San Francisco Noir

by Peter Maravelis

  Gina saw a power pole on the far shore with a wooden box on top. Snaggly sticks poked out in all directions.

  “Young osprey built a nest up there. First year she was ready to mate, she built her nest on the only tall thing didn’t already have someone else’s nest on it. Her babies died when they hit the electric wires. One of the locals climbed up there, built her a platform.”

  Gina stared at the ungainly nest in a box. She whispered, “Maybe next year the babies will live?” She looked at Alhambra. “You think?”

  Alhambra lifted her shoulders, “There’s a chance. Yeah.”

  Gina tipped back on her heels, hands in her pockets. “So. What you’re sayin is—what you’re sayin is?”

  “Somethin like that. Yeah.”

  Gina got off the bus at Sixteenth and Bryant, stretched her back, lit a cigarette, looked at the city. Not too shabby. It was home. She understood it, knew pretty much when to shift aside, when to stand firm. She headed up the steps to the park. She had a whole pack of American Spirits for Lucas, they’d smoke her welcome home, talk about rivers underfoot that were, and one that still is. For another winter season at least.

  “Hey. You seen Lucas?”

  “Nah. He not been here, day, two days, mebbe.”

  “Hey. You seen Lucas?”

  “Family trouble. He gone.”

  Gina set off for the freeway underpass, right where another spring used to bubble. “Anybody seen Lucas?”

  “Nope.” The man in front of the tents glared at her, made her uncomfortable until she realized the glare was permanent, one eye blind. She touched her own bruised face, said, “Mine’s only a day or two. Gettin used to bein a pirate with one eye. How long yours?” She shook out a few cigarettes from Lucas’s pack.

  He smiled. “Hah. Ten years ago.” He allowed Gina to light his cigarette. “Funny you ask about Lucas. He was there. When it happen to me. Was his son’s eighth birthday. We got drunk and—” Still smiling, “Was a helluva lotta fun.”

  “Where his son now?”

  The man’s mouth curled down. “Where else? He in jail.” He wandered away shaking his head. “Least ways tha’s what Lucas said.”

  Three boys whoopin in the parking lot. Here’s to a night under the moon, a hunnert miles an hour. Here’s to the girls that smiled at us.

  Here’s to the father that loved us.

  “You see Lucas, you please tellim I gotta story fer him. Yunno? So tellim I’m goin for coffee in the morning at the other place, down the street t’other way. Ain’t goin back to that Peet’s. Okay? Tellim I got to start the day off with him. Otherwise the mornin ain’t right. Yunno?”

  The old man didn’t stop his slow amble away through the puddles, but Gina saw his hand raise up, as if to say, “Sure thing, girl. Sure thing.”

  Under the dim freeway buttresses, several statues of La Virgin de Guadalupe dipped their bowls into the clear headwaters of the creek and, chuckling like pigeons, poured it over their heads.

  AFTER HOURS AT LA CHINITA

  BY BARRY GIFFORD

  The Bayview

  Spooky backside of town, Third Street, San Francisco, late at night, in a motel office. The furnishings were shabby. La Chinita, once an elegant, Spanish-style motel built in the 1930s, was now, in 1963, run-down; paint was peeling off the walls and the wooden registration desk was chipped and gouged. A decrepit, moth-eaten easy chair and a few other rickety wickers with ripped seats and backs were placed against the walls. Hanging blinds, with several slats missing or broken, covered the glass-paned door. The office was clean, however, and presided over by a bespectacled woman who looked to be in her mid-sixties. She was seated in a lounge chair in front of the desk, knitting and humming softly to herself. Her name was Vermillion Chaney. The tune she was humming was “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” It was two weeks before Christmas.

  The telephone behind the motel desk rang. Vermillion did not move. The telephone continued to ring. It was as if Vermillion did not hear it. The telephone rang eight times before it finally stopped. After the ringing stopped, Vermillion put down her knitting, stood up and walked behind the registration desk, picked up the telephone receiver, and dialed a number.

  “Was that you just called?” Vermillion asked into the phone. “Um, okay. Don’t matter. What you doin’, anyway? Sure I know it’s 3 o’clock in the mornin’, I’m at work!”

