“What we have here is 257,000 dollars. And some change.”
If Reseda were still alive, they’d already have the money spread across the bed and be fucking on top of it. But tonight the pleasure wouldn’t come. Speedy looked at Carmel as if seeking approval – for himself, he would have felt prouder at this if another two people had been in the room with him.
Fat Bob and Little Willy deserved to be here, even more than Speedy. But the Fates -- that haggard trio of deathless cunts – hadn’t seen fit to consult with anyone before rolling the bones and cutting Bob’s and Willy’s threads.
Carmel’s pinched look faded as she looked at the piles of money covering the bed. She looked at Speedy as if seeing him for the first time, and her facial muscles relaxed the rest of the way.
“A snowball in hell,” she breathed.
Then her eyes gleamed with sudden practicality, the same gleam that’s filled women’s eyes throughout time immemorial when faced with such a windfall of fortune in the hands of their clueless fellas.
“That may be enough,” Carmel said, as she fully smiled for the first time in a while.
Chapter 47
They drove north on Doolittle past the little dead-end part of the Estuary where the boat drag races used to be. Half a dozen carloads of Oakland A’s boosters were caravanning home from a Coliseum game together, all of them wearing their polyester suits and green cowboy hats. Speedy nodded approvingly as Carmel placed the Vega in the midst of the boosters for camouflage without him having to say a word.
Carmel drove across the Bay Farm Island Draw Bridge to Alameda and cruised along Shoreline Drive past Mel’s Bowl and the South Shore Center mall along what served Alameda for a beach: rundown apartment complexes lining the landward side and low dunes of trucked-in sand on the other.
They passed the specific apartment Speedy and Reseda had been shacking up in before the breakup, and his eyes riveted to it. As it was right on the shore he remembered the apartment as being expensive; but as it commanded a fine view of the South Peninsula, the SF skyline and the Bay Bridge, it had been worth it. Speedy had quickly discovered he thoroughly enjoyed standing on the balcony in the morning, sipping a black cup of coffee and smoking a butt as he watched the tame Bay surf roll against the shore.
Before prison, when he’d lived there Speedy had slept on a waterbed with satin sheets, with a big antique mirror mounted on the ceiling over it. How often had he lain on his back looking up at that mirror, watching Reseda’s reflection while she rode him cowgirl-style? But no matter how many times he’d fucked Reseda, he’d never touched her heart.
Still, it had been the high life for sure: he was King of the East Bay and he hadn’t needed anybody. No one and nothing could touch Speedy – the streets had belonged to him and anything was possible with Reseda there next to him, doing him right. He’d been on top of the world, back then . . .
Carmel hooked inland past Alameda West Lagoon, and reached T.J. and Sergio’s house. Speedy went inside and knocked on their bedroom door.
“We’re leaving now, the place is all yours again,” Speedy said.
TJ’s door opened and Pearl sauntered out to greet Speedy regally. She purred as Speedy picked her up.
“What about Willy?” Sergio asked.
“He’s checked out,” Speedy said, wincing at the unintentionally glib pun even as he made it.
Speedy went into Little Willy’s room with Pearl nestled in his arms, in search of anything his little brother might have wanted him to take along for memory’s sake. Speedy looked around at all the stacks of books, way too many to take even if he were a reader: excess baggage on its way down the tubes like everything else.
But one stood out to him from the top of a pile, this Scholastic Book Service children’s book showing a Hawaiian kid on the cover sailing an outrigger canoe on top of a big ocean swell, all alone amongst the waves’ immensity – ‘Call It Courage,’ the title read, ‘By Armstrong Perry.’ Speedy stuck it in his coat pocket.
“You can keep any of his stuff you want,” Speedy said as he was leaving. “He won’t be needing any of it.”
T.J. and Sergio eyeballed each other in confusion and then they both looked at Speedy. “But it’s just a bunch of fucking books and shit.”
Chapter 48
At Miranda’s place Speedy walked right up and knocked.
