Looking from the car window out at San Francisco, probably America’s loveliest city, Troy was surprised at the number of homeless. It was something new to him. In his childhood the few bedraggled creatures wandering about with dirty hands held out were invariably older white men, brains in a permanent fog from alcohol or insanity. Now every corner had someone with a sign or a spray bottle to wash windshields, and most were young black men.
A billboard had a dog pulling a blanket from a man in bed. It reminded him again: “We gotta go see Mad Dog tomorrow or the next day.”
“I gotta tell you something,” Diesel said. “Something I’ve never mentioned to anyone. I wanted to, ’cause it fucked with my head.”
“Give it to me.”
“Two months ago, Mad Dog called my pad. He called two or three times and got Gloria. It was a Friday and I was doin’ a favor for Jimmy the Face. When I finally talked to him, he’s busted in Portland on some chickenshit credit card beef. But if he don’t make bail by Monday morning, the parole officer would see his name on the booking list and slam him with a parole detainer. He wanted me to come bail him out.”
Diesel continued with the story, at one point inserting the scene of the dispute after the ship payroll robbery. As he told it, he relieved it in his mind. He ended with the opening of the freezer: “… my hair stood up. I swear it did. I got my ass out of there. I kept lookin’ to see if their bodies turned up somewhere, but I don’t think they did. If you wanna do a little work, it’s easy to put a body where nobody will find it—except maybe some fool-ass archeologist five hundred years from now.”
“He doesn’t know you know?” Troy asked.
“No way. I was outta there so fast—”
“Right.”
“I haven’t talked to him since then.”
Troy saw it plainly, the dead bodies of mother and child frozen solid. It made him shudder inside. He had never killed anyone, partly because he understood the gravity of taking life, and partly because circumstances had never come together, but he knew how common it had been since Cain and Abel, and he knew a lot of killers. He had friends who’d killed, many in anger from a dispute or for revenge, a few who had killed a cop or a store owner in a shootout, a few for money in a contract killing—but maniac killers were outside his sphere of experience. He knew about Mad Dog’s paranoid nature. Was he too dangerous to have around? Would it be too dangerous to cut him loose? Would that stimulate all his paranoid ideas?
On the other hand, Troy knew that Mad Dog respected him more than anyone in the world. He remembered the reform school night of years ago.
“You know what,” Troy said, “I can handle him.”
“He scares me a little. You never know what’s in his mind. You remember what him and Roach did to that guy in the East Block. What was his name, Carrigan or something. They were all tight buddies. Remember? They stabbed him about twenty times, didn’t they?”
“Yeah, but he threatened Roach, talked bad. He should have known they weren’t friends anymore.”
“Any way you say, Troy. I’m with you. But I wanted you to know what was happening with the guy.”
“I’m glad you told me. I know he’s crazy. We’ll watch his ass. If he acts too crazy—” Troy shrugged, a gesture that said nothing and yet said everything. “You ready to go to L.A.?”
“Whenever you say.”
“Just a couple days. I’m not even going to check in with the parole officer. They don’t look for you for jumping parole. They wait until you get picked up—”
“Or somebody fingers you.”
“That, too—but nobody’s gonna finger me. If they just stop me, I’ve good ID, don’t I?”
“Oh, yeah. It’ll stand up against everything but a fingerprint check.”
Diesel wheeled the car through the narrow, twistly streets of Chinatown and turned up under the porte cochere of the big Holiday Inn.
A doorman was instantly at hand.
“What time you gonna be here?” Troy asked.
“Ten … eleven … whenever you say.”
“Call me when you leave the house.”
“Will do.”
They clasped hands and Troy got out.
Diesel pulled away.
