by S. G. Browne
“What?”
“Where you’re grabbing on to me. Try lower.”
“Oh.” I readjust my grip. “Sorry.”
When we reach the corner of Jones and Union, we pull to a stop and glance back down the hill, just to make sure we’re safe. Two blocks down, the skate rats are skateboarding away in the other direction.
“Sorry about that,” she says.
“Which part?” I say, climbing off the scooter, wiping the blood from my nose. “The part where you stole my mark or the part where you incited him and his friends to want to kick my ass?”
“The second one,” she says. “I just wanted to slow you down. I didn’t think they’d get physical.”
From halfway up Lombard, she looked potentially cute. Up close, there’s no question now about her potential. Clear skin. Slightly upturned nose. Delicate jaw. Nice smile. Plus she has real breasts. Not that I felt them or anything.
“And I didn’t steal anything. We both saw him at the same time. I just made it to the bottom of the hill faster than you did.”
“That’s not the point,” I say, trying to remember what the point was. I think it had something to do with the rules of poaching, with her encroaching on my territory, but I’m suddenly wondering what she’s doing for lunch. And if she has a boyfriend.
It’s not just that she’s cute. There’s something else. An intangible essence I can’t put my finger on. Then I realize it’s because this is the first time I’ve ever met another woman, other than my mother and my sister, who could understand why I do what I do.
I wonder if she’s ever met another poacher. And if she thinks I’m attractive. And what she’s doing in San Francisco.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Are you talking about my raison d’être? Or are you digging for something more banal?”
“What are you doing in San Francisco?”
My guess is she’s working for Tommy Wong. I just want to hear her admit it.
“It’s top secret,” she says, with a smile and a wink. “I’d tell you, but then I’d have to fuck you.”
“What?”
She just smiles at me and tilts her head. “But I don’t have sex with men who poach bad luck.”
Before I have a chance to respond, she pulls out onto Union Street and drops down the hill toward North Beach, disappearing from view. I wonder how she could tell I’d poached bad luck. I’m guessing she just made that up as a lame excuse to bail out before she had to explain herself, but I’m not going to let her get away that easily.
Maybe I’m just kidding myself, but I felt a spark. Something passed between us. And I intend to find out what that something is. And what she’s doing in my town.
I walk to the Searchlight Market on Hyde Street and buy some Advil and a bottle of water, along with some Mentos and a pack of fragrance-free baby wipes that I use to clean off my face. There’s nothing I can do about the blood on my T-shirt, which makes me look kind of intimidating. Either that or like I just got my ass kicked. So I leave it and head out of the market to plan my next move.
Who am I kidding? Like I have a plan. Or any moves. All I have is a headache and a bloody T-shirt. And a tiny little crush on a female poacher.
True, she’s to blame for my failed poaching and my headache and my bloody T-shirt. But I’m willing to let all of that slide because she’s attractive and because she threatened to have sex with me. There’s also this little fact that in the few minutes I’ve known her, she’s unlike any other woman I’ve ever met. At least any woman I could have sex with and not end up on Jerry Springer. My sister’s animosity aside, poachers understand one another in a way that other people can’t.
And I’m wondering if Scooter Girl might be able to help me with my Tommy Wong dilemma.
Despite that she’s most likely working for Tommy, she’s still a poacher, so I’m hoping I can use our common genetic mutation to get her to see my side of things. I just need to figure out how to find her. And how many other poachers Tommy’s hired. So I grab the 45 bus downtown to see someone who might be able to help me find the answers to those questions.
On July 28, 1945, Lieutenant Colonel William F. Smith Jr. got lost in the fog over Manhattan on his way to LaGuardia Airport and crashed his B-25 Mitchell bomber into the seventy-ninth floor of the Empire State Building. The fuel tanks exploded, sending flames racing across the floor in all directions. Betty Lou Oliver, the elevator attendant on duty at the time on the eightieth floor, was thrown from her post and badly burned, though she survived the incident while more than a dozen others died.
