San Francisco Noir

by Peter Maravelis

  She shook her head like she wasn’t too convinced and lit a row of votive candles on the mantlepiece. They lit up an eighteenth-century painting of La Anima en Purgatorio, the fires licking up her chained wrists. I couldn’t help but comment.

  “What’s up with the burning lady?”

  “Oh that? A gift from my aunt.”

  “You mean…?”

  “The very same…”

  “Why do you keep it?”

  “Purgatory. Where souls have their sins cleansed by fire.”

  She stared at me with those dark eyes that will stay with me a lifetime. Then she said something that changed my life.

  “Did you love me then, Roberto? In Puerto Escondido?”

  “I love you now.”

  “Would you really do anything for me?”

  “Double back-flips on a high wire.”

  “I’m not joking,” she hissed. Without breaking her lock on my eyes, she held the burning tip of the cigarette an inch from my skin. When I didn’t pull back, she pressed the hot ember against my forearm and held it there for a quick second, just long enough to leave a red ring tinged with ashes. I didn’t flinch.

  “Do I pass the test?”

  She sat back and took another hit of the cig. “Why don’t we just leave? Turn over the evidence and get out of Dodge?”

  “I don’t have it on me. The photos are stashed on Twenty-fourth Street. I’m thinking that’s what those thugs were after. And who would follow up on it? No, I have to stay.”

  “Then I’ll stay with you.”

  I flicked away the ashes on my forearm and grabbed her hair. I knew this scene. Knew it very well.

  “Now it’s my turn, cariño.”

  I pulled her to me, and she was on fire. Our mouths kissed, hot and angry.

  I finally let her up for air and she said, “I’ve never kissed a man with a mustache before.”

  Then I unzipped her dress, stopping my hand on the curve of her nalgas. She turned to face me and shrugged the top half of her dress off her body. She was naked above the waist, without a bra; a string of candlelight danced around her breasts, small as pomegranates. I placed one in my mouth and sucked the juice from it. We undressed each other before rolling onto the rug, the two of us twined together like serpents. I slipped my hand under her back and flipped her on her stomach, pulled her hair, and hissed in her ear—“I want you to be my puta.”

  She didn’t hesitate in answering—“Make me do what you want.”

  And I did, over and over, all night long.

  I woke up alone in her bed Sunday morning. I didn’t have time to relish the night before. There was a note on the pillow and the morning paper. Call me on my pager—and her name scrawled in red. The headlines sent a shock through me: La Jessica had been found stabbed to death in her hotel room. The paper speculated that a john, angry at having discovered Jesus instead of Jessica under the wig, had taken out his rage with a twelve-inch blade. Somehow I was left unconvinced. La Jessica had struck me as flamboyant, a tease, maybe even a tramp, but not a whore.

  I still had to wait for Miss Mary to open, so I went to the little hotel down the alley from Esta Noche. That’s where La Jessica had lived, and I wanted to hear what the street had to say about her murder. There was an altar set up in the hallway and her friends were there, weeping and sobbing. They all knew me and they spoke frankly.

  “Those cabrones, why did they have to kill her?”

  “Because she saw too much. Everyone knows that building was torched. And that’s why they killed her, Mr. Morales.”

  “She went home alone that night. Pobrecita. So there wasn’t any john, that’s just lies. Puras mentiras.”

  I left the mourners to their grief and called Sofia but could only leave a message on her voice mail. “I turned up some interesting info. Meet me where I told you. Bring the documents.”

  I waited in a café till about 6 p.m., Miss Mary’s opening time, and then hurried over to Twenty-fourth Street. As soon as I reached the bar I sensed something wrong. The door was ajar and the lights were off. I stepped in and Johnson and another cop were waiting for me. The place had been turned upside down and Miss Mary was in a corner, frightened to death.

  “Lady’s going to lose her license. Receiving stolen city property.” Johnson had my camera and briefcase under his arm.

  “The camera’s my personal property, Johnson. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s evidence now. Her license is gone. We’re merely retrieving what belongs to the city. Boy, Morales, did you ever fuck up.”

  They left. I had just cost Miss Mary her gig. And I had a pretty good idea who had turned the cops on me.

