Scar Tissue



  SCAR

  TISSUE

  By

  Mark Gummere

  Copyright Mark Gummere 2011

  ISBN 978-1-4581-0081-8

  CHAPTER ONE

  Marty Milner was already a little high when he parked his car in the drive-way of the furniture warehouse a little after ten p.m. He took a small vial of coke from his jacket pocket, took a fresh pop, and left the car. It’d been a week since Marty had any sex and he was hoping he’d find Lucinda. He went into The Blue Light on Golden Gate and moved through the crowd.

  “You seen Lucinda tonight?” Marty asked the bartender.

  “Earlier. Not in a while.” The bartender poured Marty a shot of Old Grand Dad.

  “Tell her I’m looking, should she come back.” Marty threw down the whiskey and left the bar.

  There were three hookers working the corners a half a block down the street, but Marty wanted Lucinda. He approached the Asian propped up on 4 inch heels wearing a red mini skirt on the southeast corner, and smiled. “Hey China, Lucinda anywhere around?”

  “Black girl, not the right girl for you,” she said.

  “She’s right for tonight. She around?”

  “Don’t know,” she said, and moved away.

  Marty walked another block, turned and circled back, and then he saw her. She was getting out of a silver sedan alongside the curb. The car pulled away and Marty hollered, “Lucinda!” She turned toward him.

  The motel on Polk was one Marty had used before. He’d done a favor for the owner once when he brought him a twenty-year-old punk who had tried to rob him with a baseball bat and alcohol induced bravado. Marty looked the other way while the owner beat the hell out of the kid. Marty had been given free rooms ever since.

  Marty and Lucinda did a few lines of coke and Marty set up a little portable Ipod and docking station and they danced to some slow rhythm and blues. They swayed about the room, and slowly undressed one another. It was a set they’d played before.

  Lucinda once said she was twenty-four, same age as Marty, but he wasn’t sure. Some nights she looked eighteen and other nights thirty. One night, while she was taking a shower, he went through her purse and found three sets of i.d. She was twenty-four year old Lucinda, twenty year-old Trudy, and twenty year old Helen, with addresses in San Francisco, Portland, and Las Vegas. He didn’t really care if one of them was the real girl or not. What he did care about was the sex. They went at each other, slept for an hour, did some more coke and rolled again. It was three thirty in the morning when Marty dropped her off. When he got home he drank a beer and was smiling when he climbed into bed. He loved being a cop.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was a Sunday morning in October, and I’d have preferred a quiet lazy day to stretch out on the couch with the newspaper and junk food and football on television. But you don’t always get want you want, and I’d promised my daughter-in-law I’d come over to meet and talk with her childhood friend Ray Rhodes. Rhodes had been arrested and was out awaiting trial. He was charged with possession of cocaine and an unregistered handgun.

  “Ray has a record,” Kathleen said, when she first called. “And so the gun thing is also a parole violation.”

  “He sounds like a good friend to lose,” I’d said.

  “He says he is innocent, and I believe him. I want to believe him. He said he’d never seen the drugs or the gun and the police set him up.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “He doesn’t know. Just talk to him, okay? As a favor?”

  I wasn’t looking for any type of work, and I hoped I wouldn’t find any, but at least the trip from San Francisco to Berkeley would result in some time with my grandkids, Kit and Katy. I pulled on an extra-large black golf shirt over my blue jeans, ran a comb through my salt and pepper hair, and poured the last from a pot of coffee into a to-go cup, and walked to the back of the house. Lou, my four-year old Dalmatian, scampered up to see me from behind the bushes where he liked to hide in waiting for the neighborhood cat. He barked a hello, followed me into the garage and climbed into the backseat of my Buick.

  I backed the car out into the street, turned on a country and western radio station, and waved to my overly industrious Korean neighbor, who was on his hands and knees trimming the edges of the small patch of lawn that passes for a front yard in many of the houses in San Francisco’s Sunset District. The Sunset is quiet and comfortable. It’s also often shrouded in fog as it sits up close to the scenic Northern California coastline. This morning, however, the fog was minimal, the sun was breaking though, and life wasn’t too bad. And, if I could extricate myself from whatever involvement Kathleen had planned for me with her friend, the day might turn out just fine.

