Chapter 5
Some say the Tenderloin is getting gentrified since the 2004 city initiative to clean things up began. It’s true that there’s been nibbling around the edges. PD has more presence, at least between daybreak and midnight. Enterprising restaurants can rent cheap on the corner of a street the average tourist wouldn’t want to walk down, night or day. Maybe that adds to the charm: the whiff of slum, the scent of danger just a stone’s throw away. As long as the establishment is willing to pay for round-the-clock security and the patrons don’t mind getting the stink eye from the crackheads and pregnant junkies and prostitutes – often one and the same – they can make a go of it. Some served absolutely top-notch food.
Me, I’m a bit bolder than the next girl. These may not be my home waters but I can handle all but the biggest of the sharks. The trick is to always seem too much trouble to mess with.
Though all the chic places had closed, a meal was still my rumbling stomach’s first priority. Tonight’s nirvana was an all-night Mexican place near Fifth and Ellis called Boca Grande’s, which served up fantastic California-style crispy tacos.
Something you have to taste to believe, crispy tacos are made by stuffing a large corn tortilla with filling, traditionally barbacoa – shredded beef – clamping it closed and then dropping it into a lard-filled deep fryer. Brought out piping hot and crunchy, the clamp is then removed and they’re finished off with cheese, shredded lettuce, salsa and anything else your heart desires. Heaven in your hand.
After I dropped Bill off, coming up on eleven thirty p.m. the crowd was still fairly respectable with the inevitable security guard keeping the worst of the transients away. Not all of them, of course; those that could pay and didn’t smell too bad or cause trouble got a hot cheap meal and a seat on a hard plastic bench for as long as they could nurse a soda.
When I got in line I felt a hand on my ass. Turning cat-quick, I grabbed the shirt front of the offender – or tried to. What I ended up with was a handful of silver chains cascading within cleavage between mounds to rival Moro Rock, all framed in a black leather biker vest. I shoved the big smirking mulleted bull dyke back with, I had to admit, a touch of envy. Okay, maybe I shoved myself back more than I did her, but my message was clear, I hoped.
“Problem, ladies?” the hulking young security guard said from behind the groper. His nametag read TYRELL.
“Not unless this bitch tries to feel me up again,” I replied, releasing the chains with a flick of my short-nailed fingers. I was glad he’d been on the ball. My next move would have been to rake my heel down her shin and stomp her foot. As she sported more muscle than a lot of men I knew, I sure couldn’t hold my own in a close-quarters wrestling match.
Welcome to the Tenderloin.
“Back up a bit, please, miss,” the guard said to my opponent, and after a look of pure poison she did.
“Here or to go?” I heard from behind me, and realized I was now first in line.
“Combo number one, for here,” I replied, turning my back on the two behind me to pay. Afterward, I nodded to the guard, ignored the bitch and waited off to the side. Three minutes later I’d collected my styrofoam plate and sat down to eat next to a group of slumming college kids.
When I started on my second taco, the guard came over to me. Amused eyes lit up his dark face, highlighting even white teeth. “Don’t let that bother you,” he opened.
“I don’t.” I wasn’t giving him any rope, not tonight. Cute, but not my type.
“Yeah, you handled yourself all right.”
Yet, as long as he was here…I crooked my finger, motioning him to lean over. With the chaos and buzz of conversation all around, that was all the privacy I needed. “Hey, you been doing this for a while?”
“Over a year. I work for a service, though. Not always this joint.”
“Then you might hear things.”
“Maybe.” His face clouded a trifle.
“Hear about a big shipment of new high-grade pills hitting the street anytime soon?”
Eyes narrowing further, he shook his head. “You a cop?”
“Not anymore. P.I.” I slid my money clip out of my front pocket, peeled off a twenty. “Got anything for me?”
“I don’t need your money,” he said.
“But I need your tip if you got one, Tyrell, and everyone needs cash. No offense, but they can’t be paying you much over minimum.”
Tyrell licked his lips. “Okay. Yeah, I got something. I play college ball,” he said, flexing a bit, “and I heard guys talking about some good juice that’s going to hit this week.”
