by Jim Nisbet
“Let’s go get some breakfast.”
TWELVE
Outside, the rain was coming down.
“Listen,” Klinger told her when they’d descended to the street. “I need a drink.”
She glanced at her watch. “It’s ten-thirty in the morning.”
Klinger regarded her with frank amazement. “What’s that got to do with it?”
She lifted her hands.
Down at the end of the bar, the two guys in flannel shirts had laid off the mumblety-peg. Midway along the bar the old man had his usual seat, and Bruce was behind the plank, ringing up a sale.
They took a pair of stools adjacent to the old man.
“Oh, my goodness,” Marci said, as they settled in.
Klinger, who had taken up a Chronicle that lay on the bar, intact but for its sports section, looked at her. She slid her eyes toward the bartender, who wore, as Klinger soon observed, boots of the type with a buckled strap over the instep, a pair of chaps, a vest, and a high-visored officer’s cap, all black, all leather, and all by itself with no other apparel.
“It must be Saturday,” the old man said, turning a page in the sports section without looking up.
“Friday,” Bruce said to the cash register. “I’m starting early.”
“You think he’d take the time to visit a tanning booth.”
Bruce waggled his ass. “My regulars like their buns untoasted.” He keyed the old-fashioned register without turning around. The drawer slid open with an indefatigable ca-ching.
“Hirsute and wan,” the old man qualified.
Bruce turned to spin a pair of cocktail napkins onto the bar in front of his newly arrived customers. “What’s your pleasure?”
Klinger looked up from the paper. “Go ahead,” Marci said. “It’s on me.”
“Grog.” Klinger returned his attention to the newspaper. “Jameson double.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
Bruce set a coffee mug on the bar in front of Klinger and explained the drink as he built it. “Hot water, juice of half a lemon, sugar because there’s never been any honey at the Hawse Hole other than yours truly, and whiskey.” He centered the coffee mug on its coaster. “It’s medicinal.”
Marci had been watching attentively. When Bruce had finished she said, “That looks good. May I try one?”
“Take that one,” Klinger said, as he opened the Metro section.
Marci shook her head. “Too much whiskey. Could you make me one with half that?”
“Absolutely.” Bruce placed a mug in front of Marci and started over.
Klinger, meanwhile, had found something to read.
SAN FRANCISCO—Passersby called police to the scene of an apparent double mugging in North Beach on Thursday night.
Authorities convened onto the 900 block of Montgomery St., between Broadway St. and Pacific Ave. at 11:16 p.m. where they found the two men unconscious. A passing pedestrian, one of a number to call 911, could provide no information about the two victims. Twenty-dollar bills were strewn about the scene, a police spokeswoman said, apparently overlooked by the mugger or muggers in their haste.
Emergency vehicles removed the victims, both men, to St. Francis Memorial Hospital, where one of them was pronounced dead at 1:45 a.m. The survivor remains in critical condition. Police and hospital authorities are withholding identification pending notification of next of kin.
Witnesses to the incident are encouraged to call a confidential tips line …
Klinger skimmed the balance of the Metro section. There was no mention of a convenience store stickup.
He reread the double-mugging item.
Shit, Klinger said to himself, as he folded the paper. Could it be the cops didn’t find Frankie’s wire?
He watched steam spiral up off the golden surface of his toddy and shook his head. Once they ran his prints, it wouldn’t make any difference.
Which is the dead guy, which the survivor?
He passed his now lemon-fragrant palm over his grizzled face.
Marci’s phone rang. She plucked it from her purse, looked at the screen, stood off her stool, excused herself, and headed for the front door. “That’s a polite little lady you got there,” the old man said to his sports section, “who don’t mind putting some distance between her neighbors and her phone conversation.”
“Yeah,” Klinger said, not half paying attention. “She’s like that.”
