Cocaine and Blue Eyes

by Fred Zackel

  "What about the prelim?"

  "Oh, we got that." His mind clicked into routine. "OD by injection leading to cardiac arrest."

  I faced him. "I didn't see any hypo."

  "Nobody did, dammit." He gave me a filthy look. "If you were a cop ..." He gave up on me. "Just be down at the Hall Monday morning bright and early."

  "I'll think about it."

  He glared and gave me a final poke. "You be there, Michael." He resented his own anger. "I'll see what I can do about that civil service test. Now, where the hell's Walter?"

  His son was at a dirty book store window, gaping at the plastic peckers and pussies. His eyes were wider than the streets of Baytown.

  "Get your ass over here, Walter, and stop acting like a tourist. Walter, my boy, let's go down to Enrico's, get some cappuccino. Sounds good, doesn't it?"

  Together they went down Broadway.

  A column of blue came up beside me. It was the beat cop, and he stood as tall as Wyatt Earp. He hooked oversized thumbs into his gun belt and assumed Police Stance. He looked me over and looked down at me. "You know the Captain?"

  "You gonna roust me for it?"

  He gave pause. "That's the best cop on the force."

  "Drunk as a skunk, too," I marvelled.

  He relented some. "He got carried away showing off his kid. The kid just graduated from Saint Ignatius."

  "The kid's a jerk," I said. "He couldn't walk across the street without a wino spitting on him."

  Captain Banagan and his son were listening to the street musicians buskering for midnight dimes in front of Enrico's Coffeehouse. The Captain had his arm around his kid. It might've been a touching sight, if the kid hadn't been gawking at the taillights on a jaywalking dancer in feathers and glitter.

  "He wants me to get the kid his first blow job."

  "How're you suppose to do that?"

  The beat cop didn't know. "The kid's packing enough heat for the OK corral," he confided. "The Captain let him carry both guns."

  "So disarm the little bastard."

  His eyes watched traffic. "I'm the beat cop. He's Captain of Detectives." His drowsy eyes missed nothing. "I'll think of something." Suddenly he was on the move. He walked as slow as the traffic after his captain.

  I went inside Brother Baxter's. Several young women jumped me instantly, suggesting sensuous raptures and seductive prices. When I said I was here to see Brother, their claws retracted and they drifted away into idle chatter and porno books. A bouncer with dead man's eyes opened a sliding door. I went upstairs.

  Brother Baxter had a face a cop would stop, eyes that asked for trouble, a nose broken more often than not, and a red cracked neck. His real name was Brendon Montgomery, which didn't scan with his thick Georgia cracker drawl. The drawl was real, too, but he was from Tallahassee, not Georgia. He also had a heart of gold. Once he bought his father a week in a whorehouse. He paid for his mother's divorce after that, and even sent monthly checks so she wouldn't have to work.

  He looked up from a plate of scrambled eggs. "Michael." He had his mouth full, and his hand ushered me inside. "Where've you been keeping yourself?"

  "A little early for breakfast, isn't it?"

  "A little late," he corrected. "Maybe. You want I should send out for more?"

  "Nothing so drastic. I just need some information."

  "Okay. Sure." He pushed away the plate, while his mind raced ahead. "Background or courtroom?"

  "Background. From downstairs."

  He sobered. "You want to listen in."

  "If you'll let me."

  "You saw him coming in here?"

  "Right through the front door."

  "You know which girl?"

  "I didn't want him to spot me."

  "What's he look like?"

  "A good-looking guy, clean, a little flashy but a slow mover, hitting forty, six-foot-two, two-forty, broad shoulders and a beer gut, blue blazer and white shoes."

  He swiveled around and slid back a cabinet door. There was a TV and a video machine inside. They were connected to a closed-circuit camera in the lobby and others in the bedrooms. He stopped the videotape that had been recording, then ran back the tape, occasionally cutting in to set the scene. I saw myself entering Brother Baxter's, talking with the beat cop, to Andrew Banagan. I saw the barker mouthing his spiel. I saw Riki Anatole coming inside.

  "That guy right there."