  The traffic was light and I was across the Bay Bridge and onto University Avenue in about thirty minutes. I made a right hand turn at the corner of California Street, where there still stood one of the oldest House of Pancake restaurants in the state. It was also one with a colorful history.

  “The waitresses used to sell LSD, mescaline, and peyote, right at the table,” my son Keith said one morning when we were there for breakfast.

  “This was the 60’s?” I said.

  “Yeah, I heard the story too many times for it not to be true. Customers could actually be seen sprinkling some hallucinogenic like so much powdered sugar right across the tops of their waffles or pancakes. “Yes, I would like the blueberry pancakes, orange juice and Window Pane, please!” Amazing, huh?” Keith said, laughing.

  “Forty years before you arrived.”

  Keith had come to Berkeley for school, and met Kathleen while they were students. Married for eight years, Keith was still at the university, but now as a teacher. He’d followed my father’s lead, who was a history teacher, into the academic world. Better that he follow my dad, than his own, I always felt. After twenty four years with the Pasadena Police Department in Southern California, and after my wife’s death from cancer, I’d started drinking too much and caring too little. The Chief of Police and I came to a mutual agreement that it was time for me to leave. Teaching history hopefully will not leave Keith with the sort of damaged psyche his old man was still trying to repair.

  At California and Channing I pulled over in front of the brown shingled two story house Keith, Kathleen, Kit, and Katy called home. It was a nice looking place, weathered but not beaten, used but not worn, a house with character. I let Lou out of the car and we walked up the brick path that separated the well-manicured lawn on the left and a large oak tree on the right. Kit’s bicycle was on its side on the wooden steps that lead up to the front porch and front door. I was about to knock when the door swung open and five-year old Katy jumped up against my legs. Lou did circles and barked.

  “Grandpa!” Katy shouted. I picked her up and kissed her. She’s a wisp of a girl, with short cut brown hair and freckles splashed across the bridge of her nose. Her green eyes sparkled. She jumped down and went for the dog. “Louie, Louie!” She ran into the yard and the dog obediently followed.

  I went into the house, closing the door behind me as Kathleen got up from an overstuffed couch in the living room off to my right. Also rising from the couch was someone I assumed to be Ray Rhodes. Kathleen was wearing black jeans and a man’s white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up over a pink t-shirt emblazoned with a Save the Dolphins logo. She was barefoot.

  “Hi Lucky,” she said. Kathleen occasionally called me Dad, sometimes Robert or Bob, and if a more formal introduction was required, Mr. Lucas. Otherwise it was Lucky.

  We met in the middle of the room, she stood up on the toes of her tiny five foot two inch frame and wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed my cheek. Her long brown hair was piled on top of her head and held in place with a thin laminated stic
k painted red and black. When her hair was left to hang straight it reached her waist, but with a quick flick of her hands she could pile the whole mess up at the base of her neck, poke a stick in it and forget about it. It was the sort of maneuver I‘d watched her perform before that seemed to defy the laws of gravity, but one women could accomplish without a second thought. She had the same green eyes and scattered freckles she’d passed on to Katy, and a big easy smile.

  “Keith and Kit are out at a bookstore or a sporting goods store, but they’ll be back soon,” she said. She made a slight turn, slipping her hand beneath my elbow, and gestured with her free hand toward the couch. “And this is my friend Ray. Ray, this is my father-in-law, Lucky.”

  Rhodes stepped forward and put out his hand. “Hi.” Rhodes was medium height and medium build, with thick black hair, oiled and combed high and styled like a young Johnny Cash. He was dressed in tan slacks, a white t-shirt and a Hawaiian print short sleeved shirt left unbuttoned. On his right arm, peeking beneath the sleeves of his shirt was the bottom of a decorative tattoo.

  “Ray.”

