Bones of the Barbary Coast (Cree Black Thrillers)

  His first errand was a quick-stop place, where he gassed up the Suburban and went inside for a jumbo coffee and three egg-and-sausage sandwich things that had been in the steamer since breakfast time. Back in the driver's seat, he tore into the sandwiches and stoked himself with coffee. The coffee was good, and he felt like the truck, full tank and ready to go.

  Not yet eight, he was right on time. He drove back down to Sixteenth Street and into the Mission district. He had always felt at home here, one of the few parts of San Francisco that wasn't just pastel stucco houses but also big industrial buildings more like the type he'd grown up around back east. He pulled over in the orange glow beneath the 101 overpass and let Chevy idle as he sipped coffee, smoked, and waited.

  A few minutes later, Nearing's car slid past and pulled over. Rich got out and came to the Suburban, bringing a small gym bag and his own cup of coffee.

  Rich Nearing was a tall, stringy black guy in his late thirties, a beanpole with sandpaper-short hair over a hatchet face and a long neck with a prominent Adam's apple. Tonight he wore black jeans, black T-shirt, and a black leather jacket that he left open so you could see the straps of his shoulder rig. He worked in the Narcotics Section, Bert's unit before moving over to Homicide.

  "Hey, Machete," Rich said. He slammed the door, made himself comfortable, popped the hole in his coffee lid. First Tuesday of the month, this was the ritual. They'd drink coffee and discuss the route before they got going. In the dark cab, with the tinted windows and his black skin and clothes, Nearing was the Invisible Man, just teeth, eyes, a single gold stud earring.

  "How's it going, Rich?"

  "Goin' good. My boat's almost done, that feels all right." Nearing had used some of his off-the-record income to buy a third-hand cabin cruiser and was fixing it up himself. "My son's birthday is coming up this weekend, we're trying to get ready. That stuff. You?"

  Bert started to shrug, same old same old, but then surprised himself by finding there was something to report. "My . . . niece is visiting from out of town. A good kid, haven't seen her in a while."

  Nearing nodded, put his coffee to his face.

  "How's it look for tonight?" Bert asked.

  "Everything's routine except the new client, the dry cleaner. Mr. Zheng's son called to ask if we could wait 'til next month. I said, Sure, no problem, we're nice guys, we understand."

  Bert laughed. Being understanding was not a posture that you used. He hadn't met the Zhengs. Koslowski, their partner in Vice, had gone with Nearing for the first meeting, but he knew the call meant there'd probably be some ugly stuff later tonight. Mood he was in, he almost didn't mind.

  The first stop was a video store, specializing in but not exclusively devoted to sex tapes. It was run by a pair of old hippies who had opened up their shop on the periphery of the North Beach sin zone. Bert pulled up across the street and Nearing hopped out with his duffle, waited for traffic, then crossed to the brightly lit facade. Bert watched as he went inside, and through the door he could see the change in posture of the guy behind the counter. Nearing's favorite greeting for these visits was "Trick or treat!"

  Bert lit a cigarette, knowing there'd be a wait. Nearing liked to chat up their clients, playing buddy and coconspirator while in fact he was just drawing it out, savoring his power. Nearing always got off on the risk, the rush of being outside society, off the record, off the charts. Playing it both ways, law and outlaw.

  Working in Narcotics and Vice put you in touch with certain kinds of people and therefore certain kinds of opportunities. The guys who ran Very Very Video were typical. Storefront rentals were pricey anywhere near North Beach. You had an inventory to keep up, overhead was high, and you had competition, so of course you wanted to make extra money on the side. In the case of these guys, they had friends up in Mendocino who grew amounts of marijuana even the pot-tolerant SFPD would ordinarily be reluctant to ignore. But the tip had come first to Nearing, so word of their activities never made it into the books. All these guys did was hold the quantity shipments, stinky green bales of leaf and big zip-top bags of resinous buds until local distributors picked up their allotments. For taking the risk, they got a percentage from the suppliers.

