Every Man a Menace (6 page)

“What are you showing me this for?” asked Raymond.

“I don’t believe in money,” Shadrack said. “I don’t believe it’s worth anything. Except you can trade it for them stones. Them stones’ll tell me who to trust, and they told me to trust you.”

Shadrack’s face looked serious, but his eyes were smiling. Raymond had the distinct impression that just under the surface, the man was laughing at him.

“You’re bullshitting me,” Raymond said.

“Stones don’t lie. Very first night we met, they said you were a Seventh Son.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

Shadrack watched him for a moment. Then he said, “Listen, time out, man,” forming the signal with his hands. “No bullshit, I think you should maybe consider just walking away from this whole situation. I’m telling you the truth. Shit’s gonna get ugly. Maybe you should just pack up and leave.”

The car felt cramped. Raymond didn’t say anything.

“Don’t tell her I said that,” said Shadrack.

“Don’t worry about me. I ain’t saying shit to that woman,” Raymond said.

“She’s fucking crazy,” said Shadrack. “She probably got this whole city wired, you know that? Probably got this damn car wired. She’s about the nosiest person in North America. She probably got her bedroom wired, hear what she says when she’s sleeping.”

Raymond squinted at him.
Weren’t you the one just playing me a tape of her voice?
he thought. He reminded himself not to argue. “Over-the-top crazy,” he said, nodding. “But tell me for a second: What do
you
want to happen?”

Shadrack’s eyes went distant. “I want—I wish it was just the way it was before you came, you know,” he said. “Do it the old way, the way it was supposed to go, nobody ripping nobody off. We done all kinds of deals, me and Gloria. There ain’t no reason to stop now.”

“Well then, everyone’s finally on the same page,” Raymond said.

“Until Gloria puts her witchy little fingers in the soup,” Shadrack said.

“That’s true,” Raymond said.
Humor this man,
he thought. “That’s true.”

Raymond had a meeting with his parole officer after that. Shadrack dropped him off there, underneath the Central Freeway. Said he’d call later that afternoon, pointing his finger at Raymond like a gun.

“Don’t snitch,” he said.

Raymond shook his head as he watched the car pull away. Then, before he went inside, he called his uncle Gene. Told him he’d been sprung and asked him to pick up his mother and take her to his house for a bit. He said that everything would be fine, but he had to move her. When Gene asked what was going on, Raymond said he was doing something for “that guy.” Gene didn’t ask any more questions.

Forty-five minutes later, his parole officer finally came out into the cramped reception area and called his name. They went into a meeting room, where the PO opened up a file and started asking questions. Where was he staying? What had he done to find work? When he’d gone through his checklist, he looked up and said he’d gotten a call from an Officer Bierdeen, a Mission District cop, who told him they’d searched Raymond’s room the night before.

“Now why would they do that?” he asked.

“Don’t know,” Raymond said. “But they didn’t find nothing.”

“No they didn’t,” said the parole officer. “Not this time.”

Raymond started to get up to leave, but the man stopped him. “Give me another address for my file, in case you leave the Prita,” he said.

“I’m not planning on moving.”

“Where would I find you? Your mama’s house? Is she still up in Santa Rosa?”

Raymond stared at the man for a good five seconds. “Yeah, my mother lives there,” he said. “But I wouldn’t be staying with her. I’d probably go down to Sixth Street, the Auburn or something.”

The PO nodded his head and made a notation in his file. Raymond walked back to the Prita, keeping his head down. The city seemed filled with ugly faces. All kinds of people were smoking crack, and he was damn near tempted to join them.

It occurred to Raymond when he was back in his room that Shadrack could have gotten any old Filipina lady to say his mother’s address. Sure, it had sounded like Gloria, but how could he know it was really her voice? Any jailhouse lawyer would tell you evidence like that wouldn’t hold up in court.

The more he thought about it, the crazier Shadrack seemed. There was no conspiracy to rip him off. Raymond hadn’t seen any sign of anything like that. The man had
gotten some woman to say Raymond’s mother’s address. That was all. He would just sit back. Let things work themselves out.

His thoughts were interrupted by knocking on the door. It was Gloria this time. When she came in, the smell of perfume filled his room. There was no sign of her driver in the hall.

“You saw him?” she asked.

“I did.”

“And he what?” She held her chin up, so she was looking down her nose at Raymond. She looked like some kind of pissed-off teacher.