  “Here, sit down Lucky,” Kathleen said. She slid a chair closer to the couch. I took the seat and Ray, after a slight hesitation sat back down on the couch. “You want some coffee or something?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Kathleen left for the kitchen.

  I looked after her, and then at Ray. “So? Kathleen says you’re in some trouble. Tell me about it.”

  Ray moved about on the couch, shifted his weight. He sipped from his own cup of coffee, and then pulled out a rumbled pack of Camels from his front shirt pocket.

  “Kathleen’s indulging me with the smokes. You want one?”

  “No, thanks. An occasional cigar in the backyard is about it for me.”

  He lit his cigarette with a Blue Flame wooden match snapped against the thumbnail of his right hand, broke the match in half and dropped it in the ashtray. “I’m glad you’re willing to help.”

  “I haven’t said I would.”

  Ray looked surprised. “Well, then what are we doing? I thought…” he let his voice drift off as he took a drag from the cigarette.

  “I don’t know much, okay. I know you got busted. I know you’ve done some time. And I know Kathleen. She asked me to come and talk with you. That’s why I’m here. Beyond that we’ll just have to see. Maybe I won’t like you. Maybe you won’t like me.”

  Kathleen strolled back into the living room, handed me a cup of coffee, and slid back on the couch beside Ray. “I don’t want to interrupt,” she said. “I’ll just listen.” She patted Ray on his knee, in a reassuring, almost motherly gesture.

  Ray went into his story.

  “It was last week. In the City. I live there. Like you, I guess. Anyway, I get pulled over and I get out of the car. Probably a mistake, but I did. Right away the cop wants me to stop. Puts his hand up, like a crossing guard at a grammar school. I asked what’s wrong and he points at the tail light. Says it’s broken. I walked to the back of the car because I didn’t know there was a problem with the light, and the cop gets almost defensive. Says I told you to stop. The he looks at me kind of funny and says, he knows me.”

  “You know him?”

  “Never seen him. He’s a young guy, maybe mid-twenties. Tells me to go stand on the sidewalk. Watches me as I move from the street and then out of the blue asks me did I ever do any time. Says he guesses I have. Says he doesn’t like ex-convicts. That was his word, convict, like I was a leper. Tells me not to move from the sidewalk, and then he steps to the car and opens the passenger’s side door and starts looking around. I hollered at him about probable cause and all that, but he ignored me. Just yells, “Stay by the fucking wall.” Ray paused at looked at Kathleen to measure her reaction to his words.

  “Just tell your story Ray,” she said.

  “Yeah.” Ray seemed to relax for a moment, but as he resumed his story the anger returned. “So I’m standing there, against the wall. And what do you know, after a minute or two he’s out of the car and he’s holding a baggie full of coke bindles and a gun. I coulda shit.”

  “And then what?” I asked.

  “And then I’m busted is what!”

  “Anyone else, a friend, girlfriend, use your car?”

  “No. And I’m married. Not her at all.”

  “Go on.”

  “There’s not much else. Driving to the station and then at the station cop wants me to just admit the coke and the gun are mine. It’ll go easier on me if I do. That line, but I don’t say anything, except that the stuff isn’t mine. I say that. Beyond that, nothing. And I say, I want to call my wife, I say that.”

  “She come down?”

  “Yeah, sure. She called some bail bondsman too. But there wasn’t going to be any bail before a hearing. I squat there for the two days before the hearing, and the Court assigns me a P.D., some guy named Tetlow. And he got me out, but he’s overloaded, man. Like all those P.D.’s, caseloads up the ass. I figure I might still need help and I remember Kathleen telling me about you at some point. I don’t know when.” Ray looked at Kathleen.

  “Last year, I think it was. Some random conversation,” she shrugged her shoulders at me, as if she couldn’t recall why it would have been a part of a conversation and uncertain if she’d overstepped some boundary.

  “Yeah,” Ray said. “So I called her. I can’t go back to prison. And certainly not for this.”

  I finished my coffee, and thought briefly about the pleasures of my semi-retirement. I didn’t want to get involved in this mess, and were it not for some childhood friendship with Kathleen I wouldn’t be. Maybe I could still find a way out.

