by Ian Bull
They sit up against the headboard, side by side, and stare out the window at the lights of the cars heading down Lombard towards the Golden Gate Bridge.
“This is getting old,” Kath says.
Sam shifts and Kath touches his leg.
“Not us. Just living in motels.”
“You’re avoiding Paul, I’m avoiding Hal Weinstein, and we’re both avoiding Cliff and Dozer. It makes sense for a little while longer.”
“How much longer?” Kath asks.
“I’m working on it,” Sam says.
“I got you something today,” she says, and pulls out a keyring from her bedside table. She tosses it on the bed sheets between them.
Sam inhales. “You got the keys. You got the damn keys.”
“I guess that means we’re ready.”
Sam gets out of bed, grabs his clothes off the floor, goes into the bathroom and shuts the door. Kath stares at the closed door, listening to him pee and then running the shower. Kath puts the keys away. Feeling naked, she pulls on a t-shirt.
He comes out dressed. Kath stares at him as he sits down and puts on his shoes and socks, waiting for him to look up and make eye contact.
Look at me, she thinks. If he just looks at her when he talks, she could tell whether he’s lying or not. He doesn’t. “I thought getting the keys was a good thing,” she says.
He stands up and puts on his jacket. “It is. And soon we’re going to have everything we ever wanted. I promise. You want Chinese or Italian takeout tonight?”
“You’re leaving because you don’t want to talk to me, and the reason you don’t want to talk is because you know I’ll see through your bullshit story. You’re a lousy liar, Sam Webb!”
The people in the adjoining room bang on the wall. Sam motions for her to stay quiet and then sits on the bed next to her. Kath crosses her arms. She now wishes she had gotten dressed first so that she could be the one leaving, and not him.
“When have I lied to you?” Sam asks.
“That’s just like you. You won’t say that you’ve never lied to me. Instead you ask me to prove it.”
“Don’t do this. Not now. You’re too suspicious.”
Kath scoots away on the bed, getting as far away from him as she can. “Fine. I trust you. Let’s do the job. We’re ready. Pick a day.”
Sam puts his wallet in his pocket to avoid having to look at her. “I don’t feel right yet.”
“That’s because there is no right day! There’ll never be a right day!” Kath screams, and the people in the next room bang on the wall even louder.
Kath grabs her own clothes off the floor and pulls them on, not bothering to take a shower. She just wants out. She grabs her leather bag and stuffs in her loose clothes, her business outfit, her cosmetics, her socks, her People magazine, her toothbrush and toothpaste, just jamming it all inside.
“Where are you going?” Sam asks.
“I am going home. Paul knows we’re together, so there’s no point in hiding,” she says, pulling on her jacket and beret. She grabs the leather bag, but he blocks her before she can get to the door.
“He wants us to fight like this. He’s setting us up against each other. Can’t you see that?”
She can’t get past him. But he’s trapped, too, because as long as he stands there blocking her, she can stare into his eyes, looking for the truth.
She thinks of her mother. She’d watched her confront many men just like Sam, in different motel rooms on different road trips around the country. The man would try to block her exit, just like Sam is blocking her now. As a young girl, she’d usually already be outside, ready to go, but looking back inside the open motel door, over the man’s shoulder and into her mother’s face. She’d stare at her mother, a blonde version of herself, willing her to find the strength to push past him so they could both escape, but her mother never could. She’d end up staring at her feet instead of at Kath, waiting outside the door. Her mother would cry, the man would make her put her bag down, and Kath would know they’d be trapped with him for another three months.
Kath swore she’d never let herself sink as low as her mother – yet here she is, in love with a liar she can’t trust. She pushes past him. “Pick a day next week. I won’t wait.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
D etective Alden Stone sits behind his desk, still trying to figure out how to enter names into his new computer. He wishes he could just jump forward thirty years and speak into a microphone and have the computer create the file for him, but this is 1980, and working with a computer is like carving wood with a butter knife.
