When a Psychopath Falls in Love

by Herbert Gold

  A confused status system prevailed in democracy as practiced at the Caffe Roma. Defense lawyers dressed better than legal aid law­yers, sometimes going all the way to French cuffs. Assistant DAs sometimes sat alone with laptops open, arraying their artillery for the day’s battles. Defendants, perpetrators, and their tattooed buddies, heads in ponytails or shaved or merely with hair spit-slicked down, huddled, whispered, and dared the pretty young Asian court-appointed attorneys to meet their eyes. A uniformed black woman with a badge that said COMMANDER (of what, Kasdan still didn’t know, perhaps of Parallel Parking) sat with her Palm Pilot, rigorously playing a computer game, bureaucratic frown fixed upon her counte­nance even in this hour of breakfast relaxation. She commanded; she judged; she looked as if she were in a mood to condemn.

  A court translator, or at least an old-timer like Dan Kasdan, escaped the rules of hierarchy when he sat here with Harvey, who could easily have made Captain if he ever bothered to want it. He preferred the streets. Harvey and Dan ruminated to each other about their troubles: Harvey’s son shot for no reason by a gang wannabe who thought he had a reason; Dan’s daughter kept out of his sight and knowledge by Margaret Torres, who thought that her couple of nights with a Summer of Love veteran practicing his Spanish skills gave him no rights of fatherhood.

  The lawyers had been shading the truth since law school; most of the perps had been perpetrating since childhood; for twenty years Harvey and Dan had taken the measure of each other, which meant forgiving each other.

  A reader in secret, Harvey once asked Dan if “your ventrolateral preoptic nucleus” was keeping him awake nights; “You look kind of depleted.”

  “Huh?”

  “The word ‘depleted’ not familiar to you? Okay, next question, I got a lunch date, can you lend me a condom?”

  “No need to return it,” Kasdan had answered.

  It was time for Dan’s pal to head out with his new ear stud, his organic bellypack with its cholesterol-storage reserves, and his unmarked Ford Something. He shrugged little apologies to the jury pool conscript whose chair Harvey’s responsible-leader paunch had nudged. Detouring to amble past Dan and Ferd, he muttered only one word of greeting: “Asshole.”

  The non-audible movement of his lips was directed at Kasdan, not Conway. Harvey may have been lying in wait at the Caffe Roma, but on the other hand, since he had a perfect right to his morning routines, unless he was on an all-night stakeout, maybe it was Kasdan, taking meetings here with Ferd, who was daring Harvey to try to be his conscience.

  A little anxious, not quite hearing the word which was not quite directed at him, Ferd asked: “Hey? So the deal, it’s firm, am I correct in assuming?”

  Kasdan grinned. A Kasdan smile event was a rare pleasure for both of them.

  “Tomorrow, nine o’clock, chez moy unless I meet you on the way like one of those limo guys you see at the airport. You’re a celebrity! You need an escort! Maybe I’ll hold up a sign: MISTER KASDAN.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Ferd was still amazed. “Hey, that smile on your face? On you it looks good.”

  “I’ll try to do it more often.”

  “You’re learning, Cowboy.”

  – 18 –

  He awakened that morning with a wisp of foreign matter between his lips, not old guy petrified drool, but what was it? A hair. It was long, not gray, not his. How had Petal’s hair been transferred to his clothes and then somehow to his pillow on its migration to his lips? She had not been here. She was not a sneak, although truth was not a dominant element in their friendship. She was someone invisibly carried to him during the night. It would have been a mystery and a sign if he believed in signs. He believed in mysteries, such as Petal’s presence between his lips and on his tongue.

  Or it may have been Amanda’s hair.

  He brushed his teeth with a vigor that would delight his dentist. The imprint of the hair on his tongue faded. He prepared himself for the day’s action. A punitive white southern California light, frequent in Los Angeles despite the smog, rare in San Francisco because of moisture and fog, poured down over the Tenderloin, illuminating the dust which swirled like fireflies. Today, unmitigated like the sun, Kasdan would burn through distraction and have his way. Resolved.

  He walked south across Market toward Ferd’s apartment. He followed his usual route, this time to keep their final appointment.

