Fogtown (8 page)

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 plucked 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.”

“Who says? I don’t hear him saying shit. Never have. He doesn’t even know who I am.”

“I’m his messenger.”

“You his what?”

Richard conjured up a likeness of the unsmiling Islamic brothers in suits and bow ties and fedoras who sold bean pies and peddled newspapers next to the
BART
entrance at Seventh and Market. Most of those dudes were ex-cons harder than nails. Richard was confused. People owed him money, beginning with that little white boy Stiv. The cops were on his tail. He was sick, maybe with a bug, maybe that hepatitis C, and this woman wanted to discuss religion? Bring up God? He couldn’t cope. It was too deep for him. He said to Mama, “You ain’t a Muslim, are you?”

Mama Celeste fit the lid back on the shoebox. The world was such a strange place. Everything was upside down. This man and her—she didn’t even know his name—might never see each other again. At least one of them should profit from their meeting. “No, I’m not,” she said. “I’m just doing what God instructed me to do.”

“He told you to do this, to give me a bunch of hundreds? What did he do, call you up on the phone? Send you a fax?”

“No.”

“But he wanted you to give me these here Franklins?”

God was in everything. He was in the office buildings, the trolley cars and in city hall. He was in the trees, in the flowers, in the clouds overhead. He was in newly minted cash. He was in the hearts of criminals too. Mama said, “He did. This money is his gospel.”

“Why is he doing this?”

“Because you need it.”

“How’d you know that?”

“Do you know anyone nowadays who doesn’t need a thousand bucks?”

It dawned on Richard that he could take the shoebox from her. It would be a lark; the money was just sitting there. But he held himself back—it was torture to do that. Real bad. Impulse control had never been one of his virtues. “Where did you get this cash anyway? You a magician?”

“God gave it to me.”

That shut his mouth. He couldn’t argue with her about jack. Richard ogled the Franklins in his hand. Fingering the bills, he had no idea what he’d done to deserve them. Not a damn thing. He blinked steadily at Mama Celeste and said, “Well, hey, yeah, uh, thanks, sister.”

“You’re welcome.”

Richard Rood had a peek at Market Street. The cars in the road were thinning. No cops were in the vicinity. He had to press on. He put the cash in his wallet and without uttering another word to Mama Celeste, resumed his safari to the Allen Hotel.

M
ARKET STREET HOSTED
the Saint Patrick’s Day parade and the Gay Pride celebrations in the Civic Center. Hundreds of thousands of tourists came from all over the world to witness these events. The visitors purchased postcards to send back home. They bought souvenir T-shirts from street side vendors. They squandered wheelbarrows of money in restaurants. None of them ever stayed at the Allen Hotel.

It was how Jeeter Roche wanted it—no unwanted intruders were welcome in his castle. Squatting on the chipped marble staircase in the hotel’s portico, he cleaned the wax from his ears with a wooden matchstick. Jeeter’s leisure suit jacket sleeves were tied frat-boy style over his brawny shoulders. His feet were squeezed into a pair of spanking new Tony Lama cowboy boots. A purple cyst reigned over his brow like an all-knowing third eye.