by Ian Bull
“I have a letter for Rose,” he says, holding up the still dry envelope.
“Get away from my house, or I’ll drop hot bleach on you next.”
“Don’t throw my letter away. Rose will want it,” he says, waving it.
“She’ll never call, and I’ll never call her about you, understand? Not after what you did to her, and her boy Carl!”
But you’ll still water her geraniums for her, Sam thinks, and darts up to the mail slot and drops the letter in, while Mrs. Wilkenson spits her curses down on him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
S am leaves the Taj Mahal and walks down Turk Street until it almost reaches Market, and then makes a left on Mason and walks uphill. He has a lunch meeting in North Beach but doesn't want to take Muni. The sun is shining, and the air is cold and brisk, so he decides to walk over Nob Hill. He's lost weight since prison because he's walking more and lifting weights less, and he's not overeating crappy food out of boredom. He wants to keep the momentum going, so he takes off his leather jacket and throws it over his right shoulder, transfers his leather briefcase into his left hand, and then powers up one of the steepest streets in San Francisco. He passes pretty girls with big coiffed hair and colorful padded jackets, and bright bandanas around their necks or in their hair. He and a cute blonde make eye contact as he passes Geary Street, and she smiles. He's ready, he realizes. He can put his mistake with Marjorie behind him now. Something is bound to happen, and soon.
Memories flood through him as he walks up Mason, past Post Street and the Olympic Club where the Catholic cops, firemen and union bosses are members, then past the Marines Memorial Club, for veterans, and the Metropolitan Club, a social and athletic club for women. Then he walks up the steepest part of Mason to the top of Nob Hill and past the most exclusive club of them all, the Union Pacific Club for the rich WASP businessmen who controlled The City. They built this club first, then denied entry to everyone else. So, the Catholics started the Olympic Club, the veterans started the Marines Memorial Club, the women started the Metropolitan Club, the Jewish citizens started the Concordia Argonaut Club, the successful writers, artists and musicians started the Bohemian Club, and the lowest of the low on the social ladder, the journalists, started the Press Club. Sam's half-Irish, half-Mexican family couldn't get into any of them, but they would hire him, and he got jobs handing out towels and robes at their pools, working as a bartender for their parties, and cleaning their bathrooms. He also saw how easy life was when you had enough money that you could stick with your group and never think about what anyone else was doing.
He walks across the top of Nob Hill then heads down the other side toward Russian Hill. The cars that had passed him as he walked uphill, he now passes as he walks down, mostly because they're circling the block looking for parking. It's absurd, he thinks. He'd pay each of these drivers in cash to carry him to his destination, especially if the ride cost him less than a taxi fare. He could organize a few hundred drivers to circle the neighborhoods and give short lifts to people, which would cut down on the number of cars, free up some parking and get people places faster. It would be a good business, and it could work in other places, like New York. All he needed was a way for the drivers and the riders to contact each other quickly. He stores it in the back of his mind with his "phone the size of a pager" idea and his "friendly expensive coffee shop" idea, for the future.
He jumps onto a passing Powell and Mason cable car, pays the fare, grabs a transfer ticket and rides into North Beach. He checks the numbers on the transfer and they add up to 21, which always meant good luck when he was growing up.
He hops off at Joe DiMaggio playground and walks another block north to Fior d'Italia, the restaurant next to the San Remo Hotel. He puts his leather jacket back on, checks himself in the beveled mirror outside, then goes inside and spots Kath in one of the two leather booths. It's only noon, so they're the only ones in the restaurant. She's wearing a black leather jacket too, and she sports the same blue beret as the last time he saw her. She stubs out her cigarette as he slides into the booth across from him.
“Look at you with your briefcase, you look so important,” Kath says.
“Look at you in your little beret, like you're some underground spy," Sam says. He flicks open his briefcase and takes out her cassette case and slides it across to her. She unzips the case and opens every plastic cassette holder to make sure the music cassette is still inside.
“Prince is missing,” she complains.
“Who’s Prince?” Sam asks.
