by Peter Plate
Shoving him backwards, Richard catapulted Stiv onto the bed. As if he had been shot from a cannon, Stiv’s head crunched into the wall. Unable to control his bladder, he peed in his boxers. Urine ran over his leg, wetting his Dickies.
Richard Rood narrowed his eyes. Stiv was flopping on the sheets no different than a fish out of water. He had soiled his jeans and was ranking up the room. There was nothing cute about him. He looked half dead with the burns on his face. Killing him wouldn’t prove a damn thing. The emotion was powerful and washed over Richard. It scared him. The futility of violence was something he’d never considered before in his forty-eight years on the planet. Head in a whirl, he didn’t know what to think. Dispensing pain was his religion. Little compared to the merriment of putting the hurt on someone. But he was sick to hell of warring with his inferiors. Murdering Stiv would be a waste of calories and no more satisfying than snuffing a roach. It was better to let the bitch live and suffer. That was punishment enough. An even better policy would be to forget his ass.
Richard pulled up the chair and sat in it. He unzipped his jacket and beheld Stiv. The white boy was an amoeba under his microscope. He said, “You know what?”
Reclining on the bed, Stiv had the impression there was a lull in the action and he took the opportunity to smooth out the wet stains on his pants. He was taciturn. “What?”
“You’re stupider than all get out,” Richard said. “The dumbest damn thing I ever did see.”
Stiv’s eyes watered from the pain in his nose. “Huh?”
“You want me to repeat myself? You’re stupid and ignorant.”
“So?”
“Damn it, I’m trying to tell you something. Listen up because I’m having a fucking epiphany as we speak.”
Stiv’s curiosity was piqued. “What is it?”
“Like, fuck it.”
Stiv’s ears perked up. He heard an unexpected reprieve in Richard’s words and it sounded promising. “Fuck it?”
“Don’t you understand shit? That’s what I said. I said fuck it.”
“Fuck what?”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck me?”
“Yeah, you.”
Stiv was let down. He was greedy and wanted more. “That’s all?”
Richard ran a finger over his scar. “No.”
“What else?”
“Fuck the damn money.”
Stiv needed clarification. “What money?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Don’t be coy with me.”
“Huh?” Stiv didn’t want to lose the détente that was growing between him and Richard Rood. He said, “I ain’t, man.”
Richard slipped him a dirty look. “You’d better not be bullshitting me. If you is, you’re as good as cooked.”
“No, no, I’m cool.”
“Okay. You know the shit you owe me? That money?”
Stiv swallowed. He was having the worst heartburn of his life. “What about it?”
“Fuck it.”
“Fuck it?”
“Yeah, what the hell. Fuck it.”
“I don’t believe it.” Stiv was agog. Richard Rood had gone completely around the bend. The killer was losing his marbles. He said, “Holy shit. You don’t want your money? Jesus … what for?”
Richard had come to a decision. “That’s right, motherfucker. I don’t want it.”
“Oh, no.” Stiv was flabbergasted. “Why the hell not?”
Richard Rood thought about the old lady with the shoebox and said what he had to say. “Serendipity.”
Stiv had never heard of serendipity. Nobody in the streets was talking about it. None of the dealers he knew had any. You just couldn’t buy it like heroin, speed, or weed. That meant one thing: it had to be an au courant designer drug that came in limited quantities with the distribution tightly controlled by the suppliers. It was something only the elite was into. Not the folks on Market Street. A pang of envy tunneled through Stiv. Richard Rood was one hip cat. He went to great parties and knew the right people. He was probably high on the shit right now.
“Hey,” Stiv said. “I can get the cash for you. Just give me a little time,” he pleaded. “Another day and I’ll deliver it to you.”
Richard wasn’t having it. “Shut the fuck up.”
Stiv Wilkins couldn’t believe his luck. Richard Rood had abolished his debt and had spared his life in the bargain. The odds had been against it. The resurrection of Jesus Christ had been more likely. The clanging in his ears dissipated. The metal taint on his tongue went away. He lay amidst the furzy blankets flying on cloud nine. “Whatever you want, dude,” he said fervently.
