by Fred Zackel
"When did you set this up?"
"Last week sometime. Just before Christmas. She called me up and asked if I still had it for sale and how much I wanted. She said she had some weed, so c'mon over to her houseboat. I went and there was nobody there."
"When were you in Sausalito?"
"Last weekend and this morning. Nobody at home."
"Wasn't Joey around?"
Davey had gone with Dani to the Arroyo Grande. He knew she had split from Joey Crawford a month ago. No sense climbing out on a limb. "Who's Joey?"
"That's her old man."
"He wasn't there. Nobody's been there for days. This cat next door, he told me she split, he didn't know where."
He rubbed his jaw with a bandaged hand. "Far out," he muttered. "Maybe she left him."
"So she left her old man. So what? How do I do this deal, if I can't find her?"
"I've never known Dani to do any dealing before." He looked me over. His half-wasted eyes had smelled trouble. "Usually it's her old man, not her, who's dealing. He deals mostly in coke."
I gave him a sharp glance. "Say what?"
"Maybe you're trying to score some coke."
Suddenly a lot of things made sense.
Cocaine was rich man's dope. An ounce of coke cost as much as a pound of gold. Not many can afford a hundred dollar gram, but that doesn't stop those who believe it's magic. They'll swallow coke-filled rubbers to get it across the border. The dumb hunger for gold was nothing compared to coke fever.
Coke dealers were just as crazy. Like used car dealers or insurance salesmen, they needed a gimmick, a strong selling point to impress their suckers. Maybe flashy clothes, bleeding nostrils, a Rolls pimpmobile, a guru's smile, or maybe a thousand dollar bill for snorting.
Just the show for a guy like Joey Crawford.
I had to say something. "Maybe I am. There's nothing wrong with it."
Respect rose up in his eyes and walked away, going elsewhere, far away. "What do you want with coke?" He sounded like a social worker at the detox clinic.
"I wanna get high. That's what I want with it." I tried sounding confident in the face of adversity. "She's got the coke, I got the Sherwood. And there's this guy down in Palo Alto, he's gonna give me a good price on it."
"You're gonna resell it on the Peninsula?"
"I'm getting a good price."
"Yeah, a little easy money. Right. You gotta be outta your mind. I useta do coke myself. I don't do it any more. You know why?"
"Cos it's expensive."
"You know what coke does to you?"
"Yeah. I know what it does. It gets you off real quick."
"I grew up in China Camp. A Chinese settlement up in North Bay. When I was a kid, there was this old man next door who had a pet raccoon. Coke makes you crazy as a pet raccoon."
"That's bullshit, man."
"Don't tell me it's bullshit. You start doing coke, you start losing days."
"Now what's that mean?"
"You start and you want to do more. Pretty soon you want to do all you can. You start doing it earlier and earlier in the day."
I threw up my hands. "What's wrong with that?"
"It's so good, you don't want to slow down. You start staying up all night to do more, and nine a.m. becomes overnight. Then you start doing other shit, uppers or downers, all sorts of shit, trying to maintain your everyday style. And then you get strung out on all this shit, and you can't get your head together no more. You wake up and you got no friends. Or maybe you do, and those friendships, they're only fingernail deep. Then what do you do?"
I stared at my drink, weighing every word.
"The devil made coke," Davey said. "And when he made it, he made it too good, almost too good to believe."
"What do you think I'm going to do? Get hooked on it? I'm gonna sell most of it, keep a few lines for myself. I just want a little freebie for myself."
"Go ahead, but be cool about it."
"I'm always cool."
"Keep your eyes open, too."
"What are you saying? You sound like somebody's gonna burn me? Nobody's gonna burn me. Dani wouldn't. Would she? I mean, she does have good coke, doesn't she?"
"If she's doing the dealing."
"Dani and me. That's it. Just us two."
"She won't burn you. If she says it's good coke, it is. But her old man would sell you shit that's been stepped on a dozen times already. It's coke, but it's also talcum powder. Or maybe sugar. He's got a sweet tooth."
"I know good coke when I see it," I bragged. "Nobody's gonna burn me."
