The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  Who else came over to your house on Q Street, Dan? the FBI woman was saying. Do you know anything about that?

  She led Dan Smooth out. Smooth was red and sweating. The FBI man shook Tyler’s hand. When he saw Smooth’s sad and terrified face, Tyler wanted to kill those two tormentors.

  | 482 |

  You got time to come with me? Tyler said.

  You a cop? said the used-up woman.

  Not me, he sighed. Not me.

  How far do you live?

  Just past Harrison Street.

  They started walking, and she said bitterly: Well, I guess you’re going to take me to the paddy wagon, right?

  You don’t trust me much, do you? said Tyler.

  I don’t even trust myself.

  Well, I’ll take that as a compliment.

  Why is that a compliment?

  Because if I admitted that it wasn’t a compliment, then I might get hurt feelings, said Tyler with a wink.

  The woman laughed. Then she said: So, if I was to just turn around and run right now, I guess you’d come after me with the sirens, right?

  That’s right. What flavor of handcuffs do you want, strawberry or banana?

  When Tyler was much, much younger and had first begun to meet street prostitutes, he’d mistaken for a miraculous capacity to instantly size men up, determining whether they were muff-divers, harmless old impotents, serial killers, rich men with deeper wallets than they let on, or undercover cops, what was actually circumstantial compulsion to render quick judgments: Here he is in the bus zone, with his window rolled down, and he wants me to get in the car and date him. I have five seconds to make up my mind. Some prostitutes, granted, did have built in bullshit detectors, like an old cop Tyler once knew who had looked him in the eye and instantly known he was lying. Tyler had only been fifteen or sixteen then. He’d been trying to impress the cop by saying he knew some street criminals he didn’t know. The cop’s eyes had flicked out some awful ray of instantaneous truth, and Tyler turned red. Then the cop turned away wearily. Nothing had been said. Domino was that intuitively excellent at times. But most of her colleagues just guessed fast, risking, risking, sometimes falling into chance’s jaws.

  The whore cleared her throat. —We turn here, you said?

  That’s right, sweetheart. Paddy wagon’s just around the corner.

  He unlocked the front door and said: Pretty big paddy wagon, huh?

  Hey, I remember you. Ain’t you the old Queen’s boyfriend?

  I was. How’s the new Queen working out?

  Oh, I ain’t supposed to talk about that stuff. I mean, it’s not cool. New Queen’s not the same as the old Queen. With the new Queen a girl could get in serious trouble.

  That means it’s Domino, right?

  You ain’t stupid. Now, whatcha wanna do? You wanna date me or what? If you want me to take care of you, you gotta pay me five bucks extra, ’cause five bucks is the Queen’s percent. You come home without the Queen’s percent, honey, you better not come home.

  He locked the door behind them, and she started to take off her clothes.

  You miss your Queen? he said.

  Now there’s a mine-field of a question, the whore said. I told you already we have a Queen . . .

  You miss the Queen? The real Queen.

  Even if I was to say nothing, you’d probably snitch to the Queen and get me in black with her. I don’t wanna be in black with the Queen. Don’t think I don’t know you. You’re just another of those suck-up guys. When the Queen spits in our mouths, we swallow ’cause that’s our job. When she spits in your mouth, you like it. You’re a pervert. Now where’s my money?

  So since I’m going to snitch on you even if you keep quiet, you might as well tell me what you think, sweetheart. Here’s twenty and five for Domino. Do you miss your Queen or not?

  And if I did? What the fuck good would that do? And another thing the Queen said, she said we have to call the old queen just plain Africa now, ’cause that’s her name and she’s not Queen no more. And nobody’s supposed to say Domino like you did. That’s a serious offense. I’m warning you. You gotta be careful. If she hears a girl say Domino, she’ll take her and—and . . .

  And what?

  I’m not gonna talk about it. I saw it one time. I don’t want to think about it.

  How’s Strawberry doing?

  I haven’t seen her.

  How about Beatrice?

  She’s fine. Bea’s cool. Bea can get along with anybody.

