The Ancient Rain (15 page)

“Allen liked boys.”

“My hair was just like it is now. Very blond. And I had big eyes.” Her eyes were still big, and but the blond part, that was an act of imagination. “The poets couldn't resist me.”

“You don't have a dick.”

“Why should that be a matter of prejudice?”

“You have tits, but no dick—that would be a problem for Allen.”

“Allen had tits himself—old-man tits that sagged down. Anyway, it was dark and he fucked me in the ass.”

“You don't have a dick,” he repeated.

“Bob Kaufman did,” she said. “Bob had a big dick.”

The woman slapped her glass down on the table and the place fell into silence. You could hear the toilet running in the back. After a while the bartender went back to jiggle the handle, but it didn't do any good, and the men at the other table resumed their talk. Something about the current government and the end of times. About the collusion between the CIA and the Israeli government. How the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center had been piloted by computer drones controlled by the Pentagon. Same way they killed Kennedy.

“The other man—who was in here the other day?” Dante asked at last. “The one who asked about Kaufman?”

Jack raised his eyebrows. The woman scowled.

“I told you,” the woman said. “This one's a cop, too. Another goddamn cop.”

“No,” said Dante. “I'm a private investigator.”

The man hesitated. “He wanted to know about Kaufman, same as you. He wanted to know if I had ever heard him talk about Leland Sanford.”

The way the man stood, Dante got the impression he knew who Leland Sanford was. Apocryphal founder of the SLA … friend of the Panthers … declared dead in the ruins of the Los Angeles firefight, then resurrected, now vanished … maybe dead, maybe not … Rumors were that he'd had some kind of correspondence with Kaufman.

“The woman in the photo, the Japanese woman,” Dante said, “did the man who was here, Sorrentino, did he ask about her?”

“She wasn't part of the conversation. Us girls, we were never part of the conversation.”

“Did you know her?”

The woman shook her head.

“Bob wrote a poem about Sanford once,” said Jack. That's all I know.”

“Where can I find that poem?”

“He read it—some reading. But it's one of those scrap-of-paper things. Those papers that he just let flutter.”

Jack smiled, as if he knew something he was not telling, though it was hard to tell if the look was purely for effect. Regardless, Dante bought the couple another round. Jack leaned over the bar. That particular reading, it had been at the library, he thought. Or maybe it had been down the coast. There was a guy with an eight-millimeter camera. Maybe he'd captured something. There was a Kaufman collection, down at the local library.

The woman sighed all of a sudden, a big, weary sigh. “Ginsberg had it wrong. The center of the universe is the vagina,” said the woman. “Not the anus.”

“That's not what the Buddhists say.”

“What do the Buddhists say?”

Jack shrugged his shoulders. “Buddhists don't talk. Real Buddhists, they don't say a damn thing. But Ginsberg, you know, he couldn't shut up.”

They were silent for a long moment.

“Kaufman, he didn't say anything. We just fucked.”

“How did you know it was Kaufman?” asked Jack.

“Haven't you been paying attention? Kaufman. Not Kaufman. It's all inside our heads. We create all this shit ourselves.”

TWENTY

It was true: Before leaving the apartment that morning, Sorrentino had taken a little more care with himself than usual. Upon rising, he took out a clean polo and newly pressed slacks. He hung his sports jacket on the towel rack as he showered, steaming out the wrinkles, then sat on the edge of his bed and punched out the dents in his felt hat. Instead of going out to breakfast, as he often did, he scrambled himself some eggs and ate in his undershirt, so as not to take the chance of spilling anything on himself. He polished his shoes, then washed the polish from his fingers. He dressed carefully, but when he was done and he examined himself in the mirror—slump shouldered, holding the briefcase by his side—he couldn't help but feel disconsolate.

Sixty-one years old. Divorced. Gut hanging out over his gray slacks.

Sorrentino had a meeting with the prosecutor's office later that afternoon in the city, but that was not the only reason for his preparations. He had another errand first. He drove north on the El Camino for a while, then headed west over the hills toward Daly City.

