Since then she’d made her way doing Tarot readings, on street corners or for dealers’ girlfriends or wherever, before finally landing the Psychic Unicorn job and actually making some decent money. The steady paycheck was definitely nice, but Carmel wondered sometimes if it wasn’t putting her into a rut – a rut she was too young to be happy in for long.
Carmel had bounced over here to Alameda because she could afford the rent on her Psychic Unicorn pay, and quickly discovered that her neighbors were very patriotic about the Island. The locals ensured she was aware that Alameda was home to the Popsicle and Skippy peanut butter, and that Jim Morrison had called the Island home as well.
Her landlords had even persuaded Carmel to sit through Alameda’s last Fourth of July parade – it was one of the largest and longest in the country, and Carmel was startled to discover the parade route was three miles long on a five mile long Island. She’d been delighted at the parade-goers creativity as well, as she’d watched the passing homemade floats and vintage cars, motorized living room furniture and marching bands, fire breathing dragons and lots of enthusiastic people. . . .
Between the small town pretensions of its residents, and Alameda’s many tree-lined neighborhoods and pre-1906-Earthquake Victorians, Carmel could almost forget she was smack dab in the middle of one of the densest urban sprawls in the country. She could almost pretend she was back in Humboldt with friends and family.
Carmel was still in a sleep-deprived haze as she hooked over onto Buena Vista and walked along past Littlejohn Park. Across the street was the waterfront: boatyards, industrials and warehouses slowly crumbling into rubble, and lots of low unidentified brick buildings built flush with the now-unused rail lines curving along the eastern length of the Island.
She found Littlejohn Park soothing – a place where she’d sat so often in the closest (miniaturized) approximation to home she’d found here, eyes closed listening to the birds and smelling the domesticated vegetation as she imagined she was back amongst her peeps up in SoHum again.
She tamped down her cigarettes and tore off the cellophane, dragged out the first fresh smoke of the pack with her teeth. As Carmel lit her coffin nail and took that initial deep wonderful carcinogenic kick start of a drag, she sensed a vehicle pulling up behind her, braking and slowing to pace her at the curb.
Carmel gazed that way with a tired sidelong glance as she continued to walk along like she was clueless, a trickle of smoke coming out her nostrils to trail behind her.
A white Bronco rolled next to her filled with four stone-faced young males, all wearing Cazal sunglasses and bandannas.
Damn, Carmel thought with a sudden sinking feeling, glancing around to see what was what. There were no other people or vehicles in sight.
Maybe they’ll go away, she thought, but she already knew better than to believe that.
Carmel heard a window opening. She stopped walking and turned to face the Bronco now idling next to her at the curb.
All of them were wearing track suits; all of them were aiming their sunglasses at her. To Carmel they looked like bugs.
The banger riding shotgun had a sneer stamped onto his stereotypically conformed face as if with a cookie cutter. “I’m gonna fuck you, bitch. What you say to that?”
The driver snickered at his friend’s wit. The two in back merely watched and waited, as if instructors observing a student’s final exam.
All of a sudden the raggedy redhead from the liquor store was there at Carmel’s shoulder; almost making her jump his appearance was so silent and sudden. He dropped his gaze to the car door submissively, not meeting the eyes of anyone in the Bronco.
“Please don’t hurt us,” the redhead begged.
Carmel could see his hands trembling he was so afraid. He stepped back from the car, half turning as if to run away. The door unlatched and the passenger with the big mouth swung it open as he swiveled in his seat, grinning in the expectation of easy meat.
Big Mouth had one foot out on the curb and his head was coming up around the edge of the door – Big Mouth had something in his hand. The redhead spun back around and thrust his foot against the opening passenger door hard enough to make the metal crumple inward a little under his foot’s impact. The car door leapt back on its hinges to crunch against Big Mouth’s head, wrist and knee.
A knife clattered to the pavement from Big Mouth’s hand and he started to slump out of the car as the dented door bounced back open in equal and opposite reaction. His Cazal shades hung split in two on his pulped nose: one half hanging off an ear and the other falling to the pavement where the lens shattered with a tinkle. His uncovered eyes were rolling and unfocused.
With a curse, the driver leaned over and grabbed Big Mouth by the back of the coat and started to drag him back inside.
The redhead took a flying leap in the air and kicked the door again, catching Big Mouth’s leg once more. This time the crunch was accompanied by Big Mouth’s semi-conscious yelp of agony, and the unmistakable pistol crack of breaking bone.
The driver had finally had enough. He dragged Big Mouth the rest of the way in and tromped the gas. The door slammed shut with the force of the Bronco’s takeoff.
The redhead stooped to scoop up a chunk of brick from the gutter and shot-putted it after the fleeing vehicle. It fell short, bouncing a few times in the street. The two gangbangers in the backseat were too cool to even turn around and look. The redhead stood there and watched the Bronco take the next corner at speed and disappear.
“What are you, my knight in shining armor?” Carmel asked, not really irked but at a loss to evaluate what had just happened.
The redhead turned to her, startled, like he’d forgotten she was even there. Their gazes met.
