“You don’t know Felix. He’ll never go for that.”
“Too bad.”
For me, she thought, turning away. Too bad for me. Voices erupted from the far side of the house. Shel recognized one of them as belonging to Humberto, or Pepe. One of the big ones. They were out in the open now, out of the cellar, calling to the men in the truck. She heard something drop hard onto the back of the flatbed amid the banter of men at work.
“You hand me back to Felix,” Shel confided, “I’m dead.” Cesar wouldn’t look at her. He knows, she thought. Of course he does. On the far side of the house, the truck started up and began backing around to head out again. “I was supposed to make sure Frank could deliver. That was my side of the bargain, or else they’d just kill him as is.”
“Yeah, I know,” Cesar said softly. “Dayball told us that, too. That’s what makes you valuable.”
“To who?”
The flatbed headed out the gravel road, returning the way it had come, leaving behind another cloud of black exhaust. The truck’s back end was covered now with a large sheet of canvas roped down tight.
“Felix put a price on your head,” Cesar told her. “You disappeared last night. Frank fucked up, the trap they laid turned to shit. Felix figured somehow, some way, you’d been in on the whole thing. He’d put the word out, you get brought to him. Well, okay, we’ll do that. He brings Frank to us, so we can finish what the Arevalo brothers wanted. One for the other. A sign of good faith. He pays his weekly dues, everybody goes back to business.”
“Dues?”
“Twenty-five grand.”
Shel’s jaw dropped. A cough of air came out instead of sound. “That’s crazy,” she said. “A shakedown, Felix? That’s what, a million a year. More.”
“He can afford it.” Cesar grinned. “Like I said, that Dayball, very informative guy.”
And now he’s dead, Shel thought. Informative. Valuable. Dead. “Felix’ll never pay you.”
Cesar shrugged. “Then he’s a dead man. Him and everybody who stays in with him.”
“You don’t understand. He’s a redneck. His mind’s bloated on that Aryan warrior horseshit. Thinks the Alamo was a victory. He’ll wear his blood like a badge of honor. His and everybody else’s.”
“Yeah, well, nothing I can do about that, is there?” Cesar said. “I don’t make this shit up, I just do what I’m told.”
Another wind stirred the oak branches, showering the ground with thorny leaves.
“Either way,” she said, “I’m dead, right? You’re talking to a dead woman.”
Cesar bobbed the stone in his palm one last time, then chucked it high and far, as though to get the thing out of his hand. “Not my decision,” he murmured. “I’m sorry.” Turning to her finally, he added, “For now, though, no. Like I said, you’re valuable.”
Humberto and Pepe appeared, turning the corner of the house and grinning like grade school boys. One of them made kissing sounds again. The other one clapped his hands and whistled, as though for a dog, then gestured for Cesar to come, follow them back inside. Cesar put his hand under Shel’s arm and said, “Time to head back in.”
“I want you to do me a favor,” she said, resisting his pull. He turned back to face her. “When it comes time, I want you to be the one who kills me.”
Cesar flinched. “It’s not going to work that way, I told you. I can’t—”
“You,” Shel said. “No one else. Don’t hand me back to Felix. Don’t leave it to him.”
Resentment darkened Cesar’s eye. Gradually, something else took its place. The same sorrow as before, tinged with despair.
“Why me?”
“Because we’ve had this talk,” she said. “It’s a favor, a big one, I realize that. But I’m asking. Please.”
CHAPTER
18
Omar’s House of Omelets rested in midtown San Francisco, halfway between the theater district and the streetwalkers. The decor insinuated low-income plush: imitation Tiffany, overstuffed booths, cobwebbed ferns. The early morning clientele consisted of hustlers, cabbies, hookers ordering their ceremonial breakfasts. A few elderly locals joined the mix, sitting at the counter and staring hypnotically at the order window, holding rubbery wedges of toast. The place smelled of stale vat grease and industrial cleanser. The waitresses, older women mostly, wandered table to table without haste. It was not a pressure job.