  And Justin?

  Justin’s turned mean. Please please please don’t tell anyone I said that . . . But I still have my magic charm. It’s like a car antenna that Bernadette stole because she’s my friend, and then the Queen took it and made love to it so it’s alive from Maj. And I keep it hidden with my Mark of Cain. And Justin he knows . . .

  And Sapphire?

  Oh, she lets Sapphire hang around. That girl’s out of Protective Services now, ’cause she’s not a minor. Anyways, Sapphire can’t do no harm . . .

  Listen. If I find the Queen, you have any message for her?

  The woman burst into tears. —Tell her I love her. Tell her she’s my Mama and please come back . . .

  And I want you to tell Sapphire—

  Oh, what time is it? I got a regular waiting for me. I love you, baby. Okay, I wanna go take care of that guy.

  He let her out and stood watching as she fled. It was dark across the roofs of Harrison and Folsom Streets with yellow residential lights glowing unhealthily all around. Then he went to bed. In the morning he was not quite lonely because he had the sunny company of rusty fences.

  | 483 |

  After that, all the whores he met were sullen and suspicious. —Whatcha up to? they might say. You datin’? but if he asked: You wanna come to my place? they’d say: No, you have to come to my place. —That Queen, they’d say, she just a black widow spidah. —He saw one of them across the street from the pay phone at Seventeenth and South Van Ness and watched her approach him; she looked familiar; but when he greeted her she just walked on. At Capp Street there were none; at Mission Street there were half a dozen, but they all stood within protective knots of men who watched for enemies.

  You lookin’? a man said to him. You lookin’?

  Nope, said Tyler. Just lookin.’

  Late at night it was now, almost midnight, and enough alcohol lived inside him now to give his step a slight roll as he passed under the rhythmically thudding cars at the steel bridge at South Van Ness, and the used car lot, fissured like a mongoloid’s tongue, was so blue beneath the streetlights like the inner world of a detergent commercial; and a radio quietly talked to itself. Not a soul was anywhere in that world except the sleeping-bagged homeless pupae in the most discreet nests that they could find, and, of course, people in cars; at the red light, a grimacing woman rested her map on the steering wheel two steps from him, the light on in her station wagon; she was determined not to exist for him, and equally determined to keep him from existing for her—well, fair enough. Blue pulses came from a TV in a window.

  | 484 |

  He wandered past the Hall of Justice where at that moment a judge was saying: Your swap surrender day would be October seventh. You have a warrantless search condition. There is a two hundred dollar fine to the indemnity fund. Based on your ability to pay, there’s a forty dollar probation fee . . . and Tyler crossed the street, entering the office of Mr. Cortez the bail bondsman.

  What can I do for you, brother? asked Cortez with a knowing look.

  My name’s Henry Tyler. I’m looking for a black lady named Africa Johnston whom I think you might have bailed—

  Say, aren’t you the private detective?

  Yeah.

  I knew I’d heard of you. Who was it now? I think maybe Mike Hernandez in Vice dropped your name one time. Well, you know, Henry, with the market contraction right now we’re all going through some hard times. I wish I could use you. Most of the time we don’t have to hire a detective, because t
he family will lose their money, so they want to track the guy down.

  Narrowing his eyes, Tyler said: You don’t quite get it, Mr. Cortez. Nobody’s hiring me. I’m just looking for her because I—

  Well, it’s a free country, so I wish you good sport in your looking, laughed Mr. Cortez. I really can’t help you. Peace, brother.

