by S. G. Browne
Once I get my apple fritter from Bob’s, I continue along Polk Street into Russian Hill, keeping my eyes open for potential marks. It’s not easy spotting them and there aren’t any guarantees, but you find someone wearing an expensive suit and a Rolex or stopping just in time to avoid getting hit by a bus and at least you’ve got someplace to start.
What I really need is a residential street with some homeowners out in their gardens or washing their cars. At least that way I’d know where they live. I’m much more likely to poach from someone who owns a three-story Victorian in Pacific Heights than I am from someone who rents a one-bedroom apartment in Russian Hill. But wealth is only one part of the package. When you’re cold-calling, ideally you want someone who not only has some financial security but who also looks like they went to college.
Right now, all I see are renters and bag ladies and a bunch of people who look like they took remedial classes.
I walk past a rack of newspaper vending machines for USA Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, and SF Weekly and stop when I see a blurb on the front page of the Chronicle about the Giants game last night. That’s when I remember the article I read this morning about James Saltzman.
I finish off the rest of my apple fritter and mocha, then I take out my smartphone and open my white-pages app and type in the last name Saltzman in San Francisco. The list comes up and I scroll down. There’s a Barry Saltzman who lives on Jersey Street, a Charles Saltzman on Sixteenth, a Gloria Saltzman on Twenty-Second, and a James and Sheila Saltzman at 1331 Greenwich.
Bingo.
I touch the screen above his address and Google Maps comes up. A few seconds later I’ve got the location of James Saltzman’s home, located at the corner of Polk and Greenwich, right down the street.
I love modern technology.
Ten years ago, I would have had to find a phone book and some store or business that could look up the address for me. Or gone into a Kinko’s and rented one of their computers. But now I have all of the tools a modern luck poacher needs right at my fingertips.
1331 Greenwich Street is less than eight blocks away, which prevents me from having to grab a cab or jump on the bus, but it gives me enough time to formulate a plan of attack. With my T-shirt and jeans and Chuck Taylors, I don’t exactly have that running-for-political-office look or that dressed-for-success appearance that puts most people at ease. For some reason, your average person tends to respect someone wearing a coat and a tie more than someone who’s dressed like the drummer of a garage band, even if you’re not interviewing for a job. Though in effect, when you’re poaching luck, that’s exactly what you’re doing.
I could go home to clean up and change into something more respectable, but with the way my day’s been going, I’ll get kidnapped and drugged yet again before I can get there, so I decide to play this one as the friendly neighbor and hope that James Saltzman doesn’t know all of his.
Except that he caught the final home runs of two of baseball’s most prolific sluggers, I don’t know anything about James Saltzman. His age. His politics. His favorite sports team. If he has kids. What he does for a living. Who his friends are. Where he likes to eat. How often he hits the strip clubs in North Beach.
I would normally research those details before approaching a mark, especially at home. You never know when some bit of information can make the difference between a successful poaching and an aborted one. But this is kind of an emergency. And in an emergency, I tend to let things flow. Though my father used to tell me I wouldn’t know an emergency from a hangnail.
When I reach Greenwich, I walk down the street to scope out the address, then I walk back up the other side before I take several deep breaths to find my center. Poaching luck requires focus and concentration. It’s almost a spiritual process. Minus that I’m stealing from someone.
I admit I feel bad sometimes about what I’m doing, about the impact I’m having on the lives of the people I poach from, but when you have this kind of power it’s difficult to keep from wielding it. The lifestyle has a way of sucking you in and before you know it, you’re just another societal leech freeloading off the good fortunes of others.
Which is another reason why poachers end up committing suicide. And why I’ve always tried to avoid too much self-reflection.
Once I’m settled, I walk up the steps and knock on the front door.
No one answers, so I ring the doorbell. Still nothing. I knock once more, hoping James Saltzman is home on a Tuesday morning in August and not on vacation or, more likely, at work.
Ten seconds later, a young boy, maybe ten years old, opens the door and stands back several feet from the doorway. Normally I’d abort any planned poaching when kids are part of the equation, but I’m desperate for a score. Even if it is just questionable medium-grade luck.
“Good morning,” I say, flashing a smile.
“It’s afternoon,” he says.
I look at my watch and see that it’s almost one o’clock. Fuck. Where has the day gone? You get drugged twice by a Chinese Mafia overlord and you lose all track of time.
“Right you are,” I say with a smile. “My mistake.”
He just stands there and stares at me, his arms folded, unimpressed.
I’m getting a lot of that today.
“What do you want?” he asks.
It’s not surprising that he doesn’t have any manners. Most kids today don’t. But if you ask me, it’s a direct reflection of bad parenting. I can say this with complete certainty because I’ve never parented a day in my life and I enjoy making sweeping generalizations about how other people do a piss-poor job at something about which I have absolutely no experience.
“May I speak with James Saltzman, please?”
“Junior or Senior?”
“Senior,” I say. “Is he home?”
“Who wants to know?” asks the kid, who I’m presuming is Junior.
“Paul Jefferson.”
