THE CRYPT

By Tim Wohlforth

      

       “Crip, get me out of here. You’re my one phone call.”

      It was Henrietta. I hadn’t heard from her in months. I knew my luck couldn’t last. With Henrietta came trouble. And trouble I didn’t need. My name is Tom Batemen and I earn my meager living as a private eye hiding behind a web site. That way my customers don’t know I’m a paraplegic. They shouldn’t care as long as I perform, but they do care.

      Actually business had been pretty good recently. It’s amazing how many people out there want information they shouldn’t have access to. Easy enough to Google your estranged wife and learn everything you already knew about her. But how about her current credit rating, her latest unlisted telephone number, the net worth of her new boyfriend, or your girlfriend? Come to Tom Batemen, pay me through Pay Pal, and I will inundate you with more information than NSA has stored in its supercomputer. Snooping shouldn’t be left to the government alone. After all, we cherish our free enterprise system.

      I attributed my current modest successes at least in part to Henrietta’s absence from my life. That period of bliss appeared to be coming to a close.

      “You trying to tell me you’re in jail?”

      “Crip, I’m innocent.”

      “You’re never innocent. What’re they holding you for?”

      “Murder.”

      Murder was a bit much for Henrietta. Pot growing and drug peddling were more in her line. Not that she was a pacifist or anything. It’s just that she and her nefarious boyfriend Alvin were petty ante.

      “Who?” I asked.

      “Who what?”

      “Who did you murder?”

      “Already told you. Nobody.”

      “Okay, let me rephrase it: who are they accusing you of murdering?”

      “ Alvin .”

      “He’s dead?”

      “It’s the shits, Crip. You know how I feel about him, being my boyfriend and all. Now to make matters worse they say I did it.”

      “You didn’t do it.”

      “I know that, but they don’t believe me. Got to get out of here.”

      I asked, “Bail set?”

      “Yes.”

      “How much?”

      “100 grand.”

      “Shit.”

      “I know you ain’t got it because you’re a no account. And without me around you’re less than worthless. But come see me. I know where there are burlap bags full of just harvested product. One bag would cover the bail. Can’t talk about it over the phone.”

      “No.”

      “No, just like that? You leavin’ me in here with all these lesbians?”

      I wanted to say, “Don’t worry, they won’t touch you. They have taste.” But why hurt the lady’s feelings?

      “Just hold on. I’ll get you out of there.”

      “How?”

      “My way, not yours.”

      I hung up. But what was my way? I sighed and looked around my small cottage on Dwight off Telegraph near the Cal campus in Berkeley . The way house prices had soared recently I figured the dump was worth at least half a mil. I scooted my chair over to my filing cabinet and pulled out the deed, then headed out the front door, down the ramp and over to Cesar’s Bonds across from city jail.

      Why, you might ask, would I risk my house, my only possession, for a crazy punk with spiked green hair? I could say it was because Henrietta had no one else to turn to. Outside of Alvin , now deceased, I was her only friend. But I wouldn’t be telling you the truth. I was doing it because I had to. It’s what you do for someone who makes a specialty out of jamming sticks between the spokes of your wheels. Go figure.

* * *

       Henrietta sat bolt upright on my couch in the cottage. Her brief jail time hadn’t helped her looks. Pale drawn face and thin body made her look as if she had been on a hunger strike at Guantanamo .  The only touch of color was the faded green cannabis leaf motif on her tee shirt and matching spiked hair. The woman was shivering, her tattooed, goose-pimpled, bare arms vibrating. She didn’t look at me even though I had rolled my wheelchair right in front of her. Instead her pale green eyes stared straight at her feet. This wasn’t the usual defiant in-your-face lady I had grown used to over the years.

      “I’m pissed at you. This place is all you have. I told you how to raise the money.”

      “Let’s not talk about it. You needed my help and I was able to do something. So I did it.”

      Then something strange happened, strange even for Henrietta. Her face flushed with rage, green eyes piercing through me.

      “Fuck you,” she shouted. “I’m getting the fuck out of here. It’s all over between you and me, Crip. I’ll get the fucking weed and pay off my debt to you, don’t you worry. But I don’t want to see you ever again.”

