With Rocky ahead of me, we managed to get by the line of policemen guarding the door to the waiting room.
There were a few abandoned theaters on Mission Street; grand movie houses built earlier in the century. Their marquees were weather-beaten ornate deco confections, like obelisks. Inside, the theaters were caverns, grottos fusty with damp and rot. It was their darkness that reminded me of the waiting room.
Nobody was around except the police in their riot
gear, a dozen of them. The electricity had been turned off; flashlights provided meager illumination. The cops in the vicinity weren’t saying anything. Their silence and the dusky coloration in the place distorted my spatial perception, flattening it out. Moving forward, I banged into a chair and before I could recover my balance, I barged into two more.
“What the hell is this?”
“Just wait, Charlene.”
“Give me a hint.”
“Shut up. Shut your fucking mouth.”
The Pinkerton was still holding onto my sleeve. The police officers looked perturbed and I thought, if it could be helped, it would be wise not to vex them.
“Over here, Hassler.”
We were nearing a string of cubicles; my own office was a mere few feet away. Another group of policemen were pointing their flashlights at the floor, causing a halo that spelled trouble. A medic was on her knees doing something. We pushed our way into the circle of men standing around her. Everyone was busy staring at the figure down on the linoleum.
I counted to ten, exhaled, and lowered my eyes.
“See?” Rocky sniffled. “Look at who it is.”
Hendrix was supine, legs scissored. The police were waving their flashlights over his body like magic wands. Ribbons of light danced across his corpse, which was getting putrid in the hot room. I gagged, eyes watering. Rocky asked, “You know what happened, don’t you?”
I couldn’t answer him, nor was I able to take a breath.
“A client shot him in the chest. Took his time about it, too. Wanted to see the man suffer. By the time I got down the hall, Hendrix here, he was fucked.”
He took a step closer to the dead man and nudged one of Harry’s legs with his boot. A cop gave him a dour look for that, but the Pinkerton was blind with indignation.
“The man took three hits in him. I heard them. Made me want to puke, and damn, look at his face.”
Harry didn’t look well. The deceased’s visage had a distinctly horrified expression, having seen his whole life unreel before him. The mouth was frozen shut, leering with terror. Thinning, moussed hair lay against his dandruff-infested scalp. His eyes were white, sightless. He’d voided in his pants, and no one had seen fit to close his lids. Rocky rasped, “They got the culprit.”
“Who was it?”
“One of his caseload. The papers were all over the floor. But you know, Charlene? I can’t believe you give a fuck.”
The visible tremor running down one side of the Pinkerton’s face told me he was upset, but what the security guard said next was inexcusable.
“This is your fault, and Hendrix’s, too.”
“What?”
“You heard me. You brought this on. One of your clients, those cocksuckers.”
He took a step toward me with the intent of getting in my face. But the sight of Harry’s remains, a bag of skin and bones, took the fire out of Rocky, deflating his rage like the air coming out of a truck tire.
Unconcerned for him, I was miffed. “You know what? You owe me an apology for saying that.”
“I don’t owe you horse pucky.”
Rocky and I had moved outside of the circle, away from the policemen. We were off to one side, standing in the gloom. His back was turned to me, which was just as
well, because I had nothing to say to him. Harry was dead and I wanted to unravel, but not in public. The medics got the body onto a stretcher and with some of the Pinkertons in the corridor, they cleared a path to take Hendrix out of the building. I’d have thought Petard would be on hand to supervise the debacle. I didn’t see him or Lavoris, nor anyone else I knew, just the burly cops in their crowd-control overalls.
sixteen
I
was standing at the rear of the cubicle, fingering my wedding ring, and contemplating what I had seen that morning. I had remained dry-eyed when the police left us to clean up after them. Hendrix’s body had swelled up in the heat, tucked under the medic’s blanket on the emergency stretcher, and it was good to get it out of the waiting room. The sorrow that I felt? It would come out in stages, probably through drinking and fighting on the weekend.
Because of the slaying, Petard had ordered every caseworker and security guard to stay at his or her post, or risk losing their job. The union rep in the building was informed of this, and to nobody’s surprise, he meekly submitted to the management’s demand. Gerald was going to have his way again.