TWENTY-THREE
IT WAS TWO IN THE MORNING when Mama Celeste returned to the Allen Hotel. Backtracking through the foyer, she retreated up the unlighted staircase accompanied by a family of mice. A drunk in the bathroom on the second floor was softly singing “Fly Me to the Moon” by Frank Sinatra. His voice was raw, giving an edge to the upbeat lyrics.
By the fifth floor, Mama Celeste thought she was going to croak. Her throat was parched. Her feet were about to fall off. She had gas, nothing bad, but it had been known to get worse at the drop of a hat. One-hundred-dollar bills were clinging to her coat. Another one was on her baseball hat. Mama trekked down the hall to her room, unkeyed the door, gave it a nudge, and tramped inside.
Turning on the overhead light, she stripped off the army jacket, the Giants hat, and the bandanna. Then she placed the shoebox on the bed, sat down, and untied her lumpy orthopedic shoes. “Oy vey,” she said. Her joints ached; sciatic pains flooded her left leg. Maybe she should take a couple of Tylenol, the extra-strength type. Tomorrow she would buy some.
The room was frigid, so she swung her legs off the ground and got under a quilt. Making herself comfy, she tallied the cash in the shoebox but quit counting after ninety-seven thousand dollars. It was nerve wracking, all the mathematics. And the gelt stowed inside the Brinks bag in her chest drawer? That was more than she dared to think about. It was enough to give her an epileptic fit. A million. Two million. Three million. Who knew? She couldn’t reckon with numbers that high. They made her queasy.
What should she do with the money in the box? She needed an expert’s advice. But she didn’t trust a banker. She couldn’t go to the cops. She didn’t want to ask her neighbors. Throwing back the blankets, Mama piled out of bed and got down on her knobby knees. She put her arthritic hands together and prayed. God, she asked, what in tarnation can I do?
She waited five minutes. There was no answer. That was fine. She wasn’t worried—it happened all the time. Anyway she was getting warmed up. She repeated the litany. Ten more minutes went by. She didn’t hear anything. Now she was concerned. Maybe she had the wrong number. Maybe the line was busy.
Her knees ached from the hard floor, and it was cold in the room. She tried a third time. There was no reply and her spirits sank. Nobody was at home and Mama Celeste was ready to quit. Then God finally spoke. His message made her eyes bulge in their sockets; electricity crackled in her teeth. She broke into a sweat and said, amen.
Rearing to her feet, she hoisted the shoebox from the bed. She cradled it to her breasts and toddled to the window. Tying back the curtains, she inspected the city. A police helicopter ack-acked through the velour sky behind the Federal Building on Turk Street. A Muni bus with no passengers rambled by the Allen Hotel. The palm trees in the street palsied as arrows of fog blew through their fronds. A crow was on a phone booth in front of the Zuni Café. Jimmying open the window frame, Mama periscoped her head outside. The briny wind seared her skin, blowing a draft up her dress and sending a shiver down her spine. It was a sheer drop four stories to the pavement. If she fell, she’d be pizza on the sidewalk.
The cash in the shoebox shone like Christ in the manger on the day he was born. You could almost hear heavenly angels singing in the background, cherubs chorusing halleluiah. New to the world, the money was untainted by the problems that followed hard currenc
y wherever it went. Raising the box over her head in a salute, Mama Celeste threw it out the window.
The shoebox went in one direction. The paper, one hundred thousand dollars, bolstered by the current, went flying over the street. A deluge of Ben Franklins, Ulysses Grants, and Andrew Jacksons strafed the ground. It spread out like confetti on the grimy sidewalk, inciting a riot among the five hundred pigeons that had been sleeping on the cement.
Jeeter Roche slinked out the Allen Hotel’s door onto the front stoop for a cigarette. Garbed in a yellow doo-rag, a turpentine-stained tank top, and a pair of pajama bottoms, his buffed arms were sectioned with jailhouse tattoos. A collection of short stories by the Canadian writer Alice Munro was in his pajama pocket. He stabbed a tailor-made between his lips and fired it up, taking a deep drag. The bowl of opium-laced Nepalese hash that he’d smoked upstairs in the drug room was kicking in.