      So much for gratitude. I really didn’t expect that from Henrietta, but I didn’t expect hatred. She started to rise from the couch. I scooted over and reached for her. I had in the past gone to great lengths to avoid her and now that she was breaking with me, I couldn’t handle it. She formed a fist, prepared to strike me. Then she fell back onto the couch and let out a sound somewhere between a shriek and a mournful wail. Somehow she combined a war cry, like I imagined the mythic Amazons used when slaughtering the male population of a neighboring village, with an instinctual moan from some wound buried deep within her.

      I realized at that moment how hurt she really was. She had never learned to express grief. Or for that matter any human emotion outside of rage. Now her rage was directed at me. Yet I knew she knew I was her friend. I wasn’t responsible for Alvin ’s death. She needed me, and not just for bail money. She needed a friend. Damn her. She had found one hell of a weird way to express her need. I was beginning to wonder which of the two of us was actually crippled.

      “Sorry,” she said in a voice so low I could hardly hear her. “I know you’re trying to help me. It’s just that…”

      “You’re upset that Alvin’s dead.”

      “He was a saint, a goddamn saint. That’s why he got killed. All saints get sacrificed. The way it is in this fucked up world.”

      “Let’s not get carried away.”

      If ever there was a creep who deserved to be murdered it was Alvin . The earth, with all its faults – war, pestilence, hunger, re-runs of television sitcoms – was  now a better place because of Alvin ’s absence. But Henrietta was bonkers about the guy. There’s very little I could say positive about Henrietta, but she was loyal. Now loyal in death.

      “You never understood him,” Henrietta said. “You’re such a tight ass. Think you’re always right, got it together and all. The world hates people like Alvin because he was superior. So they killed him. Simple as that.”

      “Who killed him?”

      “You stupid or somethin’? Fate, Crip, fate. Bound to happen sooner or later. Kept tellin’ him he was too smart for the dumb assholes who live in this fuckhole. But you know he never listened to me.”

      Henrietta was beginning to sound like Mark Anthony at Julius Ceasar’s gravesite.

      “Gottcha.”

      Then she said, “What am I gonna do?”

      She acted like she really wanted an answer from me. An expression formed on her face that suggested she was preparing to let out another banshee cry. Yet not a tear in her eyes.

      “Live like you did when Alvin was in Pelican Bay .”

      “No way I’m doing that. I’m going to get the bastard that whacked my man. That’s what I’m gonna do. I’m not just sittin’ here moanin. I’m gonna find the bastard and cut his balls off. For starters.”

      She paused, then said, “Thanks, Crip, for helping me figure things out.”

      My Henrietta. Weird, but I felt relieved. Vengeance  was driving unexpressed grief from her mind and giving her a purpose to carry on. Then she looked around the room, like she was expecting a visitor. Not a good sign. Something was up and that something meant deep trouble for her and now for me.

      “Gotta go,” she said. She started to get up.

      “No.”

      “I’m gonna get that bag of weed. Settle up with you.”

      “You’re not leaving my sight. The second you go out that door, I’m on the phone to the cops. Back you go to jail.”

      “You wouldn’t.”

      “Trust me, I would.”

      “You’re a motherfucker, Crip.” She was looking at me, hatred in her eyes, pissed. My Henrietta. “We can’t just sit here.”

      “Why not?”

      “Cus.”

      “Cus what?”

      “Just cus.” A motorcycle went by and Henrietta jumped as if she had been electrocuted.

      “What’s going on? Come on Henrietta I know you. Who do you expect to come through that door at any moment?”

      “It’s complicated.”

      “I’m sure it is. So tell me. Start with the murder of Alvin .”

      “I didn’t kill him.”

      “I already know that or I wouldn’t have put up your bail. Who did?”

      “Don’t know.”

      “Henrietta?”

      “Okay, maybe I got an idea.”

      “What happened?”

      “ Alvin has this old pickup truck. He wanted me to drive him. Got no license with being in Pelican Bay and everything.” Pelican Bay is California ’s maximum security prison. Alvin ended up there after the cops stumbled on his marijuana plantation housed in a warehouse in West Oakland . “I was just to drive. Maybe keep an eye out.”

      “Where to? Another warehouse?”

