Hanson was working downtown, filling in because the weather was nice and a lot of cops were taking vacation time. Others, who’d used up their vacation time and were scheduled to work, were calling in sick at the last minute. As soon as he cleared from Transportation, Radio told him to check for a 647F in the 2200 block of Broadway.
He drove the few blocks to I. Magnin and saw the Mexican passed out, sitting propped up beneath the display windows. Mannequins in fresh summer clothes postured in the windows above him while pedestrians and shoppers coming out the revolving door pretended he wasn’t there. The sun seemed to have scorched his shadow into the wall.
Hanson double-parked in front of the store, got out of the car, and stood looking at the wino for a moment, studying his ravaged, filthy, sunbaked face. He had once been handsome.
Hanson pulled on the black leather gloves he used for handling winos, gripped his shoulder, and shook him. “Sir,” he said. “Por favor.” But the Mexican’s head just flopped from one shoulder to the other. Hanson made a fist and ran his middle knuckles up and down the Mexican’s breastbone as if it was a washboard. It was painful enough to wake him up.
“You have to come with me.”
“Ah. Of course,” he said. Hanson helped him to his feet and walked him to the patrol car, where he’d already opened the back door. The Mexican knew the routine, a wino lifer, putting his hands behind his back so Hanson could cuff him, then, as drunk as he was, and handcuffed, slid into the car almost gracefully, from years of practice.
He gave his name, age, and military serial number as soon as Hanson got back in the car. Hanson wrote them down in his notebook, glad that he’d volunteered the information. Hanson didn’t like asking the winos their age for the box on the arrest form. He felt their humiliation when they’d say “Forty-nine” or “Fifty-one,” embarrassed because they knew how much older they looked—not old men yet, by normal standards, but finished, all but dead. All hope gone for anything more than their next mickey of wine. A lot of cops humiliated them out of irritation or just for entertainment. They had no reason to expect kindness from anyone, but for some reason they would often talk to Hanson on the way to jail about the lives they’d had, or believed they’d had, and he would listen to them.
The Mexican had fought in Korea, he said, seen a lot of combat. In spite of the handcuffs, he unbuttoned the sleeve of his long-sleeve shirt, managed to pull it up to his elbow, then twisted in the backseat so Hanson could see the puckered scars. “I thought I had found a home in the Marines,” he said. Hanson listened but didn’t say anything. He was only a little surprised when the Mexican asked him, “Why didn’t you stay in?”
“That war was over. I’m not a good peacetime soldier.”
“Of course. So you are a soldier on the street now.” Even drunk, he still spoke with impeccable formality. “I wonder…May I ask you something, Officer?”
“Go ahead.”
But the Mexican didn’t speak again until they’d reached the back entrance to the jail. Hanson picked up the mike and asked Radio to have the jail open the door. He hung up the mike, and the louvered steel door began clattering open. “What was the question, Mister Sanchez?”
“Ah…it was not important,” he said, “but…” The bottom of the door rose above the windshield, moving faster now, the hinged steel panels ratcheting up until the door boomed and locked open. “You still see Death sometimes, I think.”
Whenever he worked downtown the 5150s spotted him right away. They were afraid of the other cops, but when they saw Hanson they wanted to confide in him, give witness, confess everything. They’d jaywalk through heavy traffic to describe highly developed civilizations beneath the jail, tell him about devices the VA had installed in their heads that read their thoughts, stole their ideas, and gave them instructions.
Merle&Earl, though, waited for the WALK sign, looked both ways before stepping off the curb, and kept looking both ways, back and forth, as he crossed San Pablo where Hanson was parked in a loading zone, finishing an arrest report on a shoplifter he’d transported to jail from Cost Plus. He pretended not to see Merle&Earl, knowing that just a glance would bring him immediately, hoping he’d walk away. By the time he came up to the patrol car, Hanson had his pistol in hand, just out of sight below the window. Still though, Hanson pretended not to notice him there, shifting his weight nervously from foot to foot, clearly not planning to give up.
“Could I have a word with you, Officer?”
Finally Hanson looked over at him, keeping his face as neutral and detached as he could manage, to discourage conversation.
“Just a moment. In confidence, of course.”
A man Hanson’s age, intelligent eyes, a winning smile, he was wearing a white plastic Alameda County Hospital bracelet that looked new.
“I’ve been hoping we’d have a chance to talk while you’re working downtown.”
Hanson had never seen him before. Merle&Earl must have seen the irritation in his eyes or the set of his mouth.
“I’ll get right to it, then.”
His name was Earl and he was in transit, he said, and couldn’t reveal his permanent address but could tell him that he lived in the western U.S., though he was no longer with his wife after someone in the Department of Defense decided that it would be better for the country if he lived alone. A few months after his wife left, he had a stroke, or so the VA told him, and while he was in the hospital the DOD put the transmitter in his head.
“Now he tries to tell me what to do. Bad things. Always bad things, and when I saw you I wondered if you might…”
“Who?” Hanson said. “Who tells you?” regretting it immediately. If they irritate you into responding, it takes that much longer to get rid of them.
“My Siamese twin, Merle. He’s been telling me to commit suicide lately.”
Hanson just looked at him.
“See, I wrote this book, Laugh a Minute. It’s a comedy, and I sold it to Doubleday, but Merle stole it, and the Department of Defense published it.”
He snapped his head around, looking down at his shoulder as he spoke. “I wrote the book,” he said, in a different, harsher voice. “The title is I Gotta Go. Sure, it’s a comedy, but it’s a lot more than that. It’s a book about how to leave if you’re with people and you want to go. It’s about how to leave gracefully.
“What’s wrong with you,” the voice continued. “We shouldn’t be talking to the cops. He’ll just put us back in the lockdown ward.”
