After the baby had been born, Jose didn’t miss a beat, changing and washing diapers, soothing the late-night cries, and walking that creaking floor with the child just about the time Sam would come in from a shadow job. He’d sit with the child, after a long day on his feet, and rock her, careful not to breathe close, head turned and sometimes holding his breath, at the doctor’s request. Sam made camp on the Murphy bed, an alarm clock and bottle of balsamea kept nearby for company, while Jose and the baby slept in the bedroom.
Sam left the crib and Jose and the bedroom and set a match to the burner on the iron stove, making coffee. He was off today, as was most of San Francisco, but was already showered and dressed, his military papers tucked securely in the vest pocket of his tweeds. The Examiner had run a story the day before about veterans being given food and coal, and even toys for their children, and this was the first day since making his way west that he’d been proud he’d signed up for the goddamn circus. He’d been ignored by pencil pushers, told the sickness he’d caught back in camp wasn’t worth a damn, and was now forbidden by docs to be close to his daughter. He’d be damned if he wouldn’t get every scrap offered by his government.
The coffee boiled and he strained it over a mug. On a hook by the door sat his old Army-issue coat and cap. He heard Jose stir and she came tiptoeing into the room and leaned down to kiss Sam on the cheek.
“You think we’ll have room in the icebox?” Sam asked.
“We’ll make room.”
“The paper said to come to the Civic Center.”
“Do you hear all that?”
“It’s what woke me.”
“You think you’ll see the president?”
“I’ll give him your best.”
“I’d like to get the baby out.”
“It’s shoulder to shoulder,” he said. “Drunks and fat politicians. I won’t take long.”
Sam stood, finished the coffee, and walked with Jose to the door, sliding into his Army coat and cap.
“I don’t think I’ve seen this,” she said.
“From my steamer trunk,” Sam said. “The only thing worth a damn I got from the Army.”
She buttoned him up into his coat and pulled his hat down into his eyes.
“It’s cold.”
“Who turned out the lights?”
Eddy Street was choked that morning with flivvers and cabs and crowded buses in from the county. Men in overalls and women in catalog dresses looked lost on city streets. Newsboys shouted out special editions from every corner and every other old woman wore a paper gold star on her breast. There was a legless man in ribbons and medals propped atop a wooden crate and holding a tin cup. A blind man walked in the opposite direction of Sam, being led by a nurse in white wearing a flowing black cape. Sam turned onto Van Ness, passing over Turk, and was almost over Golden Gate when he saw the thick heads of folks clear and heard a police whistle, an arc forming around the open door to a hotel.
The Mariah was parked out front, doors wide-open and waiting for a gaggle of red-faced cops who emerged from a flophouse, pushing out three men-two in their undershorts and shirts and a third with no shirt but pants and shoes-out into the street. One man was yelling at the cops. Another man’s face was spiderwebbed with blood from his nose. The yelling man got a beefy fist to his stomach and was told to shut the hell up. Sam stood there in his heavy coat, collar popped high and hands deep in his pockets, and watched the cops toss all three men into the back of the paddy wagon.
Sam asked the driver of the wagon, “What gives?”
“Filthy communist scum,” the man said. “Wobblies.”
“What did they do?”
“Nest of ’em,” the driver said. “In our city organizing, stewing up all that red bullshit for a family parade. I’m proud to give them a ride to San Quentin.”
“Not the Hall?”
“San Quentin, brother,” the man said. “Filth like that doesn’t deserve a trial. It’s goddamn Armistice Day.”
Sam continued watching another cop walk from the flophouse with a metal printing press hoisted in his thick arms. He threw it in the road, where it cracked and broke like a dismantled engine, and the cop dusted off his hands on his trousers with a big smile. One of the Wobblies broke free from the cop pushing him along and the big man caught him by the arm and began to beat him about the face and neck and back with his nightstick.
Sam yelled for him to stop and the sound coming from him felt odd, like it hadn’t been his own.
He ran for the cop and grabbed his arm, but the big cop just jabbed Sam in the stomach with the nightstick, squeezing every ounce of breath from him, and dragged the man into the Mariah, where the back door closed with a hard click. The wagon started and disappeared, and the circle of people grew smaller and smaller until there was nothing but people walking around Sam as he sat on the ground trying to find some air and his feet.
Sam could hear the crowds and noise and music down the hill at the Center and he staggered toward it.
“THIS is A NICE CAR, ROSCOE,” Gavin McNab said.
“Glad you like it.”
“It’s like sitting in your own living room.”
“Glad you like it.”
“You don’t like me much, do you?” McNab said.
“I’m tired, my ass hurts from the drive, and I’m not exactly thrilled about visiting San Francisco again.”
“Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry,” Roscoe repeated, staring out the wavy glass of his Pierce-Arrow at the endless pastures and hardscrabble little gardens. The engine hummed and purred and vibrated the limousine carriage in a fine, even way.
McNab was a big man, with a balding, closely shorn gray head and a pair of tremendous black eyebrows. His face was craggy and weather-beaten, his eyes a light blue, not as soft as those Roscoe found in the mirror but washed out and penetrating. They’d been out of Los Angeles for four hours and his new lawyer had yet to take off his black suit jacket, buttoned up over a black vest and tie, with his boiled shirt pinned tight to his thick neck. Most of the trip so far had been McNab telling tales of how he’d made it from bellhop to law school, and what it was like being right in the center of the city in ’06. He laid it on real thick about all the stone rubble and fires and smell of dead horses cooking. Gavin McNab was a hard guy all the way around.
In the bench seat across from them, the young attorney Brennan made a pillow from his jacket and leaned against the window, slack-jawed and sleeping, as the California nothingness rolled by. The driver, Harry, separated by glass, blissful and unaware, worked the wheel up a straight leg north. Good ole Harry.
“Don’t let one bad thing ruin Frisco for you,” McNab said. “It’s only after those old bitches got the vote has it been like this. Christ, they have a bull’s-eye drawn on every set of testicles they see. They won’t be happy till they turn us all to geldings.”
“Good to hear.”
“Hey,” McNab said. “I hear you have a shitter in here. Where is it?”
“Under your seat.”
McNab got up, bent at the waist, and removed the leather cushion from where he was seated. “So it is. Genius.”
“And a bar?”
“It’s empty.”
“Good. Good.”
“I’m on the wagon.”
“Good. Good.”
McNab rubbed his craggy face and stared for a moment at the sleeping young Brennan. He reached for a lever that brought down a skinny tabletop before him and opened a briefcase made from the skin of a crocodile. There was a silver flask inside and he took it out for a moment before taking a long sip. He offered it to Roscoe and Roscoe shrugged and then grabbed it and took a long pull.