When help arrived, rescue workers decided to use one of the elevators to transport casualties, unaware that the accident had weakened the cables. Once the elevator doors closed, the cables snapped, and the elevator, with Betty Lou Oliver inside, plummeted seventy-five stories to the basement. Oliver survived the fall but was taken to the hospital and treated for serious injuries. She still holds the record for the longest elevator fall ever survived.
At the moment I’m feeling a bit like Betty Lou Oliver. Bloodied and battered, moving from one catastrophe to the next.
I get off the 45 bus at Union Square, then I walk east along Geary past Macy’s and the Westin St. Francis before winding my way toward Market Street, walking back and forth in a serpentine route that takes me past a homeless person tiptoeing over cracks, a woman standing in a doorway wishing another woman good luck, and several restaurants and shops with ceramic lucky cats in their windows, beckoning in good fortune.
Human beings are such a superstitious bunch. Lighting Reiki candles to attract wealth and abundance. Knocking on wood in the hopes that good fortune will continue. Carrying around charms, amulets, and talismans for protection ever since the first caveman was trampled by a woolly mammoth.
Most people have no idea why they do the things they do in their attempts to either attract good fortune or avoid bad luck. They’re completely unaware of the historical context behind their irrational beliefs.
Knocking on wood comes from pagans who were summoning tree gods. Throwing spilled salt over your left shoulder blinded the devil who was sneaking up on you. And the number thirteen is allegedly unlucky because thirteen people were at the infamous Last Supper.
But even if people understood the origins of their superstitions, it wouldn’t make a difference. Contrary to what a lot of people think and what these New Age quacks try to sell you, you can’t create luck or draw it to you. You’re either born with it or you’re not. Everything else is just random circumstance. Sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t. Lighting candles and knocking on wood and rubbing good-luck charms isn’t going to improve your fortunes any more than wishing to have sex with a porn star is going to get you laid.
But don’t try to tell that to Doug.
Doug’s a superstitious kid just north of twenty-one who fancies himself a gangsta rapper even though he’s Irish-Italian and grew up in Danville, a suburb that’s about as white as Wonder bread. He showed up in my office a couple of years ago out of the blue, looking for a job as an assistant private investigator. Said he always wanted to be a PI and that he could be my eyes and ears on the street, someone who knew what was going on and who could help me to keep on top of the news that doesn’t make it into the news.
I told him I worked alone and couldn’t afford an assistant even if I wanted one, but he went out and got himself an investigator’s license to prove his dedication and kept showing up at my office until I finally relented, though I told him I couldn’t pay him much and that I’d likely have to let him go after a month.
That was nearly two years ago. I’ve had Doug on my under-the-table payroll ever since.
For the most part, the information I get from Doug doesn’t help me in either my private investigations or in my poaching, but I like him, despite his being as ignorant about luck as the rest of the masses. He’s kind of like a little brother or a loyal dog who wants to please me. I have to admit, when it comes to knowing
what’s going on in the city, Doug is the man.
I find Doug on Market Street at Powell, eating an apple and talking to a couple of street peddlers across from the Westfield shopping center, where a year ago some guy pretending to be God told everyone to eschew their consumer lifestyles before he allegedly vanished into thin air. It turned out to be a hoax, but some people around here still believe it happened.
Doug spends most of his time hanging out on the streets downtown, talking to people and being friendly. It’s one of his most valuable traits. People tend to open up to others who offer a smile and a warm greeting and who come across as harmless and engaging. And although he often dresses like a cross between a circus clown and a ghetto drug lord, Doug is rather harmless.
Today, Doug’s wearing an oversize, throwback New York Jets jersey tucked into his baggy, yellow Dickies, which are held up just below his ass with a belt that has a buckle the size of New Jersey. On his feet are red Nike Jordans. On his head is a royal-blue Los Angeles Dodgers cap. Around his neck hangs a half-inch-thick gold medallion with the letters BW emblazoned upon it.