Frank had found his way into the city during the last wave of paranoia. He’d wakened before dawn in his hotel room, feeling tormented and raw, his skin all but ready to rip away. There was this hazy recollection of a dream involving the president, or the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, he couldn’t quite make out which. Regardless, the end result was: Run.
He’d downed two Thorazine and it evened out his mood but left him feeling light-headed. The shakes were holding fast, but the spooks had faded somewhat. Gradually his mind decided to cooperate. The recent past took form like snatches of a TV marathon watched over a stoned weekend. If it was all true, he had some doing to do. Lie low. Razzle up some money, get to Mexico. Or Canada, maybe. All things considered, Mexico did not seem all that great an idea.
At some point, as he was driving, chow had seemed appropriate. He’d slept on and off for an entire day and it had been over thirty-six hours since his last solid food. Shel would tell me to eat, he thought. She’d always been good about that sort of thing. He missed her so badly it was painful and the pain wasn’t the kind you could just ignore till it goes away. There’d be no end to this pain, he thought.
He sat in a booth along the wall, looking down at a western omelet. His fork lay on the rim of the plate and his home fries sat cold and submerged beneath a vast discharge of ketchup. It was his second breakfast; he’d eaten the first in a dithering fury: a monte cristo sandwich, they served it with a side of lemon mayonnaise here. The remaining mayonnaise glowed in its ramekin like something left behind by a poisonous fish. The waitresses, they circulated like fish, he thought.
“Hey,” a voice said.
Frank looked in the voice’s direction and found at the next table a pimpled youth sitting with a glass of water and a plate of fries. The kid wiped his chin with his shirt cuff.
“You gonna eat your omelet?” He nodded at Frank’s plate. His eyes had a yellow tinge, and tiny white sores coated his fingers. Frank looked down at the plate. Two maraschino cherries sat in a bed of parsley as a garnish; a fly navigated the surface of the omelet. If flies were the size of people, Frank thought, they’d rule the world. He sat back from the plate.
“Take it,” he said.
The kid snatched the omelet away and attacked it with a spoon. Food spilled out of his mouth as he chewed.
Frank looked off and spotted a table of three call girls, sitting several booths down. One was Asian with waist-length hair and nails so long, they curled. She stared brokenheartedly across the table at a pockfaced blonde; the blonde wore fishnets over red tights. The third woman had brown hair and a fake mole. They all sat back from their plates, smoking. Frank looked at them and figured a couple hundred easy per purse if they’d had a decent night. It was a lot of money. And, given his circumstances, a lot of money was, well, a lot of money.
Licking his teeth clean of food, he eased up from his seat and ventured over to the threesome’s table. He smiled, crouching between the Asian and the blonde.
“You’re very pretty,” he said to no one in particular.
They ignored him, smoking their cigarettes and swinging their legs under the table in a cocaine mania. The blonde was thin in the face, with long pendant earlobes that Frank found just ugly enough to make her interesting.
“I said, you’re very pretty.”
The Asian groaned, the blonde rolled her eyes.
“How much for a go-around?” he asked. “Lost my dog the other night. I’m a little down.”
“Check out the pound,” the Asian said. “We’re off the clock.”
Frank smiled good-naturedly. Don’t
antagonize anybody, he thought, just get one of them to come along. Grab the purse and scram. Nothing scientific. Nothing rough.
“Check out the pound,” he repeated, chuckling. He pulled every bill he had from his pocket, counted off twenties and fanned himself with them. “What’s it cost to get you back on the job?”
The Asian reached across the table for the blonde’s hand. The hand was ten years older than the face, something Frank automatically associated with motherhood. The blonde exhaled a vast cloud of smoke.
“She said we’re off the clock. What d’you want, a telegram?”
Frank turned to the brunette with the fake mole. “What about you?”
She lifted a french fry from her plate and stared at it. “I’ve got herpes,” she said, returning the french fry to her plate.
“So do I,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“I said we’re through for the night.” The Asian again. “I meant it, asshole.”
She waved across the room to a pair of men sitting at the counter. Frank hadn’t noticed them before. One looked like he might be the girls’ driver, slender and neat and fey. The other was a heavyset, clean-shaven thug in a plaid jacket; he yammered nonstop, slapping the back of his left hand into the palm of his right. His bald spot was beaded with sweat. It was the driver who spotted the Asian’s signal. He tapped the shoulder of the heavy guy. Frank put the money back in his pocket.
