Police and Thieves: A Novel (8 page)

“Yeah.”

“Bobo? You?”

“Yup.”

“Okay, here’s the arithmetic. You guys, remember this. It’s important. Bobo, you got forty-three eighths to sell. You understand?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I got forty-three eighths, and Doojie … you get forty-two bags.”

“How come I get one less?”

“Oy gevalt, I don’t know. That’s how it worked out. Don’t ask me so many stupid questions.”

My sales route was a byzantine matrix that crisscrossed the Mission. I started on Shotwell, doubled back to Hampshire, then looped over to Dolores Street. Four hours later I sold my last bag to a long-standing acquaintance who told me Dee Dee was angry with us. The junkie was planning on making trouble. I acknowledged the warning, but my pockets were bulging with soiled five-, ten-, and twenty-dollar bills. Any fear I had about Dee Dee paled in the face of my earnings.

I met up with Bobo and Eichmann at the intersection of Twenty-first and Mission next to Si Tashjian Flowers. The sun was sinking behind Twin Peaks, leaving the street in muggy darkness. A papaya vendor was sitting on the steps of the Sanwa Bank across the street. Si Tashjian was closing down for the night, moving bouquets of cala lilies and rhododendrons on a cart into his store. People were shot so often at the corner of Twenty-first Street, it was the Bermuda Triangle of San Francisco. The air was heavy with a dissonance that insinuated itself into your muscles, making them quiver as if they were attached to a battery of electrodes.

Bobo asked me, “How’d you make out, Doojie?”

“Not bad.”

Eichmann piped up, “Damn straight. We’ve got the formula now.”

For once in my life, I felt self-esteem. But it wasn’t about making money. Something else was changing me. It was Eichmann and Bobo. I couldn’t believe how old they seemed. Eichmann’s prematurely receding hairline and his sunken, sleepless
eyes made his face as prehistoric as the dinosaurs in the history books. Bobo slouched by his side, too tired to be anything except careworn. Whatever happened, no matter where I ended up, I didn’t ever want to feel as tired as they looked. Eichmann’s wolfish aura was making us too obvious in the street, noticeable even to himself, and so he suggested, “Let’s get back to the garage. We’ve got to put away the cash.”

“You have a hiding place for it?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a wall safe as big as Fort Knox … you fucking dumbo. I’m putting it in a shoe box.”

“What are we going to do after that? It’s too hot to sleep.”

“I don’t know. We can go for a walk and get some of that Indian ice cream at Bombay Creamery. You know that flavor they got? Lychee nut? It’s outrageous.”

“I want a chicken taco.”

“Then we’ll go to Pancho Villa’s.”

“Think they’ll be open?”

“If they ain’t, we’re going to starve tonight.”

It was a plan. We had a short-term goal in life and the means to achieve it.

We turned left off Mission onto San Carlos, as mellow as we’d ever been, passing a joint back and forth, laughing and reminiscing. The block of San Carlos between Twentieth and Twenty-first Streets used to have lots of empty Victorians; dilapidated, unpainted two-storied tenements worth millions of dollars despite the shaky earthquake-prone soil they sat on. Thinking about the real estate made me fantasize about having a house of my own someday. If I kept making money, I could get a place. Maybe not in San Francisco, but definitely in San Leandro or Oakland. Eichmann interrupted my reverie, saying, “Hey, what’s with those dudes?”

“Who?”

“Those mother humpers over there.”

Two hefty strangers were spreading out to block our passage. San Carlos was long and narrow; there was only one way in and one way out. Both men seemed vaguely familiar in the way most of the people on Mission Street did, just a bit scruffy and hard pressed, down on their luck.

“Who are those assholes?”

“Don’t ask me.”

They were drawing closer, maybe twenty yards away. If it weren’t for the telltale bulge of the radios, guns, and handcuffs under their down vests, I would’ve mistaken them for ex-cons straight out of prison. Flaherty’s spotty face emerged from the gloom, more hirsute than ever—I couldn’t believe it. Just when we were on the brink of getting over like champions, the cops had to come down on us. And there was no doubt about it, these characters weren’t out for a jaunt; they’d been waiting to meet us. A cramp deadened my legs, pinwheeling electrical bursts from my groin. Eichmann counseled, “Aw, forget them. They’re just trying to act bad. Whatever you do, don’t look at them.”

“I ain’t blind, man. What do you want from me?”

“Be casual.”

