San Diego Noir

by Maryelizabeth Hart

  “You misspelled mortgage,” Junior said.

  They gawked.

  “So what?” Chango said. “Cops can’t spell.”

  “The plates are from Detroit,” the Mongol pointed out. “An associate UPS’d ’em to me yesterday.” He turned to Chango. “Your sedan is out back.”

  Chango bumped fists with him.

  “Remember, I want a fifty-inch flat screen.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “And any fancy jewelry and coats for my old lady.”

  “Gotcha, gotcha.”

  “And any stash you find.”

  “You get the chiba, I got it. But I’m drinkin’ all the tequila I find.”

  Chango, in his element.

  Junior had to admit, it was so stupid it was brilliant. It was just like acting. He had learned this in his drama workshop. You sold it by having complete belief. You inhabited the role and the viewers were destined to believe it, because who would be crazy enough to make up such elaborate lies?

  He followed the truck up I-15. It was a sweet Buick with stolen Orange County plates. Black, of course. He wore a Sears suit and a striped tie. His name tag read: Mr. Petrucci.

  “Here’s the play. We move shit—we’re beaners,” Chango explained. “Ain’t nobody gonna even look at us. You’re the boss. You’re Italian. As long as you got a suit and talk white, ain’t nobody lookin’ at you, neither.”

  To compound the play—to sell the illusion, his college self whispered—he had a clipboard with bogus paperwork, state tax forms they had picked up at the post office.

  Three guys in white jumpsuits bobbed along in the cab of the truck—Chango, a homeboy named Hugo, and the driver—Juan Llaves. Hugo was a furniture deliveryman, so he knew how to get heavy things into a truck. They banged north, dropping out of San Diego’s brown cloud of exhaust and into some nasty desert burnscape. They took an exit more or less at random and pulled down several mid-Tuesday-morning suburban streets—all sparsely planted with a palm here, and oleander there. Plastic jungle gyms in yellow yards, hysterical dogs appalled by the truck, abandoned bikes beside flat cement front porches. Juan Llaves pulled into the driveway of a fat faux-Georgian, half obscured by weeds and dry grass and looking as dead as a buffalo skull.

  Junior took his clipboard in hand and joined Chango on the lawn.

  “This is it, Mr. Petrucci!” Chango emoted. Junior checked his papers and nodded wisely. Nobody even looked out of the neighboring houses. It was silent. “I can’t believe we’re doing this shit,” Chango muttered with a vast porcelain grin.

  They tried the front door. Locked. Chango strolled around back. Some clanging and banging, and in a minute the front door clicked and swung open.

  “Electric’s off. Hot as hell in here. Fridge stinks.”

  The associates went inside.

  The bank notices were there on the kitchen table. Somebody had abandoned a pile of DVDs on the carpet. “Oh yeah!” Chango hooted. “The Godfather!”

  Llaves and Hugo hauled the table and chairs out to the truck. Plasma TV in the living room; flat screen in the bedroom. Black panties on the floor looking overwhelmingly sad to Junior. Chango put them in his pocket. “Chango’s in love,” he told Junior.

  In the closet, most of the clothes were gone, but a single marine uniform hung at the back. They took the TVs, a rent-toown stereo system with about fifty-seven CDs, mostly funk and hip hop. Chango found a box of Hustlers and a Glock .40 that had fallen behind the box. For the hell of it, they took the dresser and the bunk beds from the kids’ room.

  In the garage, there was a Toro lawn mower and, oddly, a snowblower. They took it all. As they were leaving, Chango trotted back into the house and came out with a blender under his arm.

  In and out in less than three hours. They were home for a late supper. The stuff went into the garage.

  Wednesday: three TVs, a tall iPod dock, a long couch painting, a washer and dryer, a new king-size bed still in plastic wrappers, whiskey and rum, a minibike, and a set of skis.

  Thursday: a Navy peacoat, a mink stole (fake), six rings, another TV, another bed, a recliner chair and matching couch in white leather, a shotgun and an ammo loading dock, a video porn collection, a framed swirl of blue tropical butterflies, golf clubs, a happening set of red cowboy boots.

