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Homeboy

Page 10

by Seth Morgan


  He rushed down the aisle, grabbed Rooski, and hustled him out the fire exit giving onto an alley. There, in an abandoned Pontiac, he ditched the masks, the robbery gear, the Smithy. He wasn’t breaking faith with the Sings by keeping the Bullpup. It was enough that it was seen.

  In any event, it would be found with Rooski at the end.

  While outside, Nadine Ackley was telling herself she always knew it would come to this. A screaming horde of bucknaked smutcrazed rapists banging on her glass ticket kiosk. She crossed herself, and with a single prayer commended her soul to the Lord’s Everafter and consigned her flesh to the Devil’s own Here and Now.

  It was a firegutted Victorian on Treat Street, pooled with black water, where wind through the gashed roof dirged and the homeless and hunted found hospice. In the front parlor Joe shook out the paper sack into the trough of a soggy mattress. Rooski tore open the envelopes, making a paltry pile of betting slips and cash. And nary a dead president could so much as smile; they shared the same look of bemused reproof as the characters staring down at them.

  “We would have done better breaking into video games,” Joe announced sourly.

  “No, it’s enough,” Rooski wanted him to believe; and began raking the bills together. They rustled like dead leaves.

  “Enough for what? Coupla weeks of jailhouse canteen?”

  “Cmon, Barker, dontcha look so blue.” Quickly he counted the money. “Over five hundred. Six, if we down the trombone. Enough to blow town.”

  “Christ, Rooski. If it werent for bad luck we’d have none at all.”

  “We gotta make a little good luck of our own,” Rooski remonstrated, “cantcha see?”

  “Sure,” Joe tried shoring up his voice with conviction. Truth was they were trapped like the rats scrabbling behind the charcoaled walls.

  “Keep the faith. You always say that, Barker.”

  Right. Faith. You got to have a little, he always said. But faith in the sidepocket bank shot and that talk walks and money talks; faith in the sucker around each corner and the perennial next score. Not the Faith illumining mean days with grace; not the Faith brimming empty hearts with hope—that faith like a shell game had mocked Joe all his life. Though never so cruelly as now Rooski’s fate was subordinated to his biological imperative to defend his own worthless breath.

  Nearby mission bells tolled vespers. It was time. Ice twisted along Joe’s sinews and lumped under his heart. Now he had to act. He said, “I got one of La Barba’s sacks we can split.”

  “I’ll second the fuck outta that emotion!”

  Joe always went first. Fumbling and cursing over his ruined blood mains, daggering himself repeatedly. Rooski knew better than to offer help or even talk. Joe liked doing his penance right along with the sin. Taking off his Levi’s, he at last struck strong blood high in his groin. With an exhalation mixing weariment and wonder, he handed the works to Rooski the way an officer might hand a blooded sword to his batman after a hard day on the killing field.

  “I got it all figgered, Barker,” Rooski was saying preparing his shot. “Hook a bus, hook a freight, anything making southward smoke. Sunup day after tomorrow we’ll be waking up on the beach at Mazatlan. They got little boys there, Barker, for pesos … mere pennies … they’ll catch you a fish and cook it for you right on the beach … What you puttin in my cooker?”

  “Lil Andes candy …”

  “I hate coke,” Rooski whimpered. “I get the wrong kick.” But the glitter was already melted in his heroin solution.

  “I need you to fire a bombida, Rooski,” Joe said softly.

  “Why? With the Edison medicine, shootin speedballs makes me double crazy …” But he already had the point poised over a vein.

  “I need you a little extra crazy.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m goin out to steal a car to run for the border. A nice car, Rooski. We got that comin … But while I’m gone I cant have you noddin out n the police come creepin on you. If they do, you gotta hold court in the streets.”

  Rooski plunged the bombida into his bloodsteam. His angled frame snapped rigid, his brow sprang a halo of sweat; his eyes shot fire like sparklers. Joe asked if he’d heard what he said; Rooski nodded tightly, eyes spinning now like slot machine lemons.

  “Down at city prison I seen one of the cons whose cat you got killed,” Joe lied. “He said soon as you fell he’d get you. Said whether its firecamp high in the Sierras or the deepest hole at Folsom, he was going to find you, cut out your heart … and eat it, Rooski.”