      “Naw. Alvin ’s smarter than that. There’s this cemetery.”

      “You got to be kidding. Growing pot in a cemetery?”

      “Not like out in the open. There’s this potting shed with an attached greenhouse. They grow flowers there in the winter, then plant ‘em in the Spring. Very pretty. People come from miles around to see ‘em.”

      “I know the place, that big cemetery on the hill off Moraga Avenue in Oakland .”

      “That’s it. A crime to leave the greenhouse empty off season. So Alvin talked to the gardener.”

      “Got the picture.”

      “Beautiful set up, hydroponics, halogen lights, and people just assumed flowers for the graves were being grown inside, no questions, no cops. I told you Alvin was a goddamn genius.” She paused, choked up, but not a tear, never a tear. “He had this seed, you know the hybrid he developed, Berkeley Blasts. People pay top dollar for the stuff. Much better than the imported Mexican shit. Alvin explained it all to me. He’s a big thinker. We’re talkin’ a quality product grown right here in the good old U. S. of A. Like Alvin always said, we live in this global economy with NAFTA and all. We Americans can’t compete price-wise. We need to use our brains, innovate, produce a superior product, like I-pods. And Alvin was an innovator. Cutting edge.”

      “I believe I-pods are manufactured in Asia .”

      “You get my drift. Why, Berkeley Blasts are so good the Mexicans used to smuggle bags of the stuff into their country.”

      Henrietta was getting so excited as she gave me her sales pitch that she must have forgotten about the shit that she was in. I’ll be damned if she wasn’t beaming. Of course, a beam from Henrietta looks an awful lot like anybody else’s scowl. You have to know her as I do to grasp these subtle distinctions.

      I figured I better try to get her back to her story.

      “So what happened?”

      “ Alvin had the seeds but he needed funds to buy the equipment, pay off Arturo…”

      “The gardener?”

      “Yes. Support us during the growing cycle.”

      “Who put up the cash this time?”

      “The Mexican Mafia.”

      “That’s a LA street gang.”

      “They’re here, too, San Jose . Alvin met them at Pelican Bay .”

      “I thought Alvin only liked white people.”

      The guy, when alive, had been covered with swastikas and white power tattoos. Part of a prison gang called the White Bloods.

      “ Alvin ’s a businessman.” She paused again. “I mean, he was. Plants were fantastic, some over six feet high. It came time to harvest them. Arturo tipped us off yesterday. The gang was going to move in last night, chop ‘em down, gather them in burlap bags, take off and leave us nothing. Those Mexicans would’ve had only imported shit if it wasn’t for Alvin . The Blasts sell for double. Alvin and Arturo slaved over that plantation. Not fair.”

      “You never learn. You deal with crooks and you get screwed.”

      “ Alvin was so trusting. I warned him.”

      “So you went in there yesterday afternoon in order to beat them to it.”

      “How did you know?”

      “I’m a detective.”

      “It was going great. Alvin cut while I stuff the weed in bags and hauled them off to the truck. We planned to take off for Mendocino. We got friends up there who could help with the distribution. The Mafia would never find us. We had almost finished when Arturo spotted us.”

      “So you were going to rip him off, too.”

      “ Alvin said we couldn’t trust him being as he was once a member of the Mafia.”

      “Your fatal mistake.”

      “ Alvin told me to take off with the grass. Dump it into a crypt. He knew the Mexican Mafia would show up. I headed up the hill. That’s when I heard the roar of the Mexican Mafia’s bikes as they entered the cemetery.”

      “A crypt?”

      “That place is loaded with those big vaults.”

      “Gotcha.”

      “I had the weed unloaded and was preparing to head back when I heard shots. I knew I shouldn’t a listened to him, but you don’t argue with Alvin . So I circled back to the greenhouse. As I pulled up this big beaner come running out. He saw me, Crip. He knows I could identify ‘im.”

      “So then what happened?”

      “I heard sirens. The cops were coming, but I didn’t give a shit. I had to see if Alvin was okay. But he wasn’t. He was laying in a pool of blood. He didn’t move. Dead, Crip, dead. For a moment I couldn’t move. Just stood there, shaking. Useless, fucking useless. This big pistol lay there right beside him.”