  Friday: aside from the usual swag—how sick were they of TV sets by now—they found an abandoned Mustang GT in the garage. Covered in dust, but sleek black. Chango wiped that baby down and Llaves hotwired it for him and he drove back to San Diego in style.

  It was a massive crime wave, and the only witnesses so far had been two kids and an ice-cream man, and the ice-cream man had called, “Times are tough!” and Chango, into some Robin Hood hallucination, took him a thirty-two-inch flat screen and traded it for Sidewalk Sundaes for his gang.

  After a month of this, after dealing the goods out to fences and setting up a tent at the flea market, Chango and Junior were rolling in it. They paid their associates a fair salary, but their folding money was in fat rolls held together by rubber bands. Chango had the old repair bay in his house converted to a gym. Nordic Trak, an elliptical, a Total Gym As Seen on TV, three sets of weights, and a shake-weight that nobody wanted to touch because it looked like they were wanking when they were ripping their biceps.

  “You don’t make this kind of money selling dope to college girls,” Chango said.

  “No,” Junior confessed. “Not lately.”

  He hadn’t planned on selling pot to anyone. He had hoped to teach a good Acting 101 class. Maybe write a script or some poems. And there was a gal … well, enough of that happy horseshit. He wasn’t going there. Then he chided himself for thinking a cliché like “going there.” No wonder he drank—it was the only way to shut his brain down. Fortunately, Chango had collected seven kinds of rum. Junior doctored his Coke Zero and lounged.

  He had a cot in the corner of Chango’s gas station. It was a little too close to Chango for comfort, and he had to put in his iPod buds to cancel out the old crow’s snoring. But it was free, and the snacks and booze were good.

  The Mustang sat out on the street. Junior kept telling Chango it would get him busted, that it was too visible. But Chango was invincible. Chango told him: “Live, peewee. Ya gotta live!” There was a tin shower rigged up in the restrooms. Junior’s stolen iPod port was blasting “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.”

  “Stones suck,” said Chango, swallowing tequila. “Except for Keith. Keith’s ba-a-ad.”

  Junior was thinking about the old times, how when they’d gather at the bowling alley to play pinball, Chango would smoke those pestilential Dominos and force Junior to lose by putting the burning cherry on his knuckle every time he had to hit the bumpers.

  “Fucker,” he said.

  “You got that right, homes.”

  “So, Chango—what’s next?”

  “We, um, steal a lot more shit.”

  “Shouldn’t we cool it for a while? Let the heat die down?”

  “Heat!” Chango shrieked. “Did you actually say ‘heat’? Haw! ‘Heat,’ he says. GodDAMN.” And then: “What heat?” He laughed out loud. “You seen one cop? We is invisible, homie. We just the trashman.”

  “I’m just being cautious,” Junior said.

  “I got it covered, peewee. Chango’s got it all covered.”

  “Covered how?”

  “Next stop,” Chango announced, “Arizona! Don’t nobody know us over there in ’Zoney!”

  They should have never crossed the border. That’s what Junior thought as he escaped. They didn’t know anything about Arizona. Someone had seen them, he was pretty sure. It was probably at the motel outside of Phoenix. They’d probably been made there.

  Whatever. It went bad right away. They drove around looking for abandoned houses, but in Arizona, how could you tell? All the yards were dirt, and the nice yards looked to them exactly like the bad yards. What was a weed and what was a xeriscape?

  In Casa Grande, they felt like t
hey were getting to it. A whole cul-de-sac had collected trash and a few tumbleweeds. Junior couldn’t believe there were actual tumbleweeds out there. John Wayne–type stuff. They pulled in and actually rang the doorbells and got nothing. So Chango did his thing and went in the back and they were disappointed to find the first house completely vacant except for an abandoned Power Ranger action figure in a bedroom and a melted bar of Dial in a bathroom.

  The second house was full of fleas and sad, broken-ass welfare crap. Chango found a bag of lime and chili tortilla chips, and he munched these as he made his way to the third, and last, house. He went in. Score!

  “I love the recession!” he shouted.

