The Octopus on My Head (7 page)

Lavinia considered this. “Ivy will get Kramer's cut to him first thing in the morning. If the cops look into it, Kramer will tell them he got paid, the sound system belongs to Stepnowski, and he knows from nothing about the guy getting killed. Kramer won't drop the dime on Ivy unless the cops give him a good reason.”

“Murder's not a good reason?”

“Sure it is. The best. Usually. But the fact is, we didn't kill the guy. Ivy can handle Kramer. They have a rapport. Kramer makes a natural dead end for that line of inquiry.”

I turned it over in my mind, and gradually a metaphor took shape. A guy is about to jump out of an airplane. He's poised at the door. He grips the jambs with both hands. The slipstream tears at his hair and at the sleeves and the legs of his jumpsuit. He squints. The green light comes on and he jumps. As he plummets, he rights himself. It's time to open his parachute. He reaches for the ripcord. The ripcord is a rattlesnake.

“Sounds great,” I lied. “Other than that
….
”

“Other than what?”

“I don't like it.'

“I don't like it, either,” Lavinia admitted. “But I don't know what else to do.”

“For example,” I said.

“Why belabor it?” she said testily.

“It's my style. For example: The cops will find Stepnowski's landlord. You know, the one we hornswoggled into giving us Stepnowski's address?”

“You,” Lavinia pointed out.

“Pardon?”

“You hornswoggled him,” she reminded me. “I drove to a gas station and gave some kid five bucks to hose the dog out from under my beautiful Lexus.”

“You did? Really?”

“I did. Really. Don't you think that's the type of workaday moment that's liable to stick in almost any kid's mind?”

“They'll have to find him first.”

“Yeah, they'll have to find him first. Meanwhile, a bald guy with an octopus tattooed on his head and carrying a guitar case was getting this address—” she gestured at our surroundings—“from Stepnowski's ex-landlord.”

“Yeah,” I said uncomfortably. “That was how it happened, wasn't it.” After what seemed to be some very sluggish thought, I added, “But there were people in the cafe who saw us together. That guitarist out front, for example. The cabbie saw us, too.”

“So? Why deny it?”

“I doubt we could deny it. But at some point, I would dearly like to dissociate myself from you.” Then it occurred to me that, if the cops did make the connection, Stepnowski's landlord would in fact provide an alibi—for me, but not for Lavinia. If Stepnowski had been dead for an hour when we found him, as it certainly seemed he had been, I, at least, would be in the clear. The timeline of my alibi had several verifiable nodes in it. Lavinia and her gun would have to shift for themselves.

“Look, Curly,” Lavinia said; “you've got a point. But first the cops have to decide they're looking for us instead of the guy or guys who really did this. Chances are excellent that Step, here, was into some bad business that we know nothing about. Fencing stolen musical gear, for example. After all, where'd he get eight grand? Maybe he's got a rap sheet a mile long. Certainly it's strange that somebody took the trouble to track him down and blow him away but didn't take the two seconds required to relieve a dead man of eight thousand dollars in cash.”

“Like I said,” I said, “I don't like it.” But I said it half-heartedly.

She frowned at Stepnowski.

So did I.

“There was a wife, as I recall.”

“Angelica,” I remembered.

“Angelica,” she confirmed. “Maybe it was a crime of passion.”

“Maybe the bastard deserved it.”

“Maybe, if we're lucky, we'll never find out.”

“Let's get out of here.” Lavinia stood up.

As she took her third step away from the wall, wary of Stepnowski, I pointed a finger: “Pick up your brass.”

She stopped and rasied an eyebrow. “Good idea.”

Though it was the last place I could imagine wanting to linger, I was reluctant to leave, or to act at all. In the face of a lot of lousy choices, I didn't want to undertake any of them. I thought of Raskolnikov, who kills on page 76 of
Crime and Punishment
, then spends the next 455 pages driving himself crazy about it. At least he, I reminded myself, was actually guilty of a murder. Nevertheless it seemed like it would be a lot less nerve-wracking to face the music up front.

Lavinia walked to the mandoor, making a wide circle around the corpse.

I peeled C-notes off the wad, sufficiently nervous to slightly tear one of them. When I'd counted twelve I folded the smaller denominations around them and returned the reduced bundle to Stepnowski's hip pocket. I tried not to think.

When I joined Lavinia at the door she opened her left hand and showed me three spent cartridges.

I turned out the lights.

There was no traffic on De Haro.

Halfway down the loading dock I said, “Wait!”

Lavinia, her nerves obviously frayed, spun on her heel and hissed, “Now what is it?”

“The guitar case.”

“Oh, you stupid—” She glanced toward the door we'd just closed. “I'll get the car.”

I grabbed her arm. “The hell you say.”

She twisted away. “What's the matter, Curly?” she sneered. “I thought you were used to the bus.”

