Scar Tissue

  “And you wrote it up, just like that?

  “Just like that,” he said.

  “Alright,” I said. “Thanks. I appreciate your time. I’ll let McNamara know, too.”

  “You do that. Even though I don’t know him. Tell him to pass along to the Captain of the Vallejo Street Station how friendly and cooperative I was. He’s my top dog.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  I moved out of the booth and took a twenty out of my wallet and laid it on the table as Cindi arrived back at the table with a pot of coffee and a piece of cherry pie on a plate. She slid the plate onto the table in front of Milner.

  “Something sweet for you Marty,” she giggled. Marty’s hand moved toward Cindi and squeezed her leg. I left, and neither Cindi nor Marty seemed to mind.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The cheeseburger hadn’t settled all that well in my belly and I found myself walking down Columbus trying to convince myself that a short shot of scotch would settle my intestinal turmoil. Sometimes any flimsy rationale will work. I found my way to Specs, a small bar nestled in an alley across from City Lights Books. Keith told me one night when they’d come into the City for dinner that a lot of the old beat poets used to fill their beaks at Specs, as well as Toscas and Vesuvios and a few other long standing North Beach havens, and the place still felt isolated from a world running on fiber optics, computer chips and wireless information waves.

  I don’t drink much anymore, not since I drank way too much for too long following the death of my wife. For months I couldn’t seem to get through the day without four or five drinks, and it began to affect my work and my judgment. The Police Chief and I were friends and had a couple good long talks. He finally told me to quit drinking or he’d fire me. I went him one better, I quit drinking and quit the force. Eventually, I moved to San Francisco to be closer to the kids. I didn’t drink for almost a year. I’ll have something now and then, but the desire to erase things is gone and I can enjoy a good drink.

  I sat on a stool at the bar and ordered a pour of Glenmorangie single malt.

  It was beautiful in its rusty amber color sitting in the clean thick glass. A small bit of perfection sipped from the glass. I savored the smoky taste and pulled out the slip of paper with the names Rhodes’ provided. In addition to Bones and Deza, there was Charlie Ramus who was renting a room in a place on Post Street. Ray had met Ramus while serving his time. I’d swing by his place and make another pass through the Mission. I patiently sipped my drink dry and left the bar. My stomach felt better and I congratulated myself on my diagnosis and prescription.

  * * * *

  Charlie Ramus lived in a cheap hotel that rented rooms by the day, week, or the month. One of many places around the theatre district, just a few blocks west of Union Square. These places are the little bridges between the flop houses and dollar strip shows of the Tenderloin proper, and the lower ridge of the better neighborhoods, beginning just a couple blocks up the hill in the other direction. Walk down the hill from Geary Boulevard toward Market Street and the drinks get cheaper, the food greasier, and the alleys more dangerous. Go up the hill and the sidewalks are cleaner, people walk little dogs on leashes, and nobody is sleeping in doorways.

  I found a place in front of Ramus’ address with a broken parking meter that was wrapped in a cloth sack. The foyer of the hotel was decorated with two straight-backed oak chairs on either side of a large mirror mounted on the wall to my left. Straight ahead was an iron pull grate elevator, and to my right was a registration office with a small hinged window like the ones at the race track where you place your bets. I could see the desk clerk looking frozen in a metal chair with a pillow cushion, staring at a small black and white television with a coat-hanger antenna. His grey hair was matted flat against his skull and his sallow skin spoke of a lifetime lived under artificial light in musty rooms.

  “Hey. How you doing?” I said.

  He leaned up from his chair.

  “Yeah?”

  “Hi. I’m here to see Charlie,” I said, leaning against the counter top on my side of the window.

  “Charlie?”

  “Ramus, sorry. Charlie Ramus.”

  “He just left. I saw him leave. Maybe five minutes ago.” He turned his attention back toward the television.

  “Know when he’ll be back?”

  The television program went into a commercial break and I got the clerk back.

