by Fred Zackel
"Sounds like a drag."
"Oh, it's not so bad. Most of the hotels have closed-circuit movies on their televisions. It costs three or four dollars, and the movies are played all day. The folks I sat for yesterday, they paid for the whole day, and I saw Gone With the Wind three times."
"Was this job through some agency?"
"Yeah. Some agency. They made me a babysitter."
"Is there any bread in it?"
She told me. A nickel more than minimum. "And if you know any girl who needs a job, could you let me talk with her? It's not much of a job, but if I can find anybody else, I get a commission from the agency."
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
The headhunter hires a staff of temporaries. He pays them a nickel more than minimum wage, then charges the tourists twice that for their services. Then he gives his temps a commission if they locate any other suckers.
A hotel guest slips the bellboy a ten spot to find him a hooker. The hooker gives the bellboy a ten spot for calling her. The bellboy gives a fin to the bell captain for letting him work. The hooker gives twenty to her pimp for letting her work. And prostitution's illegal. Maybe it is, but sometimes I wonder if the Yankee slave traders ever gave their slaves a commission for finding new slaves. Not that I was much better off. I had worked for Pacific-Continental for forty bucks a day.
I glanced at the jade-eyed woman. She was busy unfastening her pierced earrings. "When did you get out of college?"
"A couple of weeks.... How did you ... ?"
"What did you take up in school?"
"English."
"Good luck. No teaching jobs out here."
"That's what everybody keeps telling me." She sounded bitter. "Well, if I can't teach anywhere, maybe I should be a cocktail waitress."
"Cocktail waitresses make good money in this town."
"I know. That's why I'm on a couple of waiting lists already. You know, there's a two year wait for openings at most hotels." She twisted my way again. "I was talking with one girl, and she told me she makes seventy-five bucks a night. Winter or summer. And that's for a six hour shift. That's real good money, isn't it?"
"That's real good," I admitted. I get that much weekly from my unemployment claim. The rain was coming down in sheets. My car rode roughshod over the chuckholes, and for a while, it was touch and go. Ahead, the beige Caddy splashed through the puddles, hydroplaning, splashing up gull wings of water. Somewhere far away, an ambulance began its mournful song.
It was twilight in the city. The moment before the streetlights and the headlights come on. When the night begins with rush hour and after-Christmas shoppers, and the car radio fills up with static and out-of-town stations.
"Why are we following that car?"
"What car? Following who?"
"That one. That beige and white one."
"I'm not following it."
"Oh yes you are."
"I'm a private investigator," I confessed.
She didn't speak for two blocks. "I've never met a private detective before."
"Investigator's a better label." I waited for her to tell me how interesting my work must be. That's the one-liner most women seem to latch onto first.
She was filled with surprises. "What are you working on?"
"I can't tell you."
"I won't tell anybody. I promise."
"I can't tell you. It's embarrassing."
"You don't want to tell me, do you?"
"That's right."
"Well, do you work for an agency?"
"Not any more."
"Then you have your own agency."
"Maybe I do." I mulled it over. "Against my own better judgment."
"You don't want to be a private eye? I mean ... you don't want to be a private eye? Then why did you go into it?"
"I had a wife and two kids to support," I told her. "I grabbed the first job I could find."
"Oh. You're married."
"Divorced."
"Who did you work for? I mean, would I know them?"
"You might. Pacific-Continental."
Recognition came to her eyes. I wasn't surprised. Pac-Con is one of the biggest, and there's a Pac-Con office in most phone books. Everybody sneaks a look at the Detective Pages. It's like looking up dirty words in a new dictionary.
"You left them? Why'd you quit?"
"They asked me to leave."
"Oh. What did your wife say about it?"
"She asked me to leave."
We neared Market Street. The policemen and their shrill traffic whistles. A trolley lumbering down Mission, waddling beneath its overhead electric lines, scattering sparks as it crossed from one line to another.