“Where’s my car?” Miranda demanded before she even had the door completely open. Miya stood behind her in the dimness of the kitchenette, watching.
“It’s down off San Pablo,” Speedy said, handing her the keys and giving her the exact address. “It’s dinged up but still copasetic. You might want to wait a day or two before picking it up though. The cops are all over the place right now, and they will have questions.”
“That’s shit,” Miranda said. “Where’s Bob?” She looked past Speedy, trying to see where her brother was hiding.
“Bob’s dead, Miranda,” Speedy said. He reached into his coat pocket and took out a wad of 100s, held it out to her. “This is for the use of your car, and for your loss.”
Miranda’s eyes grew huge as she took physical custody of the bills.
“I want more,” she said, the snitch light almost visibly flickering into life above her head. “This isn’t near enough, you’ll be giving me Bob’s full share.”
“Well,” Speedy said as he pulled out another rubber-banded roll of bills, bigger than the first. “About that. Bob didn’t exactly leave a will, did he?”
Speedy tossed this roll of bills up in the air and caught it. Watching Miranda tracking the money going up and down, he wondered if her panties were moistening at the sight.
He held the money out to Miranda. “This is for Miya – she’s coming with us.”
Strangely, Miranda balked and her mouth hung open – perhaps at the prospect of losing the AFDC welfare check Miya represented?
“You think I’d sell my daughter like that?” Miranda asked, undoubtedly pretending the incredulity she displayed.
Speedy pulled a third wad of bills out of his pocket, this one as big as the first and second combined. He held both wads up in Miranda’s face to hypnotize her with.
“Come on Miya,” Speedy said past Miranda’s shoulder to Bob’s niece, where the little girl hid in the gloom. “You belong to me now.”
Miya ran past her mother without so much as looking at her, carrying a little suitcase like maybe Fat Bob had had her packed and ready to leave for a while, her small face set and determined.
Miranda wrestled with greed as she watched her daughter pass. Miranda’s lips writhed speechlessly as she kneaded that first thick wad of bills in her hand. Avarice won: she snatched the other two wads from Speedy’s hands and pressed all three to her breast.
Miranda grinned at Speedy as if they were co-conspirators, but her mouth was trembling.
“You sure I can’t convince you to stick around?” Miranda asked, her eyes betraying that she knew the question for futile. “We’d be good together, I know.”
“Goodbye Miranda,” Speedy said, knowing that, even if he had been semi-interested enough to dump Carmel, it would only be the do-re-mi Miranda wanted to stick around and not him. “There’ll be more where that came from, from time to time. You can keep running the AFDC if you want, I won’t tap it other than birth certificate.”
Speedy didn’t even have to mention that Miranda would be an accessory the instant she spent a penny of the drug house cash, and that there’d be no more money forthcoming if Miranda opened her mouth to anyone. She knew what was what, and he knew he owned her as long as he had dollar bills to hold over her head – Speedy knew he wasn’t important enough to earn her Witness Protection if she turned rat on him.
Miranda ducked back inside to count her money the instant Speedy and Miya commenced walking away down the hall.
As they drove away Speedy snuck a glance at Miya in the back seat without looking directly at her, pretending he was peering past the little girl back at her m
other’s receding apartment.
Clueless Speedy: He had no idea yet just what a watershed this little girl represented in his life. He didn’t realize that everything had changed for him, whether he’d intended it to or not.
Miya was crying silently, wisely stifling her sobs so as not to draw attention to herself. Pearl crawled onto Miya’s lap and draped herself there, purring in feline apathy to another’s’ suffering.
Speedy faced forward again, nodding in approval at Miya’s grief: tears should be spilled for Fat Bob; it was good that someone was able to weep for him here. But Miya was a child, and Speedy figured this pain would pass despite her best efforts to keep it alive.
