One Foot Off the Gutter

by Peter Plate

  “You know where I’m going, don’t you?” I asked.

  “I know it better than you do, homes,” Bellamy cracked.

  I had come this far and waited long enough. I had a plan. It might get me into trouble, but it was my concern, my responsibility and nobody else’s. I bent over, ducked my head into the squad car window, and said, “I’m going to do some exploring.”

  What was Bellamy supposed to say? If I wanted to hang around an abandoned building in the middle of the night, there wasn’t much he could do about it. I was the senior officer. I was a highly decorated member of the department and as far as Bellamy could tell, I was losing my marbles.

  “I’ve got to do this, Bells. Can’t you see?” I pleaded.

  “I don’t know, Coddy. You like pushing rocks uphill?”

  At least Bellamy was getting paid to watch me have a nervous breakdown. It wasn’t like he could intervene. It was better to leave me alone. That was the best thing one cop could do for another brother. Let him find his own way. He’d thank you for it later.

  “Don’t sweat it, Coddy. Just do what you have to. Me? I’ll make myself cozy and listen to the radio.”

  I was acting crazy, but I couldn’t stop myself. I let a shred of a grin touch my mouth.

  “I won’t be long.”

  I bounded across the pavement, showing more vitality than I’d had in a long time. I could feel myself gathering momentum, gaining lucidity. Simultaneously, I was getting older, breaking down, becoming creaky and forgetful. The two paths were going to converge on my deathbed. Even now with the abandoned building before me, I was aware of that.

  After Coddy took off, Bellamy relaxed in the front seat and imagined himself having a drink in a bar. A joint with a good jukebox. While he nursed a beer, getting properly wasted on an empty stomach, Johnny Mathis would be singing about a long lost love that had come back into his life. It was a renewed love born from the ashes of the dead past. You could hear the passion in Johnny’s voice. It wasn’t a mere song he was singing; it was a translation about the meaning of life in San Francisco. The lyrics were elegant and pure: if you love me, then I’m the greatest man on earth. Bellamy clasped his hands behind his neck and thought about Doreen. What else could a homeless guy do but think about his favorite squeeze? That’s how you stayed warm in a cold world.

  Deep down inside, Free Box had always known the police would come back. Studying the police had become a form of metaphysics to him. Once the cops were onto something, they stuck to you like gum on your shoes. There was a time for hell raising, and there was a time for getting caught, as there was a time for getting away with murder, and a time for paying bail.

  He peered out the window. It took him a second to recognize Coddy. When he did, he caught his breath on the intake, whistling sharply through the gap in his front teeth. It was the same cop who’d been at the door the last time. Free Box backed away from the window and crept across the floor, taking care not to step on any of the floorboards that’d give off a tell-tale creak.

  Barbie was sleeping on her back with one arm sprawled on the pillow under her. Her skin was luminous in the near dark of the room. Free Box crouched beside her and placed his palm over her mouth. Her eyes shot wide open, large and opalescent.

  “Those cops are outside again,” he whispered into her hair.

  He removed his hand from her mouth and sat down on the mattress. Her lips were no more than an inch away from his eyes when she said, “The same ones? What are they doing?”

  “Prowling around looking for something.”

  She reached under the pillow and pulled out the revolver, cocked the hammer, then laid the gun down on the pillow. Her eyes were on Free Box’s face. He didn’t say anything, intently listening to Coddy fiddle with the front door.

  “What should we do?” she asked.

  “Wait and see,” he replied.

  I couldn’t open the door. The house looked flimsy and broken down, but the door was solidly locked. I ran a gloved finger over the doorjamb, unable to detect any holes or cracks. I stepped back on the porch and lifted the gleaming riot helmet off my head to mop up the sweat on my brow.

  It didn’t take me long to hatch a plan, to solve the problem. A minute later I was edging my way across the ledge to the left of the steps. If I crossed the ledge on the tiptoes of my boots, I could get to the front window. Then I could hoist myself through the broken glass into the building. It was a daring plan for a fat man. If I lost my footing, I’d land on my head in the driveway ten feet below.

