One Foot Off the Gutter (10 page)

 

Before I could draw my gun, the
vato
grabbed Bellamy's nightstick. Bellamy jumped back, but the guy wouldn't let go. Instead, he lunged forward, throwing Bellamy off balance. The black man in the army jacket took advantage of the confusion and started walking down the street. The people in the hardware store had their faces flush to the window. But everything was still happening in slow motion. That told me something was wrong.

“Hey, where are you going?”

The black man stopped and looked back at me. His eyes had the sharp light of fear in them. He turned his head to look up the street. The crowd on the sidewalk backed off to make room for him, in case he tried to make a run for it. He jerked a finger at himself, raised his eyebrows
under the baseball hat, and said, “Me? I don't know. I'm not going anywhere.”

Then he turned around and took off helter skelter past an old couple. He got past them, but collided with a woman pushing a baby carriage. He fell over on his side. His baseball hat dropped off his head onto the sidewalk. The young mother put her hand to her mouth and screamed.

“Oh, God, no! Don't let him kill my baby!”

I flipped out, smacked myself in the forehead with the heel of my palm, aimed my revolver at the culprit.

Everyone in the street flopped down on the pavement. The perpetrator was already flat on the sidewalk with his fingers laced together behind his head, as if he'd been through the mechanics of an arrest procedure in past lives. I gingerly picked my way through the crowd, taking care not to step on anyone. I bent over and yanked the suspect to his feet by the scruff of his neck, and stuck the gun in his ear.

“You stupid bastard! Don't ever do that again!”

The asshole was awfully light. I hefted him, half flinging him in the direction of the squad car. Folks were pouring out of the New Mission Cafeteria, yelling poorly articulated insinuations about police brutality. Bellamy was still fighting with the older
vato
. Things couldn't have been worse in my opinion. The kid in the watch cap was rabbit punching Bellamy in the kidneys. I threw the prisoner onto the trunk of the car, slamming the man's face into the hood, whooping, “Stay right where you are!”

I took a flying leap into the fight. Everything was moving
too slow. I flew through the air, thinking I was never going to come down. If Christ could walk across the water, a policeman could fly through the air.

 

The surprised look on my opponent's face when I landed on him told me that I'd done the right thing. I hit the older man in the mouth with the butt of the revolver. After the third blow, the
vato
was still holding on to Bellamy's nightstick. The struggle was turning into a testimonial about will power. There was blood on my uniform, blood on the asshole, but none on Bellamy.

The Salvadoreño was drooling on my chest; the look in his eyes was glazed, but I was not feeling confident. On the fourth blow, the asshole loosened his grip on the baton, spitting out a tooth in my face. He sagged against my bulletproof vest and closed his eyes. I put my arms around his shoulders, holding on to him.

The turn of events enabled Bellamy to plant a gloved fist on junior's chin. The kid, who'd been hanging onto Bellamy's neck, flew backwards into a news rack. A girl kneeled down and scooped up the vial on the sidewalk. She shrugged her slim shoulders through the crowd and was gone.

I saw this, but I had to let her get away. I wasn't that young anymore. I couldn't scuttle after the thieves like I used to.

Bellamy wrestled his captive down to the pavement. I whipped out a pair of handcuffs and getting down on my knees, I slapped them on the
vato
. With the click of the handcuff's clasp, it was over. One moment, a guy was
admiring the view on Mission Street; the next thing he knew, he was going to the city prison. It was beautiful. The sum of its many jagged and irregular parts. The sky, the garbage on Mission Street, two cops, and an asshole.

“Now I got you, you goddamn fuck!” Bellamy swore.

 

I got to my feet, shaken and feeling worse for wear. I didn't register what the enthusiastic shouts coming from the people in the hardware store were about until it was too late. I turned around. To my disgust, I saw my prisoner, the black man in the army jacket jogging across the street and wending a path through the traffic, causing more than one car to slam on its brakes and toot its horn. The baseball hat flew off his head for a second and final time, exposing a head of short white curls. That was the last I saw of him.

“Help me get this guy into the car,” Bellamy wheezed.

The
vato
was balking at getting into the back seat. Bellamy shoved aside a pile of dirty clothes and said, “See? That's not so bad, is it?”

I looked over my shoulder, trying to remember where the kid should have been, laying under the news rack. But he was gone, too.

“Shit, Bells, junior took off.”

“Never mind. Let's get this joker in the back seat. Will you move those blankets?...Yeah, that's better. And while you're at it, Coddy, would you wipe the blood off your face? You look awful.”

I walked around to the other side of the battered police vehicle that Bellamy called home. I opened the
door and dropped behind the steering wheel. I did it a hundred times a day; I could do it in my sleep if I had to. I was smearing blood over everything I touched. I glanced into the rearview mirror, but I didn't recognize myself. What would Alice say if she saw me now? She didn't like it when my uniform got this dirty. I reached for the keys in the ignition. They weren't there. I searched my pockets, but they were empty.

“Bells?”

“I know, Coddy. I know. I'm not blind. Now what?”

Bellamy was in the back seat, sitting on top of our prisoner. He was pinning the man's head to the floor. The
vato
was chanting fierce and sad under his breath,
chupa su madre, pinche chota
. The smell in the back was awful. I wished that Bellamy would roll down the windows. But what did it matter? Our luck had soured. Someone had stolen the car keys. Now we'd have to catch a taxi cab back to the station.

 

 

 

 

 

 

w
hen I was a child, my mother had a magenta bathrobe of ankle-length chenille. It advertised the valley of her abdomen and the droop of her honey colored breasts. That bathrobe was as venerable as anything I'd ever known in my life. My mother's stare, which by then I already knew was not a friendly, benevolent gaze resembled the Egyptian Sphinx. She was fond of saying to anyone who'd listen, that bringing me into the world had felt like moving her bowels. I don't think she ever saw me. I had always been someone else for her, someone who'd she hoped never to know. She was always trying to dress me up in the costumes of the unborn.

