Street Raised Page 8

  “It’s me, Tammi,” came quietly through the door.

  Ghost opened up, and Tammi hurried in.

  She leered at Little Willy as she entered. “You handled him good, Willy.”

  “You don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Little Willy said with offended huffiness, his eyes darting away from her to the wall.

  But Tammi wasn’t even listening and her leer was professional, automatic. She hurried to Willy’s easy chair and squatted on her hams next to him with practiced unobtrusiveness, flipping her long chestnut hair back over one shoulder as she ogled the rock displayed on the table. She was eager to scavenge her own little taste of the kill.

  Ghost pressed the ball of his long knobbly thumb on the oz Willy had already been chipping off of, bearing down until the golf ball disintegrated into several smaller rocks and assorted dust and crumbs. Ghost picked up one huge specimen and put it in the end of the pipe, where it sizzled and melted into the still hot Choreboy filter.

  “Hit this and leave,” Ghost told her.

  Tammi simpered a bit at Little Willy as she squatted next to him. “You want me to stay, Willy? You know that shit makes all the girls horny.” She planted one hand on Little Willy’s crotch and gave it an accomplished squeeze.

  But Willy shook his head. Tammi’s practiced strawberry coquetry was wasted on him. Crack was better than sex anyway, and his johnson was a limp noodle after as long a run of rock smoking as he’d been on. How long a run? The days, weeks and months were a blur by now.

  Ghost handed the loaded straight shooter to Tammi, her eight pieces of silver for betraying her steady john. Tammi’s technique was poor. She didn’t even take a cook hit, just sucked steady on the pipe strong and relentless from the start (probably just like she sucked cock, Willy figured, though not disparagingly).

  But the rock that Ghost had plied her with was so huge, the quality of Sherman’s hubba so high, that the straight shooter flowed solid white with smoke despite Tammi’s strongest inhalations. Even with her lungs full, even as she stopped hitting to cough voluminous, shamefully wasteful volumes of smoke, the crack pipe was still discharging large, equally wasteful quantities of white smoke into the already smoky close quarters of the hotel room.

  Little Willy leaned forward, nostrils opening fully to inhale the dissipating smoke, just as Tammi’s eyes rolled up in her head and she went into convulsions. She slumped over towards her right until she reached the point of no return in her unbalancing. She fell full length to thud sideways onto the hotel room carpet; she lay there shuddering in a jiggering piston motion, with only the whites of her eyes showing. Tammi’s mouth was open and drool poured out to connect her with the cheap, worn floor covering.

  “Overdose,” Ghost said, looking down at the dying whore with a distinct lack of compassion.

  Her convulsions finally stopped, and she lay still.

  Willy couldn’t take his gaze off her. He squirmed in his seat, a pang of sympathy involuntarily connecting him with Tammi. “Shouldn’t we . . . ”

  Ghost stared back at him as if uncomprehending.

  Marla had spent this whole time looking into space through drooping eyes enjoying her own short lived high, but returned from her own private la-la-land to catch on to what was happening.

  “She’s got to be gone from here,” Marla said. “She has to be somewhere else, now.”

  She looked at Ghost expectantly, waiting for him to fix it, to make it right. Ghost did one of his silent communion numbers for a few moments, then untied his hoodie and tossed it back from his head to expose his medusa mop of matted hair.

  He bent and picked up Tammi with effortless ease. One of Tammi’s arms hung limp, escaping the circle of Ghost’s embrace to point at the floor. By coincidence her index finger was outstretched, making it appear as if the comatose crack whore was pointing down at something.

  At the way to hell? Willy wondered. Or was it a warning to run out the apartment and down the stairs, to get the fuck out this building and away from these people?

  “Get the door,” Ghost told Marla.

  She scuttled to the hallway door with lizard speed, opened it a crack to peer out into the hall all wide-eyed and melodramatic. She gave the thumbs up and moved out the way.

  Ghost stepped into the hall, still carrying Tammi.

  “Come,” he ordered Willy, who reluctantly followed.

