San Francisco Noir

by Peter Maravelis

  “People don’t know it,” he said. “Even round the neighborhood, they don’t know it. But Jojo here, he did more than his share. Out there in the Pacific.”

  “People don’t want to hear about this,” I said. There was an edge in my voice, maybe a little more than there should have been.

  “No,” said Maglie. “But they should know.”

  I knew what Maglie was doing. Trying to make it up to me in some way. Letting me know that whatever happened to my father, in that hearing, it wasn’t his idea. And to prove it, I could play the hero in front of this girl from The Heights with her cardigan and her pearls and that ring on her finger.

  I turned to Anne.

  “You?” I asked. “Where were you during the war?”

  She gave me a little bit of her story then. About how she had been studying back East when the war broke out. Half-way through the war, she’d graduated and gotten a job with the VA, in a hospital, on the administrative side. But now that job was done—they’d given it to a returning soldier—and she was back home.

  The jukebox was still playing.

  “You want to dance?”

  She was a little bit taller than me, but I didn’t mind this. Sinatra was crooning on the juke. I wanted to hold her closer, but I feared she’d feel the gun in my pocket. Then I decided I didn’t care.

  I glanced at the ring on her finger, and she saw me looking.

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “Berlin.”

  I didn’t say anything. Frank went on crooning. Some of my father’s friends, I remembered them talking about the Berlin of the old days. About the cabarets and the bigmouthed blondes with husky voices who made the bulge in their pants grow like Pinocchio’s nose.

  “He, my fiancé—he’s a lieutenant,” she said. “And there’s the reconstruction. He thought it was important, not just to win the war. Not just to defeat them. But to build it back.”

  “He’s an idealist.”

  “Yes.”

  I wondered how come she had fallen for him. I wondered if she had known him long. Or if it had been one of those things where you meet somebody and you can’t escape. You fall in a whirlwind.

  At that moment, inside Alcatraz, Bernie Coy and five other convicts were pinned down in the cellblock. None of us in the bar knew that yet, or even knew their names. If you wanted to know what was going on inside Alcatraz, the best you could do was climb up a rooftop and listen to the radio—but it was too far to see, and the radio was filtered by the military. Anyway, prison officials weren’t talking. They were too busy to talk. Later, though, it came out how Bernie Coy was the brains. He knew the guards’ routines. He’d managed to crow apart the bars and lead a handful of prisoners into the gun room. He and his buddies had clubbed the guards, taken their keys, and headed down the hall to the main yard; but the last door in the long line of doors would not open. The keys were not on the ring. They had all the ammunition in the world, but they could not get past that door. Now they were pinned down, cornered by the fire on one side and the guards on the other. So they fought, the way men in a foxhole fight. Our boys in Normandy. The Japanese in those bloody caves. The floodlights swept the shore and the tracer bullets lit the sky, and they fought the way desperate men fight, creeping forward on their bellies.

  Sinatra was winding it up now, and I pulled Anne a little closer. Then I noticed a man watching us. He was sitting at the same table as Maglie and the rest. He was still watching when Anne and I walked back.

  He put his arm around Anne, and they seemed to know each other better than I would like.

  “This is Davey.” Anne said.

  “Mike’s best friend,” he said.

  I didn’t get it at first, and then I did. Mike was Anne’s fiancé, and Davey was keeping his eye out.

  Davey had blue eyes and yellow hair. When he spoke, first thing, I thought he was a Brit, but I was wrong.

  “London?” I asked.

  “No, California,” he smiled. “Palo Alto. Educated abroad.”

  He had served with Anne’s fiancé over in Germany. But unlike Mike, he had not re-enlisted. Apparently he was not quite so idealistic.

  “Part of my duties, far as my best friend,” he said, “are to make sure nothing happens to Anne.”

  The Brit laughed then. Or he was still the Brit to me. A big man, with a big laugh, hard to dislike, but I can’t say I cared for him. He joined our group anyway. We ate then and we drank. We had antipasti. We had crabs and shrimp. We had mussels and linguini. Every once in a while someone would come in from the street with news. At the Yacht Harbor now…three men in a rowboat…the marines are inside, cell-to-cell, shooting them in their cots. At some point, Ellen Pagione, Fontana’s sister-in-law, came out of the kitchen to make a fuss over me.

