TWENTY-ONE
Lawyers harbor no love for parole officers. It isn’t personal. It’s commerce. In the food chain of law enforcement, there isn’t any money in liking parole officers. Making allowances for the holiday season, Roy Wonder was polite to Athena Diggs on the telephone anyway. “Listen, lady, nobody fucking asked you to call my ass. Let me get this straight,” he said. “You’re looking for Robert Grogan?”
“That’s right.”
“The last I heard the dickhead had an address on Market Street.”
“I can’t find him there.”
“So what? Write him off. He’s a scumbag.”
Athena examined Robert’s jacket in her office. She’d spilled coffee on his mug shot. The photograph was ruined. “I need your assistance in finding him.”
The shyster didn’t respond. The silence ripened into a prolonged and uncomfortable gulf between him and the parole officer. A void that was as deep as the Grand Canyon. Athena could hear his raspy breathing, the saccharine Christmas Muzak in his office, and the clink of glasses in the background. After a minute he became vulnerable and yielded his darkest secret to her. “That goddamn son of a bitch owes me six grand.”
“Then let’s get him. We’ll put the pig behind bars.”
“Forget it.”
“But he’s violating parole.”
“Tough titty.” Roy Wonder slurred the words. He was drinking, and it wasn’t even dinnertime. Getting a head start on the holidays. “You’ll never catch him.”
She was in no position to dispute his claim. “What the fuck should I do?”
“Is that a joke?”
“No.”
“Then don’t ask me, girlfriend. It’s a hot day, too hot to think about this shit.”
The parole agent had a rank taste in her mouth. The business with Robert Grogan reminded her of the Guatemalan poet Otto René Castillo. A guy she’d read about in junior college. In the 1960s the military authorities arrested Castillo. They buried him in the ground up to the chin and set his head on fire. Barbecued his skull until he was dead. That’s what she was going to do to the white boy when she got her hands on him.
As the sun waned a foghorn bleated near Point Bonita. Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill was impaled against cloudless pewter blue skies. The forests in Presidio Heights were lush green. Baker Beach was pristine and white. Point Lobos was gray and rocky. The skyscrapers in the financial district were dusted in fog. Chinatown’s alleys were sunless. The restaurants in North Beach crawled with tourists.
A shooting in Hunters Point had left two men wounded, one critically. A tenement in the Mission was in flames; plumes of magenta smoke gyrated over the city’s skyline. The Golden Gate Bridge’s southbound lanes were backed up to the Sausalito exit. The traffic expert on the radio said it would be like that until New Year’s Day.
When the apartment’s doorbell chimed, Slatts double-timed it to the spy hole. He looked into it, and his jaw dropped an inch. No goddamn way. What a bummer. Two police officers were in the patio. One was a black dude, stout and bald in a mustache and Chanel sunglasses. Carried a riot nightstick. His partner was an obese peckerwood with a flattop hairdo and a Remington shotgun.
The black officer tapped the door frame with the butt end of the baton and jabbered, “Grogan, we know you’re in there. Get the fuck out here.”
This was one of the hazards of staying in a felon’s household. The cops. They were like the earth and the mountains. They never went away. Slatts focused on his options. If he opened the door, the bastards might beat him. Leave some welts on his pretty face. It didn’t matter if Robert wasn’t home. That didn’t matter at all. The fuzz was into supply and demand. If he weren’t around, Slatts would fit the bill. The officers could take him to jail.
The white cop croaked, “Come on out, asshole.”
The pair of lawmen lobbed insults at the closed door for several minutes. Then, defeated by the mind-bending heat in the Trinity Plaza Apartments, they skulked off to Market Street.
Beginning tomorrow, once and for all, Slatts had to stop getting high. Parole demanded sobriety. That left tonight wide open. Since Robert and Harriet were out Christmas shopping, he helped himself to a beer from the fridge. Then clicked on the radio in the living room; the mellifluous trumpet of Miles Davis purred in the dimly lit apartment. The kid was in her pajamas, engulfed by pillows on the couch. Slatts scoped her out and asked, “What’s with you?”
“I don’t feel right.”
“How come?”
“How come?”
“I ate too much deer meat.”
“Where does it hurt?”
“My tummy.”
“That’s not good. Scoot over.”
Kicking off his boots, Slatts laid down on the squishy cushions next to Diana. He draped a well-muscled arm around her neck. Instinctively, she wiggled against him, pushed her nose into his armpit. “Not bad, huh?” he said.
Nobody had ever touched Diana like this before, just holding her. Just letting her be. Harriet never held her. She didn’t know how. Neither did Robert. They were as cuddly as icebergs. It was different with Slatts. It was safe with him. Time wasn’t moving forward or backward. There were no cops and no parents. Nobody wanted anything from her. It was peaceful. That scared her shitless.
Slatts was aromatic with cologne, cinnamon, and tobacco. He had calloused gladiator’s hands; his knuckles were a patchwork of old, white scars from prison fights. “You awake?” he asked. “I have to talk to you about something. I need some help.”
