Fogtown (21 page)

Cash snowed on her feet. A whirlwind of fifty-dollar bills mamboed around her head. Holding the baby in one arm, she proffered a hand in supplication and speared a twenty-dollar bill. Another Jackson was in her hair; ten more bills bejeweled her shoulders. Sharona rubbed her face in a fistful of hundreds. A trove of money blanketed the mother and child.

Richard Rood sideslipped out of the Allen Hotel and before he did anything, he scoped out the barren stretch of road from the Orbit Café
to the Fox Plaza. The boulevard was quiescent; bars and restaurants were closed. The stoplights on Van Ness Avenue winked green and red chiaroscuros. The United Nations Plaza was sprinkled with the homeless and their shopping carts.

A light and harmless object brushed Richard’s shoulder. It was the empty shoebox. Then he felt something else. He extended a hand to grab it and nailed a hundred-dollar bill. He brought his palms together and got a couple more Ben Franklins. Another bill hit him in the nose. He cackled in glee and turned his eyes skyward and saw Mama Celeste at her window. Bills kissed his forehead. Cash was drizzling from the heavens.

At the red light on Gough Street, Mandelstam eased on the brakes and the black-and-white slowed to a halt. The cop put his arm out the window, and as he did that, a rectangular piece of paper touched down in his hand. He squinched at it and was bewildered. He looked at the halogen-lighted sidewalks, and back at what he held. Scrutinizing the paper, he gulped hard. It had to be a vision. A perfect Ben Franklin dazzled in his palm. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered. “That’s a goddamn hundred-dollar bill.”

Looking in the rearview mirror, Mandelstam blinked twice. Twenty-dollar bills shimmered in the road. Paper was descending on the patrol vehicle’s trunk; the cash was spooky white under the moon’s pumpkin orange light. Cutting the engine, he removed the Ruger from its holster. Cocking the revolver’s double-action hammer, he pushed open the car door and slid out from behind the driver’s wheel.

A one-dollar bill alighted on his riot helmet and lapped against his tunic. Getting into a combat stance, Mandelstam squatted behind the black-and-white’s hood. An aureole of money covered the squad car’s roof. The fog was cotton-dense, and he couldn’t see anything. Squishing five- and ten-dollar bills under his riot boots, he stole over the sidewalk with the Ruger in his hand.

Ahead of him the snowfall of cash was blotting out the lampposts, storefronts, and pavement. The paper was beautiful, virginal and
white in the street. Keeping his head low, Mandelstam plowed forward through the blizzard. Jacksons were revolving counter-clockwise in the air, getting in his eyes. Shaking bills from his uniform, he bumped into someone.

An unrepentant voice said, “What the fuck are you doing, man?”

The cop peeled a hundred from his eyes and had the fright of his life. At his feet was Richard Rood. The black dealer was sitting in a nest of money and was stuffing Grants in his jacket’s pockets. His jheri curls were veiled in Franklins; his red suit was greenish-white with bills.

Under the streetlights, Market Street was a dreamland of cash. Parked cars were granulated with soggy twenties. Hundred-dollar bills draggled in palm tree fronds. Chain-link fences were tricked out with paper dollars. Richard was ecstatic and held up a wad of fifties. “See that, motherfucker?” he said. “That’s what they call free money. That is jubilee. It’s the closest you’ll ever get to paradise.”

He underhanded the fifties at the cop. Mandelstam scrunched down to pick one up. He held it to his nose and had a sniff. The cash was sweet and musty, like a wreath of flowers. It was good-looking. Usually money was downright homely. He said, “It’s the Brinks dough, ain’t it?”

Richard didn’t respond. While the policeman sorted through the cash, the black man looked deep inside his guts and saw the writing on the wall. It wasn’t a pretty vista. Jail was his next destination. The prospect made him think he was drowning in the waters of limbo. He had fifty thousand dollars in his pockets. There was another fifty grand on the ground. But what had convinced him that he could get away with the cash? He’d been no smarter than a cat chasing its own tail. He said with a drawn out sigh, “The Brinks money? Yeah, well, that shit’s a hoot, huh?”

Declaring that, he kicked Mandelstam in the leg. The move bowled the policeman onto his knees. Jumping on the cop’s back, Richard wrestled him to the sidewalk. Gripping the riot helmet’s visor, he pulled Mandelstam’s neck to an anatomically impossible angle. The
lawman whipped the Ruger’s stubby barrel over the black man’s face, cutting open his cheekbone.

Digging his heels into the ground, Richard drove a middle finger up Mandelstam’s nose—the cop’s septum split with an audible crack. They rolled around in the money, bloodying it. Richard slugged Mandelstam in the stomach and felt his knuckles reach the man’s backbone. He brought his head up under his opponent’s beefy arms and gave him a karate chop in the sternum. The police officer’s heart was beating an inch away from his ears.

Mandelstam squirmed and thrust the gun’s muzzle at Richard’s throat. The dealer kneed the cop in the groin and the Ruger went off with a reserved bark. The shot went awry, taking one of Richard Rood’s elegantly sculpted ears with it. He whooped and bit Mandelstam, sinking his molars in the policeman’s nose. He didn’t let go until he tasted cartilage.

The second round burrowed into Richard’s forearm an inch below the elbow, breaking the ulna bone. The third shot passed through his stomach into his kidneys and drove a hole out his back, caroming off the sidewalk. The fourth round entered under his chin, making a small aperture as a hollow point bullet is designed to do. The shell went up in the roof of his mouth and into his brain. It made a flamboyant departure by taking the crown off his skull.

Richard Rood stared at the burnt sienna moon. A picture of himself as an infant zinged across the screen of his mind. He was in a frilly purple dress and white baby shoes with a yellow ribbon in his hair. His mother, splendid in a short-sleeved chartreuse turtleneck sweater, rayon slacks, and high heels, was in the kitchen cooking a pot roast for dinner. She had the radio on and it was cranking out “Bernadette” by the Four Tops. The tableau melted into the charcoal gray sky over Market Street. Sticking to Richard Rood’s face was a pristine fifty-dollar bill, but he didn’t see it. He was too busy crossing into the land of childhood dreams.

P
ETER PLATE
, whom the
Review of Contemporary Fiction
calls “one of the most intriguing novelists writing now,” is a self-taught fiction writer and former denizen of squats in the Mission District of San Francisco. His eight novels include
One Foot off the Gutter
(1995),
Snitch Factory
(1997),
Police and Thieves
(1999), and
Angels of Catastrophe
(2001), all published by Seven Stories Press. He is a contributing essayist to the
San Francisco Chronicle.
In 2004, Plate was named a Literary Laureate of San Francisco, where he lives.