Soon the Rest Will Fall (2 page)

Unconvinced, Slatts snuggled against Robert. Two minutes later, the lights went out. The cell descended into a sea of nightlong shadows. “It sounds too good to be true.”

Robert didn't see any point in disagreeing with him. With characteristic discretion, and comfortable with the silences that existed in between words, he said, “Yeah, well, whatever.”

 

No matter how Robert looked at the situation and no matter from what angle, he kept coming to the same conclusion. Being out on parole and having Slatts and his wife under the same roof was going to be strange music.

The proof had been yesterday. A screw from Bakers-field trapped Robert inside the laundry plant. The guard took his baton, a length of whiplash plastic, looped it around Robert's neck, and forced him up against a dryer. The motion of a dozen washing machines was shaking the
floor. Motes of dust roiled in the room. The screw let up with the nightstick and breathed an incantation into Robert's ear: “Don't make no plans, asshole. You'll be back in here for Christmas. You hear me?”

At noon on the day Robert Grogan walked out of the penitentiary, he parked himself in the hot sun near San Quentin's front gate with his thumb out, the pillowcase slung over one shoulder, hoping to hitch a ride. Like real soon. It was ninety-nine degrees in the shade, and he had a headache the size of Mount Everest. A hundred yards away, the bay's uninviting waters lapped against the prison's corroded, yellowish walls, reflecting the sunlight and blinding him.

Hitchhiking wasn't cool. Having no way home was even more pitiful. Car after car emerged from the penitentiary—cops in vans, lawyers in Jaguars, social workers driving convertibles. Nobody would even stop to look at Robert. The oatmeal pallor on his face said it all: broke-ass ex-convict. Half an hour went by. An hour. Two hours. Finally a civilian employee with the Department of Corrections had mercy on Robert and gave him a lift down the road to the outskirts of suburban San Rafael.

 

The sunshine flogged his neck and shoulders as he trudged toward the Greyhound station in San Rafael. The telephone poles in the tree-lined streets were covered with
wanted posters for missing pets. Christmas Muzak poured from stores and sliced the drowsy air. The heat made Robert dizzy. He was disconnected, like someone had pulled the plug. Obliterated by the sun, the sounds of the passing traffic, all the cars making a hubbub, he put one foot in front of the other and pressed onward.

At the bus depot he bought a one-way ticket to San Francisco. He then called Harriet on a pay phone with his last fifty cents. She answered the horn, saying, “Is that you, daddy? Where in the fuck have you been?”

Taking a deep breath, Robert told himself to stay mellow. He exhaled and was dizzier than ever. “I got delayed. I'm in San Rafael.”

“What are you gonna do now?”

“Get on the next bus to the city.”

“Want me to meet you downtown?”

Breathing hard, he replied, “Yeah, uh, that'd be nice.”

Harriet talked up a storm about the weather, how awfully warm it was for Christmas. As he listened, Robert thought about the things he had to do in the next forty-eight hours, starting with reporting to his parole officer. He wasn't thrilled about having to do that. Not in the least. The prospect gave him ulcers, but it was nothing compared to dealing with Harriet. Much as he hated to cop to it, his bit in prison had weakened their marriage.

The trouble between them had begun one afternoon in a mansion on Green Street in Pacific Heights. Robert had burglarized the place and made off with an armload of hunting rifles. He was arrested twenty minutes later at a Divisadero Street bus stop. Transported to the city jail at 850 Bryant, he was booked on multiple felony charges for possession of the stolen weapons. He was fingerprinted,
photographed, and had his clothes taken away. Standard procedure called for him to get a county jail jumpsuit. Instead, he was thrown naked into a strip cell.

The hole was no larger than a shoe box. A lightbulb on a frayed cord drooped four feet from the ceiling. The walls were uneven cement block painted enamel gray.

That night, as Robert went to sleep, laying uncomfortably on his side, a sheriff in combat fatigues and a riot helmet unlocked the door and glided into the cell. Music drifted in with him—the Frank Sinatra rendition of “Witchcraft,” playing in another hall in the felony wing. The guard sneered happily at Robert. “Guess what, fuckface, you've got company.”

