Snitch Factory: A Novel (2 page)

Vukovich came back with a pizza heavy on the pepperoni. He dropped it on the bar, went over to the jukebox,
and fed the machine a quarter. A band struck up a song with lots of strings and horns, then Tony Bennett began to croon about how he left his heart in San Francisco. Rubio, fumbling with his pants, came out of the john and asked, did I want another beer? Frank said it was up to me. I clawed a comb through my hair, making sure my bangs were falling just so and replied, yes, please.

While Bart went to get the drinks, Simmons procured a knife from the bartender and divided the pizza, giving away oily slices drenched in cheese to anyone who wanted them. I was about to thank Rubio and Vukovich for the food and drink, when Hendrix, who’d been surly all day, telling people to fuck off if they didn’t like it, got into an argument with my husband. Harry said because Frank wasn’t a social worker, and because he didn’t feel like getting drunk tonight, he had no right being at the Zeitgeist. I told Harry to shut up or pay me the money I’d loaned him, and that was the beginning of my weekend.

T
hree homeless men were standing next to me at the intersection of Sixteenth Street, near Kragen’s Auto Parts and the Burger King. One of them was sucking on his dentures, moving them back and forth across his tongue. Geriatric dope fiends were shuffling about in their bedroom slippers, looking like they’d emerged from the Hallmark greeting card series for the undead. The palm trees on the sidewalk were rustling with Norwegian rats. Across the way, a quartet of Salvadoreño
evangelicos
were preaching at the corner. One of them was playing an accordion, two more were singing in harmony, and the fourth was handing out badly printed leaflets that smudged ink on your fingers if you were stupid enough to take one.

Someday, I said to the fairy princess inside me, a change will come like a flower in a shitpile to make life sweet for all of us. The light turned to green and I crossed Mission Street.

 

Rivers of clients and social workers were pouring through the smoked glass front doors of the DSS complex. I joined them effortlessly without thought, and as I went inside, smelling the tobacco on the men and the Dippity-do hair
grease the women used on their kids, I looked at the brass-lettered quote riveted into the concrete by the entrance.

“The task of each family is also the task of humanity—this is to cherish the living, remember those who have gone before, and prepare for those who are not yet born.”

The sentiment was attributed to the writings of Margaret Mead, the cultural anthropologist whose name graced the bottom of the inscription. It defined my job down to the last detail, and was a compass to guide me.

“Charlene! What’s shaking?”

Some men came on strong; some didn’t come over at all. Somebody was saying my name, saying it with fake cordiality. That would be Rocky Harlan, the chief of security. His profile: an astute, ebony black man in a navy blue Pinkerton blazer, fifty-three years of age.

The name of his employer was well-known in the textbooks of industrial history. The Pinkertons at Ludlow in Colorado during a miner’s strike, machine-gunning women and children; Pinkertons at the Phelps Dodge strike fifty years later, truncheoning strikers.

He smiled at me with half of his mouth, transmitting feelings he wasn’t conscious of. I was interested in his body language and observed it closely.

The Pinkerton wanted to be decent to me, but that required dishonesty. He had no great love of my profession, and in this, he wasn’t alone: most people didn’t. I tugged at my skirt and continued walking. If it had been music, what went on between Rocky and myself would have been a retardando when he swaggered down the hall with me.

“Let me ask you, Charlene. Your husband, he’s not a criminal or anything, is he? Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not making any accusations. But hasn’t he been in trouble?”

“Yeah, so?”

“That’s all. I was just asking. So what does he do these days?”

“He takes care of the house. Cleaning and stuff.”

“What else does he do?”

“Most of the cooking, that’s about it.”

“And what do you do?”

“I bring home the bacon. I don’t have time for anything more than that.”

“He’s your wife, is that it?”

“It’s one way of looking at it, Rocky, but I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Boy, you got it easy with him, don’t you?”

Rocky tilted his head back and gazed at the heft of my breasts, the swell of my hips. My lush figure didn’t hold any allure for the security guard, his look was automatic, impersonal. I didn’t know what he was driving at, but I couldn’t afford to have the Pinkerton cramping my style, so I rearranged my attitude.