Tab. Write name. No. Just the first name. Then tab again. Then middle initial. Then tab again, and last name. Tab down. Description box. Is this how he must write up every case?
He needs the Giants game on for this. He turns on the transistor radio and leans it against the computer monitor – and sees something worse than data entry headed his way.
A heavy man dressed in loose polyester pants with a belt cinched tight in the middle strides toward him. He looks like a moving sack of potatoes as he weaves his way through the maze of metal desks. He’s Mr. Hiram Valosek, the young, angry sales director for the Magic Massage Corporation. Detective Stone doesn’t want to deal with him right now.
“I have it,” Hiram says, waving a stack of cardboard punch cards in his hand.
“That looks like a stack of airline tickets,” Stone says.
Hiram sits down in the chair in front of Stone’s desk. “Detective, I am beginning to doubt that you take my case very seriously.”
“I do take your case seriously. I just consider robberies and burglaries more important than vandalism.”
“This is happening every night, Detective. You may think these are minor random occurrences, but this is a crime wave. It costs our company a fortune," Hiram says. He plops his stack of cards down on the desk. "But I have the data to catch them."
“Data?” Stone asks with a heavy sigh. He hates the word “data.”
“I’ve collated all the information from each crime scene, and I’ve been able to identify a predictable pattern to these perpetrators. With the computer program I just wrote, we can predict, with a high degree of probability, the motels where they will strike next. All we must do is alert all the motels the computer gives us.”
Stone stopped listening back when he heard the word “computer.” Hiram’s words turn his brain to mush, making Stone drift back to happier times when he was working the streets as a detective, instead of sitting behind a desk feeding an electronic brain.
“Excuse me,” Stone says, and gets up and heads to the water cooler by the window. Maybe he’ll phone Weinstein about sneaking away from their desks and going to a Giants game this afternoon. It’ll be cold and windy as hell in Candlestick, but at least they’ll be outside. Willie Mays would have beaten Hank Aaron’s home run record if he hadn’t been batting into the wind at Candlestick, he thinks to himself as he fills a paper cup with water.
“Alden, can we chat?”
Stone looks up. His boss, Captain Han, is standing a foot away.
“Where are we on that man and woman burglary team?”
“I’ve been busy, Cap, but I’m on it.”
“The South San Francisco heist and the art heist may be linked. A man and woman burglary team? That’s already odd, but two?” Han asks. “We have four witnesses. We can catch them.”
"I put a list together of suspects from the mug books, but it's long," Stone says and crushes the paper cup in his hand.
Captain Han moves closer. “I know this computer stuff is bugging you. You want to be out on the street again. I get it.”
Stone smiles. He knows Captain Han has his back.
Captain Han fills two more paper cups with water and hands one to Stone and mirrors him, acting like they’re colleagues, and not boss and underling. “Find a computer expert to help you out, someone who you can work with. Just get your current files into the stupid machine and start
using it. The Department will pay for it,” he says. “If it pays off once, all this crap will be worth it.”
Han slaps him on the back and heads out of the Detective Pool. As Stone walks back to his desk, Hiram Valosek picks his stack of computer cardboard punch cards off the table and waves it at him and smiles, like it was a stack of hundred-dollar bills.
Stone ponders Hiram Valosek and his cardboard punch cards, and then his own stack of manila folders that he must get into the computer, data he must enter just right so it doesn’t take up too many megabytes of computer memory. Stone sits back down across from Hiram.
“Stop waving those cards at me. What do you know about the Tandy 1000 computer?” “I know a lot. I just installed three at the Magic Massage Corporation.”
Stone pushes the stack of files towards Hiram. “You help me with this, and then we talk about your Magic Massage units. The City will pay you your rate.”
"Let's program your keyboard with some shortcuts and get started," Hiram says, rubbing his hands together.
Meanwhile, at the Buena Vista Motor Inn, the maid cleaning Sam and Kath's room from last night runs over something with her vacuum cleaner. She turns off the motor and digs it out from the brushes. It's the right-hand calfskin glove that Kath shoplifted from Macy's. The left glove she left at the first robbery. The maid stares at it, then at the broken Magic Massage unit and the charred bill on the bed stand.