  “Hold court in the streets,” Rooski repeated the dire oath with squincheyed resolve.

  “Got to, my homey. You cant let em take you.”

  “You know,” Rooski said, “even if they caught me I wouldnt give you up. I’d die first. We all gotta go sometime. Why you cryin, Barker? It’s gonna be all right.”

  “Aint cryin, Rooski.” With the hem of the dragon jacket he wiped away tears not even heroin could staunch. “It’s somethin in the air here. They must have used chemicals to put out the fire …”

  “That’s good, cuz I dont want you worryin, aint nothin gonna happen. No one knows we’re holed here. What in hell you doin?”

  Joe was trembling so violently he jammed the Bullpup trying to jack a fresh shell in its breech. Rooski took the weapon, spit in the breech, and tromboned the shell home with a clash, saying “And I thought I was the one who could fuck up a wetdream.”

  “Guess I’ll be goin,” Joe mumbled.

  “Guess I’ll just pray no police come while you out.”

  “That’s a good idea, Rooski boy … So long and good luck.”

  “You’re all the luck I ever needed, Barker,” said that ghost about to be born.

  In the blackened hallway, Joe stopped and pulled the bigass diamond from beneath his shirt. It burned a depthless blue. He had to hide it, but where? Its light licked the walls with tongues of flame, blue wavey shadows reminding Joe … Then he knew where to stash it. Not just in plain sight. On exhibit.

  But first the call.

  On the corner across the street, a booth stood empty. Its light seemed both to beckon and rebuke—Come, none will overhear your treachery on my dark corner. He ran to it, stepped in, and covered his mouth with his jacket sleeve. If 666 was the number of the Beast, then the number he dialed was the Judas code—911. “Gimme Homicide … Homicide? Take this address, 183 Treat … Chakov’s holed there … He’s hopped up and heavily armed and swears he wont be taken alive …”

  Oh, that black sump pump in his breast only a doctor would call a heart. Fast, so he needn’t further ponder the enormity of the betrayal—steal a car to drive to Golden Gate Park. He couldn’t chance a cab. Joe wanted no one to know the watery repository he’d chosen for the diamond Quick Cicero called the Moon.

  The valet parking lot attendants at Rossi’s Famous Seafood Restaurant hustled hard for tips. Otherwise they wouldn’t make it on the minimum wage Mr. Rossi paid. When patrons were preparing to leave, the head waiter called them at their shack at the front of the lot. That way they had the cars waiting at the curb, one hand holding the door open, the other palm up for the dollars Mr. Rossi liked to call gratuities.

  Often both were absent from the shack delivering cars at the same time. That night neither saw the Porsche Carrera drive off the rear of the lot or noticed its keys missing from the shack until it was called for in the midst of dinner rush two hours later.

  Joe was the day’s last paid admittance to Steinhart Aquarium. The usher at the turnstile tore his blue ticket, returning him the half bearing the imprint of a leaping dolphin, and warned him the building would be closing in fifteen minutes. Joe smiled—“Long enough.”

  He knew the aquarium’s corridors as well as the hallways of half the city’s flophouses. Times like this when few visitors were around he liked best. When the teeming colors were brigh
test, the symmetries more fantastic, the liquescent shadows most hallucinative.

  Here he was. The plaque introduced the MAKO and TIGER sharks, with a profile of each and world maps showing their ocean ranges. A brief description noted neither was dangerous to man—unless provoked. Joe looked up smiling into the flat black eye of one gray form gliding past, its flexing speckled gills recalling the bamboo blinds in the Sings’ loft. Certainly whatever hand brought forth that shape was possessed of the macabre. No more perfect articulation of sudden, silent death was imaginable.

  He turned his attention to the tank display. A shipwreck motif. From the Jolly Roger tangled in the helm canted in the sand, a sunken pirate craft. Beside the helm a cutlass, cannonballs, a binnacle, and belaying pin—all arranged around the centerpiece: Davey Jones’s locker, an overturned treasure chest spilling its hoard of jeweled dirks and diadems, gold doubloons, and crucifixes; rubies, sapphires, pearls, and diamonds; yes, diamonds, within which galaxy the birth of one more star, a blue one even, would go unnoticed until Joe returned for it.

