couple in a lower gondola); a race riot ensuing as if on autopilot; and Speedy being forced to make a fighting exit.

  Speedy remembers yanking Reseda along by the hand, aiming his .45 at anyone in the mob that got too close and Reseda laughing at the surrounding carnage like the Queen of the Night on a procession through her court. His own skin crawling at the sound of her glee, and his cold cautious core urging him to release Reseda’s hand, lengthen his stride, and walk away from her, away from the mortal threat she represented. But simultaneously, that ravenous satyr component within his heart wanting only to throw Reseda down right then and there at ground zero, stick it in and fuck her brains out on the filthy blood-splashed midway earth . . .

  “Speedy?” Carmel said, bringing him back from memory lane to the present. Bringing him back to her.

  He grunted, looked at her interrogatively.

  “She wasn’t your lover,” Carmel said, defending him as firmly as she would’ve their current embryonic relationship. “It sounds to me like, technically, she was loot.”

  Speedy’s eyes widened. He rolled over and sat up to get out of bed.

  In the moonlight seeping past the semi-closed blinds, Carmel could see the scars of all different shapes and sizes covering his back: misshapen welts and old faded cuts. Her gaze riveted to one burn scar that loomed white against the freckles covering Speedy’s shoulder blade. It resembled the front end of a boat, or as if someone had taken a hot iron and pressed it against his back for a little while, once upon a time.

  Carmel reached out and touched the scar.

  Speedy leapt up and away, whirling to face her. His eyes glittered wild for a moment but then he gave her a sheepish smile as he quashed his reflex.

  “Sorry,” Speedy said, seeing her own answering expression of surprise. “I don’t take to being touched unexpected like.”

  “I know you’d never hurt me,” Carmel said. She watched him panther-stroll out the bedroom door. “What’s with the burn on your shoulder blade?”

  “Oh,” Speedy replied as he left her sight. “Just one of those crazy kid stories.”

  In the kitchen Speedy took out his Thompson, spread the wool blanket on the table and stripped his baby down into her component parts. He’d picked up some cleaning gear from a gun shop, some solvent and brushes and such – now he went to town on his piece again, scouring her into cleanliness for the dozenth time.

  He admired the perfection of his submachine gun, loved the power she represented in his hands. He got excited at what she was going to do for him at the Mexicans’.’ Speedy could chop down a young tree with one burst from her – Hell, he could take on a small town police force with this beauty.

  Speedy finished her latest cleaning, reassembled her and stood up naked. He held her, his hands gently grasping her twin gnurled inline grips with a sweetheart’s tenderness.

  Carmel had lain in bed, listening through the partially open door to the clanking and clinking of Speedy playing with his deadly toy. Then the clanking stopped and she heard him whispering words she couldn’t understand, his low voice sounding worked up about something.

  She crept from her bed and slowly peeked around the edge of the open door to spy what Speedy was up to with that damned death dealer of his.

  Speedy was standing nude in the middle of the living room, holding the machine gun with both hands and posturing with it as if aiming at imaginary enemies. He swiveled on his feet, rear foot braced sideways against nonexistent recoil as he aimed the barrel low at all four corners of the room in turn.

  “M1A1 Thompson Submachine Gun,” Carmel heard him breathe through gritted teeth. “Caliber .45 Automatic Colt Pistol, straight blowback operation, 50-round snail drum magazine with spiral tension spring operation.”

  Speedy’s eyes glittered as if he were in ecstasy. Carmel felt embarrassed for him, as if she’d ca
ught him beating off or something.

  She crept back to her room as quiet as she’d left it. When Speedy rejoined her in bed Carmel pretended she was asleep.

  If he’d been cheating with another woman Carmel would have expected to smell the other woman’s perfume, maybe even the reek of sex. As it was she could still smell Speedy’s mistress on him, but this mistress stank of cold steel and gun oil.

  Carmel had no desire to find out what the whore smelled like after Speedy had fired her off.

  Chapter 33

  It is a night for dreams.

  By now Little Willy has stopped dreaming of crack, no more fantasies of hitting the bat for him. Instead, tonight, he dreams of miles and miles of books; of walking amongst corridors lined with stacked tomes and crowded shelves, deeper and deeper through a claustrophobic maze like an amusement park fun house of knowledge, or a haunted castle library. Each row of bound and printed heaven leads him closer to some final glowing revelation that always seems just around the next corner.

  As he so often does, this evening Fat Bob is dreaming of the Indian Kid, who just stares like always, as if desperate to impart some urgent message to Bob. Bob groans and writhes in his sleep, there on his whore sister Miranda’s couch. Niece Miya stands in the hallway wearing the Rainbow Brite pajamas her uncle bought her last Christmas, watching his tears fall heavy from his sleeping eyes – heavy enough she knows his pillow will be soaked in the morning again (although when he awakes, as always Bob will just assume he’s been drooling hard in his sleep).

  Tonight Carmel is dreaming the same vision she’d had for years before meeting Speedy, before she discovered he was the one: dreaming of life with a man she loved, and who loved her at least enough to cover her against the world’s woes – the King of Swords always faceless before, but now revealed to her dreaming self as Speedy. She dreams of their children burgeoning in her womb and growing into their full strength before leaving home to awe the world. In her sleep Carmel clutches Speedy tight, her body at least knowing that she’ll never let him get away from her.