“My Prince cassette,” she says, holding up the cassette box, showing a half-naked prince on the cover. “There were 34 cassettes in here, and now there are 33. Hand it over.”
Sam reaches into his breast pocket and hands over the missing music. She just shakes her head. “You’d steal from your own mother.”
“Should we order? I remember the tortellini here is good."
Kath puts her Prince music back in its case. “I’m not breaking bread with you. I’m having an iced coffee just to stay awake, you bore me so much,” Kath says.
“Then why am I here? Paul said you need help planning your job,” Sam answers.
“I’ll tell when and where, but that’s it. Your job is to get us inside, nothing more. If you can manage that, then I take over. You do as I say, and you’ll get your cut. Understand?”
“Why so harsh?” Sam asks, his feelings hurt.
“Your reputation precedes you. You’re too much of a risk. You’d get caught breaking into a dog house,” she says.
“Thank you for your honesty, but I think you’re the one who is too much of a risk, Little Miss Angry Headbanger. We’re working on this job together.”
“Fine. But if you screw up and get caught again, I’m not hanging around to save you.”
A young male waiter with curly hair, wearing a black bowtie and a long white apron arrives with Kath’s iced coffee. “Anything for you, sir?” he asks Sam.
“I’ll have the same as her. And some of those almond cookies, in the twisty paper wrappers?” he asks.
“Amaretti di Saronno cookies, yes sir,” he says, and disappears.
Sam leans across the table as Kath sips her coffee. “Listen, Katherine –"
“– my name isn’t Katherine. Get it right, Chuck.”
“It’s Sam, not Chuck.”
“I know that.”
“Then why did you call me Chuck?” he asks.
“Because you called me Katherine. Don’t do that,” she says.
“What is Kath short for then? Catheter? That would make sense. I had a catheter inserted once for a kidney problem and it was damn painful, just like you are.”
“My name is Katerina. Kath is a nickname my mom gave me because she didn’t want to call me Kat.”
“How about Lady K? Can I call you that?” he asks. “We all have reputations, Lady K. Before you lecture me about getting caught on jobs, I know something about you too.”
Kath downs her coffee and stares hard at him. “Listen, Chuck –"
“Sam. My name is Sam.”
“Let me tell you something, Ground Chuck. You’ll never know what it’s like to be me, not until you’ve gone through what I’ve gone through.”
The young waiter returns with Sam’s iced coffee and a plate of cookies. Everyone smiles as he places the cookies between them, then leaves.
“Let me tell you something, Lady K,” Sam says, as he untwists a cookie from its paper. “You’ll never know what it’s like to be me having to listen to you talk about how I’ll never know what’s it’s like to be you, going through what you’ve been through.”
Kath blinks and shakes her head. “What?”
Sam dips his cookie in his coffee, bites, then sips. He unwraps another cookie and pops it into his mouth, then flattens out the wrapper on the table. “Why do you work for Paul, anyway?”
“I don’t,” Kath answers. “I’m my own boss. I sell what I clip to the fence who pays the most, and th
at happens to be Paul Barnes.”
“No way. He’s got something on you. That’s why he stuck you with me,” Sam says, not looking at her. He sips his coffee instead and flattens out another almond cookie wrapper.
Kath laughs. “I owe him money, that’s why. But nowhere near a half a million like you.”
Sam looks up and locks eyes with her. He folds up his cookie wrappers and pockets them in his jacket but says nothing.
“How much was really in that safe? It must have been a lot if you were willing to go to prison for it,” she says, but Sam doesn’t even shrug. He just keeps staring at her.
Kath pulls out several pieces of paper from inside her padded jacket and lays them on the table. "Don't talk then, just listen. Dozens of Japanese computer crystal display monitors, small and super high-end, are sitting in this warehouse in South San Francisco. They cost a thousand dollars each, and there's sixty to a case," Kath says and points at the paper. "Your job will be to get me on the roof, get me in, and then help get me out."
“That’s it? I’m just muscle?”
“You can use your awesome brain power on your own heist, Chuck Roast.”