“You’re right,” I said to placate him, doing what I had to do with every insecure male I’d ever met. “I’m blessed.”

He angled his head closer to mine, and then, aware of how close he was to touching me, he shuddered, as if he was revolted by the prospect. He pulled back, pouting, “But working here, you’ve gotten a chip on your shoulder.”

It was untrue and I was not taken with his evaluation. “So what if I have? What’s it to you?”

“I don’t know why you have to be like that. You make more money than me.”

When an envious man looks at a woman, something always evaporates. When Rocky stared at me, I got nervous. Money was a touchy subject; it would’ve been great to be more relaxed about it. But that was never going to happen. Emanating a disciplined calm, I said to him, “You know what I do to earn my check?”

And then I paused to see if he’d let me proceed, and when he didn’t try to stop me, I just stood there glaring, and said, “I’m here to make a difference. You got that?”

“For what?”

“Don’t get sullen on me, Rocky. You know what I’m talking about. For those suckers out there in the waiting room, hoping to get some benefits. Samoan, Guatemalan, whatever.”

“Well, you would.”

“I don’t particularly relish their company, but unlike you, I don’t hate them,” I said toothily without mirth. “And that’s where your troubles begin.”

“Point taken.”

“And my aim is to be consistent.”

“What kind of shit is that?”

“I just do my job as a professional.”

Let him figure it out. The Pinkerton ruffled my feathers and made me feel truculent. I didn’t care if my clients were Mayan, or if they spoke Urdu. The Mission had everybody. There were Salvadoreños residing on San Carlos Street, Croats on Lexington and third generation Irish on Lapidge Street. And while I hadn’t been feeling like Joan of Arc lately, or even Jean Seberg, I was glad to get them food stamps.

T
he vast and bumpy expanse of the waiting room’s floor had been polished and buffed with wax over the weekend. The receptionist’s area had been repainted a lively hue of baby blue. Rows of red and yellow plastic chairs filled the whitewashed windowless space and the clients, some cheery, some not, had taken every seat.

This post-surplus arena was the center of my universe. If it weren’t for the herd of welfare recipients who populated it, sitting in there to get some applications processed with the whole place smelling like baby shit half the time, my college education would have been in vain and I’d have never gotten a job.

“Charlene! C’mere!”

Eldon Paskins was approaching me from twelve o’clock high. He was the DSS janitor, a fiftysomething white man, compact, powerfully built, the graduate of a vocational training program sponsored by the San Francisco County Sheriff’s Department.

“What do you need?”

“You got a smoke I can bum from you?”

“Can you handle a Marlboro?”

“Sure thing. I love them.”

I gave him two Marlboros, one for now and another for later. Without knowing the details, I saw the skidmarks of a devastating weekend on the custodial engineer’s face. He’d been recently and uneasily divorced from his wife of twenty years. And I knew that he’d been arrested last week for public intoxication, having been found naked on Mission Street in front of the Albert Hotel. Which was a shame because two months ago Eldon had told me a secret.

“I got back with my old lady. Her brother called me up and said she wanted to meet with me. We went out the next night, going over to the Deaf Club, because you know she can’t hear, yeah? That’s where we made up. And then we got some tamales from a lady selling them at the BART station. After that, we went back to my room and like, fucked our brains out.”

 

Eldon took the smokes and made tracks toward the janitor’s closet. I heard someone coming and I recognized the footfall. I peeked over my shoulder and sure enough, there was Lavoris. She was wearing a black double-breasted pants suit and she was carrying a sheaf of caseloads, which she would try in her customary fashion to pawn off on me, pleading fatigue, carpal tunnel pains, menstrual cramps.

After a weekend of devoting herself to strictly cosmetic needs, Lavoris was repaired and fortified. She was a high-yellow woman of forty-nine, older than me and better preserved. I was fourteen years younger than her and I didn’t know how she could wear high heels day after day. My own feet were flatter than spatulas.