"How about if I drop you here?"
"Where? Here?"
"You can catch a bus easily enough."
She sucked some air, but she said nothing.
I pulled behind a city bus as it was pulling out. The fumes from its exhaust put a cloud of soot on my windshield. The rain and the wipers tried their best.
I glanced at Ruth Gideon. Her eyes pleaded like a dolphin on a sandbar. Jade-eyed women are hard to resist. But I wasn't running a cab service, and she was a luxury I couldn't afford. "There'll be a bus along in a minute."
"Are you sure?"
"You'll be okay." I wondered why I had to play detective.
She got out, glanced around, and didn't believe me. I couldn't fault her eyesight. This was no-man's land. Neon and no expectations. Down where the pawnshops are numbered by the dozen. Barber colleges and liquor stores. Tattoo parlors and bus stations. Cheap hotels with fire escapes like facial scars. I wouldn't want to wait for a bus here, either. Even the pimps and the hookers stay away from Market Street. They cruise further north towards the Hilton and Union Square. They knew lowlife when they saw it.
I caught up with Riki and his wife on Kearny Street. They were moving slowly, wedged in the maze of homebound commuters. My lane was the left-turning one, open more often than theirs. I stayed a full block behind them.
Sometimes there comes to rush hour an unearthly silence. Pedestrians going about their business. Cars running as silent as any submarine. No brakes screeching and no overbearing horns. No cursing and no shouting. No newspaper hawkers. No fender-benders, and every engine seems tuned. The complete absence of city buses. No cable cars rattling up or down the hills. Just the patter of rain on wet streets. When all the elements mesh and everything is routine.
You know the shit's about to hit the fan.
A pregnant woman jaywalked in front of my car, determined to cross in the middle of the block. I stopped an inch shy of her. She gave me the finger, as did the guy behind me. Then a Volvo stuttered into my lane. The clown wouldn't pull over and he wouldn't pull ahead. Finally I passed him, almost nailing a mail truck double-parked with its emergency flashers on. By the time I could swing out and around, I had a full cab behind and an empty one ahead.
I drove up to California Street, then circled the block. But the beige Caddy had disappeared. I'd done it again.
I came back by Montgomery Street. It was soggy with calendar sheets. They'd been thrown New York City style from the office buildings of the Financial District, an annual year-end celebration. But there were fewer pages on the pavement this year, just as there were more high rises with windows that never open.
I circled Mission and came up Third. I saw her before she saw me. She was crouching in a telephone booth, trying to hide from the wino who was rifling the coin changer in the next booth. I tooted my horn until she turned my way. Her face unfroze and she scrambled from the booth to my car.
"Oh, thank God! You came back!"
"I couldn't leave you here, could I?"
We headed out into the Market Street traffic. Market Street still celebrated Christmas. Christmas music blared from the pawnshops, and the liquor stores were all brightly decorated. The Salvation Army played Adeste Fidelis, and gospel shouters, with their bugles and their Bibles, still preached the birth o
f Christ. Chinese school-girls, giggling and serene, compared their sugarplum visions at the bus stops.
But Christmas on the streets has little to do with the Season of Giving. It's a con game, and the suckers never get what they deserve. The poor people of the streets, those goddamn trusting fools, splurge on gifts to show their relatives and friends how well they did last year. A sign of their prosperity.
I wasn't any different. Christmas brings out the lonesome in me, too. Last June I put two little boy outfits on lay-away, just so they'd be paid off by Christmas. No, I wasn't any different, just luckier. This week I didn't have to pawn my own presents to repay my loans. I could thank Joey Crawford for that.
"Where to this time?"
She gave me an address on Sutter Street. A residence club she had found her first day in the city. The jobless lived in those places until they found work or went away.
"It's god-awful," she told me. She shook her head, as if she could sweep away the club's filth and its lunatic residents.
"Why don't you move?"