  I practically ran over to Dolores Street, and when I saw her roadster parked outside, I took the steps two at a time. I caught Sofia on her way out, with a little attaché case, all ready to go. I snapped. “You double-crossed me.” SMACK! I bitch-slapped her hard as I could. She stood her ground.

  “You think I would do that?”

  “You did.” And I let her have it again. SMACK!

  “Then why did I bring you this?”

  It was the señora’s little black book, listing all the contributions, legal and illegal, to the mayor, the D.A., and the chief of police.

  It wrenched my heart that I’d been so cruel to Sofia. “I’m sorry.”

  “Let’s leave now, Roberto. Please, before anything else happens.”

  “Wait. There’s something I don’t understand. If you didn’t tell them about Miss Mary…how did they know my files were there?”

  I led her back inside and started throwing the cushions around, tearing out the stuffings. Nothing. She thought I was crazy. What was I looking for? The lamp? Yes. I tore off the shade. Nothing. Then I saw the painting, the gift from the aunt, La Anima en Purgatorio. And there it was in the frame. The wire I was looking for. I ripped it out.

  “Your aunt bugged you. She heard everything we said last night. What do you think of that?”

  “You mean everything? What a degenerate.”

  “We don’t have a minute to lose.”

  “What should I pack?”

  “Nothing but your lipstick. Leave no clues behind.”

  Night had already fallen as I took the roadster out Dolores Street and onto the freeway headed south. I knew a little cove out by Half Moon Bay, where a friend of mine ran a motel by the beach. We could hang there for a few days, gauge the fallout, figure out our next move. I took Highway 1 to Pacifica and right away we came upon fog. It was rolling in quick and thick, and as I started heading up Devil’s Slide I could tell the ride over would be dangerous.

  I put the fog lights on and looked in the rearview. Coming up behind me was a white SUV. I nudged the roadster and it rose like a bird. I lost them momentarily, but at the same time I couldn’t risk hitting eighty or ninety on those twisting curves, blinded as I was by the fog. Headlights were creeping up again—it was the SUV and it didn’t look like it wanted to pass me. It wanted to ram me.

  We were going uphill but would soon come to a peak that flattened out before dropping again. With the SUV a few feet from my ass, I revved the roadster and flicked on the bright lights, creating a mirror effect, then snapped them off and did a hard brake onto the narrow right shoulder. The SUV had a choice: Pull over and smash into me, sending us both over the three hundred foot cliffs, or pass me by. It passed me by, but not without a burst from an Uzi. Ra-ta-ta-ta-ta!

  “Duck!” I shouted, and pushed Sofia down. The windshield broke into spider webs, the impact of each round making the roadster tremble. Then I heard the SUV fade. I stayed down till several more cars had passed. In case there were more than one of them.

  That’s when I saw the blood. Sofia had been hit. The bullet had missed me but had found her right shoulder. She was bleeding in a bad way and her eyes were frightened.

  “I’m going to get some help,” I said through clenched teeth. I pulled out her little cell phone but there was no si
gnal in this area, cut off by the sheer mountains. With my coat, I made her as comfortable as I could, but I knew she was in terrible danger.

  I found a flare in her trunk and sparked it. Since the roadster was close to the cliff’s edge, I walked back toward the oncoming traffic so I could be seen in the fog and drizzle. Then headlights approached, a car with two guys bullshitting instead of paying attention. And me out there swinging the flare at them in the middle of the road. Till at the last second, the driver saw me and swerved suddenly to the right, onto the shoulder; lost control, bounced fifty feet, and smashed broadside into the roadster. KABONG!

  The rest of my life I’ll remember that sound, metal against metal, heart against heart.

  I ran to the edge and watched as the two cars went over the cliff, tumbling down together and bursting into a single fireball whose heat singed my face. I screamed, I howled, I don’t know, it made no difference. I knew at that instant this would be the deciding moment of my life; the before and after that would scar whatever life I’d lived and whatever I have left of life now.

  I started walking away. I didn’t want to be around when the ambulance arrived. Didn’t want to be anywhere near the scene. If someone figured that I’d been killed in the crash, so much the better. One day, those who did this would pay, and I wanted to be around to see it.

  When I got back to La Mission I discovered my loft had been torched. A warning, I guess. The spray-painted graffiti, DIE YUPPY SCUM, didn’t fool me. They would have liked a little wet work on me that night.

