The first thing I noticed when I stepped out of the bathroom was the wonderful smell of hot coffee. Cass sat on the bed. She flicked her eyes up and down my scar tattered naked body, a smile forming on her lips. I quickly pulled on my jeans. My white belly hung over my belt line, I don’t know why I was shy in front of her, but I was. I pulled on a tee-shirt. On top of the old television set were two large coffees, some bagels, lox, thinly sliced tomatoes, and onions.
“I figured you drank it black, if not you can have mine.”
“Black’s fine.” The food tasted good and the coffee even better. Mid-bite I realized I was glad Cass had come back, as dark and twisted as it was, she gave my life direction.
“So, big boy, when you’re done wolfing down the fine food I brought you, where do we start?” Clearly she was enjoying watching me tear into the food.
“We start by buying you some new clothes. Something that doesn’t shout hooker quite so loud.”
“You don’t like the way I look?” she said with a coy pout.
“I just don’t want to spend my time beating off the dogs.”
“But you like the way I look?” She struck a pose meant to send me drooling. She had on a silver leather miniskirt and a purple tube top, no bra, so her nipples were giving me a weather report. I turned my attention away from her. Lacing up my Doc Martins I clipped the.38 into my boot holster. “Come on say it, you like the way I look.” I let my eyes travel from her feet, up her body to her eyes.
“You’re alright.”
“Alright? You and I both know you’d give your left testicle to hit my fine stuff.”
“You are one classy broad Cass, now let’s roll.”
Down on Market Street I bought her a nice Donna Karan knock off, she said it was too big, she wasn’t used to dresses that didn’t hug her every curve. The dress made her look sweet and a bit innocent. Truth is she would look great in a potato sack. Next stop, a shoe outlet to trade her seven inch spikes for a nice sensible pair of Bass walking shoes. Sure she could move quick in the new shoes but I had to agree with Fred Astaire, “God makes legs, but it takes a pair of heels to make a gam.” In flats she barely came up to the scar above my nipple. She looked more like my daughter than my partner in crime. I bought myself a casual un-constructed tan suit. I was going for middle level exec but looking in the mirror I realized I looked more like a Viking killer in a suit. Most people don’t look past the outlines, they see a suit and read businessman, they see a tattoo and leather jacket and they read trouble. Someone should tell them Hitler and his crew wore real nice suits. At a quick glance Cass and I could pass for tourists or dot commers on a break, as long as they didn’t look too deep into our eyes.
Our first stop was the main branch of the San Francisco Library, they stored back issues of the SF Chronicle on a database. An officious young clerk pointed to a bank of computers and told me to look it up. I stared at the screen for a long painful moment. I hated computers, they made me feel stupid and old. I was an analogue man living in a digital age. My hands hovered over the keyboard, my eyes flicking over the screen, it was all garbled gibberish to me. I could feel rage growing, it was like when I was in school, Moses the dummy. It took all the self-control I could muster not to grab the monitor and throw it across the room.
“Move over sport, let me show you how it’s done.” With a rapid flurry of keystrokes she was into the system. She winked at me, clearly proud of herself. I shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal. We searched back to the week they had left town. After two hours we hadn’t discovered any dead men or any links to the mysterious Mr. Torelli.
Leaving the library no wiser, we went down to Fisherman’s Wharf. I bought a steamed and cracked crab, a loaf of French bread and a couple of bottles of Bass ale. In a park down by the bay we sat looking out at the water. It was a clear day, we could see all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge. There is no graceful way to eat crab, it is a messy, dig your fingers in the shell kind of food. Cass laughed, her eyes sparkling as she fought with her meal, it was the youngest I had seen her look. She picked a piece of crab meat off my beard and popped it in her mouth.
The sun glittered off the wake of a ferry, returning from Alcatraz. The rocky prison sat peacefully in the bay; it had been Al Capone’s last home. How many ghosts roamed those pain filled iron halls? I’d done a four-year stint in Chino, for a joyride in a stolen Mercedes. I was twenty-two and all alone. I hooked up with a Chicano cat named Tommy, he wasn’t in a gang. The Aryan brothers called me a race traitor, the blacks hated us because of our skin. Inside you either joined or fought, so we watched each other’s backs, lifted weights and kicked ass when called to. Tommy taught me to go insane in battle, the crazier the better. Let them know you don’t give a fuck, laugh and howl when you attack. I learned to become a berserker, that was the Viking term for the first wave of soldiers they sent in, wild men who went insane on their enemies. I remember this skinhead coming after me in the yard. I let him hit me, felt my blood rising, let him hit me again until somewhere deep down I snapped. I let out a wild war cry, wrapping my arms around his trunk I lifted him off the ground, slamming his body into a light stanchion. Pushing his neck into the crook of my arm I crushed down on his throat. I could see his brothers moving in and I felt his body go limp in my arms. I was outside my body watching it all go down. If Tommy hadn’t arrived I would have killed the man. Tommy let out a wild laugh, setting himself for battle he danced between me and the Aryan brothers, a skinny shiv in his hand. Letting out a screaming laugh I dropped the gasping punk to the ground. I scanned the group, looking for my next victim. The skinheads let us walk, gave us a pass that day. What do you do with crazy bastards who don’t give a rat’s ass what you do to them; how do you threaten the insane? I wondered where Tommy was now, did he ever make it out of the life, was he living in the suburbs with a wife and the kids he dreamed about? Was our time together just a bad dream he finally woke from?
Cass tossed pieces of French bread to a building group of seagulls. She laughed as they caught the bread in midair. For a brief moment, the scars that made her seem so old were erased and I could see the girl she would have been if the world were fair. I was filled with the desire to make her world safe and just, a world where men didn’t fuck little girls and make them old before their time. A world I knew didn’t exist for people like us. Ok, that was only half of what I was thinking, deeper down in my shadow self I wished I was one of the men who got to fuck her. The sun fire in her hair, the way her firm body showed through the demure dress. She’s Kelly’s sister, how fucked am I.
“You’re doing it again,” she said.
“Doing what?”
“Staring at me.”
“What, I’m not supposed to look at you now?” I said looking back out at the water.
Tossing the crab shells into a trash can we headed back to the Barbary Coast. Strip clubs were an addiction for most men. If Kelly had met Gino there odds were he’d come back. The Coast was quiet, a few early birds sat at the bar and chatted up the day girls. I ordered a Gimlet, a gin and Rose’s lime juice and promised to pace my drinking. Cass had a diet coke and a bowl of pretzels. Jane the bartender was a stout girl, she had on low-rise jeans and a short shirt, showing off her sweet fuzz dusted round belly. She reminded me of a juicy peach, inviting you to take a thirst-quenching bite. When I asked her about Gino, she put a finger to her temple, pretending to think. “Your friend Benjamin Franklin might know a Gino,” she said with a cute smile. I dropped a hundred on the bar. She lifted it to her ear. “Oh really, no…” she said talking to the bill, then looked over to me. “He told me, Gino used to come in here, but he hasn’t been around for a while.”