“Duck!” I shouted, and pushed Sofia down. The windshield broke into spider webs, the impact of each round making the roadster tremble. Then I heard the SUV fade. I stayed down till several more cars had passed. In case there were more than one of them.
That’s when I saw the blood. Sofia had been hit. The bullet had missed me but had found her right shoulder. She was bleeding in a bad way and her eyes were frightened.
“I’m going to get some help,” I said through clenched teeth. I pulled out her little cell phone but there was no signal in this area, cut off by the sheer mountains. With my coat, I made her as comfortable as I could, but I knew she was in terrible danger.
I found a flare in her trunk and sparked it. Since the roadster was close to the cliff’s edge, I walked back toward the oncoming traffic so I could be seen in the fog and drizzle. Then headlights approached, a car with two guys bullshitting instead of paying attention. And me out there swinging the flare at them in the middle of the road. Till at the last second, the driver saw me and swerved suddenly to the right, onto the shoulder; lost control, bounced fifty feet, and smashed broadside into the roadster.
KABONG
!
The rest of my life I’ll remember that sound, metal against metal, heart against heart.
I ran to the edge and watched as the two cars went over the cliff, tumbling down together and bursting into a single fireball whose heat singed my face. I screamed, I howled, I don’t know, it made no difference. I knew at that instant this would be the deciding moment of my life; the before and after that would scar whatever life I’d lived and whatever I have left of life now.
I started walking away. I didn’t want to be around when the ambulance arrived. Didn’t want to be anywhere near the scene. If someone figured that I’d been killed in the crash, so much the better. One day, those who did this would pay, and I wanted to be around to see it.
When I got back to La Mission I discovered my loft had been torched. A warning, I guess. The spray-painted graffiti,
DIE YUPPY SCUM
, didn’t fool me. They would have liked a little wet work on me that night.
Obviously, I never went back to the job. I’ve stayed under the radar ever since. Gave up that whole other life to stay alive. But the circle scar on my forearm from Sofia’s cigarette reminds me every day of the dead I carry.
The newspapers and the Fox Channel all played it another way. A niece of a prominent Mission district real estate matron killed in a tragic car accident with another vehicle on Devil’s Slide. I guess the bullet holes on the roadster were caused by metal-eating termites.
Once the dust settled, so to speak, the Planning Commission approved the permit for the new building at Sixteenth and Valencia, and Callahan’s outfit built it. That’s what you see there now—that chrome shit glass monstrosity. But for a long time there was just a big gaping hole at the intersection, like when you have a tooth pulled. Arson as a cause for the fire at the Apache Hotel was in fact never investigated by the D.A.’s office, the Department of Building Inspections, or anyone else. But the word in the neighborhood is that the new building is haunted by the
animas
, the souls of the seven people who died that night.
And the big woman, Felicia Delgado, the one who profited from the insurance scam? She didn’t fall. Just too many layers between the hirelings and herself. And too many people owed her. But she’s old and sick, and her greedy heart can’t last much longer, miserable with her bloody money…so it doesn’t really matter. One way or the other, sooner or later, she’ll get her ticket to the other barrio.
I
t was ninety-six degrees on Market Street the day before Christmas. Holiday decorations graced the windows of the check-cashing store at the corner. Weary junkies in goose-down parkas congregated around the Stevenson Alley methadone clinic. Teenaged hookers wearing rhinestone-trimmed spandex capris and halter tops loitered at the Donut Star coffee shop. Pigeons drunk on heatstroke were falling off the telephone lines.
In the 1940s, Market Street had been a constellation of movie houses. Blue-collar entertainment seekers flocked there for the vibrant nightlife. Nowadays the avenue was a forest of abandoned buildings. Under the old Strand Theater’s marquee, homeless men and women had turned a fleet of shopping carts, suitcases, clothes, tarps, and strips of cardboard into a shanty fort.
A pale, unshaven twenty-four-year-old Slatts Calhoun, three days out of San Quentin Prison, stood near a pay phone at Seventh and Market. He was dressed in a Santa Claus suit stolen from a Salvation Army volunteer. To go along with the costume he had on a fake white beard and an ill-fitting stocking hat. A tarnished blue .357 Smith and Wesson revolver was stuck in his belt.