  About twenty feet down the hall there was a large square hatch in the wall with a handle in the top. Tenants on this floor of the hotel would pull the handle, the hatch would swivel out and open like a mailbox, and then they’d dump their garbage into the chute inside, said trash falling several stories to a dumpster in the basement. But Tammi’s cooling body was a different class of garbage entirely in Little Willy’s opinion.

  “Open it,” Ghost said, standing next to the hatch like a customer awaiting service with Tammi in his arms.

  Willy looked for Marla but she was peering around the corner of the doorway all goggle-eyed, refusing to set one foot out in the hall, as if hanging back kept her hands clean of the shenanigans she was currently watching. The fogbanks of crack smoke that filled Marla’s room were spilling out the doorway and into the hall – not that Willy figured any of Marla’s neighbors were likely to complain other than to come try to cadge a taste or enjoy the contact high.

  “Open the hatch Willy.” Even now Ghost’s calm voice exuded inhuman patience.

  But Little Willy couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t treat Tammi like this – and wasn’t her right eyelid still fluttering? Was she still alive?

  Willy took a step back, jealous of Ghost’s apathy. Ghost tossed Tammi up onto his left shoulder like a doll, and reached his right hand out to open the hatch himself.

  Willy went back to the open hotel room door and pushed past Marla, anxious to return to his pipe, anxious to put this whole incident out of his mind as quickly as possible.

  “I’m disappointed in you Willy,” Ghost said from around the corner and out of sight. “Speedy would have helped me.”

  Little Willy froze in impotent guilt as he heard the rustling thump of Ghost cramming Tammi’s body into the chute. Willy listened as Ghost released the corpse and it boomed and slithered and crashed against the sheet metal walls of the chute all the way down to the basement.

  Could he hear the sodden splat of Tammi hitting bottom? Willy couldn’t be sure.

  Willy picked up his three intact ounce rocks and put them in the breast pocket of his Pendleton pocket. He expected Marla to fade away from the table and into the depths of the hotel room. Instead she surprised him by snatching Ghost’s crack pipe and sweeping the rocks and crumbs of Willy’s broken-up ounce toward her with the edge of her free hand.

  Marla ignored him as she rubbed her palm all over the coffee table to wipe up whatever hubba dust might be left from the rocks. She licked her palm before putting a rock in the pipe and lighting up with her butane torch. The torch shook in her hand as she took her hit, as she took advantage of Ghost’s momentary absence from the room to hog as much of the crack to herself as she could. The lighter spilled from Marla’s hand to bounce on the table as she leaned forward in her swooning rush, covering her stolen stash with her free hand as if defending it from Little Willy.

  Willy figured Marla could have the scraps if she wanted them so bad. And besides, he didn’t want to waste time policing up the crumbs – he just wanted to get the hell out of here.

  He started toward the open doorway. But before he reached it, Willy felt a prickling on the back of his neck and he found his .45 in his hand, one round jacked in the pipe as was his habit even though Speedy had always insisted that was a stupid way to carry a piece.

  Little Willy considered how easy a pissed-off beast like Ghost could blindside him at the doorway. Willy had admitted to himself long ago that Ghost was capable of literally anything.

  If Speedy were out Willy never would’ve crewed with Ghost at all. But with Speedy inside and Bob eternally ‘wh
ereabouts unknown,’ Willy had clung to Ghost as the closest approximation to a human relationship he was able to muster now.

  Maybe they’d tolerated each other’s existence, remained silent about each other’s more conspicuous eccentricities. But did the two men actually care for each other? Did they even enjoy each other’s company? On his end, Little Willy had persuaded himself to like Ghost a little bit at least.

  Half their drug interactions had been mutual fishing expeditions: Willy trying to figure out Ghost’s deep dark secrets even as Ghost pumped him about Speedy in between pipe loads. Yet the game had gotten too dangerous now.

  Little Willy had always sensed something especially depraved and interesting about Ghost, but Willy had also been increasingly troubled even while acknowledging the many similarities between them. Ghost had been making him more and more nervous lately, like their ‘friendship’ was building up to some denouement that Willy wouldn’t find at all pleasant when the particulars were finally revealed to him.

  “Ghost,” Willy said hesitantly to the empty doorway. “Ghost – if you’re waiting right outside the door I won’t take it kindly.”