“Steroids.”
“I don’t use. Shrivels your dick.”
“Doesn’t seem to bother her,” I said, pointing with my chin at my handsy lesbian fan glowering at us from across the room.
Tyrell laughed in my ear, a little closer and huskier than necessary. “You a trip, girlfriend.”
I patted his cheek. “Thanks, bro, but I’m busy tonight. And why aren’t you hitting on some younger hotties?”
“I like a woman who stands up for herself. Besides, I never been wid’ a Asian.”
Hoo, boy. That was the way to make a girl feel special for sure: tell her the conquest checks a block on your bucket list. I held back my eyeroll with difficulty. “Thanks.”
A folded piece of paper appeared between his fingertips. He set it down next to my plate. “Call me when you got a night off,” he said, winking and standing up, all brash confidence. “I work six to two, mostly.”
I picked up the paper and slid it into my blazer pocket with a cock of my head. “I might.” I wouldn’t, but there was no point to stomping on his ego, and for a P.I., a source was a source. “Oh, do me a favor, would you? That’s my Subaru parked on the corner. Keep an eye on it for me until your shift ends, will you?”
“Sure thing, gorgeous.” Tyrell turned to deal with an obvious crackhead sliding in the door, making sure the guy had money and kept his cool.
After finishing my meal and nodding to Tyrell on the way out, I hustled down the steps and into the street, angling deeper into the Tenderloin. Within half a block the streetlights above had gone dark and the junkies began inspecting me much like I’d eyed my tacos. Wisps of light fog blew cold, faint ghosts to match the denizens of the night.
Instead of using either sidewalk, broken with root heaves from the sickly trees growing from their niches, I walked in the street, between the parked cars and traffic. That provided more visibility and distance from the lurkers in the doorways and the groups of young men hanging out and doing business.
The working girls didn’t give me a second glance, nor did their pimps skulking in their tricked-out rides. I obviously wasn’t competition, not dressed as I was. Hopefully my purposeful stride and no-nonsense demeanor would keep trouble at bay long enough for me to reach my destination.
Several blocks and corners later my hopes were dashed. In the dimly lit street, the gloom broken only by the flickering neon signs of a seriously run-down bar, two men drifted into the street in front of me.
Immediately I made a hard right turn and hustled between two parked cars, glancing back the way I came to see two more closing the trap behind me.
Had I still been a cop I’d have shown my badge and weapon, trusting to the double threat of immediate force and the weight of PD retribution to back them off. I could have tried it anyway, using my P.I. badge and a false claim, but if that didn’t work, bullets would be my only remaining response. Instead, I hurried down the steps into a half-belowground after-hours joint and pushed open the scarred steel door.
Inside, the clientele and bartender stared at me as if I’d stepped off a flying saucer. With my business casual attire and mixed-Asian racial type, I didn’t fit in among the mostly dark faces. Those few lighter types still matched the social group, looking as if life had dumped them over the side too many times to count, leaving them broken and washed up here like bloated and gasping fish.
“Got a back d
oor?” I said to the ancient barman as I hurried past the onlookers before they could react further.
He pointed silently and I followed his finger past a stinking toilet to a portal with an Alarm Will Sound bar across it.
Ignoring the warning, I shoved the heavy door open, my rubber-soled boots making an unpleasant ripping sound on the sticky floor. No alarm sounded after all. Up the stairs to street level with my hand on my weapon, I debouched into a dark alley and immediately turned left, which would, I hoped, allow me to continue toward my destination while circumventing the bandits.
A rustle and groan from a nearby dumpster brought my Glock out of its holder and into a two-handed grip, but the bleak soul who leered a meth-rotted smile at me from within presented no threat. Trotting down the alley with the weapon held low, I glanced over my shoulder to see dark figures burst out of the door behind me.
Damn. I’d hoped they were just muggers, though four working together would be unusual. No, these guys seemed to be after me specifically. I was no runner, though. My workouts consisted of yoga, light weights and judo several times a week.
