chapter 11 ET TU BRUTE?

Monday, everything stopped.  I woke up that morning to silence.  No screaming crack heads no blaring horns, just normal everyday traffic. 

I go out for my morning coffee.  The cars are gone, Queeny and her court have retuned to their usual corner by the alley in front of the Christian sceince church.  They watched, silent and weary, as I crossed the street to paradise doughnuts.

I returned home and read my newspaper in the blissful quiet.  The day continued quiet.  I took advantage of the respite to sleep most of the day.

Tuesday, the odd quiet continues.  It’s like that eerie calm center of the hurricane.  Well while the calm lasted I decided to make a quick shopping trip.  I was out of tea and I needed some more raid and cleaning supplies, ohh and more glue mustn’t forget the glue.

Before I head out I take a large heavy pane of glass that used to be a table top (I had kept it in the back of my closet as a might be useful someday object.  I had at the time been thinking of using it to make some shelves).  I used the pane of glass and some monofilament fishing line to rig a dead fall trap over my door.  Just in case the lock picks in the group had gained any skill.  My door was set off from the main room of the apartment, a little alcove that I had tacked a blanket over the door way of.  The door was there for the one place in the apartment where the cameras were blind.  Once the trap was set, open the door the wrong way and somebody has an unpleasant surprise.

I return from my quick run for supplies to find a new tenant moving into the building.  I met him as I was waiting for the elevator.  He was about six foot, pale skinned dark brown hair in an expensive hair cut, designer glasses and very nice shoes.

“Hi.” He said, friendly like.  “I’m just moving into apartment 501.”  He extended his hand.

He had soft hands.  Everything about him screamed ‘computer geek chic.’  The building wasn’t even wired for cable and people wearing a least a thousand dollars worth of clothing from his designer glasses to his envy me shoes, they don’t live in the slums, not even in San Francisco.

“Welcome to the neighborhood.” I said.

“Nice to meet you.  If I’ too noisy or anything just let me know.” He said.

“Oh don’t worry, if I’m not happy, you’ll know.” I said.

He laughs

They always laugh.

I head upstairs, carefully unhooking the booby trap before I enter.  I put away my ‘groceries’ and set on my little bed thinking.  Was it over?  Had they decided on a live and let live policy?  Nothing about their behavior over the past few weeks had lead me to think them capable of such reasonable behavior.  But as things were quiet I might as well enjoy it.  I caught up on my sleep.

Thursday, I go out for my morning coffee.  It is one of the oddities of inner city living that people are quite capable of ignoring anything.  So the coffee shop people I meet and greet each day,  the shop owner and his many brothers, Alan puttering around fixing the coffee the old men who gather around the coffee pot each morning as if sharing communion, I smile, they smile, we exchange ritual morning greetings. ‘Long time no see’ good morning, going to be a beautiful day.  We keep a careful distance.  I never talk about what is going on, they never ask.  I have never talked about what is going on because by doing so I would be either a. Exposing myself to the risk of talking to some one involved in this whole hallaballo  and nothing good would come of that or b. I would be involving some innocent shumck who just came in for his morning coffee in something that could get him killed.  And that is just not a nice thing to do to anyone.  

Cops, I suppose people may wonder why I wasn’t yammering for the cops.

I gave up believing in officer friendly before I gave up believing in Santa Clause.  (Actually in the matter of Santa Clause the jury is still out).

When I was nine I was in a car accident.  It was a beautiful summer day and I was out on a shopping trip with my grandmother.  My grandmother waited for the light.  My grandmother checked both ways.  My grandmother pulled out of the shopping center parking lot and we got broadsided by a cop going ninety miles an hour.  The cop had been chasing a speeder.  The cop had been running neither lights nor siren.  The speeder managed to get away without crashing into anyone.

My grandmother was thrown from the car and left most of her knee on the road.  I go off light with an ugly scar of stitches running down my leg. 

The cop got off without so much as a black eye, which just seemed unfair as all get out to me.  What really got me steamed was that the cop never stopped by to say sorry.  Didn’t even send a dime store Hallmark.  Not that Hallmark makes ‘Sorry I squished your Grandmother’ cards but still it’s the thought that counts.

This was the first time I ever met a cop and it left a life long distrust for the uniform.  But I do always use my seatbelt. 

When I was twenty I was raped.  The cops wired me up to a polygraph and enquired about the state of my virginity and what sort of kinky sex I was into.  At least the rapist never asked if I got off on having the crap beat out of me.

One day, my husband (at that time I was still reasonably happy to be married) and I are driving home when we are pulled over by two cop cars.  Four cops, guns drawn screaming at us to “Hands up, Exit Car, Don’t Make any Sudden Moves, On Your Knees.”  (four screaming men with guns, this could end badly)

Just then the real kidnaper drives by a woman sticks her head out the window as the car speeds by and screams for the cops to help her.

I worked for a short time in a hotel where the owner of the hotel let cops have free use of the rooms for an hours time in exchange for the cops ignoring his taste for chicken.

One day  (I wasn’t living in San Francisco at this time) I bought a light bulb.  Just that, a light bulb for my kitchen.  I get home, put in the new light bulb and there is a loud rude knock on my door.  I open my door and what do I find?  Six cops, three cop cars lights all aflashing in my driveway.  They accuse me of stealing a ratchet set from the hardware store where I had bought the light bulb. 

They demand to see my receipt for the light bulb.  Now it occurs to me that I had paid for the light bulb with a credit card which is of course how they got my address.  Still they want to see the receipt ok fine.

First thing I had done when I got home, even before changing the light bulb was, clean the cat box using the bag from the hardware store.  I hand them the bag.