  Vermillion hung up the phone. She came back around the desk, sat back down in her chair, and resumed knitting. She started singing again, only this time it was “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”

  The office door began to shake. Somebody was trying to open it but the door was locked. This was followed by a loud knocking. The knocking was hard, insistent.

  From behind the door came a woman’s scream. “Open up! Open the door!”

  Vermillion stopped singing and stared at the door. The knocking continued. The woman’s voice became hysterical.

  “You got to help me! Open up!”

  Vermillion put down her knitting, got up, and went to the door. She looked out through one of the missing slats as the woman outside continued to yell.

  “Miz Chaney, it’s me! Revancha!”

  Vermillion unlocked the door and a woman in her early twenties burst into the office, forcing the older woman back as she brushed past her.

  “Shut it!” said Revancha. “Lock the door before he gets here!”

  Vermillion stared at the young woman, who was half-dressed, wearing only a bra and panties. Clutched to her chest were other garments. Vermillion closed the door. Revancha ran back to it and fastened the chain lock.

  “What’s goin’ on, Revancha? You look like a chicken in a bag full of snakes.”

  Revancha retreated from the door and stopped with her back against the desk.

  “He beatin’ on me, Miz Chaney! Chokin’ me! Usin’ a strap!”

  “Man get what he pay for.”

  “He gone too far, cat flip his wig. Call for security!”

  Vermillion walked back behind the desk, reached down, and came up with a revolver in her right hand.

  “This the onliest security I got tonight, baby.”

  “Where’s Myron?” asked Revancha.

  Vermillion shook her head. “He out the loop. Fool got hisself arrested yestiday for receivin’ stolen property. Fake beaver coats. Can you beat that? I’m alone here this eve-nin’.”

  The office door started to shake.

  A man shouted, “Vermillion! Let me in!” He rattled the door.

  “Don’t do it, Miz Chaney!” said Revancha.

  “Bitch stole my pants!”

  “You’d best go on, Ray,” said Vermillion.

  “Not without my pants!”

  Vermillion looked at Revancha.

  “You got Ray’s pants?”

  “I scooped it all up, what was piled on the floor. Thought maybe he wouldn’t follow me.”

  “Man ain’t gonna go away without you give up his trousers.”

  Ray forced himself against the door, breaking the lock on the handle. Only the chain now prevented him from opening it. He stuck his hand through and attempted to undo the chain.

  “Don’t do it, Ray,” said Vermillion. “I got a piece.”

  Ray pushed against the door, breaking the chain. The door flew open and Ray entered. He was a handsome man in his mid-thirties, wearing only a half-unbuttoned white dress shirt, under-shorts, socks, and shoes. He moved toward Revancha.

  “Give me my wallet,” he said.

  Vermillion pointed the gun at him.

  “Stop right there, Ray,” she said. “I’ll get it for you.” Ray stopped.

  “I ain’t got your wallet!” shrieked Revancha.

  Ray brushed past Vermillion and grabbed the garments out of Revancha’s hands. He felt around in them.

  “It ain’t here.”

  He dropped the garments on the floor and grabbed hold of Revancha.

  “Where is it?!”

  “Let go the girl,
Ray!” said Vermillion.

  Ray put his hands around Revancha’s throat and began choking her. Revancha screamed; she kept screaming.

  “Turn her loose, Ray, or I got to shoot!”

  Ray turned his head and looked at Vermillion but continued strangling the girl.

  “You old whore,” Ray said to Vermillion, “you prob’ly in on the game.”

  Vermillion trained the barrel of her revolver on Ray and pulled the trigger, shooting him in the side. Ray, stunned, looked down at himself and watched as blood began to stain his shirt. Revancha continued to scream. Ray looked back at the girl and tightened his grip around her throat. Vermillion fired again, this time hitting Ray square in the back. His hands came away from Revancha’s throat. He turned slowly and faced the old lady. She fired a third bullet, which entered his body in the middle of his chest. Ray dropped to his knees, holding his hands up, as if in prayer. He remained motionless in that position for several moments before toppling over onto his face.

  Revancha stopped screaming. She looked down at Ray. Blood was everywhere.

  From behind them came a man’s voice. “Mother of God.”

  Vermillion turned and saw a short, middle-aged, long-bearded man, dressed like a tramp, standing in the doorway. He took a closer look at Ray’s corpse, crossed himself, and said, “If God knew what He was doing, He wouldn’t be doing this.”