Fortunately, as a P.I. and private citizen I had an option I’d never have exercised as a cop: a warning shot.
To cops, warning shots are pure bullshit. If you’re under direct threat, you shoot to take the bad guy down and if he dies, he dies. If not, discharging your weapon will only bring a pain-in-the-ass investigation that will put you on a desk for weeks or months before it clears.
In this case, in this neighborhood, keeping my five quarts on the inside outweighed the slight risk of getting caught to face a reckless discharge felony.
Besides, were my pursuers going to call the cops? Not likely.
Aiming low, I put a shot into the ground halfway between them and me. “Back off, scumbags. The lead man gets the next one in the face,” I snarled.
They stopped, but didn’t run right away, another sign they weren’t ordinary lowlifes. “Not kidding,” I said, shifting my weapon.
They backed off, reluctance in their body language. “C’mon,” I heard one say, and then four figures sprinted for the other end of the alley, visible momentarily within the backlighting as they disappeared into the mist.
Using my mini-light, I located the shell casing and pocketed it after holstering my weapon. Odds were nobody would even report the shot, much less find the ricochet, but the fewer bits of evidence lying around the better. I trotted down the alley, slowing to a determined walk when I reached the street. Checking my watch, I saw it read quarter to midnight.
As I strode I considered what Tyrell had said. I hadn’t thought about the underground sports market until then, but high-grade steroids could bring a mint. If I couldn’t wrap this thing up soon I might have to get Tyrell to cough up the name of his supplier and interview him – and so on up the chain. Maybe the security guard could be persuaded to back me up in my inquiries. If not, I had a couple of freelance bounty hunter friends that didn’t mind taking my money to crack a few deserving lowlifes’ knees.
The sharks kept their distance for the moment, and three blocks later I slipped into Vyazma, another dive on the outside not so different from the one I’d dashed through. This time, though, the familiar clientele was relaxed, no more wary than usual, sparse on a Monday night.
Sergei nodded at me from behind the bar, and a couple of acquaintances lifted hands when I entered. The tapman had a frigid MGD already opened when I stepped up to the rail, and I took an appreciative pull, dropping a bill onto the counter. That vanished with a swipe of a towel as if by magic, at least thirty years practice behind the move. “Za vas,” he said.
“Thanks. Game going yet?” I turned to lean an elbow on polished wood as I surveyed the joint. As I was here, I might as well play a few hands. Just to keep in practice, you understand. Besides, Sergei wouldn’t appreciate me hitting him up for info only to bolt out the door. He had an old-school attitude about relationships and respect.
“Da. Two tables. Seat should be open.” Sergei’s English was nearly perfect, but he stubbornly refused to use even the simplest articles such as “a” and “an” unless forced and like most Russians I knew he couldn’t resist dropping bits of his mother tongue into every conversation.
“Spasibo.” I lowered my voice and rotated back to him, hunching my shoulders. “Sergei, you heard anything about some high-grade pharmaceuticals arriving in the next few days?”
“Da.”
“Any word on the supplier?”
“Don’t put me on the spot, solntse. I don’t want you get hurt.” Sergei had called me sunshine in Russian as long as I can remember, since I was a child…back when my father was alive. The two men had been close.
“I’ll make it worth your while. I can play a few rounds.” The offer was pro forma.
“With you, Cal, there is no few rounds.” Sergei held out his hand, palm up. “Guns.”
With good grace I handed over my Glock and the holdout .38 from my ankle. Once he’d secured them below the bar – he had an arsenal down there most days – I turned to walk my beer through the pub area to a door in the back. The man-mountain named Rostislav moved aside, turning the knob and pushing the steel slab open. They knew me well here.
No few rounds indeed, I thought. I could walk away any time I wanted. Snap, like that.
As Sergei had said, two of the four poker tables were running, a 1-4 limit seven-card stud and the usual 2-5 no-limit Texas Hold’em. Each had a seat or two empty.