  They drained the waterbed with a hose through the bathroom window. Hey—a TV. These debt monsters really liked their giant screens. Massaging recliners. Mahogany tables and a big fiberglass saguaro cactus. “Arty,” Chango said. Mirrors, clothes, a desktop computer and printer, a new microwave, two nice Dyson floor fans, a sectional couch in cowhide with brown and white color splotches. They even found a sewing machine.

  It had taken too long, what with the long search and the three penetrations. After they loaded, pouring sweat except for “Mr. Petrucci,” who sat in his AC so he’d look good in case any rubber neckers came along, it was four in the afternoon, and they were hitting rush hour on I-10.

  The truck was a mile ahead. Junior liked to hang back and make believe he was driving on holiday. No crime. He was heading cross-country, doing a Kerouac. He was going back down to National City to find La Minnie, his sweet li’l ruca from the Bay Theater days. He should have never let her go. He hadn’t gone to a single high school reunion, but his homeboy El Rubio told him La Minnie had asked about him. Divorced, of course. Who in America was not divorced? But still slim and cute and fine as hell. Junior knew his life would have been different if he’d done the right thing and stayed on West 20th and courted that gal like she deserved, but he was hungry. Trapped like a wildcat in somebody’s garage, and when the door cracked the slightest bit, he was gone.

  These things were on his mind when the police lights and sirens went off behind him.

  He had to give it to Chango—the guy played his string out right to the end.

  The cops blasted past Junior’s Buick and dogged the white U-Haul. Two cars. Llaves knew better than to try to run—the truck had a governor on the engine that kept it to a maximum speed of fifty-five. He puttered along, Junior back there shouting, “Shit! Shit! Shit!” Then he hit his blinker and slowly pulled over to the shoulder, the police cars insanely flashing and yowling. The associates were climbing out when Junior went by. He could see Chango’s mouth already working.

  He didn’t know what to do. Should he keep going? Book and not look back?

  He hit the next exit and crossed over the freeway and sped back and crossed over again and rolled up behind the cop cars. He set his tie and pulled on his jacket with its name tag and even picked up his clipboard.

  There were two cops—one Anglo and one Hispanic.

  The associates stood in a loose group against the side of the truck. The cops turned and stared at Junior.

  “Officers,” he called. “I am Mr. Petrucci, from Bowden Federal in Detroit. Is there a problem?”

  “Petrucci,” said the Hispanic. “Is that Italian?”

  “It is,” said Junior.

  “This dude,” Chango announced, “is some kinda Tío Taco!”

  “Shut it,” the cop snapped.

  A Border Patrol truck pulled up behind the Buick.

  “Sir?” said the cop. “I need to ask you to leave. You need to call your bank and have another team sent out to deliver these goods.”

  “Fuck!” shouted Chango.

  “Is there a problem with … the load?” Junior asked.

  “No sir. This is strictly a 1070 stop.”

  “1070?”

  “SB 1070. Immigration. We have reason to believe these gennermen are illegals.” The BP agent was eyeballing Chango.

  Junior almost laughed. “Why, I never!” he said.

  Chango called, “He don’t know shit. Fuckin’ Petrucci. He’s just a bean counter. Never did a good day’s work in his life! That asshole don’t even know us.” He was playing to the crowd. “I worked every day! I paid my taxes! I, I, I served in Iraq!” he lied.

  The cop held up two licenses in his fingers, as if he were making a tight peace sign or about to smoke a cigarette. Llaves and Chango—Hugo didn’t have a license.

  “Do you have citizenship papers?” the BP man asked.

  “I don’t need no stinkin’ papers! This is America!”

  “Have they been searched?” BP asked.

  “What are you, the Gestapo?” Chango smiled a little. He felt he had scored a major point. “I’m down and brown!” he hooted. “Racial profiling!”

  “Not yet.”

  “I ain’t being searched by nobody,” Chango announced.

  The BP man wagged his finger in Chango’s face.

  “I’ll break that shit off and jam it up your ass,” Chango hissed. “You think some wetback would say that?”

  “We ran your license,” the cop said. “Your address seems to be an abandoned gas station in San Diego.”

  The cops and the BP agent smirked at each other.

  “Goddamned right I live in a gas station!” Chango bellowed. “My dad owned it!”