“It's not that,” I said evenly, watching her eyes. “It's just that the bus only takes exact change. All I have is hundreds.” I patted my back pocket.

Her sneer went away. But before it did, I swear, I saw the thought glint through her eye:
I should waste this bastard and get it over with.

“Go get the car,” I suggested quietly. “Drive around the block; pick me up.”

She hesitated.

“What's the matter, Lavinia? No gas money?”

She drew a breath. “Go get the guitar case. I'll get the car.”

Back in the warehouse it was pretty quiet.

The light came on, like it was supposed to.

Stepnowski lay where we'd found him. Like he was supposed to. Like he wasn't going to walk away. Like he was going to lay where he was supposed to lay until somebody else found him.

The guitar case lay where sighted last, too.

Right where it was supposed to be.

I closed the lid.

I latched it shut.

I picked up the case.

Just like I was supposed to.

I turned off the light and swabbed the switch plate and door knob with my bandana slash do-rag as I watched the street through the cracked mandoor. The corpse lay on the floor in the dark behind me. The Lexus pulled up out front. Everything, animate and inanimate, did like it was supposed to do.

I closed the mandoor behind me and dropped the four feet off the loading dock to street level. I walked around the back of the Lexus, opened the passenger door, and dropped the guitar case onto the back seat. I dropped myself onto the passenger seat. I closed the door.

“Buckle up,” Lavinia reminded me, and she drove us out of there.

Chapter Seven

O
UR NEXT STOP WAS A MERE TEN MINUTES AWAY, UP 7TH
S
TREET
and
right on Bryant to Barrish Bail Bonds. Don't Perish in Jail, Call Barrish for Bail. Open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Serving the People Since 1961.
Se Habla Español.

After Lavinia spent about forty-five minutes doing paperwork, we backed the Lexus onto the sidewalk on Gilbert, an alley a few doors west of Barrish's and directly across Bryant Street from the many doors of the Hall of Justice, whence Ivy would be sprung in due course. A thick fog had rolled in, cold and damp. Lavinia produced a picnic blanket from the trunk (“Telltail just loved picnics.”) and we cozied up under it with our money and a pint of brandy, the better to keep a warm eye on each other. I prevailed upon her to return the pistol to the glove compartment.

I stayed awake for about ten minutes, worried about spending the rest of my life in jail for crimes I may or may not have committed. Gradually, my eyes closed. At the threshold of dreamland, I heard Lavinia's voice. “Doesn't the leather back seat of a luxury vehicle make you feel horny?”

“No,” I replied, pretending not to wake up. “It makes me feel homeless.”

“Be that way,” she groused petulantly. “Save it for Miss Right.”

She reached between the front seatbacks and turned on the radio. It was 2:30
A.M
. Harold Land and Clifford Brown were working out
Land's End
with Max Roach. We snuggled up.

“Don't you wish you could play like that,” she declared.

“May it please the court,” I kept my eyes closed, “counsel for the defense would like to stipulate for the record that, aside from the fact that there's no guitar on this band, the state isn't asking a question.”

“I'll rephrase, your honor.”

“Skip it. The answer is yes—yes, I say, yes—I've always wanted to play like that!”

“And you never will! Isn't that true? Isn't it?”

“Yes. Yes! Oh, god, oh god oh god
….
”

“Bam! Guilty!”

“I know, I know, I know
….
”

Roach's brooding tom elided into somebody tapping on the window. We woke up. Ivy Pruitt stood on the sidewalk, looking in. He was tapping the glass with his clasp knife.

Lavinia unlocked the driver's door and Ivy slid behind the wheel. “Man,” he said, “all they talk about in that joint is assfucking and Jennifer Lopez.”

“Who's Jennifer Lopez?” I asked sleepily.

Ivy started the engine, put the car into gear, and nosed onto Bryant Street. “Well, Curly,” he said, looking to his left for oncoming traffic, “if you go from the latter to the former, it's a prime example of deductive reasoning.”

“It's a prime example of wishful thinking,” Lavinia snorted.

Across Bryant Street, the curb in front of the Hall of Justice was lined with black and white police cars, many of them double-parked. Hookers on bail descended the steps to the sidewalk and chatted with loitering cops. Ivy turned right, accelerated hard down Bryant Street, then braked to a dead stop for the light at Sixth, all within one hundred yards of the police station. Lavinia and I braced ourselves to avoid being thrown to the floorboards. “Can it be said that a Lexus has floorboards?” I wondered aloud.

“Good question,” Lavinia said, “but for sure it doesn't have an extra battery in the footwell.”

“Fasten your seat belts,” Ivy suggested mildly.

On the radio, John Coltrane started in on
I Want To Talk About You.
“The very idea of Oakland,” Lavinia cooed, “fills me with a sense of adventure.”

