San Francisco Noir

Twenty-third and Geary wouldn’t take them. Neither would the Holy Virgin Cathedral, Joy of All Who Sorrow. No money for Vegas. So, Reno was obviously the place. Where else could she wear white? A ruffled rented tux, soon to be smeared lipstick. No veil. They stayed seven days at the Lucky Horseshoe until they were down to their last dime. Then she spun cherries for silver dollars in the parking lot. Hard luck. Jackpot. Enough for bus fare back to San Francisco. But she had developed a thing for a customer, some Detroit blizzard pimp giving her a tryout in the backseat of his snow-chained El Dorado. She didn’t want to leave. Briley convinced her. First with his fists, then with a hanger he heated over a Sterno can. Just like Dad used to do, across the ass so nobody could see the scars. She couldn’t sit still anyway. He bought two decks of playing cards and they each flipped solitaire in silence as drought-brown hills passed outside like legless camels. They rented a room above a nail salon on a treeless block back in the Richmond. Crumbling stucco and mold. They ate fog. The honeymoon was over.

Briley felt his leg splinter as she brought down her heel onto the inside of his knee. There was a strange pop, and it went goofy like a chicken leg. Wing Chun. He had paid for the lessons. Sammy Wong’s: laundry and self- defense. Dragon, tiger, lotus, monkey. Shirts: $1.29. Six kids and an amphetamine addict. He was certain she fucked them all; dragon, tiger, lotus, monkey, any way they wanted, pocketed the money and practiced evenings when he wasn’t around. Parlor tricks. If he could grab hold of her, he’d show her some real chop-socky. Not some Hong-Kong four-star double-bill. Americans had invented the bitch-slap. She wouldn’t forget it. Size is what mattered. Who wore the pants. Who swung the belt.

But Briley couldn’t move, and didn’t want to. He waved an arm in feeble defense of a lamp crashing across his shoulder. Ceramic explosion. Shards of clay cutting into his eyes, lids running red. Blood, not anger. Tiny helpless bursts. Just like the hamsters he’d had as a boy. Father foraging through the wire enclosure, hand full of shit and gnawed newspaper, coming up with a Vida Blue kick and a fur fastball. Splat. “That was because of you! Next time you’ll do as you’re told!” his old man would shout. Not likely. And the rodents multiplied like guilt, bad report cards, pornography, dirt under his fingernails. Dad left two alone: male and female. Breeding. He called their crap-covered coop the Garden of Eden, less like the Bible location and more like the strip club cross town where his mother was a “waitress.” Finally, Briley took the vermin to the toilet tank and watched them drown, whirlpooling away with a sudden suck. The stains stayed behind, above the bed, closet doors, wild ceiling caroms. Reminding him what he had done. No amount of scrubbing could make them come clean. Late at night, awake with one hand working his cock, he would stare at certain spots for hours, forming their faces, making sounds, having them do tricks. That’s when they became his pets. That’s when he named them.

Briley tried to focus on his current situation and surroundings, but all he could see was a square of static encased in cheap plastic with the word Zenith below a row of busted knobs. At first, the poor reception had appeared as a woman’s face, a beautiful woman with a complexion clear as milk, eyes bluer than a breezeless sky, contented smile, mouthing the phrase, Fresh from the start. She stood in a living room of an impossibly clean house, something out of Pac Heights, not Briley’s plaster and pressboard roach trap. The ashtrays were empty too, magazines stacked, couch crammed with fluffy cushions, and although everything seemed immaculate and impeccable, the woman was vacuuming. Then electricity. It came down like a thunderbolt. Briley’s head gave way with a sick crack and he jerked spastically amongst the wires and shattered tube. He wanted to say something, not an apology, perhaps an epitaph. Something more than the cackle caught crushed in his throat. She stood above him screaming, replacing the other woman, replacing the static and white noise. Replacing himself. Waiting. He heard sirens in the distance racing toward him as if there was something left to save. No need. The best thing to do was quit moving. He knew that now. Take their best shot. Don’t cry. Go to sleep. Be still.

