The Octopus on My Head (4 page)

“Did I sleep through another blowjob?” Lavinia asked sincerely.

I had made another cocktail and resettled onto the countertop, sitting on my hands, watching my boots swing back and forth, silently mulling the atonal oeuvre of Arnold Schönberg note by note, when Lavinia said to the mirror, “There's more.”

“Always.” I blinked. “More what?”

“About you, silly, in that coffee house.”

“No. There isn't.”

“That's it. Exactly.”

I stopped waving my feet. “What are you talking about?”

“You. In that coffee house. You were wasting your time there.”

I set my heels loudly on the floor and paced to the back door and opened it. There I saw a broom whose straws were worn to a nub, a mop with a head like a nuked Medusa, a hot water heater with rust-stained rags knotted around its pipe joints, and an amazingly bad copy of Picasso's
Three Musicians
, painted onto a piece of plywood, that had been nailed sideways over a hole that once was a window. “You know,” I said to the closet, “Ivy hasn't heard me play a note in ten years.” I turned and paced back to the sink, hands in back pockets. “You know?”

Lavinia paused the reconstruction of her face. “I know,” she said to my reflection in the mirror. “I didn't hear it from him.”

I smiled in spite of myself, and shook my head. “I read an article about Sonny Rollins in the
Guardian
once. Right off the bat it said that while he's never recorded a classic album, he's a pretty good saxophone player.” I studied the glass of vodka. “What the fuck does
The San Francisco Bay Guardian
know about music, anyway?” I took a stiff swallow. “Is that self-deprecating enough?”

“Less than nothing,” she said. “But hey, I didn't come here to tell you about your lousy life, or to hear about it, either. You're hard enough on yourself. And, I must say, when I heard about that review, I thought it was so great I'd crawl over broken glass to bring you marzipan if I thought it would ease your travail through this vale of tears.”

“Marzipan?” I said. “Really?”

She smiled sweetly. “That review said you were great, despite the circumstances—streetcars and espresso machines and cellphones in the background, and whatnot.”

“Special circumstances is life,” I said, scrubbing my face with one hand. “And everybody gets the death-penalty. Thank you so much. I think.”

“You're welcome. So.” She began placing makeup tools into her purse. “That's that.” She closed the purse a snap and turned to face me. “How do I look?”

“Animatronic.”

“Wow, cool. Pornographic Hintai is all the rage, on today's Internet.”

“You've put on weight, too. How is it possible?”

She blushed as only a 'toon can, who knows she rarely eats anything more substantial than a blue-screen carrot smoothie.

“No offense,” I insisted. “For a girl who's five-foot-five, you carry ninety-seven pounds like it's natural. Plus the clothes help. Your legs look long, your hips look slim, your bosom looks shapely.” I framed her between squared forefingers and thumbs: “For a junky who hasn't slept or eaten in—how many years?” I moved the frame to one side. She shrugged. I looked through the frame again. “Sleek as the nose cone on a Studebaker. How do you do it? You got a trust fund?”

“I have a career.”

“Dealing dope is a career?”

She arched a cold eyebrow. “I can afford my insomnia.”

“What's to afford? We know you don't eat. As to rent—how many square feet can a coffin take up, anyway?”

“Fifteen hundred. On Grizzly Peak.”

Do I have to point out that, even though it's in the East Bay, it's a nice address?

She dug in her purse and produced a ring of keys. “Let's take a ride in a brand-new Lexus.”

“So,” I hesitated, “there's money in dope. I'm impressed. I'm also tired. Can I go to bed now?”

“You're too broke to sleep.”

She had me there. “So?” I said grudgingly.

“We have a plan, Ivy and I, and there's a paycheck in it for everybody. You, too. Eight or nine hundred bucks for a few hours' work. And it's completely legal,” she added, “almost.”

“Almost, she says.”

“Come on, Curly,” she cooed. “You need a break. Ivy needs a hand. Both of you need money.”

“All too true,” I said cautiously. “So where do you fit in?”

“I'm the enabler.” She dangled the car keys off an index finger.

I folded my arms and set my jaw. “I refuse to steal organs.”

“No keyboards involved,” she laughed. “Just bring your guitar case.”

