SAN FRANCISCO, MID-SEPTEMBER 1971—Ty stood in the aisle. His hand throbbed; his groin ached; his head hurt. He held the chrome overhead bar with his right hand as he had each workday evening for the past month. She sat in front, as always, sideways as always, behind the driver. He kept his left hand in his jacket pocket, slouched, stared up, forward, aware of her yet not looking at her, aware of her long straight hair, gaunt face, long straight body. He wanted to watch her, catch the light blue of her eyes if she raised her face. But he dared not. The man in the Raiders jacket was not behind him. Behind him was a haggard black woman with two children. Since they’d boarded she’d been berating the boy, perhaps eight years old, for having dropped ice cream on his pants. “How’m I gon clean em tonight? En have em dry fo tomorrow fo I get you to school? Bran new pants! How come you do this? I work, en fo what?” Loud. Pained. Sharing her plight with an entire bus of strangers; the boy shy, slouched, his head down but nowhere to hide; the girl, perhaps six, assuming a posture that said, “Not me. He did it.” And Tyrone Dorsey in front of them in his suit and fine shirt and polished shoes, not turning, assuming too a posture that said, “Not me. They are not with me. All blacks are not like them.”
His eyes itched, were watery and red. The bus stopped. People shuffled. His eyes darted to the gaunt white woman who timidly glanced up, back, then tightened her knees against the seat and twisted her feet attempting to keep them from the aisle. In his mind he apologized to her but he knew now he would never apologize, knew he would never speak to her. Indeed he was afraid she might actually acknowledge him, might read him and know. He felt ill, ached all over. The lymph nodes at his groin were sore, swelling again. No amount of washing would take the sensation away. His hand throbbed from the abuse it took every working day—packages, papers, crates, stacks of manila envelopes, every conceivable form of mail needing whisking from point A to point B, ASAP. Tonight, he told himself, as he now often did, I’ll take a little something to ease the pain.
By the tenth day after his finger had been ripped off he had felt as if adjustment and recovery were imminent. Tyrolian Finance Corp. had received its first investment capital, $7,600, via a referral from Lloyd Dunmore. Peter Wilcox had immediately provided a borrower for a short-term second mortgage of $8,000 minus ten points up front and $150 in fees. Ty, on paper, earned $950 though he retained only $450. He had yet to register with the state or the IRS.
Then the pins and needles had begun and he’d thought it was nerves over his first loan transaction. The swelling and soreness and itch had followed. Then pimplelike sores burst into blisters on the head and shaft of his penis; the inside burned. Herpes. Herpes from the woman who’d stolen his pinky ring and his finger. He’d called into work, said he had a summer flu, locked himself in his room with his few books, weathered the first bout alone, angry, withdrawn, disgusted, unable to concentrate even through a single page.
The bus swerved, rocked like a giant ark, halted, lurched, halted. He’d become aware of the feeling at ten o’clock this morning as he’d waited before a pretty receptionist, needing the signature of her boss, in an office on Montgomery Street. As he waited he’d chatted her up, chided her about working for a white guy. “Nice-looking sister like you!” Ty, cocky, proud, smiling. “Why don’t you come and work for me? I’ve got eighteen runners.” Ty kept his left hand in his pants pocket. “Couple of em out today so the boss—” he tapped his chest, “is filling in. But I need help in the office. Someone to take over. Break me loose to expand. I can’t do it if I’m tied to a desk all day. Great opportunity.”
“I don’t think so, Mr. Dorsey.” She smiled. She answered another call, put the caller on hold. “Really, I’m very happy here.”
“Nice-looking sister like you,” he repeated quietly. “Working for a honkey.” She excited him but the feeling in his groin wasn’t excitement. By noon he’d begun feeling ill, had recognized the prodromal symptoms. By three he was having chills. By five thirty, on the bus, sidling past the long, thin woman, he felt as if bugs were creeping out of his abdomen, out of his anus, creeping to his groin. He felt as if everyone could see, as if even the small boy being berated knew, and all the people with eyes darting at the haggard woman saw instead herpetic Ty Blackwell Dorsey. He felt exactly like the little boy, embarrassed, shamed, nowhere to hide.
By six fifteen Ty was sitting alone in a dark wooden booth in a small dimly lit bar a half block off The Embarcadero. Before him was his half-finished beer, the crumbs of a Reuben sandwich, a stack of thick home fries coated with ketchup that he’d aligned neatly on the plastic plate. With his fork he separated one fry from the stack, cut it in half. Eat, he told himself. “Keep yo strength up, Son,” his stepfather used to say. He forced the forkful to his mouth. “Keep yo from gettin sick. En ef yo get sick, keep yo from gettin real sick.”
Ty sipped his beer. Half a dozen patrons were seated on the stools chatting or watching the news on the TV. All were white. The bartender was white. Only the cook, who emerged occasionally from the small kitchen beyond the end of the bar, was black. Eat, Ty told himself again but he did not want to eat anything more. Herpetic cunt, he thought. Goddamn herpetic white pussy. My ring, my finger, my fuckin johnson, my whole fuckin body. He ground a forkful of fries into the plate. Carve a big H in her forehead, he thought. Goddamn. He sipped his beer, glanced to the stools, to the TV, caught a few words: “... new American chief delegate William J. Porter ... Paris talks ...” It flashed in his mind that maybe it wasn’t the bitch who’d stolen his finger but perhaps the fat fag had done something to him that night after his first speedball.
Ty did not linger on the thoughts. He believed thoughts like those would keep him from advancing. He still had plans, herpes or not, nine fingers or ten, honkeys or whatever. He glanced to the TV. The white customers, even the bartender, were rapt. The story was: black GIs; soul alley; drugs; black/white incidents. It was not a new story, not a new exposé. In the fourteen months since Ty had been discharged he’d seen scores of TV reports about how black and white GIs in Viet Nam hated each other, how they warred against each other, how blacks were abused, used as infantry fodder, treated unfairly for promotions and medals. There was not a single story on interracial cooperation, harmony, friendship.
Fuck em, he thought. Fuck it all. I go god damn Airborne. Prove my manhood. Then some honkey major ... then some honkey bitch ...
The TV caught his eye again. The scene could have been I Corps, could have been Camp Evans. A black soldier was standing by a sandbag wall. The reporter was letting him ramble. In the background a white GI was waving a Confederate flag. One of the guys at the bar glanced at Ty then quickly turned back to the TV.
“You know why we here?” the black soldier was ranting. “Economics. Even these white dudes. Suckers, Man, suckers. The Man, he lookin for an openin, you dig? He lookin for a foothold, dig? He want them rubber plantations. He want ta drill for oil. He want these little yellow people to work like ants. You understand what I’m sayin? Have these little people make radios an tape recorders. Pay em in rice. We here because of eee-co-nomics! We here to line the pockets a The Man. No matter we dyin. No matter we killin these little people. There plenty mo.”
Ty stared at the TV, at the backs of the other patrons. His thoughts were not on the validity of the assertion but, why didn’t they get a brother who could speak clearly. They do it on purpose, he thought. They find a stereotype, broadcast it, reinforce it.
