Ambrose Bierce - San Francisco Noir 2 - The Classics

Nearby mission bells tolled vespers. It was time. Ice twisted along Joe’s sinews and lumped under his heart. Now he had to act. He said, “I got one of La Barba’s sacks we can split.”

“I’ll second the fuck outta that emotion!”

Joe always went first. Fumbling and cursing over his ruined blood mains, daggering himself repeatedly. Rooski knew better than to offer help or even talk. Joe liked doing his penance right along with the sin. Taking off his Levi’s, he at last struck strong blood high in his groin. With an exhalation mixing weariment and wonder, he handed the works to Rooski the way an officer might hand a blooded sword to his batman after a hard day on the killing field.

“I got it all figgered, Barker,” Rooski was saying preparing his shot. “Hook a bus, hook a freight, anything making southward smoke. Sunup day after tomorrow we’ll be waking up on the beach at Mazatlan. They got little boys there, Barker, for pesos... mere pennies ... they’ll catch you a fish and cook it for you right on the beach... What you puttin in my cooker?”

“Lil Andes candy...”

“I hate coke,” Rooski whimpered. “I get the wrong kick.” But the glitter was already melted in his heroin solution.

“I need you to fire a bombida, Rooski,” Joe said softly.

“Why? With the Edison medicine, shootin speedballs makes me double crazy...” But he already had the point poised over a vein.

“I need you a little extra crazy.”

“Why?”

“I’m goin out to steal a car to run for the border. A nice car, Rooski. We got that comin... But while I’m gone I cant have you noddin out n the police come creepin on you. If they do, you gotta hold court in the streets.”

Rooski plunged the bombida into his bloodsteam. His angled frame snapped rigid, his brow sprang a halo of sweat; his eyes shot fire like sparklers. Joe asked if he’d heard what he said; Rooski nodded tightly, eyes spinning now like slot machine lemons.

“Down at city prison I seen one of the cons whose cat you got killed,” Joe lied. “He said soon as you fell he’d get you. Said whether its firecamp high in the Sierras or the deepest hole at Folsom, he was going to find you, cut out your heart... and eat it, Rooski.”

“Hold court in the streets,” Rooski repeated the dire oath with squinch-eyed resolve.

“Got to, my homey. You cant let em take you.”

“You know,” Rooski said, “even if they caught me I wouldnt give you up. I’d die first. We all gotta go sometime. Why you cryin, Barker? It’s gonna be all right.”

“Aint cryin, Rooski.” With the hem of the dragon jacket he wiped away tears not even heroin could staunch. “It’s somethin in the air here. They must have used chemicals to put out the fire...”

“That’s good, cuz I dont want you worryin, aint nothin gonna happen. No one knows we’re holed here. What in hell you doin?”

Joe was trembling so violently he jammed the Bullpup trying to jack a fresh shell in its breech. Rooski took the weapon, spit in the breech, and tromboned the shell home with a clash, saying, “And I thought I was the one who could fuck up a wetdream.”

“Guess I’ll be goin,” Joe mumbled.

“Guess I’ll just pray no police come while you out.”

“That’s a good idea, Rooski boy... So long and good luck.”

“You’re all the luck I ever needed, Barker,” said that ghost about to be born.

In the blackened hallway, Joe stopped and pulled the bigass diamond from beneath his shirt. It burned a depthless blue. He had to hide it, but where? Its light licked the walls with tongues of flame, blue wavey shadows reminding Joe... Then he knew where to stash it. Not just in plain sight. On exhibit.

But first the call.

On the corner across the street, a booth stood empty. Its light seemed both to beckon and rebuke — Come, none will overhear your treachery on my dark corner . He ran to it, stepped in, and covered his mouth with his jacket sleeve. If 666 was the number of the Beast, then the number he dialed was the Judas code — 911. “Gimme Homicide... Homicide? Take this address, 183 Treat... Chakov’s holed there... He’s hopped up and heavily armed and swears he wont be taken alive...”

Oh, that black sump pump in his breast only a doctor would call a heart. Fast, so he needn’t further ponder the enormity of the betrayal — steal a car to drive to Golden Gate Park. He couldn’t chance a cab. Joe wanted no one to know the watery repository he’d chosen for the diamond Quick Cicero called the Moon.

The valet parking lot attendants at Rossi’s Famous Seafood Restaurant hustled hard for tips. Otherwise they wouldn’t make it on the minimum wage Mr. Rossi paid. When patrons were preparing to leave, the head waiter called them at their shack at the front of the lot. That way they had the cars waiting at the curb, one hand holding the door open, the other palm up for the dollars Mr. Rossi liked to call gratuities.

Often both were absent from the shack delivering cars at the same time. That night neither saw the Porsche Carrera drive off the rear of the lot or noticed its keys missing from the shack until it was called for in the midst of dinner rush two hours later.

Joe was the day’s last paid admittance to Steinhart Aquarium. The usher at the turnstile tore his blue ticket, returning him the half bearing the imprint of a leaping dolphin, and warned him the building would be closing in fifteen minutes. Joe smiled — “Long enough.”

He knew the aquarium’s corridors as well as the hallways of half the city’s flophouses. Times like this when few visitors were around he liked best. When the teeming colors were brightest, the symmetries more fantastic, the liquescent shadows most hallucinative.

Here he was. The plaque introduced the mako and tiger sharks, with a profile of each and world maps showing their ocean ranges. A brief description noted neither was dangerous to man — unless provoked. Joe looked up smiling into the flat black eye of one gray form gliding past, its flexing speckled gills recalling the bamboo blinds in the Sings’ loft. Certainly whatever hand brought forth that shape was possessed of the macabre. No more perfect articulation of sudden, silent death was imaginable.

He turned his attention to the tank display. A shipwreck motif. From the Jolly Roger tangled in the helm canted in the sand, a sunken pirate craft. Beside the helm a cutlass, cannonballs, a binnacle, and belaying pin — all arranged around the centerpiece: Davey Jones’s locker, an overturned treasure chest spilling its hoard of jeweled dirks and diadems, gold doubloons, and crucifixes; rubies, sapphires, pearls, and diamonds; yes, diamonds, within which galaxy the birth of one more star, a blue one even, would go unnoticed until Joe returned for it.

“We’re closing, sir,” a guard reminded him politely.

“Yes, I’m coming.” He leaned across the railing and peered upward, spotting several gaffs hanging from hooks along the catwalk that crossed over the tank. He’d use one of them to retrieve the Moon when the time was right. He slanted both ways to make sure he wasn’t being observed, then used the stolen credit card he kept in his boot to slip the lock on the door marked: no admittance, employees only.

Out went the lights; the aquarium corridors became tunnels of wavery marine light. The colors of the shark tank were cobalt and coral. In a moment, a gasblue scintillance attached to a golden V fell, swinging slowly like a jeweled leaf to land near the treasure chest. The Tiger shark flinched at the puff of sand; then sculled its scythelike tail, gliding on.

“COURT’S IN SESSION!” was Rooski’s last scream. The concussion of the first blast blew out the parlor’s last remaining window. The second round of Double 0 exploded a door in a maelstrom of cinders. The third rocketed straight through the ceiling from where he lay in puddled black water, the .357 Magnum verdict burrowed deep in his chest.