  All the other times of his life, he had been practicing for what he was about to do, except that there had been no previous times. If there were times to come, he might do it differently. Today he was determined not to worry about the past or future. As a practical matter, no record or pattern, no confidence shared with anyone, not even any hints to Harvey Johnson, meant that no signs would lead to him. Step by step, he would follow to the end. As he crossed Minna, a zonked “Vietnam Veteran” with his soggy corrugated cardboard sign and a Styrofoam cup, but relaxed and lacking initiative, failed to ask for spare change. He must have sensed Kasdan’s momentary pause. He called out, “Have a nice day, asshole.”

  Despite living through the Summer of Love years, Kasdan still didn’t believe in karma. Yet, without asking to see the veteran’s discharge papers, he turned back and dropped a quarter in the cup. If not for the last word of the veteran’s salutation, it would have been a dollar, in memory of the idea of karma.

  On Mission, sometimes known as Mission Boulevard, a surprise awaited him. “Hi! Hi there, big guy!” Ferd had anticipated his route. He jumped up grinning from a sidewalk table at the Granada Cafe where he left half an espresso for whichever street person got there first. “One of the things I deeply admire about you is now you’re taking the best way to get where you’re going. Counting on people, knowing them through and through – very essential, n’est-ce pas?”

  These were qualities to treasure. Kasdan didn’t always take the shortest route, but today he did. They proceeded to business in the brightness of morning. Ferd also treasured the chance for a business-related stroll with his dear friend and colleague; ambling like the good pals they were, but also insuring that Kasdan would not back away during their final arrangements. He escorted his colleague toward his condo where airline tickets would be presented, via Miami to Port-au-Prince, also the address and telephone number of the notaire and instructions about the peculiarities of the telephone system in Haiti, and a complete agenda of the details concerning purchase of land and house. The money was already packed and guaranteed to be invisible during various customs inspections. “Sub rosa,” Ferd murmured, in a Latin mood today.

  Appreciatively, he sniffed deeply of the air. Two good pals and partners, marching along. Things were in the final stage despite the normal glitches that always come up in a human procedure. Ferd was a happy man.

  A leather queen on a butch holiday swooped past on rollerblades, pads at the knees but his pants cut out behind so that a few stray hairs waved enticingly from the heart-shaped rear window. Ferd meditated upon this performance. “A few years ago, it would have been skateboards. I guess he’s too grownup for kid transportation.”

  Remembering the success of yesterday’s smile, Kasdan tried to join Ferd’s good humor. “He’s put away childish things.”

  “Like a big girl, he’s into rollerblades. So what kind of future do you suppose? Nada, that’s his future. Couple years hence, sit in a bar, maybe the Katie’s place, sneaking a smoke and hope he can rent a nice boy at closing time, tell him about the time he skateboarded, got into rollerblades, used to be was a stud everybody wanted...” This sad prediction trailed off. He and Dan did not cut out their pants behind and were not losers.

  Trucks were parked and double-parked on Folsom, drivers and helpers hauling crates into clubs and bars. Later, not much later, the bars would open, sending heavy rock, hip-hop, and disco out onto the street as San Francisco’s leather central stirred into action, using up the beer, snacks, toilet paper, and vending machine items of rubber, creams and plastic. Ferd noticed out loud that the alley
s were named for long-departed hookers, Minna, Jessie, Clementina, thus showing that he too, deep down, in his heart of hearts, was a caring and noticing guy. If Dan wanted to go there. “You’re showing Grade A composure today,” Ferd said. “I mean that in the best possible way. It’s progress. I could almost say I admire it.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I admire it, next to genuine affection...” It was a struggle. “Which you already know about... I admire you. You wouldn’t venture any risky type of gig, not even for me, am I right? So here we are.” He sighed. “Home.”

  Before the Nam-brand panhandlers and the leather bars, the Stud, the White Swallow, the Belly Up, there used to be marsh grass and willows, humming with insects and the small mammals scurrying to eat them, on this low-lying tract of San Francisco near the bay; then it was rapidly filled and firmed and the Indian footprints were oblite­rated by ballast from Gold Rush sailing ships and by the abandoned ships themselves; then came the time of light industry, slaughter­houses, storage tanks, and swift-shack housing. Now dot.com real estate speculation had taken its turn in the rotation. The willows and salt murk were gone; condominiums floated on the fill. Ferd believed in financing a snug nest with a favorable prognosis for capital appreciation.

