There's Nothing to Be Afraid Of (4 page)

I made a mental note to call a man I knew on the police department’s Gang Task Force and find out about the so-called dust of life.

“What else do the people say?” I asked.

“That this is the work of a sick person. There are many in the neighborhood.” Again Mr. Tran’s eyes went to the door, but the hooker had moved away.

“They mention the prostitutes and their pimps, but of course that is nonsense. Those ones care only about money. They talk of Brother Harry, the street preacher.”

“The man with the sandwich boards?”

“Yes. He claims to be a man of God, but he is full of hate.”

“How so?”

“His message is one of vengeance. Listen to him. You will understand.”

“I’ll do that. Is there anyone else in particular?”

The old man spread his hands. “In this neighborhood we have derelicts and bag ladies, and criminals who prey on them. We have many homeless persons. There are people who act strangely—who shout or glare at others on the street. Who is to say which one might be responsible?”

Suddenly my job loomed large—and dangerous. I said, “But there’s no one in particular whom people talk about?”

“They speak of one or another from time to time, especially if he or she has had a recent outburst of violence. But no one more than the others.”

“I see.” I paused, then picked up a Hershey bar from a display on the counter and dug in my bag for money.

Hung Tran held up a waxy hand. “Please, accept it with my thanks.”

“But it’s I who should be thanking you for the information you’ve given me.”

“No, you are helping my people. It is the least I can do.”

Touched, I mumbled my thanks and put the candy bar in my pocket. “May I come to see you again, if I have more questions?”

“Certainly.” His nod was almost a bow.

The street preacher, Brother Harry, was still in front of the Sensuous Showcase Theatre. He stood on a small square of blue carpet that he had spread on the sidewalk to the right of the marquee, waving his arms and exhorting all to come back to God. The signboards he wore said PRAY TO JESUS on the front. One particularly vigorous gesture turned him partially around and I made out the words HE WILL ANSWER on the rear.

In spite of his vociferous message, Brother Harry wasn’t drawing much of an audience. A few pedestrians eyed him with wary curiosity, but most ignored him, hurrying past with their gaze straight ahead or on the ground. Still others went up to the theatre’s glassed-in ticket booth, paid their money to the heavily made-up clerk, and went inside. Undaunted, Harry preached on.

“He is waiting, brothers and sisters. He is waiting for you to come back to Him. His love is eternal, all-forgiving. But time passes quickly. And the end of the world approaches. There will be fire, flood, and pestilence. Only those who have come back to God, through Jesus Christ our Savior, will survive!

“Blood will run in the streets! Your children will scream in agony! Your own flesh will burn! The sinner will writhe in torment! None will be spared! Thus will be the punishment of he who does not accept God!

“Return, sinner! Return or else . . .”

Beside me, a man’s voice spoke. It said, “They must to keep their certainty accuse . . . all that are different of a base intent.”

I started and turned. The man who stood there was probably in his fifties, with longish gray hair and a thick beard and mustache. His nose was elfin, his cheeks rosy, and the full mouth that was visible through the surrounding hair curved up in delight. He wore baggy khaki pants and a worn brown corduroy jacket—standard Tenderloin attire.

Deciding he was harmless, I asked, “What did you say?”

Patiently he repeated, “They must to keep their certainty accuse . . . all that are different of a base intent.” The rhythm in which he spoke indicated he was probably quoting poetry. More loudly, he added, “Pull down established honor; hawk for news . . . whatever their loose phantasy invent.”

Brother Harry stopped preaching and looked over at us, his eyes becoming slits in his fleshing, weather-roughened face.

The other man continued reciting, louder and louder. I backed off.

Harry balled his fists and started toward the man, his signboards flopping clumsily. “You get out of here, you poetry-mouthing wimp! Get off my corner!”

“Truth flourishes where the student’s lamp has shone, and there along—”

Harry grabbed the name by the collar of his jacket and began shaking him. He was a head taller and looked more vigorous, in spite of the cumbersome sandwich boards. I stepped further back as Harry shouted, “This is my corner! Off!”

Surprisingly, the other man’s eyes were sparkling, and his mouth still curved up in a smile. A crowd had begun to gather behind me, and he turned his head and said, “William Butler Yeats. ‘The Leaders of the Crowd.’ Now, that was a man who knew about God.”