“Wait up, Charlene.”

She caught up with me just as I was about to enter the
women’s bathroom, taking me in with her violet eyes and flaring her nostrils; she was always complaining about sinusitis.

“I’ve got to check this with you, Hassler.”

She accented the first syllable of my surname, making it hiss on her tongue. I glanced at her mouth and saw nothing affectionate there, just business.

“What is it, Lavoris?”

“We have a situation. You mind? It’ll only take a minute.”

She didn’t hand me her paperwork or ask me to take it. I paused, wary, saying, “So, hit me.”

“Are you ready to hear this?”

“Depends on what it is.”

“Try and keep an open mind.”

“Okay.”

“You sure?”

“Sure, I’m sure.”

“I’m having a problem with your performance. The food stamps, that bit. Are you following the guidelines? We don’t want to see no illegal distribution around here.”

She waited for me to respond, wanted me to do something. A challenge like this, I didn’t need. Since there wasn’t any value in telling her my angle, I gave her a polite brush-off.

“Lav, what I do is legit. Let me get blunt with you. You got a bug up your snatch about it? File a complaint.”

“That’s all you can say?”

“What do you want? A confession for something I haven’t done? How many fucking years have I been here? Nobody’s ever given me any shit about this until now.”

“You’re more obtuse than I thought. Is it deliberate or congenital?”

“Don’t try to provoke me. It’s futile.”

“I’m not trying to do that.”

“You’re not? Then what is this? An impromptu quiz show?”

“I just want to get to the bottom of this. I want to know what you’re doing.”

“You want to know something? I’ve got it. I think you’re trying to set me up. Can you tell me why?”

“Clean the wax from your ears. If you’re breaking the law, it gets reflected on all of us.”

“Shit, you know this isn’t the best time to discuss slander.”

“Then when is? Should we make an appointment?”

“Later, okay? I’ve got some clients waiting for me.”

“What if I said this can’t wait. That if you don’t do something, it’s going to boomerang in your face.”

“Is this a warning?”

Lavoris gave me a smile that was insincere, varnished, and ruthless. “No, Charlene,” she said, walking away. “It’s not a threat. It’s a consultation.”

Hard as it was to remember, not so long ago, Lavoris and I had been allies. Seeing that the welfare recipient was going the route of the carrier pigeon; that vast herds of them would be slaughtered. That mounds of butchered dole children would be photographed and archived in the pages of regional history books: as childless women, I cannot tell you how much it pissed us off.

I was still feeling antsy about Lavoris and what she’d said when someone tapped me on the elbow, making me jump like a jack-in-the-box.

“There you are. When you get through with your interviews, some time this week come upstairs and see me. I want to have a word with you.”

It was Gerald Petard, the Commissioner of Social Services in San Francisco.

Before I hazarded a reply, a counterpoint to his request, he’d pushed through the mob in the corridor. Petard had gone so quickly, I didn’t even see what he looked like, other than getting a glimpse of his blue serge suit and his silky red hair. His salary: a tantalizing combination of bonuses, wages and perks, superior to anything I could imagine for myself. His job: seventy hours a week in a supervisory role with vile responsibilities that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies.

What did he want from me? I wasn’t in any hurry to find out. Gerald’s office was a glass-walled room decorated with wicker furniture from a close-out sale at the Emporium. His roost overlooked the crosstown freeway, and I’m sure he’d seen lots of smash-ups from there. The traffic on the highway was just like him: cars racing without any logic with me pathetically tagging after his shadow.

I shouted, “Petard!”

He didn’t hear me. In the morning, the noise of the waiting room was overwhelming.

M
y name was coming over the intercom in the corridor, guttural and obscene. It was a name that sounded like it didn’t belong to me, as if it referred to other people and other places, things I knew little about. I went over to the nearest wall telephone, took the receiver and depressed the volume button. “This is Charlene on line three. Who am I speaking to?”

“Is that you, Mrs. Hassler?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”