One Foot Off the Gutter

by Peter Plate

  “Would you look at that? Would you look at that house?” I said with admiration. “This is what I was telling you about.”

  “I’m serious, man! Don’t shine me on! What are we doing here? I want some answers!”

  “Relax, Bells. I know what I’m doing. If you stay loose, you’ll see what I’m talking about.”

  Bellamy crossed his arms and didn’t say a word. He slunk down in his seat, waxing sullen vibrations while he watched me get out of the car. I could feel his eyes questioning my sanity.

  I held my riot helmet in one hand. The hulking Victorian with its ruined gables stood out against the moon light. I adjusted my garrison belt and smoothed back my admittedly receding hairline. A bird chittered in a backyard tree. A balmy night like this seemed to be the right kind of weather for a man about to change his life.

  “See, Bells? Is this so awful? Can’t you appreciate the air, and forget about the rest of it?”

  “I don’t want to get involved, Coddy. Just let me smoke a cigarette, and I’ll calm down, okay?”

  All I wanted was a home. Something that would separate me from the citizens and the assholes. All I had to my name was a rental in Novato; Christ only knew I wanted something more than that. Alice called it real estate envy. Some people wanted a beautiful, sexy wife. Other people wanted a fancy car, and practically everyone wanted lots of money. But what I wanted was a house.

  That’s what this place was going to be, my home. I pulled out a flashlight from a pocket in my combat blouse and walked around to the side of the abandoned building. I stopped by the garbage cans, scaring a tomcat that blinked villainously at me before running off. There was jasmine, somewhere inside the neighbor’s backyard. The odor reminded me of Alice and the way she smelled after she stepped out of the shower.

  “Don’t stare at me like that, Coddy,” she’d say.

  “Come here.”

  Alice would laugh. “Not now, Coddy.”

  “Give me some candy. It won’t take long.”

  Before she could cover herself up with a towel, I’d draw her close to me, having waited so long for the moment. I’d plunge my face into her cleavage with Alice saying my name over and over, like she was casting a spell against all things bad and evil.

  I did an about face and retraced my steps until I was in front of the house again. I played the flashlight over the steps of the porch. I caught myself calculating how much money it would take to repair the place. Adding up the numbers was as automatic as wearing my uniform.

  A car drove by and I jumped; I spun around and reached for my revolver. I saw Bellamy was doing the same in the front seat of the squad car and I silently mouthed my gratitude. Bellamy was always at my back, taking care of business for me. I cherished this aspect of our relationship. You never knew when an asshole was going to surprise you.

  Twice in my career I had been radioed to the scene of an alleged crime, only to find out that I’d walked into an ambush. The first time I’d narrowly escaped getting shot. The second time wasn’t even worth remembering: the squad car had taken two hits in the side while me and Bellamy were standing in line for burgers at McDonald’s. After all these years on the force, I was getting tired of the excitement. It was monotonous, and did nil to help me sleep at night.

  I mounted the front steps of the abandoned building, testing each step before putting my full weight on it. The first thing I noticed was a yellowed piece of paper tacked to the door. It was a five-year-old advertisement for jumbo pizza slices at Domino’s on South Van Ness Avenue, a pizzeria that had burned down to the ground three years ago.

  Pointing the flashlight at the stoop, I saw it wouldn’t be too difficult to break into the building. I smiled in the gloom; the best was yet to come. Behind that door was a treasure, the things I’d never had as a kid.

  Free Box held his breath on the other side of the front door. He could hear Coddy talking to himself on the porch. The spit in Free Box’s throat dried up into a tongue-defying clot. It was that cop again, that crazy cop. Free Box cupped one ear to the door and cocked the revolver’s hammer with his thumb.

  “Officer?”....Psst, officer...is something wrong?”

  “Who’s there? Identify yourself!”

  “I’m over here.”