Harry’s face grew red and he continued to shake the man, sandwich boards heaving violently. The other man just smiled, his head bobbing this way and that. Harry’s face grew redder, both from fury and exertion. Just when it looked as if he might really hurt the man, someone stepped up behind him and grabbed his arm above the elbow.

“Let go of him, Harry,” the newcomer said.

Harry whirled, still clutching the poetry quoter. “Get your goddamn mitts off me, Otis.”

“I said, let go.”

Harry looked at the poetry quoter and gave him one last shake, then let go reluctantly, like a puppy relinquishing a bone. The man stumbled back a few feet, still smiling, and stuck his hands in his jacket pockets. He stood there, rocking back and forth from heels to toes.

I looked at the man who had broken up the confrontation. He was slender, with fine light brown hair, wearing jeans, a colorful red cowboy shirt, and elaborately tooled leather boots with two-inch heels. Letting go of the street preacher’s arm, he glanced at the bearded man and said, “Beat it, Jimmy. Go recite your poetry someplace else.”

The man called Jimmy just grinned at him.

“Get!”

With a shrug, Jimmy ambled off across the street. Once he reached the other curb, he stopped and stood there, then thumbed his nose.

The cowboy sighed and turned back to the street preacher. “Why do you let him get to you, Harry? You know Jimmy likes to see you all riled up.”

Harry glared over at Jimmy, a muscle jumping in his jaw. “Otis, the son-of-a-bitch keeps messing up my preaching. I ought to kill him, him and his William Butler Yeats.”

“Well, Harry, the way I hear it, Yeats has been dead for years. And killing Jimmy wouldn’t be good P.R.” The cowboy named Otis waved emphatically for Jimmy to go away. Jimmy thumbed his nose again.

“There—you see, Otis?” Harry said. “He’s gonna stand there and mess up my act. How am I supposed to get through to these sinners when he’s doing that?”

“I guess you won’t, right now. So why don’t you take a break? He’ll get bored and go someplace else.”

“But I was really warming up.”

“Take a break, Harry.”

Anger flashed across the street preacher’s fleshy face, and then he turned and lumbered back to his square of carpet. He bent down clumsily, rolled the carpet up, and stood, tucking it under his sandwich boards. “Sometimes I think you’re on his side, Otis,” he said.

Otis sighed again. “That’s your trouble, Harry. You don’t understand people. I’m on
my
side. Mine. Nobody else’s.” Then he turned and strode off into the Sensuous Showcase Theatre.

Harry said, “Huh. The hell I don’t understand people.” He gave Jimmy one last glare and headed around the corner onto James Street.

I looked over at the bearded man and saw his face fall. He shoved his fists into his pockets, kicked at the curb a time or two, and then shuffled off, his head bent despondently. The small crowd that had gathered began to disperse.

I glanced at the marquee of the theatre. Something called
Rajah
was playing on a triple bill with
A Mother’s Love
and
The Reluctant Couple.
I looked at my watch, decided I had time, and followed the man named Otis.

CHAPTER FOUR

No one was in the ticket booth when I went up to it, so I just walked into the lobby of the theatre. The man called Otis stood to one side of the doors talking with the jowly, heavily made-up woman who had been collecting admission fees. The lobby was small, draped in red and black velvet and bathed in what was probably supposed to be sensuous crimson light. All the light did, however, was emphasize the worn spots on the velvet hangings and carpet. Beyond the doors to the main part of the theatre I could hear the mutterings of a sound track.

When I came in, Otis broke off his conversation with the woman, frowning. “Better get back out there, Ruth. They’re wandering in without paying.”

As he spoke, I realized who he must be: Otis Knox, one of the kingpins of San Francisco’s porn industry. Knox owned this theatre, as well as two others, plus was involved in film production and distribution. He was one of a handful of operators—along with the famous Mitchell Brothers—who claimed to be legitimate entrepreneurs selling a necessary and desirable product. In a recent newspaper interview, Knox had been photographed astride a horse at his ranch in and undisclosed Marin County location. The article quoted him as saying he was just a country boy trying to make an honest buck. Why he was always being hassled by the D.A.’s office was something he couldn’t understand. He’d claimed to be providing employment for a lot of people—including women who might otherwise be out on the streets. One quote that remained in my mind was: “And I keep a lot of lawyers busy. That’s all the D.A.’s harassment does—put money in the pockets of my lawyers, who don’t need it anyway.”