6
Alone in his room on the eleventh floor of the Holiday Inn, Troy took off his shoes and socks. It was the first time since his arrest that he’d walked barefoot on carpet—or barefoot on anything except cold concrete. He doused the lights, sat on the bed, and dug his toes into the thick, soft carpet, meanwhile looking through an open window, the cool night in his face, out across San Francisco’s hills and the dark bay dotted with lights from ships and buoys. How did he feel being free after so long in the cage among the numbered men? In a way he felt less different than he had anticipated. Men had told him of weird fears, bolts of confusion and panic. He felt none of that, but he did feel a sense of the unreal. He would look at the world and see distortions that reminded him of abstract art, Dali or Picasso.
The room TV had closed-circuit movies. He ordered one from the Playboy channel. No cable stations came into San Quentin, so he had never seen anything like this. These were not trashy sluts with pimples on their butts. These Playboy women were lovely enough to be movie stars, long-legged, high-breasted, with silky hair and velvet skin and asses full and round. He wanted one so intensely that it made him dizzy. Going without sex for years was easier than the average person would imagine—and there was always the release of masturbation. His fantasies had been about women like these. One thing was sure, he knew he could buy some pussy. He had money and he knew where to go.
He dressed in his new clothes, and he liked what he saw in the mirror. It was a loose, draped look that reminded him of movies when Robert Mitchum, Burt Lancaster, and Kirk Douglas were young men. His first awareness of men’s fashion was stovepipe pants that made feet stick out like flippers and jackets with narrow shoulders and lapels. He liked this better, the pleated drape of the pants and the loose jacket with shoulder pads (it was easier to hide a pistol).
Should he take it with him? Yeah, why not. If you’re going to be a criminal, be one twenty-four hours a day. The Greco had told him that—and Greco lived up to it. “Gotta call him later,” Troy muttered to himself as he slipped the pistol with the tiny clip holster inside his waistband at the small of his back. It would be hidden even with the jacket unbuttoned and flapping open.
Going out, he stopped in the doorway. Had he forgotten anything? His key? No, he had that. As he pulled the door closed, he realized it was the first door he’d locked for himself in many years.
He pushed through the front door to the porte cochere, and the Chinese doorman beckoned him a taxicab.
“You know where the Fish and Shrimp is?” he asked.
“No.”
“It’s the other side of Market downtown. Maybe on Folsom.”
The cab took off, blasting its horn as it cut in front of a car and accelerated. It was too fast. Time was money for the cabbie, while time was cheap for Troy.
“Hey,” Troy said, “slow down.”
The driver looked around, furrowing his brow. He was dark and smelled of curry. Troy figured him as coming from India.
“Take it easy,” Troy said, “and I’ll double what’s on the meter for your tip.”
“Yes, sir.”
The cab slowed markedly. Before they found the Fish & Shrimp they wandered around many dark streets. Again Troy stared out. California had always seemed bright and new to him; now it was frayed and seedy. He’d read of recession, national debt, the fraying of the welfare net. It had seemed the usual cry wolf bullshit on the printed page, but outside the window was a new reality. Every other traffic light, it seemed, had a black man ready to wipe off the windshield. As the cabbie waved one off, he said, “Why not they get a job,” in fractured English. Troy wanted to answer that maybe the immigrants took them, but instead he chose a diplomatic comment: “Maybe they don’t know how to do anything.”
/>
“Ach. Most are lazy. Their women do the work. They did the work in Africa: they do the work here. Over there they sat around and told war stories with their balls hanging out and feathers on their heads. I saw it in National Geographic.”
Troy chuckled despite himself. Even a fool could be funny.
“Here we are,” the cabbie said, pulling over.
Troy looked out. No wonder they had missed it. The narrow façade was ebony tile, and beside the door was a small blue neon logo of a fish and a shrimp, with the name in thin script: Fish & Shrimp. Not bad for an old thief and rounder, Troy thought. The name was rhyming slang from the eighteenth-century London underworld, now known to a very few thieves and con men. It was quaint for Gigolo to use it.
The meter was thirty-one dollars. Troy gave the driver a fifty-dollar bill. It was less than he’d promised, but he suspected that the man had wandered on purpose. The cabbie looked at it and frowned. “That’s all I’ve got,” Troy said, wondering what the racist cocksucker would do if he got beat about the head with a gun butt. The cabbie nodded and Troy said nothing more. It was said that if one was going to be a sucker, it was best to be a quiet one.