“Who gettin killed, huh?” The soul brother’s arms were now flailing. “Bloods, Man, Bloods. You dig? Brothers. Twenty-five percent, Man. You tell me this aint no race war.”
It was dark in Ty’s room. Late. He needed to pee but he dared not move the bottle alarm, open the door, go down the hall to the common toilet. He was sweating, feverish, delirious, shaking, twitching like a fish too long out of water. He did not like the dark but was afraid to turn on the light. Had to, he thought. Had to. To control the pain. To control the anger. To forget those honkey motherfuckers absorbed in the TV-nigger’s babble. True or not.
Even before he’d reset the bottle alarm Ty had rolled back the mattress and taken out his “works.” He’d been shaking, sweating, aching all over, itchy at his groin. He’d weathered the pain of his traumatic finger amputation with the fat fag’s speedball and with skag-laced cigarettes; had weathered the first herpes bout snorting a little coke, smoking a little heroin. After they’d passed he’d prepared, bought the works for recurrences. Then, tonight, returning, he’d been all jitters. He’d paced the small room, removed one shoe, placed a few bottles, unfolded the kit, removed his shirt, back to the bottle alarm, checking his stash, his cash, his dope, back to undressing—nothing in straight-line order. Carefully he’d mixed the coke powder and the heroin powder—his dealer had called it Indochina Ivory—a little water, pure, clean, distilled, kept in a sterile bottle in his sheet-metal armoire, mixed in a clean spoon—so careful not to spill it, not to use too much, a quarter of a tenth of a gram of heroin, 60 percent pure, and a third of a tenth of cocaine—I can handle it—it’s too expensive to get hooked, steal my piece of the pie—then crushed a pure white sterile cotton ball into the mix in the spoon, a wadded sterile filter absorbing impurities—so careful—then inserting the needle into the cotton, drawing that beautiful mix into the syringe. He’d checked the room. His head, body, groin, had ached but the anticipation of the hit had overridden the prodromal creeps. Ty had tied off, a length of surgical rubber tubing above the left elbow, had slapped up a vein, jabbed in the needle, felt good, satisfied that he’d become proficient at self-injection. Then fifteen seconds later—Contact! Ambush! High, wide, dull, loose, BANG!
Sweating. Delirious. On his back, on his bed, in the dark, alone, needing to pee. Alone. Alone from day one, from moment one back in the land of the big PX, the pig PX. They’d snubbed him. Right down the line. Those white boys he’d sat with on the Seven-oh-Sweet Freedom Bird: moment minus one aboard, all friends and thrilled to have returned from that bad motherfucker; moment one, on the ground, “Don’t even look me up. I know we been through the same shit, Bro. I know we been close. But it won’t work back here. They won’t even let you come down my street.” Worse, honkey number two simply refusing to talk, refusing to look at him, walking away. Home. Luwan. Shut off. Keeping his daughter away from him. Randall, Phillip, all surface. Alone with them cause they couldn’t understand. Alone too, with the Captain. Not a single person to confide in. Not a single friend. Has to be. I gotta be alone. Isolate myself. I-so-late me from them hos-tile mothafuckas. Nice-looking sister! Soiled brother. Marred, Man. Diseased. Just another incurable retched niggar staring at them with their flag, them shoving that Confederate flag in my face. Kill for whitey. Killed by whitey. Brother abuses brother for The Man.
Alone like blue-eyes. Maybe she’s got it. Maybe that’s why she all the time sits like she does, like she’s holding herself in. Same as me. Cept she’s brand name. I’m generic. Yeah. Same as me. Long, straight, nice arms. Same as me cept light blue eyes and dark brown eyes. Vanilla and chocolate. We’d be perfect together. Brand name aint no better than the generic. I’ll show em. I’ll show her. When I get my piece of the pie.
How in God’s name ... this little black boy from Coal Hill who split from his baby ... Jessica, baby, Daddy gonna come back someday.... Prove your manhood. Go Airborne!
Ty rolled, grabbed an alarm bottle from before the door stile. He was high, mellow, coming down, aching, shaking, sad, afraid to go into the hall. He urinated into the bottle. His johnson burned.
OPM. OPM became his opium as much as speedballs became his addiction. OPM—other people’s money.
Ty’s second herpetic eruption lasted half as long as the initial attack. In its wake, partly because of his perception of his new vulnerability, he doubled his financial efforts, his assault on that piece of the American pie he so desperately wanted, needed, needed to assuage all the assaults and abuses by which he’d been victimized, stigmatized.
“Mr. Jackson,” Ty said, “I’m not going to play games with you.” It was the evening of Sunday, October 3, 1971. Ty was in Richmond, California, about a mile from the end of the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge. He was sitting in the comfortable living room of Elmont and Mabel Jackson, on the edge of Elmont’s large overstuffed chair with his papers, pencils and charts on the hassock before him. Mr. and Mrs. Jackson sat side by side on the sofa facing him, looking first to him, then to the papers, then to Ty’s business card and back to Ty. “Some people invest in real estate,” Ty said. “And I don’t want to discourage you from exploring that option. But allow me to point out two things. When you own a piece of property you have to maintain it, don’t you?”
Elmont nodded.
“You have to clean up after the tenants if they mess the place up, huh?”
Again Elmont nodded. He was old enough to be Ty’s father. Mabel was younger but not by much.
“And you have to pay the mortgage and taxes whether or not you collect the rent, right?”
“Honey,” Mabel said, “I been cleanin homes so long that aint gonna stop me.”
“No, Mrs. Jackson,” Ty said. “And it shouldn’t. But let me continue a minute. If you take the money your brother left you—”
“God bless his soul,” Mabel injected.
“And you buy a house and rent it ... You see, so many of these stories about buying low, letting appreciation push the price up, then selling high and making huge profits”—Elmont Jackson suppressed a smile; Ty was describing his fantasy—“well ... appreciation, actually, is the increase in cost as measured by the selling price minus your purchase price and closing costs and your selling closing costs and minus the value your money loses over that time to inflation. Most people don’t minus out the inflation. They also don’t deduct any out-of-pocket expenses for unpaid rent. Or for their labor in fixing the place back up. That’s where you get these high figures for appreciation. Look, Mr. Jackson, I’m not going to play games with you, it’s your money. I just want you to understand the alternatives.”
“Give you the money,” Elmont said, “and you turn aroun an loan it out.”
“That’s right. Totally secured. You get ten percent interest on the face value of the note. Unless you want to go the unsecured route. Then I can get you sixteen percent.”
“Sixteen!”
“Oh, yes. But I wouldn’t advise—”
“Sixteen percent a year?”
“Uh-huh. Well, ah, it’s not for everyone. Actually it works out even more. See, ah, let’s say we lend out ten thousand at sixteen percent. But we don’t actually give the borrower ten thousand. They pay points up front—”
“Like I did here when we bought the house.”
