Soon the Rest Will Fall: A Novel

by Peter Plate

  Whirling around, she lit into him. “Who in the hell is that weirdo?”

  Robert was noncommittal. It was best to go slow with Harriet. Take it smooth, take it easy. Take it casual. Get to the heavy parts later. Much later. “Slatts? He’s just a friend.”

  “What kind?”

  He qualified. “Well, uh, a close friend.”

  “Where from?”

  “Around.” Robert was taciturn. “Like, here and there.”

  Harriet rolled her eyes. “Do you know him from prison?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Is he the guy that’s been calling here?”

  His wife had become a parole officer. How she was grilling him, it was purgatory. Robert’s balls were icy and small. “That’s him.”

  Robert remembered the very first time he had laid eyes on Slatts. Saw it like it was yesterday. It was a memory that would never die. Slatts had stabbed a member of the Mexican Mafia with a toothbrush in the North Cell House and was being taken to the hole. The other guy was going to the infirmary to get the sharp end of the toothbrush extracted from his ribs. Slatts was in leg irons and waist shackles and accompanied by a detail of screws. He blew Robert a graceful kiss as he went by.

  “So what about him?” Harriet asked. “Were you guys cellmates?”

  “Uh huh.” He was nostalgic. “For three fucking years.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything about it?”

  He was forlorn. She’d never get it. Not in this lifetime or in the next one. He could see the glimmer in her eyes. She wanted him to tell her more about Slatts. Robert reminded himself there was no rush. No sense in making a confession. There was no gain in saying shit. It would only give Harriet cancer. He lied with dignity, confident that he could’ve passed a polygraph test. “Mama, a million things happened in that goddamn prison that I’ll never talk about.”

  While Harriet and Robert hashed things out in the hall, the girl and Slatts got acquainted in the living room. The dog was snug under the coffee table. The television was tuned to a game show. The host had on a toupee and was razzing the guest, a middle-aged actress with a drug problem. The audience loved it. Taking a hard pack of mentholated Marlboro 100s from his pants, Slatts offered Diana a fag. “You smoke?”

  “No.”

  Slatts’s appealing face was creamy blue in the television’s light. He shifted uncomfortably on the couch. His pants were too tight. The room was too dark. The dog smelled like it had been stored in mothballs. “You happy your old man is home from the pen?”

  Diana was candid. “It’s okay.”

  “Explain.”

  “Well, he gets depressed.”

  “That’s nothing new. What’s he been up to?”

  “He’s got guns. Lots of them.”

  “He does? How nice. What’s he doing with them?”

  “Hunting game.”

  “Did he take you yet?”

  “Yeah, for deer.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “San Bruno Mountain and Golden Gate Park.”

  “You kill anything yet?”

  “Nope.”

  “Don’t worry.” Slatts was encouraging. “You will, once you get the hang of it.” He was younger than Robert and Harriet, maybe by four years. The artless haze in the quicksand of his eyes made it obvious he was no genius. He was lost, a butterfly in the wind. “You smoke weed?”

  “No.”

  This puzzled Slatts. He didn’t understand what was wrong. No weed was unnatural and made him suspicious. He leaned forward on the couch. The dog growled at him from under the coffee table; he kicked it in the snout. “You don’t smoke reefer? Why not? You’re old enough. I was doing it when I was ten.”

  “Yeah, but I’m seven.”

  “You are?” Slatts was delighted. “You’re a youngster. It can wait.” His voice dropped into a conspiratorial, more paranoid register. “Your mom doesn’t care for me. I could see that the minute I walked in the door. What’s her trip? Is she mad?”

  Diana was red faced. “I don’t know.”

  Robert sauntered back into the living room. A tentative smile was arranged on his chapped lips. He plopped down on the couch and gave his partner a thumbs-up. “Everything’s settled. Harriet and me pulled it together. My old lady is thrilled to have you here.”

  Slatts wanted affirmation. “Yeah?”

  “I mean, like, she doesn’t know you or nothing, but when I told her we were friends, she was okay about it.”