  He spoke without putting even a touch of attitude in his tone, feeling something crazily akin to loss, knowing that this would be the last time he ever saw Ghost. Little Willy knew this was the end, and admitted to himself that their crime partnership had just officially evaporated.

  Willy flicked the .45’s safety off, the metallic click sounding a loud punctuation in the silence. A few moments of invisible indecision, then Willy heard Ghost say, “Leave.”

  Willy stuck his head out the door with his pistol held back along his leg against the possibility of a grab. Ghost stood by the garbage chute giving Willy that same old silent stare, his unkempt mane of tangled hair framing his wedge of a face.

  Little Willy rushed out the door and scrambled backward away from Ghost, his gun still in his hand though pointed at the floor, almost expecting Ghost to be unafraid of the gun and come right after him. But the big, rangy man just lurked there by the chute, gazing casually after Willy like he was taking a psychic photograph for posterity or something.

  The door to Marla’s room was still open, and crack smoke still billowed out into the hall. Although he couldn’t see inside the room, Little Willy could hear Marla abusing the lighter and gulping hits in there right up until he reached the exit at the end of the hall, slammed through the door and headed down the stairwell.

  Chapter 5

  Fat Bob was running a little late, but so the fuck what? It was tough enough to find parking in the City without anyone pitching a bitch about it.

  He snagged a spot for the car on Columbus, then marched downhill and around the corner onto Broadway. As this was North Beach he was immediately surrounded by the red lights and neon of establishments that only came alive at night – vampire capitalism in action.

  Traffic flowed by in an unbroken stream that Bob wasn’t feeling quite suicidal enough to dare, and all the tittie bars were in full swing. Hucksters stood outside each strip club like animate wooden dummies barking with hoarse, practiced voices, beckoning all and sundry inside to that old dry hump hustle. Bob had to laugh: there was no way anyone was getting their rocks off in any of these places, except maybe by self service.

  He passed the Condor Club as he rounded the corner – ‘Carol Doda Completely Nude.’ The girl on the Club’s sign wore only bikini bottoms and had red lights where her nipples would be.

  Carol had moved on in the 20 years since her first topless show here in ’64 of course. How many times had Bob seen Carol Doda on the tube doing station identification for KICU-TV? Shot from the waist up, she’d wear clothes emphasizing that magnificent rack of hers, and coo “You’re watching the Perfect 36 in San Jose.” Bob heard she was stripping again, but wasn’t interested enough to pay the monstrous cover charge and find out.

  Next to the Condor was Big Al’s, proud home to the first bottomless strip act, its neon sign prominently displaying Capone chomping a cigar and brandishing a Tommy gun. Next to Big Al’s was the Roaring 20s, and then the Hungry I Club with its ‘totally topless college coeds.’

  A mob of headbangers skulked around outside the Stone; Y&T was headlining there tonight. Metallica – some local garage band of thrash-metallers out of El Cerrito with a rabid and growing fan base – was playing also, as second fiddle.

  There was finally enough of a break in traffic for Fat Bob to dart across to the south side of the street. It was a varied crowd clogging the sidewalks in front of the On Broadway, but no more so than usual: skinheads swaggering and shoving, mohawkers in spike-studded leathers, and runaways mooching cigarettes from everyone in sight – all on the prowl for action, any kind of action at all. Drunks, thugs, bums, artists, posers and nervous tourists mingled with hard-core punkers and other assorted proles. Everyone in the crowd was flushed and feverish; everyone was chain-smoking and talking loud to be heard over everyone else.

  It was cool enough that it was Saturday night: the night to make the scene at the On Broadway, the wildest punk club in San Francisco’s North Beach. And it would have been awesome if Verbal Abuse or Special Forces had been playing, or if Social Distortion or the Angry Samoans were up from LA on a tour. But the crowd was extra excited because tonight was even better than any of that: the Bar Sharks, just about the baddest punk band around, was here out of the Valley to play one show and one show only.

  Fat Bob wended his way through the mob to start his shift at the club entrance. Those who knew the short stump of a man moved out of his way with a nod of greeting, or a “Hey, Bob.”

