One Foot Off the Gutter

by Peter Plate

  And yet I was inspired. This, too, worried Bellamy. I hefted the crowbar in both hands.

  “You ready to roll?” I asked him.

  “I guess so.”

  Bellamy snapped his gun into its worn holster. He checked his equipment to make sure he had what he needed. A plastic water bottle tied by a string to a brass loop. Three speed clips of thirty-eight bullets were attached to a creaky garrison belt along with four wooden matches wrapped in toilet paper, a skeleton key and a pair of handcuffs.

  “Let’s go, Coddy,” he said.

  It was a silky October evening. The sky was a moody indigo blue; a storm was coming up, a low pressure front moving in from Canada. Across the street from the police station, a monstrous raven was perched on top of a church steeple. I laughed when I saw the bird. The black bastard was a good sign.

  I dropped behind the steering wheel of the squad car and leaned over to unlock the passenger door so that Bellamy could get in.

  Bellamy’s dirty laundry was cluttering up the back seat. I hardly ever had any laundry to wash. I had one uniform that I wore every day, but Bellamy had managed to acquire two pairs. He’d inherited the second set after Rod Jensen died from a brain hemorrhage.

  “Here we go, here we go now,” Bellamy chanted.

  He began our nocturnal ritual by opening the door, plopping himself into the car, scooting down low in the front seat. I stashed the crowbar in the back on top of Bellamy’s clothes. I rolled down my window, stuck a key into the ignition and started the engine. I navigated the car out of the station’s parking lot, laying a generous stripe of rubber when we made contact with the street.

  Bellamy torched two cigarettes and handed one to me.

  We drove north on Mission. The sidewalks were crushed with people pushing and shoving on the pavement. The bars near Twenty-fourth Street were packed with Guatemaltecos and Salvadoreños getting an early start on the evening’s drinking. There would be fights to break up when the bars closed down for the night.

  “We might be busy tonight,” I said.

  “Don’t let it bother you,” Bellamy replied. “You’ll burn yourself out.”

  “That’s probably true. But you know what, Bells? Even when I’m not on duty, I’m always fretting about the bullshit. I see the people in the street. I see them as lesson plans in my dreams.”

  “Sounds painful, bro’.”

  I saw them when I was making love to Alice. I saw them when I was sitting on the toilet with the Sunday paper spread across my lap. I could lose my pretty blue eyes, and I’d still see the streets. The Mission had gotten into me like a knife in the head.

  I maneuvered a left onto Twenty-first Street.

  Bellamy said, “Don’t tell me where we’re going, Coddy. Just let me guess.... Goddamn it, I thought you were over that already.”

  There wasn’t anything I could say that would make Bellamy feel easier, absolutely nothing. The calm that put a smile on my face was the same calm that killed the words on my tongue.

  “What are you doing, Coddy? Haven’t you been through enough with this?”

  I knew Bellamy had told Doreen I was going nuts. I drove past Folsom Street. The wind was blowing through the car, pouring into the hole where the windshield had been shot. Bellamy raked a handful of fingers through his transplant and then he saw the lopsided Victorian coming up on the right.

  “Aw, Coddy. Let’s not get bogged down into this, you hear me? Jesus. I’ll tell you what. We’ve got a few minutes. Let’s you and me go to Hunt’s and get a cup of coffee. We can sit down and shoot the shit. You can tell me what’s on your mind.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  The patrol car sidled up to the abandoned building. I cut the engine, and it died with a pathetic whine. My mind was flattened out. I reached over and grabbed the crowbar from the back seat.

  “Keep that thing away from me.” Bellamy recoiled in sham horror. He made a funny face, in the lame hope that he could charm me and get me to relax.

  “I have this impression of you, homes. Maybe you want to hear it?”

  “You can tell me later, Bells.”

  I opened my door and got out of the squad car. I heaved the crowbar to my shoulder and loped across the sidewalk, up the front steps of the abandoned building. I had been getting ready to walk away from what I knew, to leave and to go somewhere else for a long time. Even Bellamy could see that.