  “Wait a minute. You haven’t told her about us?” Slatts had a venomous expression on his face, as if someone had stolen his wallet and taken all his money. “You haven’t said anything yet?”

  “No, dude, I didn’t tell her shit.”

  “Why not?”

  “Timing is crucial.” Robert was academic. “You don’t want to go against the flow. You want to go with it.”

  “Fuck that. It’s important that she knows about you and me.”

  “We’ll do it tomorrow.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “In the john.”

  Yawning, Slatts submerged into the couch cushions. He was bushed, too worn out to complain. It had been a monster of a day. Getting processed out of prison was one thing. He missed the bus in San Rafael, then lost his gate money, and ended up thumbing a ride into the city. A guy picked him up and offered a blow job. Slatts declined the invitation, but it did feel like Christmas.

  Robert was relieved. In stalling Slatts, a catastrophe had been delayed. Harriet was still in the dark. The quiz show on the tube ended, and the 1960s cop drama Hawaii Five-O came on. The program’s theme song, which was a surf instrumental, resounded from the black-and-white set. The music concussed the living room window, causing the upstairs neighbors to pound frantically on the ceiling.

  FOURTEEN

  At sundown dope-starved junkies and penniless winos mingled under the United Nations banner fluttering at Seventh and Market. The welfare check-cashing store across the street bulged with clients. A homeless guy with a puppy in a shopping cart hustled change from the tourists at the Renoir Hotel.

  The police had doubled their patrols around Macy’s and the other department stores in Union Square. Christmas shoplifters were pilfering the shops and robbing them blind. Holiday customers had been jacked at gun-point in the underground parking garages on Stockton Street.

  The seven-storied jailhouse at 850 Bryant was silhouetted against the graying sky. The fortress’s lights dazzled in the fog. Parrots and pigeons shared airspace over its roof. Inside the holding cell the toilet-sink had overflowed. Sewage flooded the entire jail.

  A scalding winter night was falling on the city.

  In the apartment Robert informed Slatts they had to talk. It was time for a summit conference. The journeymen criminals repaired from the kitchen to the living room with a lukewarm six-pack of beer. The German shepherd was frisky and accompanied them.

  The threesome sat on the couch facing the coffee table. Slatts was at one end of the sofa. Robert was situated at the other end. The shepherd was in the middle. A plethora of Christmas tunes from the likes of Tony Bennett, Eddie Jefferson, Dean Martin, Johnny Mathis, and Lou Rawls frothed out of a FM radio channel. Robert began the conversation, saying to Slatts, “I’m glad you’re here, boy. All the bad stuff is behind us now.”

  Slatts belittled him. “Then how come you haven’t talked to your old lady about us? You lied to me about that shit. I thought you had it all wired.”

  He decided to get it off his chest. “Yeah, well, I don’t, not yet.”

  “That ain’t right.”

  “Hey, I’ll do it tomorrow.”

  “Don’t jive me. You ain’t ever going to do it.”

  “What’s the hurry? I want to have a plan before I tell her anything.”

  “A plan? About what?”

  “Our future.”

  “Sounds bogus to me.” Slatts guffawed. “What crap.” The two lovers were stock still, sizing each other up. Slatts h
ad a glacial killer’s glare in his eyes, yellowed with bile. It was a fuck-you-in-the-ass kind of stare.

  “That’s easy for you to say.” Robert was perturbed. Slatts was up to his usual tricks, being pushy and demanding. He was also continuously bumming smokes. Treating Robert as if he was a cigarette vending machine. This violated prison etiquette. “I’ve got Harriet and the kid to think about. They’re a fucking handful.”

  “Great.” Slatts was insulted. “Now you tell me what your priorities are.”

  “So? What’s wrong with that, huh?”

  “You made it sound all peachy last week. How you and me were going to be together. How we’d live in Pacific Heights. Then it turns out to be some other horseshit.”

  Robert’s feathers were ruffled. “Be cool. Look at the bigger picture.”

