Beautiful, Naked & Dead (Moses McGuire) (13 page)

In Walmart she bought some hair bleach and a pair of scissors. At a truck stop she went into the ladies room, twenty minutes later she came out as a different girl. Her curls were now cut to shoulder length and honey blonde. I was stunned by the transformation, she looked like Marilyn’s twin sister.

“What, you don’t like?” she said pouting her lips.

“No, you did fine, nobody will recognize you,” I said turning for the car. She caught my shoulder turning me to look at her.

“Do you like it?” she said, a twinkle in her eye.

“I said you did fine, now let’s roll.” After that we drove for a while in silence. She was still putting on the pout. We purred down Highway 80, through the Sierras. We crossed the state line without any problems, no we didn’t have any fruit or vegetables, did I forget to mention we left some corpses in Nevada? Well they didn’t ask, so I didn’t tell.

“Were you one of her lovers?” Cass asked, breaking the silence as we pasted Truckee.

“No, I thought I was her friend.” I kept my eyes on the road. But she saw through me anyway.

“You were in love with her. You still are, I’ve seen the way you look at me. But trust me, I’m not her. She always had the way with men, it was like she could sense who they wanted her to be and that’s who she’d become. In high school she could have had any boy she wanted, but she wound up screwing the gym teacher. He was a burly bear. Yeah, you were her type,” she said with a wry smile. “Big, strong, a bit too old and a lot too dangerous. I’m just surprised you weren’t lovers. Maybe she saw you needed a friend more than sex.” I flinched, forcing my face into neutral. “That’s it, isn’t it?” I didn’t answer. I couldn’t believe Kelly had played me like that. Was I that transparent? As I thought about it I realized I was kin to these sisters. We were all children of the battle zone. Growing up in violence you learned to duck and weave, you learned how to read the signs and become whoever you needed to be to keep from getting whacked. At Donner Pass I pulled into a rest area to make a fresh drink; Cass arched an eyebrow, but I didn’t care. I needed the whiskey to take the edge off the speed I was popping like Altoids, and I needed the speed because it had been too many days without sleep. Crunching a few whites I sipped the drink.

“Boy you have more bad habits than a convent.” She said with a grin.

Pulling out onto the highway I noticed a stone pillar commemorating the Donner Party. They were a true testament to the American spirit, push forward at all costs and eat the dead when necessary. Wasn’t that the American dream in a nutshell.

CHAPTER 9

A
t midnight we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, Cass was asleep and I was in a drug driven haze. Somewhere around the Sacramento delta the lines between real and surreal had blurred. Fog swirled dancing in the beams of the headlights. Orange cables and girders dripped and bent at impossible angles, like a giant braided steel spider web it waited to catch low flying dreams. The bridge under our tires beat out a steady tip tapping rhythm counter punching to Iggy’s Afro Idiot CD. Where would I be without music? It had been my one true friend. From my first Stones LP, music always filled the empty void I swam in.

Through the fog and steel, jewels sparkled calling our names. The city lights drawing us in like so many sailors before us. Calling us to crash on their rocks, this city of sirens. San Francisco, with its historic promise of magic and wonder. Built to fleece the gold miners coming and going to the fields up north, back then it had more brothels than churches and more saloons than schools. Destroyed by earthquake and fire it rose from the ashes, bigger and grander than before. In the sixties it called the youth of America to crash on its rocks, what started in peace, love, and LSD ended with heroin and STD’s. In the sixties the kids took to the streets and said fuck you to the government. In the seventies the government took the belt to them, and we’ve been paying the price ever since. War on drugs, war on music content, war on all that was strange and different. The tragic truth is, start a war with your kids and you wind up with drive-bys and Columbine. Just like two plus two equals four, it’s simple old school math.

The Detroit beast cut through the fog, rising up over the near vertical streets, then swooping down past neat rows of meticulously painted Victorians. San Francisco was the closest thing to a European style city we had in the states, but its underbelly wasn’t elegant or quaint, it was pocked with strip clubs and junkies, pimps and sailors, drug dealers and dot com fast money artists. God I loved this city. The new media money may have caused the property values to skyrocket and driven out the artists, but it fed the world I swam in. The more money they got, the more sex, drugs and rock-n-roll they bought. And when the bubble burst my people bought their shit at five cents on the dollar, cash these soulless geeks needed just to keep the party going one more day.

Floating across Market Street I saw a skinny hooker stumbling up the sidewalk. Her blonde wig had slipped sideways showing the stubble of her shaved head, her arm was possessively wrapped around a drunk business guy sporting a goatee and a badly rumpled suit. Watching them, I knew I was home. Like Tom Joad said, “Wherever there’s a young girl selling herself to a fat old man, wherever there’s a bad drug deal going down twisted look for me and I’ll be there.”

I found us a room at a flophouse on O’Farrell, across the street from the Barbary Coast and several other strip clubs. If you were in town on shore leave and wanted to see some tits, O’Farrell was your street. Unlike in LA where strip clubs dot the map and piss off the neighborhood improvement folks, up here they concentrate them all on one strip and turn it into a tourist destination. The night manager was a pimply kid with the bone thin body of a long time friend of Sister Morphine. He barely glanced up when I carried the sleeping Cass into the elevator. I tried to wake her in the car but she was out cold, in the small room I put her into the bed. I knew I should sleep but my heart was still hammering away from the speed. Objects in the room seemed to glow with their own interior light source. Through the cheap woven curtains the neon called to me with its candy land colors and its promise of a good time. Oh yeah, this was a town that would love you long time G.I.