“Why? I just got fired.”

“Just the case. Leave your ax here. Do you have a piece of respectable-looking carry-on luggage?”

Chapter Four

T
EN BLOCKS LATER
, L
AVINIA KILLED A
D
ALMATIAN
.

We were crossing Dolores on 25th, she was speeding, and I barely saw the dog. It was accompanied by a woman dressed in jodhpurs and a quilted vest with a ruff collar, and it was attached to her by an inertia reel leash, the kind that extends from no length at all to fifteen or sixteen feet. The dog only needed about five of those feet to meet his undoing. His mistress was waiting for the light, but she was on the phone, too, turning one way and another and not paying attention. The dog followed its nose into the crosswalk. When the right front tire hit it square on the shoulder it sounded like a watermelon dropped off the roof of a five-story building. Orts of dog sprayed the undercarriage, the woman screamed, and we were gone.

Several blocks later, Lavinia asked me if we should have stopped.

“The dog's dead,” I pointed out.

We were crossing Sanchez. “Did you hear what she screamed?”

“‘Gates,' I think.”

“Her dog's names was Gates?”

“Maybe she'll inherit its fortune.”

Lavinia turned left on Noe and jogged right on Clipper. We crested Diamond Heights and a few minutes later descended Upper Market, half the nightlit city spread out beneath us. Nearly three miles away, next to the Lefty O'Doul drawbridge at the edge of the bay, the Giants' baseball park was brightly illuminated. A thicket of fog the size of a small town drifted on the bay beyond it, glowing in the surplus illumination shed by bright towers looking down on the stadium. Beyond the fog bank twinkled the Oakland hills.

“When I was a kid in Nevada,” I mused, “I was driving home one night from a date. In those days the eastern slope was far less populated than it is now, and a forty-mile stretch of starlit desert separated Reno and Nevada City. We lived on a ranch straight east of Mono Lake. The girl was a cellist I'd met at a summer music camp at Lake Tahoe, and she lived in Sparks. It wasn't uncommon to drive a hundred-mile round trip for a date. Forty or fifty miles to pick her up, back across the tracks to Reno or someplace where we could have some fun, see a movie or go to a party, then the other half of the round trip to drop her off and make it home again.”

Lavinia lit a cigarette and held it out the driver's window between puffs, a thoughtful courtesy, considering it was her car.

“To accommodate the necessity of covering long distances efficiently, I'd dropped a late sixties four-barrel 327 into a 1950 Chevy pickup truck. I found a rare '59 transmission for it, a Chevy three speed with overdrive, and shoehorned it in there, which in turn required a Pontiac drive shaft and a Mercury rear end. I fitted it with wide tall tires in back and normal ones up front. That heap could cruise at ninety-five or a hundred miles an hour all night long. Had an eight-track tape deck, too.”

Lavinia frowned quizzically at the nacelle of electronics in the Lexus dash, whose speedometer claimed a top speed of 145 mph and whence she could select any track in any order from five or six CDs.

“Have you ever seen an eight-track tape?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Never heard of them.”

“All the truck's original electrics, like the headlamps, the taillights, the radio, were six volts. But the tape deck and everything on the V8, like the starter, were twelve volts. So I had an extra six-volt battery wired up in series with the truck's original six volt battery. The only place the second battery would fit was in the footwell in front of the passenger seat. There was a floor shift, of course, rather crudely cut in. Through the hole in the floorboards you could watch the asphalt streaming beneath the truck. My cellist had to be careful around that rig. She didn't want to get battery acid on her party dress.”

Lavinia flicked her cigarette into the night. “It sounds to me,” she observed, checking her mirror as she signaled and changed lanes, “as if this poor girl came a distant third to that truck and its tape deck.”

“Well, that's interesting you should mention that, Lavinia, and I hasten to agree, if qualifiedly. Until I met that cellist, you might have been correct. But that cellist….”

A Lincoln Navigator, at 6,000 pounds one of the largest SUVs on the market, abruptly passed us in the right lane. Its driver held down his horn and gesticulated rudely in our direction.