“That’s right. But on these unsecured notes I can get you three points up front, so instead of you actually giving me ten thousand, you give me ninety seven hundred. But you still collect interest on the ten. So—” Ty wrote out the figures on a piece of paper on the hassock, “it’s sixteen hundred divided by ninety-seven hundred, which, ah ... Look, I’ll do those calculations later if you want but it’s probably closer to eighteen percent. And of course you get some of the loan fee too. It’s not much, maybe seventy-five—”
“That sounds—” Mabel sighed, slapped her hands on her ample thighs, “like highway robbery.”
Ty smiled sheepishly. “It does, doesn’t it?” He leaned forward. His voice was soft. “It’s not for everyone,” he almost whispered. “But the truth is, you know, as a black man, I like owning a piece of white people’s homes. They owned our homes for so long.... It’s our turn.”
“Aint that the truth,” Elmont said.
“I don’t know,” Mabel said.
“It’s time we got our piece of the pie.” Ty’s voice was soft, smooth. “You know, I’ve been overseas. In the army. America is the best hope for blacks but we’ve got to take the opportunity. We’ve got to grasp it. Grasp the legal opportunities. Otherwise your children and mine will be right down here where we at. Forever. And it’ll be our own fault.”
Mabel shifted uncomfortably. “This all legal?”
“Oh, it’s legal.” Ty nodded his head subtly. “Absolutely.”
Elmont sat up straight as if the implications of Ty’s words had just reached him. “Tyrone, you mean if I give you the nine thousand seven hundred dollars my brother left me, in a year you’ll give me back sixteen hundred and I’ll still have a note sayin I’m owed ten thousand?”
“An unsecured note,” Ty said. “I want to remind you of that. You’re protected by law, by the good name of the borrower and his legal promise to pay. But it’s not a mortgage on his house. Just like a credit card. Still, people pay their credit card bills, don’t they?”
“Yeah. Sixteen hundred the first year,” Elmont repeated, “and I don’t gotta break my back cleanin or repairin or worryin about collectin the rent!”
“That’s the way it’s been working. I can’t promise you a note for exactly that amount, you understand. It might be two notes. You don’t give me the money until I’ve got it sold.”
“Honey—” Mable fixed her eyes on Ty’s face, “you evah done this befo?”
“Oh yes,” Ty said sincerely. “All the time. Mostly to home buyers up in San Martin.” Now Ty chuckled. “There may be hardly any black families up there, but pretty soon blacks will own ten percent of the entire town.”
Elmont turned to Mabel. “What do you think, Mabe?”
“Might be nice to sit back and not worry ...”
“We’ve got a little bit”—Elmont turned from Mabel to Ty—“a little bit of savings too.”
“Oh, wait!” Ty held up his hand. “Now I don’t want you to give me all your rainy-day money.”
“Well”—Elmont was nearly bursting now to hand his money over to Ty Dorsey—”not all of it. We could go, um, maybe twelve thousand.”
Ty interrupted. “Look, this sounds like this is a bit too much for you.”
“When do you need it by?” Elmont shot back.
“I’ll need a cashier’s check on Friday,” Ty said softly.
“Mr. Ellis. Mrs. Ellis. I’m not going to play games with you....”
Again and again. “Mrs. Carr, I’m sure if your husband were still alive he’d want you to invest in the future of your children....” “Mr. Brown ... I’ve been overseas. America may have problems but it’s our best hope. I don’t want to rip it down. I’m no Panther. I’m just like you. Only I want our people to partake of their proper share.”
In San Francisco’s black neighborhoods, and in San Bruno, in Foster City, all the way south to San Jose and back north through Milpitas, Fremont, out to Martinez and across to Vallejo, Ty Dorsey’s spiel flowed, telling people what they themselves were thinking, good people aghast at the radicalism of the times, hard-working people hoping, praying to take a legal step forward. From them Ty collected funds—from generally older black men and women whom he found by searching year-old obituaries in local newspapers in municipal libraries, generally calling on the listed survivors exactly a year and a day from the death of their loved one, calling them as if by chance.
By the end of 1971, Ty Dorsey had collected just under $200,000 from thirty-one sources. He had placed $160,000 in loans on which he’d grossed nearly $12,000. For the remaining $40,000 Ty issued fake notes to the sources—those he judged most gullible. From the principle he made all necessary interest payments (which not only kept everyone happy and at bay but also generated dozens more “sales” leads).
Ty Dorsey purchased two more investment properties—small, rundown Riverside subdivision homes—in his name. He purchased another with Lloyd Dunmore as a silent partner and three more in which he was only owner-mortgagee in name, under aliases: Tyrone Blackwell, Ty E. Dorsey and T. E. Wallace.
Through autumn and early winter Ty concentrated on his pyramiding real estate “empire.” His herpes infection recurred for a short bout prior to Christmas but subsided within days. He still dared not think of sexual contact, still believed, if the thought flashed across his consciousness, that he’d been sexually scarred, devalued, but he barely thought of it now. He had his stash, his kit, his work, his “works.” Carefully, very carefully, aware of the potential for robbery, for violence, for addiction, Ty pressed forward. He spread his drug purchases thin, buying only a little from any one junkie, always complaining about the price, always lamenting, “Damn, Man, I work my ass off. This drainin me, Man, a ev-rah cent.” After a purchase Ty always returned to his hotel by a different and circuitous route, never returning to his own building without entering another by one door, leaving by a second. In his room, too, he became more cautious. One day he quietly cut a hole in the plaster behind the bureau, inserted a portion of his cash and stash, sealed the hole with an old piece of wallpaper so it appeared the room had once been painted without the furniture being moved. On another evening he pulled a section of the baseboard that ran beneath the bed away from the wall, made a second hiding place. Then he found that at the back of the base of the sheet metal armoire there was an opening and if he kept the cabinet an inch from the wall he could easily insert and retrieve envelopes. He also took the precaution of leaving ninety dollars in cash, several costume-jewelry rings, and a single vial of skag in the box on the dresser—enough, he reasoned, to satisfy any creep who’d break in. Enough to keep them from searching for more.
Ty Dorsey was careful, too, in how he administered his speedballs, how much heroin and cocaine he used. Over and over, long after it had become a nightly, then a twice-daily habit, he admonished himself, “Don’t get hooked. It’ll steal our piece a the pie. Just tee-tee, Man. Just a little now and then. Take the edge off. Keeps us goin.” When his left arm became swollen and sore he taught himself to shoot with the left into the right. When those veins collapsed, he found he could shoot his thigh or the top of his foot. “Just a little, Man. If we get hooked, The Man’ll come. Take our piece a the pie. Take our portfolio.”
There is an old adage: “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter.” Ty would never understand, not even years later, that perhaps the negative corollary is more valid.
“I’ve got a little problem,” Lloyd Dunmore said. It was midafternoon, mid-January. Dunmore, Dorsey and Peter Wilcox were standing in the sun, in a small parking lot in Sausalito, following lunch at the 7 Seas. Their backs were to the bay, their eyes sweeping Sausalito’s two-lane main street, taking in the tourists, hippies, street artists, shops, and colorful old homes stepping up the steep verdant hillside. From the crest above town a thick low fog was cascading down the hill.
