by Peter Plate
Standing at the curb, Richard was infuriated. The scar on his forehead was tender. His radar was up. There were just too many police in the street. Made him feel like a rat in a cage. He thumped his chest with a fist. No way in hell was he going to let them get him. He hoofed it down the block toward Sixth Street. An aged wino in a mackinaw called out to him from a porno shop doorway, singing, “Young blood, you got any spare change for a brother?”
Richard wagged his grizzled head at the wino. “I ain’t got shit, homes. The cops done took my last cent.”
The sidewalks were lathered with tourists, guys in wheelchairs selling candles, homeless kids and their dogs, businesspeople going to lunch in the smorgasbords on Kearney Street. Richard pondered the money that Stiv Wilkins owed him. The punk was making it hard to get.
Vigilance had kept the cops and his enemies off Richard’s back. But vigilance was a loan shark that demanded too much of his spirit. Made him so persnickety, he wanted to scream in terror. And terror had caused him to kill three men. One fellow he’d snuffed with a handgun, dusting him from a distance, maybe ten yards, with a Charter Arms .44 six-shooter. The guy had been talking in a phone booth, calling the police. Richard hadn’t felt a thing when the bullet lopped off the stool pigeon’s head and left his brains on the ground.
Killing a man with your bare hands—now that was slow-dancing with the lights turned low. Richard and another dope dealer had been in the restroom of the Stud on Ninth and Harrison. It was disco night. The disc jockey was playing vintage Thelma Houston. The floor had been crowded with dancers. The music drummed through the walls; the bass line had been wicked enough to loosen the fillings in Richard’s teeth.
He’d sold the dealer a bag of fine-quality Colombian weed, a quarter ounce for a hundred dollars; the guy turned around to walk off without paying. Richard said, “What the fuck are you doing?” and the thief produced a stiletto. He menaced Richard, waving the knife as though it were a magic wand. Richard knocked the cutter from the man’s hand and pushed him through a pair of toilet stall doors. He forced him onto his knees, rammed his face into a toilet bowl, and drowned him in two inches of water. His victim’s final breath had been tart, like an unhappy lover’s.
Richard glanced at his watch and winced. It was now one o’clock. Leaves jitterbugged on the ground. A chain-link fence rattled mournfully in the wind. A foghorn tooted in the bay. The hour promised two things: fog from the ocean, and more cops. The flu complicated matters. He’d never been so wasted in his life. Maybe he should get himself tested to see if he had a bug. Go down to the Public Health Service center on Lech Walesa Street and have a blood test.
He meandered into the crosswalk by the Warfield Theater and looked to his left. A cop car muddied from the rain was coming straight at him. He froze, not knowing which way to go. He looked east on Market Street and saw the police had blocked off traffic.
Some people when they see a policeman, they turn to stone. Others remember their lawyer’s telephone number. Richard Rood high-jumped the mural-painted fence where the Embassy Theater used to be and dove head first into a vacant lot. Landing in a cesspool of rainwater, truck tires, and plastic garbage bags, he struggled to his feet and legged it through the lot into the mouth of Stevenson Alley.
The black-and-white turned the corner onto Seventh Street and was a hundred yards behind him. The cop car swerved into an overturned trashcan and lost a hubcap. The driver floored the brakes to avoid a pothole, put the gears in reverse, then shifted into drive and gunned the gas pedal. The cruiser’s oil pan scraped the roadbed; the trunk sprang open as the car bellied forward and raced through the alley at sixty miles per hour.
A garbage truck backed out of a warehouse loading dock, and the black-and-white cooked a brodie in the road, leaving a set of skid marks a hundred feet long, stopping inches short of a collision with the truck. A cloud of radiator steam rose from under the police car’s blistered hood. Officer Mandelstam flung open the driver’s door, unstrapped his riot helmet, and threw it on the gravel. He stared at Richard Rood as the black dealer skedaddled toward the alley’s end.
Climbing a wooden fence, Richard pulled himself over the top and leapfrogged into an abandoned parking lot. Going full speed, he ran through a rent in the lot’s fence onto Mission Street and then scrammed over to the Highway 101 overpass. Midway up the adjacent block, in between the Schwarz Sausage Co. factory and the Chevron gas station on Fourteenth Street, he found a man spread-eagled on the ground.
