Hot Wire (6 page)

"Emma. How's it going?" His breath smelled like an ash tray full of stale beer. "Haven't seen you in a while." Turning back to Vincent, he slouched over the bar, digging around in his pockets. "Time for another one, Vince? On the tab?"

"Make it fast." Vincent frowned at his watch. "You gonna settle this year or what?"

"I've got a check coming Friday." Brown gave me a sloppy grin, his left eye twitching. "That's what they tell me, anyway, the little fucks. Check's in the mail. It's always in the mail." He coughed, then leaned closer, slurring his words. "My big-shot editors wouldn't know a real story if it bit them on the ass. Bunch of red-diaper doper babies. They're going to overthrow the Capitalist Oppressors as long as it doesn't cost them any ad revenue." He laughed. "I gave them five-thousand words on meter-maid rackets and ticket quotas. Fight The Power, baby." He patted his coat pockets, then pulled out a photograph the size of a Polaroid snapshot and dropped it on the bar in front of me. "You ever see this guy before?"

"Get away from me."

I thought I was going crazy. None of this was real. I had to leave, deal with Steffy, find a place to stay, figure out what to do. I couldn't sleep at home. If I did, I might wake up in a cell. Deacon had told me to vanish, so I had to vanish. Instead, I was talking to this seedy lush with my head rammed so far up my ass that I could wash my face with my own tongue.

"Just take a look." Brown stared at me, his eye twitching, then he picked up the draw Vincent gave him and slurped at the foam. "The kid's a male hustler – some jail-bait amateur. He's supposed to work at a gas station on Telegraph when he isn't blowing city officials for fifty bucks a swallow." He turned to Vincent. "You got a cigarette, Vince? I'm tapped out."

"What else you want? A goddamn liver transplant?" Vincent passed him a smoke and Brown lit up, coughing and gulping at his beer. I took a look at the photo and got this flash of revulsion. It was a grainy close-up of a teenaged boy – some junky-looking surfer dude with long blonde hair. He was busy sucking off a fat banker type sprawled across a bed with his gray-flannel trousers pulled down to his knees. The background looked like a hotel suite. I could see the lights of Knob Hill in the windows.

"Jesus Christ." I tossed the photo on the bar and got to my feet. "Get out of here, you pervert. What's the matter with you?"

"I'll take that for a no." Brown shook his head sadly, picked up his dirty picture, tucked it away and turned back to his beer. "Shaking down chicken-hawks," he mumbled to himself. "That's what I've been reduced to."

He left ten minutes later, stumbling out the door, and I almost felt sorry for the grubby bum.

#

Steffy was fried like usual.

I sat down at her table, but it took a minute before I registered on her spongy brain. She stared at me, her eyes bloodshot and dilated, then she sat up and gave me this twisted smile, reaching across the table to touch my arm. My loving cousin. She almost spilled her beer down her cleavage.

"Hi, Emma," she slurred. "I broke up with Larry."

"What happened?" I kept an eye on the door. "Did he catch you going through his wallet again?"

"That's not true." Her eyes brimmed. High theatrics. "He just said that because he lost his whole paycheck on that deal with those biker slimeballs or whatever he was doing and he tried to blame it on me..."

She trailed off, stroking my arm.

"You're so tiny," she cooed. "Just like a little doll."

"Great, Stef." First Brown, now this. "What're you doing here?"

"I just wanted to see you. That's all."

I took a deep breath. Steffy was a brunette tonight and she was wearing zombie mascara and bright red lipstick that made her look like a vampire with tits. Twenty-two going on twelve, she was a junky stripper who bounced around between the clubs and escort services when she wasn't comatose or getting kicked out by her latest scumbag pimp. I couldn't stand her, but she was my cousin on my father's side – the only family I had left. My parents got killed in a head-on collision with a drunk mortgage broker while I was still crawling around in nappies. A couple years after that, Steffy's mother ran off and her father got busted for shooting a gas station attendant in Sacramento – he got religion and wrote her letters about the Rapture from San Quentin, but she could hardly read them. Steffy was a dizzy leech with stretch marks around her mouth, but I felt kind of responsible for the brainless slut. Don't ask me why. We were both Central Valley mongrels chewed up by foster homes and Juvie, then spit out on the street to die.