  “What? No? You think I know. I don’t know,” he said. He moved a wad of chewing tobacco from one side of his mouth to another and then bent down slightly and shot a stream of juice into some unseen receptacle. “You think they tell me? It ain’t like that. Don’t want to know anyway. Don’t care, mostly, you know. I’m just here until the clock says it’s time to go. Leave a note if you want to. I’ll stick it in his mailbox, but don’t know when he’ll get it. Or if.”

  “Charlie working these days? Got a place of employment? Does he…”

  “Now how would I know that,” he said, cutting me off in mid-sentence. “Would I know that? I doubt it. Not at tall.” His television program returned from commercial and he refocused his gaze on the small screen and I wasn’t even there. People were tuning me out quite easily, it seemed. First Milner and his waitress at Clown Alley and now the hotel jasper.

  I walked back to my car and slid down Taylor Street to Market, made a right, and then a left turn at Delores Street. I drove past Delores Park and saw a drug transaction going down beneath the sunset glow painting the park. I made another left at 23rd Street and pulled over near Valencia. Sitting on the stoop of the house at the address I had for Angel Deza were three locals drinking beer from quart bottles and smoking cigarettes. Two of the three were in their late teens to early twenties, and the third guy was at least thirty. Maybe the mentor and his students. One of the young ones spoke to me as I approached the house.

  “You lost?”

  “Nope, but you’re a smart one. I’m looking for Angel Deza. You know him?”

  “I don’t know,” the kid said. “”What’s he look like?

  “Got no idea.”

  “That ain’t much? Hey Ronnie, you know this Angel?”

  Ronnie smiled and I noticed the tattooed teardrop on his cheek beneath the corner of his left eye. He didn’t speak, but shook his head back and forth.

  “What about you?” I asked the older, harder guy at the top of the stairs.

  He took a deep drag from his cigarette and a pull from his malt liquor. “You know Deza? I’m a friend of a friend. Just want to talk to him for a minute. No trouble.”

  “I might know him. Who’s your friend?’

  “Ray Rhodes”

  He smiled, and said, “You’re a friend of Ray’s? You don’t look like someone he’d have as a friend.”

  “Well, let’s say we share a friend. I’m trying to help with a problem.”

  “Oh, yeah? I heard something. He got popped. I’m Angel. You got this address from Ray?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you’re not a cop?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “I told him man. I told him he should be with me. No drug deals. For sure no weapons. I told him.”

  “Ray says he was set up. The drugs weren’t his. Never saw the gun before.”

  Angel laughed. “That’s what he should say, man. What would you say?”

  “I believe him.” I didn’t know whether or not I believed Rhodes, but while I talked with Angel I could pretend I did.

  “Well, that’s good. Then you’re a good friend to have. But I don’t know nothing about it. I talked to Ray about some other things and he wasn’t interested. That was it.”

  “What sort of things? I asked.

  Angel tilted his head, and looked at me like I was asking him to take off his clothes and run around the neighborhood naked. Was I somehow defective in the head?

  I regrouped. “Okay. But can you do me a favor. Actually you’d be doing a favor for Ray.” I reached in my wal
let and pulled out a business card that only has my name and a phone number printed on it. I handed the card to Angel. “If you do hear of anything, give me a call. Or call Ray.”

  Angel slipped the card into the right breast pocket of his long sleeved brown shirt and smoothed down the over-flap.

  “One more thing. Do you know a guy goes by the name of Bones?”

  “Sure I know that loser. Don’t like him. Why you ask about him?”

  “Bones had been to see Ray. Wanted him to get involved in some things.”

  “Las drogas,” Deza said.

  “Probably, yeah.”

  “No probably ‘bout it.”

  “How about Charlie Ramus?”

  “Who’s that?’

  “Another name from Ray.”

  “I see. Like you got mine too. Ray don’t know who his friends are, huh?”

  “You know him?”

  “Name means nothing to me. Okay?” Angel took another swallow from his beer. “I think that’s all for now, friend of Ray’s.”

