Snitch World (15 page)

The cabbie and Marci both pointed at the rear-view mirror and said, “A professional.”

A small but measurable amount of bile raised to within a couple of inches of Klinger’s trachea. He choked it down with a snarl, aided by the thought that one head is plenty.

But the cabbie was indeed a professional and, soon enough, his green taxi was blocking a bus zone within a few doors of a phone store on Van Ness.

“I’ll be right back,” Marci told them. She placed her hand on the door handle and looked back at Klinger. “Do you need anything?”

Klinger nodded yes at his fogging window but made no other answer, as what he needed isn’t to be found in a phone store.

Marci opened the door, flared the umbrella, exited.

Klinger and the cabbie waited. The rain pounded on the roof. A certain funk began to lift off Klinger’s soaked
clothing, to cloy the atmosphere inside the taxi. Without a word, the driver cracked his window.

Unable to pull into the bus zone, a bus pulled up beside the cab, blocking in turn the traffic behind it. Horns sounded, and the bus returned the compliment. The cabbie, touching buttons on his onboard computer, ignored them all.

A guy in a drenched T-shirt and a wheelchair rolled backward along the sidewalk, past Klinger’s window. The front end of the bus groaned and knelt down, like a camel, and its doors opened. Its front steps converted into a ramp and flattened onto the streaming pavement. Rain fell upon the diamond plate treads with a fury that rebounded droplets a foot into the air. The guy in the wheelchair made his way forward, to the front of the cab, and began pounding on its fender with a gloved fist. The cabbie looked up from his computer, grunted, put the cab in reverse, checked all three of his rear-view mirrors, then backed up until the guy in the wheelchair could drop off the curb between the front bumper of the cab and the rear bumper of a Chevy Blazer, so as to get a straight run at the bus ramp. He wore a Giants baseball cap and water shot off its bill sufficiently to clear his knees, but not his unlaced sneakers, each of which was poised to receive its cascade by a rubber pad on a stainless steel stalk. On his second attempt, he got the chair properly aligned and drove it onto the ramp. The ramp lifted up and the wheelchair rolled into the bus. Before the ramp was properly retracted, the bus took off with a roar, angling into the southbound lane so that water shot off its redeveloping steps, and their forward corner took out the left rear taillight on the Blazer, and left a long, tapering fissure in the sheet metal of its left rear quarter panel.

When the bus had departed, the cabbie shifted into forward and closed the gap between the cab’s front bumper
and the Blazer, before reverting to the study of his onboard computer. The pounding on the taxi roof increased to a roar, then decreased to a pounding again, as a curtain of rain passed north along Van Ness Avenue. The taxi’s radio squawked. A voice called out an incomprehensible address. Another voice said “Bingo.” The radio went silent. The cabbie touched buttons on the onboard computer. Another bus arrived, stopped, disgorged a passenger, and departed, followed by dozens of cars and trucks. After another fifteen minutes the streetside passenger door opened, Marci sat sideways into the seat, collapsed the umbrella, and closed the door.

“Jesus Christ.” She pulled a little box from a plastic bag and showed it to Klinger. “They have
one guy
working in there.” Klinger nodded dully. “And now,” she said over the seat back, as she began to open the flaps on the box, “the Goodwill at South Van Ness.

“Hmmm.” The cabbie levered the machine into reverse, backed up a few feet, and studied his side-view mirror. “That’s on the northeast corner. And you want me to wait again, am I right?”

“We want you to wait again,” Marci confirmed. “You are right.”

“So maybe I’ll take a left at Grove, cut down Polk, cross over Market to Tenth, take a right on Mission and a right on South Van Ness. Almost that entire block above Mission is a bus zone. All you’ll have to do is get out of the cab and make a dash for the front door. Just like here.”

“You’re a genius,” Marci said.

“Yelp me,” the driver said.

“You know what you want?” she said to Klinger, without looking up from her study of the package in her hand.

Klinger roused himself from his torpor. “Something thermal.”

“Here.” She produced a couple of twenties and folded his hand over them. “If you get something presentable, I’ll take you to a presentable place for lunch.”

Klinger looked at the money and looked at her. He said nothing, but he kept the money.

She made a little smile, sat back in her own corner, and watched the wet world go by.

