Peter Maravelis: San Francisco Noir

“So what are you going to do?”

I glanced toward Anne. The Brit had slid closer and was going on in that big-chested way of his.

“I don’t know.”

But I did know. There was a little roadhouse on the edge of Reno with some slots and card tables. Sal Fusco wanted my father and I to go into business with him. To get the loan, all I had to do was shake hands with Pellicano, the crab fisherman. But my father, I knew, did not really care about the roadhouse. All he wanted was for my mother to come to Reno.

I had spoken to my mother just hours before.

“If this is what you want, I will do it,” she said.

“It’s not for me. It’s for him.”

“Your father can come back here. The war is over.”

“He has his pride.”

“We all have our shame. You get used to it. At least here, I can wear my mink to the opera.”

“There is no opera anymore.”

“There will be again soon,” she said. “But if this is what you want, I will go to Reno. If this is what my son wants…”

I understood something then. She blamed my father. Someone needed to take blame, and he was the one. And part of me, I understood. Part of me didn’t want to go back to Reno either.

“It’s what I want,” I said.

Johnny Maglie looked at me with those big eyes of his. He wanted something from me. Like Ellen Pagione wanted. Like my father wanted. Like Julia Fusco. For a minute, I hated them all.

“I know how you used to talk about going into law,” Johnny said. “Before all this business.”

“Before all what business?”

“Before the war…” he stammered. “That’s all I meant. I know you wanted to be an attorney.”

“Everything’s changed.”

“My uncle-he said he would write a letter for you. Not just any school. Stanford. Columbia. His recommendation, it carries weight.”

I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel a rush of excitement-that I didn’t sense a door opening and a chance to walk into another life.

“Is it because he feels guilty?” I asked. “Because of what happened to my father? He was at the hearing, wasn’t he?”

Johnny looked at me blankly, as if he didn’t understand.

“I saw Jake yesterday.”

Jake was Judge Molinari’s boy. He was a sweet-faced kid. His father’s pride and joy. He’d done his tour in Sicily and distinguished himself, from what I heard.

“How’s he doing?”

“Getting married.”

“Good for him.”

Back at the table, the Brit raised another glass. Beside him, Anne was beautiful. The way the Brit was looking at her, I didn’t guess he was thinking about his buddy overseas.

I was born circa 1921. The records aren’t exact. It doesn’t matter. Like I said, there are times, these days, when I can’t place the current date either. It is 1998, maybe. Or 2008. The nurse who takes care of me-who scoots me up off my ass and empties my bedpan-she was born in Saigon, just before the fall. 1971, I think. French Vietnamese, but the French part doesn’t matter here in the States. Either way, she doesn’t give a fuck about me. Outside the sunlight is white, and I glimpse the airplanes descending. We have a new airport, a new convention center. Every place, these days, has a new convention center. Every place you go, there are airplanes descending and signs advertising a casino on the edge of town.

I close my eyes. The Brit gets up all of a sudden, goes out into the night. I see Anne alone at the table. I see my father dealing cards in Reno. I see Julia Fusco in my father’s kitchen, fingers on her swollen belly.

My kid. My son.

A few days ago, for recreation, they wheeled us to the convention center. We could have been anywhere. Chicago. Toronto. I spotted a couple in the hotel bar, and it didn’t take a genius to see what was going on.

You can try to fuck your way out. You can work the slot. You can run down the long hall but in the end the door is locked and you are on your belly, crawling through smoke.

No one escapes.

The nurse comes, rolls me over.

Go to sleep , she says. Go to fucking sleep .

“I was on Guam.” Anne and I were outside now, just the two of us. The evening was all but over. “The Japanese were on top of the hill. A machine-gun nest.”

One of the marine choppers was overhead now, working in a widening gyre. The wind had shifted and you could smell the smoke from the prison.

“Is it hard?”

“What?”

“The memories?”

“Of the war, you mean.”

“Yes, the war.”

I didn’t know what to say. “A lot of people on both sides,” I made a vague gesture. “Us or them. Sometimes, the difference, I don’t know.” I felt the confusion inside of me. I saw the dead Japs in their nest. “I don’t know what pulls people through.”

She looked at me then. She smiled. “Love.”

“What?”

She was a little shier now. “Something greater than themselves. A dedication to that. To someone they love. Or to something.”

“To an idea?”

“Yes,” she said. “An idea.”

What she said, it didn’t explain anything, not really, but it was the kind of thing people were saying those days-in the aftermath of all the killing. I felt myself falling for it, just like you fall for the girl in the movie. For a moment, she wasn’t Anne anymore, the girl from The Heights. She was something else, her face sculpted out of light.

She smiled.

“I’m old-fashioned,” she said. “Why don’t you get me a taxi?”

Then I had an idea. I didn’t have to go to Reno. I could just walk up Columbus with Anne. We could catch a taxi. And we could keep going. Not out to Dolores Heights, or Liberty Heights, or wherever it was she lived. But beyond the neighborhoods…beyond the city…out through the darkened fields…carried along on a river of light.

Then from behind came a loud voice. It belonged to the Brit and it boomed right through me.

“Anne,” he said. “I have gotten us a taxi.”

I felt her studying me, reading my face. I felt her hand on my back. The Brit opened the taxi door.

My legs were shaking as I headed down the alley. I could hear the copters still, and the sirens along the waterfront. As I walked deeper into the neighborhood, I heard the old sounds too. An aria from an open window. Old men neighing. Goats on a hillside. I was drunk. At some point I had taken my father’s gun out of my pocket. It was a beautiful little gun. I could have gotten into the taxi, I supposed. Or I could find Anne tomorrow. But I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I had other responsibilities. I hadn’t been in The Beach for a while, and I was disoriented. The alley was familiar and not familiar. Rome, maybe. Calabria. An alley of tradesmen, maybe an accountant or two, in the offices over the street. I saw a figure ahead, coming out of a door, and I recognized the corner. Judge Molinari had his office upstairs. Had for years. But this was a younger man. He turned to lock the door. Go the other way, I thought. Don’t come toward me. But on he came. Jake Molinari, the judge’s son. With the war behind him and a bride waiting. I hadn’t planned to be here, but here I was. There are things you don’t escape. In the dark, he was smiling to himself. Or I thought he was. He raised his eyes. He saw me. He saw the gun in my hand and his mouth opened. I thought of my father and Julia Fusco, and I shot him. He fell against the alley wall. Then all I could see was Anne. Her face was a blinding light. A flash in the desert. The man lay at my feet now. I shot him again.

At the top of the hill, I paused to look back. I knew how it was but I looked anyway. The sky over the bay was red. Alcatraz was still burning.