  “I had no idea you were back in town.” She pressed her cheek against mine. “This boy is my favorite,” she said. “My goddamn favorite.”

  Part of me liked the attention, I admit, but another part, I knew better. Ellen Pagione had never liked my father. Maybe she didn’t approve of what had happened to him, though, and felt bad. Or maybe she had pointed a finger herself. Either way, she loved me now. Everyone in North Beach, we loved one another now.

  Anne smiled. Girl that she was, she believed the whole thing.

  A little while later, she leaned toward me. She was a little in her cups maybe. Her cheeks were flush.

  “I want to take you home.”

  Then she looked away. I wondered if I’d heard correctly. The table was noisy. Then the Brit raised his glass, and everyone was laughing.

  After dinner, Johnny Maglie grabbed me at the bar. I was shaking inside, I’m not sure why. Johnny wanted to buy me a beer, and I went along, though I knew I’d had enough. There comes a time, whatever the drink is holding under, it comes back up all of a sudden and there’s nothing you can do. At the moment, I didn’t care. I caught a glimpse of Anne. Some of the others had left, but she was still at the table. So was the Brit.

  “How’s your mom?” It was the same question Johnny had asked before, out on the street, but maybe he’d forgotten.

  “She’s got her dignity,” I said.

  “That’s right. Your mama. She’s always got her head up.” He was a little drunk and a smirk showed on his face.

  I knew what people said about my mother. Or I could guess, anyway. She was a Northern Italian, like my father, from Genoa. Refinement was important to her. We were not wealthy, but this wasn’t the point. My father had only been a newspaperman, but it had been a newspaper of ideas, and the prominenti had respected him. Or so we had thought. My mother had tried for a little while to live in Montana, outside the camp where he was imprisoned, but it had been too remote, too brutal. So she had gone back to North Beach and lived with her sister. Now the war was over, and the restrictions had been lifted, but my father would not return. He had been disgraced, after all. And the people who could have helped him then—the people to whom he had catered, people like Judge Molinari, Johnny Maglie’s uncle—they had done nothing for him. Worse than nothing.

  “Are you going to stay in The Beach?” Johnny asked.

  I didn’t answer. My father worked in one of the casinos in Reno now, dealing cards. He lived in a clapboard house with Sal Fusco and Sal’s daughter, Julia. Julia took care of them both.

  About two months ago something had happened between Julia and me. It was the kind of thing that happens sometimes. To be honest, I didn’t feel much toward her other than loyalty.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  I glanced toward Anne. The Brit had slid closer and was going on in that big-chested way of his.

  “I don’t know.”

  But I did know. There was a little roadhouse on the edge of Reno with some slots and card tables. Sal Fusco wanted my father and I to go into business with him. To get the loan, all I had to do was shake hands with Pellicano, the crab fisherman. But my father, I knew, did not really care about the roadhouse. All he want
ed was for my mother to come to Reno.

  I had spoken to my mother just hours before.

  “If this is what you want, I will do it,” she said.

  “It’s not for me. It’s for him.”

  “Your father can come back here. The war is over.”

  “He has his pride.”

  “We all have our shame. You get used to it. At least here, I can wear my mink to the opera.”

  “There is no opera anymore.”

  “There will be again soon,” she said. “But if this is what you want, I will go to Reno. If this is what my son wants…”

  I understood something then. She blamed my father. Someone needed to take blame, and he was the one. And part of me, I understood. Part of me didn’t want to go back to Reno either.

  “It’s what I want,” I said.

  Johnny Maglie looked at me with those big eyes of his. He wanted something from me. Like Ellen Pagione wanted. Like my father wanted. Like Julia Fusco. For a minute, I hated them all.

  “I know how you used to talk about going into law,” Johnny said. “Before all this business.”

  “Before all what business?”

  “Before the war…” he stammered. “That’s all I meant. I know you wanted to be an attorney.”

