Soon the Rest Will Fall (11 page)

Slatts manufactured a smile tempered by several missing teeth. “No, thanks, honey. Santa can help himself.”

The store's damp stucco walls were layered with sepia-tinted Bill Graham concert posters. Two customers, an aged queen and a black man with one leg, were getting wasted on a divan. Ambient techno pulsed from a stereo. 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 bathroom. “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 studied the merchandise. The weed was in pastel ceramic bowls on a countertop. The menu was listed on a chalkboard. Medium quality green, mostly Oakland hydroponic, ran $45 an eighth, same as in the streets. Stronger grades, like Canadian indica, were $60 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 $450 an ounce. Turdlike pot cookies were $5 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 some weed and backpedaled out of the store into the ebb and flow of Market Street.

 

Pillars of gold-colored sunlight coruscated at Seventh and Market. Pickpockets, panhandlers, and speed freaks moiled at Carl's Jr. Bicycle messengers were dodging cars and delivery vans. A Muni bus seething with passengers lumbered toward Van Ness Avenue. Two homeless winos were in a liquor store's doorway begging for money. Whirlwinds of leaves and empty nickel bags flirted in the roadbed. Doves and sea gulls orbited overhead.

A brace of cops had trashed a soup kitchen in the Civic Center. A priest from a church in the Excelsior district was cited and ticketed for serving food to the homeless without a permit. The officers sequestered buckets of brown rice and pinto beans, bags of whole wheat bread, sacks of apples and oranges, and loaded them into a police van.

The heat in the street was nauseating. The pavement burned like a match head. Slatts was dizzy and ready to puke, which was how he liked things. The revolver was in his fist, muzzle pointed at the sidewalk. The beard and costume were soaked with his sweat. A wino in a garbage-bag poncho yelled at him from an insurance office doorway. “Yo, yo, Santa, yo. Can you help me, brother man?”

Slatts flicked a wary 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 prone on the ground. His sneakers had holes in them. His hollow green eyes were intent on a faraway paradise. He didn't appear to be breathing. Slatts didn't like it. “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 called an ambulance?'

“It's on the way.”

Nobody was coming out of the pot store. Slatts breathed heavily. That was a good sign. He'd hate to have to shoot someone now. Dropping to his knees, he placed a finger on the unconscious man's neck, feeling for a pulse. He didn't find one. In its stead an electrical charge zinged into his fingertip. He knew what it was and jerked his hand away. Christ on a crutch. What a drag. The motherfucker had died on him. The electricity was his spirit, what was left of it. “Your friend is fine,” he said. “He's just resting.”

“What should I do?'

“Keep waiting for the ambulance.”

“Is he sick?”

The interrogatives vexed Slatts. He was tense enough. “No, he ain't. So relax, okay?”

He barely got the words out of his mouth when a black-and-white police car screeched to a halt at the corner. Two bulky officers in midnight blue combat overalls popped out of the cruiser. Their scuffed riot helmets were opalescent in the sun's misty light. Slatts was incredulous. Talk about bad karma. This was a disaster. It was unbelievable. The dope dealers had snitched on him. The
wimps couldn't handle their own business. There was no honor among thieves.

It was funny how things never worked out. He was falling through a mirror into a black hole. Opening up with the .357, he discharged a round. The lonely bullet sped forward in slow motion, burying itself with a puff of dust in the pot club's window. The music of breaking glass rippled in the hot air. Slatts did an about-face and vamoosed. He didn't stop running until he was by the massage parlor at Ninth and Mission.

 

Zap Rodriguez made the rounds through the Tenderloin's streets, delivering grams and dime bags of crank to his valued customers. He had on a brand-new goose-down vest, a blue chambray work shirt underneath it, belly hanging over white vinyl hip hugger flares. A tailor-made clove cigarette was in his puckered red mouth.

His first stop was the shoe-shine stand on Larkin and Market. After that he hiked five blocks to the bar at Turk and Jones. It was a hot day, and he took his time. Didn't want to get no heart attack or nothing. Had an iced coffee in a Vietnamese restaurant. Smoked a spliff with the owner. He then hit the beauty parlors on Leavenworth. Done with that, he sold the remaining bags at a discount price to the Geary Street hookers.

He was by the public library when he saw a flashy white dude in a Santa Claus suit tear around the corner onto Grove Street. Zap knew who the guy was. It was hard not to. The motherfucker had more muscles than King Kong, more attitude than a plainclothes cop, and a smoking gun in his hand.

So that was Robert's she-boy. Zap marveled. What a
culo. The grapevine from the Mexican Mafia said the fairy was a mad dog. Would fight anybody, anytime, anywhere, over nothing. Just for the lark of it. Zap Rodriguez moved away in a big hurry, getting lost in a clot of office workers, junkies, and tourists. He had no interest in meeting Slatts Calhoun.

A minor earthquake rocked the neighborhood the morning after Slatts robbed the pot store. The temblor broke the outdoor clock on the furniture mart building at Ninth and Market, leaving its hands paralyzed at quarter to nine. The night's heat and fogginess had eloped into buttery smog. The street was a nest of shadows in the wicked sunshine.

Robert hightailed it to the welfare office on Harrison to put in an application for food stamps. On the walk there he stewed about how things were going at home. The truth was, shit was weird. He wasn't having sex with Harriet or Slatts. Not since he got out of the joint. Was his battery unplugged? It was hard to say with Harriet. Eight years was a long time to be married to someone when you were twenty-four.

Apart from Slatts, he'd been true to her. It didn't amount to a hill of beans. His marriage needed a psalm to heal it. And what about his relationship with Slatts? It had been smooth sailing in the penitentiary. Here in the city, it was on the skids.