Being Monday night, these were small games with barely a few grand on the felt all told. This operation was off the books, technically illegal, but with the old regulated card rooms and new tribal casinos in California, it was hardly worth Vice’s time to bust it or others like it as long as they kept their noses otherwise clean. When I was on the force I’d driven at least half an hour out of the city to find a legal place to play, but now that I’d become a civilian doing that seemed damned inconvenient when a nice friendly table waited for me within blocks. Of course, I usually arrived during daylight and left the following morning.
My heart rate climbed and my mind seemed to expand as concentrations of positive stress hormones flooded my brain and nervous system. Even if the mind said no, the brain said yes yes yes. If they had this high in a pill I knew I’d pop it regularly. As they didn’t, I just had to admit that nothing beat pitting myself against a table full of decent players and winning.
Because I was way better than decent.
Some people think poker is gambling. That’s true only if you aren’t more skilled than most of the table. Sure, there’s luck involved, but just like market trading and venture capitalism, if you’re an expert and your opponents aren’t, the odds will eventually put money in your pocket. In fact, you can even swim with the sharks and come out ahead if you stay out of serious confrontations with them and everybody takes their bites of the fish.
Fish are what we call the guaranteed losers on the felt, the ones without a deep understanding of the game, the ones who often don’t even realize how badly they are outclassed, the ones who do believe it’s all about luck. These are why people like me are here, night after night, waiting for their pounds of flesh.
For a wise working rounder, a steadfast player-of-the-odds or grinder, it’s about doing eight to twelve hours and coming out ahead, night after night, four to six nights a week. It might be fifty bucks a session or five hundred, occasionally more, but it pays the bills.
Me, I could never be a grinder. I’m a player. I lose more often, but I win more money. This is just my style. I don’t have the patience for the grind. If I play every night, I’ll start dropping too much, and then chasing my losses in a fog of judgment-sapping adrenaline poisoning.
I know. I used to do it.
I did it the night before the bomb.
Fortunately, it hadn’t affected me that day. Being a bit less fried and a little sharper wouldn’t have done a damn thing to change the outcome of the situation, I was sure.
r /> Pretty sure.
The tables sang their siren songs to me as they always did, but this time I had the case to fend them off. Talia’s picture hung in my mind’s eye.
Looking around, I spotted a guy I’d played with now and then, a big redhead with his beard and long hair unkempt, a cheerful maniac at the table in a faux retro Zeppelin t-shirt and black roadie jeans. I’d seen him snorting before – maybe cocaine, maybe speed, so he seemed like my best bet for a further tipoff. I didn’t know his name, but in the manner of poker aficionados everywhere we exchanged cordial nods.
“Not playing tonight?” he asked.
“Not tonight.”
“You need a few bills I could front you.”
“Thanks, no. But maybe I can buy you a drink.”
The redhead looked at his cards and tossed them into the muck with a grimace. “I’m out,” he said to the dealer before collecting his chips and standing up.
After he cashed out I led him out of the back room, my barely touched beer in my hand. He ordered a double Jack and Coke from the bar. When Sergei had set it up, we slid into a dim booth across the room.
Red lit a cigarette. “What you want, girlfriend?”
“Ain’t your girlfriend, hair boy.”
“You don’t like it?” He ran both hands through his ginger locks and slipped a rubber band around the mass, forming a ponytail.
I shrugged. “Not to my taste, I guess.”
“Look, you asked me over here. You must be interested.”
“Not in hooking up. I just want some info.”
“What kind of info?” He took a swallow of his drink.
“What do I call you, anyway?”
“Red works.”
“I’m Cal.”
Red licked his lips. “Nice to meet you, Cal. I got some high-quality blow back at my place. Pure. Uncut.”
I shook my head. “Listen, powder ain’t my thing, but you know where I can get some high-quality uppers? The real shit only, nothing street.”
“Maybe. Not tonight, though. Couple days for sure. How much?”
“Whatever five bills will get.”
“Yeah, I can hold that much. Pass them to you cheap.” He leered, probably figuring he’d take his profit out in trade.
I reached for my cell. “Give me your digits.”