“It’s in there officer.”  Yeh ok that was a bit mean but it made me feel good for the first time in my life to be able to give the police shit.                

The police accuse me of using the ratchet set to change the light bulb.

“Excuse me?  What sort of men are you that would use a ratchet set to change a light bulb?”

The owner of the store who I guess came along for the ride, peeps up.  He tells the cops it wasn’t me that took the ratchet set.  It’s on tape, me., the light bulb, my complete lack of ratchet setness.  Still the cops tell me to just confess.  Tell us you did it or we’ll be back with a summons

How many cops does it take to change a light bulb?

Six.

Honestly there is a point where you can’t help but take it all kinda personal.

Cynic that I am, I want to believe.  I think that’s what Fox Mulder says about UFO’s .  I want to believe

I want to believe in Matt Dillion and Aadam 12, I want to believe in.  Starsky and Hutch, I want to believe in ‘The Good Guys’.  If wishes were fishes my what fine fat fellows we would be, as my grandmother would say.

According to statistics kept by the FBI, San Franciso has the most corrupt and or incompetent police force in the entire country, with the lowest arrest and conviction rates for violent crimes like murder and rape, of any police force in any major metropolitan city in the entire country.  Congratulations San Fran your number one, a hard fought battle, I didn’t think it possible to beat out New Orleans.

Not long after I moved into my apartment the politicians were suddenly shocked to discover that there was crime in the city.  There was lots of chest thumping morality and the obligatory confessions of perhaps less the perfect actions though of course never less then angelic intentions.  The practical upshot was that the street walkers were cleared off O’Farrell street.  Since that time my neighborhood has had beat cops patrolling the street on a pretty regular basis. 

I haven’t seen a beat cop on the street since the murder rave started under my window.  Its possible they have been there but I haven’t seen them.  I don’t spend much time looking out my windows.  The view never changes. 

If the cops are walking the beat and they don’t see a mob of crack heads screaming bloody murder, hour after hour day after day, well then I guess they aren’t going to be smart enough to be of any help.

 If the cops aren’t there, why?  Have the cops been deliberately shifted away?  Then again Einstein was wrong, God does play dice with the universe, all the time.  The cops not being around could all be just chance.

/Bottom line,  I don’t feel that involving the police will in any way be helpful.

“Long time no see “ Hussein says.

“Long time no see and good morning.”  I answer.

Allen is there, this morning he is being extra special friendly, his Irish bard/humbug persona.

He, from time to time, has worked as an extra in movies shot in San Francisco.  He is most proud of his role as one of the pirates in hell in that Robin Williams film ‘What dreams may come.”

 He comments on how nice it’s been the past few days. “ Much calmer” He says.

This is the first time he has even obliquely mentioned ‘the troubles’.

“Well yes it’s been nice.  But it’s going to take more than a couple of sunny days before I step down the threat level.”

He wants me to go with him to Tiboron on a picnic.

(Picnic?  People have been trying to kill me for the past few weeks and he wants to go on a picnic?  There are times you have to wonder about men you really do.)

He was at his most,’ trying to charm the lass from the improve class,’ best. 

“It’s going to take more than a couple of quiet days before I go wandering out anywhere.”  I tried to beg off.  “I seriously have to do some grocery shopping and laundry?  A weeks worth of doing nothing but laundry before I even begin to get that mountain chipped away.”  People trying to kill me verses the desire for clean sheets, weigh it.  My laundry hamper over flowed.  “If I’m going anywhere it’s to the laundry mat.”

He kept insisting, extolling the beauties of Tiberon.  It would be good for me to get out.  He wouldn’t let it go.  Finally I relented.

“If it’s still quite by Thursday, I’ll consider it.”  He took it as a promise that I would go and looked as pleased as a puppy that had just been given his favorite wooly ball.

Later that day, I lay on my bed in the blessed quiet.  Just the soothing sounds of city traffic.  Laying there in the warm afternoon drinking in the peace.

My new upstairs neighbor is pacing the floor above my head.  His cell phone rings.

Unintended consequences,   ever since they had installed the mics and camera’s, sound from the upstairs apartment had  become easy to hear.  Like listening to voices in another room with the door ajar.

“Yeh.” He said.

“Ok, Tiburone, Thursday. Got it.”

He wasn’t the only one who ‘got it’.

chapter 10 How to annoy people

I woke at 5am and threw on my torn jeans clean enough t shirt and my doc martins and skipped out the door.  I gave a cheerful wave to my dedicated fan club and went across the street for my coffee, doughnut newspaper and cigs.

You might think that I was taking quite a risk in so exposing myself each day, not owning a bullet proof vest and all.  But my building was basically right across from the Hilton hotel and next door to the Hotel California, statistically people almost never get shot near major hotels.  Sombody gets shot right in front of major tourist centers, next thing you know the press is there, then calls for the politicos to do something about the rampant crime in the city.  Then the cops hit the streets with a vengeance.  Its bad for business.  So my going out each morning wasn’t as risky as it seemed and it gave me a chance to smile and wave.  And I want my coffee and cigs, no bunch of addlepatted gang bangers are keeping me from my coffee and cigs.

I get my morning supplies and skip back across the street giving a cheerful wave to one and all.

Back home I sit sipping my coffee smoking my morning camel reading the paper.  The news, a lesbian lacrosse coach was eaten by her neo Nazi neighbors dogs.  I do love this city.

I finish my coffee and stand stretching.  I feel a little tingle of pleasure down my spine.  It’s not often you have complete license to annoy people.  They had spent some weeks annoying the shit out of me and now,, it was my turn.