  “Okay. Thanks,” I said. I turned and walked away, while trailing behind me in the wind I could hear the laughter of another joke shared at my expense.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The next morning I got up early and took Lou for a run on the beach. He runs, I walk and throw the tennis ball he chases. By eight thirty we were back from the beach and finished with breakfast. We both had Cheerios, but Lou’s were mixed with some wet dog food and he skipped the banana and the orange juice. I read the paper for a while, put Lou in the back yard, backed the car out of the garage and headed to Ray’s place. I’d left a telephone message the night before that I’d be stopping by to talk.

  Ray and Carol Rhodes rented an apartment on Divisadero Street, a couple blocks up from Geary, past Mt. Zion Medical Center Hospital. Those few blocks are mostly made up of small businesses, and cafes and deli’s to feed the hospital staff. The street is busy with traffic, but there are a few scattered buildings still renting apartments with manageable rents that are a swap for the noise.

  The street level front door was ajar and I entered the building, walked up the two flights of stairs to Ray and Carol’s apartment and knocked on the door.

  No response, so I knocked again.

  “Yeah?” a woman’s voice said from the other side of the door before pulling it open.

  “Hi,” I said, when I saw the woman staring back at me. She was younger than I expected, maybe twenty-one, twenty-two. “I’m Lucky. I know Ray. I called last night and left a message for Ray. Said I would be stopping by. Are you Carol?”

  “Yeah.” She brushed at her unkempt hair with a small hand with long brightly painted red fingernails. “I heard your message.” She turned from the door, leaving it open and moved back into the apartment. “Come on in. Ray’s not here though.”

  I walked into the apartment, leaving the door partially open behind me. The place was small, and smelled stuffy and stale, the way rooms do that don’t get adequate ventilation. The smells of sex and sweat and smoke and food collect themselves into a presence, an invisible mass that shifts and drifts from room to room, looking for walls to climb, ceilings to cling to, cracks to invade.

  “Is Ray coming back?” I asked. “He heard my message?”

  She was stretched out on a couch pushed into one corner of the room. She was barefoot and wearing jeans and a tiny white halter top that didn’t cover all of her breasts when she moved. Her skin was in need of a little sunlight, and her bleached blonde hair was well cut, but the dark roots were beginning to show. Yet, there was something soft around the corners of her mouth and a little spark flickered out from her eyes, despite the smear of dark eye shadow. Her face had nice lines and her skinny frame would be envied by waiting lines of aspiring models. But she had not taken care of herself and she was getting by on youth and looks that wouldn’t hold up well as she aged.

  “What time is?” she asked, rubbing at her eyes.

  “A few minutes after ten.”

  “Well, Ray’s not here. He was drinking last night. We had a fight. I just woke up. He’s gone.”

  Cops hated answering calls for domestic fights. Nine times out nine they couldn’t settle it, couldn’t make it better, couldn’t accomplish squat, and what was most troubling was that they would often see reflections of their own relationship problems. Guns or knives could be involved, and even the trusty frying pan had been known to come upside the head or against the back of more than one cop caught in the middle of a domestic fight. A husband might be beating on his wife, and the cops arrive and restrain him, only to have the wife get pissed off at the cops and start yelling at them to not hurt her husband. I thought I was long past being involved in this type of mess, but apparently I was wrong.

  “And you don’t know where he went?”

  “No, I don’t. I heard him on the phone this morning. Woke me up when it rang, but I fell back asleep. He was supposed to wake me. Now I’m going to be late. I got to get to work.”

  She pushed herself off the couch and walked toward a back room of the apartment. She was pulling off her top as she neared the door to the bedroom.

  “You got a car?” she shouted from the room.

  “Yeah sure.”

  “Give me a ride,” she said, though it didn’t sound like a request. “It’s close.”

  I heard some water running. I heard her gargle and cough and spit and moan. She flipped on a radio and some thrashing guitars collided against drums. From the street below I heard a bus drive by, car horns honk. I heard a bottle break and somebody shouting about “Motherfuckin’ Jesus”.

  After ten minutes Carol came back into the front room. She’d changed her old jeans in for newer black ones, her halter top in for a deep red t-shirt, and put on some black cowboy boots. She’d pushed her hair around with a brush and added some pale red lipstick. She grabbed a faded blue denim jacket from the back of a chair and swung a red leather purse over her shoulder.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  “You’ll tell Ray I was here? Tell him to call me?”

