Snitch World (11 page)

“Cathedral Hill Apartments,” Tommy told Klinger. “Opposite St. Mary’s. Tell the doorman to ring Apartment 1426, then wait.” He turned to the bar. “Brucie. Another round.”

Klinger was in the cab and four blocks away when he realized that the substance in his maxillary sinuses was maybe only half cocaine, and the other half was probably heroin. He might have known. At least he assumed it was heroin. By the time the cab got to Geary and Van Ness, Klinger was pretty sure he was rhino-metabolizing speed-ball, and he was thrilled. Well well well, he marveled, as the taxi climbed the grade, a real vacation at last. It’s been a long time since I’ve been cold and wet and not even able to feel it. Let alone, give a shit. He fingered the bindle in his pocket. I might not catch pneumonia after all.

The light at Gough was red. “Can’t make a left,” the cabbie said to the rear-view mirror. “Gotta go around.” He made a circle with a forefinger. “Loop de loop.”

“Yeah yeah,” Klinger happily told him. “Whatever,” he added; but what he was thinking was, “
mellow
.”

The cabbie stood on the hydrogen, and his taxi
hummed downhill to Laguna, where he took a right to Post, another right uphill to Gough, another right back down to Geary, and finally diagonaled across the intersection and four lanes of no traffic into the circular drive in front of Cathedral Hill Apartments. Klinger told him to wait.

A doorman buzzed Klinger into the lobby and made a call. Five minutes later a little old lady exited an elevator and greeted him like her long lost nephew.

“My prescription,” she enthused, and she traded the envelope Klinger pulled out of his jacket pocket for one of her own, which looked a lot like a package from a pharmacy, printed up one side and down the other with do’s and don’ts. “Please give Dr. Flagon my new scrip, which I will require to be filled by this time tomorrow night at the very latest,” she said with emphasis. “Be sure to remind him of that, and here’s a little something for your trouble, you darling young man.” She pressed a folded twenty into Klinger’s hand. “It’s so late for you to be working,” she embellished, “and in the rain, too.” She patted his arm. “I’m so very grateful. Get some dry clothes on.”

The whole time this charade was going down, the doorman was making a studious perusal of a copy of the
Wall Street Journal
draped over the phone bank on his kiosk.

Klinger was back at the Hawse Hole within twenty minutes of his initial departure. The cab fare came to a mere sixteen dollars. Klinger threw the guy a twenty.

The open sign in what used to be a window, along with the green neon martini glass above the front door, had been turned off. Klinger knocked, one-two, one-two, one. Bruce opened the door. Tommy pocketed the printed envelope without opening it. When Klinger offered the two twenties, Tommy told him to keep them. A double shot of Jameson anchored the C-note to the bar. Klinger had a sip
before retiring to the head for an additional bump. They partied until dawn.

Thus it was that Klinger found himself fully clothed in bed in his hotel room about an hour after the sun came up, $247.19 to the good and listening to his heart beat erratically, almost as loud as the rain on the invisible window panes, but breathing easily, because that’s the way speed-ball affected Klinger. He knew from nothing about other metabolisms.

After a while he sat up, took off his shoes, fluffed up the hopelessly thin pillow, and lay down again without bothering to remove the rest of his clothes.

He clasped his hands behind his head. So, Klinger thought with a contented sigh, it’s about time a job went smooth.

Thus it was that Klinger almost had a coronary when, some three minutes later, Phillip Wong’s cellphone rang in the breast pocket of his, Klinger’s, jacket, and vibrated the thin layer of fascia between his damp shirt and his purring heart.

The ringtone crescendoed “Creation of Tron” by Wendy Carlos through his lingering chemistry, although Klinger might have assayed a longer sojourn on Planet Earth than the one for which he was slated without stumbling across that piece of information.

But really, in the event, the ringtone scared the piss out of him.

He fumbled at the breast pocket until he’d extracted the phone he hadn’t known was there. He couldn’t have handled it any more gingerly than if it had been a live scorpion. It was a smart phone, however, and as soon as it realized that it had received the attention for which it had signaled, it opened the connection. “Hello?” somebody said, and, “Phillip?” and, “Phillip, you are a genuine son of a bitch.”

Klinger couldn’t tell one end of the phone from the other. “Hello?” he responded uncertainly.

“What in heaven’s name are you doing down here?”