  “Uh-huh.” The cop turned to Junior. “I have to insist, Mr. Petrucci—you need to leave the scene. Now.”

  Junior stared at Chango and got into his Buick as the cops tossed the guys against the side of the panel truck and he saw, or thought he saw, just as he pulled into traffic, the Glock fall out of Chango’s pocket and the cops draw and squat, shouting, and he hit the gas and was shaking with adrenaline or fear or both and didn’t know what happened but he never slowed until he was in front of the old station. He was stiff and sore and scared out of his mind. He ran into Chango’s bedroom and tore open his Dopp kit and took his roll of cash. He thought for a minute and went out, locked the door, and slipped into the GT. The wires sparked when he touched them and the big engine gave a deep growl and shout, the glasspacks sounding sweet, like coffee cans full of rocks. He was going to go. Going to go. Just get out. Break the ties once and for all. Never look back. He was in the wind. Junior rubbed his face three or four times. He revved the big engine and put his foot on the pedal and stared. Night. Streetlights shining through the palm trees made octopus shadows in the street. Junior rolled down the window. He could smell Burger King. Two old women walked arm in arm, speaking Spanish. He could hear a sitcom through the open window of a bungalow above Chango’s station. Junior knew if he headed down toward the old Ducommun warehouse, he could find La Minnie’s mom’s house. It was funky twenty years ago. With its geraniums. Minnie could be there. Or her family could tell him where she was. She used to like a nice ride like this. Maybe she’d like to feel the wind in her hair. They could drive anywhere. He thought he could talk her into it, if he could find her. The way things had changed around town, the old house might not be there at all. Probably not. Probably gone with all the things he remembered and loved. But … he asked himself … what if it wasn’t?

  He shifted and moved steadily into the deeper dark.

  A SCENT OF DEATH

  BY MARIA LIMA

  Gaslamp Quarter

  It was an alley, just like all the other back-of-hotel alleys downtown. Nothing to distinguish it, especially after the Clean City initiative had turned most San Diego alleys into something that more resembled Vancouver. Not that this part of the city had been all too bad. The almighty tourist and convention dollar tended to keep things cleaner than, say, Chicago or Manhattan. Bonus for us, really.

  After all, this was the back of the Leaf, one of the Ivy Tree chain, originally just one hotel, but now several boutique hostelries run for the sole purpose of pampering the wealthy. Everything at the scene reflected the Leaf’s exclusivity, the green of the kitchen door matched by t
he swirling green leaves painted on the sides of the two dumpsters. The beige awning over the door was the same fine fabric and design as those facing the street view. No one came back here but delivery trucks, the city trash haulers and other similar workers. No matter, though, the Leaf kept up its branding behind the scenes too. This was a true sign of either class or just pure stinking rich.

  Admittedly, the stench wasn’t what I expected. I’d done my share of investigations in hotel alleys, and no matter how clean, they stank. Not here; like my native Vancouver, there was no real smell, unless you counted a light air of lavender and vanilla, the hotel’s signature scent, distributed as hand lotion, soaps, shampoo, and conditioner. Only here in a place so uniquely itself that a receptacle for trash smelled like flowers, did this scene seem so incongruous. Disturbing anywhere, but even more so here.

  Just one thing disrupted the relative peace and quiet in the depths of the four a.m. darkness. The thing that was the reason for all our lights, for a police photographer’s flash snapping through the still night air, its strobe punctuating what I saw, the one thing that kept me there, even though every part of me wanted to be elsewhere.

  One small hand, pale, fingers curled, clutching at a few leafy weeds poking through a tiny crack in the asphalt as if needing to hold on to the closest thing to earth it could reach in this sea of concrete and steel. Earth, living, growing things—the one avenue he could have had to safety. The tiny bedraggled weed hadn’t been enough. Whatever had tracked him down and killed him had either known that, or taken its chances. Yeah, its. As in not human. Just like the most recent victim of what we were calling the Rentboy Ripper, though the MO had little resemblance to its predecessor. The only thing in common was the profession of the victims—children of the night, Licensed Professionals, once known as hookers, prostitutes. My victims were all of the profession older than human—all male, all fae, all in the Gaslamp. Which is why I was here.