Snitch Factory: A Novel (10 page)

Purifying anger swept over me, moving rapidly from its source, a riverbed of animosity. It was directed at anyone who betrayed me, who turned me out into the cold. I
wanted to cry hateful, stinging tears, but I willed my face to stay dumb and stony.

“What’s wrong, Hassler? Are you afraid Petard is going to leave you behind?”

“He would never do that.”

“You know what? You’re wrong. Gerald won’t take any of us with him.”

“Where is he going?”

“Where do men like Petard go when they’re done with social services? Where do you think? They go into the penal industry as freelance consultants.”

She stopped rocking for a moment, a vertical crease etched into her brow. “I even offered him you, Charlene. As a trophy, if he wouldn’t leave me here. But I wasn’t bribing him with anything that he didn’t already have, was I?”

I could have been vulnerable with her, saying how I rearranged the past to suit my needs and how, every once in a while, I liked to get drunk and crazy. I could have told Lavoris about what it took to be tender, that it was something she needed to learn. But confessions like that are inappropriate, and don’t amount to much.

“Lav, do me a favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Promise to be honest with me. I need to know what’s going on.”

“I’d be glad to.”

“Because we need to communicate, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And do me one other favor, please.”

“Of course. Name it.”

“I’ve got letters to write, rejection slips to send out. So would you get the fuck out of my office?”

T
he next day, the fog was thick as the cotton pulled from an aspirin bottle. It spilled into the Mission from Diamond Heights and the Alemany Gap. I went past El Tin Tan Club, the Cor vis Union Florist, the newspaper-lined windows of the Grand Southern Hotel and a row of lonely dried-out palm trees. The BART subway trains quaked under my feet and under the street.

A rusted-out police van came to a stop at the red light on Sixteenth Street, gunning its engine. The two cops in front were staring through the windshield, both of them wearing sunglasses. A trio of Victory Outreach group streetworkers, ex-convicts, and gangbangers who were in the service of the gospel, took advantage of the idling van and ran up to the window. The first guy yipped, “Officer, you wanna buy a ticket to our church raffle? It’s for a good cause!”

The cop riding shotgun swiveled his head ever so precisely, like his neck was rolling on ball bearings. He looked at the
evangelico,
an overly enthused
vato
in a headband. Then he took in the man’s associates, two studs who were going to fat, losing their prison muscle. “Man, I don’t want to buy anything from you. I do enough,” he said politely.

The three
vatos
chuckled nervously, standing by the van’s side.

“Do you know what, homeboys?” the cop explained to them. “I give my everything. I bleed for this city. So why don’t you dwarves get away from the vehicle, or I’ll ticket you for soliciting.”

 

A few minutes later inside the DSS, I stopped off at the receptionist’s counter and riffed through the day’s mail. The intake clerk, a flustered woman named Beatrice, was there, not doing anything. She said to me out of sheer boredom while studying her nails, “I saw your new husband the other day at Safeway. He was in the express lane. I had no idea he was so handsome. He looked like a gay porn star.”

Feeling catty, I replied, “Excuse me, but he’s not that new, and maybe he is gay.”

Lavoris came over to us, dangling a costly leather purse from her wrist. Where did she get the money for that quality of gear? Not from her salary, that’s for sure. She smiled and said good morning to Beatrice, shunning me. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I said see you later to the two of them and started toward my cubicle.

Rocky was at the far end of the hall, arguing with a young woman, censuring her, about what I couldn’t hear. The Pinkerton threw his arms up in the air; the gesture was the security chief’s signature that his temper was near its breaking point. What I heard next, I’ll never forget, because it set the stage for the trouble he and I would have later on in the week.

Two shots went off with an abrupt robust bang. The Pinkerton’s howl of woe was squeezed inside the twin reports. The clients jumped from their seats, and the
Klaxons in the building started up, drowning us in a tsunami of shrill electronic beeps. Rocky doubled over, clutching his stomach and then he stumbled a couple of steps, backing up against the glass door to the children’s daycare room, knocking over a chair and bellowing, “I’m all right! I’m all right! Got my damn bulletproof on!”

Pinkertons came flying into the waiting room, locking arms together, sealing off the exits. The shooter was gone. One of the security guards made Rocky sit down, and he unbuttoned the wounded man’s shirt, revealing a green bulletproof vest. Two slugs were protruding from the center of the protective armor, exactly where Rocky’s navel was.

“Who was it, man?”

“Did you get a look at her? Could you identify her if you saw her again?”

“Jesus fucking Christ!”

I looked up. It was Rubio, breathless.

“What happened?” he asked.

A small crowd was surrounding Rocky: security guards, clients, Lavoris and Beatrice. The Pinkerton was conscious, very much so, talking a mile a minute, overwrought with the celebratory feeling that came from surviving an encounter with his own demise.

“Yeah, it’s not such a big thing. That woman, though, damn, if I saw her again, I could i.d. her. She was like, inches away from me.”

T
he Zeitgeist wasn’t the same without Harry Hendrix. It tore me down to see the vacant bar stool next to me without Harry and the eternal cigarette in his hand. The regulars from the DSS still got wrecked there nightly, but the partying wasn’t up to snuff without him. It struck me ironic that we used to talk in there about quitting the bottle.

“You gonna keep drinking for the rest of your life?” I’d asked.

“I don’t think so,” he hiccupped, nursing a Coors. “Not drinking is one thing. I could live with that, some day, and I’m not saying when. But turning into a program fascist and going to meetings is something different. I’m not into it.”

“The way I see it,” Frank interjected. “We’ve got to get you a lady. That will solve a lot.”

Hendrix was socratic about the largesse of this offer. “What do you mean? A hooker?”

“No, no, man. The real thing. Someone you take out to the movies and to dinner. A full-time lover.”