"What about after you done a few lines of this, a few lines of that, a few more of this stuff? You won't be able to see straight."
"So I'll come back and break heads."
"And the goons'll break yours."
"What goons?"
"He's got juice," Davey cautioned. "They both do."
"City, state, or federal."
He didn't laugh. "It's bigger, and they get theirs from the top."
"The Syndicate?"
"It's got a lot of names." He stared at his glass. "They're both amateurs, not professionals like the Mob, but they got connections. If you play the Big Leagues, you gotta have connections. If you don't, you don't live."
I didn't believe him. If the Syndicate is half as powerful as half the people claim, how could it bear up with so many fourth-rate punks taking its name in vain? But I told him it was worth considering.
"You gotta consider it, if you're messing with dope. Like Dani's old man, he deals a lot of cocaine, and he..."
"What's he deal?"
"Mother of pearl. Rock crystal. Whatever's around."
"You know where he gets it?"
"Columbia, Peru, Bolivia."
"No, man. Where does he buy his stash?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"If I can get it wholesale...."
He frowned at my greed. "You're gonna end up just like him." He tried to explain. "Joey's crazy. Done too much coke. That son of a bitch tried to kill me one night. That's why I don't want to do none any more."
"He tried to kill you? Where was this? When?"
"One of their houseboat parties. Right around Thanksgiving. The first time I'm ever on his goddam boat, and the son of a..."
"They throw a lot of parties?"
"First one I ever went to. And the last, too." He tapped a matchbook to the band's music. "See, I walked into the bedroom at the wrong time. Dani, Joey, a half dozen others, all sitting around, doing one line after another. They had a mason jar filled with coke."
I gave a low whistle. "A lot of coke."
"I stuck my head closer, too, just like you would've—maybe join in, if I can. But Joey starts screaming and he jumps me." Davey gulped some tequila and went on. "He's shoving tables all around, there's chairs slamming on the floor, booze and weed flying all over, and I don't know what's happening. This was the first time I ever met the dude."
"So what did you do?"
"I started shoving tables back and forth, yelling, spilling shit on the floor. I told him to throw the first punch and make it his best one, because if he let me live, I'd kill him. Which was bullshit on my part. Shit, I'm no fighter. And that's when it got freaky. This other dude, Dani's cousin, he stands up for me, telling Joey to shut up and fuck off. Parnell does the same thing then, and he don't know me from Adam."
"Parnell." I squinted at the rafters, trying to place him. "I never met him," I admitted.
"He's this freak Dani useta know in Seattle. They're still pretty tight. He's an okay guy. That was the first time I met him, and he's coming down on Joey like Joey's done that shit before. Like it's nothing new that this guy becomes a maniac and wants to kills you."
"Maybe he knew this guy in Seattle."
"Maybe. Him and Jack Anatole got it on together, you know. Yeah, they started duking it out on each other, to see who got first punch at Joey. Joey was bug-eyed as me. I mean, somebody standing up to you is one thing. But two gu
ys at once, and they're fighting over who gets to deck you first. Dani couldn't take it. She just freaked and started screaming. Hysteria, that's what it was. She got hysterical and took off. I can't blame her, though. That's a heavy scene. Her cousin and her old lover fighting over who's gonna deck her old man. That's insane."
"Where did Dani go?"
Davey didn't know, didn't care. "I just wanted to join her."
I had a good idea where she'd gone. She had taken off down the boardwalk, and Alex Symons had followed her. Later he had taken her over to her houseboat.
No wonder they had made beautiful music together. They had both been coked out of their minds. On cocaine, any combination of humans can make beautiful music together.
"Did you end up fighting him?"
"Oh no. I'm just as chicken as Joey was."
"He wouldn't fight?"
"No way. He's just a show-off. A little guy with a big mouth. Scary, like any maniac big-mouth, but he's just chickenshit in front of you."
A strange story. Maybe it was believable.
"I think I appreciate this." I gave a weak grin.
"Who needs appreciation?"