I never went away, never submerged. Never mind who my father was, whether he was young or old, green eyed or blue eyed. Never mind the man who got her pregnant and who left in such a hurry, that in later years, she could
never bring herself to say his name. And never mind that in her parents' eyes, I learned to see myself as their bastard grandson. Forever stained as the progeny of their promiscuous daughter. Who's to say what could've happened if circumstances had been different. I might not have ever joined the police force.

 

I dropped my combat overalls, bulletproof vest, riot boots, and gun and belt on the bathroom floor alongside Alice's matching peach-colored satin panties and bra. I lifted my arms and stretched. Steam from the shower stall was billowing from the ceiling to the floor. I scratched my balls absent-mindedly feeling the gray routine of the day seep out of me.

“Coddy? Is that you?”

The mist covered shower door opened; the aluminum and glass framed door screeched to a halt and there was Alice smiling at me from under the chromed nozzle. I stepped into the dwarfed stall, slammed the door behind me and without saying a word, Alice put her arms around my unshaven neck, rubbing her stomach against the tangle of hair that decorated my paunch. I encircled the small of her back with my hands, stroking the down near her tailbone. Alice banged into the tiling on the wall behind her as I was having trouble staying on my feet; the years of wearing the riot boots had given me a case of arthritic swelling. My feet were like the rest of me, splay boned and overloaded with unwanted flesh. No one could ever accuse me of being a ballerina.

The hot water supply was inexhaustible. It was the only good thing about the apartment, unless you were partial to shag carpeting. The suffering on my face must have been as bad as a tornado in a Texas town; it took me a full minute to realize Alice was stroking my neck and arms. She was murmuring into my chest hair, saying, “Hush now, baby. It's going to be all right, I promise you. Just wait and see. Now be quiet and let me hold you.”

Alice cupped my balls with her hands, holding the sac in her bridged palms. This quieted me down almost instantaneously. I was grateful for her sympathy.

If you needed to calm a man, the technique was elementary: you had to hold him where he lived. Where the center of his terror was located; where the source of his pride was centered; where his idea of entertainment began. A man could create ideas with his brain, but his spirit lived below his navel. Every woman knew that.

“We'll be okay,” she said through the water. “Whatever we do, we're doing it together. This is something that involves both of us.”

Alice was wet and half blurred, a mirage in a hot cavern. Our eyes met; hers were a green darker than normal. Mine were a coal blue that stuck out of poached egg bulges.

“I got some good stuff today at the farmer's market,” she said.

“Yeah? What did you get?”

“I got fruits and vegetables. I'm thinking of experimenting with vegetarian cuisine.”

“You're kidding me,” I said with derision.

“Don't be silly. I have a vegetarian cookbook. I'll think of something that will taste yummy.”

I was beginning to suspect Alice harbored secret powers. I was curious about how she spent her days. I thought it might not be wise to ask, that her strength came from me not knowing what she was doing. That was a presumption on my part, but I went with it. I kept my opinion to myself.

“Do you want to get out?”

“What? Is the hot going out of the water?”

“Got any clean towels?”

“On the hook behind the door.”

I removed her hands from my balls and raised them to my lips, kissing them gently, understanding the gift of her touch. “See you in a minute,” I said. Then I kissed her gossamer slick hair, pulled the shower door half open and hopped out.

The towel was where she said it was, behind the door. A royal blue towel fit for a king. I reveled in the thick, clean newness of the thing. It was perfect, just me and the steam and below my navel, the warm imprint of Alice's hands on the place where I lived.

 

 

 

 

 

 

d
octor Dick?”

He looked up from his appointment book, bleary eyed and confused.

“Yes, nurse? What is it?”

“The patient is ready to see you.”

How much more work could he take?

“Good. Could you please have her chart out so that I can refer to it?”

“Certainly, doctor. Is that all?”

“Yes, thank you.”

She left his office in four, neat, quick steps. He sank back into his leatherette easy chair and rubbed his eyes. It had been a nightmare of a day with his caseload quadrupling overnight. The next appointment was the last one of the afternoon. For that, he was grateful. He'd been working so much, that at the end of each day, his hands palsied from sheer exhaustion. It was a queer sensation when your hands wouldn't obey an order.

He walked down the hall to the examining room. He passed a nurse supervising a string of prisoner-patients from the county jail. A bunch of them were hauling an iron lung from the supplies room. The doctor was struck dumb by the iron lung; it was a cold war era antique, something out of the 1950s. He was amazed by its mammoth size; he hadn't seen one in twenty years.

The doctor knocked on the door to the examining room to let the patient know he'd arrived. The nurse had forgotten to bring the patient's chart; it should have been in a manila folder hanging on the door. He did not like that; the knot in his stomach contracted another notch.

“Hello in there. This is Doctor Dick. May I come in?”

Since he didn't get an answer, he assumed that meant a silent assent. He pushed the door open and entered the room. It was the last appointment of the day.

The patient was sitting on top of the examining table. A rather attractive blonde woman in her mid-thirties, wearing one of those starched, bleached, off-color hospital gowns.

“Hi. I'm Doctor Dick,” he smiled.

She didn't say anything.

He sat down on the stool next to the table. He mustered up the very last of his good will, then he realized he didn't know her name. He felt befuddled, as though the cabling in his brain was becoming unraveled. When he asked her what it was, she told him.

“It's Patsy,” she said with a hint of ambition.

Her voice aroused him just ever so slightly, causing a scant lock of hair to rise up along his crown.

“Well, thanks for telling me. I'm Doctor Dick.”

“I know that,” she said. “You already told me.”