  “Everything’s changed.”

  “My uncle—he said he would write a letter for you. Not just any school. Stanford. Columbia. His recommendation, it carries weight.”

  I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel a rush of excitement—that I didn’t sense a door opening and a chance to walk into another life.

  “Is it because he feels guilty?” I asked. “Because of what happened to my father? He was at the hearing, wasn’t he?”

  Johnny looked at me blankly, as if he didn’t understand.

  “I saw Jake yesterday.”

  Jake was Judge Molinari’s boy. He was a sweet-faced kid. His father’s pride and joy. He’d done his tour in Sicily and distinguished himself, from what I heard.

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Getting married.”

  “Good for him.”

  Back at the table, the Brit raised another glass. Beside him, Anne was beautiful. The way the Brit was looking at her, I didn’t guess he was thinking about his buddy overseas.

  I was born circa 1921. The records aren’t exact. It doesn’t matter. Like I said, there are times, these days, when I can’t place the current date either. It is 1998, maybe. Or 2008. The nurse who takes care of me—who scoots me up off my ass and empties my bedpan—she was born in Saigon, just before the fall. 1971, I think. French Vietnamese, but the French part doesn’t matter here in the States. Either way, she doesn’t give a fuck about me. Outside the sunlight is white, and I glimpse the airplanes descending. We have a new airport, a new convention center. Every place, these days, has a new convention center. Every place you go, there are airplanes descending and signs advertising a casino on the edge of town.

  I close my eyes. The Brit gets up all of a sudden, goes out into the night. I see Anne alone at the table. I see my father dealing cards in Reno. I see Julia Fusco in my father’s kitchen, fingers on her swollen belly.

  My kid. My son.

  A few days ago, for recreation, they wheeled us to the convention center. We could have been anywhere. Chicago. Toronto. I spotted a couple in the hotel bar, and it didn’t take a genius to see what was going on.

  You can try to fuck your way out. You can work the slot. You can run down the long hall but in the end the door is locked and you are on your belly, crawling through smoke.

  No one escapes.

  The nurse comes, rolls me over.

  Go to sleep, she says. Go to fucking sleep.

  “I was on Guam.” Anne and I were outside now, just the two of us. The evening was all but over. “The Japanese were on top of the hill. A machine-gun nest.”

  One of the marine choppers was overhead now, working in a widening gyre. The wind had shifted and you could smell the smoke from the prison.

  “Is it hard?”

  “What?”

  “The memories?”

  “Of the war, you mean.”

  “Yes, the war.”

  I didn’t know what to say. “A lot of people on both sides,” I made a vague gesture. “Us or them. Sometimes, the difference, I don’t know.” I felt the confusion inside of me. I saw the dead Japs in their nest. “I don’t know what pulls people through.”

  She looked at me then. She smiled. “Love.”

  “What?”

  She was a little shier now. “Something greater than themselves. A dedication to that. To someone they love. Or to something.”

  “To an idea?”

  “Yes,” she said. “An idea.”

  What she said, it didn’t explain anything, not really, but it was the kind of thing people were saying those days—in the aftermath of all the killing. I felt myself falling for it, just like you fall for the girl in the movie. For a moment, she wasn’t Anne anymore, the girl from The Heights. She was something else, her face sculpted out of light.

  She smiled.

  “I’m old-fashioned,” she said. “Why don’t you get me a taxi?”

  Then I had an idea. I didn’t have to go to Reno. I could just walk up Columbus with Anne. We could catch a taxi. And we could keep going. Not out to Dolores Heights, or Liberty Heights, or wherever it was she lived. But beyond the neighborhoods…beyond the city…out through the darkened fields…carried along on a river of light.

  Then from behind came a loud voice. It belonged to the Brit and it boomed right through me.

  “Anne,” he said. “I have gotten us a taxi.”

  I felt her studying me, reading my face. I felt her hand on my back. The Brit opened the taxi door.