The dude was a middle-aged Mexican male in a Carhartt work vest. His pants were bunched around his hips. A pooling of blood had colored his crotch rust-red. He was shirtless; a row of deep knife cuts scored his skin. His stomach was lacerated and glistened with pinkish gore. Both of his shoes were missing, showing two bloody feet, one without socks. His biggest problem was the bullet hole in the side of his skull.
His head was turned to one side and his unseeing eyes gazed at the street with a look of hope and uncertainty. Newspapers surrounded the deceased, bullied by the wind. A sea gull winged away, squalling at what it had witnessed.
The sight of the dead man sent an electrical charge through Richard Rood. He recognized the sensation for what it was. Death was a summons. No more complex than getting a traffic ticket with a date to appear in court. Some people showed up when they were supposed to. Others didn’t. If you were late, a warrant was issued for your arrest. Then you went to the underworld.
The doors of a motorcycle shop were open on the corner of Fourteenth Street. The blues song “You’ve Got to Love Her with a Feeling” by Freddie King swam onto the sidewalk. A car alarm sounded, followed by three more, melding into a choir. A heavyset crow in the street cawed at Richard. He craned his head and looked at the crow. The black bird was a scary sign: the day was going to get tougher before it got better.
EIGHT
SASHAYING UP MARKET STREET, Mama Celeste navigated the sidewalk. The summer chill had settled in her feet no different than a winter in Siberia. The wind had reddened her cheeks. She looked at her face in the window of a parked car: her eyes were two balls filled with merciless self-consciousness. Her mouth was the entry wound on a murder victim. Her nose belonged to a survivor of self-hatred. It was the face of a stranger who knew everything about her. Mama couldn’t bear to look any longer—enough was enough.
Mama wasn’t sure how to distribute the money. Shading her eyes, she approached the intersection of Market and Valencia and reconnoitered it. A Department of Social Services parking lot was to one side. Up the street were the Baha’i Faith Center, the Zeitgeist bar, a liquor store, and a transmission repair shop.
Two homeless men were playing cards on a tarpaulin. The taller man had long black hair under a St. Louis Cardinals baseball hat. He was outfitted in a hippie-era fringed leather jacket and his legs were encased in a pair of filthy Calvin Klein stone-washed jeans. One leg was stretched out on the tarp; the other leg was a stump neatly pinned up at the thigh with a brooch. A pair of crutches lay across his lap. His buddy had a bandanna fashioned from a brown and red silk scarf. A green leather trench coat muffled his bony shoulders. He was cross-legged, intent on the cards.
A pit bull puppy tethered to a nearby shopping cart heard Mama and growled. The dude in the St. Louis baseball hat swiveled his head to see who it was. His gaunt oatmeal-white face went smooth when he saw the seal-brown woman. He opened his toothless mouth and gummed the words, “You looking for somebody, chica?”
The man in the bandanna looked up with milky blue eyes centered in a jet-black face and reached in his trench coat. He pulled out an unfiltered cigarette and a kitchen knife. He put the cigarette in his mouth and the knife on the tarp next to an army surplus sleeping bag. Turning to his friend, he pantomimed with his weather-beaten hands.
The fellow with one leg said to Mama Celeste, “My homeboy here is mute and he’s saying you’re making him nervous. What do you want from us?”
Mama made her move. Reaching in the shoebox, she pluck
ed out a roll of hundreds. Hefting the cash in her palm, she said, “You all see this?”
The mute made the sign of the cross over himself and then put his hands over his ears and rocked back and forth. His partner, being inquisitive, tossed the cards on the tarp, adjusted the bill on his hat, and said to Mama, “Yeah, so? What’s it got to do with me?”
Mama Celeste was holding twenty thousand dollars in legal tender. It was funny how the cash made everything prettier. The sunlight was brighter. The wind had an extra zing. Cars looked newer. The sky was a deeper shade of blue. Birds sang with greater zeal. The pavement was cleaner. Monarch butterflies zigzagged in and out of the palm trees. Even the garbage on the ground was nicer.