  There wasn’t a bigger picture. There never was. Everything had limits. Both men knew it. Robert visualized putting a bullet in Slatts, in his head. That would shut him up for a minute. “Look,” he pleaded. “All I’m recommending is that we talk to Harriet about you and me a little later. What difference is it going to make, hah?”

  The last thing Robert wanted was Slatts in an uproar. It was just like his boyfriend to turn a molehill into a mountain. Once he got started, it’d take an army division to stop him. “You’ve got to slow down,” he said. “Everything’s under control.”

  “No, it ain’t.” Slatts wasn’t buying it. He should’ve consulted his astrologer before coming here. She would have said it was written in the stars. Robert was a sap. “You don’t even have the guts to tell your wife that you have another wife. You’re double-crossing me.”

  “That ain’t so.”

  “Yeah, it is. And you know what, daddy?”

  “What?”

  “You can blab on all you want about having a wife and kid. But in the end, you’re nothing but an old queen, just like me.”

  Robert hedged. “We have other things to talk about.”

  “Such as?”

  “How to get some cash.”

  Slatts ran a velvety tongue over his lips. He was an ardent fan of money. He was willing to listen to anyone about it. Even to Robert. But he understood his husband. Understood him too well. Knew that he talked out of his ass. It never sounded musical. It never sounded like much of anything.

  “Let’s start with our skills,” Robert said. “We can grade ourselves. Are we good at robbing banks?”

  “No.” Slatts was firm. “That’s for professionals.”

  “Is burglary an option?”

  “It’s what got you sent to prison.”

  “Counterfeiting?”

  “Neither you nor I have the smarts for it.”

  “Stolen checks?”

  “I think not.”

  “Credit cards?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Plastic ain’t what it used to be.”

  “How about fraud?”

  “Too much math.”

  “Extortion?”

  “Not for me.”

  “Me neither. Can we deal dope?”

  “Hell, no.” Dealing was how Slatts landed in the joint. Both times he’d sold a dime bag of skunkweed to a narc on Mission Street.

  “I can poach game,” Robert said. “How about you?”

  From the radio Nat King Cole warbled “Sometimes I’m Happy.”

  Slatts peeled himself from the couch and had a gander out the window. A police whirlybird arced over the wino encampments in the Civic Center. Kraals of shopping carts were lashed to parched, lifeless trees. Well-dressed theatergoers left the Orpheum and were accosted by swarms of panhandlers at the BART hole.

  Market Street wasn’t aging well. Zimm’s coffee shop and the Electric movie house were gone. The Pioneer army-navy surplus store was abandoned. The Woolworth’s by the cable car turnaround at Powell and Market, where Tenderloin seniors used to grab breakfast and lunch, had been reborn into a Gap outlet.

  The news guys on television had been talking about the homeless. There were more people without housing in San Francisco than in any other city in the country. Slatts answered Robert truthfully. “I ain’t good for much. That’s a goddamn fact.”

  Neither man had the personality for successful criminal activity. Both were too unschooled to pull off sophisticated con jobs. Robert was clever, but didn’t have a cool head. Slatts was cute, but had no finesse. Their collective assets added up to zip. Robert was brave enough to own up to it. He helped himself to a beer and said, “We’re sitting ducks out here. We got no money and no way of getting any.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Keep the faith.”

  “Faith in what?”

  “In Christmas. Everything will be all right.”

  Garbage trucks did the rounds on Market Street. A jet flew above the Trinity Plaza Apartments, jarring the building’s walls. The German shepherd dozed on the couch and snored. Harriet meandered into the living room with her hair in a bun. She was barefoot in a cotton house-dress, a dash of lipstick smeared on her mouth. “What’s up, guys?”

  Robert burped. “We’re talking business.”

  Slatts gave her the silent treatment. Harriet was offended. There was something rude about the guy. It might have been his hip huggers. Maybe it was his earrings—he had too many for a man. He was a lot prettier than she was. That was hard to swallow. He had smooth skin, a sexy mouth. Was he a queer? If he was, what did that make Robert? She didn’t want to obsess on it.

  “I’m going to bed,” she said.