“He told me that you broke my mother’s windows.”

Raymond watched her face undergo a series of transformations. She smiled slightly, and then the smile disappeared, her eyes filling with anger. She looked hateful. Raymond couldn’t tell if she was guilty or not.

“This man,” she said, “has gone too far.” She held her hand in the air like she was brandishing a poisoned dart.

“He’s crazy,” Raymond said.

She looked him dead in the eyes, like they were finally understanding each other. “A crazy man,” she agreed.

“He thinks y’all want to rip him off.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Why would we do that?” Her face still looked angry. “I have a prediction,” she said, then paused for a few seconds as though planning her words. “Tomorrow he will say, ‘Only Raymond. I only deal with Raymond, now.’ This man is going to wash everything down the drain.”

Something about this felt scripted. A lonely feeling settled over Raymond. He wanted to be done with these people,
their world. He wanted sleep. His shoulders hurt. His head hurt. He was hungry, thirsty, dehydrated.

“One thing I don’t understand,” said Raymond. “How’s he get to say anything, if he’s the one doing the buying?”

“Because of your boss,” she said. “Your boss says I can’t cut him out. So, for now, he stays,” she said. “It’s that simple.”

She left after that. Raymond, for the first time since he’d gotten to San Francisco, started to consider what it would mean to replace Shadrack.

He bought a pint of whiskey and wandered downtown. The only people out were bums. He walked under the tall buildings. At one point, he felt someone following him, but when he turned around he saw a beautiful woman about thirty feet away. She reminded him of a girl he’d seen before, but he couldn’t remember where. He thought about talking to her, but she went into a Walgreens and disappeared. The wind had picked up. He kept walking.

He thought about getting a hooker, or some pills, but he was feeling too unsettled to do either. Something bad was coming. There was nothing nice in San Francisco.

It was one in the morning when he finally lay back down on his bed. It barely surprised him when at three o’clock, the young black man with the blank face came by and knocked on his door. Said he had the wrong door again. When he came back at five, Raymond tried to fight him, but he ran.

Raymond’s heart was beating hard after that. He tried to cry into his pillow. He tried to force sobs, but nothing came, so he just moaned and moaned and let the bad thoughts ride through his mind.

At a quarter to seven, his phone buzzed. The sun had just come up; his room was covered in dust. Shadrack had texted him:
Godz blezzed uz with wizdom and sin.
Raymond didn’t know what the hell the man was talking about.

A couple of hours later, the knocking returned. He figured it was the black guy again, and anger spread through his whole body. He wanted to get the jump on him this time. He got out of bed as quietly as he could and snuck over to the door. Then he reached for the handle, grabbed it, and pulled the door open.

Shadrack was standing on the other side. He had his doctor’s bag with him.

“Jesus, what’s wrong with you?” he asked.

Raymond shook his head. “I thought you were that black guy.”

“What black guy?”

“Never mind. What do you want?”

“
What do I want?
What kind of greeting is that? I brought you coffee.” He held out a cup of coffee, and Raymond took it.

Shadrack scanned the room as he stepped through the doorway. “You living like a damn homeless man,” he said.

“Your place ain’t no fucking mansion.”

“Come on, get dressed.”

Raymond pulled his clothes on, went to the bathroom down the hallway, brushed his teeth, and rinsed his face. Tired as he was, he didn’t even stop to wonder where they were going. When he came back to the room, Shadrack
was sitting on the bed. He seemed to be in the middle of some kind of deep rumination. His face glum, his shoulders hunched. He looked lost. The man was dreading something, Raymond thought.

“You got your ID on you?” Shadrack asked, looking up.

They walked to the car, the sun shining down on both of them. Shadrack said he’d had to park on South Van Ness because he didn’t have any change for the meter. No change, but a bag filled with jewels. He had an errand they had to do, he said. Before Raymond could ask, he cut him off, said he’d tell him when they got there.

They drove south on 101, Shadrack leaning toward the wheel, Raymond slumping in his seat, trying to catch some sleep. As they got closer to South San Francisco Raymond realized that Gloria had never taken him to collect his ID. He felt sweat on his forehead.

“I’m sick of playing,” he said. “Tell me where we’re going.”

Shadrack pointed at the airport. “Right there,” he said.