“Down where?”

“In the Tenderloin!”

Klinger took umbrage. “How about I can’t afford to be elsewhere?”

“Can’t afford—? I’ve got your check. I—. Say, Phillip? Are you sick? You sound all nasally.”

“Who wants to know?”

“What, you got software to disguise my voice instead of yours? This is Marci, you lummox.”

“Marci, Marci …”

“I know you’re not in the bar,” the voice persisted, “because I’ve already looked in the bar.”

This got Klinger’s attention. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed. “What bar?”

“What is a hawse hole, anyway?”

“You’re there now?”

“I minimized my exposure. It’s only nine-fifteen in the morning and there’s guys in there who look like they’ve been there since last week.”

“That’s the place all right.”

“I’m on the sidewalk outside. WhereIz says you’re close by.”

Klinger tried to think faster than an app called WhereIz. Does electricity flow faster through dendrites or copper? How about speedballed dendrites? You mean, like, cryogenic copper? Perhaps it’s at the metabolic level, Klinger did not permit himself to muse, that the vernacular breaks down.

“WhereIz, being a killer app, never fails,” the woman’s voice pointed out. “I am poised for when they go public. Hello?”

“I’m here,” Klinger grudgingly admitted. Usually, in a rat trap like this, he took the trouble to ascertain the location of the fire escape. If he’d done his homework he might have been able to abandon the phone to the pillow and disappear. Maybe he could wing the phone out the window and onto the roof across the street? And she’d go look for it there? Maybe he could beat the phone to death with a chair leg? Maybe …

Maybe I should take the bull by the horns, Klinger abruptly thought: She mentioned a check.

“Say,” he told the phone, using his most ingenuous phone voice, “I was just trying to figure out how to call
somebody on this thing so I could maybe find out whose phone it is. I’m not too conversant with cellphones. I couldn’t even figure out how to access the address book.”

“It’s probably password-protected. So for sure,” the voice concluded, as if it hadn’t already, “this is not Phillip.”

“Whoever Phillip is, this isn’t him.” As if you didn’t know, Klinger had already concluded. “And who was this, again?”

“I’m a friend of Phillip’s. Maybe even his best friend, if not his only friend. So where did you find his phone?”

Good question. Klinger nodded thoughtfully. A logical question. “On the sidewalk,” he said for no good reason. “Right in front of the bar, about seven o’clock this morning.” He thought about it. “How did you know to look for this guy Phillip in the Hawse Hole?”

“This app, WhereIz,” Marci enthused. “I told you. If you’re connected to the phone, WhereIz brings up a map and erects a throbbing plood at your phone’s location. Anywhere on earth. Even here.”

“Huh,” Klinger entertained an urge to repeatedly smash the phone between the upper edge of the bedside drawer box and the faceframe of the nightstand until it disintegrated into its constituent ploods.

“But you’re not in the bar,” Marci reminded him.

“I’m not in the bar,” Klinger affirmed. “Although, statistically speaking?”

“Yes?”

“It’s hard to believe you missed me.”

“I see … I think.” Marci sighed. “So where are you, if you’re not in the bar?”

Wow, Klinger thought, that was most assuredly a sigh of impatient tenacity. This chick doesn’t give a rat’s ass about how much time I spend in the bar. Whereas I, myself, care exclusively about the time I spend there. We
are contrapositive propositions, she and I. Destined, no doubt, to cancel each other out.

He shook his head. That’s silly.

At the very moment his mind articulated this adjective, Klinger shivered involuntarily. I gotta get a hot shower and a meal, he reminded himself.

“I’m upstairs,” Klinger told the phone abruptly. “In the hotel.”

She hardly missed a beat. “What room?”

For some reason, Klinger instinctively backpedaled. “Let’s meet in the bar.”

“No,” Marci parried succinctly. “They still let people smoke in there.”

“It is a shithole,” Klinger agreed. “Hawse is a genteelism.”

“And the hotel?” Marci persisted brightly.

“Not very distinguishable from ditto,” Klinger warned her.

“Hey, pal,” Marci said, “I’m out front, remember? How disillusioning could it be?”