A three-hundred-pound doorman looked him over. He passed the examination, for the doorman opened the door for him.
Inside, cut-glass mirrors reflected soft light. The bar ran straight ahead on the right. On the bar stools were several pairs of long legs encased in silky stockings. He could see flashes of thigh, and he could almost smell more. Short skirts had returned, thank God.
The bartender was at the far end. Troy walked along the bar. In the mirrored wall behind it, eyes looked at his reflection. He would leave here with a woman, no doubt of it. He had the price.
The bartender saw him approach and turned from a young woman to see what he wanted.
“I called about half an hour ago … for George Perry.”
The bartender pointed toward the rear booth across the room. Troy turned. Gigolo had already seen him and was getting to his feet. He came forward with a grin and spread arms. He was in his late seventies but looked twenty years younger. How could it be when he had dissipated in every way known to man until about fifteen years earlier? The only change Troy noticed was that his hair and goatee had turned from gray to pure white. He was dressed sharp, in camel-hair jacket and flannel slacks. He encircled the younger man in a bear hug. “Damn, I didn’t think you were ever gonna raise.”
“Me neither.”
“When was it?”
“Today.”
“You ain’t had no pussy yet.”
“Nope.”
“Look over my shoulder and see what I got for you in the booth.”
Troy looked. Two women sat in the booth. One was fifty or more. Trim and stylish, she was still too old. The first thing he noticed about the other was the luxuriant mane of red hair.
“She’s no slut streetwalker that sucks a dick for a toot on a crack pipe. This one’s a courtesan … y’know what I mean?”
Troy nodded, still looking. She had bright blue eyes and a faint sprinkle of freckles around her nose. He couldn’t see her body, but her face was certainly pretty. She noticed him looking and smiled. It had been so long since he’d even talked to a pretty woman that he instantly grew hot with shy embarrassment and felt himself a fool. It was ludicrous, ex-con, tough guy, afraid of almost nothing that walked the earth—and he was totally nonplussed by a smile. He started to tell Gigolo to forget it, but that would have been more embarrassing. Gigolo would rib him with the accusation that prison had turned him to young boys.
“Before I introduce you,” Gigolo said, “remember one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t fall in love.”
“Don’t what?”
“Fall … in … love.”
“That sounds crazy, man. You finally got old enough so you’re simpleminded?”
George Gigolo Perry shook his head. “You know it’s true when you think about it. Guys come out of the joint, or even the army, where they haven’t been around a woman in years, and the first one that gives ’em some pussy and kisses ’em on the ear, bang, they fall in love. The broad may have five rug rats and be fat as Roseanne, it don’t matter. They get pussy-whipped. This one here is as fine as they come. Wait’ll you see her body. If I was fifty, I’d try to catch her. Anyway, I told you.”
“Don’t sweat it, brother. I can handle it.”
“I know you can. You got control of your dick. C’mon.”
They turned to the booth and George made the introductions. She was Dominique Winters, and Troy wondered if that was a name taken to hustle. Her face had the open freshness of a cheerleader.
George sat next to the older woman, whose name was Pearl, and Troy sat next to Dominique. Her perfume was light, but because it had been so long since he’d smelled anything sweet, its effect was unusually powerful.
George raised a hand toward a passing waitress. She veered over immediately; he was the owner. “One more round. What do you want?” he asked Troy.
“Vodka tonic is okay.”
George nodded to the waitress and she went away. While they waited for the drinks, George asked about mutual friends in the California prison system. “How’s Big Joe?”
“Morgan?” Troy asked.
“Yeah. Is he ever gonna get out again?”
Troy shook his head. “He’s in Pelican Bay. Oh, lemme tell you a story he told me. He came down to Quentin for some medical reason. They put a bull on his door in the hospital, but the bull let me visit him.