  Obviously, I never went back to the job. I’ve stayed under the radar ever since. Gave up that whole other life to stay alive. But the circle scar on my forearm from Sofia’s cigarette reminds me every day of the dead I carry.

  The newspapers and the Fox Channel all played it another way. A niece of a prominent Mission district real estate matron killed in a tragic car accident with another vehicle on Devil’s Slide. I guess the bullet holes on the roadster were caused by metal-eating termites.

  Once the dust settled, so to speak, the Planning Commission approved the permit for the new building at Sixteenth and Valencia, and Callahan’s outfit built it. That’s what you see there now—that chrome shit glass monstrosity. But for a long time there was just a big gaping hole at the intersection, like when you have a tooth pulled. Arson as a cause for the fire at the Apache Hotel was in fact never investigated by the D.A.’s office, the Department of Building Inspections, or anyone else. But the word in the neighborhood is that the new building is haunted by the animas, the souls of the seven people who died that night.

  And the big woman, Felicia Delgado, the one who profited from the insurance scam? She didn’t fall. Just too many layers between the hirelings and herself. And too many people owed her. But she’s old and sick, and her greedy heart can’t last much longer, miserable with her bloody money…so it doesn’t really matter. One way or the other, sooner or later, she’ll get her ticket to the other barrio.

  PART III

  Neo-Noir

  GENESIS TO REVELATION

  BY PETER PLATE

  Market Street

  It was ninety-six degrees on Market Street the day before Christmas. Holiday decorations graced the windows of the check-cashing store at the corner. Weary junkies in goose-down parkas congregated around the Stevenson Alley methadone clinic. Teenaged hookers wearing rhinestone-trimmed spandex capris and halter tops loitered at the Donut Star coffee shop. Pigeons drunk on heatstroke were falling off the telephone lines.

  In the 1940s, Market Street had been a constellation of movie houses. Blue-collar entertainment seekers flocked there for the vibrant nightlife. Nowadays the avenue was a forest of abandoned buildings. Under the old Strand Theater’s marquee, homeless men and women had turned a fleet of shopping carts, suitcases, clothes, tarps, and strips of cardboard into a shanty fort.

  A pale, unshaven twenty-four-year-old Slatts Calhoun, three days out of San Quentin Prison, stood near a pay phone at Seventh and Market. He was dressed in a Santa Claus suit stolen from a Salvation Army volunteer. To go along with the costume he had on a fake white beard and an ill-fitting stocking hat. A tarnished blue .357 Smith and Wesson revolver was stuck in his belt.

  He reconnoitered the medical marijuana club up the street and cursed. Ever since weed became legal in the city, pot stores were everywhere. They were a venereal disease. It was impossible to get away from them. This one was squeezed in between a dentist’s office and a sandwich shop. It had a brick façade and a single barred window emblazoned with graffiti. A bored surveillance camera was mounted above the security gate. The place resembled a police station.

  Slatts limped over to the dope shop, stopped in front of the steel gate, posed for the camera, and buzzed the doorbell. Nothing happened. He waited a second and repeated the procedure. A thin Mexican hippie in paisley surfer shorts and a vintage Clash T-shirt came out to inspect him. “Hey, Santa, how the fuck you doing today?”

  Keeping the gun concealed, Slatts said what came to mind. His first forty-eight hours out of the penitentiary had been a hassle. One night he slept in a garbage dumpster behind the new federal building. Then he got into a fight with a hooker and was jacked by her pimps. He didn’t even have enough money to take the bus to the welfare office. As a bonus, the beard was making his skin itch. “I’m cool, homeboy. What’s up with you?”

  “The same bullshit. You got your ID for me?”

  To gain entry into the club, a customer needed a physician-approved Department of Health identification card. Private doctors were handing them out at two hundred dollars a pop.

  Slatts didn’t have a card, no place to live, or any food in his belly. He rasped, “Yeah, well, there’s a problem, see? Can I come in and talk to you about it?”

  The pot worker’s smile faded into a cynical tic. He was prematurely aged by the needs of dope fiends. “Hell, no.”

  “C’mon, vato, give me a break.”

  “I can’t do that, dude. It’s against the law. You’ve got to have a card to get in.”

  “Listen to me, asshole, I want some fucking weed.”

