Naomi Hirahara: Santa Cruz Noir

I can’t help but check the message board as I pass by the bus station. There are some new Missing posters: Katie Rose . Boyfriend probably put them up. That photo of her, a class picture. So cute. So clean. I’ll keep trying but I’ll never find another one like her. If I could have it my way, I’d fuck her every afternoon, kill her at night, and she’d be there, waking up next to me, smiling, in the morning.

As I walk along the bike path on the levee, the San Lorenzo River is green and still. Two distinguished cholos emerge from the stand of willows along the riprap.

“Yo, Carlos. I need a gram—”

“Keep walking, blondie. It’s hot.”

I’m sure they’re not looking for me, but just in case I take the back way into Beach Flats, through the community garden. The cops have the basketball court taped off. Eight of my neighbors are sitting on the ground, handcuffed. I go around the block and cut through my yard. On the back door, someone tagged, FUCK YOU . How dare they? Fucking beaners. No class. And they left their spray can on the ground next to their paper bag still wet with activo . Huffers, no less. Brain-dead lumps of shit.

I can’t buff this today so I take the can and paint the F into a B and then turn the Y into an L and I’ll just double the U.

BUCK LOW . That’s a bit better.

The faded sheets covering my windows give the living room a pleasant soft pink glow. I dig a roach out of the ashtray, get comfortable on the couch, and nibble on some pretzels. Little boyfriend will come by. He can’t resist the opportunity to hold something of hers. He probably loves her. I cook up a shot of chiva and coke. It’s good. I wish I had some speed. I shoot some more coke and then some chiva which evens me out a bit.

There he is, I hear him on the steps. I slide the works under the couch and wait for him to knock.

“Come in,” I say as I open the door.

“This is my friend Owl,” Katie’s friend says.

“That’s fine,” I say. This has become a bit more difficult than I anticipated, but I’m almost unable to contain my joy. “Come inside. Please, make yourselves comfortable.”

I lock the dead bolt, latch the chain, walk past them, and sit on the couch. Owl takes a seat on the La-Z-Boy. Boyfriend stays standing in the middle of the room.

“You like my place?” I say.

“So, where’s her stuff?”

“This is my grandparents’ house. The neighborhood has changed a lot since I was a boy.” I pull out some weed from beneath the couch cushion and start rolling a joint on the coffee table. “It was mostly hippies, artists, in the sixties and seventies, and then in the 1980s the Mexicans came and took over.”

“Really, that’s great.”

“Her heart was so pure, just a perfect angel,” I say. I light the joint take a hit and pass it to Owl. “I miss her.”

“No thanks,” Boyfriend says.

“Hey, don’t be rude,” I say. “I’m trying to be hospitable.”

“Stop fucking with me and just give me her shit.”

Owl is hitting the joint.

“Fine,” I say, and get off the couch and open the door to the bedroom. “In the box, under the bed.”

“Stay in the living room. And Owl, watch my back.”

“Hey, man, chill out. Mi casa es su casa .”

I can see the kid through the doorway as he pulls the box out from under the bed. I back up a few steps until I’m right behind Owl, who is still puffing on the joint. I take the knife out of my pocket, open it up, and then grab Owl by his dreads and slit his throat. He makes a sound somewhere between a wheeze and a whistle. The blood gurgles, runs down his chest, and he gets up, leaps for the door, fumbles at the knob, and falls to the ground. The boyfriend is in the bedroom doorway, stunned, holding onto Katie’s patchwork Hubbard dress. I pounce and drive the knife deep into his gut. With my hand over his mouth, I stab him over and over again.

I black-bag both of them, tape up the seams, and lay them side by side. Then I cut the black oversized trash bags and wrap up the La-Z-Boy. It was my father’s chair and I’m a bit reluctant to get rid of it but it’s covered in Owl’s blood. I’ll dump everything up north, near Pittsburg or Alameda, in the backwater of the San Francisco Bay.

I keep my grandfather’s old panel van parked in my garage. Inside, I’ve got my kit: quickset concrete, extra-large duffel bags, exercise weights, black contractor trash bags, duct tape, a hacksaw, bleach, gloves. I load the bodies in first and then the carpets and cover everything with a furniture blanket before putting the chair on top. Cal’s Plumbing “The Local Pro” is still proudly painted across both sides of the van. When the logo shows some wear, I touch it up, keep it looking fresh. I apprenticed under my uncle. It’s a family business and a good trade.

I get high and lock up the house while the van idles in the garage, and pull out and drive north onto Highway 1. The moon is waning but still full and bright, so after Davenport I turn off the headlights and drive by the moonlight.

Katie is close by. Passing the beach where she’s buried, I almost pull over so we can spend some time together before I set off on the road for a while. But leaving my van parked on the side of the highway with these two assholes in the back is a bad idea. I keep driving north, switch on the headlights, and light up a joint. I should be in San Francisco by dawn.

One night, long ago, just out of high school, I wandered through Golden Gate Park with a tire iron beneath my parka. A few people were around. I checked out a couple of kids my age passing joints, bottles of beer. I followed two bums until they cut through a hedge to a secret hollow in a thick patch of bush. I stalked a lone dog walker past the windmill to Ocean Beach. Unable to get up the nerve, I turned around and walked back toward the Haight until I came across the buffalo paddock. They were just standing there, cowlike and tame. So I climbed over and cornered the smallest one. It was just a baby, really. I clubbed it in the back of its thick skull. It wobbled, ran, I chased it down and whacked it again — and again, until it fell.

On its side, in the grass, the little creature’s boney chest rose and fell with deep, slow breaths. Unconscious, she seemed at peace, and I reached out, running my hand through her wooly fur. Then I put my ear to her side and her great heart was still thumping in its cage. I laid down beside her, spooned up against her back, nuzzled my face into the long, fine hair along the nape of her neck. In the languid warmth of the dying beast, I found a wonderful peace.

At sunrise, I pull off the highway at Pacifica and into a service station. As I pump gas and the surf rolls into Rockaway Beach, I know the tide has changed the estuary’s course. The sand has shifted. Katie has become unburied.

I hang up the nozzle, screw on the gas cap, go inside the mini-mart, and buy two bundles of firewood. I open the back of the van and toss the bundles on top of the bodies of Owl and Boyfriend. I notice that the blood has pooled beneath the furniture blankets and is now seeping under the door and over my rusted chrome bumper. I need to get rid of the mess in the back as planned, clean up the van. I should stay away from Santa Cruz for a bit, head north, lay low.

But I can’t just leave her back there.

A workman’s truck pulls up on the other side of the gas pump. A man in coveralls gets out with an oversized coffee mug and walks into the mini-mart. I wipe down the bumper with some paper towels and scan the parking lot before I throw all my bloody towels into the trash.

The man exits the mini-mart, coffee steaming in the cold morning sunlight. I get in the van, start it up. I can see her there, on the beach. Her blond hair is tangled in the windswept dune grass and her face is open to the bright sky. I put the van into gear, wave at the guy, and pull away from the station. He smiles and nods. In the side mirror, I watch him lean against his truck, put his mug down on the hood, and holler to the gas station attendant as I turn left onto the highway and head back south.