  Good conversation had shortened the journey home. Ferd’s condo was built by a developer with a checklist of selling points. The structure, beyond modern, was moderne, its glass skin supported by exposed steel beams and excellent mortgage arrangements. Ferd’s personal taste included occasional privacy, so he had sprung for curtains on a pull rod. He called these curtains “drapes” because they kept the sunlight and street snoops under wrap. He had his glass, he had his light when he so desired, he had his airy position and his view; but he also had protection against transparency and excess airiness. An expansive welcome-to-my-humble-domain gesture hinted to Kasdan about the benefits of affluence: CD player with small but powerful speakers; leather furniture to sink into with a sigh or, when lucky, to fuck in; open bar standing in the middle of the hospitality space where dusky sunlight turned the “drapes” a purplish black. When Ferd awakened at night or during what he called “the wee-wee hours” of the morning, he could find his way to the bath­room by the glow from the street.

  Ferd lived most of his life elsewhere. Sometimes he grew lonely even in his way-of-life condo. He had sunk his ready cash into the down payment. But the loans? The mortgage? Life in general? Not to worry. Destiny was flowing toward copasetic for both Kasdan and Conway.

  On a low table painted black and shellacked in a version of Chinese teakwood stood a device recognized by anyone who traveled through the once and forever San Francisco Sixties. The hookah’s tube snaked out in the general direction of Ferd’s guest. Its mouth­piece, like that of a whistle or a flute, was invitingly spit-stained. “Want a hit of some water-cooled herb, amigo?” A Barcalounger waited with open arms for Kasdan to fling himself down and inhale a civilized ommm experience. Barcalounger in brown vinyl didn’t really match Chinese teak knockoff in contemporary lifestyle design, but a really advanced self-decorator knew that any one thing a person likes goes well with any other thing that person likes. No point in asking about the light caramel smell wafting off the curtains, the “drapes;” Kasdan wasn’t here as an air quality inspector. He wasn’t here to search out distractions. He was here to overcome his temptation by distraction.

  Flourishing a long fireplace match, Ferd lit the hookah and took a first hit to assure correct bubbling through the water. A punctilious sommelier also tastes the wine after de-corking. Then Ferd moved the wet nozzle on its hose in the direction of his partner. He added a strained, held-breath invitation. “My food delivery system primed for the munchies, partner. Open fridge, go ahead, there’re boxes, containers, bottles, and try the freezer…” He exhaled with a gasp. “You’ll find the ice creams, the frozen yoghurt chocolate bars, the other shit I forget what. Brownies for an emergency. Anti-oxidant, that’s what they are, bars for a fructose pickup in case you’re not into dairy! Flavenoid phenols to improve your immortality, or at least get a shot at viral old age... Did I say viral? Hey, I happen to know you’re a virile old fella, but it’s a special time down south where the conviviality is…”

  “You’re high already, Ferd.”

  “… a cute chick when you’re in the realm of prosperity like I intend to bring you, a sweet baby to fetch for you when you say, ‘Bring me a beverage, bring me a little blue pill will you, bring me a round-the-world licking including darkest Africa like that stewardess I met once before they invented flight attendants and now they’re all business stead of…”

  “Get to it, Ferd.”

  “Okay, okay.” He shook his head vigorously, shedding imaginary droplets of cold shower. He blinked away the exaggerated high. He lay down the nozzle of his hookah, careful not to nick his teak. He slid the curtain and checked out the street. He turned back to Dan. “Okay. All clear.”

  He pulled out a blue plastic document case. “So here’s the ticket, American to Miami, you stay in the airport hotel, next morning wake up fresh and a quick shower, a short flight, hour and a half, voy-la! Port-au-Prince! I upgraded you to Business Class.”

  “I don’t travel much.”

  “Don’t blame that on me, Dan. They got toilet paper and every­thing in Haiti. You’ll sleep comfortable when this is over, so a little stress comes with the territory, just fade into the background, you’re carrying this other item in your belly pack. A tight deck of hundreds. I’ll give you the name of the notaire, but best you memorize it. You can write down his telephone number, probably on – how old are you? – that very page, eighty-five, haha, a hundred ten, whatever, of the book you’re reading. The phones there... just keep trying. There’s this nice hotel. You speak French?”