  Everything I had been thinking about since the beginning of September was crystallized into a precise formation of knowledge. I ran my eyes over the front door’s frame. I was looking for a crack, for an aperture I could get my fingers into. This time, I had come prepared.

  I wedged the tip of the crowbar against the door jamb, took a deep breath, then threw all of my weight forward. I leaned back, caught another breath, and did it again. With each successive blow, the fury I’d buried alive inside my head came roaring through my hands. I wrenched the crowbar back and forth. I felt like a serial killer: now that I’d begun, to stop was unthinkable.

  The girl bolted upright in bed. A strange noise had woken her up. Maybe it had been a bad dream; her head cold made her feverish. She’d slept through most of the day and still, she didn’t feel rested. She laid back down and closed her eyes before she heard the crowbar slam into the front door for a second time. She hit Free Box in the arm with her fist. His eyelids rolled up like window shades.

  “Do you hear that?” she whispered.

  The crowbar sank with a thud into the hard wood for a third time. Free Box knew exactly what it was.

  “I thought you were kidding at first,” he said.

  The cops had returned. They were trying to break in again. He got out of bed and padded barefoot to the window.

  Barbie retrieved the revolver from under the pillow, sat up on the mattress, naked except for a t-shirt. Her sleep-tousled hair was hanging over her eyes.

  “What do you see?” she asked.

  “One cop is in the car. The other one is on the porch.”

  “Is this for real?”

  Free Box looked at her; a glance that left no room for an answer. She understood what he meant and pulled the hammer back, letting her thumb rest lightly on its flat microgrooved head.

  The crowbar was singing in my hands. It sawed through the door, splintering the dryrotted timber. The headache I’d been nursing for the last month was easing off. I took another swing, but it wasn’t necessary. The door jumped off its hinges; it fell back and collapsed to the floor with a crash that echoed through out the rest of the building.

  It took an instant before the sound evaporated. By then I was standing inside the doorway. I marveled at the house, how cold and musty it was, opening up like a treasure chest. I threw the crowbar down on top of the door and nearing delirium, I marched inside.

  Bellamy stuck his head out the car window and put his ear to the wind. That noise, it could only be Coddy. Fuckin’ Coddy. Bellamy rubbed his neck and tried to think.

  He strapped on his riot helmet, got out of the squad car, rested his bulk against the vehicle’s trunk and looked at the building. That was interesting. Where the front door used to be, there was an uninviting hole. Leave it to Coddy to start things off with a bang. What the hell, Bellamy told himself. He’d better go in there after Coddy. Otherwise, they’d be spending the entire night on Twenty-first Street.

  Bellamy crossed the pavement, clambering up the front steps and over the fallen door. He yanked out a flashlight from his jacket and flicked on the beam. The light played itself across the water-stained walls of the entrance hallway.

  “Hey, Coddy! Where are you?”

  There were cobwebs and holes in the plaster everywhere he turned. The place was a complete war zone. Water was dripping from the ceiling, splatting onto his riot helmet, making a hollow sound in his ears. What Coddy saw in this dump was beyond him.

  I was hunkering down on my knees in a room far away from the front door. I got to my feet and made for the next room by running my
fingers over the walls. I read the walls as a handicapped man would study braille. I was home now. I heard Bellamy shout out my name. I couldn’t think of any reason to answer him.

  The walls, ceilings and the floor were aligned in direct proportion to my size. It was a mammoth house; I was sure it was large enough to get rid of the claustrophobia I’d carried around on my back since the moment I was born. This was where Alice and I would start over.

  My fingers wandered over the worn out woodwork. If only I could’ve brought Alice here tonight. She would understand what I was feeling. There was freedom in the ruins of a building that no one wanted. I walked into the next room, only to find myself at the doorway to another hall. There were rooms in every direction.

  “Coddy! Where the fuck are you?”