He reconnoitered the medical marijuana club up the street and cursed. Ever since weed became legal in the city, pot stores were everywhere. They were a venereal disease. It was impossible to get away from them. This one was squeezed in between a dentist’s office and a sandwich shop. It had a brick façade and a single barred window emblazoned with graffiti. A bored surveillance camera was mounted above the security gate. The place resembled a police station.
Slatts limped over to the dope shop, stopped in front of the steel gate, posed for the camera, and buzzed the doorbell. Nothing happened. He waited a second and repeated the procedure. A thin Mexican hippie in paisley surfer shorts and a vintage Clash T-shirt came out to inspect him. “Hey, Santa, how the fuck you doing today?”
Keeping the gun concealed, Slatts said what came to mind. His first forty-eight hours out of the penitentiary had been a hassle. One night he slept in a garbage dumpster behind the new federal building. Then he got into a fight with a hooker and was jacked by her pimps. He didn’t even have enough money to take the bus to the welfare office. As a bonus, the beard was making his skin itch. “I’m cool, homeboy. What’s up with you?”
“The same bullshit. You got your ID for me?”
To gain entry into the club, a customer needed a physician-approved Department of Health identification card. Private doctors were handing them out at two hundred dollars a pop.
Slatts didn’t have a card, no place to live, or any food in his belly. He rasped, “Yeah, well, there’s a problem, see? Can I come in and talk to you about it?”
The pot worker’s smile faded into a cynical tic. He was prematurely aged by the needs of dope fiends. “Hell, no.”
“C’mon, vato, give me a break.”
“I can’t do that, dude. It’s against the law. You’ve got to have a card to get in.”
“Listen to me, asshole, I want some fucking weed.”
“Too bad, home slice. I don’t give a shit.”
“Fuck you, man. It’s goddamn Christmas, you know what I’m saying?”
Slatts lost his cool in a delicious surge of adrenaline. It was time to introduce his revolver into the conversation. It would help move the dialogue along. He poked the gun’s three-inch barrel through the gate’s latticework and hooked the dealer in the nose with it. Reaching in, he yanked the lad forward. Then he groped the kid’s shorts for the keys, found them, and unlocked the door.
Santa Claus was in the house.
Brandishing the heater, Slatts moseyed into the retail room. His mouth watered with excitement. This was better than the lottery. Cheap reefer was hard to find in the street. Plus, it was usually low-grade crap. Another worker, a lithe, tanned blond girl in patched denim overalls and Birkenstock sandals, approached him. Her oval face was a delicate flower, open and questioning. She asked, “May I assist you?”
Slatts produced a smile tempered by several missing teeth. “No, honey, Santa can help himself.”
The store’s damp walls were festooned with sepia-tinted concert posters from Bill Graham Productions. Two customers, an aged queen and a black guy with one leg, were getting loaded on a ratty divan. Ambient techno pulsed in the back-round. Slatts heard someone move and turned to confront a beefy longhair in tai chi clothes. It was the security guard.
“Hey, what are you doing with that gun?” The longhair had the attitude of a public rest room. “We’re peaceful here.”
“Shut the fuck up. Nobody talks to Santa Claus like that.”
“Kiss my ass, motherfucker. I’m calling the police.”
The cops loathed the pot clubs and didn’t give a hoot if they were robbed. Slatts ignored the threat and examined the merchandise. The weed was in pastel-colored ceramic bowls on a counter top. The menu was listed on a chalkboard. Medium-quality green, mostly Oakland hydroponic, ran forty-five an eighth, same as in the streets. Stronger grades, like Canadian indica, were sixty for three and a half grams. Mexican syndicate pot was cheaper, but wasn’t worth smoking. The stuff was first cousin to napalm. Mendocino boutique bud was four hundred and fifty dollars an ounce. Turdlike pot cookies were five bucks apiece. Slatts didn’t see what was so medicinal about the prices.
Leaning over the counter, he probed the cash register. To his delight, a wad of twenties and fifties danced into view. He pocketed the cash and backpedaled out of the store into the ebb and flow of Market Street.
Columns of gold-colored sunshine haloed the roadbed at Seventh and Market. Panhandlers, speed freaks, and pickpockets milled at Carl’s Jr. Bike messengers dodged cars and delivery trucks. A Muni bus seething with passengers lumbered toward Van Ness Avenue. Whirlwinds of leaves and empty nickel bags flirted in the gutter.