Carmel took a sudden step back. His chain lightning gaze pierced her to her core, and she felt a flutter in the base of her stomach that reminded her that it had been months since she’d gotten laid, and that she was horny as hell.
Checking him out, Carmel saw a tall, wiry, broad-shouldered man with cow-licked red hair and goatee, and Asian-looking eyes despite their bright blue color. He seemed perfectly centered within himself despite his worn clothes, and he stood as naturally within this gray urban background as if it was part of him instead of the other way around.
He took a wary step back himself, searching Carmel’s face as if for something he couldn’t even identify.
She knew what he saw: a tall girl with dyed black hair over a face made pale by makeup, with black lipstick and chipped black fingernail polish; dressed in black leather pants, black leather motorcycle jacket, and black leather engineer boots; and with enough piercings on her eyebrows and ears to put off most squares.
“What’s your name?” Carmel asked, in a quiet voice.
“Speedy,” he replied, just as quiet and strangely intimate.
Suspicion suddenly flowed through her, maybe in stubborn reaction to the hothouse attraction she was feeling here. “Can I ask why you came after me like that?”
Speedy held his hand out, displaying the 20 she’d laid on him back at the store.
“I’m not a bum,” he explained, holding the bill out to her til she took it back.
There was some hubbub from the direction of the store and the short shaven-headed buzz-saw guy from the beer cooler came striding toward them holding a case of PBR under each arm.
“What’s shaking, brother?” he asked, staring at Carmel without affection.
“Just chasing off some varmints,” Speedy said. He turned to Carmel. “You live around here?”
Carmel jerked her chin at the subdivided Victorian she called home, down the block from Little John Park. “Up there. I can walk myself.”
She started that way but Speedy stayed right beside her. After a second Speedy’s friend tagged along like wasn’t about to leave without his bro, though hanging back like he was impatient to be stepping off away from Carmel.
“I didn’t ask for your help,” Carmel said, not wanting Speedy to thin
k he had anything coming from her – but she didn’t trust herself to look at him, didn’t trust the response he seemed to inspire in her. “I’m no damsel in distress. I could’ve handled the situation.”
Carmel reached her hand in her jacket pocket for reassurance, touched her pepper spray as she risked a sidelong glance at him.
“I can see that,” Speedy said, pursing his lips with an approving nod. “I’m sure you would’ve had no problem with the four of them, no matter what all they were packing.”
Carmel snorted in not-unfriendly ridicule, turning to him in brow-raised challenge. “So what would you have done if they’d all piled out the car?”
They’d reached Carmel’s house. She got ready to deliver the sign off and let him down easy, maybe go inside and crank up the vibrator for a while before logging on again.
Speedy looked up and down the street and then half-pulled the sawed-off from his field jacket pocket for Carmel’s inspection. “They were focused on you,” he explained. “They let me get too close for numbers to matter.”
He made the gun disappear again as she pulled up short and stood shocked in the middle of the sidewalk. He continued on a few steps past her house before stopping and looking back at her as if surprised she wasn’t still strolling next to him unconcerned.
Carmel came out of her stunned trance, headed up the walk away from him and put a foot on the bottom porch step. She turned, caught Speedy looking at her strangely.
“What?” she asked.
Speedy appeared uncomfortable. “I was just wondering if – maybe you’d like to go out sometime, I mean for a cup of coffee or something.”
Carmel grinned, then she threw her head back and laughed and laughed.
When she finally stopped Speedy was looking at her with a hangdog expression on his Doberman face, and she quickly reached out to touch his arm. “Of course I’ll go out with you – I live in apartment D, you can come by any old time.”
She hurried up the steps but stopped midway through the front door to smile back at Speedy, her eyes dancing. “Okay, you played them like fish. That was pretty slick.”
Speedy shrugged. “Well, it’s not like the competition was very stiff.”
“You own, man. You own. Oh yeah: My name is Carmel.” Then she was gone, and Speedy was looking at her closed front door.
There was a mocking snicker behind him and Fat Bob asked, “So is this true love?”
“Shut the fuck up, Bob,” Speedy said in a distracted voice, before tearing his eyes away from Carmel’s door and walking back toward the car with his friend.
Little Miya was standing on the front seat leaning against the dashboard, goggling at them both through the windshield as she awaited their return. She’d seen everything.
As the two men got in the car Fat Bob turned to Miya and said, “You know that was just playing, right honey?”
Miya wasn’t buying into it, however.
“He wasn’t playing,” the little girl said, staring at Speedy.
There was an uncomfortable silence for a few seconds.
“Oh yeah,” Speedy remembered. “We got to stop off at Taco Bell on the way back.
Chapter 17
Waiting for their order at the Taco Bell drive through, Fat Bob felt eyeballs on him. Looking in through the drive-up window Bob saw one of the employees looking right at him and wearing a smirk. The burrito folder turned to a small huddle of his fellow fast food drones and said something.
Bob caught the phrase ‘Fuckin losers,’ clear as day. The other employees all laughed.
When the Burrito Folder came back to the window and handed them their food, Fat Bob said, “Meaning no disrespect and all, correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought I heard you making some less than kind comments about me and my friend in there.”