Ty did not look at Lloyd Dunmore. “If it’s only a little problem, Lloyd, you probably wouldn’t even bring it up.”
“Well, it’s little and it isn’t,” Dunmore said slowly. He opened the door of his Mercedes, rested one arm on the roof. “I’m getting up there in years.” Ty turned, looked Lloyd in the face. Peter pretended not to hear. “Not old, mind you. But I’m financially set. Except for my youngest, the kids are grown and out of the house. What I’m saying is I want to cut back. I’m still going to be in charge of my operations but the daily management—”
“Come off it, Lloyd,” Peter interrupted. “How old are you?”
“I’m fifty-eight.”
“And you want to retire?!”
“No. No. Don’t get me wrong. Madeleine ... she’d like us to do a bit of extended traveling. Believe it or not she wants to see Asia. Most of what I’ve got going takes care of itself. But there are a couple of properties ... Look, I know you two. You’re both good men. Peter, that strip shopping center we’ve got in Terra Linda, buy me out.”
“Really?”
“Come up with a price. What it’s worth. And Peter, I’m willing to let you clip me on this one.” Lloyd laughed, patted his hand on the car roof. “Not by too much. Ha! I’ll even carry the paper.” Dunmore shifted. “And Ty, that big Victorian we’ve got way out there on Miwok ...”
“The slum?”
“Ah, you haven’t been out there to see what I’ve done, have you?”
“No. Just that one time.”
“Go out and look at it. The construction’s almost finished. We’ve got eight nice units in there, Son. Tore down all that crap out back and carted it away. Some of those people were absolute pigs. I don’t know how anybody could have lived in that filth.”
“You had a problem with the building inspector....”
“Naw. I took care of him. It’s tenants. Peter won’t service it....”
Peter cringed. “Way out there?!”
“See,” Lloyd said. “I just don’t have the time. But you, Son, you could live out there.”
Ty’s stomach knotted. He raised a fist to his mouth, stifled a belch, retasted the hot prawns curry he’d had for lunch.
“Now”—Dunmore patted his car again—“hear me out. You buy me out. Move out there. Ty, the amount you spend on rental cars and coming up all the time, you’d be better off living out there.”
Ty slowly shook his head. He resented Dunmore telling him he’d be better off living in the damn woods.
“Truly, Ty. I’m just getting too old to do it. I’ve sunk nearly thirty-six grand into that rebuild. I’m not looking for a profit. And like with Peter, I’ll carry a note, ah, unless you have the OPM to cover it. You can do a wraparound. Shouldn’t cost you an out-of-pocket penny. Add to your portfolio, too. For real. Not just on paper.”
“Hmm.” Ty did not say more but purposely let Lloyd babble on.
“My wife bought a new car. You’ve seen it, right?”
“The Jag,” Peter remarked.
“Yes.” Dunmore glanced at Peter, back to Ty. “You might be interested in her old one. Basically she only drove it to the country club and back. I’d make you a good deal on it, too. Include it in the wraparound. We can make this thing work.”
“I’ll think about it, Lloyd.” Ty looked across Bridgeway, stared into the sun at the shadowed street scene.
“Good,” Lloyd said. Now he moved quickly into the car. As he started the engine, he said, “I’m late. Call me tomorrow.”
“Hey,” Wilcox said watching Lloyd’s car pull away, “have you talked to Bobby Wapinski lately?”
“No. He doing okay?”
“Sure. Fantastic! You know he’s got that new cottage.”
“Yes. I heard.”
“And, ah, maybe he told you about the house on Tin Pan Alley.”
“Which one?”
“Up by the golf course. You know, in Golden Vista Estates.”
“We haven’t talked. Maybe he tried to leave me a message....”
“Yeah. Probably. He’s thinking of putting in a low-ball offer. But you know, he’s stretched right now.”
“Golden Vista’s pretty expensive.”
“Sure. But this seller’s desperate. Transferred ... to Houston, I think. Or Dallas. The place’s been vacant for months. Except for the dining room set. It’d be a great rental for families transferred in, you know, for maybe just a year. People who don’t want to buy but want to live in a nice house.”
In April Ty drove by Bobby Wapinski’s cottage on Old Russia Road, drove Madeleine Dunmore’s old Audi 100-LS up the North Peak slope not once but three times. Each time he was happier, more reassured, delighted to find Bobby apparently not home, thrilled that 101 Old Russia Road was a shack when compared to his own new Tin Pan Alley residence which backed up to San Martin Golf and Country Club’s fourteenth tee. Happy that he had made it, that he now owned six properties, “owned” fourteen more under various aliases, and held notes totaling $67,000. In only a year and a half he—little Tyrone Blackwell-Dorsey-Wallace-Green, the jigaboo from Coal Hill, the disenfranchised spade veteran of Hamburger Hill, the coon rejected by his mentor—had eclipsed his own symbol of exactness, of making it, of the American pie. He had surpassed The Captain.
“Do all black men have huge penises?” the woman whispered into his ear. They had been making love for an hour. He was spent. She was on top of him, holding him, tickling him, attempting to reexcite him. She nuzzled her chin into the crook of his neck making him squirm. Her skin was pale, white-white, not ashen, not sickly—ice milk. Her hair was black, blacker than his. The contrast of the chalk white of her arm against his rich deep brown chest aroused her, yet making him convulse or fidget under her was what she found truly sensual.
It was hot, a mid-July afternoon. Occasionally a burst of laughter from the fourteenth tee penetrated the sheer curtains of his room.
“Only one.” He chuckled.
“Only one?” Olivia teased him.
“One each,” Ty said.
“One each what?” She shifted, straddled him. “Say it,” she ordered.
“Say what?” he countered.
“Penis,” Olivia said.
“Why?” Ty asked.
“Why can’t men say penis to a woman? I like your penis. I’m glad it’s huge.”
“Well ...” Ty chuckled. He really couldn’t say the word. Not to Olivia. “It likes you too,” Ty said.
“What does?” She tickled his ribs. He squirmed. She tickled harder. “What does? Say it.” She collapsed on him, pinned him.
“My johnson does,” Ty blurted.
“What’s a johnson?” She kissed his earlobe, blew gently into his ear.
“My wang. My dick.” She was tickling him all over, poking her chin into his clavicle, gently digging her knee into his thigh just above his knee. He wriggled, gasped, “My meat. My ding-a-ling.”
Afterward she backed into him, cuddled, snoozed in his arms. He held her, hot afternoon or not, kissed the back of her head. Better than the Captain, huh? he thought, but he did not say it. She’d told him that they’d had “several afternoon dates. You know, private. A girl can get a reputation in an office.” Ty hadn’t pressed. It was enough to know that she wanted him more than she wanted Wapinski, that she was with him now, that she thought his penis was huge even if he thought it was probably only average. He kissed her again, little pecks on the nape of the neck. Then he rolled, grabbed his Kools from the bedside table. She’d come onto him for reasons he didn’t know. He hadn’t pondered it, had thought instead, later, and laughed thinking it, and she had made him say it out loud—”Now this is true affirmative action.” She had not laughed with him, had not smiled, but she had kissed him passionately and he’d whispered to her, “I think I’m falling in love with you.” He did not tell her about his herpes infection. It was dormant; had not flared in five months.