  Bellamy slogged through a puddle in the front room and found himself in a vestibule that led to a decrepit stairwell. He became interested in the staircase, seeing that it wound around the side of the building to a landing on the second floor. There was some light up there. He pointed the flashlight at the stairs. Then on a whim, he aimed the beam at the second floor’s landing. He almost died of fright when the ray caught a face inside its dusty halo. It was a face covered in plaster dust; the eyes looked like two holes. A pulse later, it was gone.

  “Hey, wait a minute! Who are you?” Bellamy shouted.

  Nobody answered him. The silence was powerful enough to make him doubt whether he’d seen anybody. What a stupid ass he was, letting the building play tricks on him. He’d be a fool if he let his guard down. Bellamy unsnapped the holster and withdrew his pistol. He pressed the thumb plate on the frame, releasing the cylinder. The six-chambered cylinder dropped into his palm, reassuring him. All six chambers were loaded with Black Talons.

  There might be someone up there. You never knew. What he really wanted was a cigarette and a drink. When they got out of this wreck, that would be his reward. Bellamy snapped the cylinder back into place. He pointed the flashlight at his feet and started to climb the stairwell.

  Barbie listened to Bellamy’s slow ascent. The cop was having problems navigating the broken slats on the staircase. She heard the hesitation in his foot steps, the way one shoe moved forward, followed by the tread of the other shoe. She began to speculate on his chances in finding them. She entertained the notion that he might get discouraged and quit. He might go back downstairs. That was laughable.

  “He’s coming,” she whispered to Free Box.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “I think we’ll find out very soon.”

  Bellamy rested his hand on a railing, only to have it drop to the stairs at his feet. He couldn’t see anything. He should have gotten a pair of glasses like the doctor ordered. Since they cut back the benefits on the job, he just couldn’t afford it. It was another thing that would have to wait. He held the flashlight in one hand and the pistol in the other hand, calling out, “Hello? Hello? This is the San Francisco Police. Why don’t you come out and get acquainted?”

  The flashlight’s beam was picking up cracks and fissures in the walls, reminding Bellamy of the old horror movies he saw on late night television whenever he was staying over at someone’s house. He stepped over piles of broken wood and glass. He was making pretty good time getting up the stairs, considering he was slightly winded. It was amazing how out of shape he was these days.

  He reached the landing on the second floor and looked around him. The first doorway he saw made him curious. There was the light he’d seen earlier. He let the flashlight guide him down the short hall toward the door. It wasn’t so bad once you got used to the dark. Bellamy approached the room and whispered in a falsetto, “Is anybody home?”

  Free Box pressed himself against the wall, standing as far away from the door as he could get. But in his fear, he didn’t watch where he was going and he stumbled over a kerosene lamp. The glass vessel fell over with a clatter, shattering into several pieces, leaving a solitary tongue of flame to lick itself on the floor.

  “What’s that?” Bellamy stepped into the room. Like a compass, his flashlight found the flame, now standing a foot tall. Free Box was kneeling by the fire. The muscles on his naked back writhed under his ashen skin. That’s strange, Bellamy thought. The guy was all white with plaster dust.

  Bellamy didn’t see the woman aiming a revolver at him.

  Two shots rang out. He never saw them coming until the flashlight and the pistol were knocked from his hands. Two quarter-inch holes were left smoking in his sleeve and pants leg; he collapsed to the floorboards. Unable to retain his balance, Bellamy sprawled on the floor. He was mindful of the colors he saw; pink was turning into blue. At the last moment, he remembered to scream.

  “Coddy! Help me!”

  The abandoned building saw everything that was unfolding on her second floor. The pigeons roosting under her eaves scattered, flying across the street to a safer haven. The rats in the attic crawled through the chimney and dropped off onto the roof of the doctor’s house, where they scurried down the drainpipes into the plumbing. Something worse than human beings and the wrecking ball was tearing at her. It raced up into the attic, and down to the basement. It rippled in waves across her walls. It was the deadliest of her enemies. It was a fire.

  twenty-nine

  i started running towards the front of the house. I threw myself into one dim hallway after another, not knowing where Bellamy was. Every room was pitch black and dead still. There were too many rooms and too many doors to open. I tripped over a gap in the floorboards, jumped back up and staggered, reminding myself that I’d left the flashlight in the squad car.