I got the hint. I bought him another drink. The barkeep gave me a dirty look. I waited until he left us alone. "What am I suppose to do?" I wondered. "I still gotta find Dani."
"Maybe Symons." He hesitated.
"Who's he?" I wondered how Davey would handle this. He knew Dani was living with Symons. Since he had ignored that, it was his problem. And if you see one flaw, look for others.
"There's this guy, Alex Symons. Dani and him had this thing going. An off-and-on-thing."
"Because she had an old man?"
"Ah, yeah. Maybe he knows where she is. You can find him over in Sausalito. He lives on a houseboat near hers. It's called the Mal de mar."
"What's the name of the boat?"
He was shaken, but he repeated it.
"That's where I was. She told me to meet her there."
He was confused. "She told you she lived there?"
"When she called me. But nobody was home. The dude next door, he said she took off, and he hasn't seen anybody since."
Davey seemed genuinely puzzled. If he didn't know Dani wasn't living with Alex any more, then probably he didn't know where she was now.
"I don't know where she is," he admitted.
"What about Parnell?"
"Maybe. I don't know."
"How do I get in touch with him?"
"Who? Parnell? Oh yeah. You can try him, I guess. He lives up in Point Reyes. Inverness. Just a couple hours north of here."
A floorboy came to the stage, cleared his throat a couple times into the microphone, then called for everybody's attention. He read aloud my license number and asked the vehicle's owner to come to the front bar.
I pushed my way across the dance floor. A stuttering lunatic blocked my way and started badgering me about his gall bladder operation. I gave him a buck and told him to get me a beer. He disappeared faster than cocaine at a biker's wedding.
I asked the floorboy about my car.
He tried to remember. "Somebody sideswiped it, or somebody's stripping it for parts." His eyes looked like optical illusions. "I'm not really sure. It's not my car."
"It's my car." I grabbed his shirt. "Who told you this?"
"Just a guy." The floorboy brushed away invisible dirt. "I don't like being touched."
I took off towards the front door. I couldn't believe anybody would steal my car, but someone could have sideswiped it in the rain. I went outside. The rain came down in thick sheets. Visibility was zip. I pulled up my collar and scooted across the street.
My car was right where I had left it. It didn't look damaged, though someone might've thought so in the rain. It does have more dents than a Yellow Cab. Maybe I had been sideswiped. I couldn't tell, and it probably didn't matter. It wasn't much of a car. It had cost me as much as two Rolls Royce hubcaps. Which is what you'd expect a legal bachelor on unemployment to own.
I started back inside. My skull roared with thunder, and my eyes went pigeon-toed. I tried to kiss the wet concrete. I know I reached for it, thinking it was a good idea.
The rain went on forever. It stung my eyelids, my face, my hands. My skin went rubbery with the rain. It sounded like popcorn popping.
A raindrop ran up my nose. I woke up coughing and choking. Vertigo came like a jackhammer. I'd woken up too soon. My head felt like the silver ball in a pinball machine. The dry heaves came, had a good time, then went away.
I was in a basement doorway, beneath a wooden staircase. Dark and cold and moldy. It stunk like a toilet. A flooded drainpipe was emptying itself into my shoes. The rain coursing down the pipe sounded like popcorn popping.
When the vertigo was more manageable, I had a long talk with myself. Somebody had trashed me and stashed me here. What was I going to do about it?
At times like this, I wish I had a partner. Maybe then I wouldn't feel like such a wallflower, an old maid. Maybe a partner could keep me awake. Maybe he could lift me off my butt. With a partner, I could double my chances for standing up. Maybe even for getting out of these messes.
I gripped a beam and pulled myself upright. My arms were tougher than my legs. My legs were jello. But my arms could hold jello upright—I could stand, and that was a big step towards the future.
I had more guts, too. I wobbled up the stairs to the sidewalk. There, I tried to decide. Jardin's Saloon was two doors down, my car was across the street, my apartment was across town.
I went towards the bar, and I was proud of my reflexes. They clumped down the street like I'd walked with them before. I didn't bump anything or break anything or run over anything or crash into anything. I was real proud.
