Cocaine and Blue Eyes

by Fred Zackel

  I knocked on room 227. Footsteps came from behind the door. They came reluctantly, a woman's footsteps when she's alone and not expecting a knock on the door at night.

  She wore a green robe that she held tightly with folded arms. She looked at my water-softened face, my dirty clothes, my mud-streaked hair. "Oh my god!"

  I sighed. "Maybe I could come back tomorrow."

  "Oh no." She told me to come in.

  I shambled in on rubbery legs.

  Her room was munchkin-size. Two people made a crowd, and the far wall was closer than the ceiling. There was a single bed, a dresser, a wall closet. She had tried covering the bleak walls with two-dollar travel posters. She wasn't going anywhere, but she had hopes.

  "What happened to you?"

  "I got mugged," I said.

  Her jade eyes. "You were robbed?"

  "No. Just mugged." A spell of vertigo came over me. I sat on the bed and waited it out. Neither of us knew what to say. She just stared, and I felt stupid.

  "Is there anything I can do?"

  I shook my head. The icicle rattled against my ears. I held my head until it stopped rattling. I wondered why the icicle didn't melt. It had plenty of time to melt. I looked up at Ruth. She looked concerned. Maybe she didn't want me getting sick on her bed.

  Finally I could talk. "How come you're not babysitting tonight?"

  Her smile was faint. "A girl needs a night off once in awhile."

  "It's New Year's Eve," I said. "All those tourists in town. You could name your own price, almost."

  "Money isn't everything." Her smile grew. "Besides, I've seen every movie on the hotel TV."

  "You're going to stay in all night?"

  "Nobody asked me out."

  "I will. Right now."

  She folded her arms again and tucked her hands under the folds. The hardwood floor must've been cold, for her bare feet rubbed at each other. "It's late. We won't be able to get in any place."

  My throat was dry. "We can go to my place."

  She debated it. "All right."

  I almost passed out from relief.

  "I better get ready," she said.

  She took off her robe and hung it inside her small closet. She wore only panties. She had a healthy body. Slender hips and lean thighs. She didn't mind me watching. Maybe she wasn't worried about a sick man. There weren't many clothes in her closet. Another person who could throw all her belongings on the backseat of a car.

  When she was dressed, she lifted me and we left.

  The desk clerk stood by the front door. He watched us like old folks watch the rain. There was nothing he could do about it.

  She wished him a good night. He was silent, wearing the look the Chinese cultivate around round-eyes. It's not inscrutable, but it's better the round-eyes don't know what it means.

  She stopped me on the steps. "What's wrong with him?"

  "He's thinking you've ruined the joint's reputation."

  She cocked a disbelieving eye at me.

  "Scout's honor," I lied.

  "Are you sure he's not jealous?"

  I looked back. The desk clerk had his hands in his pockets and he was playing with himself. "You might be right," I told her.

  She was shivering from the gusts of wind. The storm was almost a squall. The fog-shrouded buildings on Sutler Street were no windbreak against the wind and rain. The rain came sideways like hailstones. It was bitter cold.

  "Where's your car?"

  "Just up the street by the fireplug."

  She took my car keys and took off running, dodging the rain by ducking under awnings and into doorways. I was already soaked, so I lagged behind, getting waterlogged.

  San Francisco is a city of colors. White buildings and green palms and blue skies and the ocean in every breath. But the city when it drizzles is a broken promise. All big cities are ugly in the rain, except maybe Paris, so I'm told, but San Francisco must be the ugliest in the rain. Everything is grey and moody and fogbound, and the clouds seem to hover around third floor windows.

  She had the car and the heater running when I got inside. They didn't seem to matter much. The winds howled between my windows and around the doors. Cold seeped through the floorboards.

  "Anything to drink at your place?"

  I'd forgotten that.

  "There's a liquor store up ahead. Next to the gay bar."

  I drove the half-block and pulled into a yellow zone. We went in together. She picked out two bottles of wine. The Arab shopkeeper told me they cost nine dollars. I searched through Joey's bankroll for a tenner.

  "Is that all yours?" Her eyes were wider than a rookie cop with his first book of tickets.