  He locked the frame and tightened the focus. "Every clown in the world," he grumbled. Then he went forward. A blonde's head appeared and led Riki away.

  "Denise." Brother shrugged. "He's got some taste."

  He turned off the videotape, then played with other switches. The screen stayed blank. He turned back my way. "You never been downstairs."

  "I know what goes on."

  "But you never seen it live." He hit the switch.

  The picture wavered, came into focus, settled down. I was looking into one of the prefab bedrooms downstairs. Riki was naked, on his back on a daybed, and Denise was urging him to climax. He was masturbating, and she wore panties and a bra. They were ten feet apart.

  I told Brother to turn it off.

  "That's all she's allowed to do," he argued.

  "I know that."

  He indicated the screen. "It doesn't bother him. When a man needs an orgasm, he's gotta have one."

  I looked back at the screen. Denise was bright-eyed, excited with her fun. I flashed on Dani. "And women, too?"

  "We get women in here," he admitted. "They pay the same."

  I'd had enough. There was no need to follow Riki any more. Home was the only place left for him. I said goodbye, then went the way I came.

  Downstairs, a customer was arguing with the surfer blonde. "I paid ninety bucks, and I got nothing." The poor fool had fallen victim to these vampires in swim-suits. I had some sympathy for him. If I hadn't known better, I could've fallen once.

  "Prostitution's illegal," the girl told him.

  "I don't get laid," he said. "I just get screwed."

  She had heard that line before. She was growing bored.

  "Lady, I work for the state," he insisted, "and I'm going to file a formal complaint against you and everybody else. This is nothing but fraud."

  The surfer blonde nodded green-gold hair. She was patient as she asked him to leave. The bouncer stood behind her. He was patient, too.

  I left Brother Baxter's and started walking. I had goose bumps on my arms, and not from the cool night air. I felt sick inside, as if I'd been kissing a snake. Nobody's fault but my own. That's what you get playing peeping tom in lotusland.

  I needed a drink. I decided to buy myself one. But not up here on Broadway. Not on this slimy piece of land. The path of least resistance goes downhill, as it always does in this city by the bay. My feet carried me to Chinatown.

  Chapter 28

  Fog writhing in the neon. White light overcoming the blue night. A giant mermaid with big breasts and a broad tail beckoned me inside for a drink. Her slant eyes were a tourist trap, but I decided to take her up on it. Maybe she swam in the same circles as the Anatole dolphin. I could always introduce them if they didn't. Maybe they'd even let me watch.

  The old cashier checked me over and went back to counting receipts. He didn't bother taking his cigar from his mouth. He made his money by the busload.

  The club was smaller than a five-n-dime and darker than a banker's heart. There were dim glowing hurricane lamps above the booths and tables. The club was nautical with a hint of Polynesian. There were several life-size tiki heads, a couple of navy surplus anchors, palm plants that needed watering, even a ceiling fan.

  An all-girl rock band was on stage in the back. They wore white jumpsuits with leather fringes and they sang Top Forty ballads in jagged Cantonese. There was a small dance floor in front of them, chairs and flat tables on either side.

  There were a few customers down in front. Middle-aged Chinese men in casual clothes, they were slumped against their chairs, half-hear
tedly watching the show. Locals, they had to spend their money somewhere.

  A string of Chinese b-girls sat at the bar. They were young and pretty, mostly, and they all wore chang-shans slit up the side, just like the tourists see in store windows on Grant Avenue. The bar itself wasn't very long. Nightclub owners didn't want lingering sorrow. They wanted their customers buying drinks with the ladies.

  I found an empty table and took a load off my mind. The stool was an oversized capstan with padded cushions, about as comfortable as a driftwood sofa.

  A waitress left the string of girls and asked what I was drinking. She'd seen round-eyes slumming in Chinatown nightlife before. Their money was as good as any man's.

  "Anything. It doesn't matter."

  "How about a house drink?"

  I took the list she gave me. The house drinks were all based on rum or gin, and they came in colors prettier than a rainbow. They had cutesy names, too, like Tahitian Tumbler and Tiki TNT. My favorite was the Outrigger's Rigor Mortis.