I put on my cd of rock music.  That is every sound on the cd is rocks, banging rocks, rolling rocks, rocks scraping, falling dropping rocks,.  You see why I just had to have it, an honest to god rock album.

I pull a book off my groaning book shelves put on my glasses, poured a glass of ice tea and sat down in my golden wicker chair.

“Have you ever read the Illiad?”

On and on I went in a dull droning cadence that would have made any dusty college professor proud.  Every once in a while I would change the music to the squirrel maddening cd.

By the second hour of my reading, they were complaining more about my choice of reading material,  then they were my music.  Apparently gang bangers, crack heads and mobster hit men wanta be’s hate the classics.

I took a break from my reading to watch a series of John Cless sketches called how to annoy people.  I took notes.

While I was relaxing on my bed I used a long bamboo pole to tap on the ceiling, right about where I figured they had installed the microphone.  Tap, tap, tap, tap.  Before the first hour of that they were screaming for me to stop.

By the end of the second day I was really starting to enjoy myself.

The dremile, a tool of a thousand and one uses.  I used mine to drill onto the brick wall near the location of their mics.  ARRRRRRGGGGGGG. 

Lovely.

A week passed, each morning I went out for my coffee and cigs.  Each morning I smiled and waved at my demented fan club.  I sent each day in a series of creative annoyances.

I finished reading the Iliad and moved on to Plato.   I played my cd of Japanese classical flute, it’s rather like listening to three cats involved in an orgy.  I introduced them to my cd of Liposuction set to a dance track  (not kidding).  Himalayan throat singers, Norwegian yodelers.  I of course do have a cd of bagpipes, a musical instrument that was created to be a weapon of war.

Sunday afternoon, men are in the down stairs apartment using power tools.  They seem to be cutting, drilling into the ceiling of the apartment, under my floor.

Well what ever their doing I’m sure it’s not installing cable.

I consider the problem.  I think of medieval castles and sieges.  Defenders of castles used molten lead to discourage unwanted visitors .  I didn’t have any molten lead, but one good thing about my apartment was the tubs never ending supply of scalding hot water.

I take my largest stock pot and fill it with hot hot water and set it on the stove to boil.  When it’s all nice and hot I add some bleach and glue and ohh why not some red paint?  I carry the pot to a set of pipes that run straight down to the apartment below.  I sigh, this is going to ruin my carpet.  Ahh well, never did like the beige wall to wall carpet.  I begin pouring the water.

An idea strikes me.  I rummage around under my kitchen sink.  A spray can of super glue, great stuff.  I take up my garbage bag and head out the door.  I drop the garbage down the garbage shoot on my way down stairs.  In my stocking feet I tip toe to the door of the down stairs apartment.  I spray the glue over the peep hole of the door and then into the door lock and around the handle of the door,  Whistling a merry little tune I skip back upstairs.

I return to filling my stock pot with scalding water and various cleaning supplies.  The third pot of water I poured down the apartment below the shouting begins.

I pick up my can of raid and spray it into the gaps in the floor where the pipes lead down. 

The men down stairs are shouting and coughing, loudly.

They head for the door.

Ooops.  The door is quite detrimentally glued shut. 

I spray more raid.  I pour more of my scalding pots of witches brew.

Shouting and coughing they thow open the windows.

“Who the Fuck is this Bitch?  Rambo’s sister?”

(no man, just a pissed off whore with a can of super glue)

It was a busy afternoon.  In the end they got what ever it was installed in the space between the ceiling of the apartment down stairs and my floor.

A locksmith is called to free the men down stairs.  Somebody thought is was funny.

I rest on my bed my feet off the now sodden carpet.

I hear something moving under my floor and laughter coming from upstairs.

chapter 9 And the west wind blew; Or; Well for heavens sake why didn’t you just ask?

I sat cross legged on the floor, my coat in my lap, needle and thread in my hand. Letting my mind wander as I sewed beads onto the coat.  Yellow bead, yellow bead, yellow bead, white bead.

“That bitch is worth fifty thousand dollars.”  At the time I had dismissed the words as foolish piffle, but now I felt it time to reevaluate that premise.  The siege had been going on for so long now and the addition of the cameras and listening devices, this was no small matter.  There was defiantly money involved here and organization.  Fifty thousand.

I thought briefly that I was trapped in one of those sadistic reality shows.  I can see the little marketing geek jumping all over an idea like this.

“You see chief we just pick some schmuck at random out of the phone book and pay a bunch of wanna be Soprano’s bit actors to try and kill the target.  I tell ya chief the ratings will go through the roof.

I rejected the idea only because admitted whores only get to show up in reality TV in Cops.

Yellow bead, yellow bead, I let my fingers do their work and let my mind wander.

I rummage through my mental file cabinet pulling out the files marked odd.  Looking for a pattern in the puzzle.  When exactly did everything go so horribly horribly wrong?  What impossibly improbable sequence of events has resulted in this bizarre moment in my life?

Odd file; A few months before all heck broke lose the San Francisco Bay Guardian a free weekly newspaper in town had a long article about gang involvement with massage parlors in the city.   Accompanying the article was a picture of my apartment window right next to the Empire Massage sign.

Odd file; Not long after one of my neighbors had a nasty death.  I came home late one rainy night to find the fire department, cops and emts all around my building.  Never a good thing.  One of my neighbors had apparently leapt to his death.  He was found on top of the buildings Garbage container inside the inner court of the building.  A broken doll lying atop discarded pizza boxes and shattered glass.  It was ruled a suicide.