The heat outside was nauseating. The pavement was hotter than a match head. Making Slatts dizzy and ready to puke. Which was how he liked things. The gun dangled from his hand, muzzle pointed at the sidewalk. His beard and costume were drenched in perspiration. A homeless wino decked out in a garbage-bag poncho hailed him from an insurance office doorway. “Yo, Santa, yo, yo. Can you help me, brother man?”
Slatts flicked a sideways glance at the bum and smelled trouble. His voice was colder than his mother’s pussy. “What the fuck do you want? I’m in a hurry.”
“My partner is sick.”
A white boy in an army jacket was slumped against the door frame. His tattered sneakers had holes in the soles. His cracked green eyes were intent on a faraway paradise. He didn’t appear to be breathing. Slatts frowned and hissed, “What the hell is wrong with him?”
“I don’t know,” the wino said. “We were just sitting here and shit, and the pecker keeled over. Maybe he had a heart attack or something.”
“You call an ambulance?”
“Yeah, it’s on the way.”
Nobody was coming out of the pot club. Slatts sighed. That was a good sign. He’d hate to have to shoot someone right now. Dropping to his knees, he placed a finger on the unconscious man’s neck, feeling for a pulse. He didn’t find it. Instead, an electrical charge zinged into his fingertip. He knew what it meant and jerked his hand away. Christ on a crutch. What a drag. The bastard had died on him. The electricity was his spirit, what was left of it. “It’s nothing,” he shrugged. “He’s just resting.”
“What should I do?”
“Keep waiting for the ambulance.”
“Is he sick?”
All the interrogatives vexed Slatts. Like he wasn’t tense enough already. “No, he isn’t. So relax, okay?”
He hardly got the words out of his mouth when a black-and-white police van oozed to the curb. Three husky officers in midnight-blue combat overalls jumped out. Their scuffed riot helmets gleamed in the torpid sunlight. Slatts couldn’t believe it. This was bad karma. The dope dealers had snitched on him. That wasn’t kosher. It was disgusting. The wimps couldn’t handle their own business. There was no honor among thieves.
Hefting the .357, he pressed the trigger. A lonely bullet flowered out of the revolver’s barrel and sped forward in slow motion, burying itself in the pot store’s window. The music of breaking glass rippled in the flat air. The cops scrambled for cover and returned the fire. A slug ricocheted off the pavement, catching Slatts in the wrist. The .357 went sailing into the bushes.
It was funny how things never worked out. Like he was falling through a mirror into a black hole. The cops dashed to the doorway, pushed aside the dead man, knocked Slatts onto his stomach, and handcuffed him in a pool of blood. An officer kneeled on the ex-con’s legs and brayed, “Merry Christmas, baby,” then shot him in the ear.
The blast loosened Slatts’s bowels. A jet of warm shit trickled down his thigh. A pillar of unsavory steam rose from the Santa Claus suit. The ground was painted red and pink with bits of his earlobe. The pigeons on the phone lines shrieked with indignation. A moody cloud passed over the sun.
The gods of crime were not smiling on Market Street that afternoon.
BY
W
ILL
C
HRISTOPHER
B
AER
The Castro
J
ude opened her hand and the panic of blind horses seized her. The washcloth was marked with a bloody knot of red in the shape of a gouged eye. She sat naked on the edge of the bathtub and tried not to hyperventilate. She pushed from her head the uneasy idea that her blood on a white washcloth was the single source of primary color in a strange bathroom yawning black and white around her. She stared at the locked door across from her and counted to ten, and when the horses died away she took stock of her situation.
She was seventeen and it was a school night.
Her left arm was so bruised it looked like it belonged to someone else, the bruise running so deep she was sure she could smell it, as if the blood pooling in there had gone bad. Her legs were cold to the touch, her thighs rippled with goose bumps, and when she pulled her hands from her knees they left marks slow to fade. She wondered if it were true that fingerprints could be dusted from human skin, and made a mental note to look that up.
She had locked herself in this bathroom two minutes ago, not counting a few too rapid heartbeats, and by her estimation she could safely remain another four minutes more. Any longer and he might get suspicious and come to the door to ask in a soft threatening voice if she were all right, and she couldn’t bear that. She needed to exit the bathroom without prompting.