A DOVE SAT ON A TELEPHONE POLE at the corner of Van Ness and Market. It heard a mighty flapping of wings, looked to see what kind of bird was making the noise, and was attacked by a red-tailed hawk. The predator sank its talons in the dove’s neck and yanked it from the pole. Flying off with the stunned creature, the hawk zoomed over the New College law school campus on Fell Street.
Richard Rood looked up at the red-tailed hawk and then at his fake Rolex watch. It was ten-thirty. On a scale of one to twenty, his day was starting out at zero. He had no food in his belly. No real money in his pockets. No weed to smoke. Leaning against a chain-link fence, he collected his thoughts. Stiv Wilkins had failed to come up with the money he owed. The white boy was a poltroon.
On the upside of things, Stiv was going to have to pay a harsh penalty for his transgression. Sadistic by nature, Richard looked forward to the thrill of punishing him. Maybe he’d beat Stiv into a pulp. Or put out a lit cigarette in his face. Cutting off the punk’s ears with a knife sounded divine.
If it hadn’t been for the black-and-white police cruiser that pulled up beside him, Richard Rood would’ve stood there all day thinking on how to torture Stiv Wilkins. The car announced itself by backfiring, emitting a report identical to the discharge of a large caliber handgun. Officer Mandelstam turned off the engine and decamped from the vehicle in slow motion, as if he were losing a battle with gravity. A stainless steel Ruger Security Six revolver in a lightweight canvas mesh holster was glued to his hip. A four-foot-long plastic nightstick with a whiplash handle was in his gloved fist.
Richard Rood assessed the cop and was mellow. He wasn’t sweating it. He had no warrants out on him. No outstanding tickets to pay. No probation violations hanging over his head. He wasn’t going to get busted, not for no penny-ante shit. He wasn’t holding any drugs. No dime bags of indica. No bags of crank. No stolen credit cards. No guns or knives. He was clean, pure as driven snow. Which was wise because his rap sheet was sizable—a grand total of thirty-seven arrests that had resulted in two felony convictions and ten years of court-appointed probation. But staying clean also meant he wasn’t doing any trade. Which meant Richard had no cash.
“All right,” Mandelstam burped, “what are you doing?”
Richard folded his arms, haughtily stuck his nose in the air, and said, “Not a damn thing. I’m out here being all copacetic, enjoying the weather.”
“That’ll be the day. Bring yourself and that fucking red suit you got on over here to the car.”
The black dealer felt his temper go up a notch. “What for?”
“Because you and I are going to have a tête-à-tête.” The policeman palmed the nightstick. “Empty out your pockets, shit for brains. Then put your hands on the hood where I can see them.”
There was a time for resisting arrest and there was a time to submit to a frisk. There was a time for getting thrashed with a nightstick. There was a time for going to jail. And there was a time for calling your bondsman to raise bail. There was a time for everything under the sun. It occurred to Richard Rood this wasn’t a time to fuck around with Mandelstam. He removed his alligator-skin billfold from his pants, threw it on the ground, and deployed his hands on the black-and-white’s hood.
“Spread your legs,” Mandelstam said. “I want to see daylight.”
Rifling the dealer’s jacket pockets, the cop found a pencil, a pack of chewing gum, a ring of keys, an address book with nobody’s name in it, and the measly five dollars that Richard had to his name. With a cheerful grin—now he had cigarette money for the day—Mandelstam tucked the bill in his belt and commented, “Nice suit you got on. You look like a fucking ghetto Santa Claus in it.”
Richard pivoted, looked over his shoulder at Mandelstam. “Say who?”
Mandelstam continued the pat down, running his fingers over Richard’s pants. He came up with a deck of pornographic playing cards, two half-smoked cigarette butts, a nail clipper, and a book of matches. He searched Richard’s legs, pulling down his socks, and copped a bottle of Vicodin. The policeman had a horselaugh at his discovery. He read the label and said, “Fucking opiates. I love them. This stuff gets you so blitzed and constipated, I took it for my legs once and I didn’t have a bowel movement for six days. I didn’t know if I was in heaven or hell.”
The carrot-faced cop was convinced the black man was a junkie. The evidence was the red suit. Richard Rood had to be an addict with that kind of taste in clothes. The only people who wore loud colors in the Tenderloin were dope fiends and whores. “What you taking the Vicodin for?” he asked.
“Doctor’s orders.”
“Yeah, right. And the Pope smokes dope. Let’s see your arms.”
Richard rolled back the sleeves of his jacket with dignity. The cop studied his shiny black skin with the zealotry of a rocket scientist and was visibly angered when he didn’t find any telltale tracks. For Richard the worst part of the ordeal wasn’t having his money taken. It wasn’t having his nuts fondled by Mandelstam. It wasn’t having his Vicodin stolen. And it wasn’t having his suit ridiculed. It was the cloying scent of Mandelstam’s deodorant. The smell had managed to get in his jheri curls. He was standing so close to the white dude, he could see every pore on his cauliflower nose, even the blackheads that ringed his nostrils.
“You’re on drugs.” Mandelstam held the Vicodin bottle up to the sun to prove his thesis. “What do you know about the Brinks money?”
Richard deflected the interrogative. He didn’t know what the cop was talking about. “What money?”
Mandelstam’s riot helmet refracted the sun’s etiolated rays. “Don’t give me that crap, you asshole,” he said. “You’re out here all day long. You know what I’m talking about.”
