by Rick Mofina
“Hey, bitch, watch your ass!” said a man, his face hidden by long matted hair and a beard flecked with cracker crumbs. His filthy fingers gripped a bottle wrapped in a paper bag.
Her palms slapped against brick as she kept moving toward the corner. Please be there. Baby be there. Is that him? That’s him! Thank you, Lord!
Behind his dark glasses, Gator had been eyeballing her progress since he’d stepped off the BART from Oakland and got busy. He was gaunt with a face pocked and scarred by the ravages of acne and the life of a dealer. Annoyed at the sight of her, he sneered.
“Yo, Skin Popper, come take care of your bill.”
“Gator, baby, you got to fix me up. Please. I’m sick.”
“You see your doctor for that. With me, it’s business.”
He looked away.
“You got to.”
“I got to?” Gator’s head snapped round. He inventoried her black spandex dress and ruby pumps. Arms striped with needle tracks, and sores that looked like lesions.
“How do you keep yourself looking so fine?”
She held out an open hand. “Gator, please.”
“You got what you owe?”
“I’m short, but I’ll pick up some work. Promise.”
“Ah. That’s sweet. See me when you got some dead presidents for me.”
“Give me something to get me through.”
She opened her purse, grabbed her leather wallet. It was personalized. Her name, Gloria, was written in a small elegant script in one corner. A handmade gift from her ex. He was in Folsom for a murder he didn’t commit. She had to believe that for the sake of their two-year-old daughter, Sunny. Social services was taking care of her. Just until Mommy gets all better. Sunny smiled from her color photo, the one next to the worn tens and twenties. It was money earned an hour ago after letting a tourist do depraved things to her for ten minutes in the back of his family’s rented van. And the few bucks she had left from that strange phone call she’d made for the weirdo.
She held out the cash.
“That should cover half a gram and some of what I owe, please.”
He stared at her palm as if it held an insult. “Girl, you’re not doing the math.”
She thrust the money under his nose. “I’m dying.”
He swatted her hand away. His voice was stone cold.
“You owe me five hundred.”
“But I’m dying. I’m sick. Take this. I’ll get more.”
“Either way you slice it you’re diggin your grave, Skin Popper.”
He snatched her money, shoved it in his pants, and stared at the Market Street traffic. Chewing and grinning at the undercovers with their gold chains and Vandykes, rolling by in their customized Honda. He knew they weren’t interested in a bottom-feeding minnow like him.
“I need something. I’ll take anything.”
Eyebrows appeared above the dark glasses. “Anything, baby?”
“God, yes.”
He debated with himself, then worked his tongue until it found a small saliva-slick ball that looked like white candy. Extracting it, he placed it in her palm. “I’m testing a new product line. You’re my first customer. It’s fresh. Very potent. Very pure. Cook yourself up a dream.” Her fingers closed on the balloon ball of heroin, then Gator crushed her wrist until it hurt. “Next time I see you, you better have my money.”
Sobbing with pain tempered by the knowledge that relief was on its way, she vanished into a dark alley and crouched behind a Dumpster near a doorway that had coils of week-old excrement. She emptied the contents of her purse on the ground. She poked through tampons, condoms, spermicide, chocolate bars, and the folded note from the weirdo until she found her needle kit. Fingers shaking, she set to work quickly. She boiled the impurities from the heroin on a spoon, then injected herself under the skin between her thumb and forefinger. As relief flowed through her veins, she dropped her head against an obscenity scrawled on the wall and met her daughter’s eyes staring up at her from the pavement.
She stayed that way for a while, letting the drug fill her with a warm sensation of well-being. Then she strolled off toward a corner coffee shop promising herself for the millionth time that she would get clean.
For Sunny.
As she walked, a sharp ache rocketed through her brain. Something was not right. Something was wrong. Then she heard a voice.
“Gloria?”
She turned to see a friend. The one she’d met at a party not long ago. The smart one who’d gone to college. Lois Hirt.
“College Girl Lois, hey, hon.”
“I’ve been looking all over for you, Gloria, asking everybody where you went.” Lois was nearly out of breath. “I think I can get you into detox, get you some money. Maybe a job.”
Gloria’s face brightened. “No shit?” Then her brain spasmed again. She rubbed her temples.
“Remember at the party, you told me some guy gave you money to read some joke into a phone?”
Gloria remembered. It happened down near Garfield Square. She shuddered with another jolt of pain. Something was happening to her.
“I got a friend who needs to track this guy down. He needs a little information. He’s got connections who can help you get better.”
Gloria had heard talk about Lois Hirt’s friends. She licked her lips. Her stomach was quaking.
“Is this friend of yours a cop, Lois?”
“No. Hey, are you okay?”
“I don’t know.”
They found a bench.
“My friend’s a good guy. He’ll protect you.”
Defeat washed over Gloria. She shook her head. Then felt cold.
“What does he want?”
“He needs you to help him find your telephone guy.”
Gloria pressed her temples. It was as if corn were popping in her brain and her skull were about to split open. She gasped.