  “Why were you in prison before?”

  Ray pushed out his lips, pulled them back, and ran his tongue around the corners of his mouth. He rubbed at his eyes. He was full of stalls and mannerisms. It didn’t make him worthless, but it didn’t make him necessarily likeable. At least not to me. He lit another cigarette.

  “Vehicular manslaughter,” he finally said. “And possession of marijuana.” He took a deep drag from the smoke. The memory was not a pleasant recollection. “I was with a buddy. We were drunk. I crashed the car and he died.” Ray scratched at his arm and the sleeve covering the tattoo slid up to reveal a dragon with fire billowing from the nostrils. “I did three years for it. I’ve been out for six months.”

  “Your wife, what’s her name? She didn’t know anything, right?”

  “Carol, but I told you, she hadn’t used the car, she wasn’t involved.”

  “Hey, I’m asking. Just trying to ask questions.”

  “Fuck it,” Ray said, and stood up from the couch. Kathleen reached out to grasp his arm.

  “Ray,” she said.

  “I’m going to use the head.” He released himself from Kathleen’s grip and left the room.

  I looked at Kathleen. “Kathy, I don’t know about this. Is he telling the truth? I don’t know. You don’t know. He’s in trouble and he’s scrambling. I would be too, but…” I paused. Kathleen was listening in the way she always did, closely and carefully, with a finely focused attention that studies your face and the emotion of your voice. “So, there is that. Plus, he doesn’t have cash for a lawyer. What’s that say to me? I’m pro bono on this?”

  “You’re right, Lucky,” she said. She smiled and tilted her head to one side. “It was maybe a bad idea on my part. I just thought, well, if you could hear his story. I’ve known him since we were kids, like I told you. He’s not a bad guy. Things just haven’t always broken his way, and sure some of that is his own fault. I know that. But some people have more bad luck than good. More than their share. You know what I mean?” Kathleen exhaled a deep breath, as if she were at the end of a speech. She sat back against the couch and cuddled with one of the pillows. “And you’re right about the money. You can’t work for free. I mean even if he is innocent.”

  She was doing it to me. I knew it, and she knew it, and still she was effective.
Playing her hand in a well measured, deliberate fashion, showing each card only at the precise time. Kathleen would never view her manner as manipulative, which would sound unsavory and distasteful. She would prefer to see herself as persuasive. Either way it worked. At least with me.

  “Even if he is innocent?” I said. “Oh, Kathy, that’s bad.”

  “Lucky, maybe just a day. Spend one day and see what you think. I’ll pay you.”

  “Oh, just stop it. You know I couldn’t have you pay me. I’d feel like I was taking money away from Kit and Katy’s college fund or something.”

  “Well, that’s true,” she said, trying not to laugh. I joined her in the laugh as Ray walked back into the living room. He was uncertain as to the source of the laughter, but the stern look he brought in to the room slowly gave way to a smile. He sat back down on the couch and we resumed talking about his case.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The six months since Ray had been out were a combination of odd jobs and scattered employment.

  “I got a friend with a painting business. Doing residential jobs mostly, some buildings. He needed some help for a couple months, but it didn’t last. And I wasn’t much of a painter anyway, especially up on the scaffolding in the wind. Not fun, man. Then I worked for a moving company. Made two trips to Oregon and one to Washington while the regular guy was out, but he came back. That boss hooked me up with a bartender thing for a few weeks, but I got into a fight with a customer who turns out to have been a regular in the place for ten years, so I got fired. I’m hoping to get something. Have a chance at a warehouse in South City, and maybe something out at the airport moving cargo with Fedex.”

  “What are you doing for money?”

  “Carol’s working.”

  “Ray, tell Lucky about Bones. And the others.” Ray hesitated and Kathleen said, “Bones went to high school with us. Used to be a drug dealer. But I hadn’t heard his name him for years until Ray mentioned him. Tell him.”

  “Bones and a couple friends from the past came around after I got out. They were bent. I didn’t want any part of it, and I told them that. I haven’t seen them in at least three, four weeks.”