  For overlooking Very Very Video's sideline, Bert, Nearing, and Koslowski took a percentage of the percentage.

  At last Nearing kicked his duffle under the counter. The guy back there disappeared from view, then stood again. The bag reappeared on the floor on Nearing's side, but still Rich had to shmooze some more. He called it "establishing congenial client relations."

  Bert had been inducted into the business by the old-timers back in Narcotics, had left it behind for some years after he moved to Homicide, then got recruited again by the younger generation. When his senior at Narco had first invited him in, Bert had declined. But after a year or so he'd begun to feel that he was owed something by the scumbags who he worked so hard to police and who—one of them anyway, somebody somewhere—had destroyed his life. If you wanted to get moralistic about it, you could call it a sin tax. And if it occasionally required administering pain, you could call that punishment. There was a certain quid pro quo that Bert was uneasy about, in that their clients also expected Nearing and Koslowski to stifle cop interest or at least provide advance notice of pending action. But in the end, Bert felt these guys mostly got what they deserved.

  At last Nearing wrapped up his visit, skipped across the street, jumped in.

  "How'd it go?" Bert asked.

  "Great. I had him throw in a couple copies of Bad Boys 2."

  "Give mine to Koslowski."

  "Hal was telling me how hard moving to DVD is on these smaller outfits. I never thought of that. You can't get rid of your tapes because for half your customers, that's still the viewing technology they've got, and now you also gotta please the people who've gone over to disc. Except where are you going to display it all when you've only got six hundred square feet? Plus you're carrying every title in both formats, twice the inventory for the same rental volume. It's tough." Nearing stared sympathetically at the storefront. "Funny, you never really realize what the other guy's up against. You know what I mean?"

  Bert pulled out and gunned the engine. "My heart bleeds," he said.

  The last stop was the dry cleaner's. It was after eleven, and the north end of Columbus had quieted down, storefronts dark, traffic sparse. Bert could feel pressure building as they got closer, the accumulated tension of waiting and knowing what would probably go down. Nearing was feeling it too, getting quiet, checking his gun, generally girding himself.

  All-Nite Laundry was a new business and a recent addition to their list—a full-service laundry and dry cleaner that was open twenty-four hours, three-hour guaranteed turnaround. From the street, the plate glass windows showed a spotless front waiting area, a long counter with two cash registers, and an endless garment conveyor full of clothes in plastic bags, stretching back into darkness. The actual cleaning facility was a bigger room in back with a loading entry on the alley.

  Between front and back operations were five windowless little rooms, occupied by five young Chinese women. Being open twenty-four hours a day, the business made the perfect front, allowing men to come in at any time without drawing attention to themselves. The tip had come through Koslowski.

  They pulled up directly in front and sat there for a while, looking at the bright counter and the two increasingly nervous guys behind it. They would be wondering why this big gray Suburban was there, but with its tinted windows they wouldn't be able to see who was inside. The moment Bert and Nearing got out, one of the men inside turned and scuttled back among the garments.

  "Can I he'p you?" the one guy left up front said. Big toothy grin, pretending he thought they were customers. He was about seventeen and looked ready to piss himself.

  "We need to talk to the boss," Bert said.

  "My uncle not here. Sorry." Still the tight scared grin.

  Nearing was already going around the end of the count
er. Bert ordered the boy to stay up front, absolutely not to move from where he stood. He slapped the red button that turned on the conveyor, and the whole room began to move, a rumble and swish that would provide a good noise screen. Then he followed Nearing, brushing past the sliding plastic-bagged garments toward a lighted doorway in the gloom at the back.

  They went into a square room at the center of the building, where several big canvas gurneys full of clothes waited for processing and a wide doorway opened into the laundry facility. Ranged along the walls were rows of machines topped by venting ducts, the round windows in their doors showing the tumbling cloth inside. In the middle were several long tables where a half dozen men and women were sorting, folding, spot treating. They all stopped when they saw Bert and Nearing at the door. The air was full of the stink of cleaning agents and the rumble and drone of machinery.