The Burrito Folder tried to play it off. “Naw, man, I was just joking, nothing personal, you know?”
The Burrito Folder saw how Fat Bob was still staring at him – Speedy looking on with casual, almost benign interest – and the guy copped an attitude, feeling safe way back up there behind his window. “Hey, fuck you if you can’t take a joke anyway. You need to roll, people are waiting behind you in line.”
Fat Bob nodded with a chagrinned quirk on his lips, as if in wry agreement with the inalterable. “It’s all good. Can I get some extra hot sauce?”
Burrito Folder appeared to consider refusing at first, but he was well programmed in customer service. He obediently rummaged around underneath the counter and extended a handful of plastic packets out the window toward Bob.
Bob acted like he was reaching for the hot sauce, but instead latched a brawny hand onto Burrito Folder’s wrist. Bob tapped his foot on the gas, the Valiant gave a little spurt forward, and Burrito Folder rocketed out the window to hang suspended in a sagging human bridge – from his toes desperately hooked over the window frame on one end, to Bob casually holding his wrist at the other.
Fat Bob got ready to give it the gas again and drag the fool a bit to school him in more respectful behavior, but Miya piped up from the backseat: “No, Uncle Robert.”
She wasn’t weeping and wailing. This kind of behavior was obviously old news to the little girl, and Miya was just reminding Fat Bob of her presence and stating her requirements.
After a moment Bob let go of Burrito Folder’s wrist and the punk’s hands scrabbled down the side of the Valiant before plopping onto the pavement below, supporting him head downward. His toes were still doing their best to grip the inside of the window frame and keep him from sliding all the way out. It appeared to Speedy like he was trying for a handstand but lacked the skill or the upper body strength to quite pull it off.
All the other employees were darting back and forth inside, ducking and dipping, peeping over the edges of the windows or peering around corners at them.
Bob couldn’t resist: He started ducking and skulking in his seat in mockery, jerking around like he was scared, right back at them. He opened his eyes wide, fluttered his hands at them, taunting them all.
“I think maybe we want to eat at home,” Speedy said. “We probably don’t want to chow down here in the parking lot.”
“You may be right.” Bob stopped his pantomime, tired of poking the fast fooder’s withered egos with the sharp stick of his ridicule.
As the Valiant peeled out, Speedy noted the various reactions amongst the people in the line of cars at the drive-through: some were as dismayed as the Taco Bell employees, but most were raucously amused.
When they got back to the crib Willy was up and about. He wasn’t looking any too good – but he was standing, there wasn’t a crack pipe in his hand, and his appetite was back in full force to judge by how he ogled the sacks of food.
Speedy had bought a full assortment of Taco Bell. He knocked on Sergio and TJ’s doors and the two roommates came out to join the feast at the coffee table. They were both silent and didn’t join in on the general conversation; but they listened with interest to all the banal exchanges between the three crime partners.
Miya went into the kitchen carrying the kitten under one arm. Speedy could hear her dragging a chair across the floor, and heard her fumbling in a drawer
He went in to check up. She had a can opener out and was opening the cat food they’d bought at the liquor store. Her hands were a little too small for the appliance but she was getting it done.
“Need help?” Speedy asked.
“No thank you,” Miya said, but smiled at him before putting the open can on the floor in front of the kitten, which made like a furry little vacuum cleaner.
“Your niece is pretty self-reliant,” Speedy said back in the front room, grabbing a taco from the rapidly diminishing pile on the coffee table.
Willy, Sergio and T.J. were huddled over the food like ape-men at a primordial feast. Fat Bob was standing; gnawing on a burrito with one foot braced on the table like his assembly line food product was going to try and escape.
Bob considered Speedy�
�s words as he chewed and swallowed, scowling as he did so. “Well I try, you know? But that kid has to look after herself way too much.”
“If I could swing it,” Bob rasped, taking another bite and talking with his mouth full, “I’d take her away from this place.”
When they were done eating Willy said, “I need more books for future reference. Can you give me a ride up to Telegraph, Bob?”
“Sure. Miya likes the Ave. You want to come Speedy?”
Speedy nodded assent.
Little Willy went into his room, talking to himself for a few minutes as he gleaned a few of his less precious volumes to trade. They left the red-eyed stoners to polish off the rest of the Taco Bell.
Chapter 18
At Miya’s request Fat Bob had the car radio tuned to 610 KFRC – ‘San Francisco with the Best Music!’ She loved Dr. Donald D. Rose, and she laughed as Dr. Don did his wacky trademark sound byte, saying “That’s right. That’s right. That’s RIGHT,” over and over (and freakin over) again in that manic voice of his. This morning Dr. Don inaugurated their trip by playing Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’ and Miya serenaded the carload of men, singing along in her strident little girl falsetto.
Bob took them under the Estuary through the Posey Tube, north on the Nasty Nimitz to the junction, and inland on the Grove Shafter til just past the Macarthur Interchange. After that it was surface streets the whole rest of the way: Fat Bob took Shattuck into Southside Berkeley, jogged east on Ashby and then drove ‘Telepath’ Avenue north to the UCB Campus.
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