“What is it?”
“It’s about your mother.”
“What about her?”
“I think she hates me.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Why not?”
“She hates everyone. It makes her happy.”
“Yeah, but like, the chick is losing it, and she ain’t even twenty-five. And what about your old man? He’s losing it, too, ain’t he?”
“Yeah, he is.”
“That’s a bring down.” Slatts did his tabulations. “I depend on Robert, and I can’t have him blowing it. Not now. I need him to act correctly, especially under stress. Robert has to be strong and levelheaded. If he isn’t, we’re fucked.”
“Are you his wife?”
Slatts waited before answering. “Yeah, I guess so.”
She gave it some thought. “That makes you my mom.”
The girl and the parolee were allies. United against the tyranny of Robert and Harriet. The couch was their private kingdom, faraway from the tedium of adulthood. Buoying her against his chest, Slatts said, “I’ve got some weed. Might as well get toasted.”
Producing a three-papered reefer, he torched it with a lighter. He sucked in the fumes, quickly exhaled. The dog got wind of the dope and sidled out of the kitchen over to the couch. Flipping the joint around, Slatts put the lit end in his mouth, and shot-gunned a funnel of blue smoke at the German shepherd’s nose. The beast inhaled and spluttered. Wagging its tail, it collided with the coffee table.
“This is fantastic shit.” Slatts had another drag and proffered the spliff to the girl. “Here,” he said, tucking it in her mouth. “It’ll make you relax.”
Diana had a toke, imitating how Robert and Harriet did it. Drawing the weed in and then letting it out, watching the vapor slip from her mouth. It hit her like a ton of bricks. The room changed color and became a rectangle of black. A green line passed down the middle of it and a yellow border held up the bottom. In the center was a pulsing white light.
The front door swung open, and Robert crossed the threshold with Harriet in tow. He had a three-foot-tall Christmas tree in his arms. She had a half-empty jug of Boone’s Farm wine and a box of tinsel. Husband and wife moved slowly through the arabesque of pot smoke into the living room. The dog was overjoyed to see them and leaped on Robert.
Plunking the tree onto the coffee table, Robert surveyed the living room. The place reeked with weed. The shepherd was red eyed and loaded. So was Slatts. The kid was stoned, too. Incredible, he thought.
“Is something wrong?” Harriet didn’t understand what was happening.
Robert held her hand. “Yes, mama, everything is.”
He instructed Diana to get away from Slatts. “Make tracks, baby.” The kid was evacuated into the bedroom with her mother. The dog was so high it couldn’t walk and sprawled in a heap on the rug. This is heavy, Robert decided.
The devil was at the crossroads. There was no avoiding him. Robert had to choose between his two wives. If he maintained his allegiance to Slatts, it guaranteed a divorce from Harriet, a parole violation, and another bus ride to San Quentin.
In the pen, he’d be put into segregation. It would be months before he even saw the general population. The Aryan Brotherhood would put a contract on his life. Harriet would also deny him legal rights to see his daughter. He flexed his bad hand. “Slatts?”
The younger man was slumped on the living room carpet. A sweetish brown pot cloud swirled around his leonine head. “Say what?”
“Getting high with the kid. That was shitty of you.”
“Yeah, I fucked up.” Slatts was rueful, self-effacing. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Too bad for your ass.”
“Huh?”
“You’ve got to go. Now.”
“What?”
“You have to leave. What you did was fucking unacceptable.”
“You’re putting me on, ain’t you?”
“No, I’m not.”
A telegraph signal of hostility whizzed between them. The dog whimpered and gnawed on the coffee table’s legs.
“Jesus, it’s just reefer,” Slatts wheedled. “It ain’t heroin or nothing.”
“She’s only seven years old.”
“Yeah, so?”
“You went too far.”
“Like you don’t all the time?”
“This is different. I’m a goddamn parent and everything.”
“What a saint. I suppose your shit doesn’t stink anymore, right?”
“Whatever. You’re out of here.”
Getting rid of a lover was no different than a cell extraction in San Quentin. The guards used dogs, hoses and nightsticks, pepper gas and rubber bullets to remove a prisoner from his cage. The procedure was messy with lots of bloodshed. It was enough to end a romance.
“Wait a minute.” Slatts was pious. “You’re being unfair.”
“No one made you smoke weed with her.”
“Yeah, well, okay, okay.”
Robert got domineering. “Then whose fault is it?”
“It was mine.”
“So there.”
“But you know what?”
“What?”
Slatts emitted a self-righteous falsetto. “You can’t blame all your crap on me.”
Blustering, Robert spat, “I don’t know what the fuck you’re saying.” That was a falsehood. He knew exactly what Slatts meant. He hadn’t kept his promises. Harriet had him under her thumb. They weren’t dwelling in Pacific Heights.
“I’m sorry, dude,” he said. “You’d better find yourself another place to crash.”