  "Evidence. A case I'm working on."

  "Would anybody miss some of it?"

  "Probably not." I grinned. "Why? Are you planning on rolling me?"

  "If I could, I would. How much is that?"

  "I won't tell you, so you won't be tempted."

  "You better put it away. I'm tempted now."

  I thought how tempted I was. I didn't know why I was holding onto it. With this dough, I could live down in Mexico and miss most of the rainy season. Instead I bought two bottles of wine.

  The rain was forming wide pools across Geary Boulevard. Cars were sailboating from lane to lane, and emergency brake flashers dotted every other block. One car ahead went into a 360 degree turn, sideswiping a small foreign car, then finally colliding with the median barrier.

  I wasn't too happy, either. My wipers were worn. Just as they'd clear a swatch of glass, some joker would roar by me tossing rooster-tails of rainwater back onto my windshield, and I'd be blind again. I felt like I was steering a submarine through rough ocean swells.

  But, somehow, my car managed to cut a wake through the floods. Somehow we weren't sideswiped or drowned. The car began to smell of wet clothes drying. A muskiness that increased the tension between us. Ruth resolved it by moving closer to me.

  I parked in front of my apartment building. There was no one on the streets, and no lights were on in my building. Even my landlady's apartment was dark. New Year's Eve, of course. Everyone was out partying.

  We took the elevator upstairs. When we got to my flat, I reached inside and snapped on the overhead light. Ruth walked in first. She gave a low whistle. I stepped around to see why.

  Someone had broken in and had searched my place. They'd done a great job, too. My apartment looked like a hippie van after a customs check.

  My newspapers, the ones I'd been too lazy to throw out, had been pulled from the closet and thrown everywhere. My couch had been overturned, and the lining had been ripped with a knife. The back panel of my television set had been removed. Every cupboard had been emptied, and most of the foodstuffs were scattered over the counter. The ice trays had been defrosted, and even the wall plugs had been removed.

  The telephone rang. I answered it.

  "Brennen?" A man's voice. Throaty and low.

  "Yeah? What is it?"

  "If you don't quit this case, they'll do you just like they did Joey Crawford."

  I gripped the phone. "Who is this?" He had hung up. On a hunch, I drew back the drapes and looked up and down the dark street.

  A man slithered from the phone booth by the hamburger joint on the corner. He scampered through the rain and jumped into a silver Porsche. The engine coughed, shook itself awake, making more noise than a power lawnmower. The headlights snapped on, and the car spun out onto Geary, then disappeared.

  Ruth was straightening the furniture.

  "I didn't bring you here to clean house."

  "Why don't you grab a shower?" she said.

  An idea whose time had come. I needed a shower, a good long one. And tonight with everybody in the building out partying, there just might be enough hot water.

  The bathroom had been hit, too. My toothpaste tube had been squeezed dry, and there were fluoridated squiggles all over the sink. The toilet paper holder and the shower curtain rod had both been torn loose, on
the off-chance one or both were hollow. The Boston fern on the tank top had been unpotted, and dirt covered the tile floor.

  I cleaned what I could, gave up before the room was clean, then shucked my clothes and hopped into the shower. The needle spray was a thousand pine needles. Slowly the fatigue washed away from me. I almost felt human again, not a puppet managed by a nitwit.

  The shower curtain was pulled back. Ruthann came into the shower. She was very much naked. Red ringlets glistened like copper below her navel.

  And there was time for kisses and caresses, splashing feet and make-believe falls, giggles and baby talk and laughter.

  Later, when she pushed my hands away, we rinsed off the soap and stepped from the shower and toweled each other dry.

  There was a full-length mirror on the inside bathroom door. Our reflections were half-hidden by steam. We seemed to fit together, like the chords of some song.

  I held her close and kissed her. I could smell the creme rinse in her hair. It smelled like vanilla extract. "I'm glad you're not babysitting," I told her.

  She opened her eyes and stared into mine. Her jade eyes were deep as a mountain lake. A man could get lost in them. I looked down at her long fingernails. Red nails lost in the darker curls of my chest.

