Soon the Rest Will Fall (7 page)

A hawk zoomed through the sultry moonlight and alighted in a palm tree under the freeway. It had a pigeon squirming in its talons. Without ceremony, the hawk ripped the other bird to shreds, tearing hunks of meat from its breast. Blood spotted the palm's desiccated fronds.

 

A twenty-foot-tall white Christmas tree ornamented with black glass bulbs guarded the station's lobby. Uniformed beat officers, suited attorneys, meter maids, rumpled bail bondsmen, and stone-faced narcs flocked at the coffee machines. A janitor on his hands and knees polished the
granite floor with a rag. A sergeant in tan camouflage overalls was positioned behind the information window. A jazz number gurgled from the CD player on his desk. Horace Silver's “A Song for My Father.”

A sullen Harriet Grogan hunkered on a bench in the visitor's section, togged out in sunglasses, a long-sleeved silk blouse, yellow pumps, and a brown leather miniskirt. A velvet ribbon held her ponytail in place. Sterling silver earrings draggled from her ears.

She looked at a wall clock. It was midnight on the dot. There was no word on Robert yet. The cop at the information window didn't have anything to report. The guys in the booking room had nothing to say either. Harriet had to assume the worst. Her husband was on the bus to San Quentin.

That's it, she said to herself. I'm done with him.

The felony wing's elevator doors opened on the ground floor. Two attorneys with briefcases stepped out followed by a mob of sheriffs in combat gear. Then came a worried-looking bail bondsman. After him was a rotund plainclothes cop in a purple tracksuit. Robert was at his side. A juicy black eye marred the ex-con's thin face. His shirt was shredded, his jeans were unzipped. He was missing his shoes—someone in the holding cell had stolen them.

Whipping the shit out of Robert had mollified the cops, and he was being discharged. It was a Christmas miracle. Either that or the cop he hit wanted revenge outside the legal system. Anyway, the jail was already full beyond the legal limit with holiday revelers in there on charges of domestic violence, shoplifting, manslaughter, and robbery. The guards were afraid of tuberculosis. The narc gave him a shove toward the front door. “Get the fuck
out of here, you piece of shit.” Robert stumbled, arms windmilling, and then regained his footing.

Barefooted, he collected his wife and shepherded her to the exit. “Sorry to make you wait, tootsie,” he apologized. “It was hectic upstairs.”

 

The hot night had shellacked the street with threads of silvered light. The pockmarked moon was just a smudge in the blackened sky. A police van was double-parked in front of the station. Two working girls quarreled with their pimp on the jailhouse steps. The women wore go-go boots, blue vinyl skirts, and cheap blonde wigs. The dude had on an ill-fitting brown leather suit. The smaller whore slapped him in the mouth with the back of her hand, crying, “What do you mean, I owe you money? I don't owe you a goddamn thing, motherfucker!”

Towing Harriet past the warring hookers, Robert lectured her. “You know, baby, the cops started that crap with me. No two ways about it.”

His wife's pumps clacked on the pavement, reverberating like gunshots. Her svelte hips moved to and fro in a mouthwatering rhythm. She removed her sunglasses, looked to see a wine-red moon emerging from the fog. Her bare legs were whiter than snow under the street-lamps. She cut her tawny eyes at Robert. He was the father of her child, not the man of her dreams.

“That ain't true,” she said.

The accusation stumped Robert. Embarrassed, he searched his pockets for a fag. His shiner throbbed like Christ's own wounds. He wanted forgiveness from Harriet for his sins, particularly the sin of anxiety. And he craved absolution for the crime of being selfish, not knowing
when to think about other people. “Okay, okay, okay,” he conceded. “I started it.”

“Of course you did, goddamn it.”

“But it wasn't my fault.”

“Yes, it was.”

“No, it wasn't.”

“That's bullshit.”

He backed off. “Maybe you're right. Where's the kid?”

“At the pad.”

“By herself?”

“Yeah, she's reading a book. She doesn't give a shit about us.”

Robert put his hand on Harriet's shoulder, giving it an affectionate squeeze. He'd survived forty-eight hours outside San Quentin's walls. It was a record of sorts. Tomorrow would be a better day. He could feel it in his bones. “Take it easy,” he said. “Everything is hunky-dory.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

“We're fine,” Robert said the following morning. “There ain't a thing to worry about.”

The sun's red beams streamed through the kitchen window, lighting the room. He slouched at the table in one of Harriet's nightgowns, a lilac chenille thing. Diana was seated next to him in a rayon skirt and a dress shirt. Harriet was at the stove in panties and bra, cooking a pot of deer and onions, potatoes, turnips, garlic, and paprika.

“Your mom and me,” Robert told his daughter, “we've been going through some hard shit, all that hoopla with the cops. It's been a bitch.” The admission was just short of oratory. He summarized it. “And you've been cool about it. No bad vibes from you or nothing. So we got you a Christmas present.”

The kid smelled a rat. The old man was trying to bribe her. It was an attempt to win her confidence. It would never work. “A gift?”

“Yeah, a token of our appreciation.” Robert grinned from ear to ear like a Halloween pumpkin. “Wait here and I'll be right back.”

Tying the gown securely around his waist, he gimped out
the door. Five minutes later he returned with a mature black and gray German shepherd dog. The mutt was walleyed, had stumpy legs, and a dishonest face. Its fur was crisscrossed with scars. Houseflies did a fandango over its cropped ears. Shattered from imprisonment at the SPCA, the shepherd schlepped over to the refrigerator and lay down on the floor.

Robert was satisfied with himself. “Ain't he handsome?” Harriet chipped in. “Did you get it checked for fleas?” She signaled her daughter. “Take the dog and go outside and play. Your dad and me need some time by ourselves.”