Crowding around the portable General Electric radio in Simmons’s office like excited teenagers, we’d heard the cops tell the reporters outside the gates on Otis Street that they were investigating the motive for the murder.
I caught a glimpse of the pawky Eldon carrying a mop and a pail of sudsy water. He must have seen me because even though he was walking toward the custodial supply closet,
he quickly turned around and bustled over to my door. He acted as if our strife had never existed, and hailed me with enthusiasm.
“What’s up?”
I scrunched my shoulders and said, “What a day, huh?”
“Man, who would’ve ever thought of Harry?”
“Mrs. Hassler…Hassler…line two…Mrs. Dominguez is on hold.”
Eldon took that as his cue to keep moving, and he moseyed down the hall. I waded through the papers on the carpeting over to my desk and picked up the phone, flashing that if Hendrix was alive, he’d be doing the same thing in another office.
“Hello? Frances? How are you today?”
“I’ve been waiting twenty minutes to speak with you.”
“Yeah, well, I was busy.”
“What took you so long?”
The petulant tone in her voice made me want to vent my spleen, but I counted to five and felt calmer.
“Sorry, but we’ve had a difficult morning over here. We had some trouble.”
“I’m sorry, but we’re having our problems here, too. The stamps haven’t come in the mail yet.”
“Wasn’t I at your duplex yesterday, Frances?”
“Yeah, so you were. But shouldn’t the stamps be here today?”
“Wait a minute, will you?” I said.
I picked up a pencil, jotted down a few notes on a pad and told her, “We have to solve this. The problem is how. What can I do about the mail?”
“I need those benefits right now. Goddamn it,
hija,
can’t you get on the stick and make something happen for me, please? What are we paying you for? To sit on your
nalgas
?”
“What do you want me to do? Come over to your house? Is that it? Just get up, forget all the other people I have to deal with here, and make a special trip for you, because the mail is holding up your shit? Is that what you want me to do?”
“Could you do that for a
vieja
?”
“Frances, c’mon, don’t manipulate me.”
“Please.”
“What do you need?”
“When will you be over?”
She wheedled and provoked, jerking on my chain. Frances Dominguez knew my weaknesses and had her finger on them. I don’t know how many times we’d been through this, me and her. Only a few, I guessed. Our relationship had prematurely aged, ripening like cheese, getting to where she knew me better than I did myself. I inspected my calendar and breathed into the greasy telephone receiver.
“Give me two hours. Is that okay?”
She didn’t even bother to say goodbye, just left me with the dial tone in my ear.
In the waiting room, the children were singing:
“Food stamps, food stamps, taste great! Gonna get mine, can’t wait!”
A client was harassing Simmons in the adjacent office, castigating him for not providing her with temporary housing. It seems her house had gotten arsoned during a drug war in Hunter’s Point. The local Red Cross didn’t have any shelter for her, and he didn’t know what to do either. She was going on about her kids and what they were lacking. When Simmons started to defend himself in his trademark falsetto, I turned a deaf ear to the argument.
seventeen
I
n the cubicle across from mine, a radio was tuned to KSOL, an Oakland soul station. They were playing a Barry White song about being in the head-space for love. I swept up some food stamp coupons, a stick of chap-stick and the sunscreen from my desktop, let them fall into a leatherette purse that Frank had gotten for me on my last birthday, then vacated the office.
The Pinkertons were massed in the corridor, arm in arm. They presented the look of a ragtag army, like they were extras in a Ronald Reagan western—one of the later ones during the twilight of his career when he was nothing less than a rouged and vituperative queen on horseback promoting Borax. You cannot imagine what it was to grow up in California on welfare, and to watch him on television.
A candle was burning in a saucer plate next to the receptionist’s counter, surrounded by an assortment of pungent bouquets. The caseworkers in Harry’s unit had dug into their pockets and bought flowers to honor him. Most of the orchids, calla lilies and roses were wilting in the overheated air. A couple of the guys, Vukovich and Rubio, had gathered around the devotional candle, and
looked seriously wasted. Both of them were sporting bold bags of sleeplessness under their eyes. Vukovich asked me when I went out the door, “Where are you going?”