“Can I take these papers? Is this the address?” Sam asks, taking Kath’s drawing.
“Yes, it's the address, and no, you can't take them. Memorize them," Kath says, and holds them out. Sam stares at them for two minutes and then nods. Kath pockets her papers, finishes her coffee and stands up. Sam holds his hand up to stop her.
“I need to know one more thing," Sam asks, and Kath is already impatient. "Do these guys deserve it? I used not to care, but now –"
Kath interrupts him. “No, they don’t deserve it. Nobody deserves getting robbed by us. But we’re both stuck, the poor stealing from the rich, okay?”
Sam nods and sighs. “See you later, Lady K.”
“And remember to pay the waiter. I come here a lot so don’t make trouble.”
She pushes open the big wood and glass doors and walks out onto Mason Street. Sam waits for a beat and then glances out the window to check out her ass in her tight jeans as she strolls away. She's got a nice figure to go with that sharp tongue of hers, he thinks. He finishes his coffee and smiles.
He wonders if he should get the tortellini but decides against it. The cookies were enough, and it's always tough for his palate to go from sweet back to savory. But he will walk back on Mason Street and through four neighborhoods to get back to his Tenderloin hotel and keep his lucky 21 Muni transfer in his wallet, and his cookie wrappers in his pocket. He knows he'll need some luck in the next few weeks.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
S outh San Francisco is an industrial town with little similarity to her painted sister to the north. The town is bordered by 280 on the west and the Bayshore freeway on the right, and the tiny town of Brisbane to the south. The airport, the Union Pacific Railroad, the warehouses and the storage yards are all here, the moving guts that make the city to the north work. Just like New York City uses the open space of northern New Jersey, San Francisco uses the open space of South San Francisco, then takes her for granted.
Sam and Kath cross through the dune grass that ekes out a living between all the broken asphalt, cross railroad tracks, step through a break in a cyclone fence, and dart up to a parking lot behind a two-story warehouse. It's one of six grey buildings that line this half-mile stretch of soil between the freeway and the San Francisco Bay.
Sam drops the black canvas bag he's carrying, and Kath pulls out her new calfskin gloves and puts them on. They both stare up at the backside of the grey warehouse, which has one decorative red stripe around its middle. The moon is low on the horizon, there's a distant train whistle, and the planes lining up to land at SFO create a tiny row of lights in the sky. The dull roar of the freeway is the background noise that covers everything.
Sam and Kath stare at each other. This is their Rubicon; they each have one die to cast, and it will determine their future. Sam hesitates a bit too long.
“I knew it. You’re not even ready.”
Sam smiles as he takes out a pair of yellow dishwashing gloves from his jacket. He puts them on, then steps back through the hole in the cyclone fence. He walks a few yards through the white yarrow and into a wild blackberry bramble growing up the backside of the fence. He comes back with a fifteen-foot extension ladder. He guides it through the hole in the cyclone fence and leans it up against the building.
“Can you help me extend this, please? If I do it alone, it will make too much noise," Sam says, with a thick layer of sarcasm.
“This is planning?” Kath asks.
“How do you think the hole in the fence got there?” Sam asks. “I watched this place for 24 hours straight, both on a weekend and a Saturday. Did you?”
Kath doesn't answer but helps him extend his ladder instead. They carefully pull out each section, so it moves past each joint with a tiny click. Sam then leans the ladder up against the building, and it clears the top by a foot. He holds it for Kath and gestures for her to climb. She obeys. Once she's at the top, he throws his canvas bag on his shoulders like a backpack and climbs.
Sam steps onto the roof next to Kath, takes off his canvas bag, and then leans over the building and grabs the top rung of the ladder. In an impressive show of strength made possible by two years lifting weights in prison, Sam lifts the ladder up by the top rung, then grabs the next rung and lifts again, until he has enough of the ladder above his head that he can lean the ladder against the lip of the building. He then guides it down so it’s flat and perpendicular to the parapet, making a cross. Sam swivels the heavy ladder so it’s parallel with parapet and then lifts it and lays down onto the gravel and tar roof without a sound.