  She took my hand. I led her to my bed. We made love like all first-time lovers. We were clumsy, awkward, too much aware of our bodies. And it was over too soon as it always is.

  I didn't fall asleep when she did. I couldn't sleep. I peeled away the covers and left the bedside. She didn't waken. A man leaving bed in the middle of the night was not a strange feeling for her.

  I pulled back my landlady's drapes and looked out across my city. The rain had stopped, and the storm was busy moving eastward. Fog was blowing in from the Golden Gateway. This was not the white fog of summer, but grey and serpentine. Winter fog meant the rainy season had settled in. A lone searchlight from the harbor patiently flailed at it, like a man knifing a ghost.

  I opened the window. Cars sluicing through the rainwater on Geary. Fire sirens from the downtown districts for an instant. And behind them all, reverberating, the foghorns on the bay.

  I watched a tomcat doing a tightrope on my neighbor's fence. My neighbor's kitchen light flicked on. Then I heard a burst of high-speed Cantonese. A young boy's voice, then a man's deeper tones. The cat crouched with bright fearing eyes.

  I waited until it came. A string of firecrackers. Then several shots from a deer rifle. Lastly, a shotgun's double barrel boomed through the moist night, erasing for a moment the foghorns.

  Ruthann jumped from the sheets like a startled fawn. She grappled me from behind, and her body shook, chilled by the noise and the randy evening. Her voice was shrill, noise to my ears. "Gunshots! Those were...!"

  "Take it easy," I whispered. Her waist in my hands. "It's just my neighbors celebrating the New Year."

  "New Year?" She was startled. "It's midnight?

  "Yes, it's midnight. Come to bed."

  She gawked at my neighbors. "They're Chinese!" She leaned over the ledge. "Don't they have their own?"

  I coaxed her back to bed. I calmed her shaking body. I palmed her pubic hair. Her flat stomach fluttered with my touch. A moment later she caught her breath, and her body slowed from its tremblings. A moment later, it found another rhythm.

  "Mmmm. Again."

  "You like that?"

  "Yes. I like that."

  Midnight. The last day of the year.

  I brushed a red hair from my lips.

  Chapter 14

  From my bed I watched the moon set behind the Farallones. The islands, thirty miles out in the Pacific, are rarely visible from the city. Too much haze on the water, usually. But last night's storm had cleared the air, and now those granite rocks were bathed in moonlight and daylight.

  The Chinese celebrate New Year's Day as the time when debts are paid, when accounts are settled, when grudges are forgotten. I wasn't so civilized. I wanted to do nothing today. It was my holiday, too, and I wanted to enjoy it. I wasn't going to play detective today. Not when the moon was setting in the Pacific, when the skies were clear and the sun was warm, when a fine woman shared my bed.

  For six months I had slept alone. Now Ruth Gideon slept beside me. Her legs were curled around mine for warmth, and her long hair had fallen on the pillow like a rouge Niagara. She looked lovely in the moon glow, in first light. Better than I deserved. I wasn't sure what to say when she awoke.

  I was a damn fool to get involved with Dani Anatole's life. It wasn't my business some female grew apart from her boyfriend. It was natural, normal, an everyday thing, and I didn't have to play detective for a living.

  I had joined Pac-Con for a job. Not because I wanted to be a trained investigator, but because I needed a paycheck every two weeks to put food into my kids' mouths. The job paid forty a day. It paid the landlord, the pediatrician, the finance company, the supermarket.

  There's nothing wrong with the nine-to-five existence. Nothing wrong with a paycheck every two weeks. Nothing wrong with two weeks paid vacation, major medical and dental, pension points and group insurance.

  I just never made it as a company man. I was embarrassed by what I had to do. The job was a snap, even for me, and I have no illusions. I'm not much of an investigator.

  But I couldn't quit. I had a family to support. But then it became easier and easier to quit, harder and harder to stay. So I let myself get fired. The easiest way out.

  I lay there a full hour, watching the moon falling into the sea, watching the new year rising with the sun. Smoking cigarette after cigarette. Her cigarettes. I didn't know why I was back in the game.

  Her cigarettes eventually made me sick.