Diana didn't want to do that. It was too warm out there. But her parents had to be alone. Just like junkies had to have drugs. Harriet and Robert could go to hell. Someday they would. She said to the dog, “C'mon, let's go for a walk.”

 

The merciless sun shimmered off the windows of the G&J Café as a bag lady in a moth-eaten fur coat sorted through a trash can at Seventh and Market. From a second-story window in the Grant Building, the liquid sounds of Art Pepper doing “Begin the Beguine” seeped into the breathless air. A hooker in hot pants talked to a junkie on crutches at Merrill's drugstore. Winos toddled by Kaplan's surplus store and the Islamic Society's meeting place. A middle-aged Korean woman sold porno magazines next to the BART hole.

The newly constructed federal building was a twenty story green-glassed blockhouse sheltered under a multi-angled steel mesh bomb repellent barrier. The monolith reared over the Ho King Grill and Travelers Liquors, the Ming Kee Thrift Store, and the Stevenson Alley methadone clinic, demoralizing the beggars and the hustlers
that habituated the corner's fast-food dives. Soon there would be more cops than ever on Market Street.

The German shepherd looked up the street, then down the street. It wasn't interested in the local scenery. Fleabites mottled its graying muzzle. The blistering sidewalks hurt its paws. The girl was a pain in the ass. “You have to sit when I tell you to,” she said. “I'm the boss here.” The dog was tense because it wanted to make a good impression and feared getting sent back to the SPCA. Angered by its predicament, it snarled at the winos camped under the Strand Theater's marquee.

Diana whacked the beast on the rump. “No barking,” she scolded. “It's Christmas and you have to be nice to everyone.”

 

Defeated by the heat, the child and the mutt retreated to the apartment. Robert was at the front door to welcome them. In the early-afternoon sunlight his gaunt face was a poetic wasteland. The old cigarette burn on his forehead was brown. Blue and red veins stippled his cheekbones. The black eye had colonized his nose. He absentmindedly tugged at his gown. “Hey, you guys, there's someone here I want you to say hello to.”

Diana brightened. “Who is it?”

“Somebody important. Let's go see him.”

“Is it Santa Claus?”

“It's better than that, chicken.”

Father and daughter bowled down the hall, the dog eagerly leading them. There wasn't much lighting in the apartment. The chintz curtains in the living room were shut tight. Harriet was marooned on the couch in a ratty lime green bathrobe. A big man with close-cropped
blonde hair, dressed in an athletic jersey and skintight denim hip hugger flares sat at her side. He had two gold studs in each earlobe. His prodigious feet were squeezed into combat boots.

Robert pointed a finger at the stranger and dithered. “Uh, yeah, this is Slatts Calhoun. He just got out of San Quentin today, and he'll be staying with us.”

 

Slatts's unannounced arrival had Robert freaking out. He'd expected the dude next week, not this week. He wasn't together enough to deal with his boyfriend. Not by a long shot. But that's how the Department of Corrections was doing things. Slatts had been released eleven days early to make room in the pen for new fish.

Harriet was pissed off. One minute she'd been in bed with Robert. The next thing she knew this guy was banging on the front door and yelling her husband's name. Then he was in their house. Furthermore she was certain Slatts had been to a dermatologist. No one's complexion was that good. She asked Robert, “Where's he gonna sleep? We don't have any space.”

Robert rebelted the nightgown, cinched it. “Don't sweat it.”

Feeling dowdy, Harriet opted to go to the bathroom to fix her face. She heaved-ho from the couch, brushed past the coffee table, and scurried out of the room. Robert did not like her body language. Mouth constipated with resentment. Forehead terraced with unhappiness. Chin sharp enough to kill. That shit spelled trouble. He followed her into the hall, the chenille gown flapping around his ankles. “Babe, what is it? Are you stressing? Tell daddy.”

Whirling around, she lit into him. “Who in the hell is that weirdo?”

Robert was noncommittal. It was best to go slow with Harriet. Take it smooth, take it easy. Take it casual. Get to the heavy parts later. Much later. “Slatts? He's just a friend.”

“What kind?”

He qualified. “Well, uh, a close friend.”

“Where from?”

“Around.” Robert was taciturn. “Like, here and there.”

Harriet rolled her eyes. “Do you know him from prison?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Is he the guy that's been calling here?”

His wife had become a parole officer. How she was grilling him, it was purgatory. Robert's balls were icy and small. “That's him.”

Robert remembered the very first time he had laid eyes on Slatts. Saw it like it was yesterday. It was a memory that would never die. Slatts had stabbed a member of the Mexican Mafia with a toothbrush in the North Cell House and was being taken to the hole. The other guy was going to the infirmary to get the sharp end of the toothbrush extracted from his ribs. Slatts was in leg irons and waist shackles and accompanied by a detail of screws. He blew Robert a graceful kiss as he went by.

“So what about him?” Harriet asked. “Were you guys cellmates?”

“Uh huh.” He was nostalgic. “For three fucking years.”

“Why didn't you say anything about it?”

He was forlorn. She'd never get it. Not in this lifetime or in the next one. He could see the glimmer in her eyes.
She wanted him to tell her more about Slatts. Robert reminded himself there was no rush. No sense in making a confession. There was no gain in saying shit. It would only give Harriet cancer. He lied with dignity, confident that he could've passed a polygraph test. “Mama, a million things happened in that goddamn prison that I'll never talk about.”

 

While Harriet and Robert hashed things out in the hall, the girl and Slatts got acquainted in the living room. The dog was snug under the coffee table. The television was tuned to a game show. The host had on a toupee and was razzing the guest, a middle-aged actress with a drug problem. The audience loved it. Taking a hard pack of mentholated Marlboro 100s from his pants, Slatts offered Diana a fag. “You smoke?”