"Look, Steffy," I said. "I've got to get out of here."

"Can I stay with you tonight? Larry kicked me out."

"Tonight's bad, OK?" I sat up, tapping the floor with my shoe, clasping my hands together and looking around. The longhair had vanished. The janitors were heading for the door. "I've got some problems. It's a bad idea."

"What kind of problems?" She got all bug-eyed. "Is it that fat guy you work for? He tried to feel me up once. He's got these big hairy hands."

"I can't talk about it," I said. "And you can't stay with me."

"Please? It's just for tonight. I'm getting paid Friday and Arn said there's a vacancy in the building next to him and I think I can make the deposit."

"Friday's five days away," I said. "When did you talk to Arn?"

"A couple days ago. Please? I don't have any place to go."

"Jesus Christ." Vincent was getting ready to close. The place had cleared out and he was giving me the evil eye while he locked the front door and started to turn out the lights. The pinball machine flashed and chimed in the shadows, playing a little tune. "All right, come on." I got to my feet and started for the bar. "I've got to get my keys, then I'll drive you over there, OK? I'm not going to be around. I'm just going to pick up some stuff."

"You're not going to be there?" She grabbed her purse, one of those monster jobs covered with sequins and plastic flowers, then stumbled after me on her spiked heels. "Why not? What's going on?"

"I told you," I said. "I can't talk about it."

"It's that fat guy, isn't it? What a creep."

#

I always left my keys with Vincent while I was working. He could tell something was wrong when I picked them up early, but he didn't ask any questions and just told me to be careful. After I got the keys, I used the pay phone to call the Radisson at the Berkeley Marina and got a room for two days – a lucky break since they were usually full on the weekends. The reservations maxed out my Visa, but I couldn't face hiding in a Motel 6 while Deacon tried to find out what was going on. His guy at the DMV could trace the Lexus and his bondsman could find out if Arn had been arrested, so it might only take a couple days for everything to settle down. If it took longer than that, I'd have to move someplace cheaper: I could only hole up for a week or two before I ran out of money.

Finally, I was ready to go. I said goodbye to Vincent, bundled Steffy into my Dodge, then I headed over to Berkeley to drop her off and do some packing. She was fading fast, giggling and whining about her manager and his slimeball friends, or something like that. Her jabber made perfect sense if I didn't actually listen to it. Slouched behind the wheel, I watched the rearview, the headlights drifting through the streets. It was almost two in the morning.

I lived in a one-bedroom apartment on the top floor of this dump on San Pablo – right across the city line from Emeryville. My neighborhood was a mixed zone of stucco houses, apartment blocks, gas stations and liquor stores with neon signs poking through a canopy of oaks and billboards. I parked on the street behind my building, back in the shadows, then we walked down an alley lined with trash cans, went in through the side door and took the elevator up to seven. Steffy had finally shut up; she didn't know what was going on, but she must've picked up on my mood. I listened for strange noises, watching the shadows on the stairwell landing as we walked down the hall to my apartment. The dump smelled like weed and moldy wallpaper. A streetlight glowed behind a tree in the window at the end of the hall.

I hustled Steffy inside the apartment, then locked the dead bolt and threw the chain. Leaving the lights off, I walked over to the bay windows and checked the street in front, trying to stay out of view. I didn't know what I was looking for, but if somebody was hanging around down there, I couldn't see them. Steffy hung back in the shadows, watching me like a moron.

"What's going on?" she asked. "You're freaking me out."

"Don't worry about it." I pulled the blinds, turned on the lamp by the sofa, then walked past her into the kitchen and looked out the window by the refrigerator. The city glowed over the trees and rooftops. Five floors below, a cat darted across a circle of streetlight in the alley. "I'm going to be gone for a couple days. Don't answer the phone and don't even think about having a party."

"How come you're leaving?"