“Holmes!” he says, taking a bite of his apple, his face exploding in a smile, then morphing into concern. “What’s up with the hemoglobin on your threads?”
At first I don’t understand what he’s talking about, mostly because more often than not, I don’t understand what Doug’s saying. But then I look down and notice the blood covering my shirt.
“I cut myself shaving.”
“You need to use a mirror, Holmes. You didn’t break your mirror, did you?”
“No,” I say. “I’m good.”
“’Cause if you did, you can reverse the seven years of bad luck by turning seven times in a clockwise circle.”
“I’ll take that under advisement.”
Doug smiles and nods and raises his fist to me for a knuckle tap.
I used to try to explain to Doug that superstitions are ridiculous and that luck is like energy: It can’t be created or destroyed. But he argued that following his superstitions had kept him lucky all of his life, so he wasn’t going to stop.
I couldn’t tell him that the reason he’s lucky is because he was born that way.
When I tap Doug’s knuckles with my own, I get a slight burst of static energy. But Doug doesn’t notice. People who are born with good luck aren’t aware of the electric charge they give off.
I’ve known Doug was packing luck ever since I met him. Although I can only guess as to the quality of the grade, Doug’s got some pretty healthy stuff running through him. It’s what helps him to get the information he acquires and what keeps him from getting his ass kicked by the punks and the criminals who actually live on the street. And what’s given him that good fortune he attributes to his superstitions.
But even though I could use an infusion of good luck right now, I’d never poach from Doug.
“How’s it hanging, Holmes?” he says, taking a bite of his apple.
“Big and low.”
Which is what I say every time he asks me this, but for some reason it always cracks Doug up, causing him to giggle and snort and slap his knee.
Just up the block at Powell, tourists wait in line for the cable car, while a street preacher shouts into a megaphone that Jesus wants them to repent of their sins. And it will cost them only one dollar.
“So what’s the word, Dog?”
“It’s Bow Wow, Holmes.”
Doug used to go by Dog, a derivative of Doug, because he liked the expression What up, dawg? But then he realized people would say What up, dawg? even if they didn’t know his name, so he changed it to Bow Wow.
“Sounds more like a forizzle gangsta,” he says, pursing his lips and making a hand gesture that he apparently thinks is smooth and edgy and indicative of his gangster-rap appeal. I don’t have the heart to tell him it’s the official Hawaiian sign for hang loose. “Know what I mean, Holmes?”
He doesn’t call anyone else Holmes. Just me. Because of the private investigator thing. I think it’s kind of sweet.
“Sorry, Bow Wow.”
“No worries, Holmes.” He pulls another apple out of his pocket and offers it to me.
“No thanks.”
“You sure? An apple a day keeps the doctor away.”
“I’m good.”
“Just trying to keep you healthy,” he says, pocketing the apple.
“So what’s the word on the street, Bow Wow?”
“You on a new case, Holmes?” he says, lowering his voice.
Although Doug tends to be about as subtle as a money shot in a bad porno, he knows when to play it cool.
I nod. “But this one’s on the down-low. No one else can know about this.”
Not that I’m worried about Doug sharing the details of my questions with anyone, and I don’t need to remind him to keep things hush-hush, but he’s always under the impression that I’m perpetually dealing with nefarious criminals and shady characters and seductive women. So I play it up every now and then because I know it makes him feel like he’s involved in something exciting.
Of course, today’s turning out to be more like Doug’s imaginative musings than I’d like to admit.
Doug puts one hand over his heart. “I always got your back, Holmes.” He likes to think of himself as my Dr. Watson. “So what info you lookin’ to find?”
“You hear any word on the street about luck poachers?”
“Luck poachers?” His eyes grow wide. He looks left and right as if someone might be listening in on our conversation. “Snap! You looking to score some luck, Holmes?”
