by Peter Plate
Selling dope was tolerable. The cash flow was consistent and it gave him extra hours to indulge in books that he ordinarily wouldn’t have chanced. Lately he’d been reading William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It was slow going; the print required a magnifying glass.
Reading was a survival skill that Jeeter had acquired in prison. He’d been languishing in county jail, waiting for a transfer to the penitentiary upstate, and came upon a dog-eared copy of a John Dos Passos trilogy in his cell. The book took weeks to read and had kept him from going insane with boredom.
Jeeter closed his paperback when he heard steps on the staircase. The movement meant only one thing: a tenant was approaching. He looked up to find Mama Celeste holding onto the railing as she made her way downstairs. Jeeter noted she was dressed for winter on a summer morning. He put the novel in his jacket, rubbed his eyes, and smiled. Jeeter had several types of smiles. There was the smile he’d learned while doing his first jolt for larceny. That was his everyday servile smile. Then there was the smile that he’d earned during a three-year bit for burglary. That was his serene smile. And there was his vocational smile. He employed the latter on Mama Celeste, snarking, “Hey, girl. Top of the morning to you.”
Mama Celeste said an epithet under her breath. The landlord was speaking to her. He was a putrid man, worse than a Cossack. She was instantaneously defensive. “What do you want?”
Jeeter had a pull off his fag and said, “The rent. It’s due today. That’s why I’m sitting down here in the lobby, to let you and everybody else in the building know it.” He winked at Mama Celeste. “You look ready for a snowstorm. Don’t you get hot wearing that army jacket all the time?”
Mama turned beet-red. She was indignant. Jeeter Roche was a bully. Sitting on the milk crate with his flabby legs, the goniff reminded her of the demon in her dreams. “I get cold,” she said flatly.
“You do? Well, turn up the heat in your room.”
“There ain’t any.”
“What?”
“It doesn’t work.”
Jeeter had turned off the heat in the building to save money. The owners had asked him to do it, saying they’d split the profit with him. For Mama Celeste’s benefit, Jeeter made out like he didn’t know anything. “Oh, yeah?”
Mama wasn’t buying his innocence. Her nostrils quivered in accusation. “You knew there was no damn heat.”
The cigarette’s smoke hid the dismay on Jeeter’s rubbery face. She’d slipped that one in real nice. Essentially calling him a liar. Jeeter had stolen cars in his ill-starred career as a villain. He’d also robbed banks, not very successfully, and had thieved from department stores. But when all was said and done, that was in the distant past and he now considered himself an honest man. Miffed, he said, “Well, hell.”
“I see what goes on around here. I ain’t blind.”
“Oh, yeah?” Jeeter retorted. “And what is it that you see?”
Mama showed her claws. “You and them drugs.”
Jeeter switched off his vocational smile and resorted to his penal smile. It was a submissive smile, how a feral dog is submissive. You turn your back on the cur, and it goes for your throat. Jeeter’s lips were veal-colored. His teeth were sharp and yellow. His tongue flicked sideways when he said, “Whatever I’m doing, that ain’t your business, you hear?”
Unconsciously, Jeeter fingered his face. His livid skin was a minefield of razor bumps and ingrown hairs. Shaving was daily purgatory, a personal holocaust. Choreographing his mouth, he coaxed a final drag from the roll-up. He exhaled, spat out flecks of tobacco, then flung the butt on the ground and crushed it under his loafers. His bulky muscles twitched under the leisure suit’s antiquated polyester. He said without emotion, “You keep talking like you’ve been doing, Mama, and you and me, we’re gonna have a disagreement. One that will be thorny.” He added, “Have you got your money for me?”
Mama was hard of hearing when the subject wasn’t to her liking. “What, the rent?”
Jeeter whipped out an embossed leather bound receipt book from another pocket in his jacket. The receipt book was his pride and joy; it spoke the language of his soul. He opened the book, licked his thumb, turned several pages, and smiled again, this time with warmth. “It says here in my ledger, you haven’t given me no money yet for this week. You either pay up or I’m going to have to evict you. You know I don’t want to do that. But it’s the law.”
Mama was aghast. “You’d evict me?”
“I’d have to.” Jeeter was impassive. “The owners would make me.”
