The Shamus Sampler

by Sean Dexter

  Rittenhouse Square is a straight shot south from Suburban Station, maybe fifteen minutes down 19th Street. I hoofed it. Short taught me a long time ago that if you walk with your chin up and look like you know where you’re going, nobody will bother you. It’s always proved true. Well, there was Henk earlier, but he had an agenda so he doesn’t count.

  I waved to the bronze girl on the fountain in front of the jaggedy glass and concrete hotel. I don’t know who she was supposed to be but she had a pleasant face and I thought it would be nice if she wished me well. And I felt a little sorry for her spending all her time in front of that building. In the general way of things, I have no objections to contemporary architecture but Rittenhouse Hotel always sets my teeth on edge. It looks like it wants to hurt somebody. Bruce Willis stayed here when he was filming that movie about the kid who saw dead people. Hey, kid. Give my regards to Henk and tell him ‘Nothing personal’. He shouldn’t have jumped me like that.

  But Bruce wasn’t in residence now so my options were limited to Ooijer and Jakobitz. The Yooper wasn’t likely to have answers but Ooijer was probably the one who sicced van der Vaart on me in the first place so I wasn’t looking forward to a conversation with him. The desk clerk gave me both their room numbers. No trick to it, really. You just smile and ask nicely. And wipe his memory with a hundred dollar bill. There were a few other women in the lobby, clicking across the marble floor in stiletto heels with the kind of pointy toes we used to call roach killers before Bruno Magli got the stupid idea they were sexy. But let’s be sensible here. How is a person supposed to run down an alley in shoes that would have Chinese foot binders cringing in sympathetic agony? Short always said dress comfortable, advice that was sacrilegious to Main Line sensibilities but went well with my own inclinations. So I took my hot pink, high top Converse All Stars over to the bank of elevators and rode up to the 12th floor.

  There was no answer when I knocked on the door to Jakobitz’ room. People who think key cards are the ne plus ultra in security should have a little chat with a friend of mine who takes about twenty minutes to alter the code on a Nordstrom’s credit card and turn it into a universal hotel room opener. Swipe – I was in. It was a well proportioned suite, I’ll say that for the Rittenhouse. And not bad for generic decorating: fireplace, wet bar, the usual works. The drapes were open on a great view down along the Schuylkill River to Boathouse Row. Not that Jakobitz was enjoying the view. Or any of the room’s other amenities. He was sprawled naked across the bathroom floor in an amateurish attempt to make that bashed-in place on his head look like an accident. Hey, kid. Check with Jakobitz and ask him what happened. But I didn’t need the kid. The Yooper was as cold as the imported Italian tile he was lying on. I figured my old buddy Henk had stopped in here for a quick visit before heading out to Haverford to catch up with me.

  That left Ooijer. Two floors down and along a hallway carpeted in an orangey shade of terra cotta that clashed horribly with my shoes. Knock or just invite myself in? I decided not to bother with the knock but it didn’t matter. Ooijer wasn’t there, his clothes weren’t there, and (Oh my goodness, here’s a surprise!) the diamonds weren’t there. Henk didn’t have them. I’d checked. I was willing to bet Ooijer had stiffed the hotel for the bill, probably with some room service meals and phone calls to Holland thrown in. He was shaping up to be that kind of guy. Okay, so if you were a Dutchman with a pocketful of diamonds and the mistaken idea that nobody knows you’ve got them, where would you be? Right. That’s what I thought, too. I headed back to Suburban Station and caught the next train out to the airport.

  I love Amtrak. You can get almost any place, almost any time. And if you pay cash for your ticket, you get there without leaving a trail. Not like taking a cab with a driver who might remember your funky shoes or, god forbid, filling out paperwork at Avis. I don’t love the Philly airport. At a time when airports were madly redecorating in an effort to shush the critics who were complaining about their homogeneity, Philly opted to go with cement. That’s it. No plants, no art, no polished wood. Just cement. Cement walls, cement floors, cement ceilings. Maybe they thought they were making some sort of buck-the-trend statement. What they ended up making looked like a three story basement.