Names are important when poaching. You don’t want to make up a name on the spot and end up with something like John Smith or Fabio Delucci. You want a name that’s benign and forgettable but that makes your marks comfortable and gets them to relax.
Paul was the primary public-relations mouthpiece for Christianity, and I’ve found that even those who aren’t religious respond to the name favorably. And Jefferson still commands admiration and a sense of patriotism for the third president of the United States nearly two hundred years after his death. Even if he did grow pot and have sex with his slaves.
I figure a ten-year-old kid has heard the names enough that his subconscious will be put at ease.
“Paul Jefferson? That sounds like a made-up name.”
Or maybe not.
I can feel my face growing warm and my T-shirt beginning to stick to my back, which is unsettling because I never sweat during a poaching. Sweating is a sign of nervousness. And being nervous is bad for business.
I look at him and smile without meaning it.
“Is your father home?” I ask.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On what you want him for.”
In addition to feeling unusually warm, I’m beginning to get a little light-headed and I’m suddenly beginning to wonder if this was such a good idea.
“I was hoping to talk to him about some important neighborhood issues.”
“What kind of issues?”
This is why I refuse to deal with kids. With an adult, it’s just a quick introduction and a handshake and the rest is gravy. With kids, it’s a series of whats and whys and hows. Especially, it seems, with this one.
I never was good with being patient.
“It’s regarding planned development in Russian Hill.” I don’t know what I’m saying. Or where I’m going with this.
“What kind of development?”
“Anyone ever tell you that you ask a lot of questions?”
“Anyone ever tell you that you smell like cat pee?”
&nbs
p; “Look,” I say, barely editing out the accompanying phrase you little shit, “I’d just like to speak with your father.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“What? No. I don’t have an appointment.”
“Then come back next week.” He closes the door.
I stand there a few moments, staring at the door, wanting to give it a good kick or ring the doorbell a hundred times, but instead I just stick out my tongue and walk away.
Well, that was productive.
Feeling deflated, not to mention a little humiliated, I walk up Lombard Street to Hyde to take in the view of the Coit Tower and the Bay Bridge and to try to clear my head, cool off, and figure out my next move. Maybe see if I can find some random tourist brimming with good luck to cheer me up. But I’m not counting on it.
At the top of the hill where Lombard crosses Hyde, it becomes paved with bricks and descends down a steep grade through eight terraced switchbacks past residential homes. Crowds of summer tourists have gathered at the top of Lombard to take pictures of the view and to watch the cars wind their way down the alleged crookedest street in the world. I stand with the tourists, listening to the symphony of foreign languages and laughter, wondering if any of them are worth taking the risk of a quick hit-and-run poaching.
While I’m perusing the tourists, a Hispanic couple comes over and asks me to take their picture. I don’t have anything better to do, and I figure I might at least be able to bum a low-grade high from them, so I have them line up to one side of the stairs with Coit Tower and Telegraph Hill and the Bay Bridge in the background.
Just as they have their canned smiles ready and I press down on the shutter release, a sixteen-year-old kid on a skateboard races past between us on the sidewalk, does a ninety-degree turn at the entrance to Lombard Street, then takes off down the twisting road, maneuvering between cars and eliciting honks and shouts from the drivers.
Still holding the camera while the Hispanic couple asks me if I could please take another picture, I watch the kid on the skateboard glide between fenders and curbs, past bumpers and hedges, oozing teenage bravado and confidence. Halfway down the hill, the kid gets clipped by a Volvo, rolls over the hood of the car, and lands in some bushes blooming with pink flowers. Then he pops up and gets back on his skateboard unscathed and continues down the street with a smile on his face and a triumphant middle finger raised in salute for the driver of the Volvo.
And behold, I think I’ve just found my mark.
I’m racing down the stairs along the side of Lombard Street, dodging tourists and trying to act like this is all perfectly normal, hoping I can somehow manage to beat the kid on the skateboard to the bottom, when I realize I’m still holding the Hispanic couple’s camera.
I turn around and see the husband chasing after me, about two flights back, while his wife is at the top of the street yelling and pointing my way.
Sometimes I really hate that my father might be watching me and nodding and saying, I told you so.
Just because I figure it’ll add to their memories, I take a quick picture of the husband racing toward me with his wife screaming in the background, shout out, “Sorry,” then toss the camera safely in a flower bed and continue down the stairs.
The kid on the skateboard has almost reached the bottom of Lombard and I still have half a dozen flights of tourist-encumbered stairs to negotiate, when I notice a woman on a scooter maneuvering down the crooked, brick-paved street, weaving through and past a couple of cars, until she reaches the bottom of the street, pulls to one side, and looks back my way. At first I think she’s just savoring the moment, enjoying the view. But as I make my way past a family of four from Germany and a young couple arguing about their lunch plans, I realize the woman is watching me . . . almost as if she knows me. I have no idea who she is.
From this distance she looks like she could be attractive. Young. Slender. Short brown hair poking out of her helmet. I’m thinking maybe she’s one of the baristas I’ve slept with and I’m trying to remember her name and whether she works at Starbucks or Peet’s. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Eventually, they all end up hating me, so this one could just be a stalker out for vengeance. Or an admirer. I’ve had both.