“But I don’t know where to find him, I think he was wearing--”
The sidewalk rushed up to hit Gloria. Her last conscious thoughts were blurry images of the strange phone man and Lois Hirt’s screaming.
FIFTY-SEVEN
Tom Reed had overslept and was running late. The shower’s hot water soothed his sore muscles. He’d gone to bed coiled with tension after discovering Yarrow’s incident with the Miss Texas finalist. Now he was uncertain it mattered.
It had happened over a decade ago. Sydowski supposedly knew all about him and was checking him out. Yarrow was recently divorced and not in the city when the murders took place. Showing up at Hooper’s funeral was a strange coincidence; all valid points Molly had raised sharply during his call last night.
All right, maybe he’d overreacted. But Yarrow’s case simply did not look good, Tom reasoned after dressing and driving to the paper. Yarrow’s behavior gnawed at him. It didn’t sit right. No, he wasn’t ready to cross him off without digging a little more. And he’d chase his other leads. He was stopped at a red light when his cell phone rang.
“Reed.”
“Yeah, this is a friend of Lois’s.”
“Hi. I was trying to reach her today.”
“Something bad has just happened, like, a little while ago.”
“Bad? Like what? Is she hurt?”
“No. She just called me crying, saying to tell you something went wrong on that thing she was checking for you. She’s going to tell you more later.”
“What? Jesus. Where is she? Do you know? Hello?”
The line went dead.
Tom immediately detoured from the Star for the Sixteenth-Street BART Station in the Mission District. He spent an hour searching the streets in vain for Lois Hirt before giving up and going to the paper.
The call about Lois worried him. What could it be? Any one of a million scenarios, that’s what. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do but wait. At least Lois had got word to him. He had to trust her. She’d never let him down before, he assured himself as he settled in at his desk.
Get busy.
Tom got on the Internet for contact information, then called the Barner County Sheriff’s Department in Texas.
“Sheriff,” a woman’s voice said.
“Tom Reed from the San Francisco Star. Do you have a press person?”
“You’re calling from San Francisco?”
“Yes. Do you have a person who handles press calls?”
“What’s your question?”
“I’m trying to locate a deputy. He was with the department a few years back.”
“Name?”
“Yarrow. Frank G. Yarrow?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell with me. Hold on a second.”
The line clicked and he heard a Dixie Chicks song. Tom loved their stuff. Then the woman came back.
“The man you want is Will Zotta. He’s stepped away for a bit. I’ll have him call you.”
Tom went downstairs to the cafeteria. He was at the register paying for his bagel and tomato juice when old Hank Kruner grunted in his ear.
“Hear the latest?”
“About what?”
“The profits are down and the board’s rigged some secret deal with managers,” Kruner said. “Cash bonuses for every salary cut from their departmental payroll. Watch out, Ace.”
At his desk, Tom finished his bagel and juice then looked around for Simon Lepp. He’d wondered if Lepp had made any headway on the foggy thing about old drug accusations against Hooper. Maybe that was a connection to Lois and the street? He couldn’t recall if Lepp had said he was off today.
Tom was stretching when his line rang and Irene Pepper summoned him to her office. He sat while she remained standing, leaning against her desk with her arms folded.
“Did you ask Molly about doing a first-person account on the murders like I asked you?”
“She knows about your request.”
“And?”
“Irene, I’m uncomfor table with the way you keep pushing me for this.”
The polished nails of her fingers began drumming. The corners of her mouth courted a grin.
“Refusing an assignment is tantamount to insubordination, solid grounds for termination. To be blunt, I can fire you. End your career with this paper here and now.”
Tom’s jaw muscles tightened. He stared at her wondering, How did it come to this?
All the late nights pumping cops, hanging out at bars, riding along, working street sources, knocking on doors, and stepping into the lives of heartbroken people in pursuit of stories no one else dared chase, stories that pierced the city’s soul. Stories that swallowed him whole, before chewing him up and spitting him out.
For that, he’d earned a Pulitzer nomination. He’d also earned a drinking problem and a marriage that had been patched over more times than he could remember. So how did it come down to someone like Pepper, standing over his career like a gravedigger waiting to throw the first spadeful of earth on it?
It doesn’t.
No way in hell will that happen.
“Tom, if you’ve got something to say, something to get off your chest to clear the air in my newsroom, then take your shot. Tell me. Journalist to journalist.”
Journalist to journalist.
“That’s the problem, Irene, you’re not a journalist.”
“I’ve been an editor here for nine years.”
“You’ve been on the desk here for nine years.”
“Do you know how many times I’ve saved you at the Star? How many times I’ve put your name on your page one stories, after I routinely rewrote the entire things on the desk?”
“That’s not true. You tell yourself these lies to justify your existence here,” he said. “You have nothing but disdain for reporters because you’ve never covered a single hard news story on the streets of this city. And you can’t stand the fact that I, and most of the others at the Star, do it, day after day after day. It magnifies your incompetence. And now, here you are, by some horrible twist of fate, overlord of those you despise.”