Kath raises her eyebrows. Sam made it look like he was lifting bamboo, not aluminum, and she feels a tingle in her fingertips, toes and the back of her neck. She's impressed but hates that she is.
"Musclehead," she mutters instead.
Kath starts to walk across the gravel, but Sam stops her with his yellow-gloved hand. He opens the black canvas bag and pulls out a roll of toilet paper. He unrolls it a bit and holds the edge, then tosses the heavy end of the roll across the wide roof. The paper unfurls and flutters down to the gravel top – except in four places where the paper forms miniature tents across four invisible trip wires. These are attached to an alarm box with a direct line to the security company.
Sam and Kath carefully step over two of the four wires and get to the center of the roof. They both kneel. Sam unzips his canvas bag again and pulls out a battery-operated buzzsaw. He lays it against the roof but does not start it. He glances up and sees the first light in the row of lights in the sky getting larger until it splits into two lights, one on each wing of the huge jumbo jet landing on one of SFO's two parallel runways a half mile south. As the rumble reaches its peak, Sam starts the buzzsaw and cuts an inch into the roof. The loud scream of metal cutting through gravel, tar, paper, and wood is drowned out by the landing plane, but he can only cut for twenty seconds before the rumble has passed and he must stop.
“How long is this going to take?” Kath asks.
“They’re landing every minute. I’d say three hours.”
They stare at the line of lights in the sky to avoid staring at each other. Another tiny light appears in the distance as another plane drops into the last place in line.
“Nice night. With no moon, you can see more stars," Sam says and winks at her.
She rolls her eyes. “Just get me inside, please.”
Another rumble begins, and Sam lays the buzz saw against the roof. He cuts another quarter inch cut, holding the spinning saw steady against the vibration until his hands and arms lose all feeling – and then he stops. Sam must replace the batteries every hour, he must shake his hands every five minutes to get feeling back in them, and he must close his eyes when the sparks fly because the spinning teeth hit spraying wood and bits of nail, but he keeps going.
Three hours later, his buzz saw st
ops.
“Why are you stopping?” Kath asks.
“It’s dead and I’m out of batteries,” Sam says, staring at the saw in his hand.
“You are such an idiot,” Kath says.
“How many hours have I been doing this?” Sam asks.
Kath looks at her watch. “Three hours.”
Sam puts the buzzsaw back into his canvas bag and pulls out a crowbar, wedges an end into the cut, then pries open the hole he’s cut. There’s a crunching of wood and metal, but it opens, like a hatch to a buried tomb. He then puts the crowbar back and looks at Kath.
“You were saying?”
“Bravo. We still need to get down onto the warehouse floor, Chuck Roast. I’m not Spider Woman, I’m not going to jump thirty feet down.”
“Spider Woman. That’s a good name for you,” Sam says, then motions for Kath to step back. “Hold your venom, Spider Woman, and let Chuck Roast finish cooking.”
Kath wants to hit him with more poisonous darts, but thinks better of it and backs up a few feet. Sam stands up, shakes out his legs, and walks back across the gravel roof, careful to step over the trip wires. He grabs the long ladder and easily lifts it over his head despite it being fully extended and lays it on his shoulder. He whistles as he walks back toward her, stepping over each trip wire with ease, like a fisherman with his pole on his shoulder, stepping from rock to rock in a stream.
Kath sees his strength and grace and feels that same tingle in her feet and neck again but refuses to let it rise to a full thought in her mind.
Sam lays the ladder across the hole so that two rungs frame either side. Sam kneels back down by his canvas bag and pulls out a rope. He ties one end to one rung, then loops the rope around the opposite rung, creating a simple pulley. He holds the rope, stands up and nods at Kath.
“The rope has a loop in the bottom. Put your foot in, slide through the hole and I'll lower you down," Sam says. "Sorry. Putting the ladder down there would make too much noise."
Kath stares at the contraption he created. “Is it going to work?” she asks.