The concept interested the social worker. I saw lightning zigzag in his eyes, like someone had thrown a switch,
illuminating the sexual darkness that was every single male’s plight.

“Frank’s onto something, Harry,” I said.

“You know what?” he replied out of the blue. “I’ve got a kid, a boy somewhere that I haven’t seen in a couple of years.”

“Is he with the mother?” Frank asked.

Hendrix stared at the bottom of his beer. “He sure is. They’re out in the desert, down south, near Palmdale, some hellhole like that.”

“Not Tehachapi. I did time there.”

Harry quizzed Frank. “You were in prison?”

“Ah, it was nothing.” Frank took a swig of beer, letting us admire his profile. “Receiving stolen goods, that’s all.”

Hendrix tried to extract a reaction from me by asking, “You know about this, Charlene?”

Great: Harry was going to lapse into his alternate personality; the crabby man who liked to feel sorry for himself. But Simmons came over to us, throwing his meaty arms around Frank and Harry, asking the three of us, “You heavyweights sticking around? Want another drink?”

I could see Simmons was asking us to stay with him. He was afraid of the withering silence that came with the end of each weeknight. Frank winked, “I’m staying, and so is Charlene.”

Harry smiled, uplifted by the invitation. He held out his glass to Simmons. “Get me another beer.”

Rubio was necking with a woman in the back next to the pay phone, moving to a REO Speedwagon song on the jukebox. Rumor had it Bart was getting some from the middle-aged bleached blonde, a veteran bar hopper who’d been at the Zeitgeist for years. Simmons said she was a DSS groupie. Rubio had his arm around her waist and he was listening to what she was saying, his face transfixed,
eyes glowing. They swayed together, shuffling and giggling.

Hendrix glanced at them and said, “I’m glad to see the man’s having fun.”

It was what you’d expect Harry to say: affirming another fellow’s happiness. Simmons came back with three eloquent, inviting bottles of Bud. Frank took one and chugged it non-stop until it was a third empty. Hendrix read the label on his beer, then had a nourishing swallow.

“You know what?” he belched.

“What’s that, Harry?” I asked, taking the last bottle Simmons brought.

“You and your guy here are good people. I’m glad to know you.”

Frank raised his bottle in a toast, and I did mine. Harry brought his Bud to clink against ours; the sound of it sent a shiver down my spine.

“To friends,” Hendrix vowed.

Harry was gone. In his stead, like a portent, a hustler in a studded leather jacket came up to Frank in the Zeitgeist. The dealer, tanned and speeding with psychotic acne under his chin, got on a stool and said, “We need to rap, homeboy.”

Frank put his beer down and stared at it while the muscles in his neck bulged up, inflated with disgust. “What about?” he asked.

“Those five dime bags I loaned you,” the dealer said.

Frank looked at me with the hopes that I wasn’t hearing anything. His eyes met mine in a brief exchange which didn’t yield much for him. He said to his antagonist, “I told you when we did it, the other guy was going to pay for
them. You were fronting them to him, not me. I was doing an errand. Didn’t he let you know that?”

The dude asked blandly, “What other guy? I don’t recall anyone else in on this, just you and me. Are you making shit up to get out of it? Is that how you do things?”

“Frank, what’s going on here?”

“Charlene, please.”

To the dealer, Frank explained in a husky voice how it was with him. “I don’t like you coming up to me while I’m with my old lady. What are we talking about? Forty, fifty dollars? Can’t it wait?”

The rat tapped Frank on the chest. “Don’t shine me on. I want the money. I’m calling in my debts.”

“Tomorrow, okay?”

“I know where you live, fucker!”

That did it for Frank. He half-turned on his stool and straight-armed the asshole into the bar top, knocking him over, kicking him in the mouth once, twice, three times. When the dealer tried to hoist himself upright, Frank pushed him to the floor, stomping on him, working the bar stool for leverage, and using it to bash his opponent in the ribs.

A friend of the man, a long-haired guy with a goatee, came up to Frank, blustering, “Lay off! That’s my cousin!”

I jumped back, clutching my drink and my purse. I ducked when Frank crunched the longhair with a left hook, a right jab, then two more hooks, left and right, sending the man flying into a table. Frank was spinning around, ululating and frothing at the mouth, losing control, royally losing it. My husband kneeled down and stripped the leather jacket from the hustler, stood up and threw it over my shoulders. “Sure looks sharp on you,” he said.

The garment was rank with the speed freak’s odor. I tossed it to the floor and thought to myself, it would be smart if we never came back to the Zeitgeist.

 

On our way home slinking down South Van Ness Avenue, weighed under by three extra quart bottles of Budweiser, I said to Frank, “Next time, you want to get us killed, let me know first. Why didn’t you tell me that you needed some cash?”

Frank’s head was sunk into his jacket lapels, making him look vulnerable. His brawn was hidden, the sun was descending, and both of us were semi-drunk.

At the corner of Eighteenth Street next to the Whiz Burgers Drive-In, we encountered my second ex-husband. A short, thin man with golden curly hair, he was in the company of a mutual acquaintance, a tart with herpes. I said to Frank, “I don’t want to hear a word out of you.”

My ex-husband whistled, “Charlene?”

I played the game. I rubbed my nose, snorting, “Yeah, Skippy. It’s me. Long time, no see. What’s up? You look great.”

“You remember Rita, don’t you?”

Both of them were smiling so hard, their mouths were going to shatter. I projected a frosty stare at the pock-marked mink standing by his side.

“For sure. How are you doing, Rita?”

The gold-toothed girl had an excess of Revlon ultra-blush caked on her marred cheeks. She said hello, sort of. Skippy ignored Frank and took her arm in his and said: “I’m going to school. I thought you’d like to know that.”