  “Spanish. I can make do.”

  “He speaks English, the notaire. Besides, you point to the menu and say Jumbo Omelet and they give you eggs with ham. You’ll be fine.”

  The briefcase, new, unscuffed shiny leather, was not showoff top grain but not vinyl, either. “They’ll ask you to unlock it, unless you don’t have to, but you’re smiling inside. It’s not in your shoes. You do like to read on board a long flight, don’t you? Study your French? Only this book is not exactly a reading book. It’s a transportation book. They ask you unlock the briefcase – no pharma-cuticles, am I right? – they spend ten minutes fiddling with the briefcase. By that time, other good citizens and aliens in line, they’re too dumb to try reading your book, French book because you’re studying, always studying, underlining the words you want to learn, the way you are, Dan – a scholar and a gentleman.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You said it, I didn’t.”

  The briefcase was still locked. Kasdan stared, leaving it on the table. Ferd gave him a tinny little key. “You can fumble, waste their valuable time, you’re an absent-minded professor, understand?”

  “You’re not that hard to understand.”

  “Scholar that you are. They ask you to open, you do so. They rummage. They say, Sorry Mister, because, you know, that’s in the T.O., Table of Disorganization, for when they’re too stupid to look in the right place. You stand there patient, reading glasses maybe in your hair, you can get them at Walgreens, super-scholarly, and this study book tucked under your arm. They can see you’re a professor or a court translator or some other kind of dummy…”

  “Thanks.”

  “Now they’ve done their job. You’re free to proceed to your seat, upgraded to Business Class. My advice: bring a nice sandwich for lunch. The stuff they serve you was always shit and in today’s no fi­nesse world it’s really shit.”

  Ferd paused for a thank you for the dining advice. No thank you forthcoming. He waited for something else, a word about Amanda, about Petal. A possible reproach... A flicker of concern crossed Ferd’s face. His partner wasn’t sharing.

  Okay, good, the partner’s greed and the prospect of a nice payday took precedence over Amanda
, Petal, and affiliated reproaches. This was America, wasn’t it?

  The flicker of concern was now a flicker of relief.

  They were concluding their friendship south of Market in Ferd’s condo on the former marsh, but Kasdan felt as if he were still at home among dogwood, ailanthus, alley trees and weeds and the scrambled debris outside. In the Tenderloin, a junk tree, seeking the sun, almost reached his window; swaying and rustling, weed trees stretched out their shoots like amphetamined bamboo. Here with Ferd, there was a faint naphtha smell of mothballs, Ferd fastidiously protecting his woolen clothes.

  He was finally presenting Dan with all that he needed in proper order, travel documents, money, the name of the contact in Port-au-Prince, the notaire, a Monsieur Jean-Pierre Jean Pierre, who had legal custody of a seafront house for sale in Jacmel, a lovely residence for a cocaine transporter when he was at home and not transporting and also of permanent value because of its gracious garden, beach access, and helicopter docking space... Ferd full-heartedly smiled. He tilted his head optimistically. Kasdan was given a view of two narrow black caverns, nostril hairs waving with the tidal ebb and flow of breath intake and outgo.

  “Prop-pity is always solid,” Ferd explained. “Look, there’s plenty in Nevada, and I’m not even counting the desert. I’m talking built-up, subdivided. In the desert, you take the wheels off your trailer on the outskirts of Tonapah – I thought about that, halfway between Reno and Vegas, they used to mine silver, they got a casino, the hotel has gold-plated faucets and you can flush with a gold nozzle...”

  “That’d be fun,” Kasdan said.

  “Take the wheels off your trailer and what have you got? Real estate! Plus not that much government. They don’t need no stinkin’ zoning laws.”

  “Free at last,” Kasdan said.

  “But Haiti, there’s loose dollars floating around, boats, airplanes, the Free Republic of Colombia practically next door, plus it’s less government than Nevada even in the good old days before our time. It’s the Wild West only elsewhere, so they need nice villas with beaches. Man, the whole world is full of real estate, that’s how God made it. Even you should be able to figure that out, no head for busi­ness without me.”