  The stage was dark. A single spotlight lit up, shining on an empty stool set in the middle of the stage. A microphone lay on the stool.

  The voice of the club announcer boomed out at the audience: “And now, ladies and gentlemen, the moment you have all been waiting for. The Blackhawk, San Francisco’s premier nightclub, is proud to welcome America’s favorite recording artist, Mr. Smooth himself, Ray Sparks!”

  As the audience applauded, Ray Sparks, the man who had been gunned down in the motel office, skipped on stage.

  He was nattily dressed in a sharp suit and tie. Lights came up behind him, revealing an orchestra, which began to play. Ray smiled and bowed to the audience, who continued to applaud. He then turned and picked up the microphone, sat down on the stool, and began to sing.

  Twenty years later. In the corridor of a decrepit nursing home, elderly people in wheelchairs, mostly black, were either sitting in or being pushed along by attendants. One of the former, a woman in her eighties, sat in a wheelchair placed flush against a wall, ignored by the overworked staff. The woman, now blind, wearing dark glasses, was Vermillion Chaney.

  “I don’t recall that night too good,” said Vermillion. “I’m old enough now I don’t recall most too good, though sometimes I surprise myself, rememberin’ the tiniest detail from way back in the day. I know Revancha was a workin’ girl, sure I did. Used to be she hung out at the Toro Club down Bayshore. Almost always she’d bring her man to the Chinita. Never had no trouble about her till that night.

  “Ray Sparks? Everybody knowed Ray Sparks. Famous singer like him? Nobody miss that face. I heard he sometimes hung at the Toro, sat in with the band, after hours, like that. Maybe he just run into Revancha for the first time. Can’t say one way or another. About the shootin’, it’s like I told the po-lice when it happen, I was just defendin’ the girl and myself.”

  Revancha Lopez, now in her mid-forties, was seated on a bed in a crummy hotel room. The evidence of a hard life showed in her face.

  “My name is Esquerita Revancha Lopez y Arrieta. I ain’t been usin’ for six years, since before my last holiday at Tehachapi, and I won’t start again, the Good Lord wil-lin’. The street broke me. If you can believe this, I got me a straight job now, cleanin’ rooms at the Chinita. Ain’t that a twist? ’Bout that night, I heard so many stories, ’bout the man bein’ set up and all, ’bout Miz Chaney be in on a hustle, even that she and I was hired by the FBI or a black militant group to put him out the way. People make up shit like that don’t need no TV. They got enough goin’ on inside they own mind entertain’ theyself.

  “I knew Ray Sparks for a while before that. He had this image, you know, clean-livin’ man, good family, still singin’ gospel some Sundays. Cat was a player! Not only that but I heard his wife was runnin’ the streets, too. I had just got back to the Toro Club after doin’ a piece of business when in walk Ray with his cousin, Anthony. Was Anthony come over to me, buy me a drink. We shootin’ the shit for a few moments, then here come Ray. Puts his arm around me, says somethin’ like, Señorita Lopez, I figure it’s about time you treat me right. I said, You got what it takes, Ray. We was playin’, straight up. He’d had a few drinks already, he didn’t want no more, and he was all over me, tellin’ me how beautiful I look, he don’t know why we ain’t got together before, makin’ me feel good. Back then, it don’t take but fifty dollars to make me feel good, but Ray, he liked to have some style, you know what I mean. He know it’s gonna cost him, but he liked to play like it’s on the house. One thing, with this girl was nothin’ doin’ on the house.

  “Now I’d been with Anthony before, so Ray, he know the deal. The three of us was havin’ a good time. Ray be rubbin’ against me, I knew he was ready to do some business. Inside an hour, we get in his red Corvette, tool over to the Chinita. I ask him, Don’t you want to do better than this? He say, Baby, I’m in a hurry to get at you. Okay by me. I didn’t figure him to be a freak. I ask for a hundred dollars. Star like him can’t think under that. He pay for the privilege of bein’ a star. He took off his pants. I got to my underwear and next thing I know, he starts beatin’ on me. I mean, serious, usin’ a belt. I tell him to quit, he don’t need to be doin’ that. He say, Don’t tell me what I need! He throw me down on the bed, push my face into the pillow so I can’t scream, hittin’ me. Then he sticks his dick in from behind, finish in a hurry. Then he get up, go into the bathroom.