  Leaning over, I stretched my arms as far as they could reach. After a few seconds of mortal conflict with the air and with the final outcome liable to go either way, I got a hand on the window’s sill. I looked down at the driveway. My bulletproof vest was soaked in nervous sweat. I didn’t like heights, not even small heights.

  I teetered on the narrow ledge, my fingers in an orbit of their own. They moved, scrabbling like two crabs to get hold of the window. My confidence soared when I got both hands on the window’s frame. I dug my fingertips into the broken-off glass stuck in the sill, almost pleased to suffer. I was going to jump through the window’s jagged hole, confident that I wouldn’t get cut too badly. Practically speaking, it was a cinch.

  Then I committed one of those pedestrian mistakes that never warrant a moment’s thought. I lifted one hand from the frame; the next thing I knew, I was slipping off the ledge. Initially, I could not rationalize my plight. Space moved one way; my perception of it ran in the other direction. The sky lurched up in front of my eyes. I looked at the stars rushing by. They were moving very fast, and I wondered why.

  Barbie heard the crash. She’d had the strangest feeling about that cop. While the noise wasn’t what she’d expected, it didn’t faze her. The sound was loud and dramatic. Free Box jumped to his feet. He hugged the side of the wall nearest to the bed, standing there with his arms akimbo.

  “Maybe we’d better get out of here,” he said.

  She decocked the hammer on the revolver and cussed softly under her breath. Some cops didn’t have a clue.

  “That won’t be necessary. We can stay right where we are, because the cop fell down on his ass,” she said.

  “How can you be sure?” Free Box frowned.

  “Just believe me,” she replied.

  The sound of Coddy’s fall stirred Bellamy from his reverie. He’d been dreaming about doing the wild thing with Doreen when he heard his partner scream in anguish. He threw himself out of the car and stumbled across the sidewalk while drawing his back up revolver from its ankle pouch. Bellamy hurled himself towards the commotion, to where he thought the noise was coming from. He raised his pistol and shouted.

  “Freeze, motherfuckers! This is the San Francisco Police!”

  No one answered him. But the fuss in the driveway did not stop. Bellamy flung the gun over his head, squeezed his eyes shut, pulled the trigger.

  Three shots tore into the silence. There was another moment of quiet, then the lights went on in every nearby building. A dozen windows were opened; citizens’ heads sprang out like jack-in-the-boxes.

  I lay on my back at the bottom of the driveway, flexed my fingers and wriggled my legs. Nothing was broken, a minor triumph. French fries, sanitary napkins, and baby diapers were hanging from my uniform. I peeled a Kotex from my arm, growling in self-disgust.

  Bellamy swung his pistol around in a circle. He stalked down the lip of the driveway, leap frogging forward in a combat ready position. He kept his finger on the trigger, ready for anything.

  “Would you give me a hand,” I croaked.

  Bellamy’s ears perked up. I knew what he was thinking: the enemy was everywhere. There were only a few cops to hold back an ocean of assholes. You had to expect to get shot. You had to think quickly or you’d get smoked. Bellamy laid the cold barrel of the pistol against his chin. His gun could smell a criminal in the driveway. But regardless of what you wanted to call me, epithets included, I was not an asshole.
r />   “Bells?”

  “Coddy!”

  “Would you fucking help me, you sonuvabitch?”

  Bellamy ran down the driveway’s apron, eager to aid me. He found me, got down on one knee, and extending a hand, he pulled me to my feet. We stood face to face, ankle deep in the trash. Bellamy plucked a hamburger bun from my sleeve. He let the bun fall to the ground. Both of us looked at it.

  Something had gone wrong again. Our work was often like that. We couldn’t find enough gas for the squad car. We didn’t have an adequate supply of bullets for our post-Vietnam war-era revolvers. The assholes were gaining the upper hand in the Mission. There was another wage cut due on the horizon. Cops were dying every day. The flag above the station was always at half mast. In a city where no one cared about us, where we were barely tolerated by the climate of liberalism, we had nobody but each other.