  My legs were shaking as I headed down the alley. I could hear the copters still, and the sirens along the waterfront. As I walked deeper into the neighborhood, I heard the old sounds too. An aria from an open window. Old men neighing. Goats on a hillside. I was drunk. At some point I had taken my father’s gun out of my pocket. It was a beautiful little gun. I could have gotten into the taxi, I supposed. Or I could find Anne tomorrow. But I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I had other responsibilities. I hadn’t been in The Beach for a while, and I was disoriented. The alley was familiar and not familiar. Rome, maybe. Calabria. An alley of tradesmen, maybe an accountant or two, in the offices over the street. I saw a figure ahead, coming out of a door, and I recognized the corner. Judge Molinari had his office upstairs. Had for years. But this was a younger man. He turned to lock the door. Go the other way, I thought. Don’t come toward me. But on he came. Jake Molinari, the judge’s son. With the war behind him and a bride waiting. I hadn’t planned to be here, but here I was. There are things you don’t escape. In the dark, he was smiling to himself. Or I thought he was. He raised his eyes. He saw me. He saw the gun in my hand and his mouth opened. I thought of my father and Julia Fusco, and I shot him. He fell against the alley wall. Then all I could see was Anne. Her face was a blinding light. A flash in the desert. The man lay at my feet now. I shot him again.

  At the top of the hill, I paused to look back. I knew how it was but I looked anyway. The sky over the bay was red. Alcatraz was still burning.

  IT CAN HAPPEN

  BY DAVID CORBETT

  Hunter’s Point

  Pilgrim watched as, just outside his bedroom door, Lorene handed Robert fifty dollars and told him she wanted to visit personal with her ex-husband for a spell. Robert was Pilgrim’s nurse. He’d been a wrestler in college—you had to be strong to heft a paralyzed man in and out of bed—and worked sometimes now as a bouncer on his off-hours.

  Robert glanced back toward the bedroom for approval and Pilgrim gave his nod. The big man pocketed the money, donned his hat, and walked out the door in his whites, not bothering with his coat despite the cold.

  Pilgrim liked that about Robert—his strength, his vigor, his indifference to life’s little bothers. Maybe “li
ked” wasn’t quite the word. Envied.

  He lay back in bed and waited for Lorene to rejoin him. His room was the largest in the cramped, dreary house and bare except for the $20,000 wheelchair gathering dust in the corner, the large-screen TV he was so very tired of watching, an armchair for visitors with a single lamp beside it. And the centerpiece—the mechanical bed, a hospital model, tilted up so he didn’t just lie flat all day.

  Lorene took up position bedside and crossed her arms. She was a pretty, short, ample, strong woman. “Don’t make me go off on you.”

  Pilgrim tilted his head to see her, eyes glazed. Every ten minutes or so, someone needed to wipe the fluid away. It was a new problem, the tear ducts. Three years now since the accident, reduced to deadweight from the neck down, followed by organs failing, musty skin, powdery hair, his body in a slow but inexorable race with his mind to the grave. He was forty-three years old.

  In a scratchy whisper, he said, “I got my eyes and ears out there.”

  “Corella?” Their daughter. Corella the Giver, Lorene called her, not kindly.

  “You been buying things,” he said.

  “Furniture a crime now?”

  “Things you can’t afford, not by the wildest stretch—”

  “Ain’t your business, Pilgrim. My home, we’re talkin’ about.” She pressed her finger against her breastbone. “Mine.”

  Lorene lived in a renovated Queen Anne Victorian in the Excelsior district of San Francisco, hardly an exclusive area but grand next to Hunter’s Point, where Pilgrim remained, living in the same house he’d lived in on a warehouseman’s salary, barely more than a shack.

  Pilgrim bought the Excelsior house after his accident, when he came into money through the legal settlement. He was broadsided by a semi when his brakes failed, a design defect on his lightweight pickup. Lorene stood by him till the money came through, then filed for divorce, saying she was still young. She needed a real husband.

  Actually, the word she used was “functional.”

  The divorce was uglier than some, less so than most. The major compromise concerned the Victorian. He gave her a living estate—it was her residence till she died—but it stayed in his name. He needed that. Lorene would have her lovers, the men would come and go, but he’d still have that cord, connecting them—his love, her guilt. His money, her wants.