  I swung the flashlight toward the voice and slid my revolver from its holster with the other hand. A citizen in his pajamas from the house next door was hailing me. The guy’s timing was phenomenal; people had been known to die for less.

  For the entirety of my life, people had been interrupting me at the wrong moment. It was like walking in on someone when they were making love to their wife. It was something that should never happen, but it kept occurring regular as clockwork.

  “What can I do for you, sir?” I glowed with malice.

  The doctor’s tangled hair and white skin were caught inside the radius of Coddy’s flashlight beam. The doctor had woken up to the sound of an unusual noise. He’d gotten out of bed and gone over to the window to investigate the disturbance. To his surprise, as dark as it was, he saw a large policeman standing on the steps of the abandoned building.

  It was the last thing he expected to see at four o’clock in the morning. Doctor Dick was suspicious. The Mission cops were the dregs of the city’s police force; untested, callow rookies and hardened sociopaths that no other station in the system wanted. Headquarters sent all the bad apples to the Mission. The doctor had read about it in the local newspaper.

  “Is everything okay, officer?”

  “Everything is beautiful. Now why don’t you go back to sleep.”

  The doctor didn’t move. “Are you sure?” he asked.

  This is perfect, I thought. The little man wants to stand me off.

  “Sir, things couldn’t be better,” I piped up, ready to be diplomatic.

  There was an uncomfortable interlude; the citizen did not know what to do. Finally, with great and protracted reluctance, he shut his window. I flicked off the flashlight and made my way back down the front steps to the sidewalk. I was trembling like a wet shirt on a clothesline in the wind. Fucking hell, I wanted that building. For now, I had to maintain my cool. I appropriated a casual but artificial gait and strolled over to the squad car, opening the door.

  Bellamy stirred from a cat nap, one of his specialties. Bellamy could sleep with both eyes open. It wasn’t something the average man did.

  “What’s going on?” he yawned.

  “Nothing,” I sniggered. “Ain’t nothing going on but the rent.”

  “Let’s get some coffee,” Bellamy said. “Cruise over to Hunt’s Donuts. They’ll have some freshly baked maple bars.”

  “I’m with that.”

  I started the engine, shifted into gear and backed into the street. I stepped on the gas, excited and irritated at the same time. The car roared one hundred yards up the block to the corner of Folsom. The light turned to green and I goosed the pedal, sending Bellamy flying back into his seat as we zoomed through the intersection past the park toward Mission Street.

  Free Box listened to the police car fade into the distance. The cops didn’t have a muffler on their engine. Even after the vehicle had gone three blocks, he could still hear its raucous, tubercular hacking. He decocked his revolver’s hammer and breathed heavily. Thin as it was, his fortune was continuing to hold out.

  twelve

  it had something to do with the heat; there was a state of heightened awareness on Folsom Street. There was a panic happening at the door to the Rainbow health food store.

  Some people were trying to exit the place while others were pushing their way inside. Those who were leaving the store were carrying bags of potatoes, pasta, oats, assorted vegetables, bottles of herbal shampoo, blocks of rennetless cheese, organic laundry soap, shoelaces made from hemp and natural fiber underwear.

  Among the departing customers were semi-professional shoplifters who’d filled their pockets with socks, collagen face cream, cruelty-free razor blades, vitamins, and whate
ver else they could sell on the street to the other junkies. Goods stolen from the middle-aged hippies at the health food store were highly regarded among the Mission’s thieves.

  Outside Rainbow’s entrance on the sidewalk, an array of panhandlers were hitting on the customers. The panhandlers blocked the door whenever they thought they could get away with it. It was a useful tactic; many shoppers coming to the store for the first time found the panhandlers impossible to get around.

  Donating money to the panhandlers imbued the citizens with a feeling of community. The act made them feel as if they belonged to the neighborhood. A dollar was a small price to pay, considering it had the power to initiate someone into an authentic San Franciscan experience.