There were a couple of things about his death that struck me as off at the time.  Mind you I didn’t go all Mrs. Marple over it, but still.  He didn’t leave a suicide note, well nothing odd about that, most suicides don’t bother with such nice detail.  Why that is so I can’t imagine, if one is going to stalk off and leave the party in such a dramatic way you would think you would put some thought into your exit lines.    What struck me as off was the manner and location of his death.

Jumping to your death.  Why jump off a five story tall building when we have a perfectly good bridge for that sort of thing?  Most suicides are solitary affairs, in our culture any way.  Like a wounded animal they crawl off into the solitary shadows to die.  Jumpers, however are the exception.  Jumpers are suicides with a flare for the dramatic and they want an audience for their big scene.  He didn’t ‘jump’ off the street side of the building where he would have been seen.  He ‘jumped’ to his death to the inner court of the building, a place always in the shadows, a place no one but the garbage man ever goes into.

The part that really struck me as off was the fact that he landed on top of the buildings garbage container.  The top of the garbage container was a good 12 or 15 foot off the ground.

All jumpers look down first.  Bungee jumpers, parachutists, suicides, they all look before they leap.  Why would a suicide leap from the building from the one spot least likely to be immediately fatal?  Jumpers think, SPLAT, lights out, they don’t think, ‘ writhing in agony atop a pile of rotting garbage yeh that’s the ticket. ‘

Odd file;  The empty building next door.  Emptiness, it’s not a quality you notice at first.  It is a growing sense of, wrongness, a sense of something, missing.  The two buildings were close together cheek to jowl, you can step from one roof top to the next with no disturbing daylight between your shoes.

I passed this building everyday and didn’t give it any thought, but over time  this sense of something missing begins nagging at me.

The building was empty, not abandoned, not ill kept, just empty.  It was empty when I moved into my apartment.  It was still empty.  San Francisco has some of the highest rents and lowest vacancy rates of any city in the world and here sits an empty apartment building in the center of the city.  Who leaves a cash cow unmilked?  For four years?

Halloween night a couple of months before my neighbor had his unfortunate encounter with gravity, he and some of his friends from the CIA (cook school not spy school) were having a party up on the roof.  A gathering of aspiring chiefs want to share their beer and brownies, sure I’m in.

Young men + beer= mischief. 

They wanted to go exploring.

The two buildings were cheek by jowl.

And wouldn’t you know the empty buildings roof top door was unlocked?

Abandoned is the element of things left behind.  Empty is a thing waiting to be filled.

The building was empty.  Every room was perfect, new carpet, shinny new sinks, no dust.  Four years at least four years empty, shinny sinks, no dust.  I left after a few minutes.  A haunted house I can handle but this was just creepy.

About a week after my neighbors death some workmen arrived to the empty building and took out all the brand new carpeting I had seen in those empty rooms, in big ragged rolls.

Odd file;  The cars now involved in my siege had arrived in the neighborhood right about the same time as the work men removed the carpeting next door.   Parking in the alley with their get smart codes of honking horns.

Bead by bead the pattern on my coat grew under my hands.  I moved the puzzle pieces around in my mind.

Odd file;  The succession of decidedly unusual short term tenants in the apartment above me.

Odd file;  The fact that so many of the apartments in my building were now vacant.  This in a time when any vacancy is filled before the ink on the paper advertising the fact dries.

Bead by bead the pattern on my coat grew under my hands.  I moved the puzzle pieces around in my mind.

Then snap the pieces fell into place and my stomach clenched around a fist of ice.  Like the moment when you see the mac truck barreling down at you going a hundred miles an hour and the only thought going through your head is: (“Shit, this is really going to suck.”)

And then I laughed.

Clutching my coat rocking with laughter.

It was drugs, of course, in a big way, and Boccie was in it, in it, right up to his sharks toothed grin.  The kicker, it wasn’t about me.  It was my apartment they were after.  Just like they say in real estate, Location, Location, Location.

The apartment above me the one below me and mine shared one thing, all three apartments were the ones that had windows facing out onto O’Farrell street and were the ones that inside the building faced the only stairwell and elevator in the building.  With those apartments, one would know everyone who entered or left the building.

I thought about the building next door, could that be where they are either storing and or manufacturing their drugs?  Distribute through the Massage Palor but keep the main supplies off sight.  If the cops searched the Massage pallor all they would find would be small quantities they could blame on the whores working the place.  

The fifty thousand wasn’t for my death so much as simply to scare me enough to move out of my apartment.  An old folk tale came to my mind.

The tale of the sun and the west wind.

Once upon a time in the misty days when the world was young the sun and the west wind got into a pissing match over which of them had more influence over the actions of men.

Just then quite coincidently a young man appears walking on the road below the arguing sun and west wind.  He is walking with the loose limbed carefree stride of a youth not quite totally misspent.  His long duster coat open and flapping free about his knees.

The sun proposes a contest.  Which ever of us can get the man below to remove his coat is the winner.  The wind accepted the challenge and took the first go.

The wind blew upon the young man, the man buttoned up his coat.  The wind blew harder, the man belted his coat.  The wind blew upon the man til the wind was quite purple with the effort.  The man gripped his coat tight in both hands and leaned into the stubborn wind.

Then the sun took his turn and he shone bright and warm down upon the man. 

I guess we all know who went to the celestial bar with bragging rights that night.

//

I don’t think Boccie read many fairy tales growing up.

I set aside the coat and went to the kitchen for some tea.  I sat myself comfortably into my gold leafed wicker chair and looked up at the ceiling.  Time to have a little talk.

“All righty then.” I began  “First off, Mr. Boccie, you’ve been a very bad landlord and I am decidedly not happy.”  I lift my teacup to the ceiling with a wry smile and continued.