“How soon I forget,” Klinger muttered sourly. Frankie Geeze, he apostrophized, you fun-loving motherfucker, you surely didn’t lose your touch inna joint. Klinger reflected a moment. It’s stupid moves like your stupid move with the phone that got you in the joint in the first place. That, and your habit. As my old pal Georgie once happened to mention, Klinger my boy, Georgie happened to mention, I’ve known a lot of dippers in my day, and every last one of them was a hophead. It’s got something to do with their nerves. They’re usually pretty good at what they do, too, which is picking a pocket with an L-shaped length of wire. But I don’t like them. Talented, skillful and smart they may be, and a lot of them are all those things, but every last one of them is
hincty
, cause every last one of them is a hophead, and a hop-head don’t care but about the one thing, and that’s his dope.

I wonder, Klinger wondered, passing his thumb back and forth along the edge of the phone, if this is what Georgie meant by hincty. Surprising me with this phone was a fucking lame thing to do.

“Pardon?”

“What’s the room number?” Marci repeated.

“Say,” Klinger replied, “what’s that noise? Is this phone tapped or something?”

“Aside from the fact that our government can tap any phone it wants to tap,” Marci replied, “what noise?”

“That noise,” Klinger said. “You don’t hear it?”

“What’s it sound like?” Marci said, humoring him, albeit not without a trace of impatience.

“Beeee,” Klinger said, making with a high-pitched tone. Then he added a lower-pitched one. “Oop.”

“Your battery’s low,” Marci responded without hesitation. “Quick, what’s the room number?”

Klinger drew a breath. Then: “Three thirty-five. Take the stairs all the way up.”

“How do I get in?”

“Next to the bar entrance there’s a piece of plywood nailed over a window and covered with chicken wire and rebar and it’s all painted gray. To the left of that there’s a door, painted ditto?”

“I see it. Yech.”

“The button’s painted over, high up and to the right of the corner of the casing. A guy on the second floor will buzz you in. Tell him you’re from Social Services—.” The phone went dead. “—Hello?”

Klinger looked at the screen. battery low was all that appeared on it. As he watched, the image faded, the phone emitted a pathetic peep, and the screen went black.

Huh.

Klinger dropped the useless phone onto the pillow.

Klinger considered his circumstances. His clothes were still wet, there was this dead phone, and there were $247.19.

End of story.

But now a visitor. He shivered. He hadn’t had a visitor … He couldn’t remember when he’d had a visitor. Even in jail, he hadn’t had a visitor. Especially in jail. Other than which, it had been a very long time since he’d had a place to be visited in. He shivered again. Clean and dry clothes would be nice. Let’s deal with the visitor, then clean and dry clothes will be the chore, and maybe a change of venue if I can get my money back, fat chance.

He considered the phone. Anyway, he leveled with himself, it’s this phone that’s getting visited, not me. She didn’t even ask about that guy … Phillip. One el or two? No matter. It’s the phone she’s after. Not one el or two el Phillip, but this phone. Dead or alive, Klinger thought, referring to the phone, because Klinger didn’t give a rat’s ass about Phillip either. Charged or not. What’s in a phone, anyway? Phone numbers?

Maybe there’s a buck in it?

Klinger touched the dead cellphone. He’d never owned one. But certainly he’d heard that they’d evolved to the point where they’d pretty much become computers. He knew that Mary Fiducione had been able to quit her day job because of phones. He knew that street punks were jacking up tourists for their phones, not unlike they used to jack them up for sneakers or cameras. It wasn’t hard. In fact, it was a lot easier than taking a pair of shoes off a sucker. You punch him in the face with one hand, grab his phone with the other, you book with both feet. Child’s play. Children, in fact, were the ones perpetrating most of these kinds of crimes. It occurred to Klinger to wonder whether or not the cops knew about this WhereIz app. Get
in the cruiser with the victim, call his hijacked phone—voilà. Another statistic.

No doubt somebody had already thought to call it phonejacking.

Klinger looked around the room. Not even a closet. He looked at the drawer in the bedside table. If he had a length of duct tape he could park the phone on the back of the drawer box, or underneath it. Fine. Send out for duct tape. Next scenario would be … under the mattress? Please. In the overhead light fixture? Try and be creative. He opened the nightstand drawer, there to find a copy of
Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health
, and nothing else. He closed the drawer.

In the end, Klinger slit an edge of the tinfoil which covered a pane of the room’s window with his thumbnail and slipped the phone into the slot so that it stood edgewise on a mullion between glass and tinfoil. As concealment, the result wasn’t bad.