by Peter Plate
Louis went catatonic and didn’t jerk a muscle. In spite of himself, he bared his teeth. His eyes darted back and forth from Flaherty to me, trying to brace himself for the next attack.
“Now, Louis, let’s start over. Do you know this white boy?”
“No, I don’t.”
“But you do know some people we’re trying to contact.”
“Who? Listen, I’m from Los Angeles, from Inglewood, and I don’t know nobody in this goddamn town. I mind my own business.”
“Don’t be stubborn.”
“I ain’t. I just don’t know who you want.”
“Are you telling me a fib?”
“I don’t do that, never have. I say what comes to mind.”
Flaherty sighed as if he was tired, then stooped over and bit Louis on the nose, forcing him to yowl. The narc took that as a hint to let go and he stepped back. He said to Louis, almost tenderly, like they were lovers going through a bad spell, “Do you want to try that one again?”
Louis’s voice was high-pitched when he answered. “Wha-what do you want?”
“Some dealers. Just ordinary garden-variety dope dealers. You’ve seen a million of them and so have I.”
“What about them?”
“The one I want? He just happened to be somewhere he shouldn’t have been. You know how it is. You do that, you get into conflicts with people. People like me you don’t want to have a problem with.”
Louis fervently agreed, swallowing hard. “I hear that, man.”
Sputum was gleaming on Flaherty’s cyst-pitted cheeks; his mouth was flinty, compressed into a single line that crossed the road map of his face like the interstate.
Flaherty shook a stubby finger at Louis. “Where is he? He witnessed a shooting!”
This tidbit of information energized Louis. He straightened up on the stool, letting curiosity get the better part of his caution. “Someone got shot?”
“Yeah.”
“And somebody saw it go down?”
“I hear he’s a friend of yours.”
“A friend of mine?”
If Louis confessed, it would be curtains for me.
Louis turned around on the stool, pleading with me to tell the cop what he wanted to know. Talk, he silently begged me. His hollow eyes were unfocused; a thread of mucus hung from one nostril. He took a deep breath; Flaherty jumped on him, knocking him to the cement floor, screeching, “Your friend saw me shoot someone! I’d like to talk to him! Is it this white boy?”
“No, it ain’t!”
“Then who is it?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know!”
Louis kept saying the words over and over like an empty-headed oracle, reaching deep down into himself, shouting until the walls were humming with the echo of his lament. He arched his back and rocked the stool onto its hind legs. Sweat poured down his face, dripping off his chin, irrigating his shirt. Then he fell silent. One minute ticked by, then another. Flaherty looked at both of us and swore, “What a waste of time. I’m turning you loose. But you assholes want to know something? I’m going to find my witness if it kills me.”
9
We were stationed on a plain where no quarter was asked for or given. What Louis went through with Flaherty was a reminder of it.
Bobo, Eichmann, and me were standing by the retaining wall of the Chevron station on Valencia Street, toward the back in the parking lot. We’d been there for approximately forty-five minutes.
“This is it, guys,” Eichmann confided in us. “We’ve been working toward this day for a long time.”
“This is the turning point, huh?”
“Completely.”
Eichmann was holding the five grand we’d liberated from Dee Dee. His eyes were clear and untroubled, tuned into the gravity of his own prediction. We were waiting for Roy from Pacific Heights to bring us a pound of sinsemilla for five thousand dollars. It was a good price, the best we could get. Like any specialty commodity you wanted to buy these days, weed was expensive. The problem was, Roy wouldn’t let us come over to his place because his parents were staying with him. He told us to meet him at the Chevron station; that’s where we’d conduct the transaction. Eichmann had the money in a brown paper bag and he was getting impatient, hopping up and down on one foot. He kept wringing his hands, saying, “Yeah, I feel lucky today. Fuck, yeah. What time did Roy say he was meeting us?”
“Three o’clock. I already told you that.”
“Okay, okay. But it’s three-thirty now. Where is he?”
“He’ll be here. Maybe he got hung up in traffic.”
“There’s no goddamn traffic between here and Pacific Heights.”
“He had to get the stuff up in Marin.”