“Like they’re not there? Like they don’t exist?”

“Totally. Just keep walking and they’ll let us be.”

It sounded diplomatic to me and I was willing to give it a try. A détente was better than nothing. But when the other narc, Flaherty’s silent partner, pulled out his gun, Bobo howled, “Fuck that! Let’s get out of here!”

We zigzagged back toward Twenty-first Street; Eichmann cut in front of me, going to my left while Bobo sailed past me on the right. The streetlights bobbed up and down, dancing merrily as my shoes touched the ground.

“Hurry up, Doojie!” Eichmann screamed.

He and Bobo were ahead of me. The quicker I ran, the smaller they became, receding up the block. I made a picture of Flaherty in my brain and sent it down to my legs to make them run faster, but my feet didn’t respond. The first warning shot he fired twanged over my head. The second report blew out a streetlight, throwing half the street into blackness, showering glass on me, and covering my hair with shards. People were opening their doors and windows to see what the ruckus was about. The narcs kept coming, hot on my tail.

I’d been sprinting, not running, all my life. At first, it was to avoid my mom’s hand, and if it wasn’t her, it was my stepdad or my grandmother. Then came the teachers in public school, always liberal with their fists. Then it became everything the world had to offer me and I kept sprinting. The other narc squeezed off a round that shrieked the length of San Carlos Street—the bullet whistled by my leg, nicking the pavement. Before I could take cover, a mint-condition ’63 Chevy Impala turned the corner at a rapid clip. Flaherty saw the car and opened up with a panicked fusillade from his Smith and Wesson, obliterating the Chevy’s windshield.

The Impala’s driver gunned the gas pedal, losing control of the steering wheel—the Chevy veered left, jumping the curb and knocking over a dwarfed palm tree before plowing into a ground-floor apartment. The car barreled through sheet rock and timber, leaving a gaping hole in the front wall.

When the smoke thinned, the folks in the Impala climbed out of the wreckage unharmed, but completely bananas, terrified. The narcs corralled them on the sidewalk, forcing them to get down on their knees, then Flaherty punched the car’s driver in the mouth.

I said to myself, Doojie, if you get out of this one alive, swear you’ll never break the law again. It was an oath I’d made and broken
a thousand times before. So I did it once more for superstition’s sake. Then I put my head down, tucked in my arms, and got the hell out of there.

I woke up that night not knowing where I was, and desperate to go to the toilet. I wriggled out of the sleeping bag and got to my feet. Nobody else was awake. Loretta and Eichmann were sleeping on the couch; he was snoring like a freight train. So I tiptoed past them, silent as a tomcat on the prowl.

In the dark, dust sprites swirled around my ankles. I went around the couch and bumped into the hot plate, which I didn’t understand because the garage door was in the other direction. So I turned around and retraced my steps. By accident, I blundered into the beanbag chair. Someone was sitting in it, gently moaning.

I leaned over to get a better look and and got a shock that turned my hair white. A stranger with bloodshot eyes stared belligerently back at me. His translucent skin was punctured by a solitary bullet hole; blackened rivulets of blood decorated his flaccid chest and stomach.

It was the dead man; sweet musical hatred writhed on his broad, solemn face.

He asked me in a grating, pissed voice, “Why did Flaherty shoot me?”

What was I supposed to say? The Mission was a small neighborhood; some places were made for bloodletting, but nobody got away with murder anymore. Every time I passed Folsom Street, I thought about the shooting. An altar of plastic flowers, bouquets of carnations, single roses wrapped in cellophane, votive candles, white dominoes, bottles of vodka, and cans of Olde English 800
had been erected on the nearby sidewalk to commemorate the killing. I answered, “Flaherty fucked up. But what can I do?”

“You can say something about it.”

“Why? He did it. Isn’t that enough?”

He mimicked me, “He did it … but you
saw
what he did.”

“Yeah, so? What can I do about that?”

“You have to do something. Why don’t you admit that to yourself?”

“Because I’m covering my ass. It’s more complicated than you think. It’s like every which way I turn, I’m getting backed into a trap. You got any more questions, talk to Eichmann.”

“You trust him?”

“What choice do I have?”