  I bought a ticket to Florida and got barefoot for the security check. I even kept a straight face while assuring the guards I wasn’t carrying any toothpaste or other gel substance that could be used to blow up a plane. I have no idea how one might go about blowing up an airplane with toothpaste. I suspect the whole ban on toothpaste and deodorant and hand cream is just airport personnel’s clever way of not having to shop for their own toiletries. I spotted Ooijer in the KLM departure lounge.

  So what was I going to do about that? I was unarmed, having left my very nice knife back in the alley with Henk. There are lots of interesting things that will slip silently through metal detectors. Depression glass fruit knives, for example. But I was ad libbing this one. I didn’t even have a tube of Pepsodent. I wasn’t too worried about that but I was going to have to get him off somewhere away from the perky smile of the desk attendant. Obviously, no one had ever confiscated her toothpaste. When in doubt, act really stupid. That was another one of Short’s maxims. The man had been a font of good advice. Well, there was that one about sitting on bar stools will give you hemorrhoids but mostly he was right on.

  “Mijnheer Ooijer, I’m so glad I found you.” All breathless like I’d been running around the airport looking for him. Like I couldn’t have figured out he was going to be on the next flight to Schiphol. “I’m afraid you might be in terrible danger.” He’d been expecting Henk, not me, but he was a quick thinker. Surprise and alarm flashed through his eyes so fast I would have missed them if I hadn’t been looking. He was nothing but bland curiosity in the time it took for him to reach out and grab my arm.

  “We will talk. Not here. We must find some private place.”

  “Yes, thank you. That’s what I had in mind.”

  He hustled me down the concourse, one pudgy hand still clamped on my elbow, the other clinging on to a briefcase. Aha! I’ll bet I know where the diamonds are! We were heading back toward the baggage claim area. That wouldn’t do; it was still too crowded. I shot a frightened look in the direction of the stairs leading down to the train tracks. Oh please, don’t throw me in the briar patch. Ooijer, evidently never having read Joel Chandler Harris, took the hint and started dragging me down the steps.

  “Where are we going? Wait. I don’t understand what’s happening.” I’m good at acting stupid; that worries me sometimes. I tried to slow our progress by clutching at the hand rail. We were early. For a chubby guy, Ooijer moved along at a pretty good pace. He didn’t stop tugging at me until we were way up at the empty end of the platform.

  “Where is Henk?”

  “He attacked me. In an alley. I ran away.” Okay, so I Ieft out the middle bit about the knife and exaggerated a little. “I was afraid he might come after you, too.” And yes, lied. But hey. This guy wasn’t playing by the rules so I saw no reason why I should feel constrained by them.

  “You are a problem.” Actually, he said ‘probleem’. I don’t speak Dutch but problems are the same in any language. “I will deal with you myself.” And darned if he didn’t let go of the briefcase and yank the handle out of a luggage trolley. Those handles are designed to be detachable; you can stick them on either end, depending on which way you want to go. I used to think that was a good idea.

  Ooijer raised the handle, expecting to bash me over the head with it. Expecting me to pull away. Not expecting me to move in close for a hip check. I learned that move watching Eric Desjardins, the Flyers’ defenseman. It was a sad day for Philly hockey fans when he retired last summer. The press conference where he made the announcement got really emotional. Buckmueller is okay but he’s never going to fill Desjardin’s skates.

  Have I mentioned how much I love Amtrak? Their nice quiet electric trains that always run on time? Ooijer went down like a New Jer
sey Devil bumped off a slap shot. He splatted onto the tracks right in front of the 10:42 heading out for Paoli and points west.

  I’d missed my Florida flight. The airlines have gotten huffy lately about refunds and substitutions; I’d have to buy another ticket. That’s okay. I can afford it. In all the confusion of people screaming and air brakes hissing and one or two folks sufficiently composed to rummage in their pockets for cell phones to call 911, it had only taken a minute to slip the diamonds out of Ooijer’s briefcase before blending into the crowd. Hell, I could even buy a new tube of toothpaste once I got there.

  Kit Rohrbach lives in Rochester MN but shares Q's love of Philadelphia and its Main Line suburbs.