  Watching his wife trundle to the bedroom, Robert ground his teeth. Things were getting funky with Harriet. The vibe was not mellow. Prying his hindquarters from the couch, he tiptoed into the hall and copped a pillow and a sleeping bag from the linen closet. Returning to the living room, he gave the items to Slatts. “This shit is for you.”

  “Where am I sleeping?”

  “In the hall.”

  “You said I’d have my own room.”

  Robert was conciliatory. “That ain’t happening. There’s only one bedroom and that’s for Harriet and me. The kid has the couch. Take the dog and go crash on the floor. He just got out of the pound, and you’re straight from the pen. You should get on fine.”

  He kissed Slatts lightly on the neck. Then he switched off the lights. The living room slipped into moonlit blackness.

  When everyone was asleep Robert retired to the kitchen and wrote a letter to his parole officer. Telling her what he’d been up to. It wasn’t going well, and he was restless. Mooching over to the door, he opened it and had a peek at the street.

  The stifling fog was level with the sidewalks. The Orpheum Theater’s lights burned dully in the bracken mists. Pigeons bathed in the UN Plaza’s fountain. At the corner of Eighth and Market a white dude in denim overalls idled by the stoplight. He had a spliff in his mouth, red hair done up in cornrows, a porkpie hat on his head.

  Robert recognized the cat. It was Arnold Burgess, a veteran dope fiend with a graduate degree in burglary. His specialty was pharmacies—he’d taken every drugstore in the bay area. His streak had remained unbroken until he’d been caught at a Safeway in Oakland. The cops found him overdosed on morphine in the stockroom. The escapade garnered him a one-year vacation in the pen at Tehachapi.

  Seeing him alarmed Robert. He wasn’t worried that Arnold would rob him. He wasn’t even concerned about the man’s addiction to narcotics. It was worse than that. The dude had been dead for years and was resting in a grave in Los Angeles. Robert Grogan’s mind was playing tricks on him. Imagining things in the darkness that weren’t even there.

  FIFTEEN

  The trouble with sleep was dreaming. There were bad dreams and good dreams. The law of averages said to be on the lookout for all varieties. Knowing this didn’t prepare Robert Grogan for his grandmother at three in the morning.

  The old woman was in a shapeless print frock, white hair streaming to her waist. She bent over Robert’s bed, miming w
ith her gnarled hands, chanting at him. “Your wife doesn’t love you. Your daughter doesn’t love you. Slatts doesn’t love you. The dog doesn’t love you. Nobody does. Only me.”

  Taking off her orthopedic shoes, she added, “You must learn to be a ghost.”

  In her stockinged feet she moved soundlessly across the bedroom’s shag carpeting.

  One year she and Robert had lived above a Chinese herb shop on Clement Street. A kitten came to their door. The cat was a three-month-old female with orange and white markings on its chest and head. It had piercing green eyes and a prehensile tail. The kitty was skittish, but Robert managed to tame it. He even made a pallet for it from a coat.

  His grandma would have none of it. “The cat is a whore!” The same Christmas she prepared dinner for Robert and his grandfather. The meal was boiled cow’s tongue, unsalted mashed potatoes, and cabbage. The old man sat with Robert at the kitchen table. His wife turned from the stove and taunted him, something she was brilliant at. “You don’t have a penis.”

  “And you’re a witch,” he retorted.

  “Hey, Grandma,” Robert piped up, “do I have a penis?”

  Her face was an unwavering mountain of madness. “You? Who knows?”

  Her sandpapery voice faded and was replaced by the noise in the parole unit. The offices were steamy enough to cook an ox and redolent of Lysol. Caseworkers were shouting at each other. Marvin Gaye crooned “What’s Going On” from a ghetto blaster.

  Robert was at the intake window and spoke to the receptionist. “I’ve got an appointment with my parole officer.” He was dressed in his finest vines, a button-down white shirt from J.C. Penny’s and creased tan slacks with tasseled penny loafers. His scalp was pomaded; he didn’t have on any jewelry or cologne.