“What did you do that for?” he said.
“I trust my feelings.”
The man in the plaid jacket crossed the room in a slow walk, bandy-legged, hands in his pockets, smiling with fraudulent good humor. He greeted Frank with, “Hey, Scrape.”
“Waldo, get rid of this,” the Asian said, pointing.
Up close the man’s eyes had a moronic intensity. They were marbles in the face of a doll. He had hairy fingers, nails chewed down to the raw.
“Wrong table,” Frank said, but before he could turn away Waldo locked one hand around his elbow. His thumb speared down to bone. Frank’s arm went numb. Waldo leaned close and whispered, “You go outside, I’ll shoot your pink ass.” He shook Frank’s arm like a rag. “Look at me.”
The top of his head came level with Frank’s nose. Frank stared into a flat, reddish face, cavernous pores, thin hair combed back on a damp skull. Waldo breathed heavily, offering Frank a smile.
“Let’s,” he said.
He spun Frank around and steered him toward the men’s room. The three women waved to his back, chirping “bye-bye” like the Puerto Rican girls in West Side Story. Frank made a quick glance around the room. The waitresses turned their backs. The cooks and busmen kept busy, looking away. It was not a pressure job.
The slender one, the driver, stood watch at the rest room door while Waldo pitched Frank against the sink. An old man tottered out frantically. Frank felt a sudden bond with him.
“Look,” Frank said to Waldo, “go slob the knob with your faggot friend out there, leave me alone.”
With startling quickness, Waldo laid a punch hard to his temple, creating water from the waist down and a nauseating blackness. In the doorway the slender one told someone to use another rest room, a man was inside getting sick. Waldo lodged a handkerchief into Frank’s mouth, took out a penknife and opened the smallest blade, then locked Frank’s wrist in his grip and forced the blade deep beneath the thumbnail. The pain shot everywhere, he fell to his knees. This earned him a kick in the abdomen so violent his arms disappeared, his face hit the floor. He was choking, the linoleum stank with urine.
At the doorway, the slender one said again, “Inside,” louder now. “Getting sick.”
Waldo wiggled his knife free and rifled Frank’s pockets. Coins scattered across the floor. Through a galaxy of black stars Frank watched Waldo count his wad of bills; he tossed Frank’s car keys into the urinal. Another kick struck the base of his skull.
Waldo bent down. “Check it out, Scrape. Who’s the faggot now?”
At the Pierpont Hotel a gaunt bellman with feathery white hair and fleshy eyes Hoovered the lobby rug. Uniform jacket unbuttoned, he sang fiercely over the warm noise and the tickling dust, smiling into the carpet trails.
Frank limped through the Powell Street door. The bellman stood straight and fell quiet. He turned off the vacuum. Frank took shallow breaths, holding his side, ignoring the bellman’s stare. He had a paper napkin wrapped tight around his thumb because blood continued to seep from under the nail, which had turned a purplish black. He moved each foot as though it were weighted down.
He got to the rest room as fast as he could, checking the back of his head for blood. He’d swallowed ten aspirins already, taking them dry from a bottle he’d shoplifted from a Tenderloin Thrifty. Reaching an empty stall he collapsed onto the toilet seat, latching the door as he sat. His heart was racing. He pressed his good hand to his eyes and squeezed, sitting like that till the bellman came in after him. Frank could see the man’s shoes and pant cuffs beneath the stall door.
The bellman said, “Can’t stay in there. You know that.”
“I’m a guest,” Frank said.
“Like hell you is.”
“I’m the guest of a guest.”
“What you is,” the bellman said, “is gone. Else I call the po-lice.”
Frank breathed gently through his mouth. The nausea lessened that way. He looked up and saw an elderly bloodshot eye peering through the door crack at him.
“Tell you what. I’m feeling just a little bit better, I’ll go.”
“Ain’t no junkie gettin’ sick in my ho-tel, understand?”