Now Knox came toward me, barring further entrance. Up close I could see that he was older than he’d looked on the street—in his late forties—and that his light brown hair was blow-dried backwards in an attempt to disguise a spreading bald spot.

“You want to see the movie, you have to pay,” he said, glancing at the woman, who was disappearing through a door to the ticket booth. “Go back outside, she’ll be glad to take your money.”

“It’s not the film I’m interested in, Mr. Knox,” I said. “I’d like to talk to you.”

“If you’re a reporter, I don’t give interviews on short notice. Call and set up an appointment.”

“I’m not a reporter.” I took out the Photostat of my license and handed it to him.

He squinted at hit, holding it up to the dim light. Then his lean face twisted in annoyance. “Aw, Christ! Now it’s some unofficial beef. Who hired you?”

“No one who has any interest in you or your business. I saw the scene you broke up on the street between Brother Harry and the man you called Jimmy. I’d like to talk to you about them.”

His annoyance turned to perplexity and he handed the Photostat back to me. “You want to talk about those bums? Why?”

A couple who were easily identifiable as tourists—she carried an enormous vinyl handbag, he had a camera slung over one shoulder—came in, the woman hanging back in obvious reluctance. I said, “Is there someplace better to talk?”

Knox shrugged, then turned and headed for a door marked OFFICE. “Okay, I’ve got a few minutes and nothing better to do”

The office was a small cubicle jammed with the kind of junk some people call collector’s items. The walls were covered with signs—street signs, Yield signs, Stop signs, Men Working signs. Shelves held old beer cans, disconnected limbs of mannequins, wooden cigar boxes, a gumball machine minus the candy, Coca-cola glasses, a mason jar full of marbles, a stack of Uncle Scrooge comic books, miscellaneous bottles, and a decoy duck. From the ceiling hung a fishnet full of glass bobbers, corks, and seashells. There was a metal desk covered with papers and two chairs in front of it—one of which held a saddle. Knox waved me toward the other chair and went around the desk. He fumbled through the papers, came up with cigarettes and matches, lit one, and put the match in an ashtray shaped like a foot.

I sat down and looked up at the fishnet. A crutch rested incongruously among the nautical items.

Knox was watching me. “You like my stuff?” He flopped into his desk chair, gesturing around us.

“It’s interesting.”

“Yeah. A hobby of mine, collecting.”

“I see.”

“I’ve got even more at home. Bigger stuff. Jukeboxes. And old Coke machine. McDonald’s Golden Arches. Babe and Blue Ox.”

“What?”

“Babe and Blue Ox. A statue. Thirteen feet high. I got him when they tore down the Paul Bunyan Drive-in in Corvallis, Oregon.”

“Good Lord.”

Abruptly Knox’s manner changed. He leaned forward on the desk and looked at me intently. “Now what’s this about Brother Harry and Jimmy?”

I explained about the problems at the Globe Hotel and the suspicions that were circulating through the neighborhood. Knox listened carefully, squinting at me through a haze of smoke. When I finished, he said, “I don’t know, honey. Both of the boys are as crazy as loons, but to frighten a bunch of slopes . . .”

Inwardly I winced at the cruel term, which had come home from Vietnam with the American military.

“I don’t know,” Knox repeated. “Harry’s just a lunatic, has some half-cocked ideas about God. And Jimmy’s a poor homeless bastard who’s been run from pillar to post. It doesn’t seem likely either of them—”

“Tell me about them.”

He shifted in his chair, stuck one booted foot up on the corner of the desk, and leaned his head back. “Well, Harry’s been around for years. Mostly preaches on this corner; I guess he thinks it’s some kind of antidote for my films.”

“Does he live in the neighborhood?”

“Yeah, he’s got a room in a flophouse over on Turk Street. He’s here rain or shine, hollering about salvation. Sometimes I chase him off, just for form’s sake, but usually I let him rant.”

“What’s his last name?”

Knox paused. “Woods, I think. But I wouldn’t swear to it.”

Do you know how he feels about the Vietnamese who have been moving into the area?”

“We’ve never discussed it. Probably the same as he feels about everybody else—that they’re sinners who’ve got to be brought to God.”