San Francisco Noir

when he didn’t come, ran through my house and out the back door, climbing the shabby back stairs to Larry’s. The stairs shook with the slam of my feet, a snowfall of dried paint sifted down onto the weeds.

Larry! I banged on his back door. My voice carried out into the quiet.

Larry was an unconscious heap at his front door. I don’t know why I was attracting all this attention to myself when I knew I was going to have to break into his place. I pulled and pushed and otherwise strained at his back door. I wasn’t good at this. I’d never broken into a place before; my particular illegal inclinations hadn’t ever brought me to such a situation. I’ve picked a pocket, shoplifted, and been guilty of an occasional drunken assault on equally drunken men behaving rudely in bars or on street corners. But I’d never broken into a home. I rattled the dully gleaming doorknob. It figures that Larry’s doors have adequate locks. Doesn’t that just sum up the whole thing?

Larry had a few ceramic pots on his back stairs. The plants inside them were long dead, all dried up. Cigarette butts were stubbed out in the dirt. I grabbed one and hurled it against his kitchen window, where it shattered in a rain of terra cotta and dirt that plunged to the yard below. I threw a second pot at the window and experienced a similar explosion. Jesus, I whined. The dirt was in my hair, smudged over my blouse. I grabbed a shard of pottery and used it to gouge a hole in the screen, tore it away. Now it was just the glass and me. The third pot bust through, sending a whole mess onto Larry’s linoleum floor. Huh. Linoleum. Must be nice.

As I climbed in through the shattered window, ruining my fishnet stockings on a jutting piece of glass, I realized I had never been inside Larry’s apartment. I stepped gingerly onto a recycling box piled high with beer cans.

Larry? I called.

I walked into a small pile of dirt and plant roots. Broken glass glittered. I skipped quickly to the fridge and leaned onto it for balance.

Larry? I cried out again, my voice little more than a croak.

Oh fuck. I pulled open the fridge and spied a lone Budweiser, its plastic loop of rings still noosed around its aluminum neck. I yanked it out, set it free, cracked it.

I moved through Larry’s place. It was nice, much nicer than my watery grave below. Good stove in the kitchen, ample cabinets. The floor was linoleum, and where it wasn’t, carpet provided a soft relief on my feet. The living room was in disarray. The rest of the six-pack rolled empty on the floor alongside a glass bottle of something stronger. The television was set to ESPN. Some electronic device whirred in the corner. I studied it and discovered it was a dehumidifier. Fucking genius. I made a note to buy one when I had money again. Then I remembered that Larry was almost certainly dead and I could probably just take it.

I crept to the edge of the hall stairs, took a deep breath, a gulp from the can, and then switched on the light. There was Larry. His head was smooshed against the front door at an awful angle. His neck looked incorrect. His eyes were disturbingly open, as was his mouth. He was not alive.

Larry? I asked, just in case.

Nothing. Outside, the dog barked and barked. In the living room a sports team won something and the crowds in the stands cheered in unison. I finished my beer.

* * *

That was all about a month ago, perhaps a little longer. San Francisco’s autumn summertime is all but gone, and the winds have brought their cold damp; they lash the house with it like a locker room of jocks snapping soggy towels. The wind is so forceful that it actually shakes the house. Before I became used to it, I would wake in the night thinking an earthquake had struck. I would stare at the ceiling in terror and wait for the upstairs apartment to cave in onto my bed in the basement. Then I would remember that I was upstairs, and it was only the wind. I would turn up the heat that hummed gently out from the vent in Larry’s bedroom and fall back asleep.

I haven’t seen Larry since I drug him into the bathroom and heaved him into his claw-footed bathtub. I shut the door with a click and I do not open it. I pee in an empty pickle jar and, when I must, slip out into the backyard and shit in the weeds like that tiny black-and-orange cat who lives out there, too. I shower in the hotels and private homes of the men that I trick with. One shower before and a longer one after. I can’t bring myself to return to my basement, not even to use the toilet. I poked my head in only once, and it was as if the mold had accelerated in my absence. The moisture seemed heavier, wetter; the decay, palpable. It scented the very air of the place. There was an animal turd in plain view on the wooden kitchen floor, and a scurrying sound in the corner I did not investigate.

Upstairs, in Larry’s place, I can hear my broken doors squeak like a strange wind chime in the gusting air. Upstairs, in Larry’s place, I watch cable TV and eat the last of his food; bring home six-packs for the fridge. I drive his car to my calls. I’ve taken up smoking. When I cannot sleep, which is more and more frequent, I stand out on the back porch amidst the dirt and smashed pottery, and I smoke. The kitchen window is secured with cardboard and shiny gray duct tape; the light from inside does not shine on me there.

I stand in the dark night and the powerful wind steals the smoke as it streams from my mouth. I know that this will all end soon, and the understanding makes me jumpy. Last night, as I stood smoking, I saw beams of light in the wild hill below; the wide swath of land between my home and the housing projects at the bottom. It was a cop or two, prowling with flashlights, searching in the unruly grass. It seemed an omen. I’m not sure what I’ve done or what sort of punishment I need to outrun.

Late at night, as I smoke cigarettes, I can hear my telephone ringing through the open door downstairs. It’s just past last call and I know the ringing won’t stop for hours. I stand and smoke in the chill until it’s quiet. The man across the street tries to speak to me when I let myself into Larry’s with the key I took from his pocket. I ignore him. It makes him mad and he yells, and his yells inspire the dog, and I close my door on the decaying block and all of its angry inhabitants.

In the night, it is the hardest to be here; when I come back from a call and the television greets me. I have thousands of dollars in my box. I’ve been working so hard, so very hard.

Lately, I imagine I can smell him-the scent of Larry’s collapsing body coming out from under the bathroom door on a terrible breeze. Certainly it is time to leave. I think I would like to live in Russian Hill; in a glinting apartment with a chandelier in the lobby and a man who holds the door open as I come and go.

I stand on the back stairs in the afternoon light; and when my cigarette is half-done, I look down and see that man-the one who lives in his undershirt-standing in the weeds beneath me, looking up. And I know before I see her that Jenny is behind him.

THE OTHER BARRIO BY ALEJANDRO MURGUIA

The Mission

It stood on the corner of Sixteenth and Valencia-the Apache Hotel, a once elegant residence for out of town visitors, more recently a rundown joint for several dozen single men and some desperate families. Every time I go by the spot I still hear the screams, the cries for help of those who were caught in the fire the night the Apache Hotel burned down.

The newspapers screamed the headlines the next day: SEVEN DEAD IN FIRE. It didn’t state the cause, but I knew I would be dragged into it. And I didn’t want to be dragged into it. I had cited the place three times, but not for fire hazards, just the common stuff-garbage and rodent infestations. Had there been a fire hazard, God himself could not have stopped me from making sure the owner took care of it that very day. Now it was going to come down on me. That’s why Choy had taken me off the case. He was my shithead boss at the Department of Building Inspections, and my job was on the line if my report had failed to mention a fire hazard, which it did not. Seven people had died and I wasn’t going to carry those dead. They weren’t my dead. Let whoever killed them carry them.

It was Friday evening, and Choy’s order to report for a Monday morning meeting had appeared on my desk as I was leaving work. I decided to take my file on the Apache Hotel with me; I had the weekend to find the cause of the fire. Sometime after my Wednesday inspection, maybe thirty-six hours afterwards, the place had burned down