KID’S LAST FIGHT BY EDDIE MULLER

South of Market

Danh woke up that morning excited. Today he was finally going to use the pruning shears. He’d learned about the technique at a lineup the previous week. Some guy was bragging how he’d done it to his ex-fiancee when she wouldn’t give back his engagement ring. Ever since, Danh had wanted to give it a try. Grab some rich bitch by the wrist and snip her clean, like a butcher scissoring a duck. There’d be lots of blood and screaming, but he’d just calmly pocket her fingers with the fat-ass jewels and be gone, quick as a hummingbird. Later, at Li Po, when it was his turn to buy, he’d toss a finger on the bar and say something funny, just for the reaction. After that, he’d be known as the craziest fucker in the crew. What to say when he threw down the finger? He hadn’t figured that part out yet, but it would come to him.

Hanna hiked up the shoulder strap on the briefcase and checked her wristwatch as she blew through the doors of the Jewelry Mart. She wasn’t going to make the 2 o’clock briefing with the caterers. She’d driven all the way across town to get a deal on the earrings for Katie’s birthday, and for a second she regretted it. But only for a second, since nothing made Hanna happier than buying wholesale. At the foot of the stairs, she hesitated. It took her a couple of seconds to remember where she’d parked.

Bud couldn’t remember why he was on this street. He was headed someplace, had something important to do. Back a couple of blocks he’d remembered, and his shuffle shifted into a determined stride. But then he started looking at buildings and street signs, recognizing places from long ago, and his head began filling with pictures and sounds from the old days and pretty soon he couldn’t recall what was obvious only minutes before. Damn it. Anger welled up in him, making it harder to hold onto a thought.

Bud turned around and looked back. Maybe he’d dropped the answer on the sidewalk. Had he come this way? Maybe Joan had given him a note, to remind him what to do. From his jacket pocket he pulled a wad of paper.

A hundred-dollar bill. Had she put it there? Yes, Joan put it there. He remembered that now. She’d told him he needed to go somewhere-where? The money was for when he got there.

I’m supposed to buy something. Goddamn if he could recall what it was. I had eggs this morning, he thought. He could still taste the yolks, that’s how he knew.

Hanna was almost to her car when the Asian kid appeared. She barely had time to gasp. He ripped the briefcase off her shoulder, but instead of running away with it, he trapped her arm between his ribs and biceps and grabbed her wrist. She started screaming when she saw the pruning shears. Instinctively, she made fists of both hands.

“Open!” Danh shrieked. “Open!”

Something slammed Danh’s left ear, hard and heavy as brick. To protect himself, he had to let the woman go. Another blow banged his skull. He swung the shears blindly, then took a third blow on the jaw, just below his mouth. Down Danh went, dropping the shears when his hands reached out to break the fall.

That last right hand was the best one Bud had thrown since he decked Lyle Cooley at the Cow Palace in 1958. He’d set that up with a left hook, which missed high but made Cooley bend at the waist. Bud came over the top with a punch that had every ounce of his shoulders, hips, and legs behind it-Cooley was lights-out for three minutes. Every second of that fight was clear as a bell to Bud, to this day.

The final punch in the flurry had hurt like hell; his knuckles had hit flush on the kid’s jawbone. Something might have busted. Bud instinctively flexed his right hand a few times, already feeling the swelling. His whole body vibrated. The fight had lasted about six seconds-the cleanest six seconds he’d experienced in a long time. He stood over the kid, left cocked, just in case the little fuck had some guts and wanted to fight. Of course he didn’t-he mugged women, for chris-sakes. The kid scooped something off the sidewalk and ran like hell, never looking back.

Bud turned, expecting to see his manager, Joe Herman, smiling at him.

“You saved my life,” Hanna said, trying to compose herself. “Or at least my fingers.”

Bud stared at her, trying to piece things together.

Hanna could tell right off the guy wasn’t all there. His clothes were neat and clean and his white hair was cut