“Lady’s going to lose her license. Receiving stolen city property.” Johnson had my camera and briefcase under his arm.
“The camera’s my personal property, Johnson. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s evidence now. Her license is gone. We’re merely retrieving what belongs to the city. Boy, Morales, did you ever fuck up.”
They left. I had just cost Miss Mary her gig. And I had a pretty good idea who had turned the cops on me.
I practically ran over to Dolores Street, and when I saw her roadster parked outside, I took the steps two at a time. I caught Sofia on her way out, with a little attaché case, all ready to go. I snapped. “You double-crossed me.” SMACK! I bitch-slapped her hard as I could. She stood her ground.
“You think I would do that?”
“You did.” And I let her have it again. SMACK!
“Then why did I bring you this?”
It was the señora’s little black book, listing all the contributions, legal and illegal, to the mayor, the D.A., and the chief of police.
It wrenched my heart that I’d been so cruel to Sofia. “I’m sorry.”
“Let’s leave now, Roberto. Please, before anything else happens.”
“Wait. There’s something I don’t understand. If you didn’t tell them about Miss Mary…how did they know my files were there?”
I led her back inside and started throwing the cushions around, tearing out the stuffings. Nothing. She thought I was crazy. What was I looking for? The lamp? Yes. I tore off the shade. Nothing. Then I saw the painting, the gift from the aunt, La Anima en Purgatorio. And there it was in the frame. The wire I was looking for. I ripped it out.
“Your aunt bugged you. She heard everything we said last night. What do you think of that?”
“You mean everything? What a degenerate.”
“We don’t have a minute to lose.”
“What should I pack?”
“Nothing but your lipstick. Leave no clues behind.”
Night had already fallen as I took the roadster out Dolores Street and onto the freeway headed south. I knew a little cove out by Half Moon Bay, where a friend of mine ran a motel by the beach. We could hang there for a few days, gauge the fallout, figure out our next move. I took Highway 1 to Pacifica and right away we came upon fog. It was rolling in quick and thick, and as I started heading up Devil’s Slide I could tell the ride over would be dangerous.
I put the fog lights on and looked in the rearview. Coming up behind me was a white SUV. I nudged the roadster and it rose like a bird. I lost them momentarily, but at the same time I couldn’t risk hitting eighty or ninety on those twisting curves, blinded as I was by the fog. Headlights were creeping up again-it was the SUV and it didn’t look like it wanted to pass me. It wanted to ram me.
We were going uphill but would soon come to a peak that flattened out before dropping again. With the SUV a few feet from my ass, I revved the roadster and flicked on the bright lights, creating a mirror effect, then snapped them off and did a hard brake onto the narrow right shoulder. The SUV had a choice: Pull over and smash into me, sending us both over the three hundred foot cliffs, or pass me by. It passed me by, but not without a burst from an Uzi. Ra-ta-ta-ta-ta!
“Duck!” I shouted, and pushed Sofia down. The windshield broke into spider webs, the impact of each round making the roadster tremble. Then I heard the SUV fade. I stayed down till several more cars had passed. In case there were more than one of them.
That’s when I saw the blood. Sofia had been hit. The bullet had missed me but had found her right shoulder. She was bleeding in a bad way and her eyes were frightened.
“I’m going to get some help,” I said through clenched teeth. I pulled out her little cell phone but there was no signal in this area, cut off by the sheer mountains. With my coat, I made her as comfortable as I could, but I knew she was in terrible danger.
I found a flare in her trunk and sparked it. Since the roadster was close to the cliff’s edge, I walked back toward the oncoming traffic so I could be seen in the fog and drizzle. Then headlights approached, a car with two guys bullshitting instead of paying attention. And me out there swinging the flare at them in the middle of the road. Till at the last second, the driver saw me and swerved suddenly to the right, onto the shoulder; lost control, bounced fifty feet, and smashed broadside into the roadster. KABONG!
The rest of my life I’ll remember that sound, metal against metal, heart against heart.
I ran to the edge and watched as the two cars went over the cliff, tumbling down together and bursting into a single fireball whose heat singed my face. I screamed, I howled, I don’t know, it made no difference. I knew at that instant this would be the deciding moment of my life; the before and after that would scar whatever life I’d lived and whatever I have left of life now.
I started walking away. I didn’t want to be around when the ambulance arrived. Didn’t want to be anywhere near the scene. If someone figured that I’d been killed in the crash, so much the better. One day, those who did this would pay, and I wanted to be around to see it.
When I got back to La Mission I discovered my loft had been torched. A warning, I guess. The spray-painted graffiti, DIE YUPPY SCUM, didn’t fool me. They would have liked a little wet work on me that night.
Obviously, I never went back to the job. I’ve stayed under the radar ever since. Gave up that whole other life to stay alive. But the circle scar on my forearm from Sofia’s cigarette reminds me every day of the dead I carry.
The newspapers and the Fox Channel all played it another way. A niece of a prominent Mission district real estate matron killed in a tragic car accident with another vehicle on Devil’s Slide. I guess the bullet holes on the roadster were caused by metal-eating termites.
Once the dust settled, so to speak, the Planning Commission approved the permit for the new building at Sixteenth and Valencia, and Callahan’s outfit built it. That’s what you see there now-that chrome shit glass monstrosity. But for a long time there was just a big gaping hole at the intersection, like when you have a tooth pulled. Arson as a cause for the fire at the Apache Hotel was in fact never investigated by the D.A.’s office, the Department of Building Inspections, or anyone else. But the word in the neighborhood is that the new building is haunted by the animas, the souls of the seven people who died that night.
And the big woman, Felicia Delgado, the one who profited from the insurance scam? She didn’t fall. Just too many layers between the hirelings and herself. And too many people owed her. But she’s old and sick, and her greedy heart can’t last much longer, miserable with her bloody money…so it doesn’t really matter. One way or the other, sooner or later, she’ll get her ticket to the other barrio.
PART III. Neo-Noir
GENESIS TO REVELATION BY PETER PLATE
Market Street
It was ninety-six degrees on Market Street the day before Christmas. Holiday decorations graced the windows of the check-cashing store at the corner. Weary junkies in goose-down parkas congregated around the Stevenson Alley methadone clinic. Teenaged hookers wearing rhinestone-trimmed spandex capris and halter tops loitered at the Donut Star coffee shop. Pigeons drunk on heatstroke were falling off the telephone lines.
In the 1940s, Market Street had been a constellation of movie houses. Blue-collar entertainment seekers flocked there for the vibrant nightlife. Nowadays the avenue was a forest of abandoned buildings. Under the old Strand Theater’s marquee, homeless men and women had turned a fleet of shopping carts, suitcases, clothes, tarps, and strips of cardboard into a shanty fort.