Snitch World (10 page)

“Hey, buddy,” Klinger said, “you seen the guy drives that Jag roadster, parked on the lower deck?”

“No,” the attendant said, not looking up from his screen. “What about him?”

“He must still be in the bar,” Klinger said.

“He’s always in the bar,” the attendant said. “He owns the fucking bar.”

“That’s why I like to hang out with him,” Klinger said. “As opposed to you.”

The attendant maintained his attention on his television with barely a grunt.

“They gotta be fake,” a man on the screen said to a woman.

“Nope,” she responded proudly, “though it’s nothing you’re ever going to find out for yourself.”

Canned laughter followed Klinger to the Broadway sidewalk. He merged and headed west with some dozen others, weaving among additional dozens walking the
other way. Fifty yards behind him the after end of a ladder truck, most of its length hidden by the building on the corner at Montgomery, blocked one of the two eastbound lanes of Broadway. At Kearny Klinger crossed Broadway with the light and walked straight up the hill. A breeze had sprung up at his back, from the southwest, and it helped. When he’d labored all the way up the carless block, which is close to a forty-degree grade, too steep for cars, he took the staircase to Vallejo, and continued past Green Street. At Union Street he took a left, and half a block later he took another left into an alley called Varennes Street. Varennes brought him back to Green, at which he took a left and, ten feet later, another left, into the front door of Gino & Carlo, where, despite a double thickness of people crowding the bar, he was able to get his hands around a double shot of Jameson on the rocks within two minutes. Its taste barely overcame the bitterness of the epinephrine that had zincked his palate.

He set the empty glass on the bar and moved to the door. The blustery southwest harbinger that had followed him up the Kearny steps was now making good on its promise of rain. Klinger turned up his collar, forged his way through the smokers huddled in the entry, and stepped onto the sidewalk.

At Stockton he took a left and hustled south, wind and rain in his teeth. Excepting staff who surrounded big tables in the backs of darkened restaurants, the storefronts of Chinatown were shuttered. For no reason at all, Klinger remembered that 94133 is Chinatown’s ZIP code.

To forestall an inevitable soaking and in the hope that the rain would let up, he lingered at the southern mouth of the Stockton Tunnel until a passing southbound articulated bus—three axles, the latter two bearing two sets of double wheels each—drenched him good and proper. So much for that snap decision. He debouched into the downpour and slogged the remaining eleven blocks to the Hawse Hole.

Habit dies hard. It never once occurred to Klinger to take a bus. Or to try another bar. Or to mug a pedestrian for an umbrella.

The bar was still open. Klinger asked to borrow a towel. The bartender tossed him one that, though already damp, was a lot drier than Klinger. He mopped his face, draped the towel over a stool, sat on it, and ordered a mug of hot water with sugar, lemon, and a double-shot of Jameson.

“Oho,” the bartender said, setting to work on the drink. “The ship came in, did it?”

Klinger bethought the dignity of his low profile. “The pneumonia has me dreaming of better times. Make that whiskey from the well. All else the same. After all,” he added, “what can you charge a man for hot water?”

“Four dollars and fifty cents,” the bartender readily admitted. “And it’s still cheaper than health insurance.”

“Point taken.” It tasted like health insurance, too. Before five minutes had elapsed, Klinger ordered another.

Down by the bend in the bar, two guys were playing finger finger whosegottafinger. One two three four, four three two one. Shot glasses and knife blades gleamed in the gloom.

The bartender finished topping off six thimbles of tequila and delivered them to the bend in the bar on a tray. The thick bottoms of the shot glasses made short arcs in the gloom. The bartender returned to the cash register with an ashtray heaped with wrung-out wedges of lime and rang up forty-eight dollars. When the drawer sprang open he stuffed three twenties into the tray, extracted a ten and two ones, closed the drawer, and tucked the tip into a stein next to the register.

One two three four, four three two one.

One hundred and fourteen dollars plus eleven sixty-nine equals $125.69, Klinger was thinking. Less the nine bucks I just spent here, plus a dollar tip makes ten, leaves one sixteen, less the twelve plus three-dollar tip for the double Jameson in North Beach, leaves the cruising kitty with one-oh-oh sixty-nine. A long day’s work, but not bad. Unless you count Frankie Geeze coldcocked on the sidewalk not five feet from an equally cold-cocked mark, and how is that one going to play out?