She glared at him for a long silent moment.
“You’re on thin ice,” she said. “I’ve assigned you to convince Molly to do a first-person account for me. Do it!”
“Or else?”
“Or else you’re gone.”
Anger bubbled in Tom’s gut when he left Pepper’s office, but it stopped when Acker yelled to him.
“Reed! Call for you! Some guy in Texas!”
“I’ll take it at my desk.”
He jogged to his phone and seized the line.
“Will Zotta with the Barner County Sheriff’s Department in Texas returning your call.”
“Mr. Zotta, thanks.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I’m trying to locate Frank G. Yarrow, a deputy.”
“And what is this in regards to?”
“I’m doing a story on police officers. A little biography work and Yarrow’s name came up here and I’d heard he’d been with Barner County. Has anyone else called you on this?”
“No. But you’re right. He was with us. He left the department years ago.”
“Oh, I thought he was still with you. Any idea where he went?”
“Why are you interested in Yarrow?”
“It’s kinda complicated. All part of a San Francisco story.”
Silence filled the time that passed. Zotta was not stupid. He sighed. “Last we heard, Yarrow went to Chicago. Got into some trouble there.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“You’d have to ask the Chicago PD.”
Chicago Police Department?
“That’s all I can say.” Zotta was ending the call.
“Wait. There’s something else. Can you tell me how, or why, Yarrow left your department?”
Another long tense moment passed. Tom fought the urge to push Zotta, who seemed a little uneasy that someone would call about Yarrow.
“He resigned.”
“Resigned? Why?”
“Like you said, it’s kind of complicated.”
Okay, time to show his cards. “Can you tell me if there were ever any charges out of that old stalking complaint against him by that Miss Texas finalist?”
Zotta paused, realizing Tom had done his homework.
“No charges. It never got that far.”
“You sound like you’re familiar with the case.”
“Yarrow was under my command.”
“So he was never charged?”
“No. He volunteered to resign, and frankly, we weren’t too choked up to see him go. Now, son, that’s all I have to say.”
Tom hung up.
He looked at Yarrow’s ball team photo, then the story about stalking. He looked at Molly’s empty desk and thought of the flowers and notes Yarrow’d sent her.
White roses.
They meant silence, secrecy.
Something was not right here. He was going to need more help fast and he knew just where he could get it.
Tom flipped through his Rolodex and reached for his phone.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Lois Hirt pleaded in vain to the hookers, addicts, and Tenderloin zombies who stepped around Gloria as her body convulsed on a Market Street sidewalk.
“Please, somebody call 911!” Lois knelt over Gloria, supporting her head, cursing when she spotted a tourist in plaid shorts, his eye clenched behind his camcorder. “Can’t you see, she’s dying! Call an ambulance!”
Fear slithered up Lois’s spine as Gloria’s body went cold and her lips turned blue. Her shoes clicked together until they slipped from her feet, exposing her cracked, painted toenails. Lois tightened her arms around her and their bodies shook in unison. She refused to let her friend die alone on a San Francisco street.
“Hang on, honey. Please hang on.”
“Yo, that ho got some bad shi
t happening,” a passing voice said just as a stream of vomit erupted from Gloria’s gloss-lipped mouth.
“Somebody, please! Help us. Please!”
Lois stretched her own blouse, using it to wipe Gloria’s face just as her eyes fluttered open and she moaned, attempting to speak.
“He-he-he-he wanted me to talk on the phone--”
“Shh. Don’t talk.”
Amid the street and traffic noise a scream surfaced from someplace distant. Gloria’s eyes widened at something far above her in the blue sky.
“The phone man had nice clothes--”
The scream grew louder.
“Honey, please don’t talk. I’m going to get you to the hospital.”
Horns honked.
“Gloria?”
Her eyes rolled back into her head exposing the whites.
“Gloria!”
Sirens wailed. An engine growled. Brakes squeaked. Ambulance doors opened. The rattling aluminum sounds of a stretcher unfolding, wheels dollying on pavement.
“Miss, excuse us, please.”
The paramedics were battle-weary street veterans. Not cold. Just efficient as they worked on Gloria. They refused to let Lois ride with her to San Francisco General. They loaded her. Doors slammed and they drove off, leaving Lois standing alone on the street hugging Gloria’s purse and shoes to her stained shirt.
At the hospital, Lois showed Gloria’s California driver’s license picture to an emergency nurse, then detailed what happened.
“You’re a family member?”
“Her sister,” Lois lied.
“She was the overdose on Market they brought in a while ago.” The nurse consulted admissions information on her computer screen.
“Yes.”
“You know who her provider is?”
“No. We were estranged. Lost her to the street.”
“Have a seat and we’ll let you know when you can see her.”
Lois spent nearly two hours in the crowded, depressing waiting room, fingering Tom Reed’s card. She wondered if he could help her and Gloria. Or maybe Lois should call Gloria’s case worker. Did she still use her case worker? Lois snapped through the pages of year-old copies of People and Newsweek before a nurse wearing green scrubs led her to Gloria’s room.