“Didn’t he say he was doing that yesterday?”
“Yeah, he did.”
“Boy, that’s great.”
I got the last word in. “It sure is. We’re standing out here like fucking dorks waiting for him.”
Eichmann whirled on me, bulldozing his chin into my face. He opened his mouth, his teeth green and fanglike. “It ain’t my fault! I’m doing the best I can! If you don’t like it, take a hike!”
Bobo stepped in between us and gently pried Eichmann off me. “Easy, guys,” he crooned. “Take it easy.”
And so we waited for Roy.
The exhilaration of having stolen Dee Dee’s cash was a dim memory. The time had come to make more money. The motive? Bobo, Eichmann, Loretta, and I wanted to move out of the garage. All four of us were disgusted with not being able to take a shower or cook on a real stove.
By the time four o’clock had come and gone, Eichmann was acting like he was on the rag. Bobo went down the street to the liquor store to see what they had in their delicatessen. The minute he got back, munching on a Mars candy bar, Eichmann turned sullen. “I didn’t think Roy would hang us up like this, the dick.”
Our efforts were pointless. I began to hate Eichmann and myself. I was so busy dwelling on my negativity I didn’t pay any attention to the pickup truck that pulled into the gas station. Eichmann waved at the vehicle and said to me, “Well, I’ll be damned, that’s him. Doojie, you and Bobo let me do the talking.”
“What for?”
“Because I know Roy.”
“So do I, and Bobo does, too.”
“Let me do it, okay?”
Roy rolled down his window and motioned for one of us to join him. Eichmann went over to the pickup, shook the dealer’s hand, and the two of them started signifying. Everything looked friendly. But just in case things got shitty, and you never knew when that would occur, we had our escape routes planned out. The options were Twenty-second Street in back of the Chevron station or San Jose Street where it bled into a dead end near St. Luke’s Hospital.
Roy was in his mid-thirties, a commercial airplane pilot with a greasy suntan who sold weed in bulk quantities. He was from the Marina. During the great earthquake in 1989, the street he lived on was destroyed. Despite this tragedy, I was uneasy around him—I always felt he was patronizing me, something I was never going to come to terms with. Twenty minutes went by before Eichmann gave us the high sign to come over and schmooze with them. Bobo sniggered for my benefit, “We’re being included … how cool.”
When we approached the truck, I saw a ribbed wooden camper shell attached to the pickup’s bed. Eichmann was all false smiles, smoking one of Roy’s Dunhill cigarettes. I noticed his eyes were dangerously gray and unpredictable. He said, “You guys remember each other, don’t you?”
Roy acknowledged Bobo and myself with a blind stare, not even moving his mouth when he mumbled, “Haven’t seen you boys for a while. Sorry I was late.”
Eichmann playfully punched him on the arm, hard enough to make it sting. “Hey, it doesn’t matter now that you’re here.”
“You want to get in the camper?”
“Sure.”
“Then let me open the door.”
We went around the truck to the back. When Roy popped the
camper hatch and saw us, he got testy. “All three of you want to get in here? I’m not sure about that.”
“C’mon, don’t futz around,” Eichmann said. He pushed his way past Roy, dragging Bobo and me in his wake. We crawled into the shell and found a couple of seats around a table bolted to the floor. It wasn’t bad in there considering how cramped it was. There were wood storage bins to keep things out of the way, a futon bed in the front, a window with lace curtains over it. Roy locked the door from the inside, then sat down with us at the table. He reached into a shirt pocket, pulling out a small bag of weed. “You guys want to sample the shit?”
“Yeah.”
While Roy built a spliff, I continued to look around the camper. He had a four-burner propane stove, a mini-refrigerator, and a toilet stall in the corner, all of it sparkling clean. The sweet-smelling cedarwood interior was like being inside a cabin in the forest. It had to be more fun than living in a garage off Mission Street, and I was impressed.
“A fine truck you got,” Eichmann said.
“Yeah, it’s all right. My dad gave it to me on my birthday. It’s been over at my mom’s ranch in Marin. Doojie, you want to have the pleasure of firing up the joint?”
