William Vollmann - The Royal Family

Laurie Berkman, Debbie Trevellini, Jeanine Bray, an anonymous employee of Planned Parenthood (all of San Francisco), Shauna Heckert of the Feminist Women’s Health Center (Sacramento), Regina Lorenzo and her friend Bill (New York City), and other women who wish to be unnamed gave me useful information on abortion clinics.

Ruth Ellis and her colleague Teddy at the Sacramento Room of the Sacramento Public Library allowed me to see some old photographs of the Sacramento region which added to the train context.

Mr. Jacob Dickinson of Los Angeles discussed chip design and security as it related to the RoboGraphix chapter.

Paul Wilner at the San Francisco Examiner got me access to the chief medical examiner’s office, whose staff I would like to thank. Most of the notes I took there wound up in my long essay on violence, Rising Up and Rising Down, of which Paul published a smidgeon (not to mention the Geary Street and financial district chapters of this book). However, more than enough descriptions remained to be inlaid into the tale of Dan Smooth’s demise. Dr. Jasper, Connie, and the autopsy doctor do not represent any particular real-life individuals.

Jonathon Keats of San Francisco Magazine was kind enough to publish a small excerpt from the beginning of this novel. He also encouraged, then rejected, the “Essay on Bail.”

Jean Stein and Deborah Treisman, both then of Grand Street, published other snippets of this novel and sent me delicious cold cash. My thanks and friendship will always go to those two most nurturing Muses.

Vanessa Renwick protected, comforted and cherished me when a certain street prostitute and I were treated in a degrading fashion.

Against his better judgment, Paul Slovak at Viking permitted me to refrain from cutting the book by one-third. Paul, I want to thank you for having stood by me for so long. (As for me, I was a good boy, too. Since I refused the page cut, I took a royalty cut instead.)

Mike Pulley and Lizzy Kate Gray hopped freights with me (Lizzy’s maiden voyage took her all the way from Sacramento to West Sacramento. Mike’s took him as far as Marysville before the heat got to him.) Mike got me access to the new Sacramento coroner’s facility, which proved good for many of Dan Smooth’s finer moments. He also drove me around and kept me company while I took note on Sacramento and San Francisco street scenes. Mr. Kent Lacin listened patiently to my half-baked theories on Buddhism and drug addiction. William Linne discussed Gnostic Scriptures with me in and out of various Tenderloin bars. My old friend Ben Pax has chatted with me about Christian spiritual issues many times over the years. Some of our conversations meandered into the text, or at least stained it. Mr. Chuck Stevens and I met several nice Tenderloin prostitutes together. Mr. David Golden kept me cheerful company on a few nighttime Tenderloin strolls, and allowed me to use his car in place of a photographic tripod. Heaven the barmaid deserves a book of her own. Peter at City Lights bookstore has done me many kindnesses.

Mandy Aftel spent a good $250 photocopying and mailing this manuscript to the Proper Authorities. Dr. Janice Ryu gave me access to pertinent medical facts.

Larry McCaffery and his wife and Sinda Gregory introduced me to the Imperial Valley and in particular to Slab City, a place of some interest to Henry Tyler. I just may write another novel set there.

Most of all, I would like to thank the San Francisco and Sacramento street prostitutes whom I have gotten to know over the years. Without them I never could have imagined “the life.”

*Robbed; gypped.

*Crack cocaine.

*Execute.

*Supplemental security income.

*Literally, his tripes. A prostitute in Mexicali whom I knew for several years told me this story. I never met the little boy, and the woman is dead now. God rest her. The congenital defect might have been an umbilical hernia or an anal prolapse.

*Usually on account of failure to appear, or else for some probation violation.

*I also wish that every act classified as a crime were really evil.

*It has always struck me as horrid that the prosecution, not the defense, gets to call itself the people . — “I know we’re all working with the new law,” asserts a brisk woman in a pants-suit who until now has been cleverly employing the passive voice (“reports have been generated”), “but it’s the people’s position that the defendant comes within the parameters of this statute. What I would ask the court to do is to sign the detention order at this time.”—The public defender pleads against the people. Replies the judge: “Your objections are noted for the record. But I will sign the order.”

*Strawberry was entirely correct. Probation and parole violators frequently get no-bail warrants. One public defender described parole as A most vicious cycle. You’re entitled to a hearing before a parole officer, but you’re not entitled to a judge or a lawyer. “I know guys who can’t get off parole for fifteen years,” he insisted. “They just go back and back. You can get charged with violation just for not reporting to your parole officer one time, and then back you go to jail.”

*Gonzalez, reading this over: “Actually, that’s not the worst scenario. The DA could dismiss the case and then refile the same day, which would double the time to six months. I’ve seen that happen.” According to Mr. Daro Inouye in the same office, the average length of detention between felony arrest and sentencing in San Francisco is more than four months.

†Isaiah 19.4.

*Here is Locher’s rather politic answer to the same question: “The bail bondsmen in general perform a service, and it’s a service that’s established by law and actually recognized by the Constitution. Like any profession, there are some people in that profession who don’t meet the highest standards. There are others who do.”

*When I asked the bail commissioner about this, he remarked: “I don’t know of that ninety-four percent how many were O.R.’d before and were O.R. failures.” As for the D.A. man, Locher, when I raised Inouye’s statistic with him he was silent for a moment, then said: “It’s difficult for me to assess that. I don’t believe that that reflects the experience here in Sacramento. But look. To the extent that there is always going to have to be a certain class of criminal defendants who are unable to make bail, they are more likely to be the public defender’s clients. The others are more likely to get bail. In that sense, the system would be working.” —This conclusion amazed me not a little.

†Locher agreed with these statistics, but disagreed with Adair’s imputation that all but 342 of the 95,000 bench warrants were for O.R.s. In fact, he said, most of them were not for O.R.s. And Gonzalez remarked: “Outstanding bench warrants stay in the system for something like seven years. The system has a lot of bench warrants looking for deceased persons, or persons travelling out of their home state who do things they wouldn’t do at home, or multiple warrants for the same persons. Maybe one guy has ten failures to appear.”

*In 1998 a “basic flatback” from a San Francisco street-whore cost about fifty dollars. Back in the days when misdemeanors still required bail, it would have been around twenty-five or thirty.

*Gonzalez said: “Man, the number of times public defenders have heard the client saying, I don’t want to fight the case! One guy who’d been charged of assaulting his girlfriend, I remember him telling me: I don’t got time. Even if she’s been convicted of assaulting me in another county. I just wanna get out of here.”