  “Too bad, home slice. I don’t give a shit.”

  “Fuck you, man. It’s goddamn Christmas, you know what I’m saying?”

  Slatts lost his cool in a delicious surge of adrenaline. It was time to introduce his revolver into the conversation. It would help move the dialogue along. He poked the gun’s three-inch barrel through the gate’s latticework and hooked the dealer in the nose with it. Reaching in, he yanked the lad forward. Then he groped the kid’s shorts for the keys, found them, and unlocked the door.

  Santa Claus was in the house.

  Brandishing the heater, Slatts moseyed into the retail room. His mouth watered with excitement. This was better than the lottery. Cheap reefer was hard to find in the street. Plus, it was usually low-grade crap. Another worker, a lithe, tanned blond girl in patched denim overalls and Birkenstock sandals, approached him. Her oval face was a delicate flower, open and questioning. She asked, “May I assist you?”

  Slatts produced a smile tempered by several missing teeth. “No, honey, Santa can help himself.”

  The store’s damp walls were festooned with sepia-tinted concert posters from Bill Graham Productions. Two customers, an aged queen and a black guy with one leg, were getting loaded on a ratty divan. Ambient techno pulsed in the back-round. Slatts heard someone move and turned to confront a beefy longhair in tai chi clothes. It was the security guard.

  “Hey, what are you doing with that gun?” The longhair had the attitude of a public rest room. “We’re peaceful here.”

  “Shut the fuck up. Nobody talks to Santa Claus like that.”

  “Kiss my ass, motherfucker. I’m calling the police.”

  The cops loathed the pot clubs and didn’t give a hoot if they were robbed. Slatts ignored the threat and examined the merchandise. The weed was in pastel-colored ceramic bowls on a counter top. The menu was listed on a chalkboard. Medium-quality
green, mostly Oakland hydroponic, ran forty-five an eighth, same as in the streets. Stronger grades, like Canadian indica, were sixty for three and a half grams. Mexican syndicate pot was cheaper, but wasn’t worth smoking. The stuff was first cousin to napalm. Mendocino boutique bud was four hundred and fifty dollars an ounce. Turdlike pot cookies were five bucks apiece. Slatts didn’t see what was so medicinal about the prices.

  Leaning over the counter, he probed the cash register. To his delight, a wad of twenties and fifties danced into view. He pocketed the cash and backpedaled out of the store into the ebb and flow of Market Street.

  Columns of gold-colored sunshine haloed the roadbed at Seventh and Market. Panhandlers, speed freaks, and pickpockets milled at Carl’s Jr. Bike messengers dodged cars and delivery trucks. A Muni bus seething with passengers lumbered toward Van Ness Avenue. Whirlwinds of leaves and empty nickel bags flirted in the gutter.

  The heat outside was nauseating. The pavement was hotter than a match head. Making Slatts dizzy and ready to puke. Which was how he liked things. The gun dangled from his hand, muzzle pointed at the sidewalk. His beard and costume were drenched in perspiration. A homeless wino decked out in a garbage-bag poncho hailed him from an insurance office doorway. “Yo, Santa, yo, yo. Can you help me, brother man?”

  Slatts flicked a sideways glance at the bum and smelled trouble. His voice was colder than his mother’s pussy. “What the fuck do you want? I’m in a hurry.”

  “My partner is sick.”

  A white boy in an army jacket was slumped against the door frame. His tattered sneakers had holes in the soles. His cracked green eyes were intent on a faraway paradise. He didn’t appear to be breathing. Slatts frowned and hissed, “What the hell is wrong with him?”

  “I don’t know,” the wino said. “We were just sitting here and shit, and the pecker keeled over. Maybe he had a heart attack or something.”

  “You call an ambulance?”

  “Yeah, it’s on the way.”

  Nobody was coming out of the pot club. Slatts sighed. That was a good sign. He’d hate to have to shoot someone right now. Dropping to his knees, he placed a finger on the unconscious man’s neck, feeling for a pulse. He didn’t find it. Instead, an electrical charge zinged into his fingertip. He knew what it meant and jerked his hand away. Christ on a crutch. What a drag. The bastard had died on him. The electricity was his spirit, what was left of it. “It’s nothing,” he shrugged. “He’s just resting.”