Then she glances at the kid on the skateboard, who has finished his slalom course and is high-fiving his skate-rat friends across the street, and she looks back up at me.
That’s when she smiles.
I don’t know who she is or where she came from, but I realize she was watching me not because of who I am, but because of what I am. I’m also pretty sure from her triumphant smile that she plans on taking what I thought was mine.
Another luck poacher. In my city.
And I’m wondering if this has anything to do with Tommy Wong.
How she knows I’m a poacher, I don’t know. Maybe it’s my obvious intent. Or the Hispanic couple chasing me down the stairs. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that she’s here, in San Francisco, and she shouldn’t be.
I race down the stairs, taking two at a time as the woman rides her scooter over to the teenage kid and immediately starts up a conversation with him. Whatever she says does the trick. Even from my vantage point, I can see from the look on his face that he’s flattered by her words. And I know I don’t have much time.
I’m one flight from the bottom, hoping I can get to them in time, to intrude, to maybe work my own charms on the kid before it’s too late. But then I see her extend her soft, feminine hand out to him, an invitation of intimacy, the possibility of sexual delights, and I know I never stood a chance.
The kid takes her hand with a smile just as I hit the sidewalk.
“Hey!” I shout out.
I don’t know what I expect to accomplish by yelling at her. The damage is already done. She’s stolen his luck and it’s not like she’s going to share. But I’m pissed off. This is my city. These are my people. No one else is entitled to steal from them except me.
The cute brunette glances back over her shoulder, still holding on to the kid’s hand, then she says something to him before she lets go and takes off on her scooter down Leavenworth, turns the corner, and disappears from view.
I chase after her for half a block, shouting at her to stop, then I give up because I realize it’s pointless. When I turn around, the teenage Evel Knievel is blocking my way, his skate-rat friends spread out on either side of him.
“What’s your problem, dude?” says the kid, a high school punk with long hair and his baseball hat turned around backward.
“Take your pick,” I say, moving to walk around them. I don’t have the time to deal with them, whatever it is they want.
They counter to keep me in check, spreading out to block my way.
I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I feel like I’m in a bad 1980s movie starring Corey Haim. Or maybe Corey Feldman. I never could keep those two straight.
Their leader steps up to me, a shadow of a mustache on his upper lip. “Why don’t you leave that chick alone?”
Now I understand. Nothing engenders male bravado like coming to the rescue of a cute damsel in distress.
It’s bad enough that I lost my potential score to a woman poacher who encroached on my territory, but now I’m being challenged by a bunch of teenagers with baggy pants and peach fuzz who have delusions of grandeur.
“Why don’t you mind your own business?” I say.
I never was good at diplomacy.
“How about if we mind it for you?” says one of the other kids. I don’t know which one. They all look the same to me.
On the Lombard Street stairs, the Hispanic husband whose camera I sort of accidentally stole hurries down the steps and points me out to some big steroid monkey who has apparently decided to play the role of the helpful ass kicker.
Great. This just keeps getting better.
“Look,” I say, “I don’t know what she told you . . .”
Before I can finish my sentence, a fist pops me in the face. I
don’t know who threw the punch. I never even saw it coming. But the next thing I know, I’m stumbling backward and reaching up to stop the blood from pouring out of my nose.
In front of me, Corey and the Skater Boys are moving in for the kill, either dropping their boards to free up their teenage fists or tightening their grips to use their boards as weapons. Behind them, the Hispanic husband and his bodyguard have reached the bottom of the stairs and are coming over to join the party.
Ever have one of those moments when you know you’re completely fucked?
Like when your second parachute doesn’t open?
Or when you get pulled over for speeding, holding ten kilos of cocaine?
Or when you wake up naked in bed with your mother-in-law?
I’m wondering if I can talk my way out of this or just start grabbing hands and poaching, hoping to strike a vein of good luck, when the cute little bitch on the scooter pulls up next to me and says, “Get on!”
I’m not exactly in a position to play the indignant card or to enter into a discourse on the etiquette of luck poaching, so I climb on the back, wrap my arms around her waist, and hold on as she floors the scooter.
She turns right on Chestnut, and for a moment we’re in the clear. Then I look behind me and see the pack of skate rats bearing down on us, taking the next right onto Jones faster than we can. We scoot across Lombard and Greenwich without stopping, our pursuers less than half a block behind us, when Scooter Girl makes use of San Francisco’s legendary topography to prove that age-old wisdom:
You can’t skateboard uphill.
She blows through the stop sign at Filbert, then starts climbing. Granted, we’re not exactly flying up Jones, which is a good thirty-degree slope, but we’ve definitely put some distance between us and our pursuers. When I glance back, most of the Skater Boys have picked up their boards and have given up the chase. Only Corey is still trying, but eventually even he succumbs to the laws of physics.
I breathe a sigh of relief and hold on tight to Scooter Girl’s waist to keep from sliding backward off the seat.
“That’s not my waist,” she says.