I was handed the fattie and a book of matches. I ignited one end of the stick and inhaled with all of my might. The sinsemilla was aggressive—it exploded in my lungs as if someone had dropped a hand grenade into my mouth.
“Good shit.” I exhaled and saw mushroom clouds in front of my eyes. The end of the world. I saw my own death, a shadow inches from my face. I blinked once, then it was gone. “Yeah, it’s tasty.”
“This is that Canadian bud you’ve been hearing about. It’s grown in the Rockies up by Kelowna.”
The reefer made its way around the table. By the time Eichmann gave it to Roy, there was hardly anything left of it. My partner had consumed most of the doobie, leaving little for our host. Roy held the roach between two fingers, his bottom lip quivering with disapproval. “You selfish Jew, you hogged it.”
“What?”
Roy snarled at Eichmann, “You smoked the whole thing and I got none. Are you deaf?”
“No, I ain’t, and I don’t like what you just said, dipshit.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, because I’m Jewish. And so’s Doojie.”
“I was joking. Don’t get weird on me.”
“I didn’t like it.”
“So drop it, why don’t you. Okay?”
No one said a word. A dog barking across the street was getting on my nerves. Roy’s irritation had changed the atmosphere in the camper, making my hands clammy. He attempted to light the roach, unaware of the acrimony brewing on Eichmann’s face. He couldn’t get the joint going again, so he flung it into an ashtray. “Forget that. Let’s make the deal. Five thousand?”
Bobo replied, “That’s right.”
Eichmann hadn’t changed the hard look in his eyes. Roy reached under the table and produced a large clear plastic bag of red-haired emerald buds. Instantly I was transfixed by the indica. The weed smelled like a dead skunk by the side of the road, a sure sign of potency, what our customers wanted the most from their smoky-smoke. Roy said, “Here’s the product. It won’t get any better than this. The price goes up the next time.”
Eichmann asked, “You want your money?”
“Yeah, I do. I want to get back over the bridge into Marin before rush hour.”
“Well, let me ask you something … who were you calling a selfish Jew?”
“That again? Don’t be so thin-skinned. Everything’s racial these days, you know?”
Roy’s comeback was glib, and it needed an answer. Eichmann launched himself across the table, clobbering the dealer on the chin with a right hook, and doing it fast enough to befuddle Roy. I swiped the bag of weed off the table to keep it from getting damaged. I put the bag under my shirt and got up from the table. Bobo flung open the door and we poised ourselves on the threshold, getting scared. I bawled at Eichmann, “C’mon, let’s get out of here!”
For once, he listened to me. The three of us bounced out of the camper and took off like banshees across the Chevron parking lot, sprinting over to San Jose Street. Our peculiar success was unfathomable to me—we had a pound of Canadian indica, courtesy of Roy.
On one hand, I had to question what I was doing; stealing was for losers. A thief who stole from the poor was anathema to me. But an outlaw who took what he needed from the fat of the land, like from Roy, this was marginally acceptable. On the other hand, we had engineered an entrepreneurial coup that would bring us the joy of money and the contamination of added strife. In summation, we were winners.
10
An afternoon in the sun at Ocean Beach had been Eichmann’s idea. He said ripping off Roy called for a day of rest, a sabbath from the usual scuffling. So we hopped on the N Judah Muni bus at Market Street. Two hours later we got off at the last stop on Forty-eighth Street, a little worse for wear. Ocean Beach was a mile-long strip of sand frequented by low-income San Francisco residents, such as Bayview welfare mothers, Sunset District surfers, and South of Market bike messengers, and we fit in perfectly.
Bobo was down at the water’s edge getting his feet wet in the surf, yelling at some kids to stop throwing rocks at the seagulls. The Mexican looked naked in a pair of too-tight Speedos that accentuated the tree trunk size of his legs and the cantaloupe plumpness of his stomach. To round out the picture, Eichmann was sitting at my side and Loretta was dozing on a tattered space blanket by our feet.