Soon enough her memory of Uncle Robert would fade for Miya, into that of a hazy half-forgotten kindly protector she’d rarely bother to remember. Soon enough Speedy knew he’d be the only one that cared Fat Bob and Little Willy had ever existed; knew that, to the world, they were just two more pieces of anonymous gutter trash plowed under into the landfill of history.
He’d snag a bottle once he was settled up in Humboldt, and find himself a lonely spot in the piney woods. He’d pour out libations for both Fat Bob and Little Willy then. He’d toast them and get drunk as a skunk, crawling-on-his-hands-and-knees wasted.
Would he cry then?
Weakness was danger to begin with, and when tear drops fell, you might as well be pissing your pain out onto the ground. You could weep a river into the ocean, and the sea level wouldn’t rise an inch.
Yes, but would he cry?
Chapter 49
It was around midnight as they took the Nimitz north to the East Shore, the same route they’d taken running from Chatter earlier. Carmel couldn’t clear her mind of the surreal contrast between the excitement and terror she’d felt then, and driving the same stretch of freeway now on her way home with a pile of money and a man at her side that would freak her friends out when she showed him off to them.
They started across the first cantilever of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. They were about midway across the bridge, they’d come off the first rollercoaster causeway onto the bridge’s more traditional appearing center superstructure, when Carmel said out of nowhere, “You can dump that machine gun here.”
Speedy goggled at her for a second, until she reminded him, “You swore.”
He rolled down his window and pulled the blanket-wrapped Thompson from the floor and onto his lap. He stared out into the night Bay’s blackness, watching the bridge’s gray hinges and trusses flash past them. Speedy lifted the Thompson off his lap and started to heave her butt-first out the window.
But it was if the Tommy gun was glued to his hands – he couldn’t let go, he couldn’t drown this beautiful weapon. He slowly lowered her back onto his lap and held her there, protectively.
The V-8 engine’s roar, and the moan coming in the open window from the wind of their passage, were both deafening over the silence that had descended on the car’s interior. Speedy and Carmel sat side by side staring straight ahead, neither one saying a word.
“Wait,” Speedy said, and then he chucked the Thompson out the window between two of the superstructure’s beams, not giving himself a chance to think about it this time.
The machine gun flew out into the air over the railing, the blanket still clinging to her to flutter behind like a super hero’s cape, or bat wings, as if the Thompson were an industrial Lucifer dive-bombing her way to Hell. And then she was gone, on her way to those cold, dark waters below.
The Thompson was going to embed herself in the mud at the bottom of the Bay. Speedy imagined boneless little sea creatures crawling over her, oblivious to her beauty and lethal power, and the Thompson rusting away in the end, leaving nothing behind but an iron-enriched section of ocean-bottom muck.
“Better?” Speedy asked Carmel.
She reached out one hand to him without taking her eyes off the road. Speedy took her hand and held it. Louis’s precious stars smirked down on them all benevolent, as they finished crossing the water.
Chapter 50
When they reached the San Rafael shore and curved past San Quentin Prison, Speedy saw someone familiar ahead, standing right next to the freeway where a frontage road hooked onto 580 North.
“Pull up next to that guy,” Speedy instructed with a jerk of his chin.
Carmel pulled over to the shoulder of the freeway, stopping next to the little man thumbing there next to the line of trees paralleling the highway.
It was Pavel, looking at them squirrelly as they slowed, like he was trying to decide which way to jump.
“Hey,” Speedy said, smiling out the shotgun window at the shrimpy Lot Lizard.
“Hey,” Pavel said, relaxing and grinning as he recognized Speedy.
Pavel took in Carmel driving, at how wary yet determined she appeared. He looked at little Miya looking right back at him, with her suitcase next to her on the car seat.
Pavel saw Pearl sitting on Miya’s lap kneading Miya’s chest with her little paws. If he recognized this sleek white kitten as the filthy starveling he’d foisted on Speedy at the truck stop, he didn’t let on.