CHAPTER FORTY
K ath sits at Bella’s kitchen table comparing Bella’s paper bank statements to what Bella has written in her checkbook register. Bella sits across from her eating cinnamon toast while playing Solitaire. “I wouldn’t need to cross-check your statements against your checkbook if you’d just let me pay your bills for you. I can save you money.”
“I can write my own checks,” Bella says.
“I’d prefer to come down here and just visit you, and not bust your chops about how you send too many charity checks to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.”
“Your grandfather Vito fought the Nazis in the Battle of the Bulge. Never forget that,” Bella says, and wags her finger at her. “Other Italian Americans supported Mussolini. We never did. We fought on the side of freedom.”
Kath ignores the finger-wagging as she adds up the check totals. She wishes she’d bought that new Casio calculator for sixty bucks, the kind that you can fit in your purse. They'd be at the track by now, instead of adding and subtracting amounts with a pencil.
“You haven’t mentioned my flowers from my secret admirer,” Bella says. She points at a new bouquet of sunflowers in a large blue vase on the coffee table in the living room.
“I saw them when I came in, Bella. Don’t rub it in.”
“What’s up with you and that man?” Bella says.
“Do you mind? I can’t monitor your spending and talk about my love life at the same time, it’s too depressing.”
“In fifty years, you’ll look back on all this as the best time of your life.”
“Great, something to look forward to,” Kath mutters. “You made a mistake. We need to go to the bank and transfer $300 from your savings to your checking or you’ll be overdrawn.”
“Can’t we just phone them?”
“No, Auntie. Banks don’t work that way. You have to go stand in line and wait for a teller and explain the situation, so they can then make the transfer for you.”
Bella reaches out and grabs Kath's hand, getting cinnamon and sugar all over it. Kath stares at her great aunt, wishing she could reach out and adjust her bad black wig, which sits too far back on Bella's head.
“Do you love him?” Bella asks.
“How can I? I don’t even trust him.”
“But do you love him?”
Kath puts down her pencil and looks at the bouquet behind her on the table.
“Yes. I think I do.”
Bella waves her hand at Kath. “Then tell him. Just because he’s a coward doesn’t mean you should be one too. Be the best version of yourself. That’s all you can do. It will give him something to live up to.”
Kath nods. This makes sense.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
M rs. Wilkenson, in her little stucco house on 28th Avenue, comes upstairs from the basement with her mail. She tosses it on her dining room table, adjusts her eyepatch and examines each piece.
“I kill my knees going up and down those stairs for what? Junk mail,” she says to her white cat sitting by the floor heater. She comes across another letter addressed to Rose, from Sam Webb. She scoffs and tosses it on the growing pile of letters from Sam that’s already on her rosewood dining room table.
Her hallway phone rings. She walks past the kitchen door to a phone built into the wall with a little chair that folds down, so you can sit down while you talk on the phone, a 1940s luxury feature built into all the homes in the Sunset district.
“Hello? No, there’s no Rose here,” Mrs. Wilkenson says into the phone.
“No, Mrs. Wilkenson, I’m Rose. It’s me, Rose Armanini, your old neighbor.”
“Rose! I’m so glad you called! That Sam character keeps sliding letters for you into my mailbox. One came just today!”
Mrs. Wilkenson flops down the wooden seat from its slot in the wall and sits down, so she and Rose can have a long talk and catch up on all that has happened since Rose moved away.
"How's your boy, Carl? Is he doing okay?" Mrs. Wilkenson asks.
An hour later, Sam walks down Turk Street toward the Taj Mahal hotel. It’s the first time he’s been back in the neighborhood in weeks. He smells the urine and the rot and notices again how every color is muted except for harsh black and white, and he realizes the streets no longer hold any film noir nostalgia for him.