  “We’re closing, sir,” a guard reminded him politely.

  “Yes, I’m coming.” He leaned across the railing and peered upward, spotting several gaffs hanging from hooks along the catwalk that crossed over the tank. He’d use one of them to retrieve the Moon when the time was right. He slanted both ways to make sure he wasn’t being observed, then used the stolen credit card he kept in his boot to slip the lock on the door marked: NO ADMITTANCE, EMPLOYEES ONLY.

  Out went the lights; the aquarium corridors became tunnels of wavery marine light. The colors of the shark tank were cobalt and coral. In a moment, a gasblue scintillance attached to a golden V fell, swinging slowly like a jeweled leaf to land near the treasure chest. The Tiger shark flinched at the puff of sand; then sculled its scythelike tail, gliding on.

  “Court’s in session!” was Rooski’s last scream. The concussion of the first blast blew out the parlor’s last remaining window. The second round of Double 0 exploded a door in a maelstrom of cinders. The third rocketed straight through the ceiling from where he lay in puddled black water, the .357 Magnum verdict burrowed deep in his chest.

  All Joe had to do now was ditch the Porsche, then get Kitty and maybe they could get shut of this old Life. Go to Galveston, lay low until it was safe to return for the diamond; escape the cooker, crooks, and cops, who had nothing on Joe now if court was adjourned.

  But he had to make sure, see for himself. He turned up Divisadero toward Twin Peaks. You’re almost home, you’re almost home, the tires whispered on the fogdamp asphalt … Oh no, Rooski boy. Was it me laid you low? Me? raved his heart. With an effort he steeled himself. It was selfdefense, pure and simple. More: it was euthanasia. Better to die a man in the streets than an animal behind walls.

  He turned onto a side street and parked in its culdesac over the streetcar tunnel. He walked to the railing overlooking the tracks and leaned against a streetlamp that looked, in the swirling mist, like a giant dandelion atop a wrought iron stem. The N Judah car burst out between his legs, rattletrapping down the cutbacks through the steep backyards, jiggling in its yellow windows like corn in a popper newspapers, crossed legs, a woman applying lipstick. Scanning the gray density of buildings, Joe spotted the house on Treat Street by the police lights. They pulsed in the fog like red amoebas.

  He was just in time to see the morgue attendants lug out the stretcher. Coming down the front steps, they lifted it perpendicularly, raising the corpse, and Joe thought he saw Rooski’s face splattered once, twice, three times with spinning red …

  Then, with a suddenness snatching a cry from Joe’s throat, the circular chill of steel at his neck, the familiar cold, clipped voice:

  “I knew I’d find you close. A rat’s never far from its hole. You found him first, saved your ass by setting his up for me to blast. You made him hold court in the streets. You better pray you wont have to pick a jury on a prison yard. Because you’re going down for the car. You’re penitentiary bound … motherfucker.”

  RINGS TAKES A TUMBLE

  The colored whores sang a cappella in the rear of the tank, where the echo was best:

  Shebop my baby shebop shebop

  Hello stranger

  Darcie and Rings’n’Things slowdanced, boxgrinding around the dayroom, husking sweet nothings in each other’s ear like the longlost lovers of the song

  Ooooh it seems like a mighty long time

  Shebop shebop my baby oooohhh

  which in a sense they were. Coupla years ago they both worked the Femme Fatale escort service, since defunct, and Darcie and Rings did the specialty shows where the conventioneers paid pretty pictures to watch a coupla bimbos sixtynine on their banquet table—only then it was makebelieve; “stimulated,” Rings remembered it called. But there was no faking here in the women’s section of county jail. Rings couldn’t get enough of Darcie’s ass like an upsidedown valentine and boobies firm as boxing speedbags.

  “When the lights go out I’m gonna toot your twat till it tweets,” Darcie whispered, raising gooseflesh on Rings’s neck.

  “Kasj!” gushed Rings. “Fur shur! Just like last night?”

  “Better, girlfriend. With us it gonna just get better.”