For sure the cops will make Frankie whether he survived or not. Klinger took a tentative sip. The toddy was good and it was hot and he took some consolation in it, but he took further solace in a pair of twinned facts. To wit, if Frankie hadn’t survived, Klinger’s contribution to Thursday’s debacle would remain unknown; if Frankie had survived, however, he wouldn’t tell the cops a thing. Frankie was a professional. Klinger’s anonymity was assured.
Dead or alive, on the other hand, Frankie Geeze was done.
Bummer.
Klinger wrinkled his lips and recalled a case in point.
Several years before, a witness noticed a bicyclist exit the Broadway Tunnel, heading west, at two-thirty in the morning.
Ten minutes later, at Steiner and Jackson, high atop Pacific Heights, three pedestrians in a crosswalk toppled the cyclist in an attempt to rob him.
The bicyclist, however, hit the pavement rolling, came up in a crouch holding a pistol in both hands, and precisely drilled his assailants once each. Then he sprinted into the darkness of Alta Plaza Park, diagonally across the intersection, never to be seen again.
The commotion drew the attention of someone six stories up in a building overlooking the intersection, who called the cops.
One of the three assailants died on the spot. A second was grievously wounded. The third, also wounded, helped the second man half a block down Steiner, where they got into a pickup truck. The driver managed to back the truck out of its perpendicular parking place but only got a block away before he crashed it into a row of parked cars.
Meanwhile, before the cops arrived, a fifth party happened onto the scene, noticed the bicycle lying in the crosswalk, and stole it.
When the cops showed up, the observant neighbor met them in the street, mentioned the theft of the bicycle, pointed out the body in the crosswalk, and led the authorities down the hill to the crashed pickup truck. In its cab they found a dead passenger and the guy behind the wheel wounded and unconscious.
Net result? The surviving mugger found himself slapped with two counts of murder, which, having been committed in the course of another felony, the attempted robbery, made him liable to special or aggravating circumstances—a capital offense. It made no difference whatsoever that it was somebody else who shot the surviving suspect and his two partners. It didn’t even make a difference if the survivor had no previous strikes. The surviving suspect took the fall.
The cops put out the word that they’d like very much to talk with the cyclist, as well as to the man who stole the bicycle.
Nobody came forward.
If Frankie Geeze were already dead? He was better off.
Klinger sipped his drink.
Which leads us …
Klinger contemplated the second toddy on the counter.
Which leads us to that extra cellphone.
“If I’m a lousy hour late to work,” Marci said, resuming her seat, “it’s like the whole company falls apart.”
“Is it your company?”
“Not yet,” she said. “Ow.” She leaned back and glanced under the bar. “There’s hooks under there.”
“For your purse,” Klinger pointed out.
“How civilized.” She lifted her briefcase/purse and hung it under the bar, directly in front of her knees. “Perfect.” She frowned. “What’s this?”
Klinger laid his hand on her forearm.
Marci looked at him.
Klinger could have told her that, if she asked, Bruce would give her eight inches of duct tape with which to adhere her pistol or knife or eight-bal
l bindle to the under-side of the bar, just in case the cops showed up and frisked everybody in the joint. But he merely shook his head.
“Guy said he’d be back,” the old man quietly told his sports section.
Klinger gently guided Marci’s arm until its hand was above the bar. “Your drink is getting cold.”
Marci tried her drink. “Mmm. Good.” She tried it again, then put it down. “How can you drink at this hour?”
Klinger drained his own mug. “What hour?” He set the empty on the bar. Bruce pointed. It was an interrogative gesture.
“Finish mine,” Marci said, before Klinger could react.
Klinger shrugged.
“Nudge?” Bruce asked him.
“Bruce,” Klinger declared, “you’re a lot more sensitive than your costume would suggest.”
Bruce topped off Marci’s toddy with whiskey and returned the bottle to its shelf under the back bar. “Like you know from sensitive.”
“Where’s this breakfast place?” Marci asked, as Klinger downed half the repurposed toddy.
Klinger paused to swallow, then downed the second half. “Pine and Hyde.” He placed the second empty on the bar next to the first. “I was there just …” He frowned. “Yesterday? It doesn’t seem possible.”