At four they rose. A steady breeze came from the golf course, billowed the curtains. Olivia closed the glass slider, stood nonchalant, naked, facing Ty, teasing him with her matter-of-fact posture.
“Why’d you close it?” Ty asked.
She did not look at him but coyly gazed to the side. “I’m run down.”
“Hmm?”
“Let’s do a couple more lines. Then I’ve got to go.”
“I never expected him to move in.”
“When the hell did he decide ... What the hell’s he thinking?”
Their voices were harsh, hushed. Peter Wilcox, Lloyd Dunmore, Dirk Everest, and Howard Trimball, president of San Martin Savings and Loan, were in the country club locker room. They had played eighteen holes, had had a quick sandwich and beer, then had come down to shower and change. The room was clean, fluorescent-light bright, royal blue carpeted, mirrored between the banks of lockers.
“Damn. I never thought ...” Peter Wilcox stepped one foot onto the bench, untied the lace on his golf shoe. “When I told him about it, I thought he’d rent it like he’s done with all the others. Have you been there?”
“God damn, no.” Dunmore sat on the bench.
“He’s a slob. There’s not a stick of furniture in that house. Except the dining room set that came with it.”
“Well, where’s he sleep?” Howard Trimball placed a foot on the bench.
“I suppose he’s got something in the bedroom,” Peter said.
“Who gives a damn where he sleeps.” Dirk stammered, “Th-this is bad.”
“Yes, it is bad,” Dunmore said.
“There’s no blacks in SMGCC,” Trimball said.
“I don’t want this setting a precedent,” Dunmore said. “And I don’t want this becoming a court case.”
“You know, Lloyd”—Everest tapped a fist onto his locker—“you and Peter did this. And you, Howard. Why in hell did you give him the god damn loan?”
“Shit! He’s got half a dozen loans with me. This way I can show we make loans to Negroes.”
“I thought he was going to move into that eight-plex out in the canyon.” Lloyd grabbed his chin, pushed his fingers up against the grain of his beard, removed his shirt.
“So did I,” Peter said.
“Well, he hasn’t.” Dirk straightened, banged his locker with his fist, removed his pants. “Figure some way to call his loan.”
Howard Trimball pursed his lips. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Come on, Dirk. You know as well as I do.”
“Well, what the hell are we going to do if he wants to join?!”
“I really never thought—” Peter began.
“I don’t care what you never thought.” Dirk cut him off.
“He hasn’t submitted an application—” Howard began.
Again Dirk cut in. “But if he does ... He owns property abutting the course. It’s supposed to be automatic.”
Now Lloyd Dunmore stood, broke up the group. “I’ll buy him out,” he said. He opened his locker. “He’s money hungry. Where’s he coming up with all this money for notes, anyway? Unsecured! Damn, what a salesman! But”—Lloyd turned to the other three—“he doesn’t have a pot to pee in. Let him buy what he wants. He’ll need capital to keep it. And, damn it Howard, he bailed your butt out. I’m just a shareholder.”
“My butt?!”
“You bet your god damned ass. Now you let me know the first minute he’s late with a payment. I’ll tell him Madeleine and I are divorcing and I’m getting the house for her.” Lloyd paused, stood naked, hands on his hips, his knees stiff, his belly bulging. He fixed the men with his stare. “I don’t,” he said emphatically, “want this to go to court.”
“Execrable.” Ty chuckled.
“I don’t know,” Olivia said.
Three months had passed. Their first tryst had ended not with a bang, not with a whimper, but simply without word. He’d been perplexed, bothered. She had given him back his manhood and had vanished. He had not chased her. He had a piece of the pie to get and the exact size of the slice was yet to be determined. And he was having problems with his veins. In August his left arm had swelled so horribly he’d been unable to wear any shirt, suit or jacket he owned and he’d gone nearly stark-raving mad trapped inside that Tin Pan Alley house, feverish, nauseated, self-dosing with black market antibiotics so as to avoid medical reports. He felt caged. Very late at night he escaped, drove to the Safeway on Miwok Road, shopped, returned, paced. He bought a ten-inch black-and-white portable TV, watched as Ramsey Clark visited Hanoi and averred that U.S. POWs were being treated well; as the last U.S. ground combat units in Viet Nam stood down; as the ARVN recaptured Quang Tri City or what was left of it; and as Henry Kissinger, in Paris, announced an agreement in principle accepting a cease-fire-in-place and agreeing to give the communists nearly one-quarter of South Viet Nam’s land area.
During the entire time Ty Dorsey did not see or hear from Olivia Taft. He did not “raise funds,” did not expand his portfolio. Being sick dropped his resistance. The blisters and burning returned and added to his misery, pain, and self-imposed incarceration in that home on the fourteenth tee. Slowly it subsided. He fought the desire, the need for speedballs. He locked his “works” away but needed it, had to have it. He wrapped his “works” in plastic, put it in the freezer so that when he needed it, it would be uncomfortable. He smoked grass, smoked skag-laced Kools, snorted coke. Anything to stay away from the wonderful feel of the needle, the conditioned pleasure now so tightly locked in his mind that the very touch of the kit bag sent waves of joy trembling throughout his body. Slowly he gained control and the infections subsided. He analyzed his spread sheet and saw that his cash on hand had collapsed to $19,000, that other expendable items (drugs) had been depleted, that his net worth had plummeted to under twenty grand. Still he was current with all payments. And with a 6 percent adjustment of property values—he was certain the market had jumped at least six percent—he could increase the assets side, and the bottom line, by $17,600; and $37,600 was still a pretty good bottom line for a twenty-one-year-old black man.
Then Olivia came back. He did not question her but loved her and shared his coke with her and when she told him about a triplex on Fifth Street he agreed to buy it. On this property Ty gained a $70,000 asset, yet via the Mickey Mouse of financing, a total loan liability of $75,111. He put $3,592 cash in his pocket. The monthly principal, interest and tax payment was $688.13. The rental income was projected at $460 per month, but in mid-November 1972 the big first-floor apartment was vacant and the income was only $260.
“Execrable,” Ty repeated. “Utterly detestable.”
“I would never use that word,” Olivia said.
“Well, it’s good to know them.”
“I couldn’t use it. It doesn’t sound right. It’d be like speaking a foreign language.”
“How about hauteur?”
“Beats me.”
“Come on.”
“I don’t know.”
“Haughty spirited. You know, snobbish. Disdainful. Kinda the way you act.”
“I’m a snob?!”
“Aw, come on.” He grasped her. Pulled her onto him. Kissed her. They were on the bed, partially dressed.
“I think it’s snobbish using those words,” Olivia said.
“I don’t use em much,” Ty answered. “Just ... I need to know em so if they get used on me ...”
Olivia hushed him by putting a finger to his lips. Then she kissed him, then raised her torso above him by planting her elbows on his chest and said, “What’s really snobbish is what they’re trying to do.”
“Who?”