Ten minutes later I was seated in the Barbary Coast, slamming down shots of Jack with a beer back. It was bigger, older, and classier looking than Uncle Manny’s club but the game was just the same. A tall Black girl was strutting her rather wonderful stuff on a large stage. She pressed her breasts together creating a soft brown valley of cleavage. Legs spread, ass stuck out, hips rocking to the beat, she sucked on her finger in mime fellatio. She used her moist fingertip to stiffen her half dollar sized nipples. A brass rail surrounded the footlights at the base of the stage, where businessmen sat waving dollars, hoping to get an up close and personal look at her titties. Change the location, change the player, the moves remain the same.

I sat at the bar, next to an old fisherman and a fat cat who was being hustled by a redhead in a short neon blue lycra dress that might as well have been spray painted onto her plump frame. As the room swam around me, I told myself I was looking for traces of Kelly, the truth was…when I was lost, I returned to what I knew, or some psych bullshit like that. Maybe the speed and booze and death had made me horny, who the fuck knows how this fucked up brain worked, not me that’s for damn sure…. A skinny Asian gal swirled out of the haze, her small naturally proportioned breasts were a real turn on in this sea of monster ta-tas. She aimed toward me, dancing up swaying her hips. From a distance she looked like a lithe wood nymph, all legs and arms and the promise of unbridled sensuality, just the ticket for these weary bones. But the closer she got the younger she got, a baby at best, but her eyes were old and cold. She was the walking wounded, one more victim of the life. Sliding up, she latched herself onto my thigh. “Want a nasty, grab-your-cock-suck-on-my-tits lap dance? Come on, big guy?” Behind her smile lurked those dead eyes. “Don’t worry ‘bout the bouncer,” she leaned in whispering into my ear, I could smell cheap perfume. “I know a dark corner in the lap room, I will rock you so hard, baby, I really want to make you come. I want to feel your cock in my hand, between my legs. Come on, baby.” Her tongue licked my ear to show she really meant it, I guess. I decided this was one lonely ride I didn’t need to take. Handing her a twenty I walked out.

I could feel the speed crashing out of my system as I stumbled across the boulevard. I made it to the room before I puked into the toilet, I washed my face and fell into the bed beside Cass. She stirred once then went back to softly snoring. With neon lights blinking on the ceiling I drifted in the deep warm blackness of sleep.

Tijuana is baked hot, close buildings in the centro district make the air pungent with the stink of humanity. Cheap bars and strip clubs line Avenue of the Heroes. After the Root I spent my leave time down here, drinking and fucking and trying to find that blissful play of pure numb. Now it all feels different, gaudy and tarnished. A long snaking line of marines stretches down the street. Some of the soldiers are in their dress whites, others wear sweat stained flack jackets and soiled olive drabs. Many have rifles strapped over their shoulders. Every few minutes the line shuffles forward a few feet, then stands waiting, bored. I move down the line, studying the faces, looking for anyone I might know.

Sergeant Tibs, a jolly Black Marine from the Root, is standing in the middle of a busy intersection. MP’s block the taxis from crossing. Horns blare. I touch Tibs’ arm. He turns his face and I see the hole in his forehead. He took a round from a sniper two days before ship out. His eyes are milky and lacking any shine. He opens his mouth to speak, red dust drifts out past his cracked lips, but no sound.

I run away from Tibs, up the line. In the shacks by the river the head of the line disappears into a tin walled building. A young Muslim woman in a black burka stands guard on the door, her hand tightly grips an AK47.

The line snakes past the front door and down an ally. They are lined up to a back door. I move past them like a ghost. Through a curtain, men are standing around a table, they all have dollars in their hands. Moving through them I see a young soldier pumping away on some girl. I can’t see her face, but I get a queasy feeling when I see her brown curls. The young grunt finishes and the others cheer him. As he climbs off her I can see her face… it’s Kelly.

“Hey baby, how are you,” she says smiling up at me.

I try to speak but my throat closes off.

The next in line climbs on her, covering her face with his chest.

I run out into the street, only now it’s Hooterville, the Lebanese ghetto. Towel-heads point and laugh at me. The crowd parts and I see the little boy kneeling over his dead mother. She sits up and reaches out a bloody hand. She points an accusing finger at me and lets out a high-pitched wail.

I jerked up in bed, my body covered in sweat. The late afternoon sun flooded the room with its painful radiance. Where the hell was I? The dream still felt more real than this strange hotel room. Slowly the last few days came back to me like flashes from a fever nightmare. A rank odor wafted up over me. It smelled like something had died in the bed beside me. Sniffing around I discovered to my shame and disgust that the smell was coming from me. All the poison I had put in my body over the last few days seemed to have leaked out of my pores. My body reeked like a barroom floor on Sunday morning. Flicking my eyes around the room I noticed something was missing, Cass. While I’d slept she must have skipped out. I wasn’t really sure how I should feel about that, pissed or relieved?

A shower, a cup of coffee and some food in that order, and death to anyone who tried to stop me. As the warm water soothed my muscles I thought about Cass. Maybe I didn’t owe her or Kelly anything. Maybe I should drive home and forget I ever met either of them. I made a promise to my fantasy of a girl who never existed. In the only movie ever made worth watching, “The Wild Bunch,” Sikes asks why their friend is hunting them so hard, and Pike says, “He gave his word.” But Sikes says, “To a railroad!” and Pike roars, “It doesn’t matter who you give it to.” Words I lived by I guess. Walking away wasn’t an option, at least not one I could live with.

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.