"I can't afford to. No yet, anyway."
"Are you broke?"
"Oh no." But she fell silent too soon.
"How about if I buy you dinner?"
Her head swiveled like a chair.
"A real meal," I said. "No hamburger joint."
She was hesitant. "I promised the girl next door I'd be home early tonight. She's making supper for both of us."
"Okay. Not tonight. Some other night."
Her voice was softer. "I'd like that." Almost too soft.
"How have you been eating, anyway?"
"I've been fasting."
"Was that her idea? The girl across the hall?"
Ruthann glanced out her window.
"Are you trying to lose weight?"
"That's right," she said.
Aw Jesus. The little dunce. She didn't have a brain in her head. She was fasting to lose weight because she had no money. I decided to cough up for more than one decent meal.
"What's she like? The girl across the hall."
"Why should you care?"
"I don't. Forget it."
She glared at me, considering obscenities, then turned away, deciding not to. "She's from Iowa, Ohio, one of those states. She's been here a couple of years already. She's been cooking for both of us because I've been out job hunting or babysitting. I get fried rice and Mexican beans with every meal. And I'm getting sick of fried rice and Mexican beans."
"Can't she cook anything else?"
"Yesterday she burned a batch of marijuana cookies."
"Remind me not to eat her cookies."
Ruthann went silent. She shook her red hair, fluffed it once or twice, then turned to stare out at the rain. I was mystified, so I counted the traffic lights ahead.
"Maybe I shouldn't have told you," she said.
"About what? Burnt cookies?"
"No. Not that."
"Well, what is it?"
"Marijuana's illegal in California, isn't it?"
"Sorta. A hundred dollar fine for an ounce or less. But nobody gets excited about it." And then it dawned on me, and I started laughing. "You mean, you shouldn't have told me about the cookies because you're afraid I might turn you in. Is that it?"
She stared at the rain, said nothing. She thought I was mocking her, and now she was upset. When I spoke to her, she wouldn't answer. The car was quiet until we reached her residence club. It shook when she slammed the door.
Chapter 9
There was an empty space in front of my apartment building. I was in it in a flash. I locked my doors and went inside and took the elevator to the third floor.
I headed right for the refrigerator. It wasn't Mother Hubbard's cupboard, but the hoarfrost had an echo. I found a sirloin strip steak cowering behind the Best Foods mayonnaise. The little sucker didn't have a prayer against a private eye.
I cut it into long strips, then stuffed them down the neck of a liter carafe. I poured a couple of inches of brandy after them. I threw in a lit match for a kicker.
After a while the blue flames died. I tugged out the strips of brandy-soaked steak and threw them on a plate. With dinner in one hand, a beer in the other, I went to the living room. I plugged in the TV and switched it on.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was on Dialing for Dollars. Fred C. Dobbs was splashing water on pyrite, thinking he had found the Mother Lode. And the doorbell rang.
I turned down the television, swigged a little beer for mouthwash, then went to peep through my landlady's peephole.
A man in a business suit was outside. He was small and frail and Chinese. I couldn't decide if he were the oldest man in the world, or a cadaver who'd escaped the crypt. He was scrawny, boney, shrunken with age. Like many old people, it was a struggle for him to stand. Any minute he could fall into a fetal crouch. His spine was curving forward, like a hunchback's, and his shoulders were sloped. They looked as if they might someday touch, if they didn't collapse before then.
He pressed my doorbell again. He was impatient. Maybe he was afraid he'd croak before I answered the door. Then his body had a spasm, like the land above the fault line, and his face twitched with pain. I couldn't have him on my conscience, or on my landlady's carpet, so I opened the door.
"I am Tan Ng. May I come in please?"
He came ever-so-slowly through the doorway, hesitant and arthritic, using an umbrella as a cane. He had a thin chicken neck and his face was gaunt with loose skin and wrinkles. There were hollows where his cheeks should have been, and harpy lines flared down his nose. His hair was blizzard-white, but not as white as his skin. It was pale and anemic. Too pale for most Chinese. So anemic, he'd need a touch of jaundice to pass.