“The board of directors. You must have heard.”
“You mean Lloyd? Peter? They’re my partners.”
“I heard ... you know, just a rumor ... you know, you’ve caused quite a stir moving in here.... Some of them want to buy you out.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just a rumor, I guess.”
“Yeah. Just ... ha! I’m probably their worse nightmare. Ha! Me puttin my black johnson into a white woman.”
“Penis.”
“Pe—” Ty broke into a laugh and Olivia laughed with him.
“Let’s do another line.” She rolled off him, stood. “Then I’ve got a word for you.” She shimmied.
“Umm?” He sat on the edge of the bed, placed his hands on her thighs, ran them up over her hips to her waist. She grabbed them, arched her back. He rocked forward to kiss her stomach.
“Hooters.” She jumped back.
“Who-dares?” He laughed, rose. “What are who-dares?”
“You’ll have to catch me to find out.” She ran to the door, glanced back, saw him, his eyes revealing he was ready to take up the chase. “You can’t catch me,” she squealed, bolted down the hall toward the living room. He sprinted after her. She darted to the far end by the archway to the dining room. He stood, poised to move either through the kitchen to capture her in the dining room or lunge straight through the living room. She too tensed, ready to move opposite him. Then she quickly straightened, arched her back, shimmied, sang out, “Hooters,” disappeared into the dining room.
Ty froze. She couldn’t see him. He could hear her. He crouched, silently edged into the kitchen.
“Where are you?” Olivia sang sweetly.
Just then he lunged, burst through the dining room door, his arms extended to tackle her. As he lunged his foot caught the carpet. She was at the far side of the table, pulling her bra straps off her shoulders, teasing. Then, BAM! His face, his mouth, the entire mass and force of his movement, right into the table edge.
“Oooph! Shit!” Garbled. “Shit.”
“Ty. Oh Ty!” Olivia came to him. He was on the floor, a hand covering his mouth. “Are you ...” She could see blood behind his hand. “Let me look.”
Ty tilted his head down, dropped his hand. Amid the splatter of blood were two ivory tiles—his upper incisors. “Shit. Lthk at thhis! Shit!” He covered his mouth, looked up at her. “So what are who-thares?” He chuckled. Then he groaned.
“Would you talk to him?” Peter asked.
“I didn’t even know he was living there.”
“But you do now. There’s going to be incidents. I don’t want it to get ugly.”
“What do you want me to say to him?” Bobby was miffed. According to Peter Wilcox virtually everyone else in the office knew that Ty Dorsey was living in Golden Vista.
“Tell him it’s for his own good. And Lloyd will make it worth his while.”
“You’re fuckin crazy!”
“You brought him out here,” Peter said. “You’re partly responsible, you know. If they burn a cross on his lawn or something, San Martin will suffer. The town will be in every newspaper in the country. Is that what you want?”
“Don’t put that shit on me, Peter. I just came down to see Al. If Ty’s living there, if he bought that place, that’s his business. He’s got every right to live there.”
“Yeah,” Peter scoffed. “Some friend he is of yours. You don’t even know....”
“Know what?”
“Forget it. That’s his business too, I suppose.”
It was rainy, cool, gray. Inside, even with the bathroom light on, it seemed gray. Ty Dorsey, wrapped in a towel, stood before the sink, leaning in, one hand on the sink back, the other holding his upper lip, leaning in close to the mirror inspecting his new gold caps, real gold, gleaming like his grandfather’s one incisor had gleamed when Ty was small. There were other teeth, too, that came to mind—incidents, intrusive connections that hit him the moment a month earlier when he’d looked down and seen the white chips amid the red splatter. He’d told himself it was nothing. Don’t mean nothin. Drive on! Don’t mean nothin. Those fuckers were dead. Dead meat. Dead meat don’t hurt.
Ty stood straight, used both hands to raise his lip. Then he let his lip go, experimented with different smiles, different facial expressions. This one got too much teeth, he thought. Not enough, he thought of the next. He practiced a demure smile he found visually pleasing, professional.
When Ty was satisfied with his appearance he retreated to the bedroom. He glanced through the glass slider at the drizzle, at the gray-green of the fourteenth tee. “Dead meat don’t hurt,” he muttered. “What the fuck he mean, sixty-four grand!” Ty sat on the bed, pulled on a gold-toed sock. One good thing, he thought, one good thing about smashin my face—he leaned back slightly, caressed the mattress where Olivia had spent the night—she’s got a debt attitude. Ha! Like Bobby and those goddamn shopping list pads. She owes me. But I don’t owe him nothin. Nothin. Nothing. Don’t talk like trash. Sixty-four thousand dollars. Get yo black ass ... your black ... being ... out of the country club. Fuck you, Lloyd. I can’t believe ... For Madeleine, my ass. Needs her own space! That bimbo wouldn’t leave sugar daddy for all the tea in China. I can-fuckin-not believe he asked. We’ve been partners. We’ve had deals. I’ve put a quarter of a million dollars out through him.
As Ty dressed for his appointments in Oakland anger touched off anger—thoughts of Olivia, of his new gold caps, no match for the realization of what had happened. He had taken Lloyd Dunmore at face value, had told him he’d consider it. He’d told Olivia about the offer.
“They want to buy you out.”
“No. Not Lloyd. We’re tight. Really. Something to do with Madeleine needing to find herself.”
“Get real. There’s eight homes in Golden Vista on the market. There’s a beauty on Silver Spoon that backs up to the course. And it has access to the open space slope and riding trails of North Peak. And a pool. For sixty-one nine. Why would they want yours?”
“Maybe my financing’s better.”
“If he asked you to secure him a second on Silver Spoon, you’d do it, wouldn’t you?”
“Of cour—”
“See? I can’t believe you’re being so naive.”
Naive! It was her word. He had never seen himself as naive. Not Ty. Not Tyrone Blackwell-Dorsey-Wallace. Not Mr. I-won’t-play-games-with-you. It took time to settle. Naive. Get the nigger out of the country club. For God’s sake! This wasn’t the South. This was California! This was 1972! He’d been an American soldier! He’d fought for The Man. And there were laws. Laws! Laws to protect him. He steamed inside. But I—I couldn’t go to ... They’d want to know who I am. And who the fuck am I?
In January Lloyd Dunmore made Ty Dorsey a new offer. This time he attempted, after beating around the bush during another Sausalito luncheon, to be up front. “Ty, I’m getting lots of flak.”
“About what, Lloyd?” Ty flashed his demure golden smile.
“You.”
“Me?”
Dunmore tucked his chin, glanced up. “I don’t want to do this. I like you. We’re friends. And I’m not a racist.”
“What’s happening, Lloyd?”
“Ty, it’s for your own protection.”
“What is?” Ty acted concerned for Lloyd Dunmore, acted as if he wished to help the older man. Beneath, he laughed. Naive, my black ass. Squirm, honkey.
“Ty, I’ll buy your place for ... I’ll give you seventy-four. That’s twenty thousand more than you paid. People up there are really upset and I’m taking the heat.”
“Is my yard maintained okay?”