"It's just for a couple days."

I went back to the john, got my toothbrush and stuff, then I walked into the bedroom and tossed some clothes into a garbage bag. Then I went back into the living room and handed Steffy my spare keys.

"This one's the apartment door," I said, "and the big one's for the outside doors to the building, OK? If you need to do laundry, the washer and dryer are in the basement and there's some detergent in the hall closet."

"But why are you going?" Steffy looked bewildered. "Is it because of me?"

"Try not to trash the place out," I said.

"What if I need to reach you?"

"I'll be at the Berkeley Marina Radisson," I said without thinking. "It's not that far away. If you really have to, you can call the front desk and ask for my room, but don't do it if you don't have to." I bit my lip and handed her a couple twenties. "There's some TV dinners and leftovers in the refrigerator and soup and spaghetti and stuff in the cabinets. Just wash the dishes when you're done, all right? I might be back by Tuesday. I don't know yet."

"Thanks." Stef sniffled and rubbed her eyes. "I'll be OK."

Jesus Christ. I gave her a hug and stepped back reeking of beer and cheap perfume. Then it hit me that I shouldn't have told her where I was going.

"Listen," I told her. "Forget what I said. Don't call me at the Radisson. If something comes up, leave a message at the Hot Box, but don't tell anybody where I went, all right? If somebody comes around asking for me, tell them I went to Reno and you're watching the place, OK? Then leave a message with Vincent."

"OK," she mumbled.

I left ten minutes later and I had this feeling I was being watched while I loaded my junk into the trunk of the Dodge. Leaves gusted through the alley. Sirens howled to the north. I drove around the block a couple times, watching the rearview, then took San Pablo to University and headed back to the highway, passing Arn's place on the way. He lived in a studio apartment on the corner of University and Seventh, and I felt kind of sick when I drove by. His windows were dark. Nobody home.

Forty bucks. I had given her forty bucks.

Two blocks later, I stopped for a light, still brooding about the money. A car pulled in behind me, but I couldn't see the driver in the rearview and the glare in the mirror gave me a bad case of deja vu. Clenching the wheel, I waited for sirens, bullhorns, a hail of bullets, but nothing happened. The light changed and the car stayed on my tail for a while, then it turned off at the Amtrak stop on Sixth Street. Crossing bells clanged a few blocks away. I passed over the highway, stopped at the light at West Frontage Road, then escaped into the darkness of Eastshore State Park.

The Bay spread out around me, black and glistening, the South Sailing Basin and Bay Bridge on my left, San Francisco sparkling on the horizon beyond the glow of the Berkeley Marina. The breeze smelled of pine needles, brine and open fields. A channel marker chimed on the breakwater outside the harbor. I passed a row of yachts tied up in the Marina, turned into the Radisson lot, then stopped under the lobby carport and turned off the engine. I could hear leaves in the wind, water lapping at rocks, the creak of rigging in the dark. Relaxing for the first time that night, I checked in, then drove around to the north side and found my room – ground floor, back by the trees. My window faced the yacht club and Cesar Chavez Park and I remembered there was a footpath back there. It wandered past the motel and along the shore, ending at the circle on Spinnaker Way where the normal people flew kites on Sundays.

My room was nice: double bed, soft lights.

I fell across the bed and tossed around for a while, but I was too wired to get to sleep. For some reason, I started to think about the night I almost got killed by the Disciples in Sacramento. If I could survive that, I could survive anything.

#

I was fourteen at the time and I had this job running errands for the Iron Vipers, a biker gang full of scuzz-balls and rednecks from the Central Valley. Filthy Al, their road captain, had worked construction with my old man and when I ran away from my sixth foster home, I looked him up and he made me his gofer. The Vipers liked to use juveniles for mules because they were inconspicuous and the cops couldn't do much if they caught them except give them detention. Filthy Al was a nice guy for biker trash. He was a meth freak and a bar brawler, but he took me under his wing and kept the other thugs off my back. After a while, they all got used to me and they were real protective. Nobody would screw with me because I was with the Vipers.