Red recited a local number, which I punched in and saved. I sent him a quick text. “There. You got mine. Ping me when you have something.”
“Sure, girlfriend,” he said as he leered again.
“Not gonna happen.”
Red shrugged and smiled, clearly not put off. “Why not? We’re the same, you and me. We both live for the game. I can tell.” He reached across and took my hand in a strong grip.
Using a simple judo move, I disengaged my arm and shook it to let the sleeve of my blazer fall into place. “Touch me again and –”
“And what?” Red asked with that maniac’s grin.
“And I’ll have you barred from this club. The owner’s an old friend of mine.”
That threat stopped him more effectively than violence, as I knew it would. “Okay, okay,” he said, lifting his palms to me. “Sorry. Jus’ tryin’ to be friendly.”
I forced myself to match his leer. “I could be friendly too if you get me what I want.”
“I said I would.”
“I want more than that. I want you to introduce me to your connection. Cut out the middleman.”
“Cut me out, you mean. Why would I do that?”
“I don’t sleep with people I do business with, so if you got any interest in hooking up it has to be on my terms.”
“You’re playing me,” he said flatly.
“What do you have to lose?”
“I don’t have the time to get jerked around. I got women whenever I want.” He snapped his fingers.
“Junkies that will do anything for a fix, you mean. If that was all you wanted you wouldn’t be hitting on me now.”
Red grinned. “I like smart girls. You ever think about partnering up?”
I knew he was referring to poker, not sex. Two players working together could collude to swing the odds in their favor, though it was hard to do subtly enough to get away with it. “That’s not me. Anyway…the introduction?”
Polishing off his drink and looking into the distance as if thinking, he eventually said, “Okay. Why not? Let’s go.”
“Good.” I stood and slipped out of the booth, holding up a hand. “Give me a minute.”
Red nodded and watched as I walked across to Sergei.
“How’d you do, solntse?” he asked.
“I didn’t play.”
Sergei smiled. “Good.” He left his concern at that flat syllable, but I knew he cared. He always nagged me when he thought I played too much.
“What I need is that info. Give me a name.”
“Not good idea, Cal.”
I leaned in. “Listen, Sergei, you know I can take care of myself. There’s a ten-year-old girl out there duct-taped to a chair and I promised her mother I’d find her. The people involved with this shipment have her. You’re a father. How would you feel in her position? How would you feel if it was me?” I gripped the bar and dropped my voice to a whisper. “That name takes me one step closer. Please, dyadya Sergei, tell me.” Calling him uncle always sweetened him up.
Sergei’s black eyes, dark pits set within deep sockets surrounded by prune skin, stared into my own as if searching for a way to avoid answering. Finally, he spoke. “All right, Cal. I tell you. And I tell your mother if you don’t come home tonight. The name is Houdini.”
“Houdini? Is that a joke?”
“No joke, and you heard nothing from old Sergei.”
I patted him on the cheek. “Not so old. You still have a heart.”
“In box, locked in my safe.” He caught my hand, kissed it and winked. I’d always be a little girl to him. Maybe that was why I could usually get what I wanted.
“So, where do I find this Houdini?”
Sergei backed away to begin wiping the spotless bar again, eyes downcast. “Ask your other uncles. I tell you nothing more.”
I sighed with frustration, but I couldn’t blame him. Fingering a powerful drug lord could get him killed. “Thanks anyway. Listen, you know this guy?” I hooked a thumb over my shoulder at Red.
“Da. He’s not right for you.”
“I’m not looking to sleep with him, just get some information. How careful should I be?”
Sergei shrugged. “No more than usual. He’s not violent and I know where he lives.”
“Good enough.”
“You want muscle?”
“No, thanks. Your guys are too big and conspicuous. But do me a favor. Ask your people about anyone holding a child.”
“No problem, solntse.”
“Guns,” I said, holding out my hands. He reached under the bar without looking, bringing them up and carefully placing them on the polished surface.
I secured them in their holsters. “See you, Sergei.”
“Das vedanya, Cal.”