The cabbie made good on his route, although it took two light changes to make the left onto Grove. By the time they pulled into the bus zone in front of the Goodwill, the meter read fifty-two dollars.

The Goodwill at the corner of Mission and South Van Ness is the biggest one in San Francisco. Before the so-called recession, it reliably turned over its inventory on a weekly basis. A few months into the so-called recession, it was churning the better part of its inventory on a daily basis.

Even so early, the place was mobbed. A couple of beautiful easy chairs and a couch flanking the double front doors were occupied by three people who obviously were there for no other reason than to get out of the rain. A guy on the customer side of the computer counter (the San Francisco Goodwill store at Mission and South Van Ness has a dedicated computer department) was holding forth on the virtues of DOS WordStar. No clerk on the other side of the counter paid him heed. Women were speed-dialing their way through racks of dresses and blouses, men were doing the same in the pants department. The clatter of crockery was almost deafening. Klinger took up a position behind the guy methodically looking at every pair of pants in menswear and, soon enough, a nice pair of lined woolen trousers turned up in Klinger’s size. Ditto the shirt department, where he found a flannel item with long sleeves, ditto jackets, where he lucked into a navy pea
coat of quilted wool complete with an anchor etched into each of its big blue buttons. New, this coat alone would cost well over a hundred bucks. Finally, in the bottom of a large carton full of hats, he turned up a dark blue woolen watch cap, a perfect match to the coat. In short order he scooped up a pair of thick woolen socks, a steeply discounted “Republicans for Voldemort” T-shirt, and a pair of summer weight Madras shorts to stand in for underwear. Altogether, he’d assembled an ideal foul-weather outfit. For shoes, however, he had to make do with a pair of high-top pseudo-fawn disco boots, each with a zipper on its instep and no tread whatsoever. But they fit over the wool socks.

The man ahead of Klinger in the register line was diminutive of stature, and he dressed sharp. His white linen trousers, belted high, were creased, as was his shirt, whose blacks limned a pattern of white geese merging into their contrapositives. Raindrops beaded the high gloss of his ebony shoes as if each were the hood of a black limousine.

The girl at the cash register scanned the barcodes of each of the man’s purchases—a pair of dissimilar wine glasses, an Arizona! souvenir ashtray shaped like a saguaro cactus, a guide to Rocky Mountain wildflowers, a Pedro Infante DVD.

As the clerk bagged the last item, she read the total off the register. “Eight ninety-nine, sir.”

The man perfunctorily patted his breast pocket and searched the pockets of his trousers, back to front, until he came up with a carelessly folded hundred-dollar bill, which he offered to the cashier with a modest shrug.

The clerk looked at the bill. “I can’t do that, sir.”

Shortstuff rubbed the bill between thumb and forefinger suggestively, as if he meant it for the girl, and as
if maybe she wouldn’t have to work too hard to earn it. If his expression betrayed nothing, the gesture came on lascivious.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the cashier explained patiently. “I can’t accept any bill larger than a twenty.”

As if just noticing the line behind him, Shortstuff showed his bill to Klinger.

Klinger, who had maybe fifteen twenties on him, looked into the face of the customer with the C-note. The eyes were dead. Klinger made no move toward the cash in his pocket, and said nothing. If Klinger weren’t abiding by a certain code, by which he wouldn’t bust this guy’s hustle, he might have been insulted at the net’s being cast his way.

Behind Klinger, a woman said cheerily, “I have it, I think.” The man’s eyes skimmed over Klinger like a pair of shucked oysters sliding off a tray. Klinger turned, too, as did the clerk. Nobody said a word.

The third person in line was a woman with gray hair. She wore a floor-length tie-dye dress under a wool sweater, each of whose antler buttons faced a threaded loop of braided hair, possibly harvested from the six or eight reindeer circumnavigating her ribcage. She placed a one-dollar copy of an illustrated book titled
Deities of the Hindu Kush
on the counter while she fingered a twenty, a ten, a five, and two ones out of a chamois wallet embroidered with a tomahawk and an eagle feather.

If this isn’t somebody’s slaphappy grandmother, thought Klinger, she’s missing a good chance.