      “His gun?”

      “No, Alvin uses a rifle. So’s I pick up the gun…”

      “You didn’t.”

      “Wasn’t thinkin.’”

      She spoke softly as if she had traveled back to the greenhouse and Alvin lay right before her in a pool of blood. The phrase was for her personal, not some lyric from a country music ballad by Merle Haggard. Now there’s an idea: The Ballad of Alvin and Henrietta.

      “I ran out of the greenhouse,” she continued, “and got off two shots at the motorcycles. But they were too far away.”

      “Now that was even stupider. I’m sure the cops have tested you for powder residue.”

       “It happened so fast. The cops came and surrounded me. Must’ve heard the shots. Gonna shoot me so’s I dropped the gun. Cuffed me and dragged me to a cop car. Just threw me in the back, not nice like they do it on Law & Order. My head hit the door opening. Still hurts.”

      “You’re fucked, totally fucked.”

      “That’s not all. Those beaners ain’t dumb. They saw the empty greenhouse. They’ll figure out I know where the harvest is stashed. They know I can identify them. I’m a dead woman.”

      “Should’ve stayed in jail.”

      “Worse there. They got female members.”

      “Like I said you’re totally fucked.”

      “And that’s all you got to say?”

      “For the moment.”

      “Don’t be such a wise guy. They know about you.”

      “You told them?”

      “Of course not, but they know. Cesar, your bail bondsman, will tell ‘em. Also former Mexican Mafia and they’re his biggest customers.”

      “Shit.”

      She was fucked, I was fucked and I didn’t have the slightest idea what to do. I had to think but I can never think when Henrietta is staring at me. Still I had to try. Take it one step at a time. The first step was security.

      “We need protection,” I said, “and I know where to get it.”

      “Can they be trusted?”

      “Absolutely.” I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and made a call.

   * * *

      For a blessed half hour Henrietta was quiet, fallen asleep on the couch. No doubt up all night in jail worrying about lesbians. I used the time to think up a plan. A wild one, but that was the only kind that had any possibility of success in this situation. I made a phone call to an old buddy from ‘ Nam . He owed me. I took a bullet with his name on it in my spine. I lost the use of my legs, but he would’ve lost his life. Now was payback time. Everything was set for this evening.

* * *

      There was a knock on the door. My hand gripped the revolver I had placed under the blanket on my lap. A terrified Henrietta, awakened by the knock, cowered in a corner of the couch.

      “Come in,” I shouted.

      The door opened and Allison stuck her head in. A short woman, no more than five feet tall, Allison had long straight blond hair that fell past her waist and bounced off her cute bottom. She wore a bright red tee shirt, jeans, moccasins and a big smile. A vet, she put in weird hours at the all-night emergency pet hospital on University. She also boarded dogs at her house for a small fee. Two of ‘em mine.

      In dashed Ralph and Patsy, two 120 pound Presa Canario fighting dogs I had taken over from Alvin when he was at Pelican Bay . And I was still stuck with them. Alvin had said I ruined the pair because they no longer attacked on command. Useless for guarding pot plantations. He was wrong. They no longer responded to his commands. They had bonded to me.

      “Meet our protection,” I said. Ralph and Patsy dashed to Henrietta and jumped up on the couch, baring their teeth, snarling.

      “Get ‘em offen me,” Henrietta shouted.

      “Stay,” I commanded. Ralph and Patsy stopped snarling, pulled back from Henrietta, and looked inquiringly at me.

      “Come.” They bounded off the couch, ran to me, placed their immense paws on my lap, and then pressed their ice-cold noses against my face. Very affectionate animals, but they could be a bit much.

      “Down.” They obediently dropped to the floor by my feet, resting their massive heads on their paws. I reached down and patted them.

      “Thanks, Allison,” I said. “I must say I miss these critters.”

      “And they miss you.”

      Allison came over and gave me a kiss on the cheek. Her nose was pleasantly warm. Allison and I have been seeing a bit of each other lately. We talk about dogs. Our relationship is a bit limited in that dogs is all Allison wants to talk about. But there are worse subjects, like ‘ Nam which I don’t like to talk about, or politics where we both just get pissed as hell. And when it comes to Ralph and Patsy, there’s quite a bit to talk about. The two dogs noticed the kiss and I could see they approved. Henrietta, on the other hand, scowled. Jealous, I guess, in a way.