Marci, repossessing her purse, looked up. “Where?”
Klinger repeated the coordinates.
Marci pulled a collapsed umbrella from the purse and smiled. “What a coincidence.”
“Yes?” Klinger asked without interest.
“Phillip,” Marci said, “is in St. Francis Memorial.”
Klinger hesitated. “The phone guy?”
Marci nodded.
Klinger frowned. “He’s in St. Francis?”
“Right there on the same corner,” she nodded. “It’s the whole block.”
Klinger pointed at her purse. “Is that what that call was about?”
“It came up.”
So Frankie Geeze is dead.
“I’ve got his room number.” Marci evinced an enthusiastic smile. “He’ll be so pleased to get his phone back.”
“Yeah.” Klinger looked at the folded Chronicle. “Want your paper?” he asked the old man.
Ostensibly absorbed in the sports section, the old man grunted.
“I guess that’s a negative,” Klinger said.
“Did you check the Lotto?” the bartender asked.
“You play that shit?”
“Every day,” Bruce said. “Give it here.”
Klinger handed Bruce the paper. “What’s he doing in the hospital?”
“No idea,” Marci said. “But we’re going to find out.”
Klinger stared at her. “We?”
“Sure,” She pushed a button on the umbrella and its handle trebled in length. “Why not?”
“Well,” Klinger suggested, “how about I don’t even know the guy.”
“But you found his phone,” Marci reasoned. She pushed another button and the handle blossomed in front of her. “A guy like Phillip?” She shouldered her purse. “His phone is his life. He’s got everything in there. And what he doesn’t have in there?”
Klinger waited glumly.
“It’s in the cloud, and his phone can access the cloud.”
“The cloud …”
Marci pointed straight up.
Klinger lifted his eyes halfway to the ceiling before he thought to discover a gleam of hope. “Even if it’s dead?”
Marci looked at him. “That’s right. I’d forgotten.” She shot a cuff and looked at her watch. “We need a charger. Better yet, we need a battery. Better yet—both. Hold this.” She offered Klinger the umbrella.
If I’d gone ahead and fucked her, Klinger was thinking, we might not be having this conversation. He took the umbrella. I take that back, oh yes we would.
Marci produced her own phone and began to tap its screen. “Okay …” she said to herself. “What’s …” She drew Phillip’s phone from her purse, studied its case, turned it in the light to discern its model number. “Okay …” She returned the dead phone to her purse and tapped her screen. “There’s a phone store at … No … How about …” She nodded. “Proximity … Hang on … I know there’s an app for this …”
“It’s called the brain,” Klinger submitted.
“Van Ness and Clay,” Marci nodded and smiled. “Okay. That’s pretty close.” She tapped the screen. “They open at eleven.”
“Van Ness and Clay?” Klinger almost whined. “That’s, like, twelve blocks from here.”
“Thirteen,” said the old man, looking up from his paper. “Really?” Bruce said to the cash register. “I’d have said eleven.”
“Whatever,” Klinger said testily. “It’s pissing down rain, and I’m already wringing wet.”
“We’ll take a cab.” Marci tapped her phone a couple of times and held it to her ear.
“Listen,” Klinger told her. “I’d like to get by the Goodwill for a change of clothes.”
“And it’s where?” Marci asked over the phone.
“The big one’s at Van Ness and Mission,” Klinger told her.
“That’s South Van Ness,” the old man said to his newspaper.
“He’s right,” Bruce said to his cash register.
“You heard them,” Klinger said.
“Will it take long?” Marci asked.
“Fifteen minutes,” Klinger assured her.
“Yes, we’re at Ellis at Hyde, please,” Marci told her phone, adding, after a pause, “Clay and Van Ness, waiting, then Mission and South Van Ness, waiting, then to St. Francis Memorial, at Hyde and Pine.” She turned off the phone.
“They’re on the way,” she said brightly.
THIRTEEN
Klinger and Marci exited the Hawse Hole, on Hyde just below Ellis, at ten-thirty in the a.m.