An eviction in a city with a 1 percent vacancy rate in rental housing was a nightmare. It was a death warrant for a geriatric on a fixed income. Too agitated to respond to Jeeter Roche’s threat, Mama Celeste moved stiffly past him and went out the yawning security gate.
It took Mama a few seconds to get used to the street. A trolley car rumbled past a row of stunted palm trees. Three homeless men saddled with sleeping bags sat on the pavement by the Allen Hotel. A pigeon winged overhead, arcing into the haze. The wind mischievously lifted the hem of her coat. She felt chilliness under her collar, but the money in the shoebox, about two hundred thousand dollars, lifted her spirits as she ambled to the corner of Gough Street.
TWO
AT NINE O’CLOCK THAT MORNING it began to rain. Lightning buzzed over the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island. The city’s piebald hills were shrouded in eggshell-colored clouds. The shower lambasted Market Street with deafening intensity, rebounding off the pavement like buckshot. Tourists held newspapers over their heads and ducked into doorways for cover.
The shift in the weather didn’t stop the police response to the Brinks robbery. Teams of plainclothes agents from the department’s intelligence unit fanned out in the Tenderloin to hunt for eyewitnesses. A squad of uniformed police officers, acting on an anonymous tip, searched the housing project for the aged on Polk Street. Radio and television news said a gang of well-organized thieves had pilfered over four million dollars.
The symphony of police car sirens on Market Street startled Stiv Wilkins, making him think he was back in jail. Rolling over in bed, he looked at his bride of ten months. She was snoring mouth open, dead to the world. Her shoulder-length bleached platinum blonde hair was splayed on the pillow. Matte black lipstick was daubed on her mouth. Her belly button was pierced with an eighteen-karat-gold ring. Her taut coppery breasts were swollen with milk. Their three-month-old baby boy was sleeping on her stomach.
Crawling out of the sack, Stiv padded over to the window to see what the brouhaha was about. Naked, he braced his hands on the sill. Pressing his aquiline nose to the cold glass, he gazed at the street. The rain was coming down in buckets. A string of black-and-white cop cars flashing red and blue lights were at the Bank of America building on Van Ness Avenue.
The Allen Hotel had been Stiv’s residence for two years. Twenty-four months. Seven hundred and thirty days. Seventeen thousand five hundred and twenty hours. Ever since his band came to town on tour from Portland and fell apart. The drummer decided he was gay and left the group to join a drag queen revue, and the bass player went back to Oregon because the heroin was cheaper up north.
The room was ten feet wide and twelve feet long. The bed took up most of the floor. A sink was wedged in a corner and a Sony television was bolted to the wall. With three people in it, him, Sharona and the brat, the place was no better than a sardine can. Watching the cavalcade of police cars glide past the Allen Hotel toward Octavia Street and the cross-town freeway overpass, Stiv was anxious and tugged at the hair on his narrow chest.
The day before he’d had a beef with a dope dealer. It began when Richard Rood came up to him in the Orbit Café on Market Street. Stiv had been sitting alone at a table drinking a cup of black coffee and minding his own business. Richard was decked out in a gaudy red patent leather suit with a large American flag sewn on the back. His jacket was skintight, advertising his muscular chest. The pants rode high up th
e cleft in his ass, causing intense discomfort. Three zircon earrings gleamed in each ear. His ebony countenance profiled an oft-broken nose, chiseled cheeks, and deep-set brooding eyes.
A respiratory virus had been circulating throughout the Tenderloin. There was a dull tone to Richard Rood’s skin, courtesy of the flu. Without being asked, he sat down at Stiv’s table and issued bad vibes. He said, “Where in damnation have you been?”
Stiv was concise. “Around.”
“We’ve got trouble.”
“Who does?”
“You and me.”
“We do?”
“For reals and I’m only going say four things here, dig? Let me chop it up for you,” Richard said. “You’ve been fucking me. You can’t turn shit into sugar and I don’t want any excuses from you. I just want my money.”
Stiv sipped at his coffee and remained poker-faced. He was resplendent in a red Pendleton shirt that he’d gotten at the flea market in Berkeley, blue Ben Davis jeans, and a black leather motorcycle jacket; his hair had been recently barbered into a modified quiff and was stiff with Brylcreem. His steel-toed Chippewa engineer boots were planted flat on the floor.