      “Now don’t you go get ‘em shot up again,” Allison said. “I had a hell of a time digging that bullet out of Patsy.”

      “I’ll try my best. They’re just for show, but you never know.”

      Then she looked seriously into my eyes. “And no bullets in you, either. Ralph and Patsy need you.”

      “You know Henrietta?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

      “Never met,” Allison said brightly, “but I heard a lot about you.”

      “Can’t believe a word Crip says. He doesn’t know shit about me.” Henrietta was pissed. But what the hell, she was always pissed. Allison gave me a knowing look. Henrietta caught it.

      “Don’t you have some mutts to stick needles into or to cut up or somethin’?” she muttered.

      “I guess I better be going.” Allison made a special point of leaning over me and kissing me on the lips, lingering for more than a moment, and then headed out the door.

      “You fuckin’ her?” Henrietta asked me.

      “None of your business.”

      “Thought you were paralyzed.”

      “Not all of me.”

      Ralph and Patsy growled. I figured I better change the subject.

      “The four of us are going on a trip,” I said.

      “But the Mexican Mafia will be watching us. They’ll follow.”

      “I’m counting on it.”

      “Where we going?”

      “To visit a crypt.”

* * *

      The sun had set and the cemetery was dark by the time we got there. Just the way I wanted it. I drove my van up a serpentine road that meandered around graves, climbing ever higher up a hill. When we reached the top we passed a stately row of crypts dug into the side of the hill, with massive granite doorways and marble statuary. I had visited the cemetery before and knew that these majestic structures were built by leading Nineteenth Century Oakland tycoons – lumber barons, steamship owners, railroad magnates. I slowed the van to a stop in front of the one pointed out by Henrietta. For a moment I glanced out the window at a sea of twinkling lights that was Oakland . The Bay Bridge , outlined by what from this distance looked like Christmas tree ornaments, led to a glow that I knew was San Francisco .

      These great men had rooms with views. A lot of good it did them. Death, the great equalizer. Henrietta and I had chosen a convenient place to die.

      Henrietta must have been thinking similar thoughts because she asked, “Did you bring a shovel? Might as well get down to it and start digging our graves.”

      “You have no confidence in me.”

      “We’re sitting ducks up here.”

      “No, we’re not. We have the high ground. Our enemies must come up this hill in plain sight.”

      “ Lot a good that’ll do. But, I don’t give a shit. All that counts is getting the motherfucker that killed Alvin .”

      “Henrietta, can I ask you something?”

      “Like what?”

      “You feeling any better?”

      “About what?”

      “About losing Alvin ?”

      “Feel pissed, that’s how I feel. At the motherfucker who killed him. At this shitty cemetery. At Oakland and everybody that lives in this dump.”

      I knew there was more involved, but Henrietta wasn’t prepared to let it all out. At least not yet. She needed her vengeance, then maybe.

      “You have my condolences.”

      “I don’t want shit from you… except maybe to get out of here alive.”

      “Then you need to do what I say. We’ve got to get the pot out of that crypt and pile it up outside.”

      “That’s stupid.”

      “If you want to live, do what I say.”

      “And then what?”

      “You, me, Ralph and Patsy wait.”

      “What for?”

      “The Mexican Mafia.”

* * *

      We didn’t have long to wait. We had just finished dragging the last burlap bag of harvested weed out of the crypt when I heard a distant rumble. I looked out over the graves of Oakland and saw a stream of single headlights passing through the entrance to the cemetery. A long snake of light filtering through exhaust made its way up the road. The noise became deafening. You would have thought it would wake up the neighbors, but these neighbors were long past the awake up stage – or so I hoped. Here and there a headlight landed on a grave. The death squad had arrived.

      I reached under the blanket in my lap and withdrew my revolver. Ralph and Patsy waited alert on either side of me. Shivering, Henrietta slid behind my chair. A lot of help she would be.

      “Fuck,” she whispered in my ear.

      “Patience, Dear, patience.”

      “I’m getting the shit out of here.”