  But after awhile, the customers and the panhandlers began to regard each other with cautious disdain. Each feared the other because they didn’t have anything in common, except a healthy enthusiasm for money. As a consequence, there was usually a great deal of tension at the front door to the store. Buying food at Rainbow was not an ordinary experience.

  “After you,” Free Box said to Barbie.

  “No, no,” she graciously replied. “After you, please.”

  “Ladies, first. I insist,” Free Box smiled.

  Free Box’s teeth were chattering. One of his eyes was distinctly smaller than the other. It gave him the look of a man who was in dire need of cosmetic surgery.

  “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” she whispered.

  “That’s a lame question. You’re getting hungry, aren’t you?”

  “We can back out of it, if you want to.”

  “And do what? Join the panhandlers? That’s not my style.”

  His logic was infallible, impossible to refute. The growl in her stomach resumed its bitter tirade. Upon hearing it, Free Box offered Barbie his arm. She took it, and he patted her hand. Her fingers were ice cold.

  “Get a grip on yourself,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “Which way?” he asked.

  “Over there,” she nodded.

  They squeezed by the service desk. A man wearing long black hair in braids was tinkering with the dials of a portable radio. A snatch of one song filled the air, then disappeared as another song took its place. Barbie motioned to Free Box.

  “That’s the guy we have to watch out for.”

  “What did you say?” Free Box hissed.

  “Never mind,” she shrugged. “Just follow me.”

  She led him past a string of shopping carts into the produce section. A cashier glanced at her, wanting to say something about how Barbie had to go the other way, but she was overwhelmed by a long line of customers. Barbie noted this and filed it away. The snarl by the front door would be a blessing when the time came for her and Free Box to leave the store.

  Everything went so fast when you were pulling a job. People’s faces came and went in erratic flashes of color that exploded nova sharp and blurred within seconds.

  “Try and look calm,” Free Box advised. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were having an ulcer attack.”

  “You should talk,” she spat. “You don’t look so hot yourself.”

  Free Box’s face was corrugated with tension, leached of color. She hardly recognized him, he looked so bad.

  “Which way now?” she asked him.

  “I thought you knew that,” he snapped.

  Barbie stopped dead in her tracks.

  “Don’t get irritated with me, mister,” she warned him.

  He held up his hands, a picture of innocence. “I was just asking a question. You don’t have to take it so personally, you know?”

  The other shoppers in the produce aisle were watching them; that was the last thing she needed. People’s inability to concentrate on anything for more than five seconds was the key to a successful job. She took a gigantic breath and counted backwards from ten before she exhaled.

  “Okay,” she said. “I accept that. Now let’s go.”

  The arc lamps on the high beamed ceiling burned her eyes. She found herself trapped in between two mountainous black women. They were shoveling handfuls of raisins into recycled paper bags. Free Box stood to one side of the women and stared helplessly at her. The hollows under his eyes were smudged with sleepless, charcoal streaks. Barbie zipped the best faked smile she had across her mouth and nudged the women out of her way with a sharp elbow. She didn’t have a second to lose. The women looked at her and in their faces, she saw confirmation: it was like a dream that had been waiting to happen.

  Free Box had turned the corner into another section of the store. When Barbie caught up with him, he whispered, “Over there, right?”

  She jerked her chin wordlessly, saying yes.

  Free Box whipped out the revolver from under his sweatshirt. He stuck the tip of the barrel into the nose of a young woman standing behind the cash register in the clothing department. The clerk was a short haired brunette with a multitude of zits on her chin. Reflexively, though she knew something was wrong, she smiled and asked Free Box, “Hello. Do you need any help?”

  “Yes, please,” he said. “Open the drawer.”

  His request took a moment to dawn on her. It sank into her mouth and washed away her rigid smile. Then it registered in her eyes, wiping out their warmth. Her hands hovered at her waist, not knowing what to do. Barbie sized up the situation and saw it was going to be a problem unless she did something about it. Someone had to make a move. She pushed Free Box away from the counter.