  The house had changed its persona right before my eyes. A house could be many things. A moment ago, it had been a playground. I plucked my revolver from its holster, stood at the doorway to another room. I couldn’t hear the traffic on Twenty-first Street. I brushed away a cobweb, and crept forward a few more feet.

  A hush was left frothing in the wake of Bellamy’s scream.

  When it was this silent, I was afraid of hearing things. A doctor had told me they weren’t quite hallucinations, but close enough. I’d been having them ever since I was a kid. The devil talked to me, his uncharitable words loitering in my ears. The more alone I was, the louder his voice became. I’d never spoken to anyone about the voices that were in my head, not since I signed up for the job.

  I called to Bellamy, not so much as to gain an answer, but to hear myself. I was in danger of losing my sense of direction. The devil was getting stronger; he was crowding out Bellamy’s call for help.

  “Bells? Are you there? Where are you?”

  Barbie stuck her pistol in Bellamy’s mouth.

  “Keep still, you creep.”

  Bellamy couldn’t help himself, hurting like he was. The room was rotating, reminding him of a carousel he used to ride when he was a kid. A merry-go-round with gaudy wooden horses bobbing up and down. Every horse had an expression of vacant boredom painted on its face. Bellamy pressed his hand against the hole in his pants. Blood was flowing down his leg into his riot boot. She nudged him again.

  “Didn’t I tell you not to talk?”

  Was he talking out loud?

  “Excuse me, lady. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  He was babbling on the floor of an abandoned building. There was a naked girl pointing a gun at his head. It was his birthday next week. He’d be turning forty-one. An extra charge of dizziness swept over him. And who was going to tell Doreen?

  Barbie poked her head out the door on the second floor landing. The other cop was down at the bottom of the stairwell. She could hear him thrashing like a wild elephant in the garbage. Behind her, the fire in the room was gaining strength; flames were stroking the walls, smoke was spurting out the front window.

  She raised the pistol and aimed.

  Bellamy was up there. Call it a knack, seeing beyond walls, something only policemen know about. I stopped for a moment and lifted my cleft chin. I was about to start off
in the other direction when I heard the tantalizing ghost of a whimper. My headache came rushing back with a vengeance, hurling spearheads of distress into the back of my neck. I shouted, “This is the police! Whoever you are, come out with your hands up!”

  The first shot went over my head without so much as touching me. The second bullet streaked down the stairwell and sank into the plaster between my feet, cautioning me. I was getting ready to shoot back when a tall, slender man flew through the doorway and bounded down the stairs, heading straight for me. The size of the guy was unbelievable, strictly for the circus. I cocked the hammer and shrank up against the staircase wall, keening wildly, “Put that gun down or I’ll shoot!”

  “I don’t have a gun!” he cried.

  “Don’t give me that shit! I don’t want to hear it!”

  I didn’t notice the girl. I assumed the man in front of me had the weapon. There was a light in the room behind the perpetrator. The asshole’s head and shoulders were coated in white plaster dust. The sight of him made me queasy.

  “Take it easy,” I warned him. “Don’t make me do something I don’t want to. Just relax and everything will be all right. Drop the gun on the floor and put your hands in the air, where I can see them.”

  “I don’t have a gun,” he complained.

  I hated it when the assholes got to whining. I was about to snap off a sarcastic retort when the girl stepped out from behind him. She was pointing a gun at me.

  Two sharp blasts came my way, two faint red lines that got brighter the closer they sped toward me. Simultaneously, I caught a glimpse of the young woman again, half-naked and covered with blood.

  This was before the bullets hit me in the chest.