“You are involved in the drug business.  The building next door the massage pallor, you, I don’t need to know all the details to see the picture.  All this noise and foolishness,” I gesture to the window.  “You all want my apartment.”

“First point, I do not care about your business.  Hell I like drugs.  If I had known a drup warehouse was right next door all I would have done was become a customer.  Would have been soo convenient.

“Second point, you want my apartment, well for heaven’s sake why didn’t you just ask?.  I mean really now I am not an unreasonable woman and I would think that my , , profession would tell you that I really no qualms over being bought off.  If you had come to me and simply offered me a different apartment at the same rent in another or your buildings and a bit of money for moving costs.  I would have gone, simple as that  No muss no fuss no questions.”

But nooo.. You all  decided to get all up in my grill.”

“While I have no trouble with you ‘little’ drug business.  I don’t like bullies. Mr. Boccie you have been a bad landlord and that is going to cost you.  You hired the nit wit gang to harass me, to frighten me into running away from My apartment.  That is just down right rude.”

“So here’s the deal.  You offered them fifty grand to get me out of my apartment.  As investments go I think you will have to admit that you really are not getting your monies worth.   In fact things have gone from bad to worse.  Your victim hasn’t run away and has now figured out a lot of things I am sure you would rather she had not.  So cut your losses.  Pay me the money you offered the nit wit gang and I will go.  No muss, no fuss, no questions.  I will turn my back on you, this apartment and even California.  All your problems here solved.”

“Now honestly I don’t expect you to do this.  I have found that once a person starts a foolish course of action their ego insists they keep going no matter how foolish.  Some part of you convinced that you can prove folly wise by dedication.”

“But I do like to give people a chance to make a better choice.  Consider  carefully, continue down a path that hasn’t worked and has in fact resulted in the exact opposite of your desires, or be reasonable and make a deal”

“Of course you think to your self that you have the men, the money, the guns, terrible to give into a mere woman, and a whore at that.  I’m sure you find that a bit galling.”

“Still, you think I’ve been an annoying pain in the ass so far?”

I smile around the lip of my tea cup.

“Well I’m going to bed.  You all think it over.”

I rinsed the cup ot in the sink and went to bed. Drifting off to sleep to a lullaby of death threats.

chapter 8 CURISIOUSIER AND CURIOUSIER SAID ALICE

Chapter 8

CURISIOUSIER AND CURIOUSIER SAID ALICE

I drank my coffee and read my newspaper in blessed peace.  For the first time in two weeks my irritating little fan club was silent.  The morning continued quiet so I thought it would be a good time to take a quick trip out to get supplies. 

I locked the deadbolt and the lock on the door handle as I was making out my mental shopping list.  Paint, some super glue, beads,  some cleaning supplies hmm and monofilament fishing line I think.

Twenty minutes to walk to Pearl art and craft store, twenty minutes back, five minutes to get what I needed, fifteen to wait for someone to man the cash register (Pearl hires art students so it takes awhile to get anything useful done).  I would be home in an hour.
  Typically when I leave the house I am gone for some hours, shopping, a bit of lunch, some afternoon bar hopping, so those seeing me leave will have the expectation that I will be gone for some time.
 I cant help but feel that this quiet is only a temporary reprieve.

 My trip out isn’t so much to replenish my supplies as to test to see if I’m perhaps over reacting to a bit of noise, or if there is something a tad more serious going on.  Give people a vulnerability an opening and see if anyone goes for it. It's a good way to test your enemy's intentions and capabilities.

I give Queeny’s  nervous court a jaunty wave and head out walking quickly.  Pearl art store is on Market street straight down Tyler street, I don’t see anyone following me, but unless someone were being like totally inspector Clouseau about it, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t notice if someone were following me or not.

Shopping done I head home.  I wave at Queeny’s court as a reach my building.  They don’t seem happy to see me.  I unlock the buildings door and pause in the lobby before calling the elevator.

“Oh shit she’s here.” I hear a man’s voice trying to whisper floating down to me from the stairwell.  I hear a sound like tools being shoved into a bag and foot steps heading up.  A door opens, from the cold metal snick sound it was the door to the roof.  The door closes.

Hmmm

I take the elevator up to my floor, stepping out cautiously .  The hall way is empty.  I go to my door, hmm, scratches around my deadbolt and its unlocked.  The second lock I have on my door apparently they didn’t have time to get to.  Jezz, they had the better part of an hour and they couldn’t pick two simple locks?   And I would have had lookouts posted with a cell phone to alert the burglars of my return.  Stupid and sloppy, but why where they trying to break into my apartment in the first place? 

I go inside and lock the door behind me.  I set my, ‘groceries’ down.  Ok then time to upgrade home security.  I go to my closet and get a length of 2x4 I had tucked away as a useful thing for something someday .  I braced the 2x4 against the door and wedged it against the facing wall.  Primitive but effective, even if they picked the locks they wouldn’t be able to open the door. 

I sat on my bed thinking.  ‘Shit she’s here’, footsteps, the door.  Two men,  the speaker, white I think, he didn’t speak with the same accent as the members of queeny’s court who are all African American.  They went up to the roof, but not down.  My apartment faced the stairwell and the elevator, if anyone went up or down I would know of it.  If the door to the roof opened I would hear it, that cold snick sound, I would hear it. 

The roof, the only other way down was by the fire escape that went right by my window.  The roof.  I thought of the empty building next door.  The building next door, you can get to it from the roof of my building.  The two buildings so close together you can step from one roof top to the other.  They went up but not down. 

Curiousier and curiousier said Alice.