      “No, you’re not. That would be suicide. Don’t move a muscle.”

      The motorcycles, I counted twenty of them, stopped at a curve in the road about ten feet below us.  They lined their machines in a row facing up the hill. The glare of their headlights blinded me. But I didn’t need to see and I wanted them to see me.

      “You’re finished, Bateman,” a Spanish-accented voice shouted out. Having adjusted my eyes to the glare I could make out a gargantuan figure, dressed completely in black leather, an opaque visor and black helmet covered his face. He pointed a large revolver at me. The leader. “Drop the gun or you’re dead. We’re taking the weed. Then we’ll deal with you.”

      “No problem,” I said.

      Henrietta gasped. I believed at that moment she was more concerned with the loss of the pot than our lives. Slowly, I lowered my gun at the same time raising my other hand. It contained an old Zippo lighter, relic from my ‘ Nam days. The roar of twenty massive engines shattered my eardrums as they geared up to rush me.

      “Stop!” I shouted. “You come any closer and I light this weed. Half the city will get high but you won’t end up with a penny. And Ralph and Patsy here will tear you to pieces just as if you were prime steak from Costco.”

      “We’ll shoot the damn dogs.”

      “And suppose you miss?”

       Ralph and Patsy snarled, ready to rush the bikers. They had this thing about guns and the leader had a gun in his hand. Those dogs didn’t know fear. On command they would fly at his throat, taking a bullet on the way if necessary. They’d done it before.

      “You lose as well,” the leader said. I noticed a hesitancy in his voice. Punks don’t mind shooting it out with other punks, but they shrink from fighting dogs. That fear is rooted deep in our collective psyche, going back to the days we battled wolves and packs of wild dogs – and usually lost.

      “He’s right, Crip,” Henrietta joined in.

      “Why don’t we all calm down and talk this matter through?” I asked, reasonably.

      At that moment I heard distant thunder, but there wasn’t a cloud in the dark sky. A stream of headlights came through the cemetery entrance as a seemingly endless line of Harleys roared into the cemetery. The Devil’s Disciples outlaw motorcycle gang. This one night was going to raise the pollution level in the City of Oakland to surpass rush hour on LA’s Long Beach Freeway. They stopped at a twist in the road ten feet below the Mexican Mafia. The DDs had the Mafia outnumbered at least two to one.

      A massive man, over 300 pounds, with a scraggly gray beard sat in the center on a customized all chrome bike with a psychedelic painting on the fuel tank. Big Bob, my buddy from ‘ Nam . He had gained some weight over the years, been in and out of prison several times, took all drugs he could get hold of, and sold what he didn’t consume. Some would say Bob wasn’t an upstanding member of our community. But they hadn’t been to ‘ Nam . I came back from ‘ Nam with my permanent disability. Bob returned physically whole, but fucked up in every other way. Above all he just didn’t give a shit. Except for his buddies. And I was buddy numero uno. He reached behind his seat and pulled a shotgun out of a long leather holster.

      “What the fuck?” the Mexican Mafia lead man asked.

      “Like I said we’re going to have a little chat. One of your Mexican Mafia brothers whacked my friend Henrietta’s boyfriend. Then left her holding the gun. Now I’ll admit that Alvin was a piece of shit,” Henrietta poked me in the back, “but I would argue that was perhaps not sufficient reason to kill him. Even if it was, the problem is that Henrietta here was stuck with the rap. Not fair. Tonight, we‘re going to right that wrong.”

      “How?”

      “I’ll spell it out for you. You’re going to hand the shooter over to us. He’s going to confess into a tape recorder I’ve brought with me. And we certainly have enough witnesses.”

      “We don’t squeal on our brothers.”

      “Your call,” I said. I clicked on the Zippo lighter and a flame burst out lighting up Henrietta’s flush face. Not exactly red, more like purplish blotches. First time I had ever seen any color in it. “I light the weed, give my dogs the attack command, and allow my friends, the DDs, to settle some scores of their own they have been storing up against your crowd. Or…”

      “Or what?”

      “You turn over the shooter, one bag goes to the DDs, the rest to you guys.”

      “What about me?” Henrietta asked.

      “You get your life.”