“Oakland?” I repeated ingenuously. “I'm not going to Oakland.”

“Why not?” Lavinia asked frankly. “You don't even have a job to get cleaned up for.”

Ivy's eyes snapped to the rear view mirror. “No job?”

“He got canned,” Lavinia helpfully supplied.

The light turned green. “Oakland,” Ivy announced, “here we come,” and he floored it.

The brandy bottle tumbled to the floor and Lavinia and I were thrown against the back seat. “Wait a minute,” I shouted from the tangle of arms and picnic blanket, as the Fifth Street on-ramp began to fill the windshield. Between Fifth Street and the bridge there are no more San Francisco exits. “I need to go home!”

There was a slight dip at the intersection of Fifth and Bryant, and Ivy had to swerve some thirty degrees to port to line up for the onramp beyond. The Lexus bottomed its springs, rebounded and angled left. Lavinia and I were thrown against the right side of the car in a heap. Before we untangled, we were on 80 East and heading for the maw of the lower deck of the Bay Bridge, not one hundred yards away.

“Goddammit, Ivy, I already spent a day and a night on your agenda. I've got my own trip to attend to.”

The speedometer said we were doing eighty. Ivy's free hand was draped behind the passenger headrest. He turned up its palm in my face. “Gimme.”

“I'll take you home when Ivy gives me my car back,” Lavinia laughed consolingly.

Ivy laughed good-naturedly, then snapped the fingers of his free hand twice.

I got myself sitting up straight and counted six one-hundred dollar bills into Ivy's waiting hand. As I laid the seventh over the other six, I said, “You owe me twenty-five bucks.”

Ivy folded the cash into the breast pocket of his shirt.

Lavinia tapped my shoulder.

I counted nine c-notes into her waiting palm. “You I'll owe thirty-seven fifty until I find change.”

“Fine.” She tucked the money into her blouse. “Buy me a leather teddy.”

“Now, that brings up an interesting point,” Ivy said, as I counted the remaining cash to make sure I hadn't shorted myself. “I owe Curly twenty-five bucks, Curly owes Lavinia thirty-seven fifty, and that comes to sixty-two fifty—no?”

Automatically I said, “Whatever you're thinking, count me out. Plus, you two owe me half of the forty bucks I spent on cab fare to the Stepnowski residence—”

“Forty?” Lavinia yelped. “I told his dispatcher thirty.”

“I gave him forty.”

“Unauthorized expenditure! That's one's on you, Curly.”

“Hey, I got the job done, didn't I?”

She crossed her arms and looked out the window. “I told him thirty.”

“Goddammit
….
”

“Wait, wait.” Ivy deigned to use both hands on the wheel long enough to swerve left one lane to pass a car and right one lane to pass another, the two vehicles doing a mere fifty-five or sixty, and then replaced his right hand on the back of the passenger seat, pinching the two stainless steel stanchions of the headrest between his thumb and forefinger as if they were some hapless robot's neck struts. “Hear me out,” he said pleasantly to the rearview mirror.

“And you call this a business,” I grumbled.

“You got a shot at amelioration, hoss,” Ivy assured me. “It won't take but a little more grease to set us up with an eight-ball and a jock.”

An eight-ball, for the information of those of you who live in Thomas Kinkaid communities, is one-eighth of an ounce or 3.54 grams. An eight-ball could be one-eighth of an ounce of anything, of course, of pea gravel or the pubic hairs of koala bears, but usually it's somewhere between three and four grams of cocaine.

But a jock? The jock was new to me.

“Not that I'm interested,” I said, as the container cranes of the Port of Oakland streamed toward us, “but is a ‘jock' when you get some buffed midget to ride your back for three hours while you snort dope out of a dog bowl?”

“Wow,” Lavinia perked up, “whom do I call?”

“Nah,” said Ivy, as uninterested in word play as he was single-minded about his career as a drug fiend. “Jock is short for jockey, which is argot for one gram of horse.”

“Oh,
argot,
is it?” Lavinia said.

“Heroin again,” I said tiredly to my window.

“But it's China white,” Ivy explained helpfully. “Different from tarball. Different animal altogether. Purer, stronger, meaner.”

“So the jock is a kind of moral equivalent to an eight-ball. How come I couldn't guess that?”

“Actually,” Lavinia said, “it was the amount you didn't know, not the substance. Jock? Horse? Right?”

I threw up my hands.

“So,” Lavinia said to the front seat, “what's the tab?”

“I can hook us up for a hundred and eighty on the eight-ball and maybe forty for the jockey. Two-twenty in all.”

“Good price,” Lavinia said. “By three that's
….
”

Without hesitating Ivy said to the windscreen, “Seventy-three dollars and thirty-three cents. The penny's on me.”

“It seems a privation, to go without,” Lavinia suggested.