  Mario and Cheryse

  by

  Fred Zackel

  Fred Zackel isn’t as well-known as he used to be, but one of his novels (Cocaine & Blue Eyes) got the Hollywood treatment in a TV pilot starring none other than O.J. Simpson. I’m delighted he turned in this hardboiled version of Romeo and Juliette.

  After midnight the foggy streets of San Francisco were like a foreign country. The night was so dead quiet, the hookers had spread out from the Tenderloin and into the decent people's worlds, and now were promenading across from the Cliff Hotel. And still no johns were striking at the bait. Last time I'd seen San Francisco night life this quiet was the last time an Alcoholic Anonymous convention hit town.

  A beat cop who quit the streets to become a junior high school teacher once told me what hooking is. He said the word “prostitute” comes from a Latin word that means “to stare,” and hookers stare for hours. Time passes slowly when you stare for a living. When you're new to it, the hours go by like years, and then you grow used to it, and the years go by like hours, until one day you realize that what you're staring for is what's long gone.

  I did a stake-out at Hooker Heaven, the corner of O'Farrell and Leavenworth. I parked behind a Volvo with an old bumper sticker on the rear fender that read, “Die, Yuppie Scum!” He was another individual unclear on the concept.

  Time dragged like a legless dog. Now and again vice cops cruised by in their unmarked cars that everybody who works the streets instantly recognizes, and every-so-often beat cops came by, swapped lies and bullshit with old regulars, and memorized new faces for next time. The streets went on and on as they always have. Seventy minutes into the stake-out I watched a homeless man fight his shadow. He fought dirty. It still came out a draw.

  Two hours into the stake-out, I saw the girl again.

  She was holding up a building, just one of the many hookers scattered like fireplugs around the neighborhood. She had changed clothes. Now she wore a red skin-tight dress and red high heels and a thin parka. From my vantage point, her fourteen year old eyes were cold-blooded and ruthless.

  I watched her work the street. I watched a homeless man give a calculating look at a woman he couldn't afford. I watched her flip him off when his back was turned. I watched her get into a purple Camaro. The purple Camaro drove a hundred yards, then parked in an alley. Ah, the old handjob in an alley.

  Don't ask me the going rate. Just because I work on the streets doesn't mean I live on them. The last time I was curious, I was new to the streets, and spending money that way struck me as foolish and deadly.

  But it was handjob interruptus when a San Francisco garbage truck came down the alley the wrong way. Like all garbage trucks in the City and County of San Francisco, after dark he drove like he had the right-of-way over all but emergency vehicles. He was determined to go the wrong way down the alley, and no out-of-towner scoring a handjob was going to slow him down or keep him from his appointed rounds.

  The garbage truck leaned on its horn, and the sound was like a locomotive blowing through a cloistered nunnery. He had a route, a schedule, and zero sympathy for anyone parked in his path. He blasted his horn and hit his high beams, and his high beams lit up the purple Camaro's interior like klieg lights at a Hollywood premiere. He blared his horn, he sat on his horn until all the apartment dwellers above the alley on either side were screaming for the purple Camaro to back out and let the garbage truck through so they could go back to sleep, goddammit! The purple Camaro had no choice but to back out of the alley. Once he pulled backwards into the street, and the garbage truck had swung around him, loudly cursing him all the way, the driver of the purple Camaro kicked Cheryse Geneva's skinny ass out.

  Cheryse Geneva stood on the street again, staring at the long shadows that were everywhere. She looked as desperate and lonely as the country & western music sounded that was coming from the deserted laundromat behind her.

  Time passed like a gallstone. I watched two transvestites kiss. I watched pigeons pecking at roadkill. I watched a drunk in a wheelchair cruising down the middle lane of O'Farrell Street.

  The night got colder. Hotel flags were snapping to attention from the winds off the ocean. The winds pressed her parka against her dress. She stood at the bus stop like a victim waiting for a villain. She held hot coffee from a fast food outlet and sipped it as if it were the Holiest Sacrament.