  "You get to keep the mugs," she told me.

  The mugs had little tiki faces. They looked like old men in a smoke-filled room. They could keep me from drinking coffee in the morning.

  "A brandy and soda," I said. "No. Make it two."

  She headed right for the bar. She was a good waitress.

  A tour busload of Japanese businessmen came in just then. You'd have thought they were entering a church. Their silence was sudden and reverent. Like lost children, they huddled together, finding protection in numbers. Their tour guide couldn't coax them any farther through the foyer. They weren't going to follow the leader everywhere.

  The Chinese women left their barstools and came to help them inside. The businessmen liked that. Their eyes went large at the smiling ladies. The ladies steered them to an empty section far from the local trade. The local trade counted its change and drifted out and went home alone.

  The waitress brought my drinks and set them in front of me, adding mermaid coasters and a couple of gratis packs of mermaid matches. I poured the first drink down my throat.

  She had a smile for me. "You needed that."

  "Yeah." The second wasn't much slower going down.

  "Would you like another round?"

  "Yeah." I remembered my duty. "Can I buy you one?"

  She was agreeable. She went to the bar and had the bartender mix more drinks. She brought back my twins and a drink for herself. She said it was cognac. It was probably cold oolong tea.

  She was older than the others, nearly my age. She was a nice enough woman, but she had sad eyes. There was too much of life behind them. There was too little, too.

  She still stood there. "Mind if I join you?"

  "Glad to have you." I started the second drink.

  "My name is Suzie," she lied. "What's yours?"

  "Michael. Michael Brennen."

  She almost started to wait me out. "So tell me about yourself." She couldn't forget her duty. It was her paycheck, too.

  "Oh, there's not too much to tell," I started.

  "What do you do for a living?"

  I thought it over. "I'm in the jade business." She didn't need to hear I was a private investigator, and I didn't want to be reminded of it. I remembered a cover story from work. "I'm from Paradise. It's near Chico."

  She was amused. "So there is a Paradise in California."

  "That's where crunchy granola comes from. It's mostly a retirement home for John Birchers. My grandmother still lives up there. She sends me apples every harvest. Jonathans and Macintoshes." How did I get into this?

  She wasn't listening, anyway. She only had eyes for the Japanese. I must've looked promising to her in an empty bar, but exercising her seniority rights had blown her cut of the action. At this hour I was a frazzled case, and those businessmen were spending money like tourists.

  The Japanese boys had really loosened up. They were laughing and joking and telling stories, slapping their pants with excitement. They were in Frisco and far from home.

  The Chinese women sat beside them. They laughed when the men laughed. When the men ignored them, they didn't talk to each other. They sat chain-smoking and inscrutable. Like waiters in a Chinese restaurant, they were counting their tips before they got them, almost before they spent them, years after they had earned them.

  I feel pity in every tourist trap. Those who work for the Yankee dollar usually get the minimum wage, but these girls made twenty-five cents less than that. Legal in some California joints if the employee receives tips.

  There's nothing like the minimum wage to breed contempt. That's more than these girls had time to feel. The struggle for survival in America's most crowded ghetto leaves little time for anything else. And what another might mistake for exotic or inscrutable is usually lack of interest doing battle with hunger.

  My own waitress had the same eyes. I didn't bother asking how she had gotten here. I knew her story by looking at her. She was from Hong Kong, or maybe Taiwan. Maybe she had a green card. She lived in a nearby walk-up, a building with more families than there should be tenants. Her money was pooled. There were a lot of mouths to feed. It was an old story in Chinatown.

  Which reminded me. "D'you know Tan Ng?"

  She wasn't impressed. "Everyone in Chinatown knows him." She remembered round eyes. She became cautious, chose her words with care. "He's a lawyer. He helps the old people move out into the Sunset."

  "Sometimes he lets them sink in the sunset," I crabbed.

  "I don't know him very well." She toyed with her coaster. "Is he a friend of yours?"

  "We're in the jade business together."

  A while before she answered. "I can't leave until after last call."