The day continued quiet.  At sunset John returned.  I was beading my coat listening to him yell at Queeny and her court for their dereliction of their duty to be a pain in my ass. They weren’t all that interested in continuing since I apparently had a flame thrower that they hadn’t been warned about.

“Are you Fucking kidding me?” He screamed at them “That bitch is worth fifty thousand bucks.”

And the big cartoon question mark popped into existence above my head.

“HU??”

TV, dvd player, stereo.  Fifty thousand?  I’m worth fifty thousand? Something wasnt adding up here, the stereo wasnt even a BOSE.   Did they think I was one of those odd eccentrics who lived like paupers with gold bars stuffed under their bed?  Is that why they tried to break into my apartment ? to steal my secrete stash of gold?

For a moment I considered the idea that someone was offering to pay fifty thousand to actually kill me.  And dismissed the  idea as more nuts then the idea of me with gold bars under my bed.   truly nuts.  Sure I’m an annoying person but I couldn’t think of anyone I had pissed off enough to shell out that kind of cash.

I figured that ‘John’ was spinning a whopper to the crew to get them motivated.  Still worrisome, people get stupid for a lot less than that.  I sighed and put away my bead work.

Before I went to bed I took some pieces of ply wood I had in my closet and tacked them up, covering the window that the fire escape went past, and over the two bay windows that faced out over the street.   Fifty thousand is a lot of motivation and a rifle with a decent scope isn’t that big of an investment. 

I went to bed.

Midnight.

Car horns and people screaming up at me, in Spanish.  I understand just enough Spanish to know that nothing they were shouting up at me was at all nice.

There were three cars involved in a bizarre little parade.  Spaced about three car lengths apart they circled the block and every time they passed my building they began laying on their horns and screaming rude things up at me.  That they were screaming in Spanish struck me as a bit off.  The population of the tenderloin is African American and Asian.

“What? Their importing assholes from the mission now?”

I was beginning to feel like the last defender of the Alamo.  Considering how well that worked out for the Alamo, it wasn’t a good feeling.

I recognized the cars.

The sounds of the city are not random noise.  There is a pattern to it.  Like the beat of your heart or the breath in your lungs.  Car, buses, taxi’s, people come people going, I know the rhythm.  I noticed the cars a couple of months before the ruckus. 

The honking of a car horn, what sound could be more normal more common than the sound of a car horn in the city?  Commonly, normally a car horn is used to impart one of two basic messages; either I’m here get your ass in gear or fuck you asshole.  There is also the watch out but it is always watch out asshole so I put that in the same category as fuck you asshole.

A car parked in the alley beeps three times, a car driving by honks three times in answer.

The car in the alley pulls out and drives off. 

A new car parks in the alley.

It waits.

It honks twice.

A car driving by honks twice in response.

The car in the alley pulls out and drives off.

A new car parks in the alley.

It waits.

It is a pattern that is repeated often. Day after day.  The same three cars.  The same three cars that are now circling my building and honking their horns at me.

Being under siege, isn’t as interesting as one might think.  It goes on and on and I occupied my time with my beading.  The coat was coming along really well.  I ate, I slept, I drank tea, I watched movies (I have an extensive collection), I read books and I wait.  Sooner or later they will get bored with this.  Sooner or later these yo yos will figure out that idiot ‘John’ hasn’t got 50 anything let alone fifty thousand.  They would most likely beat him to death when they finally figure out that they had been had. I was quite looking forward to watching that.

A week goes by, I got quite a bit done on my coat.  The crack heads screamed under my windows, the cars   circled the block honking and screaming every time they passed my building.

Couple of times that week someone tried to job the lock.  They weren’t very good at it, or maybe they weren’t trying to be subtle.

Midnight.

The sound of power tools coming from the upstairs apartment.  I groan and roll out of bed.  I was doing really well at ignoring the constant clamor coming from outside but power tools are hard to ignore.  Why always midnight I grouse and fix myself a cup of tea.

I sat sipping my tea listening as someone upstairs drilled into their floor, my ceiling.

The apartment upstairs was currently vacant.  As were most of the apartments in the building, now that I thought about it.  Upstairs only one apartment was currently occupied by a young woman who is a niece of Mr. Ripinder of the copy shop.   She moved in about four months ago.  And on my floor, other than me there was only one tenant, a beefy young man who told me he was a cook and who once offered to pick my lock for me when I miss placed my keys for about five minutes.  I’m not a suspicious person by nature,  but , hmmm.

The apartment directly above me has had a series of odd tenants, who never stayed for long, a week or two mostly.

There were the unpleasant Mongolians.   One night I was woken to the sounds of a woman screaming that she had been raped by the Mongolians in the apartment upstairs.  She screamed rape, she screamed for help. I heard her running up the stairs, I heard the cold snick sound of the roof door being opened.  She disappeared.  I complained to Boccie, the Mongolians moved out.

There was the elder Yemenis man in full robes.  He was the father of the owner of  the coffee shop on the corner of O’Farrell and Larken.  He didn’t speak a word of English and I met him because of his lack of understanding of indoor plumbing.  He had to call his son to explain why a crazed American woman with wet hair was screaming at him.

There was the Alaskan Airlines steward and his new Chinese bride.   They stayed a couple of months.

The last I swear looked exactly like a gangster from some movie from the 50’s.  He was a square shaped man from head to toe, in a double breasted suite and smoking a stogie.  He had introduced himself to me as a retired district attorney from some city near by I cant rember.  He gave me his card.  Told me he was trying to track a man stalking the woman in new York who owned the apartment. 