Earl stuttered, “Fu-fuck you, Merle.” He strained to bring his head back upright, and once he had, he relaxed. “You see what I mean, Officer Hanson? He’s a thief and a liar and I can’t get rid of him. I haven’t slept the last two nights.”
“Doesn’t he get tired?”
“Eventually, but I’m the one who has to carry him around and feed us and every other thing.”
“Why’s he such an asshole?”
“He’s still furious that I left Elaine. After all this time. He was in love with her.”
“Are you taking your medication, Earl?”
Earl avoided Hanson’s eyes, then set his jaw and looked at him. “No. They just make me weaker and him stronger.”
“You’re the one who should know, I guess,” Hanson said. “The shrinks don’t know as much as they think they do.”
“They don’t. None of them,” Earl said, relieved.
“I’ve gotta go, Earl,” Hanson said, then smiled. “Look, I shouldn’t do this, so don’t tell anyone or I’ll be in deep shit.”
Earl looked at him hopefully but didn’t speak.
“Okay?”
“No one,” Earl said.
Hanson pulled one of his speedloaders from its holder on his belt, removed one round, and put the speedloader back. “Keep this,” he said. “It’ll give you extra strength, a .357 magnum, a powerful round. It should even things up between you and Merle. But you and Merle have to work things out. It’s not your fault that you had to leave Elaine. It’s too bad but not your fault. And he needs to keep in mind that he’s dependent on you for almost everything. If you get sick, he gets sick. If you get locked up, he’s stuck in there with you. So you have to forgive each other and work together,” Hanson said, starting the patrol car.
“Thank you, Officer Hanson. I’ll guard this,” Earl said, gripping the bullet in his fist, “with my life. And don’t worry, no one but Merle will know you gave it to me.”
“Okay,” Hanson said, putting the car into gear. “Good luck to both of you.”
“Wait,” Earl said, with that other voice.
Hanson looked at him, his foot on the brake.
“Come on, Merle. Let’s get a move on,” Earl said in his own voice, and they limped and lurched their way back across the street.
Hanson imagined himself wandering in the wind, able to feel the ground beneath his feet but unable to see it, wondering where he was and how he’d gotten there.
2L2…
2L2…
Hanson picked up the mike. That was his call sign today. “2L2…”
Can you go…?
He was back at the Hotel California, up on the sixth floor looking for a pre-op transvestite whore who called himself Black Velvet. Down in the hotel bar and grill he’d beaten a trick bloody with a catsup bottle. The bartender had called it in. It was happy hour.
It was getting dark by the time he’d tracked him to the sixth floor. Another transvestite, his hair up, wearing a teal-and-mauve patchwork satin kimono open to his navel, watched Hanson coming down the hall. Standing just inside the door to his room, he had one hand on his hip and the other, holding a lit cigarette, high up on the doorframe, revealing most of his augmented and very attractive breasts.
In a smoky voice he said, “You looking for that Vel-vet bitch, honey?”
“I am, indeed,” Hanson said.
He tilted his cigarette, pointing languidly down the narrow hallway.
“Ah,” Hanson said, nodding, “thank you very much.” He started back down the hall, stopped, looked back at him, and said, “That is a beautiful robe, by the way,” then walked on, the whore saying, “Why, thank you, baby.”
Other residents, in bras and panties, fishnet body stockings, and tight vinyl, pouting in their doorways, their eyes on Hanson, all pointed toward an open window. The hallway carpet runner, frayed and bare and stained, a dead gray flesh color, ended at the window.
Hanson climbed out onto a fire escape landing. It was dusk, and just below him the buzzing hotel marquee flashed CALIFORNIA in bursts of gold neon. He went halfway up the next section of steel ladder, stopped, and looked down through the grid work between his feet at traffic passing six stories below. A man stood looking up at him from the sidewalk, illuminated by the yellow light. He was wearing a shiny blue warm-up jacket, the words TOKYO JAPAN embroidered in silver across the back, spelled out by the undulating body of a grinning dragon. Hanson recognized Death immediately and wondered, What am I doing out here?
He shook his head, smiling ruefully at Death, and backed carefully down to the fire escape landing, the ladder gonging like doom with each step he took. He slipped back inside and Death walked on to the corner, turned, and was gone.
Hanson didn’t find Black Velvet, but his victim, a doe-eyed ex-con who’d been born in Oaxaca—not much more than five feet tall—was hiding in the bathroom at the other end of the hall. Everybody downtown was an ex-con, it seemed, but he had gotten out of San Quentin, fifteen miles to the north, across the San Rafael Bridge, just the day before. He didn’t want to get involved in his own assault. There was no assault. He didn’t call the cops.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Is no problem here.” His black hair was matted with blood, and though he had wiped most of it off his face with paper towels, he hadn’t gotten it all out of his eyelashes. They wanted to stick to his cheeks when he blinked, holding themselves closed for a moment before popping open again. It was a little disorienting to Hanson, as time…stopped…held…started again each time he blinked his eyes.
He was glad to be off that fucking fire escape, though.
“You’re bleeding pretty good,” Hanson said.
“Is okay, Officer. I’m a bleeder. You know? I bleed easy.” He was moderately drunk, doing his best to be cheerful.
“Okay,” Hanson said. “Why don’t you get your stuff, and I’ll walk you out.”
“But I paid for the room, Officer. In advance.”
“If I leave you here, you’re not gonna cause a problem so I have to come back, are you?”
He shook his bloody head, smiling up at Hanson.
“That’s gonna piss me off if you do.”
“No problem, Officer. I swear.”
Hanson wrote it off on an incident card. No complainant on arrival. Returned to service. He’d written the guy’s name and DOB in his notebook, just in case. If he decided to find the whore and stab him, with any luck, Hanson thought, he’d be off duty or tied up with another call.
No problem, Officer.