  I wasn’t too pleased with myself, but that was nobody’s business but my own. Bellamy seemed confused. He wanted to put his arms around me and hug me. I had seen him do that with other cops, but I wasn’t someone you could reach out and touch that easily. You had to disarm me first.

  “What in the name of living fuck happened, Coddy? Maybe this isn’t the most opportune time to ask you a question like that, I don’t know.”

  “Opportune? What’s that mean? If you’re gonna talk to me, Bellamy, speak English. Say something I can understand.”

  “Look at this shit. This is ridiculous. Coddy. You are seriously blowing it. You’d better get a grip on yourself, or you’re gonna end up on psychological disability leave. You know what’ll go down then, don’t you? You’ll be humiliated. You’ll be asked to leave the force. The captain will have to take your badge and gun away from you.”

  Bellamy punctuated his nagging by sticking a finger into my paunch. I saw that as a green light to let off some steam. My partner had gone too far in criticizing me.

  I shoved Bellamy in the chest and without thinking, he threw a roundhouse punch at my face. I parried the blow, gave him a sharp left jab in the ribs. Both of us fell over into the garbage. I rolled over on top of him and swung a fist at his jaw, missed, banging my hand off the side of Bellamy’s riot helmet. It hurt like hell, getting worse when Bellamy jabbed me between the legs with a stiffened thumb.

  I wasn’t going insane. I had a plan. I was moving in the right direction. He elbowed me twice in the belly, sending jet lightning trilling up my spine.

  “You had enough, Coddy?” Bellamy gasped.

  “Nope, I haven’t,” I replied.

  A solitary dog began to howl in a nearby backyard. The poor animal listened to our scuffling and had decided to sing along with it. A hellacious melody that made my skin crawl. The creature trumpeted ill, as though our torment and all the afflictions in the Mission were heaped on its flea-bitten, ghetto-sagging back.

  twenty-three

  relax, Coddy. It’s no big deal. We’re tight right?” “Right.”

  I could not argue with him, but I didn’t know what was coming over me. A mood swing or a rapid descent into acute depression. Bellamy had punched me hard, as only friends with that privilege can. He’d knocked the wind out of me; not only out of my stomach, but out of my spirit. A gob rose in my throat and jumped past my tongue to the back of my mouth to exactly where the sinuses met the bridge of my oft-broken nose. Then it leaped into the space behind my eyes. I really didn’t believe it was happening to me. Alice cried all of the time, but not me.

  This was the worst thing a policeman could do.

  My hands crossed over my face so Bellamy couldn’t see me. But it was too late: I wasn’t hidden enough. The first sob smashed through my defenses, shaking the jelly belly constricted by the garrison belt. I snapped my head against the steering wheel. I gripped the dashboard with both hands.

  The second gust of tears had me kicking the underside of the radio. The third wave burst like a plague, bringing more water from my eyes, more mucus from my nose, and spit from my mouth. The bib of my combat overalls was viscous with fluid. I squirmed in the bucket seat, half conscious of the image I was presenting to Bellamy.

  I also saw two pieces of a riddle.

  The first part affirmed life; sometimes savory and sometimes enigmatic. But when I felt the hummingbird of defeat in my chest under the bulletproof vest; that part of me belonged to death.

  Freedom was a lonely thing. It didn’t surprise me that most people refused it. Death was a voracious beast that roamed inside my ribcage, trying to get at the hummingbird. It made me speculate about which part would grow stronger.

  Since the squad car was parked on Mission Street, I couldn’t help but look through the windshield at the dozen conservatively dressed Salvadoreño men standing in front of Hunt’s Donuts with their thumbs hooked into their belt loops. They looked back at me and saw a cop with a tear-stained face. Newspapers, cigarette butts, potato chip bags and donut crusts were tangoing with the wind on the sidewalk, eddying around the curb at the intersection.

  “You okay now, Coddy?”

  “Yeah, I’m all right. Thanks for askin’.”