  To Bert's left, another doorway opened into a narrow hall lined by a series of doors, all but one of them closed. He leaned so he could look into the open door and saw just a bed, a lamp, and a chair.

  He turned when three men appeared in the doorway to the laundry area. The oldest was the father, a gray-haired, irritable-looking man of fifty, one of those tight-faced guys who looked like a skull. Behind him was the young man who had been at the counter and a burly Chinese guy with pecs and biceps bulging out of a wife-beater T-shirt.

  "You don't come in here!" the older man said. He waved his hands at them as if that would make them go away.

  "Mr. Zheng," Nearing said reasonably. "We do come in here. We come in here and you give us some money. That's how it works. That's what we arranged, remember?"

  "No money now." The father stood resolutely in the doorway. "You said okay you wait."

  The skinny young man moved forward. He was a good-looking kid, early twenties, dressed in a blue button-down shirt, tie, trim khakis. "Please. We'll be sure to have the money for you next time." His English was unaccented.

  "Oh, come on, people!" Nearing said. "This is exactly what I warned you not to do. Mr. Zheng, I told you, this is how you get in trouble."

  The patriarch said something rapidly in Mandarin, his eyes moving from Bert to Nearing, full of hate, and the clean-cut young man translated: "My father wants you to know that he doesn't believe you will have us prosecuted. Because if you close us down, you will get nothing from us."

  "Hey, we're gettin' nothin' already," Bert reminded him.

  "Prosecuting isn't the only kind of trouble I meant," Nearing added grimly.

  "We'll have it next time," the young man repeated urgently. "It's not going to be a problem. Please."

  Bert heard a noise from his left and he looked over to see a young woman stepping out of one of the doors along the side hall. She was wearing a short, lacy robe, and as she turned a length of smooth thigh emerged from the blue cloth. She made an involuntary shriek when she saw Bert and Nearing confronting her red-faced boss.

  At the sound, two of the other doors opened and women's faces looked out warily. They were all smooth skinned, moon faced, ebony haired, terrified. Not one of them was older than fourteen, fifteen.

  "You go back inside!" the father ordered them in Mandarin.

  Two of them disappeared immediately, but the first one hesitated, clenching the robe at her throat.

  Bert grunted, taken aback by what he was feeling. The father was haranguing the girl, his eyes screwed up, gesturing threateningly, but still she stood uncertainly, paralyzed.

  "Take it easy, Bud," Bert said to the father.

  "You don't tell me! You don't tell me in here!" He went on in Mandarin, incomprehensible except for his rage, as he stepped toward the girl.

  Bert grabbed his arm and flung him across the room. Guy didn't weigh anything, he flew against one of the gurneys and half fell into it. Nearing drew his gun and went into a shooting stance, freezing the two at the door. The father stood up but Bert gave him a backhanded slap that spun his head around and dropped him in a heap. Bert bent, half lifted him by his shirt, and slapped him again. The guy looked ready to spit venom, his cheeks red-bruised, choking and sputtering, and the sight of his self-righteousness filled Bert with rage. He hauled off and slugged him, put his weight into it.

  "The fuck you doing?" Bert yelled. "They're kidsl Don't you have any self-respect? They your daughters? Nieces? Or just kids you bought? What?"

  Nearing stayed spreadlegged, gun on the guys at the door. On the floor the father moaned, his face still that weasel mask of hate, and Bert felt a tight string break inside. A terrific energy seized him. He lifted Zheng up and dragged him to the hallway where the girl had been. He held him up with one hand and threw open her door and saw her huddled on the bed, cringing and crying.

  "How old is this kid? Twelve? Thirteen? You fucking piece of shit, how old is she?" But the father was in no shape to answer. Bert ground him against the door frame, shook him like a scarecrow and then tossed him on the floor like the trash he was. The girl wouldn't look, just hid her head and cried. Bert was panting and he could feel the red swelling in his neck and face. He strode out to the two who stood at the door. "You want some too?" he said. He pushed the slender young man aside and swung a foot into the balls of the muscle-bound one before either could react. The guy fell back, skated across the floor on his ass and stayed sitting there, gasping for air.