"I do not wish to disturb you."
"Don't worry. You're not." I noticed his shoes. There was a raindrop or two on the shiny leather, but they weren't as wet as they might be. Tan Ng had come by car. Maybe a chauffeur was downstairs.
"It is still raining," he apologized.
"Let me take your umbrella."
He shook it out, splattering water on my face, then passed it over. I set it upright and open to drip on the carpet. His watery eyes roamed my apartment like a Methodist minister casing a massage parlor. Nothing escaped him, not even my supper. "You were preparing supper?"
"Just a little snack."
"I am sorry. I must leave. I will come back later."
"Forget it. If it doesn't bother me, why should it bother you? In fact, I'll set a place for you. You look like you could use a good meal."
He didn't like that. "I have eaten."
Tan Ng came on like a career woman. Prim and proper and fastidious. Asexual, almost, determined not to show emotion. His every word was precise and slightly minced, as if he had spent time listening and imitating career women and their speech. But there was one answer. Like career women, the Chinese have to work twice as hard to get half as far.
I wondered what his game was. He might be as old as Chinatown, but he had spent too many years here to be playing the poor immigrant. His business suit was too well-tailored, even for his ill-fitting body. And his snowy hair hadn't been trimmed in any Chinatown shop. It had no cowlicks, for one thing, and it was neater, fuller, more rounded than the butchers of Chinatown could ever do. His teeth were just crooked enough to be real, and white enough for fluoridated water. He was thin enough for malnutrition, but a lot of rich folks diet and exercise for that look.
"Something to drink? Beer, wine, coffee, tea, brandy..."
"A little tea perhaps."
I went into the kitchen. The old man followed at his own pace. Gingerly, he sat at my kitchen table. He watched me set the kettle on the gas stove. I let him select his own favorite. He chose jasmine, and I turned up the heat.
He still stared at my tea rack. "You drink Po Lee tea?"
"My wife bought it."
"It is from the Mainland."
"If it's good enough for Nixon ..."
"Please do not men
tion his name. He has done us much harm in Chinatown."
"All of us, my friend. Not just Chinatown."
"Had he never set foot in Peking, the Maoists in our city would have no say in community matters. Because of him, they now feel their voices should be heard on every street."
"Why should you care?"
"I am a lawyer. I have many clients in Chinatown. They are old and I try to help them live within the white man's world."
"Where do I come in?"
He faltered, then caught the thread. "I have been in practice for many years. More years than you have already seen. And I have been a good citizen all those years."
"I'm sure you have."
"On occasion, I have associated with the police department. And on occasion I have asked their assistance. But a matter has arisen that is not easily remedied by their intervention. That is why I wish to hire you."
I had to laugh. "Who put you up to this?"
"You are a private investigator?"
"Until May, I am."
"What happens then?"
"My license comes up for renewal."
"But you will renew it."
"Maybe. I haven't decided."
"I trust you will."
I made a small noise. It was a fifty buck fee. Fifty bucks was fifty bucks. "Who told you about me?"
"Oh, you were well-recommended."
"I'm not in the phone book."
"I would rather not say."
"And I can name a hundred better than me."
"Please do not humble yourself. I have been to many detective agencies over the years and have spoken to many men in your profession. You have been highly recommended."
"I'm not even in business for myself."
"That works very much in your favor." He tried being conspiratorial. "For one thing, you are not associated with the police department, as most others are. I have need for a man who is not already connected with them. A man who will not run to them when the journey becomes difficult."
"I don't break laws for anybody else," I told him. "If you want them broken, go break them yourself."
"I am not asking you to break any laws, or ignore anyone who is breaking them. I merely wish that you do not feel alone in their absence."
"You're a slick old fart," I marvelled.