  I slid from bed and found some clothes and grabbed my car keys and wallet. There was an Arab mom-n-pop ten blocks away that was open every holiday, even the Arabic ones. I didn't bother leaving a note. A quake wouldn't budge Ruth, and I'd be back within a dozen minutes.

  When I reached the streets, the early morning westerlies off the Pacific tousled my hair. I didn't bother raking the tangles. The winds were warm and this was a Farallones holiday. A great way to start off the new year.

  I got into my car, started the motor and rolled down my window. There was a lot of sunshine and ocean breeze today. I wanted my share.

  A late-model Camaro lumbered down the street. Its ass was higher than its hood. A large decal said Camaro in block letters on the rear window. It drove past slowly, then reversed itself until it was almost alongside.

  There were four Chinese males inside. They didn't look intimidating. I'd seen their kind before, usually cruising Broadway near the topless clubs. Just teenagers trying to keep back the boredom. Voyeurs with little money and too much time.

  The driver left his car and came over. He was moustached and near my age. His eyes were black glass, unflinching, like rattlesnake eyes. He said something that I didn't catch. Thinking he needed directions, I asked him to repeat it.

  He kicked my door. "You cut me off on Geary."

  I said nothing. I wasn't worried about my car. It had plenty of dents. One more was nothing. This goon hadn't confused me with anyone. I was being ambushed. Like teenagers baiting hookers, these Chinese were out baiting the white folks. Looking for trouble and hoping they had found it. They couldn't have timed it better. The world was hung over, and there'd be no witnesses today.

  "I'm talking to you, round-eyes."

  I watched his three buddies. They had left his Camaro and were fanning out around me. They moved like men who had been drinking warm red wine by the jug all night. Not drunk, just weary from steady drinking. I got a little worried then. These guys could be crazies. With a little heat in them, they might try anything.

  One had chipmunk cheeks. He brought two woods sticks from his jacket. Two short pieces of wood held together by a short swivel chain. He came head-on, and he had eyes for my windshield.

  The other two were younger. They looked sleepy-eyed. Maybe
they were up too early. One sidled around the right side. I looked around and behind. The doors were locked. He wouldn't get in that way. The other disappeared behind me. I heard a jarring sound, felt the car rock. The goon was on my trunk, crawling forward. I didn't bother to look.

  The circle was closing in.

  The sticks registered then. They were nunchukas. A vicious pound of steel and wood. They were more than lethal. They had been used in karate classes until the state outlawed them.

  Whip them forward and reverse, and they could crack a human skull or break an arm in two. In the hands of a pro, they're twice as fast as cheetahs. But you didn't need to be a pro. A little natural coordination, five minutes of instruction, another fifteen of practice, and you can take on the world. Just right for street punks with inferiority complexes.

  And the goon wanted my windshield.

  I set my foot on the brake and slipped the gearshift into low. The car moved imperceptibly. I wanted to be ready to fly. I lifted the door handle. The door was open. It would swing freely.

  Rattlesnake Eyes had been talking. I hadn't heard one word. I looked up his way just as he called me a "lackey dog." I told him to go fuck himself.

  He blew up then. Unleashed a burst of short jabs at me. It was hard fending the flurry of fists with just my hands. I did my best, then popped open my door. I slammed it against his knees, nearly toppling him.

  It didn't stop him. He lunged through the window, got a grip on my neck and tried throttling me. I grabbed a wrist and twisted it with both hands. I peeled his fingers off, but his other hand still peppered my face.

  I caught a glimpse through the windshield. I shouldn't have looked. The maniac with the nunchukas had the sticks swinging in a fast circle through the air.

  I grabbed Rattlesnake Eyes by the wrists and twisted. Chipmunk Cheeks whip-snapped his wrists. I closed my eyes and stomped on the gas pedal. The windshield shattered. I felt slivers driving into my face. The car shot forward, hauling ass down the street. I held onto the wrist and dragged him with me. The goon on the trunk tumbled off. I could feel the wind roar through the hole in the windshield. The car dragged Rattlesnake Eyes down the street. He had a heart-rending scream. It was louder than the engine's roar, the roar of the wind. And he was so hard to hold.