A husky, tanned, middle-aged SFPD detective in a cobalt blue linen suit, pearl gray shirt, and chartreuse bowtie, breezed in behind the sheriff. Acknowledging Robert with a nod, the plainclothesman humped it to the far side of the cell. Stationing himself against the wall, he said, “Grogan. That's your real name, ain't it?”

Robert's balls were damp with fear. “Yeah.”

“Good. Now let me ask you something else.”

“Okay.”

“You a homo?”

This wasn't the time for honesty. “No, I ain't.”

“I mean it's no big thing if you're a fag. We'll house you in the queens' tank.”

The detective's angular face was even featured; a sensuous mouth, straight nose. His yellow cat's eyes had the lubricated serenity of a machine. He strutted over to Robert, throwing a shadow over the smaller man. He cocked his head. “You like it in here?”

The strip cell gave Robert the heebie-jeebies. There
was no oxygen, and he had trouble breathing. “Can't say that I do.”

“Excellent.” The cop shook a pack of Marlboros from his jacket pocket, selected one, and lit it. An aureole of stale tobacco smoke billowed around him. Without warning, he reached out and extinguished the butt on Robert's forehead. “Let's talk about the guns.”

The tang of burned skin permeated the cell. A dime-sized red cigarette hole was left dead center in Robert's brow. It made the rest of his mug look as white as the North Pole. The burn hurt more than dying. It took every iota of willpower he had not to show it. He feigned ignorance. “What about 'em?”

“Why'd you steal them?”

“I didn't, dude.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, I am. I don't know anything about that shit.”

“You're lying, you little cocksucker.”

“No, I'm not. I'm telling the fucking truth.”

There was nothing more to say. The interview was terminated. As a reward for his cooperation, Robert was left to fester in the hole for three days and nights. In those seventy-two hours silence became a virtue. Noise was the enemy. He made friends with every cockroach in the space.

 

Jailhouse memories are vampires. They are born small and gain importance as time goes on. They feed on loneliness, suck the marrow from dreams, and leave nothing. It took Robert a second to remember he was talking with Harriet on the telephone. “Honey,” he rasped. “I have to get on the bus. I'll see you in forty minutes, okay?”

A wino in a housecoat was tossing bread crumbs at the ravens in the Greyhound depot's lot. The birds rioted and trampled one another to get the crumbs. Tufts of black feathers whirled in all directions, incandescent in the whitened winter sunlight. The pavement was speckled with crimson blood. Robert knew it was a sign. Trouble was waiting for him in San Francisco.

San Francisco squats on forty-seven square miles of foggy peninsula in the Pacific Ocean. The town has the highest population density of any burg west of the Mississippi. Cantonese, Mandarin, Spanish, and Tagalog are spoken in the streets more than English.

Christmas is always hot. There's never any snow or cold winds. In a city with fewer children than anywhere else in the country, the holidays are a crapshoot. Killings are frequent. So are hit-and-run accidents and heroin overdoses.

 

The heat wave had turned Market Street into a savage god. There was no shade, not a sliver of it. Pedestrians floated over the sidewalks, their heads bowed in worship to the unholy sun. A shoot-out by the Thai restaurant at Sixth and Market had left one fatality. The dead man's corpse was left to bake on the curb for three hours because the coroner's wagon couldn't get through the traffic—fire engines were battling a three-alarm blaze at a tenement on Jones Street.

The tourist information center in Hallidie Plaza at the Powell and Market cable car turnaround was overrun with
nickel bag dealers, hookers, and evangelical preachers. A needle exchange worker handed out packets of bleach and rubbers to the junkies by the Gap store. A blind man in the BART hole belted out gospel.

The intersection of Market and Van Ness was a tableau of SRO residential hotels, fast-food joints, emptied-out storefronts, a Honda dealership, the Bank of America building, a Rite Aid drugstore, nouveau-retro furniture shops, liquor stores, and more winos than sand at the beach. Two homeless men panhandled in front of a café. Commuters queued at the trolley car stop.