“At the very least,” Ivy agreed. “So,” he continued, “we can take advantage of this unit of fun to square up if I spring for $98.33, Curly rings in with $86.83, and Lavinia gets off, as it were, for a mere $35.83.”

Ivy's agility with arithmetic seemed remarkably undiminished despite years of desuetude and drug abuse. It occurred to me to wonder whether the perseverance of this skill still coexisted with his no less remarkable and formerly effortless ability to count the most swinging and the most bizarre time signatures alike with an equally formidable dexterity. And, I continued to wonder, so what if he had? These and others of his talents have gone and will go entirely wasted until, one fine day, he dies.

“And then,” I said aloud without enthusiasm, “I suppose we all go back to your place and get wall-eyed fucked up.”

Ivy adjusted the rear-view mirror and said to my reflection, “You got a better place to go?”

“No,” Lavinia declared with certainty, “he doesn't.”

“Not to mention,” I interpolated, watching the eyes of Ivy, “the place to score is conveniently located on the way to your place.”

“Places,” Ivy smiled. “But it's a true story.” His eyes refocused on the freeway.

“Sometimes,” I said to nobody in particular, “life is a perfectly bowled strike.”

“Nothing more,” Lavinia nodded, “nothing less.”

I sat back, resigned to the joyride. What else did I have to do? The upper deck of the Bay Bridge, overhead since San Francisco, abruptly gave way to night sky. There was fog over only the bay here, its underside illuminated by the mercury lamps surrounding the gantries of West Oakland. The toll plaza whipped past and receded westward. Ivy centered the Lexus on the two lanes that became 580. We rose over The Maze, as are called the multiple lanes and freeways between Emeryville and the Bay Bridge approach, that merge and entwine and diverge there like heartworms in a commuter's dog, and we veered south.

Merely excepting Sonny Rollins' immortal cover of
Everything Happens to Me
, we rode the ten miles to the Fruitvale Avenue exit in silence.

Street level regained, Ivy turned west. A taco wagon rolling slowly east was followed by a large pit bull trailing three feet of logging chain. He trotted contentedly, oblivious of an Oakland squad car behind him with its rooftop lights on. Burger joints and liquor stores alternated with rib stands, a tortilleria, laundromats, bars and convenience stores on either side of the street, all of them shuttered for the night and many of them boarded up for good. Knots of men stood here and there on the corners anyway, each group attended by boys on bicycles or motorized scooters. Despite the obvious lack of commercial destinations, there seemed to be a lot of commerce.

Ivy turned into the apron of an open gas station, a rarity in this neighborhood where, if a door open to the street in broad daylight is an invitation to robbery, at three in the morning it's a guarantee.

But as soon as I saw the limousines and taxis lined up among the service islands, I realized that Ivy knew exactly where he was going and what he was doing. A crowd of men hung around the vending machines at one end of the service garage, some of them actually consuming soft drinks. Others paced and talked animatedly, while a few leaned over the black hood of an immaculately detailed Mercedes 600SL limousine. Two or three men wore the dark livery of the chauffeur—blazer or black suit, with tie—while a greater number affected the variegated non-uniforms of the taxi or jitney driver, each with a medallion on his breast or cap. Many of them smoked. Few seemed eager to sally back into the night. None of them would have cruised Fruitvale Avenue for a fare in any case.

Since it was handy and I had nothing else to do, I gassed the Lexus and cleaned the windshield while Ivy went into the office behind the pay window. Nobody else approached the window while Ivy was doing his business. Striding back to the car counting his change, he was humming an old pop tune entitled
Downtown
, “downtown,” among certain people, being yet another of the myriad slang terms for heroin.

He sat behind the wheel and closed the door. “Now.”

Wrapped in the blanket, Lavinia said, without opening her eyes, “You score?”

“Halfway to paradise.”

“This will have been the coke,” she surmised, looking around. “Marching powder.”

Ivy nodded as he put the car in gear. “These folks like to stay awake while they work.”

Next stop was a mile or two further west and two blocks south, where the neighborhood went from charmingly bedraggled to conspicuously worse. Here, most of the street-front commercial façades were boarded up and dark, but even the odd residential building brandished permanent plumes of black soot over plywood-shuttered windows. Rocks or bullets had taken out most of the streetlights and, before I realized what was going on, Ivy had made a turn and the pavement ended. A block later we pulled up behind a row of vehicles parked in front of a low wooden building that might have been on a back street in any cotton town in Mississippi. There were even crickets—a sound never heard in San Francisco, not fifteen miles across the bay. Twelve feet above the dirt lot was the bottom 2×6 of a wood-framed sign with dirty pearlescent plexiglass sides. Three or four fluorescent tubes inside the box, one of them burned out, backlit a corpus of dead insects, windrowed against a lower corner of the frame, and a single row of diminutive sans-serif black capital letters, which announced the place as Emil's Grotto.