The stud in the baseball hat focused on the money and then on Mama Celeste. It took him a minute, but he figured it out. The lady with the dreadlocks was from the police. She was plainclothes, an undercover cop on a sting. Trying to lure him into a trap with the cash. Flapping a hand, he said to the mute, “Put the dog and the shit in the shopping cart and let’s get the hell out of here.”
Mama Celeste watched the two homeless men totter down Valencia Street. She replaced the money in the shoebox and moved off in the opposite direction. Fifty feet away from the crosswalk at McCoppin and Market she encountered a large sassy tomcat, a tangerine-colored tabby, sprawled out on a curbstone. The feline’s whiskers were mangled. One of its ears was gone. Its eyes were green and sharp and took in Mama.
Only yesterday Mama had been a young woman. Married with a husband. Working for some friendly white folks in a rest home on Sutter Street. Went out dancing at the jazz clubs in the Fillmore on the weekend. Was saving a nest egg to buy a house in the suburbs out near Pinole in the East Bay. Everything in life had been ahead of her. Now all that was behind her.
On their honeymoon her husband had rented a car and driven them up the coast past Jenner-by-the-Sea in Sonoma County and then over through the redwoods into Mendocino. On the banks of the Eel River miles away from any paved roads, they had made love in the hot sun. She could still taste his sweat as if it had been yesterday.
“May the Lord have mercy,” Mama Celeste sighed, “on my tired ass.”
Striding along Market Street, Richard Rood was impatient to get to the Allen Hotel. Getting away from the cops had robbed him of energy; lassitude was doing a number on him. Recalling how the squad car had chased him through Stevenson Alley was enough to make him jittery all over again. The heat was on. Being in the streets wasn’t safe anymore. That was how the police wanted it: let the outlaws rot indoors from inactivity.
Appraising the condition of his wardrobe, he was peeved. There was a rip in the shoulder seam of his patent leather jacket and a hole in the seat of his pants. The wind had shifted direction, affording Richard a whiff of himself. His suit was getting funky, simply because patent leather didn’t breathe like other fabrics.
Rood didn’t notice Mama Celeste until he practically trolled into her. He recognized her as the old lady he’d seen an hour ago. Shrinking back a step, he burred, “What the hell are you doing in my goddamn way? Can’t you see I’m in a hurry?”
Mama Celeste stopped on a dime. She drank in Richard’s appearance and saw a handsome man. His mouth was generous and intelligent. His eyes had red embers in them. His hands were aristocratic and feminine. His shoulders were wide and his hips svelte. Even the scar on his forehead was attractive.
“Where are you going?” she asked. “You’re in a big rush, no?”
Agitated, Richard jiggled out a wide-toothed steel comb from his pants and worked his jheri curls with it. Grooming himself, fixing his hair, tamping it, pushing it into place, he glared at Mama. “What do you want to know that for? It ain’t your business.”
Mama Celeste took a second, longer look at him. He was a lot older than she’d originally guessed, maybe fifty. Her voice was steady when she said, “You never know. It might be.”
“That’s a load of foolishness if I’ve ever heard any,” he said. “And excuse my French? But there are too many loudmouthed mother-fuckers out here anyway and I ain’t one of them.” Richard bowed his head knowingly and pawed the sidewalk with his foot. Cars chugged up the street. A man and a woman with a shopping cart walked by. He said, “But that don’t explain why you’re speaking with me.”
“Maybe you need a friend.”
Friends: everybody had a few of them. Richard had dead friends. He had ex-friends and friends in prison that were serving life without parole. He sneezed and said, “I got a million friends. I got them coming out of my ass. More than I need.”
“You don’t look like you have any friends.”
He smiled in anger, exposing three missing front teeth. “Oh, yeah? What else don’t I have?”
“Money.”
Richard whisked a hand over his damaged suit. “No kidding. I never have enough damn cabbage.”
“Do you need some cash? I’ll give it to you.”