“Guy's panties are too tight,” Lavinia suggested, braking as the Navigator cut us off and stopped, just in time, for the light at Clayton. Lavinia had to brake hard to avoid rear-ending it. “Does not this pig care that I am carrying a gun?”

I looked at her. “You are?” Lavinia said nothing. I turned back to the windshield. “Maybe the IRS is reviewing his offshore partnerships, so he needs to commit suicide.”

We studied the vehicle—we had no choice. Just four inches shy of eight feet wide, burnished to an ebony luster, its bulk filled the entire windscreen. It's rear bumper was almost as high as the hood on the Lexus, which forced us to squint into the reflected glare of our own headlights. As for its sparkling windows, an American flag filled each of the two rear ones. A red, white and blue sticker on its left bumper read,
United We Stand
, and as Lavinia quoted it, she was quick to provide the phrase with a minor premise, “
On Top Of Everyone Else,
” and a conclusion, “
Or Else!
” She slapped my knee. “Pretty good, huh? Huh?”

“Yes,” I agreed, “but it's unpatriotic.” I pointed out the sticker on the beast's right bumper.

I'm Changing the Climate:
Ask Me How!

“That's incredible,” Lavinia marveled. “No way this jerk knows that motto is defiling his Global Warmer. Some prankster put it there.”

“On the contrary. Maybe he's proud of it.”

“Which makes for the bigger jerk?”

“That he knows, of course.”

Lavinia nodded. “Then he knows.”

When the light turned green, the Navigator emitted a strange roar and lunged forward. It sounded like a sand-blaster.

“He got a mile to that gallon,” Lavinia said, as we watched the huge taillights diminish down Market Street.

A car behind us honked. Lavinia turned left.

“So,” I continued, “one night, having delivered the cellist to her mother in Sparks a little earlier than we'd planned, on account we were making out in her driveway and accidentally leaned on the horn, which woke her mother up….”

Lavinia laughed. “You've never played a note that wasn't smooth jazz, have you, Curly?”

“Hey. I'm telling you all this for a reason.”

“You are?”

“Check it out. The way home was 43 miles through the desert. Not a stop sign, not a streetlight, not another car, no speed limit. There wasn't even a line painted in the middle of the road. It was way past midnight on a Sunday, and I was supposed to open up the Flying A station in Lee Vining at six
A.M
., where I worked at the time, which left me about four hours' sleep. No problem. I was nineteen. I parked the tachometer at 3300 rpm in overdrive, which translated to about 92 miles per hour—no speedometer—and let her roll. It was late spring in the desert. The sage had begun to get hot enough in the daytime to release its scent into the cooler night air, but I was steering with a light touch, elbow out the window, and smelling the inside of my right wrist, on which I could detect the perfume of my cellist. I never knew what brand it was, but to this day I remember what it smelled like, and if I ever notice that smell in a club or a hotel lobby or on the street, it takes me straight back to that night. I can hear the exact pitch of the dual exhaust on that 300 horsepower V8, I can hear the chains rattle on the tailgate, I can hear the Grateful Dead's
Dark Star
, the longest cut ever released on eight-track tape, so far as I know….”

“You're a fucking moron,” Lavinia said.

“I entered one of those long desert curves that can take up a whole valley, and I saw the dog sleeping in the road, but that's all I had time to do before the right front wheel simply exploded it. It sounded like a wave hitting a seawall, a percussive splash that spewed large and small pieces of dog all up under the truck. It didn't affect the forward momentum at all. I was a mile down the road before I even thought to react.”

Lavinia stopped for the light at 17th Street.

“Dogs, you know, way out in the country, they'll sleep on the road at night for the warmth the asphalt's soaked up during the day.”

The light turned green and Lavinia turned left. “Did you stop?”

“What for? It was between me and that dog, and he was dead.”

“Didn't you feel bad?”

“I just told you the story, didn't I?”

“So?”

“So it's thirty years later. Doesn't that tell you something?”

“Like what, Curly? That you're a sensitive moron? But that story just about made me puke. What if it had been a kid?”

“Kids don't sleep on asphalt in the middle of the night.”

Lavinia was silent.

“Do they?” I asked uncertainly.

“You know what I've been thinking the whole time you were telling that story—since before your story, since we ran over the Dalmatian?”