  An empty bus after midnight came down the street and stopped in front of her. The bus had a placard on its flank that said Use Condoms. She walked from the bus stop, huddled in her whore's dress, her thin parka.

  A drunk got off the bus, looked around and licked his lips at the sight of her, and tried to hustle her. He looked twenty-two years old. He was apple-cheeked and had blonde hair. Had the California surfer look down pat. He probably lived in blue jeans and T-shirts. And he tried to hustle her. But something was wrong, and he wasn't right, and she tried brushing him off. He tried copping a feel, and she pushed him aside and off her. Snarling and growling, the drunk came at her with hatred and blood-lust. He didn't see her whip out her stun gun and zap him.

  She stunned him good. He lay on the sidewalk, clutching his face, and howled with the misery and the pain of a wounded animal. She zapped him again, just a quickie, to scatter his brains, then left him quivering alone on the cold concrete. She walked uphill, into the shadowy recesses of a residence hotel, and watched him drag his maimed body downhill. She stayed long after he was gone.

  When she no longer felt hunted, she came out from the shadows like a coyote comes down from the hills. Nobody noticed, or seemed to care, and quickly all was quiet and cold again. In the long hours of night, what is five minutes?

  Stiff gusts of wind began blowing in before Last Call, and those nightly breezes off the ocean turned mean-spirited. Still not a dollar or a dime to be found. Work the streets every night, and you know soon enough some nights are like that. Lonely nights, when the only thing on the streets is the wind.

  She had a long night of nothing happening. She worked to 3 AM, an hour past Last Call, until even the drunk bartenders had found their way home. Then she flagged a cab and left the streets.

  The cab took Jones to Golden Gate Avenue, then crossed Market, and took 6th to Harrison. Then the cab climbed onto the 101 freeway south at 7th Street. Only a handful of cars were up there at this hour. The cab and I rode awhile through a sleeping city, then we both left the 101 freeway south at the Candlestick exit.

  But we didn't hang left and cross over 101 to reach the 'Stick or Hunter's Point. Instead we bore right and took Old Bayshore Boulevard and the Cow Palace turn-off that led down into the housing projects that were Vivisection Valley. We wound down the long curving road until Old Bayshore Boulevard was jabbed in the side by San Bruno Boulevard. The cab didn't have the green light, but goosed itself through the yellow light, and I caught the red light in all her car-stopping glory. I gritted my teeth and watched the cab turn onto Visitacion Avenue and disappear.

  Once I got on Visitacion, the empty cab came from a street four blocks up, and he passed me going the other way like a bat out of hell; he was deadheading back downtown, I guessed, or maybe out to the airport. Sure, a cab is like a hooker; it only makes money when it's on the streets. But answering a radio call down here was downright dangerous, and the fastes
t way to die in San Francisco was to pick up somebody here off the streets who was flagging you down.

  The fourth city block led directly to Vivisection Towers. The front doors were locked and chained, but a service entrance on one side gaped like an open sore. I looked all around, I saw no signs of life anywhere, but that was no comfort.

  I guess I was both amazed and depressed. Mario Rosales's last best place to hide was Vivisection Towers. He and his girl friend were squatters in a derelict housing project. Boy, had they hit rock-bottom.

  The service entrance door moved with the wind. I couldn't imagine anyone in his right mind walking through that door. Behind that door death waits.

  Any cop will show you dozens, maybe hundreds, in the City. The dispatcher gives them a call at this address, that address, any one of those addresses, and the cops drive up, stop, stare, lock their doors and wonder why they should go open that door, why they should step inside, wonder why they should hear that door clang! shut behind them.

  They think about their families, try to remember when they last kissed their babies good-bye, wonder if that was too long ago to count, and wonder if they should take this final fatal stroll.

  They know the chance they take. They have done it before, swallowed their pride and their fright, and walked that lonely walk through those long shadows on a deserted street on a moonless night and walked through that door.

  They didn't die then. They might not now.

  They might not now.

  I looked around to see if any of the long shadows had sprouted arms or legs or handguns. This was the heart of Vivisection Valley, if it had a heart. And what was on these streets at this time of night was no different than those punks who killed Old Pete and tried killing his son.