  | 485 |

  In search of that priceless jewel of sources, the neighborhood snitch, he revisited the abandoned warehouse in Oakland where the Queen’s outcasts used to sleep, shoot up, hide and dream. It was August eighth, the day before Irene’s birthday. In the parking lot with the black cloth on his head, peering through the ground glass of his view camera, Ken the street photographer was saying to a whore so sincerely: You’re beautiful. That’s beautiful. —Tyler crawled under the dogeared flap of sheetmetal and found mounds of yellowed newspapers which dated back to the time that Deng Xiao Ping had still been alive, but which seemed to be wet with fresh spittle or some other substance. These burrows were all ringed round by concrete blocks. In the Queen’s day there’d been mattresses. —Anybody home? he called desolately. There had never been any signal to announce oneself to the Queen because her eyes and ears would have already done the announcing long before any visitor could have spied her out, but, remembering Domino’s call sign, he kicked the wall four times. He waited. Then he scraped one of the concrete blocks along the floor as loudly as he could. Nobody answered; nobody lived there anymore except for an ancient black lady he’d never seen before who whispered: ’Member I kept sayin’ there was somebody there? I miss the place, creeps and all.

  | 486 |

  But Beatrice with her smell of soap and cigarette smoke saw him one evening when it was already late enough for the fat red stripes on the back doors of ambulances to turn a cold purplish-black in the darkness, much less vivid than the purple lips of Beatrice who now rushed over, simultaneously lisping and croaking in her half-harsh, half-babyish voice: Henry, I come running, running! She had lost weight.

  Hello, baby, he said.

  Can I be your wife?

  Sure you can, Bea.

  Am I your wife? You said I’m your wife, so give me money!

  Yeah, sure, Bea. Business isn’t so great for these days, but I can scrape together a couple of bucks . . .

  Thank you, Henry. Now I know I’m your wife. You gotta always give your wife money. And that money you gave me before, I lost it at the bus ’cause somebody took my purse, so I couldn’t buy my baby his operation. You know, his tripas, his guts, they doan stay in his insides, so I got to go to the hospital, and get a ticket for way in line, maybe one-two, three-four hours so they can fix my baby. But he’s too far anyway; he’s way down in Mexico. I won’t never go back down there. Too far from my Mama. My Mama is my Queen. My other Mama said, Doan let him play outside ’cause he’s not strong, and maybe his tripas gonna get dirty. —But she’s dead like Irene, so I guess she didn’t really say that but I wish she was here to tell me what to do and how to live. She was a good Mama, just like my Queen. I always respect her so much. He’s a good baby, too, name Christian, just like you and me when we were babies, always playing, always good, like even you, even me. And my Queen says . . .

  You never told me about your baby.

  He’s a bastard.

  Is his father one of your customers?

  One night four men robbed me and cut me and beat me up, and then all night fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, and that’s how I got this bastard.

  Is he a nice kid?

  I doan know, said Beatrice with a cheery shrug.

  They went to the Imperial Motel where she started to go down on him and he said: No, I don’t need it! but she snarled, bent his fingers back until they hurt, and did her job.

  Thank you, he said wearily.

  Thanks for nothing.

  She opened her legs like the low spread-out buildings of Mexicali. Realizing that she actually wanted it, he went down on her. She reeked of excrement. When her orgasm came, tears exploded from her eyes.

  Seconds afterward, her every word high-contrast and blatant like Mexican signs urgent red on yellow, like Mexicali grapes green and black shining in the sun, she told him that she was alone, that she’d fled from Domino and the others, that all her dreams told her that the Queen was dead.

  | 487 |

  Two decades before, when Tyler was just learning his trade, a wise old private eye had explained: Here’s the way you get information. Drugs. If you’re trying to get somebody’s rap sheet, well, people who need quick cash have always been for hire, whether it’s the phone company or whether it’s somebody who has access to computers or what. In other words, I don’t have access to rap sheets but I know people who do. We don’t jack each other on that stuff. It’s just like Mobil and Shell. We need each other, and we can’t all have everything. I know a guy who has access to unlisted numbers . . .

  Tyler possessed his own list of such people. He called every one of them, and could hardly believe that these were the same “sources” who’d been so grandly infallible in years before.

  | 488 |

  Tightly gripping his heavy and reliable old telephone, made back in the monopoly days when such devices were rented, not owned, he called Mike Hernandez in Vice, who had first brought him knowledge of Dan Smooth so long ago. Usually he got that detective’s answering machine, but this time he reached the man himself, who jovially said: Yeah? as shouts of office glee rang out in the background—some party, some practical joke; maybe it was April Fool’s Day . . .