“No,” I say, though I actually am. “I was just wondering if you might have heard anyone talking about the latest luck gossip. Something going down. New luck poachers in town. Anything out of the ordinary.”
He looks left and right over his shoulders, then steps in a bit closer. “You hear of a guy named Tommy Wang?”
“Wong.”
“What?”
“Wong,” I say. “It’s Tommy Wong.”
“So you heard of him.”
I just nod.
“Anyway,” he says, “this Tommy Wong is apparently some sort of Chinese gangsta badass, and he’s been buyin’ up as much luck as he can get hold of. Hiring poachers from out of town and puttin’ ’em on his payroll. No one knows who they are, but rumor has it a bunch of ’em have moved into town.”
Which pretty much confirms my suspicions about Scooter Girl. Apparently, Tommy’s not only contracting luck poachers but bringing them into my territory. I wonder how many more of them there are. And how the hell I’m going to get rid of them.
Just add it to my list of Things to Do.
“You ever seen a luck poacher, Holmes?”
I shake my head and do my best impersonation of someone who’s telling the truth. “Not that I know of.”
“I seen one.”
“Is that so?”
“Word. Saw this dude cruisin’ past the Orpheum the other night, checking out the scene. He was a tall, white dude. And when I say white, I don’t mean Conan O’Brien white. We’re talking creepy-dude white. Like he’s allergic to the sun.”
“You mean an albino?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Dude was freaky.”
“How did you know he was a poacher?”
“I just knew, Holmes. I just knew.”
I don’t know who this guy was, but no respectable poacher would be caught hanging out by the Orpheum. You don’t tend to find a lot of good luck in the Tenderloin. More likely you’re going to find a lot of drug addiction and failure. And I’m not putting any stock in Doug’s ability to identify poachers, considering he has one standing right in front of him. Still, if Tommy’s hiring poachers and bringing them into the city, I suppose anything’s possible.
“You know what, Holmes?” Doug leans in even closer. “I hear that if a poacher takes your luck, it’s like he’s taking your soul.”
So much for Doug’s powers of perception.
&nbs
p; “I had no idea,” I say.
Doug gives a single nod, slow and solemn. Like a little kid silently admitting to something he’s done. “I also heard that if you carry a rabbit’s foot or some sort of lucky charm, it keeps poachers away.”
“Kind of like garlic and vampires?”
“Word. You ever seen a vampire, Holmes?”
“No.”
“Me neither,” he says, sounding disappointed. “But I always carry this, just in case.”
Doug reaches inside his shirt and pulls out something on a cord that’s hanging around his neck. I think it’s going to be a bulb of garlic or a silver cross or a vial of holy water, but when he opens his hand, there’s a brass ring the size of a rolled-up condom in his palm.
“Had this since my dad gave it to me when I was ten,” he says. “Just before he died. Got it from the carousel at the boardwalk in Santa Cruz. Told me I should always reach for the brass ring.”
My father always told me I needed to develop brass balls.
“Anyway,” he says, “I always keep it on me. Not for vampires, but just, you know, for good luck.”
In the United States, people kiss crosses and carry around a rabbit’s foot for good luck, which obviously wasn’t very lucky for the rabbit, while in other countries, people attempt to control and enhance their good fortune through all sorts of ridiculous behaviors.
In Russia, carrying a fish scale in your purse or wallet is considered good luck.
In Germany, the spotting of a chimney sweep in traditional garb is regarded as fortuitous.
In Scandinavia, trolls are thought to be lucky.
Which I find kind of confusing. I always thought trolls lived in caves or mounds or under bridges and ate billy goats or little children. Not really sure what’s so lucky about that. Unless you’re a troll.
Others believe luck can be created by looking for opportunities, listening to their intuition, using the power of positive thinking, and adopting a resilient attitude. Which is more ridiculous than carrying around a fish scale in your wallet.
“You carry any good-luck charms?” asks Doug, putting the brass ring back inside his shirt.