Klinger turned the steaming mug between the fingers
of both hands as he considered this. If the mark were alive, Frankie was in a tough spot. If the mark was dead, maybe Frankie could claim he got creamed trying to come to the mark’s aid when he was getting mugged. This might fly until the cops pulled Frankie’s jacket, which would take about five minutes, after which things would go tough for Frankie.

One two three four, four three two one.

That was stupid, a minute ago, letting this guy behind the plank think I was holding more pelf than usual, Klinger told himself. If I’m going to persevere with the life of crime, I gotta start keeping track of that kinda shit. It’s one thing to spring for a double shot of top shelf booze in a crowded joint where everybody’s drunk and nobody knows you. It’s another to be throwing money around where you’re a regular who’s known for being regularly broke. It smacks of a big score. Word gets around. Next thing you know …

Big score. Listen to you. A hundred bucks and a major snafu to boot. Come to do the books, two major snafus and only a hundred bucks to show for it. It’s a wonder I’m not dead or in jail or both. But, really, Klinger had no room to complain. When the sun rose on him two days ago, he had nothing.

Or had that particular sun risen just yesterday?

Klinger thought about it. He’d spent last night in the hotel upstairs. The night before, he’d slept in a bed of Mexican sage in Buena Vista Park. Mary Fiducione had stood him to a hot bath and a meal and a C-note. So it had been just since yesterday morning that he’d … That he’d what?

Klinger ordered a third drink.

Now it’s down to $87.19.

So he had two nights left on his hotel: wait. He glanced at the Chinese clock on the wall above the cash register. Twelve-thirty. The bar clock would be fifteen minutes fast
but, still, he had what was left of tonight and tomorrow night in the hotel. The smart thing to do would be to get a bottle, if drinking himself to sleep was what he was planning on doing, and pay in advance for three or four more nights in the hotel, which would still leave him a couple of bucks to eat on. Put it on the come, as his daddy used to say. Which was just about all Klinger could remember about his daddy.

A guy came in the bar, had a look around, and made as if he thought the stool next to the game of mumblety-finger was an obvious perch at which to make himself comfortable. The guy nodded at the bartender, the bartender spun a coaster onto the bar in front of him. They exchanged words. The bartender came back up the bar, set up two shot glasses with a rocks glass and said to Klinger, “You got a friend in the booze business.” He moved his head toward the bend in the bar. “Still fancy the Jameson?”

Klinger glanced sideways down the bar, but his benefactor was absorbed in the game and ignored him. “Don’t mind if I do.”

“Same setup?”

Klinger nodded. The bartender added a coffee mug to his lineup and went about his business. Klinger went back to inhaling the fumes coming off his remaining grog, holding the mug to his nose with both hands, staring at the back bar, suppressing the occasional full-frame shiver. The future receded to a tantalizing distance of two, maybe three days, among the bottles and beer advertisements beyond the cash register, below the Chinese clock, within the frame of a well-begrimed proscenium, hand-carved in the nineteenth century—whereat the scenario dwindled to the last pixel dead center in the depowered cathode ray tube of his prescience.

Four two three one, one two “Ow! Fuck!” came the shout from the other end of the bar. “Fuck fuck fuck!” One of the players hopped through a circle with one hand in his
mouth while the other player and their new friend laughed at him.

The bartender set a fresh mug of grog and the double shot of Jameson on fresh coasters in front of Klinger and took the other drinks down to the far end of the bar.

Everybody raised their glasses or mug toward one another, then quaffed. For the two mumblety-peg players it was top-shelf tequila as usual, and bottoms up.

The bartender came back up the duckboards, rang up the sale, put a couple of twenties into the register, retrieved a five and a couple of quarters, and added them to the tip jar.

Somebody’s making a living, Klinger observed to himself. He inhaled the fumes off his fresh mug of grog. They smacked of quality.

And Klinger? Klinger was in the position nine-tenths of humanity finds itself in, which is, if you’re not spending money, nobody returns your calls.

Such is the little bifurcation as I’m allowed, Klinger was thinking to himself, one or two bifurcations later, from the path of righteousness, onto the path of a little greater righteousness. I don’t even have a driver’s license anymore. Why should I be held to account? If you come to a fork in the road, Yogi Berra is reputed to have said, take it. But as Klinger saw the scenario, if you come to a fork in the road, take it to a pawnshop. Good whiskey or bad, if I don’t get out of these clothes soon, I—.