Eichmann was the man Loretta wanted, but his love for her was questionable. They’d been together for a month and Eichmann was already getting tired of her demands, the things she wanted. He couldn’t afford an apartment or to get out of town on a vacation, and Loretta was quite sore about it. In her eyes, he was becoming a portrait of lessened expectations. In a symbiotic response, Eichmann had turned into a dynamo of ambition since we’d robbed Roy. He said better days were coming. It sounded like he was getting religious. Or maybe he was going crazy, I didn’t know. He rubbed his belly and looked fondly at Bobo, saying to me, “What do you want to do about Flaherty?”
“Got a plan?”
Eichmann lifted a beer to his mouth and swallowed once. “The way I see it, he needs to get rid of you. He can do it by intimidating you, by driving you out of the city. I don’t know how far he’s willing to go and you don’t either.”
“What about you and Bobo?”
“It ain’t got nothing to do with me. You saw what went down with him, not us.”
His stance was obvious: he wanted to separate himself from my troubles. He finished his beer, threw it on the oil-stained sand, then reached into Bobo’s Igloo chest cooler for another Budweiser. Loretta heard our quibbling and stirred, shaking herself awake. Her plain black one-piece bathing suit showed her freckled cleavage. Her legs were getting burned despite the colossal amount of sunscreen she’d slathered on them. She asked us in a timorous, drowsy voice, “What time is it? It seems late.”
Eichmann consulted his watch. “It’s three-forty. You okay?”
“God, I don’t know. It’s terribly hot, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it’s bad. You want to go swimming?”
“The water’s dirty, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, so? That never stopped me.”
Whenever I was around Loretta, I couldn’t take my eyes off her body. She had more flesh on her bones than I did and I was interested in that difference, her being larger than me. Sometimes I’d watch Eichmann as he gazed at her, trying to see what he saw. What she felt for him, Loretta was never one to say, though I had a strong suspicion she admired Eichmann. He said to me, “Why don’t you take your clothes off, you goon.”
I was dressed in my jeans, army coat, and Red Wing boots; the last thing in the world I wanted was a suntan. I didn’t want to look like a Los Angeles television drug overlord. I was a San Franciscan nickel-bag dealer, and most of the other sunbathers at Ocean Beach resembled
me. No one was tanned or buffed. I didn’t see any weight lifters or beach bunnies. The men were hunchbacked and pale from their day jobs. The women were blanched and wrinkled, and their children were anemic, weedy creatures that puttered around the shoreline, tossing seaweed at each other.
As a rule, I stayed away from the water. The one time I went swimming, the tide took me out farther than I wanted to go. I was underwater, sinking. I opened my eyes but I couldn’t see anything. Air bubbles trailed from my mouth, disappearing over my head. The currents under the surface alternated between tepid and cool; the warm water made me drowsy, but the cold water frightened me, amplifying the ringing in my ears. Clouds of air bubbles swirled around my face; my lungs were torqued to bursting. I asked myself, If I drowned, who would care?
Bobo stumbled over the sand to us and threw himself on Eichmann, baying happily. Loretta sat up, adjusting her sunglasses. She rose to her feet, brushing sand away from her swimsuit. She looked at Bobo, Eichmann, and me, then sashayed over to the waterline. Eichmann didn’t want her straying off too far; he was about to yell at her when Bobo cautioned him.
“Let her be. Can’t you see she’s having a hard time?”
The Mexican’s off-key suggestion stung Eichmann. He was so used to everyone giving in to him, letting him say whatever he wanted to, he couldn’t believe Bobo’s impertinence. It was one thing if Eichmann brought up Loretta in conversation, but it wasn’t anybody else’s place to do that. And I never did. Loretta was off-limits to me. I just thought about her, that’s all. Eichmann’s retort to Bobo was succinct and charged with animosity.
“Stay out of my business.”
“Aw, c’mon, I’m your friend.”
“Oh, yeah? Wonderful … and how long has that been going on?”
“Slow down. What’s with you?”
“What’s with me? Everything you say stinks, you know? Have I ever told you that? And you want to tell me how to talk to my girlfriend?”
“Don’t get ugly with me.”
“Don’t get ugly? I don’t need nothing when it comes to me and her, you hear?”