An asshole was uncool. An asshole was dishonest. An asshole was a perjurer and a back-stabber. An asshole hedged his bets. It was the cruelest of insults. Gnashing his teeth, Richard Rood resisted the urge to sass the policeman. Much as he wanted to start a fight, he saw the wisdom in keeping his trap shut. There was no sense in causing aggravation or a fracas. He didn’t want to get on the receiving end of the nightstick. He didn’t want to go to the hoosegow. He didn’t want to sit in a felony tank cell with nothing to do, and so he was deliberate with his answer. “I don’t know a thing about no goddamn money.”
Richard was telling the truth. He didn’t know squat about the Brinks paper. But it was plain to see by the scornful look on Mandelstam’s mug that honesty would get him nowhere. The realization was bitter and deepened his belief that lying was the only way to get through life.
Mandelstam trained the nightstick on him. “My ass, you don’t. You’re probably the dick who ran off with it. Where else would you get the cash to buy that shitty vinyl suit you got on?”
Rood was taken aback. Bile rose in his throat. Pink lights danced behind his eyes. The punk was saying his suit was made from plastic? He would allow no man or beast to disrespect his vines. He’d paid four hundred dollars for them at Kaplan’s army-navy surplus store. The cop had crossed his Rubicon—he just didn’t know it yet. Richard cursed him softly, “Fuck you, man. If I had that Brinks money, you think I’d be out here dealing with your shit? Hell, no. I’d be in a penthouse, kicking back in style.”
His opinion hung uncomfortably in the air. It hadn’t been a smart thing to say. The sentiment guaranteed him a trip into a wilderness of misery. The words had barely escaped from his mouth when he had to deal with the cop’s response.
Each policeman utilizes a nightstick differently. Some use an overhead approach. Others swing it like a bat. Still more policemen wield their billy clubs as if it was a pike. Mandelstam had been schooled in the traditional thrust and jab technique. Quick as a snake, he peppered Richard Rood’s ribcage with the tip of the stick.
It was curtains for Richard. His legs gave out, and he couldn’t swallow. He turned blue in the face and his eyes did a circuit in their sockets. Then he collapsed to the pavement, and had a flash through the pain about the first man he’d ever kissed.
Armed with a forged identification card, he’d been hanging out in a Fillmore district bar. The neighborhood was a historic black community that had been ninety square blocks before gentrification whittled it down to nil. An older hustler in a dapper silk suit motioned for Richard to join him. They smoked a medium-sized joint in the back by the pool tables and talked about the people they knew in common. It so happened the dude knew Richard’s mother. After a while they ran out of things to say. The hustler put his hand on Richard’s shoulder, turned his head so that his face was shining white from a lamp. He hooked his other hand behind Richard’s neck and drew him close. He gently kissed the younger man’s lower lip, saying, “That’s nice, ain’t it?”
Richard’s face rushed to meet the ground. His last meal, clam chowder and a Greek salad with an espresso from the deli on Ellis Street, gushed out of his mouth and splashed down his suit. He went out like a light.
Rood roused himself five minutes later. His head was on the sidewalk and his legs were in the gutter. Pedestrians were walking around him, making as if he wasn’t there. He jackknifed to his feet, got his billfold and slipped it back in his jacket. Getting harassed by the police was no big deal. But it killed his spirit every time. Like he was a square of toilet paper they could wipe themselves on. That cop was going to suffer for messing with him. Richard brushed off his pants and jacket and made a decision. He was done waiting for his money. It was time to proceed to phase two of his plan. He had reached a verdict: track down Stiv Wilkins and regain what he was owed.
The problem was, the task wouldn’t be simple. It required a strategy, an umbrella of ideas that fit together. Richard had his limits. He had his phobias. The nitty-gritty was he didn’t want to leave his patch. The strip of Market Street between Van Ness Avenue and Octavia Street was all he had.
Whenever he left the four blocks that constituted his universe, Richard felt as if he was heading off-planet. Traveling to a foreign solar system. What with all the trouble going down, the cops acting loco about the Brinks money, things were just too hot. So he had a decision to make. Was the four hundred dollars worth the effort?
The clock tower above the Goodwill store on Mission Street said it was a few minutes after eleven. Richard peered up the road at the Allen Hotel. That’s where Stiv lived in a room no bigger than a refrigerator. The walk to the Allen was lengthy, maybe three blocks. A journey that was too long for a man of Richard’s importance.
He couldn’t be seen walking around like some low-rent dunce—his credibility was at stake. His stature would be diminished if anyone saw him taking a stroll to the Allen. Only suckers and folks with no class tooled up Market Street on foot. Beggars, panhandlers, winos, and junkies walked. The better classes drove cars. But the debt had to be collected.
Richard recalled something he’d heard about Stiv, some gossip. Hearsay about a woman the punk was involved with, the wife of a dope dealer. That made him even angrier. He had no use for women, including any that were connected to Stiv Wilkins.
Fighting the wind, he began his march to the Allen Hotel.
Mama Celeste flailed past him going the opposite way on Market Street. Her left shoe was untied. The baseball hat was cocked at a jaunty angle. A stream of dreadlocks plunged down her shoulders. The army jungle coat rustled in the breeze as she walked. Talking out loud to herself, she didn’t see the frowning black man in the red patent leather suit.
Richard Rood recoiled, narrowly avoiding a collision with her. His nose was running. He had goose bumps up and down his back from the flu. His mouth tasted of vomit. A cop had taken his money and his Vicodin. An old biddy with a beat-up Reebok shoebox was the last thing he needed to lay eyes on.
“Damn crone,” he lamented. “Ought to be in a rest home and shit.”