A pale, unshaven twenty-four-year-old Slatts Calhoun, three days out of San Quentin Prison, stood near a pay phone at Seventh and Market. He was dressed in a Santa Claus suit stolen from a Salvation Army volunteer. To go along with the costume he had on a fake white beard and an ill-fitting stocking hat. A tarnished blue.357 Smith and Wesson revolver was stuck in his belt.
He reconnoitered the medical marijuana club up the street and cursed. Ever since weed became legal in the city, pot stores were everywhere. They were a venereal disease. It was impossible to get away from them. This one was squeezed in between a dentist’s office and a sandwich shop. It had a brick façade and a single barred window emblazoned with graffiti. A bored surveillance camera was mounted above the security gate. The place resembled a police station.
Slatts limped over to the dope shop, stopped in front of the steel gate, posed for the camera, and buzzed the doorbell. Nothing happened. He waited a second and repeated the procedure. A thin Mexican hippie in paisley surfer shorts and a vintage Clash T-shirt came out to inspect him. “Hey, Santa, how the fuck you doing today?”
Keeping the gun concealed, Slatts said what came to mind. His first forty-eight hours out of the penitentiary had been a hassle. One night he slept in a garbage dumpster behind the new federal building. Then he got into a fight with a hooker and was jacked by her pimps. He didn’t even have enough money to take the bus to the welfare office. As a bonus, the beard was making his skin itch. “I’m cool, homeboy. What’s up with you?”
“The same bullshit. You got your ID for me?”
To gain entry into the club, a customer needed a physician-approved Department of Health identification card. Private doctors were handing them out at two hundred dollars a pop.
Slatts didn’t have a card, no place to live, or any food in his belly. He rasped, “Yeah, well, there’s a problem, see? Can I come in and talk to you about it?”
The pot worker’s smile faded into a cynical tic. He was prematurely aged by the needs of dope fiends. “Hell, no.”
“C’mon, vato, give me a break.”
“I can’t do that, dude. It’s against the law. You’ve got to have a card to get in.”
“Listen to me, asshole, I want some fucking weed.”
“Too bad, home slice. I don’t give a shit.”
“Fuck you, man. It’s goddamn Christmas, you know what I’m saying?”
Slatts lost his cool in a delicious surge of adrenaline. It was time to introduce his revolver into the conversation. It would help move the dialogue along. He poked the gun’s three-inch barrel through the gate’s latticework and hooked the dealer in the nose with it. Reaching in, he yanked the lad forward. Then he groped the kid’s shorts for the keys, found them, and unlocked the door.
Santa Claus was in the house.
Brandishing the heater, Slatts moseyed into the retail room. His mouth watered with excitement. This was better than the lottery. Cheap reefer was hard to find in the street. Plus, it was usually low-grade crap. Another worker, a lithe, tanned blond girl in patched denim overalls and Birkenstock sandals, approached him. Her oval face was a delicate flower, open and questioning. She asked, “May I assist you?”
Slatts produced a smile tempered by several missing teeth. “No, honey, Santa can help himself.”
The store’s damp walls were festooned with sepia-tinted concert posters from Bill Graham Productions. Two customers, an aged queen and a black guy with one leg, were getting loaded on a ratty divan. Ambient techno pulsed in the back-round. Slatts heard someone move and turned to confront a beefy longhair in tai chi clothes. It was the security guard.
“Hey, what are you doing with that gun?” The longhair had the attitude of a public rest room. “We’re peaceful here.”
“Shut the fuck up. Nobody talks to Santa Claus like that.”
“Kiss my ass, motherfucker. I’m calling the police.”
The cops loathed the pot clubs and didn’t give a hoot if they were robbed. Slatts ignored the threat and examined the merchandise. The weed was in pastel-colored ceramic bowls on a counter top. The menu was listed on a chalkboard. Medium-quality green, mostly Oakland hydroponic, ran forty-five an eighth, same as in the streets. Stronger grades, like Canadian indica, were sixty for three and a half grams. Mexican syndicate pot was cheaper, but wasn’t worth smoking. The stuff was first cousin to napalm. Mendocino boutique bud was four hundred and fifty dollars an ounce. Turdlike pot cookies were five bucks apiece. Slatts didn’t see what was so medicinal about the prices.
Leaning over the counter, he probed the cash register. To his delight, a wad of twenties and fifties danced into view. He pocketed the cash and backpedaled out of the store into the ebb and flow of Market Street.
Columns of gold-colored sunshine haloed the roadbed at Seventh and Market. Panhandlers, speed freaks, and pickpockets milled at Carl’s Jr. Bike messengers dodged cars and delivery trucks. A Muni bus seething with passengers lumbered toward Van Ness Avenue. Whirlwinds of leaves and empty nickel bags flirted in the gutter.
The heat outside was nauseating. The pavement was hotter than a match head. Making Slatts dizzy and ready to puke. Which was how he liked things. The gun dangled from his hand, muzzle pointed at the sidewalk. His beard and costume were drenched in perspiration. A homeless wino decked out in a garbage-bag poncho hailed him from an insurance office doorway. “Yo, Santa, yo, yo. Can you help me, brother man?”
Slatts flicked a sideways glance at the bum and smelled trouble. His voice was colder than his mother’s pussy. “What the fuck do you want? I’m in a hurry.”
“My partner is sick.”
A white boy in an army jacket was slumped against the door frame. His tattered sneakers had holes in the soles. His cracked green eyes were intent on a faraway paradise. He didn’t appear to be breathing. Slatts frowned and hissed, “What the hell is wrong with him?”
“I don’t know,” the wino said. “We were just sitting here and shit, and the pecker keeled over. Maybe he had a heart attack or something.”
“You call an ambulance?”
“Yeah, it’s on the way.”
Nobody was coming out of the pot club. Slatts sighed. That was a good sign. He’d hate to have to shoot someone right now. Dropping to his knees, he placed a finger on the unconscious man’s neck, feeling for a pulse. He didn’t find it. Instead, an electrical charge zinged into his fingertip. He knew what it meant and jerked his hand away. Christ on a crutch. What a drag. The bastard had died on him. The electricity was his spirit, what was left of it. “It’s nothing,” he shrugged. “He’s just resting.”
“What should I do?”
“Keep waiting for the ambulance.”
“Is he sick?”
All the interrogatives vexed Slatts. Like he wasn’t tense enough already. “No, he isn’t. So relax, okay?”
He hardly got the words out of his mouth when a black-and-white police van oozed to the curb. Three husky officers in midnight-blue combat overalls jumped out. Their scuffed riot helmets gleamed in the torpid sunlight. Slatts couldn’t believe it. This was bad karma. The dope dealers had snitched on him. That wasn’t kosher. It was disgusting. The wimps couldn’t handle their own business. There was no honor among thieves.
Hefting the.357, he pressed the trigger. A lonely bullet flowered out of the revolver’s barrel and sped forward in slow motion, burying itself in the pot store’s window. The music of breaking glass rippled in the flat air. The cops scrambled for cover and returned the fire. A slug ricocheted off the pavement, catching Slatts in the wrist. The.357 went sailing into the bushes.
It was funny how things never worked out. Like he was falling through a mirror into a black hole. The cops dashed to the doorway, pushed aside the dead man, knocked Slatts onto his stomach, and handcuffed him in a pool of blood. An officer kneeled on the ex-con’s legs and brayed, “Merry Christmas, baby,” then shot him in the ear.