Mama Celeste was shorter than a tree stump. Richard couldn’t pin down her nationality. Her accent was eastern European, high-pitched and nasal. But she looked black. She had the dark skin, the almond-shaped eyes, and the voluptuous lips of the motherland. She wanted to give him money? Richard Rood’s jaw dropped an inch. She had to be raving. What a comedian. She ought to be on television. Stuffing the comb in his back pocket, he said, “Did I hear you right, sister? You want to give me money? I must be dreaming.”
“You ain’t.”
“I ain’t dreaming?”
“No.”
“Then what is it that I’m doing?”
“Nothing. I just want to give you money.”
“Then I must be going insane.”
“You ain’t doing that either.”
“You the welfare office?”
“No.”
“You the police?”
“No.”
“You from the lottery?”
“No.”
“You from another planet, you know, Pluto or something?”
“Nope.”
“Then who the fuck are you?”
Richard was irate. The witch was setting him up to run a game on him. Toying with him. She was trying to outwit him and pull the wool over his eyes. If that’s what she had planned, she had another thing coming. He said, “What’s your scam?”
“My scam?”
“Yeah, the shit you’re pulling here with me. You think I’m a mark or something? You trying to rob me?”
“No.”
He ridiculed Mama Celeste. “You wearing a one-million-year-old army coat and you got on the funkiest damn shoes this side of the Mississippi River—Hunchback of Notre Dame wear that shit—and you want to give me money? You belong in the poor house. You styling like a homeless shelter. You don’t have any money, no how.”
A warm welcome, Mama Celeste didn’t expect. A celebration of her presence wasn’t necessary. But the denigration of her wardrobe was humiliating. There was no need to get personal. “You don’t like my coat?” she shrugged. “Good for you. But let me tell you something. A coat is just a coat. It means nothing. And yes, I have money.”
Richard mocked her. “You do not.”
“Do too.”
“You tripping.” Richard couldn’t take it any more—people were always talking big about their money. He called her bluff. “Prove it, girlfriend. Let’s see it.” That would show her who she was fucking with. She wanted to put some trick bag over on Richard Rood? No dice. She had to back up her play and show him what was what. There would be no half-stepping. No hoaxing. He waited and said, “Well? I ain’t got all day.”
Mama Celeste opened the shoebox and filched ten brand new one-hundred-dollar bills. She held the money in her palsying hands; the paper shimmered in the daylight. It trilled musically in the breeze, making a fanning sound. “Take it,” she said. “It’s a gift.”
The proof was right in front of Richard Rood, but he didn’t believe it. The money had to be bogus. It had to be a booby trap. It
had to be an ambush. She was conning him. Thinking he was a dupe. Everybody was running a racket. Even this old dame had a gig she was hustling. He was too clever to fall for it. “Let me peruse that shit,” he said.
Snatching the bills from Mama, Richard expertly ran his fingertips over the money. The paper was crisp. Good texture. The ink didn’t smudge. Everything was in alignment and squared properly. The picture was solid. Ben Franklin looked like Ben Franklin. It wasn’t a counterfeit. The cash was genuine. He grunted with reluctant approval. The money was tight. But what was she was doing with it? There was a ton of it in her box. And why was she giving some of it to him? She had nothing to gain by doing that. “It’s the real McCoy,” he admitted.
“Then keep it.”
Richard cupped his ear. “Did I hear you right?”
“You did.”
Giving money away to a total stranger made no sense to Richard Rood. It didn’t compute. Nothing was for free. That was the way of the world. Whatever you wanted, you bought or absconded. If you couldn’t do it, that was too bad—you had nobody to blame but yourself. A man without money wasn’t alive. A man without the courage to steal what he needed was even less than that. Baffled, he asked, “What do you want from me?”
“Not a thing.”
“That’s malarkey. You gotta want something.”
Mama was firm. “I don’t want a damn thing from you.”
“Then why are you doing this if you don’t want nothing? You some kind of masochist?”
“Because God cares about you.”
“God?” Richard was bamboozled. He jerked a thumb at his chest, maddened by what she’d said. “He cares about my butt?” He glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone was gaining on him. “That’s bull pucky. He doesn’t give a fuck about me. Never did.”
“Yes, he does.”