Marci peered beneath the catenary of her umbrella’s rim and through the smoking rain at the name above the bar’s entrance. “How come everybody calls it the Horse Hole, when it’s spelled h-a-w-s-e? Is that a gay thing?”
“Very likely.” Klinger had no more set foot on a boat than he’d wondered about the name of the bar.
Marci donned a pair of shades whose blind spot had been co-opted by their designer’s faux gold initials. “I expect to devote time to alternate cultures after I cash out and take early retirement.”
Klinger only stared at her.
“Get under here,” she said. “You’ll catch your death.” Klinger had never heard the word hypothermia, but it was true that he was flirting with it.
“Here’s our cab.”
A taxi painted entirely green, with an overlay of advertising, glided silently to the curb.
“How’d you do that?” Klinger thought to inquire, as he opened the back door.
She ignored the question. “You first.” She followed Klinger into the back seat, folded the umbrella and gave it a shake over the gutter before she closed the door. “Van Ness and Clay,” she told the driver. “A phone store.”
With a glance at his side-view mirror, the driver made as if to pull back into traffic, but a klaxon, violent and unyielding, persuaded him otherwise. To the extent that he swerved back to the right and managed to stop before he piled into a Mercedes parked in front of the Tuolumne Meadows Residential Hotel, he appeared to be an excellent driver.
“Son of a bitch,” the cabbie declared in an objective tone. He grabbed a crucifix, which dangled from a rosary wrapped around the stalk of the rear-view mirror, and touched it to his lips.
Klinger and Marci, as yet unbelted, found themselves piled against the respective seat backs in front of them.
“Buckle up,” the cabbie admonished.
A wall of malarial yellow eclipsed the light in the driver’s side windows, and a wave of rainwater lifted up between the two vehicles, drenching the glass.
The cabbie checked his rear-view mirror and tried again.
This time they made it.
Marci started over. “Van
Ness and Clay. A phone store.” “Got it the first time,” the cabbie told his rear-view mirror.
“Speaking as someone who has nearly been impaled by her own umbrella,” Marci replied politely, “it’s nice to be dealing with a professional.”
“Them Hummers,” the cabbie said to his windshield, “are an affliction, a scourge, a bane, and expensive.”
“Indeed,” Marci agreed. “Comfortable, too. Heated seats. Individual thermostats. Plus, they make me feel safe. When I’m on the inside of one of them, I mean,” she clarified, “I feel safe.”
“This baby here,” the cabbie said, patting the dashboard, “runs on pure corn.”
“Corn,” Klinger repeated.
“Yeah,” the cabbie assured the mirror. “Like the news.”
“Would that be …” Marci asked tentatively, “genetically modified corn?”
The cabbie had a gold tooth, and now it twinkled in the mirror. “Is there any other kind?”
Marci looked out her window, and chewed her lip. “Good question.”
“Actually,” the cabbie said to his mirror, “the correct answer is, Not for long.”
Klinger, paying little attention to the conversation, was looking out his own window. It seemed that as many as a third of the storefronts on this stretch of Hyde Street were vacant. Some had signs—For Sale or Lease, All or Part, 100–2,000 Sq. Ft., Will Build To Suit—but many were boarded up and painted over with that universal gray, up to which color miscellaneous used buckets of paint will sum, when mixed together at the behest of harried landlords cited by a city that no longer has the tax base to deal with graffiti abatement on its own. Not that Klinger knew any of this. All he saw was rain-glistened desuetude.
“You know,” the taxi driver was saying, “I did a calculation.”
“In my line of work,” Marci said, as she watched her side of the world go by, “I do a lot of spreadsheets.”
“You’re an unusual woman,” the cabbie said to his mirror. “I can see that.”
Marci nodded vaguely.
“People talk about how many Hummers it would take to pave the planet,” the cabbie said.
“They do?” Marci frowned.
“Sure,” said the cabbie. “When you consider their footprint, you wouldn’t think it would calculate out to too damn very many of them. Am I right?”