In front of Melvin Belli’s office, which is a bogus old San Francisco — style place with a theater-set law library in the front window, two whores are using the reflection to improve their makeup. Belli’s occasional appearances on the other side of the glass are of the same order.
About a block away, Bobby gives Jane a send-off. She is dressed pretty much like the girls at the window. They watch her approach warily.
“What’s happening?” asks Jane.
“We’re innocent, officer,” says the first girl, a Chinese.
“I’m looking for a girl I used to know in the life. Name of Donna.”
“Madonna?”
“Donna.”
“Donna who?”
“Donna from Hamtramck with a chipped tooth.”
“Where did you work?” the Chinese girl wants to know.
“Out of a high rise on Sansome. I had a book.”
“What’d you quit for?” asks the white girl.
“I didn’t like the humiliation.” Jane doesn’t have her heart in this. She doesn’t want to find Donna and she doesn’t want to find Marianne. She feels like a dope in this hooker suit Bobby got her. The cheapie sequined pantyhose are squeezing her ass like an anaconda.
The white girl says. “It isn’t no humiliation unless you don’t get paid. You were never in the life.”
“What’s the difference? I’m not going to stand here and argue all night. Just tell me where a person could bump into Donna.”
“Last time we seen her, which was tonight”—the Chinese girl walks off in disgust and casts a satirical wave to Bobby—“she was working the fake ship at Bernstein’s Fish Grotto.”
Bobby and Jane glide down Powell Street in a taxi, headed for Bernstein’s. The imitation ship’s bow projects over the sidewalk. And in front of a window full of back-lit swimming fish stands Donna. The street is Atlantis.
“There she is!”
Bobby jumps out and Donna is gone like a deer. He sprints a few yards and quits. Bobby climbs back in and slumps in real depression.
The driver says, “Give her ten minutes and she’ll be in Moar’s cafeteria.”
At Moar’s, Bobby and Jane get out and rush inside. The door nearly slams in Jane’s face. Inside, Donna sits beneath Benjamino Bufano murals that depict brotherly love. She’s drinking a cup of coffee. They go to her table.
Donna says, “A working girl can’t get nowhere today. You’ve got your nerve.”
“I’m Jane Adams.”
“Are you with the law?”
“Let’s just say I’m helping Bobby find his — find somebody.”
“Bobby’s a God damned deviate, and he had her up there working for free.”
“Up where?”
“Look, I’m not telling anything.”
“Would it take money?” Bobby asks.
“No.”
“Something. What?”
“Pain pills. Fifty thousand Percodans.”
“We could land you in jail.”
“So land me.”
“Donna,” Jane asks, “what’s the problem?”
“The problem is I still think my ship will come in. So far, the only one’s been at Bernstein’s. My cousin married a hippie trial lawyer and got out of the life. They adopted a three-year-old Chicano right off of a Hallmark card and live in Pacific Heights two blocks from the Russian Embassy. What’s wrong with that? My only trip to Pacific Heights and I drew a seventy-year-old eye-ear-nose-throat guy and he had a dead monkey in a footlocker. I gave him his money back. You know what? I can’t stand it. And I won’t talk. And if you don’t get out of here, I’m going to start screaming!”
Somehow the next day, by the time La Costa has gotten Marianne to the cable-car stop, Marianne’s vitality has begun to return. Pragmatic La Costa is not interested in how Marianne got herself into this; to La Costa, Marianne is another prostitute, and, for instance, we all have a story. She says to Marianne, “I think it’s time the rotten little kids had a spree. Marianne, let’s go downtown.”
They descend Powell Street gazing upon the beautiful city. When they pass the Bank of America La Costa says, “Many pimps in there.”
They head for Gump’s department store and proceed to its imperial interior, crossing the great showrooms and on to the Kimono Room, where they play at being old-time courtesans amid the exorbitant women’s clothing. La Costa fills their purses with silk scarves. When Marianne looks startled, La Costa says, “If we’re nabbed, yell ‘racist.’ Tell them you’re high yellow.”
On this same day, Bobby and Jane are downtown shopping in a glamorous Maiden Lane pet store, a splendid room full of South American birds, very carefully observed by an ocelot with an aqua collar.
Bobby explains everything. “I can’t have another day without a hawk. And the only thing legal here is a Colombian broadwing, which is not a first-class hawk.”
“I don’t know one from another,” Jane says, shyly gazing at Bobby.
When the shrouded cage rests on the back seat of the cab between Bobby and Jane, she says demurely, “I always thought hawks just killed chickens.”
Bobby sighs. “That’s only part of the story, Jane.”
Inside the Presidio Heights house, Bobby sets the cage on the floor and removes the shroud.
“Open the cage, Jane.”
“I’m afraid.”
“Open the cage.”
Jane gingerly opens the cage and the hawk comes out, flying around the room with terrible beating wings, to settle finally on the back of the tall chair, where it stares with unforgiving yellow eyes at the amateur pimp and his realtor friend.
The middle of the night at Quickee Char-Broil can be lone-some. The chef sweeps the little flaming pieces of meat onto a tray with salad and hands them over to Chino and Donna. Then the cook becomes the cashier and takes Donna’s money. Condominium Donald is Cheapo Chino again.
Donna carries the tray to the table and puts the meals down carefully. She aches with love. The two sit. Immediately, Chino swaps plates.
“I said rare.” He fills his mouth. “That other God damn thing’s like a baseball glove. How’d you do?”
“Four hundred.”
“Give it ta me.”
Donna hands him the money proudly. Now is her opportunity.
“I want to work in the condo.”
“No room.”
“I’m tired.”
“You want to go back to Petaluma?”
“I’m not from Petaluma.”
“I know a big-time Jap chicken farmer. I’ll send your ass to him in Petaluma.”
“I brought you Marianne, and now I’m working the hotels and she’s in the condo. That’s not fair.”
What an outburst. Chino reaches and seizes her steak in his hand. He squeezes it until beef blood runs between his fingers.
“You shit too,” he says. “See that? That’s your Petaluma face. Gimme your napkin.”
Chino puts her steak down and wipes his hands. He continues, upon reflection.
“Don’t give me no eye. Looking at me like you got nothing to eat.” Impulsively, he shoves the steak down her blouse. Tears stream as the steak bleeds through. Chino is on the verge of raving. “ ‘I wanna be in the condo, I wanna be in the condo.’ How much room you think is there? Huh? Look, I’m no McDonald’s.” He stands in total disgust and turns to the staring fry cook. “Hey.” He menaces him. “Try going blind.” He turns back to Donna, his original fury intact. “I’ll give you a condo. Petaluma Jap chicken condo. I give up.”
He upends her purse on the table.
“What are you doing?”