Despite getting his nose bloodied by Richard Rood, Jeeter was relieved with how the day had gone and surveyed the lobby with satisfaction. The rent had been collected for the landlords and was in the bank. The trash had been taken out. The floors were waxed. The walls had been scrubbed. Everything was ship-shape. When the building inspectors came next week to look at the hotel, they’d find no violations.
Things hadn’t always been this good. When Jeeter came to the city five years ago, hitchhiking in from Los Angeles without a dime in his pockets, he’d lived on the street and peddled nickel bags of oregano at Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park. The money had been bad. The police were a headache. The other dealers stole from you and smiled in your face.
The cops arrested him one afternoon and threw him in a paddy wagon with a black homeboy his age, them and a couple of Vietnam vet winos. The interior of the van had been too small for the four miscreants. The black guy wouldn’t sit still; he heard somebody tampering with the van’s door from the outside and threw himself at it. The door opened; the homeboy jumped out and diddy-bopped across Hippie Hill.
The park had been crowded with tourists. The police officers were chatting up three girls from Britain and didn’t see him flee. Jeeter followed the black dude out and skulked past the policemen. Their mouths gaped when they saw him. The cops pursued Jeeter with their guns drawn—ducking into a grove of redwoods, he scurried through the children’s playground into the bushes and lost them.
That had been the turning point in his life. Jeeter had been in and out of the state’s penal system with visits to Mule Creek, Folsom, Chino, Pelican Bay, Corcoran, Susanville, and the MCC in San Diego. He didn’t want to go to prison anymore. From then on he sold drugs indoors and had never regretted it.
Absolutely blinded from the hashish, Jeeter didn’t notice the money that was raining down onto the sidewalks. He squashed the tailor-made under his bare foot and went back inside to go to sleep. He cut the lights in the lobby. A crow erupted from the roof’s chimney and soared over Market Street in a spray of feathers. The equinox moon breached the fog and enameled the Allen Hotel in silver.
TWENTY-FOUR
THE WIND SHIFTED COURSE a few degrees and the downpouring of Jacksons and Grants and Franklins blew due east, pelting the storefronts on Market Street. The money got entangled in the telephone lines, plastered the windshields of parked cars, and fell into uncovered trash bins.
In a liquor store doorway a hundred yards from the Allen Hotel, Sharona looked at the fog as it roiled knee-high over the street. A Ben Franklin scudded, eddying, and came to rest on the baby’s nose. Never having seen a hundred-dollar bill before, the infant imagined how the money would taste. Would it be sweet or sour? He snagged the note with his fingers and slurped the paper, chewing on it with a question in his inquisitive eyes. When the bill started to get yucky, Booboo regurgitated it on his mother’s arm. Sharona saw what the mush on his mouth was and went, “Oh, fuck.”
Cash snowed on her feet. A whirlwind of fifty-dollar bills mamboed around her head. Holding the baby in one arm, she proffered a hand in supplication and speared a twenty-dollar bill. Another Jackson was in her hair; ten more bills bejeweled her shoulders. Sharona rubbed her face in a fistful of hundreds. A trove of money blanketed the mother and child.
Richard Rood sideslipped out of the Allen Hotel and before he did anything, he scoped out the barren stretch of road from the Orbit Café to the Fox Plaza. The boulevard was quiescent; bars and restaurants were closed. The stoplights on Van Ness Avenue winked green and red chiaroscuros. The United Nations Plaza was sprinkled with the homeless and their shopping carts.
A light and harmless object brushed Richard’s shoulder. It was the empty shoebox. Then he felt something else. He extended a hand to grab it and nailed a hundred-dollar bill. He brought his palms together and got a couple more Ben Franklins. Another bill hit him in the nose. He cackled in glee and turned his eyes skyward and saw Mama Celeste at her window. Bills kissed his forehead. Cash was drizzling from the heavens.
At the red light on Gough Street, Mandelstam eased on the brakes and the black-and-white slowed to a halt. The cop put his arm out the window, and as he did that, a rectangular piece of paper touched down in his hand. He squinched at it and was bewildered. He looked at the halogen-lighted sidewalks, and back at what he held. Scrutinizing the paper, he gulped hard. It had to be a vision. A perfect Ben Franklin dazzled in his palm. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered. “That’s a goddamn hundred-dollar bill.”