      “You’re bluffing,” The Mexican said.

      I touched the top bag of plant with my Zippo. A flame shot up. At the same time I shouted, “Sic ‘em.” Ralph and Patsy dashed toward the Mafia leader. He got off a wild shot. The rest of the gang had no chance to fire. While I had occupied their attention, the DDs crawled up the hill and now had guns on each of them.

      Henrietta threw herself on top of the pot and snuffed the fire out with her body. She didn’t even scream as, for a brief moment, her jeans and tee shirt started to burn. It was amazing what Henrietta would do for weed.

      “Hold,” I shouted to Ralph and Patsy. They stopped chewing on the Mafia leader and, blood dripping from their powerful jaws, stood hovering over his bleeding body. Then I grabbed my wheels, gave them a spin, and shot down the roadway. I had to navigate a long curve, but the Mexican Mafia weren’t going anyplace.

      I stopped and looked down on the frightened Mexican Mafia boss. Big guy but he couldn’t stop shaking. Blood dripped from his arm and throat. The throat was probably Patsy. She can be the more enthusiastic of the pair. My friend Bob, shotgun in hand, hovered over him for good measure.

      “Thanks, Bob.”

      He came up to me, leaned over and lifted me completely out of my chair. He gave me a bear hug that took my breath away then gently lowered me back into my seat. That’s the way Bob is, so full of life, of love, too full for the world he returned to after ‘ Nam . I almost cried. Instead all I could think of doing was to pat his back. The way we stupid men are.

      “Fuck ‘em all, Tom, fuck all the motherfuckers in this fucked up world. It’s you and me against ‘em all. It was a jungle there in ‘ Nam , it’s a jungle here now. The monkeys are still howling in my ears. The snipers still trying to take me out.”

      “Thank your friends for me.”

      “No problema,” he said. “Me and the boys haven’t had so much fun in ages. Not since the run-in with the Pagans out by Barstow . We’re all a bunch of shitheads, but we can count on each other. I owe you, they owe me. It’s as simple as that. Want us to finish ‘em off?”

      “In due time. Let’s see if our friend here has changed his mind.” I looked around. Henrietta was trying to drag a bag of weed off the pile. “Henrietta come down here. Pick the shithead out who shot Alvin .”

      That got her attention. She dropped the pot – talk about sacrifice – and ran down the hill. Then she pointed a wavering finger at a large Hispanic man, unshaven craggy face, red bandanna wrapped around his head, who stood next to the boss man. “Him.”

      The leader nodded and said, “Take him.”

      Shithead shouted, “Puta!”

      Henrietta rushed him, scratching his face with her green nails, biting his neck like Patsy, and then kneed him in the balls. The rage that had burned within her over the loss of Alvin now poured out.

      “You killed my man,” she shouted, as she reached for the man’s balls. I swear she would have bit them off with her teeth if Big Bob hadn’t pulled her off. The Mafia bikers moved away. If there is anything more frightening than killer dogs, it’s an enraged woman who has lost the love of her life. She collapsed on the ground and groaned. Finally, she was feeling the pain of her burns, the pain of losing Alvin .

      I pulled my tape recorder out from under my blanket and said to the Mafia boss man, “I suggest that you inform your buddy here that if he doesn’t tell all into this tape recorder, his life isn’t worth shit. Between my dogs, Henrietta, the DDs, and his fellow Mafias whose lives and livelihoods are now in his hands, he’s had it.”

      “But if I confess, I’m fucked, too,” the shooter said.

      “You prefer being shredded limb-by-limb by trained Presa Canario fighting dogs?”

      That did it. Once again Ralph and Patsy were my trump cards. The fellow poured his heart out into the tape recorder. I looked around for Henrietta. I caught a glimpse of her running up the hill towards the sacks of pot. So much for her injuries.

      “Bob, just do me one more favor, retrieve that green-haired lady intent on taking some of the weed.”

      “Take her out?”

      “No, just take her.”

      He took off on his bike, scooped her up just as she was struggling with a sack of cannabis, swung his bike around, and with one arm wrapped around her torso like he was carrying a rather longish and moldy baguette, brought her back down to the biker encampment.