“No. Since
you
ran over the Dalmatian, what have
you
been thinking about?”

“Telltail.”

“Telltail? Is that a person?”

“That's the girl in my video. Tanya was her real name. Telltail was her nickname.” She glanced my way, “That's T-A-I-L.”

I nodded. “The girl who was killed in the liquor store hold-up.”

“I'll never forget it. I dedicate every show to her.”

“That's big of you. Do you send royalties to her mother?”

“No way. Telltail's mother was renting her out to her own boyfriends by the time Telltail was twelve.”

“Oh, great, honey, let's grow a sociopath. So you keep the money.”

“Hey. Curly?”

I turned to look at her.

“Did you keep that hotrod pickup truck?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Damn straight I did.”

She turned right on Stanyan.

A half hour later Lavinia parked the Lexus in front of Lafayette Elementary on Anza between 36th and 37th Avenues, and pointed out a two-story bungalow across the street.

“What about it?”

“The address is 4514 Anza. Can you remember that?”

“Sure.”

She pulled away from the curb. “Now we need a cab.” She produced a cell phone and retrieved the number of Big Dog Taxi from information. When the dispatcher came on the line, she ordered a cab for a cafe called In Fog We Trust, on Cabrillo at 40th. She listened for a moment, then explained that the ride was six blocks, a wait, then another six blocks, but, not to worry, she'd guarantee a thirty-dollar fare. She listened for another moment, then patiently spelled the name of the cafe. She was parallel-parking one-handed on 39th, just above Balboa, by the time she hung up.

We retrieved the empty guitar case and carry-on bag from the trunk and walked two blocks to 40th and Cabrillo. There we found a lively little group of businesses, including a dry cleaner, a yoga school, a trophy shop, a bar, a Vietnamese restaurant, and a small grocery. In Fog We Trust was a natural-food cafe with a genuine, humming samovar looming over the back bar next to a pastry case. A couple of people played chess in the front window. A guy strummed a guitar on a bench out front. When he saw my instrument case, he quit playing.

The marine layer was gliding in to blanket the city for the night, and it was chilly. Lavinia and I walked past the cafe. As we neared the top of the block, the shy guitarist began to play again. From sixty yards down wind it sounded like Fernando Sor's “Tema con Variaciones.”

“When you get to 4514 Anza, tell the driver to wait for you. Make sure he parks in front of the house, so whoever answers the door will see the cab. Your name is Stepnowski.”

“What is that? Polish?”

“How should I know? You're looking for your brother. His name is Stefan and his wife's name is Angelica. Got that?”

“Stefan and Angelica,” I repeated.

She looked at my head and frowned. “I wish we had a stupid hat for you, but we don't. If whoever answers the door isn't too nervous to speak with you, they'll tell you that Stepnowski no longer lives at that address.”

“Oh, dear.”

“That's right. You've been on the road for a month and out of touch, but you came all the way from Philadelphia to gig with your brother's band until they find a new guitar player. The first job's tomorrow night, but you don't know where it is.”

“You need Stepnowski's new address.”

“That's correct.”

“He owes you money?”

“He owes money to Kramer's World of Sound.”

“Sal ‘The King' Kramer? How much?”

“Seventy-five hundred dollars.”

“Since when does Ivy Pruitt carry the weight for a job like this?”

“He gets pretty ugly when he's strung out. People are afraid of him.”

“So where's that leave me?”

“You're big and you're bald and you got an octopus tattooed on your head.”

“But these,” I said, turning them palm up, “are an artist's hands. I don't use them to beat up people.”

“So use your feet. If we pull this off,” she persisted, “we have a bondsman who will go Ivy's bail for $1200. Once he's out, Ivy will need a little running-around money—”

“Is that what he calls it?”

“—say another six seventy-five. That makes eighteen seventy-five for Ivy. Whether these reprobates give up the gear or fork over cash, ‘The King' gives Ivy half of whatever he manages to intimidate out of them. In this case, if we get the whole seventy-five hundred, you and I will split what's left after Sal and Ivy get theirs. That's nine hundred and thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents apiece. In other words, you fucking idiot, your cut will come to more than five month's pay at that crappy gig you just got fired from.”