Richard’s accusation was indisputable. The dealer had fronted Stiv an ounce of mota to sell. Not the good stuff, not Humboldt green; Richard didn’t trust him with top-quality merchandise. The product had been Sinaloa dirt weed, a lousy grade that attacked your lungs as if it were napalm. The wholesale price to Stiv had been four hundred dollars. A tad inflated, but reasonable. Anything Stiv earned over that sum was his to keep. But Stiv wasn’t a good businessman. Nor was he practical. Instead of selling the pot, he’d smoked the whole bag. Stiv knew he’d erred. It was no secret. And he didn’t have the money. He didn’t have anything. He had nada. He paused before answering Richard, taking his time, and then said, “I’m sorry, man. I ain’t got it.”
With a moue of disbelief, Richard Rood rolled his eyes and chastised him. “What did you do with the weed? Did you even sell it?”
Stiv demurred. “I didn’t do a damn thing with it.”
“Then where is it?”
“It’s gone.”
Richard zeroed in for the kill. “You smoked it, didn’t you?”
“Did not.”
“Did too. You’ve got it written all over your tired-ass face. You smoked it.”
Stiv put the coffee cup on the table and threw his hands in the air. The gesture was saturated with defeat. “Okay, okay, I did. What can I say, dude? It’s a weird time. I’ve got a wife and kid. I’m stressing and shit.”
Because he was sick, Richard Rood’s throat hurt and it was difficult to talk. He should’ve been at home in bed. Instead he was running all over town collecting his money. His nose was stuffed up and he couldn’t inhale through his nostrils. His eyes flamed red with disgust as he said, “Once you dipped into the bag, you couldn’t stop smoking. So you just kept going.”
Rood’s reputation had its origin in the puckered, cross-shaped blob of scar tissue that ornamented his forehead. Legend had it, a rival drug dealer dusted on PCP—the man believed he was the reincarnation of Judas Iscariot—had been mad at Richard for stealing a jar of morphine tablets. The rumor of the theft had spread in the ghetto with the speed of a venereal disease. Everyone knew a showdown was coming and that it would be nasty.
Exhibiting his customary disdain for no-count idiots, Richard had ignored the gossip and gone about his business. His mistake proved near fatal as his adversary cornered him in an alley one fine evening and shot him point-blank in the face with a .22 Colt derringer.
A derringer is a modest gun, suitable for low-key situations such as a brawl at a party or a rumble in a nightclub. For assassinations, it isn’t adequate. The derringer’s bullet, the kind of ordnance that was sold under the counter at swap meets, blossomed out of the barrel and hit Richard Rood in the head. But it failed to penetrate his skull. The slug planted itself between his eyebrows, sticking out of his skin like avant-garde jewelry.
Realizing he wasn’t dead, Richard underwent a severe mood swing. Not having any family, he felt alone. More alone than he’d ever been in his life. That had hurt more than the bullet. Being vain, he was enraged that his flawless complexion had been marred. He tugged at the slug with his fingers, but couldn’t get it out. Half-blinded from the blood running down his skin, he caressed the twisted piece of lead that was supposed to have killed him.
His foe took off, never looking back.
Because he was uneducated—a tenth-grade dropout from San Francisco’s Galileo High School—Richard wasn’t quite sure what the bullet in his noggin was supposed to mean. But from then on, his rep was sterling. No one ever dared to tangle with him.
Aware of Richard Rood’s history, Stiv did an inventory on himself. He was young and didn’t have a pot to piss in. The only thing he had going was a penchant for recklessness that bordered on self-destruction.
“Stiv, pay attention to me.”
“Uh, what?”
“You don’t know shit from Shinola. You are lower than a broke-dick dog.”
Stiv’s reply was marinated in resignation. “You’re right.”
Richard’s jheri curls were a black corona around his face. He flexed his biceps and heard the distinct sound of a jacket inseam giving way. The cheap stitching in his suit was busting apart. “Sure as hell,” he said. “You’ll have to pony up that money.”