  “Yeah, sure. When I see him.” She was already out of the apartment and moving down the hall as I followed her and shut the front door.

  “We need to make it to The Penthouse. O’Farrell at Polk,” Carol said as I started the car and she looked in the mirror of her compact and worked on some make-up details. The morning shift at The Penthouse, a strip club with a colorful past that included shootings, mob business, and charges of police protection.

  “I’m not proud of the work, ya know,” Carol said as we neared the club. “But it’s job. And I make decent money.”

  “I’m not judging you,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not the college type. And when Ray was in jail, well…,” her voice trailed off and left the sentence unfinished. “I can look good,” she added. “And I like to dance.” The afterthought sounded as though Carol was trying to convince herself more than me.

  I pulled the car over to the curb in front of the club. It was a few minutes before eleven. A short redhead in a mini skirt and a black girl in a bright yellow jumpsuit were let into the club by the doorman. To one side of the entrance door, behind a red velvet rope, waiting for the early bird opening, were two Asian men who looked like tourists, a college aged kid in a baseball cap, and a guy in a business suit with his back to the street as if he were afraid he might be recognized.

  Carol got out of the car, started toward the club, and then paused. She came back to the car and opened the door. “Hey, you know, I’m glad you’re trying to help Ray. We both are. Ray and me. He should have been home this morning. I’ll tell him. And thanks for the ride, too.”

  Carol closed the car door and moved toward the club. The doorman smiled at her and opened the door. The adjacent door opened at the same time and a janitor came out pushing a trash can. I could see into the lobby of the club. A fat lady with silver blue hair was sitting behind a counter with a cash register, adjusting her glasses, g
etting ready for the customers anxiously waiting to shuffle inside.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I wasn’t far from Ramus’ Post Street address so I continued down O’Farrell and turned left on Leavenworth to Post and slid into a spot just vacated by a Comcast van half a block from the hotel. Sitting in the reception office, like he’d never moved, was the old guy from the night before. The television reception was distorted and I watched him fiddle with the coat hanger antenna. I leaned against the counter and watched him work. I could have been invisible.

  “Damn thing,” he eventually said, and turned off the set.

  “You work all the time,” I said.

  He was still annoyed with the television. He slapped it.

  “What?” he said. He looked at me.

  “You work long hours, I guess. You were on last night.”

  “You want something?”

  “Yeah, Charlie Ramus. Came by to see him. Room 304, right?” I was guessing, but Ray said it was on the third floor.

  “306, Jesus.”

  “Right,” I said. As I left the old guy turned the television back on and was getting ready to again do battle with his version of modern technology.

  I turned toward the elevator and watched the noisy metal grate open. A tall black man, maybe in his seventies, stepped into the lobby. He was dressed in grey slacks and a powder blue long sleeved shirt, buttoned to the neck. Black shoes. He carried a dark charcoal colored hat in one hand. The clothes might have been thirty years old, but were sharply pressed and worn with pride. He saw me coming to the elevator and held the grate open for me.

  “Good morning, sir,” he said.

  “Good morning.”

  “Be careful of the latch. Sometimes it doesn’t catch when you slide it. Doesn’t hold.”

  “I’ll check it. Thanks.”

  “Just a helpful hint,” he said with a wink.

  He used both hands to carefully place his hat on his head, and I watched him glide toward the front door and the outside world as the elevator slowly began its ascent to the third floor. The third floor hall was lit by three ceiling lights. The one window at the end of the hall had been painted a muddy military green in an apparent attempt to keep out unwanted sunlight. Any hour, day or night, and the hall would look the same. Three in the afternoon could be three in the morning. Ramus’ room was down the hall to the right, and as I neared the room I could hear some jazz seeping out into the hallway. I hoped it was an indication Ramus was home. I knocked on his door and the music was replaced by the sound of a radio disc jockey. Ramus didn’t come to the door so I knocked again. Nothing. I reached for the door knob. The door was unlocked and I went into the room.