  “Any time, man, you know that.”

  One thing was for certain: the world was a puzzle where I knew an answer. One day many years from now after I had collected my memories, my victories and defeats, the moments when I’d controlled and lost my own destiny, I would put them aside or hand them over to my surviving family members. Then I would pass away. This was not a problem. It was the other part that was a hassle. I did not know how to live as to insure the success and the presence of those memories. I just didn’t know how I was going to live until the end, until that other, final part began.

  twenty-four

  the doctor parked the Volvo, and looked into the rearview mirror. Satisfied that every strand of his pony tail was tied back, he snatched his briefcase from the front seat and jumped out of the car. A sensation of almost unnatural ebullience was moving through him.

  What was it about, he didn’t know. His work hadn’t gone any better than usual. He’d spent the morning treating three local men for gunshot wounds. Two of the men had twelve-gauge buckshot lodged in their backs. The third man’s face was studded with pellets; a line of them were buried across his nose and both cheeks.

  The doctor had picked at the small pods of skin that puckered over their wounds. He dug at the buckshot with a pair of needle-thin forceps. It was strange how the pellets vanished under the surface of the skin. They’d burrowed into the flesh with a vehemence that bordered on sentient.

  What was stranger was how stoic the men were about their plight. They’d been found by the police wandering around Garfield Park. They refused to talk about what had happened. The police assumed they’d gotten caught up in a spoiled drug deal; that’s why they were handcuffed to their chairs in the emergency room.

  They’d accepted the doctor’s ministrations with fatalistic calm. One of them would say a joke in Spanish. The other two would smile. The doctor wiped away the blood from the pellet holes in their bodies. He covered their wounds with an antiseptic gel and a swathe of bandages. They represented the revenge of the empire. Their faces reminded the doctor that things were going to get worse before they’d improve.

  He dashed up the front stairs through the door and breezed into the living room, greeting everybody with a wave of his hand.

  “Hey, everybody! What’s up? I got off early for a change.”

  Patsy’s mom was sitting in an easy chair. She was twirling a swizzle stick into the bottom of a highball glass.

  “What do you know?” she said. “Here’s our son.”

  Daf was standing by the fireplace, nursing a water glass filled with straight gin. “Well, look at what the cat dragged in.”

  “Give him a drink. He looks like he could use one.”

  Having said that, Patsy sauntered into the living room carrying a tray laden with corn chips and a dish of green salsa. When it came to cuisine, the girl was from Missouri, but she was learning about Cal
ifornia.

  “Here you go, honey,” Patsy’s mom said. “You can have my drink.”

  The old woman made a petulant gesture with her mouth, letting everyone see that she was sober enough to know she was drunk.

  “Thanks, mom,” the doctor sighed.

  He set down his briefcase on the Navajo rug and sprawled back on the couch. He kicked off his tasseled loafers and grabbed the glass his mother-in-law handed him. He stuck his nose into the drink. A quarter moon of lipstick was enameled on its rim. He sniffed it and not surprisingly, he found the highball smelled like her perfume. He took a sip and discovered the drink was strong, the way he liked it.

  “Tastes great,” he smiled.

  “Most alcohol does,” Daf twinkled.

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” his wife said.

  Patsy leaned over and put the tray down on the coffee table.

  “What are we having for dinner?” her mother asked.

  “We’re having pan fried chicken,” Patsy replied.

  “With mashed potatoes and gravy?” Daf grinned.

  “And corn biscuits, snap greens and cream gravy,” Patsy said with modesty.

  “With molasses in the corn bread?” Daf cackled.

  “And chocolate ice cream for dessert,” Patsy said.

  “That’s just marvelous,” her mother burped.

  Daf licked his lips and thanked his daughter. Patsy kneeled down on the other side of the coffee table, and dipped a few chips into the salsa. She did that several times without tasting them, looking up at the doctor as if she was seeing him for the first time that evening.

  “How did work go today?”

  “The same as yesterday. Lots of craziness in the emergency room. It’s becoming a way of life for me.”