Stiv parried. “And if I don’t?”
“Further trouble will befall your ass.”
The two men were sitting face-to-face. Except that the top of Richard’s head was level with Stiv’s chin. All sounds in the space between them died away, building disquietude polluted with cynicism. The other customers in the café had prudently departed. The counter-person was busy washing dishes in the back. Stiv was of two minds. Part of him said to drop it and walk away. Deal with the problem later. Worry about the money some other time. That was the passive Stiv. Another side of him wanted to get mad and cause a scene. That was his aggressive streak talking. But he was afraid of Richard. Crossing the man would earn him a one-way excursion to the morgue with a death certificate tied to his foot and a burial in a pine box. Thinking rapidly, he pontificated, “All right, man, I’ve got a plan.”
Richard Rood wasn’t impressed. “What is it?”
Stiv leaned forward and gave the dealer his most sincere look. The illumination in the café reflected the nervous warmth in his eyes. “Give me another day.”
“To do what?”
“To get the money.”
Rood smiled with heartfelt malevolence. His big white incisors were wet with spit. “And what if you don’t come up with it?”
Stiv didn’t know what was worse, the diminutive Richard, or his own rash mouthing. “Don’t sweat it,” he said confidently. “I’ll get the cash.”
Staring out the window at the rain, Stiv had other issues on his mind that were even worse than Richard Rood. The rent on the room at the Allen was overdue and the bookworm Jeeter Roche never took no for an answer. He was the type of building manager who never cut you any slack. If you didn’t have the money, you were out on your ear.
Stiv had also gotten involved with Jeeter’s wife. That had been another one of his quick-witted moves. The affair with her had been going up and down for weeks, and he was dying to end it. To cap it off he’d been seeing a ghost in the Allen Hotel.
The spook wore a pair of leather chaps studded with silver bells and a coarse white linen shirt. His feet were shod in rough cowhide boots. His youthful handsome face was haggard from exhaustion; his long black hair was matted in clumps. On the brocaded sash binding his waist were a holstered single-shot pistol and a sheathed butcher’s knife. A braided quirt hung from his left wrist. His clothes were covered with the reddish-brown dust indigenous to the shores of the San Francisco Bay. His name was José Reyna. From Sonora in Mexico, he’d been an outlaw in the 1830s. San Francisco had been a sleepy bayside village populated with Mexicans, Ohlone and
Miwok Indians, and gringo gold miners.
Stiv thought he was going bonkers and went to the mental health clinic on Shotwell Street. He was processed by a zealous twenty-seven-year-old psychiatric social worker out of UC Berkeley, a cat by the name of Norbert Deflass. Uniformed in a buttoned-down oxford shirt, pressed khakis, and topsiders with a cowlick in his hairdo, Deflass was courteous and enthusiastic, more like a shoe salesman than a social worker.
He ran Stiv through a battery of tests and then interviewed him, just the two of them in a whitewashed cubicle at the rear of the clinic. The room had two chairs and a desk. Norbert parked himself behind the desk, put his shoes on it, and said, “Look, Stiv, you’re under a lot of pressure with having a kid and everything. How’s your wife doing? How is she handling it?”
Stiv hunkered in a folding chair. He didn’t like the look in Norbert’s eyes. It was too friendly. “A lot better than me. She’s a tough cookie.”
“How old is she?”
“Nineteen.”
“Wow, a baby mama. That’s young. She must be a together kind of woman.”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
“Is your relationship stable?”
Stiv bristled. He didn’t appreciate the question. His sex life wasn’t the social worker’s business. “What do you mean?”
“You’re not planning on leaving her, are you, because of the kid?”
Stiv mulled it over. He decided not to say anything about the affair he was having. That was a separate issue. “No. I’m sticking it out. Like, family is important, you know?”
Deflass seemed to buy it. “Good, but here’s the deal. I’m going to advise medication. You need something to smooth out the edges.”
Stiv was nonplussed. “What’s wrong with me?”
“I’m not a shrink, but I think you’re borderline.”
The diagnosis didn’t mean a thing to Stiv. It was a jumble of words that he’d need a thesaurus to sort out. He was more curious about the drugs. They were more his style. He said, “What can you do for me?”