“Your hotel?” Frank cackled. “Mr. Pierpont, sir.”
The bellman pulled back from the door. “Okay, smart-ass. Here it comes.”
He turned on his heel and left. Frank closed his eyes as the rest room door swooshed open then closed. Here it comes, he thought.
After a moment he checked his thumb again, probing gently with the forefinger of his good hand, then wrapping the thumb in fresh tissue. The blood had dried on the back of his head; he reminded himself to leave the scab alone. Eventually he rose to his feet, combating a swirl of dizziness, and leaned forward on the door till the latch gave way. He tumbled out, gaining his balance only after he hit the far wall. He looked up into the mirror and once again felt utterly astounded to find himself there, gazing back.
“You need money,” he told his reflection.
He tottered back out to the lobby, flipped the bellman off, crossed to the Powell Street door and ventured back into the street. Pedestrians marched in vacant-eyed unison down the sidewalk. A damp wind howled between buildings. He stuffed the wounded hand inside his jacket, where it would be warm and out of sight.
He could feel people looking at him as he searched out his truck. It rested in a green zone down the block from Omar’s. He checked through the restaurant’s window to be sure Waldo was gone, then hurried past with his head down. When he reached his truck he discovered a parking ticket tucked under his windshield wiper. As he crumpled it and prepared to throw, he glanced up at a newspaper dispenser and saw a headline that stopped him cold: TRIPLE HOMICIDE IN THE DELTA. In smaller typeface, a second lead read: SUSPECTED LINK TO BRISCOE MURDERS.
He moved closer. Beneath the headline, the only words he could read were, “Last night three persons, one of them a seven-year-old boy, were murdered execution-style in a remote …” The rest disappeared below the fold. He tried to open the dispenser, gently at first, but the catch held. Shortly he was pounding on it, kicking it, till passersby stopped and he shrank back. Panting, it dawned on him finally he might have the change. He’d retrieved it from the floor of the rest room at Omar’s after Waldo had left. He checked his pockets but found only thirteen cents; he needed twenty-five.
Just then a salesgirl from one of the nearby shops came out, dropped in her quarter and lifted the dispenser lid. Frank lunged, shoved her aside and caught the lid before it closed, grabbing a paper from inside. The girl recoiled, ready to scream.
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“I’m sorry,” Frank said, easing away.
Abatangelo spent the better part of two hours trying to reach Waxman on the phone. The screak of the busy signal seemed particularly galling, given the state of things. Even so, it was never more than a minute before he had the phone in his hand again, redialing Waxman’s number. A little after noon, deciding he needed a break, he went down to the street to see if the early afternoon edition was out. Might as well check the damage, he thought, remembering Cohn’s admonitions on the subject of Waxman’s faithlessness. He bought his copy of the paper from a corner stand and returned upstairs to his flat. Incapable as yet of reading Waxman’s article, he turned instead to the interior pages.
The Saturday edition, as always, was particularly ripe with morbid news, most of it drug-related. One item in particular mentioned a 7.6 mm chain gun, designed for troop support aboard attack helicopters like the Cobra, discovered missing from the Port Chicago Naval Weapons Station; officials feared it may have fallen into the hands of drug traffickers. The term “narcoterrorism” appeared twice, and this was the briefs.
An old veteran of press hysteria on such matters, Abatangelo had little confidence in the objectivity of this particular report. Even so, he felt a vague anxiety, an uneasiness tinged with shame. The point, he reflected, had never been to hurt anyone. Quite the contrary. He’d always considered himself too on the ball for that. Just a hustler on the make for the expanded mind. An epicurean. Such defenses always minimized the money angle, of course. Small wonder, then, the world being what it is, that with such dubious justifications the end result would be a lot of death.
Finally, buried in the outdoorsman pages of the sports section, a piece on the Pacific salmon industry caught his eye. A lifelong fisherman complained that the manufactured salmon from the hatcheries no longer knew their spawning streams. Crossbreeding had all but ruined the wild strains. Once fabled for its spawning navigation, the salmon now got lost. Clogging inlet waterways, it died lost. “The noble salmon,” the author lamented, “has become just another dumb fish.”
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