“Check this,” Troy continued. “Somebody subpoenaed him to L.A. last year. They make a production number—two cars, six bulls, automatic weapons, all that shit. They don’t tell him he’s goin’. They don’t want him to know. They just snatch him up, strip him down, take the wooden leg, put him in the white jumpsuit, and dump him in the backseat.
“Off they go down the highway, two cars, six cops—and Joe with one leg. Somewhere along Ninety-nine, he tells ’em that they didn’t tell him ahead of time and he’s gotta take a piss. They tell him to hold it, and he tells the cop that if they don’t stop, he’s gonna piss on the car seat. It’s the agent’s private car.
“So they radio from car to car and finally pull into a Mobil station. They form a perimeter, weapons ready, like they expected a hundred of the Mexican mafia to jump out and rescue Joe. They check the toilet to make sure there’s no pistol under the sink, and they finally let him go.
“While he’s in the shitter, this brother in an old pickup pulls into the gas station and gets out to fill up. He doesn’t see what’s happening until he’s pumping gas. Then he sees these white men in business suits with Uzis and dark glasses with this perimeter behind the cars outside the bathroom door. You can imagine what’s going through his head. Who the fuck is this?
“The door opens, out comes Joe, hippety-hoppin’ along on one leg, draped in a ton of chains. The guy forgot he was pumping gas. It ran out on the ground. He said, ‘Man, you gotta be the baddest motherfucker that e’er walked the face of the earth.’”
Laughter explodes from George. “That’s funny, man.”
“Joe was cracking up when he told me. What about Paul Allen? How’s he doing? He’s been out for three years. That’s hard to believe.”
“Paul died, man. They found him in a hotel room in Hollywood about a month ago.”
“Paul! Damn, that’s a bummer. I’ve known him nearly twenty years and never saw him outside of jail.”
“At least he died outside.”
“That’s true.”
“Willy Hart told me.”
“Willy. What’s he doin’? How’s he doin’?”
“He’s doing good, except instead of being the lean and mean handball player, he’s got a pot gut from too much beer. I think he sells aluminum awnings.”
“A tin man.”
“Yeah, he’s pretty good, too.”
“God knows he runs at the mouth enough.”<
br />
The mutual recollection made them both laugh.
“Who else?” George asked. “Where’s T.D.?”
“He’s buried in Leavenworth or Marion.”
“Probably Marion. Didn’t he pick up a murder beef in the joint?”
“Yeah. Some fool riled him up and didn’t know what he was fuckin’ with.”
“I hear Marion is fucked up.”
“Like Pelican Bay—right out of Kafka.”
“It can’t be any worse than when I went to the joint. Bulls had canes with lead at the end. When you lined up for lockup, they’d walk along beside the lines. If your foot was one inch on the line, they’d bust your instep with the lead tip of the cane. Lousy motherfuckers. Some of ’em couldn’t even read back then.”
“They’re not much smarter now, but they sure get paid better. It’s the biggest employees’ union in the state. They’ve got it all down. They shoot a laser in the cell, then run in and hit you with a couple hundred milligrams of Thorazine … then kick your ass. And after they do all that, they write a report that they used the minimum amount of necessary force after you assaulted them.”
“Then they wonder what makes a sucker antisocial.”
“It’s a wonder more guys don’t take it out on old ladies.”
“I remember when I went to the joint in thirty-five. The public didn’t hate thieves like they do now. Shit, man, down in Oklahoma, they liked Pretty Boy Floyd. I haven’t been arrested in twenty-eight years. If I wrote a bad check, they’d give me life under that three-strikes-you’re-out bullshit. You know why I think it is?”
“Tell me.”
“Two reasons. One is niggers. There didn’t used to be so many doin’ shit, and those that were thieves, they know how to play con, or boost. They had some game. Young niggers today, they don’t know nuthin’ about nuthin’, and they don’t give a shit. They think killin’ somebody makes ’em a man, some kinda way. Where there used to be fifteen, twenty percent in the joint, now it’s sixty percent.”
Dog Eat Dog Page 7