 

The Greyhound bus was mired in traffic on Van Ness. Twisting in his seat, Robert Grogan looked out the rear window. A rundown warehouse next to the Honda showroom on Twelfth Street, half visible in the superheated midafternoon haze, caught his eye. The industrial structure had barred and tinted windows. Its chipped brick walls were emblazoned with spray painted gang graffiti. A sunburned Christmas wreath hung from the rusting steel-plated security gate. A phlegmatic surveillance camera was posted above the eaves. A sign on the door read: Parole Unit Number Four.

Robert whistled under his breath. Fucking hell. Seeing that place was a curse. Ex-cons reported there and never came out—they became lost in a jungle of atonement. Closing his eyes, he fretted. What if he were arrested at Christmas, had his parole revoked, and was sent back to prison? You're scared now, he told himself. This isn't shit. Just wait until Slatts gets here. That's when things will get weird.

Someone on the bus had a boom box. It was playing an Etta James cassette. The singer wailed her guts out to “I'd Rather Go Blind.”

Rounding the corner onto Market Street, the Greyhound sailed downtown.

 

The interior of the parole unit was a maze of spic-and-span offices. Red and blue holiday lights were strung from the ceiling. The air conditioning was going full blast. An anorexic green plastic Christmas tree stood sentry next to the restrooms. The Peggy Lee classic “Fever” was on the sound system.

Senior agent Athena Diggs was anchored at a military surplus desk in her cubicle, poring over the day's caseload. She sported a floor-length maroon silk caftan with enough bracelets and bangles on her arms and wrists to supply a belly-dancing troupe. A mushroom cloud auburn Afro framed her chiseled ebony black features. Open-toe leatherette sandals graced her pedicured feet.

She'd been assigned a couple of new jackets. Two white dudes from San Quentin. One had just been released. The other was pending. Like she wasn't working hard enough already. Removing the convicts' mug shots from the files, she had a look at their pictures. White boys were paroling out of the joint in bigger numbers than a plague of locusts. Many of them were ganged up—had joined the Nazi Lowriders or the Aryan Brotherhood. Typical profile: first-time offender and public school dropout from a town with a high unemployment rate.

The guy in the first photo had no hair, a big nose, well-formed ears, a defiant mouth, and ashy skin. His eyes were two brown whirlpools of confusion. His chin was larger than a boat's prow. His jaw line was pugnacious, indicating belligerence. He mocked the camera, as if he were dueling with it. Daring it to catch him. She double-checked
his moniker. Robert Grogan. Born in the Tenderloin. Didn't know his mother or father. Was raised by his maternal grandparents in the Richmond district. Contracted tuberculosis as a child and was placed in a sanitarium to recuperate. At sixteen blew off two fingers on his left hand with a stick of dynamite. Had done three years for weapons.

She took an instant dislike to him. It wasn't hard. That face of his—it was a foreign planet. Nowhere you'd want to visit. Athena's take on him was instinctive. He was the type of fast-talking punk that would put a trick bag on her. He'd never keep his appointments. Never see his counselors. Never take his meds. Never submit to urine tests.

The second mug shot belonged to a penny-ante dope dealer, a twenty-year-old two-time loser named Slatts Calhoun. His file indicated no family. Both of his felonies were for marijuana sales. His innocent face with the teardrop inked under the left eye was remarkable for its lack of scars. That alone set him apart from the rest of the mob. Convicts were always scarred up. He possessed luxurious blonde hair, a model's bones, and a flawless, tight-pored complexion. It made him suspect in her book. He was too handsome for his own good. He would need disciplining.

A mug shot was the key to a man's spirit. It was a portal into his inner nature. It was an X-ray of his soul. The eyes were the giveaway. A convict's eyes were ferryboats over the waters of limbo. In every batch of parolees, there were a few bad apples. It was the law of gravity. It was the devil's handiwork. Like Robert Grogan and Slatts Calhoun.

Putting down the files, Athena sighed. There had been a time in her life when she would've laughed at the thought of becoming a parole officer. It was the last thing
she ever expected to do. The only consolation she got these days was in her plot at the community garden on Twenty-fifth and Potrero. It was a lovely patch of turnips, parsnips, potatoes, and squash.

On the spot, she made a decision about Robert Grogan. He had twenty-four hours to report to her. If he failed to show up and went on the lam—which she expected—his ass would be shipped back to the penitentiary.