There was an envelope in his pocket, with a check inside.

Years ago, it had been truck farms out this way. It was all box stores now. There were people who longed for the old days, but he couldn't go with that. A person could only eat so much broccoli, so many tomatoes. He liked the box stores. They were cheap, and you didn't have to struggle all day for parking. You didn't have to deal with the no-goods on the city streets, or worry about running into someone you knew from the neighborhood, because there was no neighborhood.

But there was too much damn traffic. Too many damn cars.

He snaked his Torino up over the hill and down into Daly City.

His ex-wife still lived here, in the middle of the fog belt—in the little house that he had bought on his policeman's pay back in the late seventies. The idea had been that they would keep the place for a few years and then step up to someplace bigger. It hadn't worked out. Then a few years back there had been a rash of break-ins, so his wife put up iron bars on the door and the windows.

Now, whenever he drove by the house, he was taken aback by those iron bars.

Sorrentino parked a little ways up the street. His intention had been to go up and knock on the door, but he had had that intention before. Instead, he pulled out the check in his pocket, examining it.

*   *   *

Elise Younger had given the check to him a few days back—when they'd met, once again, at that diner out in the Sunset. Elise was out there two, three times a week, tending to the flowers on the sidewalk, the notes people left, the small commemorations from passersby. Cleaning up, too, the trash and scrubbing the graffiti from the sidewalk.

“No,” Sorrentino had said. “I can't take your money.”

“You must. You've done too much work for nothing. I don't feel right.”

“Where did it come from?”

“That's not all of it,” she said, embarrassed.

“A donation?”

“To the justice fund. The person who gave it, he wants to remain anonymous.”

“You need it yourself. There's Sacramento coming up.”

“That's taken care of,” she said sheepishly. “I bought myself some clothes. Presents for the kids.”

“Does Blackwell know about this?”

“It's none of his business.”

She was right about that, maybe—and if people wanted to help her, well, it wasn't like there had not been expenses … but it made him uneasy.

“I'll go to Sacramento with you,” he said. “To the Remembrance Day march. Just like last year.”

She glanced away. Put her hand over his the way she liked to do.

“Take it.”

Five thousand bucks.

It wasn't so much money, really, not for all the hours he'd put in, and though she wanted to give it to him, and he had his needs, there was something sad in her eyes. All through the conversation, it was like they were skating around something.

“That man who works for them—the investigator,” she said. “I saw him out by the memorial.”

“Nosey son of a bitch.” He shook his head. “Nothing's sacred.”

He took the check. He had his reservations, but he took it anyway. Then the next day, Blackwell called. The prosecution wanted to see him—and they wanted him to bring his files. He had half a mind to say no, but if it helped Elise, then OK. They needed him on the case, he thought. They had work for him.

*   *   *

Now Sorrentino held the check between his fingers. His ex-wife was home, he was all but certain. Her car was in the driveway. It was always in the driveway. What his ex did with her days, he didn't know anymore. She didn't work. She didn't do anything. With the divorce settlement he had given her half his pension, so he was always broke, and the house had gone downhill. The roof was leaking. She'd embarrassed him by calling up Leo Malvino's kid and asking him to do the work on account, till her husband caught up with his alimony.

His intention had been to walk up and ring the bell and give it to her. A way of exonerating himself somehow. He had gotten a hint of the kind of stories she told about him, and he wanted to clear his obligation. And maybe more than that, for her to see his name on this check and know that he was not a fool. He'd done a job and he had gotten paid.

But he had been at this point before, sitting in the car out in front of her house, with some offering or another. He'd been out to Colma, where his son was buried, but in the end, whether he sat in the car or went up to look at the grave, what difference did it make?