Client, I pantomimed, sucking in my cheeks, making my face look gaunt.
Seeing Bart Rubio and Matt Vukovich mourning for Hendrix in their tacky
maquiladora
-wear, flaunting their Gap sweatshirts, Nike hightops and baggy Levi’s confirmed my opinion: social workers didn’t have a clue about fashion. Most welfare recipients had lofty taste in clothing, at least compared to the caseworkers. The clients just didn’t have the money to accessorize their wardrobes.
Bad judgment, empty pocketbooks and no self-respect: that’s what the waiting room was about. Girl, I had to get out of there.
Walking down the street, there was this guy in front of me, a scruffy bushy-haired penitente in a wheelchair pushing south on Mission. Baby-faced with a wispy beard, his black eyes were congealed with the singularity of purpose that belongs to idiots and madmen. A stainless steel crucifix was hanging from a mesh chain between his eyes. Other crucifixes hung on leather thongs from his chest, back and shoulders. Everyone who saw him, the gangbangers in their blue bandannas, the Catholic school girls, the cops driving by in their black and white vans, stopped to get a look at him. To absorb from him what they could not get out of themselves, a talismanic effect.
After waiting for a funeral procession on South Van Ness Avenue to let me pass, I got to Shotwell without any hindrance. The pieces of a Harley-Davidson panhead were soaking in buckets of gasoline on the pavement by Mrs. Dominguez’s building. Even though none of my client’s
biker neighbors were around, I saw the imprints of their boot heels in the oil stains on the sidewalk.
There was a pile of circulars from Thrifty’s, the state lottery program, and a
Reader’s Digest
on her doormat. This led me to surmise that Frances might not be in the house. If that was the case, I was going to be ticked off. I rang the bell, and nothing. I checked the door knob, but it didn’t budge. What a fuck in the ass. She wasn’t answering: this was getting me mad.
“Hello? It’s me, Hassler.”
The windows were shut and the curtains were drawn. I pounded on the door; nobody answered my knocking. I decided to sit down, to get stubborn, and to wait.
For that hour of day, getting close to three o’clock, the street was dead. I had never been a patient person; it’s a trait for those people who can afford it. The stoop was uneven, and I pulled my dress over my knees, thinking I ought to wear pants on the job. Damn her. I didn’t know why Frances wasn’t making herself available. Like anybody, the woman was capable of irresponsible, untimely behavior, but I’d thought she understood the rules and knew how the contest was played.
“Mrs. Dominguez. I’m getting tired. Open the door.”
It took me a few minutes, then I deduced she wasn’t at home. It was exasperating doing this penny-ante stuff. I got to my feet, slipped a notice through her mail slot, a triplicate form that said she could get her food stamps down at the DSS.
It was rush hour on Mission Street when I ambled past Lutz Plumbing, Rubalcava Flower Shop, La Cuban Panderia, Fay’s Club, Kun Woo Food Products and a billion Chinese ladies streaming out of the Capp Street haberdashery sweatshops. At the Sixteenth Street bus stop, a wall-eyed
pink-faced man with Down’s Syndrome was hammering away on a battered acoustic guitar.
The guitar was propped on his hip. He leaned forward, working his stubby fingers over the frets, whacking the strings with a downward stroke, and singing out of key.
“Hey-da-hey-da-ho-da-hey-da-do-da-do.”
Some entertainers are born with the gift; others have to practice for a lifetime to get anywhere with their craft. I gave the guitarist a spare quarter and wished him good luck.
eighteen
F
rank was stirring beside me, smelling like a man who needed a shower. He was shedding his body hair on the sheets. I’d have to vacuum the bed before we slept in it again. The alarm clock hadn’t gone off, but the rumbling of the homeless and their shopping carts on Lexington Street had rousted us from our sleep. He put a hand on my thigh, fishing for the warmth between my legs.
“Well,” he said. “Another day.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“Did you see the newspaper last night? It said a social worker…it said Harry had been shot. How come you didn’t tell me?”