“Of course.”
“And the house?”
“You know that’s not it.”
“Am I dirty?”
“Ty! Don’t make it hard on me.”
“How can you offer me this and say you’re not a racist?”
“Because I wouldn’t offer it to you if it were only me.”
“So, you’re fronting for racists.”
“Listen, damn it. I’ve been protecting you. I got you started. Tyrolian Financial’d be nothing if I didn’t ... Damn! And I know you’re balling that white woman. They’re going to lynch you. Or burn you out. Besides ... I know, I know you’ve got cash-flow problems. This’ll solve it. You can’t afford—”
Ty glared. He’d heard enough, had let Lloyd talk enough. “Who?” he demanded.
“Seventy-four thousand. That’s my final offer. Move into the Miwok eight-plex. No one will bother you out there.”
The two sat silent except for Lloyd’s heavy breathing and the ticking of Ty’s right foot. Lloyd kept his eyes down. Ty stared past him, out a window to the boat slips and across the bay to Angel Island. For minutes on end neither spoke.
The waiter came. “Are you finished, Mr. Dunmore? Mr. Dorsey?” Both nodded.
Finally Ty broke the impasse. “I’ve got to get down to San Bruno,” he said. “Tell them not to do it. Tell them Blackwell says there’s more trouble in it for them than for him.” Ty stood. His heart was racing, his legs felt weak. “And Wallace and Dorsey agree. You guys can’t afford my house.”
“Hey, you look different.”
“Naw, same old me.”
Bobby cocked his head. “No, there’s something different.”
“Just serve the ball.” Ty laughed, turned away from the net, then turned back. “You any good at this?”
“No.” Bobby chuckled too. It was late June. School was out for the summer. They were on one of the green-painted asphalt courts of the school complex between Sixth and Seventh streets. “This is only my fourth time. How about you?”
“You’re up on me by one. Olivia needed somebody to beat!” Bobby and Ty were now next to each other, the net between them. Olivia was back at the baseline, stretching.
“I didn’t know you guys knew each other,” Bobby said.
“Yeah. I bought a couple of houses through her. You know, they say you’re not there anymore.”
“Aw, you know, a little. I’m trying to line up something with the regional planning board. I ... I guess I’m really not much of a saleman.”
“Oh Man, Bobby, I know you were good.”
“Maybe. But ... Ah, hey, you know, this with Olivia, it’s awk—”
“No big deal, Man. You guys dated some, huh?”
“Yeah, a little.”
Ty laughed again. “We’ll just volley, Captain.”
“Hey. Maybe after”—quietly—“just us”—then louder—“a few beers up at my place.”
“Gotcha.” Ty chuckled, flashed his smile.
Through an hour of volleying, of laughs, good-natured taunts and quips, of Bobby and Olivia carefully not looking at each other, Ty laughed. He laughed openly and happily. He’d beaten Lloyd Dunmore. He’d beaten Bobby Wapinski. He had very simply, in his own mind, won on every level. Even Ty’s tennis gear, Pallucci clothes—presents from Olivia—were better than Bobby’s cutoffs and sleeveless sweatshirt. By the gods, he said to himself, I am happy. And to it all Ty added, in his own mind, his own clean arms (Olivia’s pressure—she found the “works” repulsive so they only snorted and smoked), his legal registration of Dorsey Financial Services, and this beating of Bobby’s ass on the court. Ty’s laughter rolled, his smile glistened. Bobby too, even confronted with this ex-girlfriend, looking battered and broke, seemed happy. Only that bugged Ty.
“You know what it is with those two fuckers?”
“Take it easy, Dirk.”
“I’ve had it. I know how to come down on those sons of bitches.”
“Dirk, why don’t you—”
“Peter, nobody humiliates me. I was going to let that bastard run my company. And that nigger! Every time I approach that tee, I can smell him.”
“I don’t even know he’s there.”
“That’s because you don’t live down here.” Now Dirk Everest jabbed Peter Wilcox in the chest with an index finger. “You know what it is? That jackass and that jigaboo, they were in Viet Nam together. Goddamned losers.”
Throughout the first eight months of 1973 Ty Dorsey adjusted his portfolio. To his numerous unsecured notes he added mortgage liens secured by property whose value was highly inflated. To his real property assets he had added the Fifth Street triplex, and in April he included a duplex on Second Street that huddled in the shadow of Bennett, Bennett and Bennett’s eight-story financial complex. In short, on the day the OPEC ministers announced their agreement that became the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973, Ty Dorsey’s financial summary, had he been honest with himself, would have looked like this—Assets: Real property (liberally) valued at $432,100; Cash: $16,050; Notes owned: $86,600; Drugs: $1,000; Vehicles: $1,600; and personal property (including two-dozen fine suits): $6,500. Total: $543,850. Ty’s liabilities: Loans against real property: $373,000; Unsecured notes owed: $266,000; Unpaid taxes, fines, etc.: (est.) $50,000; Miscellaneous debt: $10,000. Total: $699,000.
Worse, his yearly cash flow from rents, loan fees and points, and interest on notes owned, minus expenses to interest, taxes, and insurance, was a net negative of nearly $20,000. Indeed, the only way Ty Dorsey was staying financially afloat was by using monies collected by Tyrolian or Dorsey Financial and purportedly loaned.
Southeast Asia was dropped from the news. All U.S. troops were out of Viet Nam. U.S. bombing of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia had come to a legislated halt. Despite numerous omens and perhaps because of that long conflict, most Americans were caught off guard. Still, war triggered it. War in the Middle East.
The first Arab oil embargo hit in the late summer of 1973. In San Martin the Shell gas station on Third and Miwok was the first to run dry. Then the Mobil station a block away. Then the Stop-n-Go pumps next door to the Safeway. Lines formed. September ’73 was hot, dry, nice weather for cruising with the top down but too warm to sit and bake and not know if there’d be gas when one’s turn finally came. Tempers flared. Fights broke out. Dozens of out-of-gas cars lined the shoulder of Highway 101 through town; hundreds sat in garages or driveways.
The biggest problem, even though two of every three working townspeople commuted to San Francisco, was not gas but the new local cost of living. By November the initial impact of high energy costs was followed by a loss in San Martin of 17 percent of the town’s appeal as an All-American bedroom community, as measured by the average sales price of a home. Those who were caught financially extended or overextended, found their worlds quaking.
By December ’73 capital had dried up. Those who had, held on. Those who had lent, demanded their due. The financial rains stopped. Ty’s outgoing cash depleted his reservoir. And someone, somewhere was watching.
“What the fuck!” His voice was loud, booming, angry. Even cushioned by the dense vegetation and towering redwoods the sound reverberated in the canyon. He hollered it again. He stomped the broken macadam of Miwok Road. He jumped, turned, kicked a clod of dirt that had fallen from between the treads of the D-7 Cat. “No fuckin way!” He gritted his teeth, seethed at the building inspector, the three policemen, the city’s wetland’s officer. Only a half hour earlier he’d been home, with Olivia, doing a few lines, laughing, when the tenant called. “Impossible,” he’d said.