  No one budged. Everything stayed frozen except the tumbling clothes in all the round windows.

  Bert turned back. Nearing's face was twitching with nerves, but he managed a quick smile. Bert shook himself, shot his cuffs, straightened his shirt. Then he turned around to the son, who hovered in the doorway, wanting to go to his father but afraid to move.

  "You," Bert said. "Your old man's English isn't so good, so I want you to translate for me." He gestured for the young man to go to his father, sprawled half in the hall, half in the center room. The kid scuttled over, knelt, lifted the patriarch's head to his lap.

  Bert hunkered down and gripped the father's face in two hands so he couldn't break eye contact. "Tell him just as I say it. First, you have the money next time, every time. The law doesn't like what you're doing and I don't either, so if you fight me you're guaranteed to lose every which way. You think this is bad, there's four guys out in the truck who'll come in here and put you out of business for good. Tell him."

  The young man rattled it out, and Bert understood enough to know he was translating correctly. Bert held the father's head until he felt him try to nod his assent.

  "Second thing, and listen closely. You're gonna be ashamed because now those girls know you're not such a big shot after all. You're gonna want to take it out on them, them seeing you humiliated like this. But I'm coming back here in a week and in a month, and I'm going to check up on them. If I see a bruise, a scratch, a frown even, I'm gonna take you in the back room there, put you in one of your machines and cook you in the chemicals. Got it?"

  The son translated. The bloodied face of the father nodded with a series of jerks. Bert kept up eye contact until the flame of hate and resistance had been replaced by hopelessness in the dark eyes, then tossed the skull-like head back into his son's lap.

  The clothes were still filing around on the conveyor, zombies on parade drill. Out at the front counter, the kid opened the cash registers and handed over whatever was in there, even the checks, which were no use to them.

  They drove back to Nearing's car. Nearing was having a ball, recounting what happened, mimicking the expressions on their faces. Now that the adrenaline was fading, Bert felt like shit, his hands sore, a muscle pulled in his shoulder. Worse was the feeling that he'd eaten or drunk something poisonous, something that was still in his blood.

  He pulled up behind Rich's car and they sat for a while as Nearing worked inside his duffle, divvying up the night's take, setting aside the bundle for Koslowski. Bert pocketed his without looking at it.

  "You were in top form, Bertie," Nearing crowed. "I was ready to crap myself, but you—man! Eye of the tiger!
You scared the living shit out of them."

  "Okay, Rich. I gotta go home now."

  "Come on! You love this shit! You love it and you're good at it. Admit it, man!"

  "I don't love it."

  "Go on, Bertie, you the man Credit where credit's due!"

  "Shut up. I mean it."

  Nearing's eyes narrowed. He looked offended at what he must have mistaken for Bert's tone of moral indignation. "Hey Bertie, why do you think Koslowski and me asked you back in? We know your rep—Bert 'Machete' Marchetti. I saw you, man, okay? You don't think we've seen it before? You get off on it, man. Don't even try to bullshit me."

  Nearing wasn't getting it. It was time for him to shut up before something bad happened, but he didn't know it. Bert held onto himself hard for a few seconds. Finally he just looked over at Nearing, nodded. "Okay, Rich. Now I'm tired, I'm an old man, gotta get my beauty sleep, yeah?"

  Smiling again, Nearing punched his shoulder and got out.

  14

  CREE BEGAN WEDNESDAY with a terrific run through the Presidio, a labyrinth of winding streets and parkland that capped the northern tip of the city. Her AAA book said it had been the site of the first Spanish fort in the area, and then a U.S. military base that had been converted to private offices and residences and public recreation areas. Curving roads, big overhanging trees, tile-roofed buildings, broad lawns and soccer fields, ocean air spiced with eucalyptus tang: utterly lovely. One minute she was running through a neighborhood of white stucco duplexes and four-units, the next she was plunging down a steep curving lane into deep jungle where innumerable paths snaked off into the green, tempting her feet. She felt as if she could run forever.