Looking in the rearview mirror, Mandelstam blinked twice. Twenty-dollar bills shimmered in the road. Paper was descending on the patrol vehicle’s trunk; the cash was spooky white under the moon’s pumpkin orange light. Cutting the engine, he removed the Ruger from its holster. Cocking the revolver’s double-action hammer, he pushed open the car door and slid out from behind the driver’s wheel.
A one-dollar bill alighted on his riot helmet and lapped against his tunic. Getting into a combat stance, Mandelstam squatted behind the black-and-white’s hood. An aureole of money covered the squad car’s roof. The fog was cotton-dense, and he couldn’t see anything. Squishing five- and ten-dollar bills under his riot boots, he stole over the sidewalk with the Ruger in his hand.
Ahead of him the snowfall of cash was blotting out the lampposts, storefronts, and pavement. The paper was beautiful, virginal and white in the street. Keeping his head low, Mandelstam plowed forward through the blizzard. Jacksons were revolving counter-clockwise in the air, getting in his eyes. Shaking bills from his uniform, he bumped into someone.
An unrepentant voice said, “What the fuck are you doing, man?”
The cop peeled a hundred from his eyes and had the fright of his life. At his feet was Richard Rood. The black dealer was sitting in a nest of money and was stuffing Grants in his jacket’s pockets. His jheri curls were veiled in Franklins; his red suit was greenish-white with bills.
Under the streetlights, Market Street was a dreamland of cash. Parked cars were granulated with soggy twenties. Hundred-dollar bills draggled in palm tree fronds. Chain-link fences were tricked out with paper dollars. Richard was ecstatic and held up a wad of fifties. “See that, motherfucker?” he said. “That’s what they call free money. That is jubilee. It’s the closest you’ll ever get to paradise.”
He underhanded the fifties at the cop. Mandelstam scrunched down to pick one up. He held it to his nose and had a sniff. The cash was sweet and musty, like a wreath of flowers. It was good-looking. Usually money was downright homely. He said, “It’s the Brinks dough, ain’t it?”
Richard didn’t respond. While the policeman sorted through the cash, the black man looked deep inside his guts and saw the writing on the wall. It wasn’t a pretty vista. Jail was his next destination. The prospect made him think he was drowning in the waters of limbo. He had fifty thousand dollars in his pockets. There was another fifty grand on the ground. But what had convinced him that he could get away with the cash? He’d been no smarter than a cat chasing its own tail. He said with a drawn out sigh, “The Brinks money? Yeah, well, that shit’s a hoot, huh?”
Digging his heels into the ground, Richard drove a middle finger up Mandelstam’s nose—the cop’s septum split with an audible crack. They rolled around in the money, bloodying it. Richard slugged Mandelstam in the stomach and felt his knuckles reach the man’s backbone. He brought his head up under his opponent’s beefy arms and gave him a karate chop in the sternum. The police officer’s heart was beating an inch away from his ears.
Mandelstam squirmed and thrust the gun’s muzzle at Richard’s throat. The dealer kneed the cop in the groin and the Ruger went off with a reserved bark. The shot went awry, taking one of Richard Rood’s elegantly sculpted ears with it. He whooped and bit Mandelstam, sinking his molars in the policeman’s nose. He didn’t let go until he tasted cartilage.
The second round burrowed into Richard’s forearm an inch below the elbow, breaking the ulna bone. The third shot passed through his stomach into his kidneys and drove a hole out his back, caroming off the sidewalk. The fourth round entered under his chin, making a small aperture as a hollow point bullet is designed to do. The shell went up in the roof of his mouth and into his brain. It made a flamboyant departure by taking the crown off his skull.
Richard Rood stared at the burnt sienna moon. A picture of himself as an infant zinged across the screen of his mind. He was in a frilly purple dress and white baby shoes with a yellow ribbon in his hair. His mother, splendid in a short-sleeved chartreuse turtleneck sweater, rayon slacks, and high heels, was in the kitchen cooking a pot roast for dinner. She had the radio on and it was cranking out “Bernadette” by the Four Tops. The tableau melted into the charcoal gray sky over Market Street. Sticking to Richard Rood’s face was a pristine fifty-dollar bill, but he didn’t see it. He was too busy crossing into the land of childhood dreams.