In San Quentin he got three square meals a day—nothing to sneer at. Poaching game in San Francisco was getting old real fast. So was associating with Harriet and
Slatts. Harriet had been disrespecting his ass, telling him how hard everything had been for her while he was in the joint. As if he didn't know that.

 

Inside the food stamp office a pair of security guards—two Samoan men, one tall and the other short, both in gray Pinkerton company uniforms—blocked his passage. Neither of them had guns. Didn't need them. They had muscles coming out of their ears. The first one said, “What do you want, dude?”

Robert was agitated. “What do you mean? This is the food stamp joint, ain't it?”

“Yeah, so? You just can't come through here, all unorganized. You've got to have an appointment and stuff.”

“But it's an emergency.”

“Says who? Your mama?”

“No, man, I've got a wife and kid to feed.”

“Too fucking bad.”

The other guard gave Robert advice. “We ain't running a nightclub. You want food stamps? You call up and talk to somebody.”

“Come on, you guys, gimme a break.”

The taller Samoan had shoulder-length jheri curls and gave Robert the once-over. His hard brown face softened. “You'll be cool if we let you in?”

Robert's shiner was a magnificent lemon yellow. He said fervently, “I'll be cool.”

 

The first rule in the welfare office was to say nothing that could be used against you. Robert's eligibility worker was a lady by the name of Ruth Landau, a recent graduate from the sociology department at Stanford. She was red
haired and buxom, done up in a leather maxi skirt, lightweight goose-down parka, waist-long rayon scarf, and hiking boots. Had nice laugh lines around her mouth. Her cubbyhole was swamped with papers. She got Robert a chair and drilled him. “How old is your daughter?”

He was poker-faced. “Seven. I think.”

“Is she in school?”

“Never misses a day.”

“And you're her biological father?”

“Uh huh.”

“Where is she now?”

“With her mother.”

“Do you live at home?”

“Yeah.”

“And what about nutrition in your family? What's your diet like?”

The topic was more to his liking. Robert warmed up to her. “It's great. I'm a hunter.”

“You hunt? That's odd.”

“I hunt game all the time.”

“In San Francisco?”

“Yes.”

“That isn't possible.”

Robert cross-examined her. “Maybe for you. Not for me. I'm a genius. I can do it anywhere.”

“So you eat a lot of meat?”

“At every meal.”

“What kind?”

“You name it. Rabbit, deer, squirrel, duck, and possum.”

“Nothing from the supermarket?”

“Never.” Robert was condescending. “I'm particular about my meat.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“I do a lot of things.”

She did a root canal on his biography. “What sort of things?”

“To be honest, employment has been slow.”

“How come?”

“I had a little spate of trouble with the police. No big deal.”

“Were you arrested for a crime?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever been convicted?”

“Yup.”

“For a misdemeanor?”

“Nope.”

“A felony?”

“Once.”

Her eyes went dead. “You're not eligible for food stamps.”

Robert looked at the floor and didn't say anything. What was there to say? He had no cash. He was a felon. His wife thought he was a schmuck. He got up from the chair and shambled out of the cubicle. Then he retraced his steps through the waiting room and trudged from the building into the sun-drenched street. On the way out, one of the Samoan guards hooted at him. “Dumb ass white boy.”

 

Breaking into a client's residence wasn't a parole officer's usual modus operandi. Athena Diggs was willing to make an exception for Robert Grogan. She picked the lock to his door with an implement from her tool kit and stepped inside the apartment.

All the windows in the living room were closed. The curtains were drawn. The wallpaper was perspiring from the heat. The coffee table was burdened with beer cans and three overpopulated ashtrays. The rug was slathered with dog biscuit crumbs.

She ventured into the kitchen. A mound of dirty dishes was stacked head-high on the counter. Self-satisfied flies dive-bombed the pots and pans on the stove. A box of cookies was on the table. A dried-out orange and a bowl of cold cereal kept it company. There was no sign of Christmas anywhere.

Sneaking into the bathroom, she had a collision with the deerskin. It was stretched over the curtain rod in the bathtub. Then she heard a muffled sound from the bedroom. Bingo. That was it. The white boys were hiding in the closet. Thought they were cunning. Thought they were tricky. It was all over for their shit. Robert Grogan and Slatts Calhoun had fucked up. Athena reached in her purse for the stun gun and the handcuffs.

In the hall, she met the dog. There was an immediate standoff. An electric current washed against the black woman's skin. Was the mutt going to bite her? She had visions of rabies. Her fears multiplied when the shepherd hippety-hopped over to her and rammed his snout in her crotch. She warned him. “Get the fuck away from me.”

The dog's hypnotic amber eyes drank her in. Flies caroused over the shepherd's tormented head. Drool hung in stalactites from its muzzle. A red-tipped erection nestled between its furry legs. Athena gave the pooch a shove with her hand. “Move off.” Fleas settled on her arm. Gripping the handcuffs, she said, “Stop it.”

Nobody was at the pad except the dog. The parole officer
withdrew to the front door. The shepherd pursued her. His stiffened penis trailed across the shag carpeting, attracting lint. As she left the crib, he bayed with sorrow.

At the corner of Eighth and Market, near the Ramada Inn, outlined by the hotel's Christmas lights, a cavalcade of green-headed parrots skirted the power lines. They dipped through a parking lot and disappeared into the fog. Holiday lighting sparkled deliriously in the Walgreens drugstore. It was hotter than it had been all week.

The noontime sun blitzed the Trinity Plaza Apartments. In the parking lot two sea gulls bullied a one-legged pigeon. The sidewalk teemed with homeless women and men selling books and cassettes, clothes, shoes and boots, frying pans, toasters, hammers and screwdrivers, extension cords, and bicycle tires. A crow feasted on a cast-off box of KFC chicken wings in the gutter.