  “I’ll take care of this. Now, miss, you have to do what he said. Don’t be scared.”

  There was a wan grin on Barbie’s face. Her eyes were like agate marbles, distant and slightly out of focus. Then she reached over the glass counter top and grabbed a handful of the girl’s hair, gurgling, “The money, miss. Do you hear me?”

  The girl blanched, but still managed to oblige. She reached for the button that opened the cash register’s drawer and pressed it. The tray slid open with a solid bang. Barbie stood up on her toes and took a peek at it. She licked her lips and swallowed. The clerk was waiting, chalk faced. Barbie smiled and let go of the girl’s hair.

  There was a stack of cash in that drawer.

  Without saying a word, she took the gun from Free Box. She aimed the weapon at a couple standing nearby; several other customers gawked at her. No one said a word, and nobody moved.

  “Get down on the ground!” she barked.

  She waved the gun back and forth. One heart beat later, everyone did as she asked. It was easier than she’d imagined. She squinted over the top of the gun sights. The ugly muzzle was trained on the couple as they lay face down on the carpeted floor. The woman’s ankle length dress was hiked up around her knees. It made Barbie sad to see the woman’s bony and tender kneecaps.

  “I got it,” Free Box said from behind her.

  His voice was feverish. It made her think of snakebites and how painful they were when you got one in the face.

  “Did you put it in a bag?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The girl?”

  “Don’t worry about her. Let’s get out of here,” Free Box panted.

  Barbie fired three shots into the ceiling on her way out of the clothing department. There was so much she wanted to get off her chest. She squeezed off another round and brilliantly, the shot crashed through a window. By the time the two of them got past the service desk, pandemonium was breaking out across the store. It was becoming impossible to get out the front door. Someone had fallen down and another person had tripped with still more people stepping on them trying to get away.

  Free Box grabbed the door’s handle bar. Two workers came at him, swinging haymakers. He opened the door, and Barbie muscled her way past him. She dashed onto the sidewalk and he leaped out after her, hooking his long legs around the metal frame, then slamming the door behind him.

  Barbie was standing there with smoke weeping from the gun’s barrel. Free Box took her hand an
d they started running up Fifteenth Street away from the health food store. He slid his hand over her palm, tightened his fingers around her wrist, and dragged her after him.

  Tears were flying out of her eyes. To hell with everyone. She had never been given anything she could call her own. The odds were set against her; precious numbers that flew away from her. She’d spent her entire life trying to catch up with them.

  They ran down the sidewalk towards Minna Street, coming upon two teenagers, a girl and a boy unlocking their bicycles at the corner. Barbie jumped on the boy and jammed the gun into his ribs, and screeched at him.

  “Just give me the rotten bicycle and you won’t get hurt!”

  The boy looked at Free Box, then he glanced at his girlfriend. She was standing by her bicycle with her mouth hanging wide open. He twisted his head to catch a glimpse of Barbie. Her eyes were riveted on his mouth. Shiny, hard eyes that resembled black bone buttons. The gun in her hand was empty, but he didn’t know that. All he saw was the passage of his own death in her eyes.

  “Please, take them both,” he begged.

  That night Free Box and Barbie lay side by side naked on top of the bed. The air was warm and the window was open. The bleat of the foghorn in the bay went off.

  The money was spread over the mattress; one thousand, two hundred and forty-three dollars. Barbie had covered herself in a pile of the stuff. She’d blanketed herself in five and ten dollar bills. The money gave off several strange odors. New bills smelled like plastic and metal while the older bills smelled like dirty clothes. She lay on her side with twenty dollar bills falling off her breasts and shoulders.

  “How do I look?” she asked him.

  He was silent for a moment. She snuggled up against him. Several twenty dollar bills fell against his face. He brushed them away as she got on top of him. The money crackled under her knees. Free Box shut his eyes and ran the fingers of one hand through her hair. He closed the other hand over a ten dollar bill and crumpled the note into a ball.