“Mr. Dorsey, they’ve made us remove all our personal things. We’ve got it all scattered out on the lawn.”
“They can’t do that!”
“They have. And they’re unloading the bulldozers. You’d better get out here.”
Now Ty exploded again. “You goddamn son of a bitch.”
“One more crack like that out of you”—the police sergeant stood, squared, one hand on his belt, one gesturing at Ty—“and I’ll bring you in for disturbing the peace.”
Ty threw his hands straight up, his lips pulled back, his gold caps flashing. He was speechless, overwhelmed, overpowered. Finally he blurted, “You CAN’T do this!”
“Certainly can. You should have answered all those summonses,” the sergeant snapped. “You expanded this way beyond the original footprint.”
“That wasn’t me. That was Lloyd.”
“Your name’s on the papers.”
“Where my tenants goina go?”
“That’s their problem.”
“Come on, Mr. Bailey,” Ty pleaded with the building inspector who was ten feet beyond the sergeant. “Give me one day. One day!”
“I’ve given you six months,” Bailey called over his shoulder. The two dozers were now positioned against the northeast side of the rebuilt Victorian. On the opposite side, corralled by additional police officers, stood eight tenants amid piles of their clothing and effects. “Court says it comes down. That expansion was illegal and you knew it. This is single-family residential.”
“One day,” Ty shouted.
“Time’s up,” Bailey said. He raised his right arm.
From above came the increasing revs of the diesel motors, then the clank and squeak of the plow blades being raised by the hydraulic pistons, then the ka-thunk as the operators shifted. Ty closed his eyes, turned away, put his hands to his ears. Of all his real assets this was the only one with substantial equity, and within thirty-five minutes it was nothing but a crushed and broken pile of boards heaped into a foundation hole. Even the foundation the dozers broke here and there, wherever they could get traction in the dirt, which had been a new lawn.
“You owe Elmont. You owe me. You owe anybody else?”
It was now 10 December 1973. To add insult to injury the city of San Martin had sent Ty a bill for $3,700 for destroying his Miwok Road Victorian. Now here, on the front porch of his Tin Pan Alley home, was this man, this very big man who said he represented two of Ty’s clients, this very big man who said he’d bought a note himself, discounted, six months earlier and the balloon payment—of $16,000—had been due on Halloween. He hadn’t received one red cent!
“Come to my office tomorrow morning,” Ty said calmly.
“What office?”
Ty’s eyes skittered. “Great Homes Realty,” he said quickly.
“You son of a bitch,” the big man said. “I want my money. Now!”
“You think I keep that kind of money here? in my house?” Now Ty acted angry. “I do business during business hours. Ten o’clock tomorrow morning. In the office. Bring the note and I’ll give you a check for—”
“You pay me in cash, Mister.”
“What are you, some kind of idiot?” Ty stepped from the doorway to the porch, aggressively confronting the big man. Again he felt sick, stress-induced sick. Even the bitch had dumped him, had blown him off only moments after she’d inhaled his last line. Ty shoved the big man in the chest. “Get the hell outta here!”
“Tomorrow, mothafucka. Tomorrow. You hear me!”
Inside, alone, Ty leaned back against the locked door, held his head, tried to breathe deeply but his breath came in quivering gasps like a small child crying.
Like Jessica crying, he thought. Like his own daughter crying. “Dear Uncle Phillip”—Luwan had helped her write it and Phillip had sent it on to Ty—“for Christmas I want a skip-rope and some beads. Love, Jessica.” Nothing more. Not even a “Hello,” from Phillip. “Aw shit, Man. Shit.” His jaw quivered. His quadriceps felt like jelly. He thought of her but he could not picture her.
There was so much shit coming down. If it wasn’t, Ty thought, for moving in ... No. If it wasn’t for them white racist fuckers ... The Man’s system. Set up to separate blacks from their money. They won’t let us get no piece a the pie. Set me up.
He stumbled into the dim light of the living room, searched the window wall, which faced the golf course, for shadows. He did not concentrate, did not extinguish interior lights. Instead he went to the closet in the middle bedroom where he’d maintained his cache: works, skag, cash. Without the Victorian eight-plex, he knew, even without laying out the spread sheet, that his bottom line was out-of-reach negative. And notes were coming due, secured notes on which he was sure he could default with impunity, but also unsecured notes that would bring civil action, and fraudulent notes that, sooner or later, would bring criminal action.
He went through the procedure, tied off, slapped up, shot up. Heroin. No money for cocaine. No cocaine for speedballs. Better this way. Duller. No psycho-bitch ... she’d used the term herself, about herself, said Wapinski had called her psycho-bitch. They had laughed. Laughed together ... He was floating now—dull, without pain, hours without feeling.
“One minute.” He raised his face to thumping on the door. It was midnight, perhaps two A.M. His mind was barely clear enough for him to reassemble and recache his works. “One minute.” He buckled his belt, straightened his clothes. Opened the door.
Two men burst in, slammed the door.
“Whaaa ...”
“You don’t hear well do you, mothafucka?”
“Get outta—”
One man punched Ty in the face. “You dumb!” He growled, ranted as Ty fell, folded, crumpled to his knees. “Dumb. You know that?”
Ty looked up. One man was white. One black. The black man was not the same one who’d demanded money earlier. Ty’s mind was too dusty to feel frightened, his body too dull to feel pain. He rocked to one side, began to kneel. The white man grasped Ty’s hair, squeezed hard pulling the tight curls, banging Ty’s head against the wall. He pulled Ty’s head up straight so Ty was staring at the black man. “You didn’t hear Mr. Dee,” the man said.
Ty was dumbfounded.
“You don’t hear, do you?” the black man said. In Ty’s mind the words mixed with the words of the big man earlier. “If you don’t hear, you don’t got much need for this, huh, mothafucka?” The black man nodded to the white man. The white man hammer-locked Ty’s head, squeezed hard.
Ty felt a sharp prickling at his right ear, heard the material being sliced, did not yet feel the pain. The man released him. He felt warm trickling on his jaw, down his chin. Then the man dropped Ty’s ear on the floor in front of him.
“Ya don’t use em, mothafucka. Ya won’t miss it.” The black man laughed and the white man laughed, too.
Ty escaped, fled. He left the house, left his fine suits and shirts and shoes, left the car, the secured and unsecured notes, left San Martin, left the North Bay. He took his works, his skag, $3,000 cash, the clothes he wore. Nine-fingered, one-eared, gold-toothed Ty Dorsey, under the name of Theodore Darsman, moved south; finally, after two months, he took up residence in a one-room unit in a run-down flophouse near San Jose. His hair grew long. Picking it out covered his ear space. He ate little, talked to almost no one, shot up the last of his skag. By March 1974, not yet twenty-three years old, he was broke, on the lam, hopeless, dopeless. On the eighth Ty, now Theo, broke two of the glass bottles of his door alarm. Then he picked up a bottom shard with his left hand. Crying like a baby, whimpering, “Dead meat don’t hurt!” he placed the sharpest edge on the heel of his right palm, pressed hard, jerked the glass back.