  Mike, it’s—

  Henry, old chum! How’s the life? You ever find that Queen of the Whores you were bugging me about last year? I figure she’s probably related by incest to the Loch Ness Monster . . .

  That kind of rings a bell, said Tyler.

  Listen, what can I do for you? Things are kind of in chaos around here, so I—

  Wondered if you guys had picked up a Miss Africa Johnston.

  What’s her social?

  No social.

  What do you mean, no social?

  I took her prints, but even the FBI couldn’t find a match.

  Then she must not be a U.S. citizen.

  She’s a—

  One of your whores?

  Yeah, said Tyler, narrowing his eyes.

  Look, buddy. I’ve been in Vice for fourteen years. If she’s been in the business, she has to have been busted. Now misdeameanors drop off the record, for the most part, within ten years. That’s the paperwork Reduction Act. But I’m sure if she’s in the life, as they say, then she must have committed some felonies. She’s the one you were looking for last year, right?

  Yeah, but I found her. She exists. She—

  Okay. Then you lost her. Listen, buddy, gotta go, but let’s have a drink sometime. Happy trails, eh?

  | 489 |

  He tried the National Death Index, current up to three months before, and by then it had been four months, and she wasn’t there, not on that computer-web version, at least. (Irene was there.) Well, why should the Queen be there? He called the San Francisco Department of Health but they didn’t have any death certificate, either. (They had one for Lily.)

  | 490 |

  Well? the tall man had said.

  All right, Tyler had said. (She had been missing for less than twenty-four hours back then.)—So if she’s arrested on the street, she’ll be brought in and booked, and they’ll keep one copy of that booking in the jail and send another copy to the state and another copy to the FBI. I guess we’d better not go to the FBI, so that leaves the state and the jail. Now, Mr. Cortez checked out Eight-Fifty Bryant and found nothing, so we’ll go to the state. You have any quarters? Lemme make a few phone calls . . .

  You don’t even have any quarters? Man, you are solid horseshit.

  Well, we’re billing a hundred and fifty, two hundred grand a year, but usually they don’t pay in quarters, Justin. Still, if you have the patience it’s kind of good. In other word, you’re doing twelve—
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  Will you stop babbling like a fucking crackhead bitch?

  Ordinarily they pay in million dollar bills, laughed Tyler. He left the tall man and broke a five on a shot of whiskey at Jonell’s bar. He got three dollars back. One he used for a tip, and the barmaid brightened. When he asked her to transform the other two bills into quarters, she smilingly obliged. He tried to smile back, but couldn’t.

  What’s wrong? she said.

  Oh, just a minor emergency, he chuckled, showing his stained teeth. He went back into the darkness near the men’s restroom where the pay phone was and began calling various minions of the state of California, confident of imminent success.

  Later, when he stepped back onto the street, the tall man was gone and three drunken Brady’s Boys laughed at Tyler, shouting: God save the Queen! His car was in the towing yard, so he took the bus home and stayed up all night trying to do an extended trace . . .

  | 491 |

  The Queen of the Tenderloin is really three people put into one person who’s the illegitimate son of the Queen of England, explained the crazy whore, whose eye-blinks were more numerous even than late afternoon Tenderloin pigeons. In the thirties she was a teenager and then a movie star. In the forties she married the Duke of Windsor by mistake. But when she was aspiring to be a movie star she abandoned seven children. My grandmother is one of those children. That’s why I’m dyslexic with a not very well formed thyroid gland connected to my urine by electricity. And the name of the Queen, the one and only true Queen, is and always has been Domino. You know why? Well, first of all, the strongest woman of all is a male that’s stuck in a female’s body. Then there’s the second sort of men who just dress as women, just to snoop around and see what men do to women. Isn’t that lucky for them? But Domino’s the first kind. She has a penis. She rapes me. She’s my Queen.