He couldn't bring himself to get out. No doubt, she still blamed him—because he had encouraged the kid to enlist. No doubt there were still pictures of their son on the mantle, in the tiny hallway, on the bureau in their bedroom. If he knocked on the door, he would have to look into her eyes, he would have to see all those pictures. There was no telling where things would go.

He couldn't do it.

He drove around the corner to the local post office and dropped the check in the mail. His wife would see the postmark, he told himself. That was good enough. She would know he had mailed it from nearby.

*   *   *

The prosecution had scheduled the meeting for just after two. Sorrentino was not sure exactly what they wanted from him, but he had brought his files, as requested. He parked the Torino in a cyclone lot up Polk Street, even though it meant walking past a boatload of junkies and an asshole transvestite.
Hey fat boy, what you got in those pants?
Still, it was better than paying the higher fees at the Union Street garage.

Outside the Federal Building, there were protestors. This wasn't anything new. There were always protestors outside the Federal Building. This particular group, Code Pink, he remembered from the press conference, the day they'd brought in Owens, though their numbers had grown. Older women mostly, dressed in black tights and pink T-shirts, continuing their vigil, protesting U.S. troops massing in the Middle East. “All for oil!” they chanted, “All for greed!” There were maybe seventy-five of them chanting in the north end of Federal Plaza and a smaller group on the sidewalk, just outside the square. At the fringes, a number of the woman stood passing around cartons of milk—and a number of these looked quite pale, as if seized by a sudden illness. As he walked into the plaza, the chants echoed more loudly against the building. Meanwhile, the cops watched placidly.

Sorrentino couldn't believe this city.

Everywhere else in the country these days, people had flags out their windows, bunting everywhere. Anywhere else, loudmouths like these would be stuffed in the tank.

But here …

The women looked harmless enough, but Sorrentino knew better. Lesbians. Professors from Berkeley. Women on the edge of menopause, too uptight to get laid. He had a sister-in-law like this. College teacher, so used to laying off her opinion on her students, she'd gotten the idea that the world was her soapbox. If you disagreed with her, if you so much as twitched, then there was something the matter with you.

Eventually, even her husband had gotten sick of listening and left for another woman. One of her students, as it turned out. A girl with big eyes and no opinions.

Sorrentino reached the security barricade at the front of the building, and there joined a line that snaked back into the plaza, to the image of the federal seal embedded there in concrete. The line moved slowly. Up ahead, there was some kind of problem with the scanning machines.

Across the plaza, the protestors fell quiet. The group did not seem as cohesive as it had just a few minutes before, lingering now in smaller groups, loosely knit—like a flock of birds, flamingoes in their pink shirts and spandex leggings. They started to move then, as if by some common signal. The police moved, too, in an arc outward from the center of the plaza. Since 9/11, protestors were restricted to the far end of the square, and the police moved now in such a way as to keep the women toward the periphery. The chanting started up again. One of the women broke from the others, dashing forward toward the police, then all of a sudden falling to her knees. Another woman did the same. Similar scenes, more or less identical, played out around the plaza—a woman bolting toward the statue of justice, another holding her stomach as she ran, heading for the security quay, straight toward Sorrentino, her face contorted, as if she meant to leap into his arms. A cop ran to intercept her. At the last minute, she pulled up short. The policeman stopped, too, regarding her warily. The chanting went on in the distance. And as the cop stepped forward, his club drawn, the woman grabbed her stomach, doubled over, then vomited violently onto the federal seal.

Pink puke, bubbling and frothing. Pink blood.

Around the square, the same scene played itself out, women rushing forward, falling to their knees.
America makes me puke! The blood of America is in my belly!

The plaza smelled of curdled cream.

We are vomiting up the blood of America!

The policeman leaned over the woman now, struggling to get her cuffed. She gazed up at Sorrentino. Her eyes were bright with hatred. Her lips were pink.

The security guard emerged from behind the barricade and started herding the line. He glanced at Sorrentino's trousers and shook his head.

“A vomiting agent,” he said. “They put into milk, along with pink dye. One of them got into the lobby this morning.”