And right in front of the Taj Mahal is the black Town Car, with Cliff and Dozer sitting inside, eating fast food hamburgers. Cliff lowers his window and waves as Sam walks up.
“Hey Sam, we knew you’d show up eventually! Paul wants to see you.”
Sam makes a left into the Taj Mahal lobby instead of answering him. He almost gets to the stairs before Mr. Pavel stubs out a cigarette and shouts at him.
“Sam Webb! Wait!”
“I paid you through the end of the month,” Sam says back.
“Someone’s been calling for you,” Pavel says, just as the payphone on the wall rings again. Pavel looks at his watch and points at it. “She calls every two hours. That’s her again. Answer it and talk to her before I throw your stuff into the street.”
Sam stares at the ringing phone like it’s a ticking bomb. He picks it up and whispers into the phone. “This is Sam Webb.”
“Hello, Sam. It’s me, Rose.”
Sam’s face brightens, and his face seems to grow ten years younger. “I knew you’d call.”
“Sorry I didn’t call earlier. Mrs. Wilkenson was busy protecting me. How are you?”
“Much better, now that I’m talking to you,” Sam says. He glances outside. Dozer sits in the front passenger seat and stares at him through the plate glass window. Dozer nudges Cliff, who is mid-bite on his hamburger. Both men stare at him until Sam turns and faces the wall.
“We have a lot to talk about,” Rose says.
“We do. When can I see you?” Sam asks.
An hour after that, Sam walks into Hal Weinstein’s office. Again, he catches Hal mid-sip from his white Styrofoam coffee cup, but this time Hal doesn’t spill.
“I need an out-of-town pass to go to Sacramento.”
Sam bounces from one foot to the other, like he’s ready to run a sprint.
Hal stands slowly, puts his cup down, and adjusts his comb-over.
“Where have you been the past few weeks?” Hal asks.
“I haven’t missed an appointment. I saw you last Friday.”
“I went by the Taj Mahal this past weekend and Pavel says you’re hardly ever there. You come by only to change your clothes,” Hal says.
“I’ve been spending a lot of time with my girlfriend,” Sam says.
<
br /> “What’s her name again?” Hal asks, eyeing him carefully.
Sam waits a moment, wracking his brain. Did he give him a name? Did he give the right name? “Katerina Trulli. She lives on 29th Street, the steep part, in a pink house below Diamond Street.”
“So, you’ve been sleeping in her pink house on 29th Street?” Hal asks.
Sam feels the sweat pooling under his arms and his porkpie hat. For all he knows, Hal's gone to the house already and knocked on the door. He decides to lie by not lying and give just enough truth to keep his bigger lie going. "We've been spending a lot of time in motels. Her landlady gives her a discount because she lives alone. Kath doesn't want to mess that up."
“She goes by Kat?” Hal says, scribbling all this down on a legal yellow pad.
“Yes sir,” Sam says. “Can I get a pass to go to Sacramento?”
“You said you’d bring your girl in the next time I saw you. Maybe you thought I’d forgotten, but I haven’t. And now that you want something, I can insist.”
Sam looks across the desk at this beanpole skinny man with bad posture, but with the steely eyes and confident swagger of a gunslinger from the 1880s.
“I can’t make her appear out of thin air. And I need this pass, Hal. I could’ve gone without asking and been back before you even knew I was gone.”
“What’s it for?” Hal asks.
“A job interview. They’re building new condos up along the Sacramento River and they need someone who knows construction and electrical wiring and security systems, and I know all three. They hire ex-cons, too, but I’d need a letter to give to them.”
Hal bends over his desk and writes it all down as fast as he can, then looks up. “That’s a hell of a story. Keep talking, you’re good at this.”
“I like this girl, Hal. The City isn’t good for me. Sacramento might be the place for me.”
Hal looks up from his scribbling and puts his pen back inside his pocket protector. “That’s the first believable thing you’ve said since you walked in here.” He pulls out a form from one of his manila folders. “I can push and get you a week’s pass today. Call me the minute you get there so I can check it out. Is she going with you?”