There was nothing else to see up front. In case of a traffic stop, Speedy had the sawed-off and the cash hidden in the spare-tire well. He hoped they didn’t get a flat, because he’d had to chuck both the spare and the jack to make room.
“So what are you doing down here?” Speedy asked.
“Trying to find you, my man,” Pavel replied.
Speedy lifted his brows.
“Yeah,” Pavel expanded. “The Lizards didn’t like me letting you slide. There was a recall election as it were. Rachel led the revolt. She’s in charge now.” Pavel shook his head like he still couldn’t believe it.
“You told me if I came down here, you’d show me how you play in Oakland.” Pavel looked at him intently. “Is it playtime Speedy?”
Speedy didn’t so much as glance over at Carmel, who stared at the highway ahead like she wasn’t extremely interested in his answer. If she’d thought before that she’d tamed Speedy, she no longer appeared as certain of it.
“No Pavel,” Speedy told the little man. “It ain’t playtime, and I don’t do that shit anymore. However, I do know a guy that could steer you to some game.”
Speedy gave Pavel Hector’s address in Jingletown and directions on how to get there.
Speedy thought about a way to vouch for Pavel and grinned: “Ask him if his straight razor is still sharp – he’ll know I sent you then.”
With a wave to the ex-Lot Lizard, Speedy signaled Carmel to drive on. They were off to Humboldt.
Speedy looked back at Miya and Pearl; he touched Willy’s book, still safe in his field jacket’s left pocket. Perhaps in wishful thinking, Speedy imagined he could see Little Willy and Fat Bob flanking Miya.
‘Are we going home, Speedy?’ he could almost hear Willy’s translucent shade ask, with Bob’s smiling ghost seeming to await the answer with equal curiosity.
“Yeah, Willy,” Speedy told his baby brother’s shade. “We’re going home.”
Neither Carmel nor Miya commented on Speedy’s speaking to the empty air.
Speedy snuck a peek past Miya through the rear windshield at the receding lights of the East Bay skyline; at her lighted boulevards shining, her neon and sodium lights beaming up to drown the stars in that eternal promise of riches and horror, splendor and despair.
He tripped as he realized that he’d raised from prison only the week before. He turned to face forward.
When Speedy looked back again a few minutes later, the East Bay was gone from his sight.
# # #
THE END
This book is fiction, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is completely coincidental. The East Bay and Oakland, however, are quite real.
# # #
A shorter version of this book was published under the same title by Point Blank/Wildside Press on November 1, 2006: ISBN: 0-8095-5659-6 (hc) & 0-8095-5660-X (tpb). Portion
s of this novel were previously published as short stories in Mysterical-e, Anthony Neil Smith’s Plots With Guns! and Dave Zeltserman’s Hardluck Stories.
# # #
This book is dedicated to two absent friends: Pete Peterson and Beau Bixler. Pete, thanks for everything – I’d never have become a writer without you. Sandy, tell Beau Junior his daddy loved this book.
Why I’m Republishing STREET RAISED
Previously printed June 6 2011 in Spinetingler Magazine.
I come from Danish stock on my father’s side. My grandfather went down to the sea at an early age, in the days of the tall ships. Karl sailed around the world five times and was shipwrecked three times – once, his vessel went down out of sight from dry land, 25 miles from shore.
As he trod water there where his ship had gone under to Davy Jones, dolphins appeared and allowed him to grasp their dorsal fins. These dolphins then swam him all the way over the horizon to land.
Besides the fact that I would not be here to write these words today if those dolphins hadn’t interfered, it is of interest that grandpa’s main regret in abandoning ship was that he’d lost a sea bag full of books. My love of learning seems to be hereditary, and I have thus come by it honestly.
As for myself: I was born in San Francisco on Alma Street in the late 50s, a handful of blocks from the already blossoming ferment of Haight-Ashbury. I’ve been a reader for over half a century now. Proudly, I cite ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ as the first book I ever read cover to cover – but I rapidly moved upward in terms of subject matter complexity.
Street Raised Page 36