(Yeh right, what ever,)

I threw the card away.  He stayed two weeks.

There was the asian gang banger.  He was about 5’ 8’’ a  wightlifters body and a bald head with the letters VIN tattooed across his forehead I assumed that the tattoo had to be some sort of gang thing.  You don’t have something like that plastered on your skull to show off your arty aesthetics. I figured  he had some connection with the Empire Massage.  He stayed a couple of weeks.

The drilling upstairs stops and I hear something being snaked into my ceiling and laughter.

I have my suspicions, but not wanting to give in to paranoia and there was nothing I could do about it any so I want back to bed.  The next day was the same as the others except for a couple of things.  There were people in the upstairs apartment, coming and going with heavy feet.  The other difference was the people outside were now commenting on my every move.

“Going to the kitchen for more tea?”

I was.  There was no way to see into my apartment from the street, especially with my street fronting windows were now blocked off with plywood.  I looked up at my ceiling and thought of the drilling.  Hmm.

That night I decided to test the matter.  You want to know if men are watching? Nothing easier.

I drew a bath.  Lots of bubbles.  I put on some  music, Mozart, a little night music. I lite a few candles lowered the lights and…

I had a cat once who loved nothing more then to tease the German Shepard next door.  She knew exactly how long the dogs chain was, to the inch.  She would saunter over to his yard tail high in the air and she would sit, just outside the reach of his chain.  And bath herself.  She took her time at it, lifting her leg high in the air licking her fur clean with long extravagant strokes, smiling her cat smile at the dog barking and howling at the end of his chain.  You can lean a lot from cats.

There was no doubt.  They were watching.  The detailed descriptions of my body, right down to the cute little mole on my ass,  were at least complimentary.  Much to the displeasure of a couple of women in the group, shrieking at their ‘boyfriends?’ to “Quit watching her.”

I quite enjoyed that.   Though I did wonder at the thought process behind bringing ones girl friend out on a job like this. 
 “Hey instead of going out to dinner and seeing a movie lets go to a group murder party.”
Maybe I am just too old fashioned in my thinking.

I always wanted to go to a rave. They looked like such fun. But I was never cool enough to go to that sort of party. The Gods do enjoy their little jokes.

Ok they were watching.  Were they also listening?  It seemed logical that they would be, still might as well be sure.  I toweled off and threw on a robe.

I have a rather odd collection of music.  I tend to buy cd’s not so much because I know I will like it or ever heard of the band or what ever.  I buy things that make me go Hu?  If I have no idea what something is or what it will sound like my eyes light up.  So I have a collection of things that would make any normal person cringe.

I go through my collection and find just the thing.  Sound Chambers, by Mary Archer, ahh yes.  This woman went into cathedrals with her sound equipment and recorded an experiment.  She would bounce a high electronic tone off one wall and another off another wall and record it.  When you play it you hear the first tone, then the second tone in your other ear then in the middle of your head the two sounds collide and a third tone chimes inside your head. 

I had a friend who once had trouble with squirrels in the walls of his house.  I gave him this cd and told him to play it loud next to the walls where the squirrels were.  He did and in a minute he ran out of the house terrified as the squirrels were screaming and beating their little heads against the walls.  Ever since that day he has had a fear of squirrels, convinced that they are plotting bloody vengeance.

Just the thing.

I take Mozart off the stereo and put in Sound Chambers.  I crank the volume, pause a moment, then hit play.

I hear screaming.

I go to the one window I haven’t blocked off because it is away from the fire escape and it has the Empire Massage sign blocking any view into my apartment.  I look down to the street and wow just like in the movies, two men come barreling out of a white van parked near to my building.  They were tearing head phones off their heads and shrieking just like the squirrels.

I take up my bead work.  Time to do some serious thinking

chapter 7 and this was such a nice quiet neighborhood

Chapter 7

AND THIS WAS SUCH A NICE QUIET NEIGBORHOOD

One night some time after midnight I am woken up by a god awful hallabaloo coming from the street below my windows.  I am normally pretty good at ignoring city noises, O’Farrell is a busy street the traffic never sleeps on O’Farrell street, buses, cabs, people going to the theaters to hotels going shopping, just going, people.  My building is right in what I call the tidal delta zone.  The place where the worlds of the tourist  hotels, the shopping the theaters and restaurants, meet and mix with the tenderloin world of the broken, the used and the forgotten.  My apartment looks out over it all.  I would sit at my windows working on some beading project and watch the endlessly entertaining theater of the streets.  So I am used to the sounds of the streets and find the sounds of the city breathing actually comfort my sleep.  But even so hearing people screaming out my name with death threats attached kinda got my attention

I pull open my window and lean out looking down to the street below.

Queeny and her crack head court were down below my window, screaming up death threats, to me.

Queeny is a needle thin African American woman who could be an aged thirty or a preserved sixty.  Her court is an ever changing collection of the hopelessly lost.  Her tribe occupies the sidewalk in front of the Christian science church half a block from my building.  The sidewalk there is wide and open, catching the warming sun for most of the day and there is an alley between the church building and the building next to mine perfect for  the clandestine deals necessary for survival on the streets.  Every now and then I toss the tribe a few bucks for coffee or crack, what ever gets you through the day. 

I leaned out the window a bit to get a better look at the commotion.  Spotting me Queeny screams up at me shaking her boney first.

“Ya you, you bitch, we going ta KILL you!”

“Really?  Have I done something in particular to piss you off?”

They all shook their fists at me and screamed up a chorus of murder.  This is the first time in my life I have been serenaded and I must say I imagined such an event in my life quite differently.