Don’t do it, Klinger might have advised the woman. As, indeed, the girl at the cash register might have advised as well. But, as it was, neither of them spoke. The girl had seen this a thousand times, no doubt, or maybe she really didn’t understand what was going on and just followed the rules. Shortstuff stood as if he had all day to get the bread
for his next fix. Or maybe he just had his eye on a pair of ninety-dollar shoes.

“Nope,” the grandmother announced, apologetically showing her thirty-seven dollars to anybody who might have been interested, which was everybody. “Wishful thinking,” she added with a chuckle. And, excepting the pair of singles, her money went back into her wallet.

Klinger reverted his eyes forward. Shortstuff was already looking at the clerk. “I can hold your purchases until closing time,” she suggested, her expression neutral.

“There’s a bank,” Klinger volunteered, and pointed helpfully. “Right across Mission.”

“Yeah,” Shortstuff said, as if begrudgingly. “There is.”

The clerk gathered the mouth of the shopping bag. “We close at five,” she said, setting the bag on a shelf under the register counter. She moved her eyes toward Klinger. “Next, please.”

As it happened, the front door was twenty feet beyond the cash register. As the clerk scanned his own purchases, Klinger watched the sharply dressed short guy pause at the front door. Beyond the glass, pedestrians scurried in driving rain. Only now did the customer thoughtfully pocket the hundred-dollar bill and apply himself to a quick study of a canister full of wet umbrellas, just inside the entrance. He selected a colorful example from among its black brothers, pushed open the front door. The umbrella opened over Shortstuff’s head as he gained the sidewalk, displaying, as he turned, the logo of the Pebble Beach Country Club.

The Bank of America to which Klinger had referred was directly across Mission Street, to the left of the front door of the Goodwill store.

The sharply dressed little man under the stolen umbrella took a right and disappeared into the rain.

The bill came to fifty-six dollars, so that Klinger had
to kick in some of his own money toward the purchase. This chafed him.

Receipt in hand, Klinger nicked a bath towel and repaired to a changing booth. There he shucked his soaked duds onto the floor with a good riddance, dried himself off, having donned the newly purchased ensemble, moved his money from a wet pocket to a dry one, and departed.

The cab was right where he’d left it.

The meter read sixty-eight dollars.

“Okay,” Marci was saying to her phone as Klinger reentered the back seat. “Later. Hey,” she said, putting her phone away. “Looking sharp.”

“And toasty.” Warm and more or less dry, feeling somewhat human and communicative, despite his ass prickling where it had been exposed to damp fabric for too long, Klinger essayed his most sociable inducement: “How about a drink?”

“How about breakfast first?” Marci chided him.

“How about both?” Klinger countered.

“Man,” Marci chuckled. “Are you sure you’re not some kinda
hombre de negocios
?”

Outside of
chiva
and
adiós
Klinger understood very little Spanish; but he knew from
man of business
, as it happened, for this was hardly the first time someone had made fun of his commercial acumen. Also not for the first time, Klinger found himself wondering about what he perceived as the strange relationship between business acumen and misanthropy.

Marci showed Klinger Phillip’s cellphone. “Notice anything?”

Klinger shrugged. “The screen’s illuminated.”

“Very good,” Marci nodded. “Can you read it?”

Klinger varied his head’s distance from the screen and its angle to the available light.

“Well?” Marci asked impatiently.

“Enter Password,” Klinger read aloud.

Marci dropped the phone into the mouth of her briefcase /purse.

“Goddammit,” she pronounced.

The cabbie had whiled away Klinger’s absence gleaning figures and statistics via the internet via the virtual keyboard on his cellphone, thence feeding them to a handheld scientific and graphing calculator.

“So,” the cabbie had announced as Klinger opened the curbside door, “given that it’s going to take some five hundred and sixty-three trillion Hummers to pave the planet?”

“Sure,” Marci said, addressing her rain-swept window. “And pegging,” the cabbie continued, “the standard length of a Hummer at sixteen point nine six feet, exclusive of bikeracks and winches?” He thumped the display window of the calculator with a forefinger. “Thirty-seven times ten-to-the-sixth trips to the moon and back.” He nodded. “That’s round-trips, baby.” He sucked a tooth. “If you could drive a single Hummer at the speed of light in order to take all them round-trips?” He worked his two machines: “Two years and ten months.” He buffed the display window of his calculator with a thumb.