* * *

      I sat for a while in my chair looking out over the black immense of the cemetery, the distant lights of Oakland , with the hulk of the crypt behind me. My gaze fell to a small grave. It belonged to Sara Bellows who had died at the age of four in 1856. A modest stone to commemorate a short life in hard times. Not everyone those days ended up in a massive crypt. A slight breeze stirred the tall eucalyptus trees. How quiet, how peaceful. The two motorcycle gangs had left with their shares of the pot. I had called the police and they took away Ramos, the shooter, along with my tape. Ralph and Patsy had long since licked the blood off their paws. They sat next to me, pressing their immense heads down on my lap.

      Henrietta hovered in front of me. “Guess we should call it a night,” she said.

      “You okay? The burns?”

      “I felt worse when they tattooed my tits and then pierced my cu….”

      “Got the picture,” I quickly said, cutting her off. I didn’t need a graphic account of Henrietta’s tribal initiation rites. I paused, then said, “Been thinking.”

      “What about?”

      “I guess about Bob, about life.”

      “Big guy.”

      “In more ways than physical size. I hadn’t seen or heard from him in years, and here he turns up and saves our hides.”

      “You told me he owed you.”

      “I took his bullet in ‘ Nam . Yes, he owed me. But there’s more involved. Every time I see him its like no time has passed. We’re close, Henrietta, real close. He’s my friend. Always will be. Like…”

      Then she started to talk, saying what she had bottled up for so long. She had gotten her vengeance. Now she could express feelings she had bottled up inside her. I knew that despite her surface toughness and hostility, she felt, and felt deeply.

      “Like Alvin and me. He had a fucked life, Crip, like me but in a different way. He was found as a fondling, tossed out in a garbage can. Never did find his mother. Raised in foster homes. What he ever got, he got because he was tough, because he fought, because he wrote his own rules, because he didn’t take shit from nobody.”

      “And you?”

      “I was a mistake. The result of a fucking hole in my father’s rubber. From the very first moment I can remember, I felt I was dropped into this weird family. They were nothing like me, Crip. They didn’t understand me and I didn’t understand them. No big deal. I could’ve lived that way, walling myself off from the fuckers. Except for my cunt of a mother. She wouldn’t leave me alone. She thought she was Mother Teresa. I’d cry, she’d smile. I’d piss in her face, shit on the floor, she’d smile. I’d puke, she’d smile. I drew pictures with my crayons over the walls, she’d smile. Drove me crazy ‘cus I knew that face was a mask. There was nothing underneath. I decided early on I had to get out of there. I was suffocating. The hypocrisy, the shitty saintliness.”

      “And your father?”

      “Never saw the motherfucker. Always working. Always someplace else.”

      “When did you leave?”

      “I was thirteen. Thought I was going to die in that place. Raised by fucking aliens from some planet where all they do is push strollers. Wisest thing I ever did.”

      “You came to Telegraph Avenue ?”

      “ Minneapolis , Seattle , Portland , then here. I met Alvin . We connected, Crip, really connected. Like you and Bob. He never had parents and I had too fucking much of parents. And now he’s gone. I got nothin’ now.”

      “You got me. We’ve been through a lot of shit together and you can be a pain in the butt, but we have each other.”

      “You’re a worthless asshole. I have to watch out for you. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be dead long ago.”

      Henrietta dug into her jean pocket, pulled out a bent Camel, lit up and puffed smoke in my face.

      “Friends?” I asked.

      “Fuck off.”

      Then she took her ice-cold, bone-thin hand, reached down, and squeezed mine.  

 

Copyright 2006 by Tim Wohlforth

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Tim Wohlforth’s story Jesus Christ Is Dead! made the “Distinguished Mystery Stories” list in Otto Penzler’s 2005 Best American Mystery Stories. A story of his is included in the Mystery Writers of America’s Death Do Us Part, edited by Harlan Coben.  He is a 2003 Pushcart Prize Nominee. He has received a Certificate of Excellence from the Dana Literary Society. Wohlforth has had seventy-two short stories accepted for publication. A contemporary noir novel, No Time To Mourn, was recently published. He co-authored the non-fiction book, On The Edge: Political Cults Right and Left.

  
Lee Child has called him “an exciting new voice.”