I shrug my shoulders and close the window.  What ever drugs their on, will no doubt wear off in a day or two.  I thought and vowed that I would never again buy those idiots another cup of coffee.  I go back to sleep, fading the calls for my death into the steady back ground of the street.  I slept.

5am I woke as I did every morning except that this morning the crack heads were still under my window screaming up the endless creative means of my demise they could come up with.   I pull on my torn jeans a clean enough t shirt and my doc martins and head out the door.

Once I was out on the sidewalk  Queeny and her court fall silent, watching me with weary eyes.  I smile and wave at them and skip across the street to paradise doughnuts for my breakfast.

“Long time no see.”  Hussen greets me as he does every morning.  Hussen has the whitest teeth I have ever seen outside of a tooth paste add. 

I pour myself a cup of coffee and grab a doughnut, hmm boston cream.  I say my good morning to Hussan and to Alan who is there as he is every morning puttering about fixing the coffee.

 Alan is the sort of man you could see teaching Irish poetry in some exclusive boys school.  He sixtyish with a neatly trimmed beard and hawkish nose.  He tries very hard to project roguish charm.  He runs errands of an unspecified sorts for paradise doughnuts and for the quick copy store that is owned by an Indian gentleman named Mr. Repinder.  Alan is also a small time loan shark loaning 10 for 15 kinda thing.  Alan and I are friends, with in boundaries.  That is we go out to lunch from time to time,  and take little trips out and about to places in San Fran and the bay area.  I don’t talk about his busness, he doesn’t talk about mine.  He enjoys having someone to tell stories about the old days to, I enjoy listening to stories so it all works out fine.

I get a newspaper and a pack of camels pay for my breakfast and skip back across the street.  I smile and wave as I pass the court.  They give me the squint eye.  As soon as I got back inside my apartment they began yowling up at my windows again. ( Oh for heavens sake.)

They seemed quite determined to continue their annoyance of my peace so I shrugged my shoulders, put on a movie and turned to my bead work.  I had just started on a large project, a large denim coat that I was beading with designs from the beetles movie the yellow submarine.

They continued all that day and night.  Working in shifts.  I was impressed.  I never would thought that that crew was capable of such well organized behavior or of being capable of holding a single thought or plan of action for such a long stretch of time.

Day two, repeat day one. A week.  I was no less confused about the cause of this nonsense but was seriously impressed with their sticktiuvness.

You would think that that many people making that much noise at literally all hours of the day and night would attract some attention, but apparently not in my neighborhood.  Now of course you wonder why didn’t I immediately call the police?  For what exactly? Making noise?   And of course when the cops show up they won’t be making nose, will they?  Hell the cops won’t even see them, as like cockroaches when the light snaps on, they would disappear into the shadows.

I continued with my beading, ordered the occasional pizza.  I kept the window open a bit and looked out every now and then, trying to puzzle out the cause for all this ruckus.  I noticed a man hanging out with the crack head crew.  He seemed to be the one directing the crew.

I knew him, calls himself John. Very original.  He was tall blond and muscle bound and very very sure of his attractiveness to women.  It is one of the true wonder of the world that the men most sure of themselves are so often the ones with the least reason to be.  He had shown up in the neighborhood about two weeks before the ruckus started.

He had been just standing there on the street corner.  When I passed on by he started trying to chat me up.  Trying to do everything in his power to attract my attention, if there had been a puddle in the street he would have thrown his jacket on it for me to step on. 

Unfortunatly for him, I pretty much considered him a puddle I was trying to avoid steping in.

One day I went out to the dinner just up the ally from my place for a bit of breakfast.  He invited himself to join me.  I couldn’t bring myself to object.  It was like having my very own performing monkey amusing me at breakfast.

Ohhh and how he did go, telling me all about his numerous girl friends his prowess is bed his size,

“Jezz dude, I’m on my first cup of coffee here.”

He continued on, going on and on about my hotness. 

Yawning widly.  Sipping at my coffee.  (I havent finished my first cup of coffee yet, I refuse to believe that I am currently anyone's hottness.)

He wants me to take him home with me.

“What ever for?  “

So he can have sex with me.

Well direct enough.  I laugh.

“Why would I do that?”

Because he wants it.

“Really?  So I should have sex with you, just because you want it?”

“Yes.”

He looks at me so convinced of his attractiveness that my agreement is a forgone conclusion.

I laugh so hard I have to push the plate out of the way.  My head down on the table, pounding the table with my fists.

He frowns and with out another word stalks off from the table and out the door. My wild peals of laughter following him.

Looking out my window watching him talking to the crack heads, I figured that the blow to his ego was more then he could handle gracefully and this foolishness with the crack head crew was his little way of acting out.  Well sooner or later he’ll get over it and the crack heads will find another game.

The end of the second week, I am becoming annoyed. ( Fun is fun but really this has gone on quite long enough.)  From under the kitchen sink I take out my can of raid.  ‘Kill roaches from 10 feet away’ nice.  I put on my torn jeans a clean enough t shirt and my doc martins and the yellow submarine coat I am still working on.  In one pocket I stuff the can of raid in the other a bic lighter and I head out the door.

Out on the side walk I stand across the alley from the crowd of crack heads.  I take out the can of raid and the lighter. I smile and point the can.  It works better than I expected.  A fifteen foot jet of flames lights up the predawn darkness.  I catch the shocked startled looks on the faces of Queeny and her court, frozen for a moment like in the flash of a camera.

I put the can and the lighter back in my pockets and smile at their frozen faces.

“You all may bay at the moon if you wish.

“But,,,,quit,,,,Fucking with Me.”

I smile pleasantly and skip across the street to paradise doughnuts.