I went back inside the funhouse. The band had finished a set, but the dance floor crowd wasn't about to disperse. They had come to dance, and they waited for the jukebox. I looked them over and decided Damon Runyon had tunnel vision.
And then the jukebox started up. Suddenly the music was too loud. Suddenly there were too many people, and they all were moving blurs. Somebody asked me what time it was. I didn't know what day it was. I asked what year it was. They asked what time it was. And I wanted to die.
I headed right for the men's room. A drag queen just leaving held open the door. I stumbled through without saying thanks. Some cowboy was pissing in the sink. He looked at me, gulped part of his drink, zipped up and left me alone.
I was better off in the basement doorway. The men's room was a good shooting gallery for any junkie. Naked light bulbs and broken porcelain. Broken tiles and filthy walls. The mirror was cracked, and the paper towel machine had been ripped from its hinges. There were shreds of toilet paper everywhere, like the calendar pages in the Financial District. Puddles of water, murky and brown and algaed, like the mudflats at low tide. The smell was the same, too.
I found my reflection. My eyebrows were frowning, and my eyes were redder than the squiggle of blood trickling down my forehead. My hair was plastered like greasy leather, and there were grease streaks across my face and hands.
No worse than any wino in the Tenderloin. Maybe even better than most. But this was the night-before, not the morning-after. I didn't look like me, and I felt worse than I looked.
There was an icicle lost inside my head. It felt like an icicle, anyway, making a few stabs in the dark. Maybe it wasn't an icicle. Maybe it was a needle looking for a haystack. Maybe my head boomed with the sound of my own pulse.
It took a long time to clean up. A real long time. Finally I felt ready to face the real world. I hoped it was ready for me. I headed out to see what I could see.
I called the bartender over.
"What happened to you?"
"A mud puddle in the men's room," I didn't care what he thought. "Gimme a couple of fingers of brandy."
"The good stuff?"
"Make it rotgut." I drank down the shot glass. The cheap brandy burned like iodine on a wound. I was
wider awake than anytime since breakfast. Now I was smart enough not to drink this crap. I looked around the back bar. Davey was missing. I asked the bartender if he'd seen the Chinese cowboy.
"He's not here any more."
I wondered if I was slowing down. Of course he had split. Whoever had conked me had gotten Davey out fast. And Alex Symons had talked with that one on the telephone.
"Did you see who he left with?"
The bartender hadn't noticed. "He wasn't what you need." He had his hand on his hip, Bette Davis style, and he stared with brazen eyes at me. His thin smile was pulled tighter than his britches.
I was tired. Too tired to get upset. "I like women."
We looked over the women who sat at the back bar. They were all flat-chested, and their fat buttocks spilled over the barstools.
"Should I try and get you one?" he asked. Then he pranced away looking for his midnight love.
It was New Year's Eve. I needed someone.
I thought I knew where I could find her.
Chapter 13
The desk clerk was sleeping beneath a Chinese newspaper. I rapped knuckles on the desk. He came awake slowly, like a street sweeper on double time, set aside his paper and ambled over.
"You wanna room?"
"Yeah. Ruth Gideon's."
"No visitors after nine o'clock."
"What room is she in?"
He said it again. No visitors after nine o'clock.
I was in no mood to play games. My head throbbed and my armpits stunk. My clothes were masquerading as sponges, my socks squeaked in my shoes, my shoes were buckets of rainwater.
I put a dollar on the counter. I told him he looked like a man money could buy. He didn't call the cops and he didn't kick me out. Nothing flickered in his eyes. I threw another dollar after the first. Something flickered, but he was still the Rock of Propriety.
"If there's another," I said, "you're gonna eat it."
The wisdom of Solomon is knowing when to pass the buck. "Two-two-seven. Second floor."
The second floor was like tuning a car radio. I heard every station in town. I could almost smell every restaurant, too. Curry powder, oyster sauce, boiling cabbage, garlic, Tabasco sauce, even the autumnal smells of burning marijuana. It was strongest in the hall by Ruth Gideon's door. Maybe the girl next door was baking cookies again.