  “When I hear him relievin’ himself, I jump up, scoop up all the clothes off the floor, and run out the room. I run to the office. Miz Chaney let me in, she by herself, lock the door. A few seconds later, Ray bust it down. Miz Chaney be afraid for her life, that’s the truth. He come at me, shoutin’ I stolen his wallet. Chokin’ me. Miz Chaney come up with a hand cannon, tell Ray to turn me loose. Next thing I know, there’s Ray on the floor, everywhere is red. It weren’t the worst time in my life, but it was sure the beginin’ of a downhill. I keep thinkin’, slide gotta stop sometime. I keep thinkin’, but it don’t really stop.”

  Ray Sparks was half-seated on a nightclub stool.

  “Who you looking at ain’t Ray Sparks, it’s the ghost of Ray Sparks. Here it is twenty years later, and I look the same, not like Revancha Lopez and Vermillion Chaney. You’ll have to decide for yourself if it’s a comfort to look like you did when you died on into eternity. They don’t look so good as me but they got to live a lot longer. What people do with their lives is mostly fuck ’em up. Almost no way they could do anything else. I always liked that saying, Give a man enough rope and he’ll hang himself. Just some folks got themselves a longer rope to hang with.

  “People like to blame other people for their own troubles. Even me. One thing I picked up on recently—in eternity, all thoughts and things are recent—is how there is no particular way to avoid what you do or how you do it. It’s like waking up in the middle of the night, hung over, and snoring in the bed next to you is an ugly whore. And you think to yourself, this can’t be me, shacked up with some nasty skank. Me is little Ray, running with my dog down along the river. Seven years old, me and my dog running next to the river and it’s about to rain. Nobody bothering us. But no mistake, it’s you in that bed, feeling like a bomb gone off in your head, and it ain’t no cute puppy lying there. You got to ask yourself why, and then if you got a lick of sense, do something to change your situation. If you never ask yourself the question Why? then you ain’t got a chance. You got to be brave.”

  “Don’t you be listenin’ to that man!” said Vermillion Chaney, who rolled herself up to Ray in her wheelchair. “Talk like he sang, smooth as silk. Didn’t shoot you on purpose,” she
said.

  “What do you mean, didn’t do it on purpose?” said Ray. “That was on purpose as possible to be. You shot me three times. Once in the back.”

  “Pistol felt light as a feather in my hand.”

  “You got to like pulling that trigger.”

  “Light as a feather,” said Vermillion.

  Revancha walked up to Ray and said, “I didn’t mean to steal your clothes.”

  “Only my wallet.”

  “Your wallet was up in those clothes somewhere. I would have left it, after I took what was owed me.”

  “There is no such thing as an honest whore,” said Ray.

  “Man gets violent, what’s a woman to do?” said Vermillion. “God put that gun in my hand, told me to use it.”

  “Better leave God out of this,” said Ray.

  “When I was a little girl, eight years old,” said Revancha, “Mamacita took me down on Mission Street to La Iglesia Espiritu Santu to pray for my father, who was in the prison hospital. He had got stabbed in the stomach in a fight. We didn’t know it then, but at the same moment we was in the church, he died. I liked lightin’ the candles.

  “We was about to leave when a man comes in off the street, wearin’ nothin’ but dirty rags. Had a long beard. I said, Mama, look it’s Jesus Cristo! The man started blowin’ out all the candles, then picked ’em up and stuffed as many as he could inside his shirt. He looked up at the cross and shook his fist at it. He shouted, There’s no hiding place for the damned! Then he ran out of the church, droppin’ candles as he went.

  “When Mama and I got home, we found out my father was dead. I asked Mamacita, Is Papa damned? No se, she said, I don’t know.”

  “I heard that after I died,” said Ray, “there was a church created in my name. The Church of Ray Sparks.”

  “You coulda been a saint, Ray,” said Vermillion, “but instead you was a fool.”

  “I’d like to’ve gone to the Church of Ray Sparks, shown up with nobody knowing I was coming. Got up in front of the choir and sung, ‘He’s My Friend Until the End.’”