  Rings was like, Wow, I never thought to find love in the clink! She’d just come in last night and right off got into it with a cholita who called her a comicbook whore. Rings was getting the best of it, had the puta down chopping her face with her fists, when the bitch pulled a razor from her ratted hair and sliced Rings’s cheek. The matrons stormed the pen then and rebooked the tacotwat for a concealed weapon and transferred Rings to the women’s felony section.

  It was fur shur a relief seeing Darcie in the tank—such a relief Rings let her make it with her in the shower, washing off the blood. Darcie knew all the secret places and the sweet slow way of reaching them, until Rings had to snatch a washrag and stuff it in her mouth to keep from screaming.

  Shebop my baby oooohhhh

  Now Darcie danced Rings up against the bars, gripping them above her head, pelvising her clit through her jeans until the Illustrated Hooker was fixing to melt in a cum puddle, when she felt a tap on her shoulder.

  “Can I cut in?” It was Big Lurleen the Sex Machine, grinning her grungy teeth.

  Big Lurleen was just that, humongous. She waddled around with her thick arms stuck out sideways like a cop, only she didn’t have a big belt with a radio and handcannon and six pairs of handcuffs for an excuse. She always put her foot on a bunkframe or stool when she talked to you and carried her cigarets rolled up in her T-shirt sleeve. She smoked filters, which she bit off before lighting up, demonstrating how she’d chomp off any bitch’s clit who doubted Big Lurleen was boss of female county.

  “I like dirty dancing,” the grungy teeth announced.

  “Oh gag me with the phone book!” Rings screeched. “My dance card’s full, dildohead.”

  Big Lurleen turned on Darcie. “Not if I break her legs.”

  Up leaped Rings and grabbed Big Lurleen’s pigtails. Before the giant bulldagger could get her balance, Rings tied them through the bars. Big Lurleen bellowed like a she elephant yanking her knotted hair, trying to free herself. Other girls took advantage of the situation to get in a few licks of their own.

  “Cmon.” Rings took Darcie’s arm. “That dieseler wont fuck with us no more.”

  They went and sat on Rings’s bunk, and Darcie said she was sure glad she was raising up any day because she was sick and tired of the shit that came down behind bars. “But the way you handled that, baby. Ooohh—got my jalobies harder n jawbreakers.”

  Rings looked. Sure enough, Darcie’s nipples looked like rocks in her jumpsuit pockets.

  “What you mean glad you raisin up?” Rings asked.

  “Didnt you know? I just finished a stretch at the women’s prison at Frontera. They’re just holdin me h
ere in county until they find a halfway house, one of my parole stips … Why you cryin, girlfriend?”

  “Because I thought we were goin to Frontera together,” sobbed Rings.

  “You mean you’re goin to the pen? Since when’s slingin pussy a felony?”

  “Since I copped too many cases in too short a time,” Rings said dismally. She turned teary eyes on her new lover. “You wanna hear my Tale?”

  “That’s what these jailhouses are for, tellin them Tales. And that’s what lovers are for, lissenin.”

  Rings sighed. “Love’s a many splendored thing.”

  “I knew you got poetry, I seen it in your eyes. Now tell me your Tale, baby.” Darcie squeezed her knee.

  Rings told her of Marty, how she was so totally sure it was like megalove that she even found room amid the tattoos adorning her ass to add Marty’s name inside a heart. And what did it get her? State time. Well, maybe that wasn’t fair. Marty didn’t exactly sentence her or anything. But it was his fault just the same.

  What happened was, Marty was kasj in the beginning, everything was peaches and cream. They went to the movies and toney boites where Rings learned not to drink from fingerbowls. One afternoon they went to the yacht club where Marty had a sailboat. Only Rings got so seasick, like totally scuzzed the first wave even, that they were back in the lounge in twenty minutes where they hung out tossing back Singapore Slings until the sun set over the Marin Headlands.

  Thing was, Marty never got down to doing it. You know, it. Boinking. She tried accidentally on purpose dropping her towel coming out of the shower and playing with his weenie while he was driving—but nothing doing. Marty kept saying he had to have maximum respect for her first. Rings wasn’t sure what that meant, she only wished he’d get around to it in a hurry. If you don’t use it, you lose it. And Rings hadn’t used her’s in so long she was afraid it was going to heal shut like a pierced ear you dont wear a post in.

 

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