Eichmann said if we kept peddling weed at our present rate, by the end of summer we would have enough money to vacate the garage. That’s what we were aiming toward. It was incredible to think about it. I’d been a squatter for too long, for centuries. There was one hitch to the program—Eichmann also said we had to do things his way. Bobo agreed; he could care less. But I resented Eichmann’s authoritarian methods. He fancied himself a Jewish gangster, the next generation in a vaunted legacy. Benya Krik, Meyer Lansky, and now himself. A gangster from the ghetto who robbed the shysters and fed the less-than-privileged. In the meantime, I was trapped in San Francisco at the height of tourist season, and there was little I could do. I gazed at the dead man waning and waxing like a police-bulletin poltergeist.

“What do you want from me?” I asked.

He opened the jagged hole where his mouth used to be, and nothing came out.

My grandmother was celebrating the first day of summer by cooking potatoes in a gigantic aluminum cauldron on the stove; a pot of
chicken was boiling madly on the next gas burner. Three hot custard cups of instant tapioca pudding were sitting on the sink counter. When the pudding cooled, the tapioca would congeal, the surface getting tough as rawhide.

She hoisted the chicken pot from the stove, then shuttled it over to the kitchen table, slamming it down on a straw place mat, spilling some of the scalding broth on my grandfather’s arm—he didn’t even blink. He just sat there in his chair with the novel
The Family Moskat
by Isaac Bashevis Singer in his hands. The paperback was a tome of over five hundred yellowed pages. Whenever he wasn’t around, I touched the book like it was a talisman, hoping it would bring me good luck.

The chicken was floating majestically in the water surrounded by opalescent blobs of fat. Satisfied the meat was properly cooked, she went back to the stove and returned with the potatoes. When she had everything on the table, she ladled chicken legs, broth, and potatoes onto her husband’s plate, pushing back her black hair when it fell over her eyes. Other than the frozen snarl of a zombie on her mouth, there wasn’t any expression on her ashen face, none whatsoever.

Eager to eat, the old man reached under her serving hand for the salt shaker. Salt was the only condiment they used in their diet. She said pepper or any other kind of spice was harmful to their digestion. If he didn’t think the meal was adequately seasoned, the solution was simple: He could always add more salt. She also said boiling food was the best way to eat it. Boiling killed the poisons and the diseases that were in bread, fruits and vegetables, fowl, and beef.

The old man shoveled the potatoes on his plate into his mouth with great relish, never pausing until he had all of the spuds down his throat. He dug into the chicken with his fingers, ripping the bones apart and sucking at the marrow after eating the gray,
overcooked meat. His lonely chin gleamed with chicken fat; bits of potato were ending up on the table and in his lap.

By the time she served herself, he was done with the main course. Eating was the only fun he had, and he did it with a speed that was disconcerting. My grandmother pecked at a chicken wing on her own plate, but her annoyance with him was clear. She disapproved of the old man’s eating habits, but what was the point in mentioning it to him? She pushed aside her teacup and muttered, “Let me get the grand finale.”

She got a cup of tapioca from the counter and handed it to him along with a tin spoon. He put the pudding down on the table, and began to eat. Then she caught me staring at her from the other side of the table. That was a mistake on my part, something I shouldn’t have done. Never let them catch you looking, that was my motto. She trapped me inside the hollow points of her glinting eyes and held me captive there. She said to me in her violently accented, guttural English, “What’s wrong? No want eat?”

I hated food. The lack of it made me ornery, hysterical, and a little off balance. Every morsel I put in my mouth just killed me.

Doojie Sr. felt the best hour and place to hunt deer was in the cauliflower field at night. “It’s like this,” he said to my mother. “I can’t go shoot a buck in the daytime, can I? There’s laws against that. Not that I wouldn’t mind tempting fate, but I don’t want to push it. So I have to hunt after dark, closer to midnight.”

He failed to mention hunting at night was illegal, too.

We’d spent the day in the Hillman. For Christmas my mother purchased a silver-plated shotgun for Doojie Sr. It was a hunting piece he’d coveted for quite a while, and now to have it in his possession … well, he wanted to use it. My mother was proud of herself—she’d found a way to please her husband. Doojie Sr. was a man of simple tastes, but he was picky about guns.

I was strapped into my baby chair in the backseat. I stared at the nubble on Doojie Sr.’s creased neck. He had one arm out the window, and he was smoking a Parliament cigarette. My mother was in the front seat, facing him at an angle. I winched my head and looked out the rear window at the telephone poles whizzing by the treeline. Doojie Sr. had a beer resting between his legs. The radio was on, blasting a tune by the Beach Boys. My mother pointed her finger out the window and said, “Is that it?”