  Those who didn’t know Bob generally moved anyway when they took a good gander at his face, and realized just how hella thick and wide his rolling shoulders were in relation to his short stature, just how freakishly big his veiny paws were as they jutted out the sleeves of his Derby jacket.

  By the time Fat Bob physically reached the On Broadway, Kong was already in place at the front door, appearing bored. The two bouncers took note of each other without getting warm and fuzzy about it. Fat Bob fell into position next to Kong: checking I.D.s, stamping the hands of those old enough to drink, and scanning the growing crowd outside the entrance as people lined up to buy tickets at the door.

  The motley parade continued into the club. A pallid girl with hennaed hair gave Fat Bob a hooded glance he pointedly ignored, while her sullen date glared at him. A giggling trio of teenage rockabillies came through with matching bread-loaf-sized pompadours. Some bikers, some stoned Samoan college football players, a few gay couples. Typical audience.

  Fat Bob confiscated several of the more blatantly phony I.D.s and refused entrance to one belligerent drunk, sending him on his way without having to hurt him at least.

  But one dude on the fringes of the crowd kept attracting Fat Bob’s attention: a slope-shouldered man of about forty with a bushy mustache and cocker spaniel eyes, holding a Bible as he talked to a teenage girl with purple hair. As Fat Bob looked on the girl laughed in the guy’s face and walked away. The dog-eyed man searched for a new target.

  “What’s with the Bible Thumper?” Bob asked, his voice gravelly from the one-too-many times he’d been punched in the throat.

  Kong followed Fat Bob’s gaze. “Talks to all the girls, especially the runaways. Says he wants to be their friend.” Kong was his usual talkative self.

  Something felt even more off than ‘normal’ about the guy, and Fat Bob kept one eye on him while processing the rest of the audience through the entrance assembly-line worker style for the next half-hour.

  ‘Turn the other cheek, love thine enemy as thine self’ – alien concepts in Fat Bob’s world. How could he trust or even understand anyone that claimed to believe that? His own belief system could be summed up in three words: ‘Payback’s a bitch.’

  Admittedly, the televangelists cracked Bob up when he watched them holding the Bible distractingly high the whole time their other hand was ransacking somebody’s walle
t. But Fat Bob had also experienced more than once just how much sketchiness lay concealed behind the loudest acclamations of religious righteousness; seen so-called Christians using the cross to browbeat everyone else around them, while simultaneously refusing to obey the very words they claimed to believe in. Bob had little use for sky pilot types.

  Several hundred customers were already inside and the club was almost full to fire-code capacity. Here on the outside, those too young to get in packed the pavement along with people still trying to panhandle the price of admission.

  Fat Bob was about to go upstairs and let Kong finish things at the entrance when he saw Dog-Eyes talking to another girl, his Bible nowhere in sight. Something about their body language pantomime made Bob pause to watch.

  The girl’s name was Skid. She was a short, busty, peppy runaway with a scarlet mop of eternally uncombed hair, always in trouble. She’d always inspired the White Knight component of Bob’s nature. These days she was hanging with the Powell Street Punks down at Market, spare changing her life away outside of Dalda’s (AKA Dildo’s) Liquors.

  Fat Bob worried about her, hanging down there in the Tenderloin like that. The Loin was true Indian Country: 50 square blocks of liquor stores, sex shops and crumbling SSI residential hotels. It was a brawling sea of illicit business so wide open it barely slowed even when Five-O came through: crack slingers crowding each other like frat boys at a gang bang, competing for the customers desperate enough to shop there; hordes of garish Decepticon hookers with big hands and prominent Adam’s apples; homeless bums in alleys making sculptures out of their own feces (with someone in a gentrified loft somewhere probably scheming on how to purchase and speculate a profit on those fecular pieces of Art Brut).

  The boys in Skid’s circle of gutter punks had a bad habit of disappearing after a while – meandering up Polk Gulch to the Castro and turning tricks at the bath houses – but it was even harder for girls on the SF street. A million times Fat Bob had made sure Skid got home safe to wherever she was currently couch surfing or squatting, but Bob knew Skid was just being friendly whenever she batted her eyelashes at him while toying with her hair.