“Hey,” the bartender said again. “You in there?”

Klinger, recollecting himself to the present, blinked. The mug was still poised in front of his face, the balance of its contents warming him from within. The Chinese clock told him it was five minutes after one in the morning.

“I’m here,” Klinger declared. “Where else would I be?”

The bartender nodded. “Guy who’s been buying your drinks?”

Klinger waited.

“He’d like a word.”

Klinger slid his eyes down the bar. Game in abeyance, the two mumblety-peg players leaned on the bar, talking. The third guy had his back to Klinger.

“Sure,” Klinger said. “About what?”

The bartender smiled. “I have no idea.” And he set about loading spent shot glasses into the little under-counter washing machine.

Klinger roused himself to call down the bar. “Hey.” The three men looked his way. “Thanks.” Klinger raised his drink. “What’s up?”

The guy seated on the stool gestured.

Klinger took his drink down there.

The guy was bigger than he had looked from the other end of the bar. So were his friends.

“Klinger,” he said to the guy who might be thought of as generous.

“Tommy,” the guy said. Tommy and Klinger shook hands, each clasping the other’s hand as if it were the handle on a stein of beer. The mumblety-peg players weren’t introduced.

“I gotta piss,” one of them abruptly said. “Me too,” agreed the other. They made themselves scarce.

Klinger watched them go.

“You’re friend a Frankie Geeze,” Tommy said.

Klinger didn’t freeze, exactly, but he assumed a mantle of caution. “That’s true,” he allowed. “Spent a little time with Frankie just this morning,” he added, “as it happens. We had breakfast.”

“I seen ya,” Tommy said. “That’s why I asked Bruce, there,” he indicated the bartender, “to speak to ya. I got a little job. Real little.” Tommy squinted. “You need a little job?”

“Depends,” Klinger lied by way of hedging. “I like little. Big stresses me out.”

“Yeah,” Tommy smiled. “Stress sucks.”

Klinger managed a smile, too. “How little?”

Tommy shrugged. “Little cab ride, little delivery, another cab ride, a little payoff. Like that.”

Klinger nodded.

“I’m fronting cab fare.” Tommy produced a wad sufficiently fat that extracting its thickness from the side pocket of his leather jacket gave him an awkward moment. He peeled three twenties off it, laid them on the bar, and, not far away, he laid down a hundred-dollar bill. “When you get back, the C-note is yours.”

Klinger glanced toward the clock. “It’s—.”

“Not to worry,” Tommy told him. “The light’ll be off but the door will be open. Just knock.” He rapped the knuckles of the wad-burdened fist on the bar, one-two, one-two, one. “Bruce likes to have a couple of belts after hours.” He chucked Klinger lightly on the shoulder with the same knuckles. “He likes company, too.”

“Occupational hazard,” Klinger nodded.

“Wanna bump?” Tommy asked him.

Klinger shook his head. “I can’t handle the crank,” he said, “Shit burns too much.”

“Who said anything about fuckin’ crank?” Tommy spoke as if his feelings were hurt.

“Oh, well,” Klinger said. “In that case …”

“Wait’ll the fellas get back.”

“And, what am I delivering?”

“Not a big deal,” Tommy smiled. His teeth were narrow and yellow, their gums pink and receded. He pointed at Klinger’s jacket. “It’s already in your pocket.”

“Hey,” Klinger smiled weakly. “I guess you are a friend of Frankie’s.”

“Taught me everything I know and most of what I forgot,” Tommy said. “I gotta lotta respect for Frankie.”

Klinger nodded faintly. “Frankie’s the best.”

The two mumblety-peg players returned. At a sign from Tommy, each shook hands with Klinger. “’Sup,” each of them said, “’sup.” The second handshake left a flat bindle in the curled fingers of Klinger’s right hand.

“Better take a piss before you head out,” Tommy suggested. “There might be traffic or somethin’.”

Klinger visited the men’s room and snorted one line per nostril. When he came back he offered to shake hands with any of the three men standing there, so as to pass the bindle back, but they waved him off.

The bar telephone rang and Bruce answered it. “Somebody call a cab?” he asked the room.