  Oh Jesus. Tan Ng could get you into more than a friendly fantan game. "What do I get for my money?"

  "How much do you have?"

  "How much is all night?" I countered.

  "Two hundred dollars." She braced herself for the inevitable quibblings, but she was already reconciled to anything.

  "What else can I get with it?"

  Her smile didn't waver. "What would you like?"

  "Black rice," I said. Right out of the blue.

  "I don't know what that means," she confessed.

  "It's an old story. Something to smoke."

  Her smile was knowing. "I have some Oaxacan."

  "Oh yeah? You have any to sell?"

  She knew caution. "Maybe in the morning."

  "How about nose powder? Tonight."

  She said nothing. She waited for the pitch.

  "I like staying up all night with a lady," I said. "Coke gets you up, keeps you up."

  "Coke's expensive," she said. "Can you afford it?"

  I showed her Joey Crawford's stash.

  "That's a lot of money." She thought it over. "Lemme see." She left and went to the bar. I told her to bring another round.

  The bartender had her wait until he was finished with the tour bus trade. Then he listened to her story. He gestured, it was no problem. She told him to look me over. He glanced over and saw round eyes. He started rapping hard in Cantonese, like telling her to stop being so greedy. She had started to chill off, anyway. They looked at me as if they hoped 86ing me would go easy. They were forgetting my drinks.

  I threw a twenty on the table, reached over and took her drink. I tasted cold oolong tea.

  She came back without the drinks. "That was my drink." She saw my empties and the twenty. "I forgot your drinks."

  "Forget it. Where's the John?"

  She pointed the way, then looked down at the twenty. She wanted it, but she didn't expect it. She didn't resent me, either. She was simply patient. Maybe I'd leave it behind.

  "It's yours," I said. "Forget it." Yeah. I felt sorry for her. The other women were younger, and young women hustle best. A woman can make the most of it then. A hustler wears her age in her eyes. Pride was the first to leave them.

  Her hand didn't move. The twenty disappeared faster than Saturday night pa
rking. I knew Joey Crawford wouldn't mind.

  The restroom wasn't built for broad-shouldered men. I was a bad case of elbows. There was graffiti on the wall. It was in Chinese. About what I deserved.

  When I left the John, I started to push aside the beaded curtain, then remembered I needed cigarettes. A Chinese sugar daddy was holding up the cigarette machine, whispering sweet Cantonese nothings into his baby beancake's ear. I counted my change. I didn't have enough, anyway.

  I pushed back the curtain. I saw a Chinese male at the front register with the old man. The kid had chipmunk cheeks. I ducked back out of sight, counted to ten fast, then took another peek.

  It was the goon with the nunchukas. And another goon was behind the bar. The old man had his back to them. He was scooping money from the register and putting it into a white envelope. A couple of b-girls stood by with stupid looks on their pretty faces. Two other goons by the door were warming their hands in their hooded parkas.

  It was a nice quiet shakedown. No visible guns.

  There was a payphone on the wall. I called Central Station and said there was a robbery in progress on lower Grant. The duty officer took down the address and told me to wait around. I said sure, hung up, then slipped out the back door.

  I knew the cops would find nothing there, and I knew less than nothing. The touring businessmen didn't understand English and the old man at the register soon wouldn't be able to. The b-girls had no green cards, and the owners had hired them. It was an old story in Chinatown.

  I bought the next morning's paper from the Filipino hawker around the block. He was lame from Corregidor, but he took no medicine and never complained. He had a long face made longer by a stubbly goatee.

  "How's it going?"

  "It's going."

  Four SFPD squad cars flew around the corner, their engines close to hemorrhaging. They flew past us. Their red flashers were on, but they had no siren.

  "Somebody's in trouble," the hawker said. "Whenever I see those guys, I know somebody's in trouble."

  The squad cars fishtailed to the mermaid club, scaring the hell out of a poor cabbie waiting for a fare.

  A brace of coppers jumped from the lead car. One leaped onto his car's hood to get closer. The front door began to open. The cop assumed Police Stance, used both hands to hold his gun, aimed it at the front door.