“You better stop fucking with me,” Raymond said. “You ain’t letting me sleep. You and Gloria both, you keep messing with me. I’m tired of it, man. You get it?”

“Well, we’re reaching the end of this little journey,” said Shadrack. “Soon enough you’ll be able to sleep all you want.” He looked at Raymond and winked.

“I’m not flying.”

“I’m not asking you to fly. Now shut your damn mouth.”

Raymond looked at the doctor’s bag near his feet and swore that if he had the chance he would take a handful of Shadrack’s precious jewels. He would take the whole damn bag. It was time to push this motherfucker out, he thought.

They moved to exit the freeway, joining a stream of taxis floating toward the airport. Raymond resigned himself to whatever was coming. He sat back and looked at the sky, watching the planes cut through it.

Shadrack stopped in front of the United Airlines terminal. It looked like a prison for rich people. After making sure they were unobserved, he pulled an envelope from his breast pocket and handed it to Raymond. It was stuffed full of traveler’s checks.

“Need you to buy me a ticket,” he said.

“Shit, man, you can do this shit online now,” Raymond said. “Do it on your damn phone. You don’t need me to do this.”

Shadrack’s eyes searched Raymond’s face. A female voice announced something about passenger pickup on the intercom. A cop walking by bent his head and looked at them.

“I need you to buy me a ticket,” Shadrack said again, when the cop had passed. “Go in there, go to the desk, and buy a ticket to Mexico City. Make it for three days from now, Friday. You hear me?”

Raymond shook his head. “And I’m supposed to pay with these?” he said.

“With those. Make it in your name.”

“My name? I’m not flying anywhere, man! I’m on parole, I can’t go—”

Shadrack raised a finger to silence him. “I didn’t say you flying. Just buy it in your name. It’ll hold a seat for me. You can’t get violated for conspiring to leave a damn state. You only get violated if you leave the state. Go on. We’ll cancel yours and change it to mine on the day of, but I’m on the
no-fly watch, all right? I put it in my name today, the FBI’ll be here waiting. So we’ll come in together, switch the tickets right before the flight. Nobody gonna know, and I’ll be gone. It’s how I do it every time, dummy.”

Raymond squinted at him. It didn’t make sense. But the image of Shadrack on a plane, soaring far away, certainly intrigued him.

“Just do it,” Shadrack said. “Stop asking so many damned questions.”

“Friday?”

Shadrack nodded.

“First class?”

He thought about it for a moment. “If there’s enough money in them checks right there, yeah, first class. Go on, I’m gonna circle around. I’ll be back.”

Raymond went to the desk and bought a one-way ticket to Mexico City. It was the first time he’d ever bought a ticket at the airport. The traveler’s checks made the woman helping him smile mechanically. She muttered to herself while she counted. Tired-looking people shuffled by pulling bags. Raymond’s own weariness had faded. He was wide awake.

Outside, he waited for Shadrack. The man’s face, as he pulled up, looked so serious it almost seemed funny.

“You did it?” he asked, when Raymond was back in the car.

Raymond handed him the ticket. Shadrack took it out of the envelope, examined it, then folded it up and stuck it in his pocket. Raymond felt a brief wave of fear. He didn’t like putting his name on paper, didn’t like the idea of Shadrack holding this over him somehow, but arguing
seemed impossible; instead, he sat there and felt doomed. Shadrack looked around for a moment, then pulled out into traffic.

“I knew this dude once,” he said, when they were back on the freeway. “Back when I was still just a kid selling weed in Eureka. He was one of those dudes with a wide face. You never wanna fight one of them; they’re liable to head-butt you. He used to scare everyone. There wasn’t a single tweaker on the street wouldn’t cross over when they seen him coming. Matter of fact, they called this wide-faced dude—”

“You saying
wide
or
white
?” Raymond asked.

“Wide—
wide
,” said Shadrack, waving his hand in front of his face. “They called him Pan Face, or some shit. I’ll tell you a story, though, he got cut in the arm with a knife by a girl one time, and they took him to the hospital and he got one of them staphs, one of them MRSAs. He ended up dying from that shit. The point is, the girl that cut him, did it just ‘cause she was crazy. She didn’t have no reason to do it. See? You had the scariest boy in town, shit, scariest boy in the
area,
get cut by a girl, and dies from a fever.” He shook his head. “My question for you is: When you were in prison, you ever thought Arthur was the scariest boy on the yard?”