1.

The frigid June fog coaxes me into the club. I’m winded and still sweating a bit, and when my martini is served, I use the bar napkin to mop my brow. The small unlighted marquee in front of Club Boomerang told me that Riki, an ex-girlfriend, and her rock band are playing tonight. The irony will no doubt double my alcohol consumption for the evening. The place is not crowded much, but there is still a half an hour before she’s due to go on. I swipe a stool at a tall table near the bar, find a cigarette, and puff myself to placation.

There is a story about my coming here: a melodrama in four acts. I will reveal my tale as long as you don’t judge me hastily. Besides, you can’t blame the actors for the playwright’s folly, even if the playwright is of divine origin. Surely, I’m just an actor in a drama of someone else’s cruel design.

It has been a month since I saw Riki, or Erika Denise Palke, as her fine old-world mother might call her. One night about four Mondays ago, she read me the Riot Act until one in the morning before wearing herself out and locking herself in our bedroom. All her complaints were one hundred percent truthful; I couldn’t blame her for being angry and frustrated with me.

We were together for five years, four of them good, at least in my estimation. My estimation, however, may be skewed by my indifference, my habit of receding into blankness. This indifference, she claimed, amongst a variety of other gripes, was what had driven her near the brink of her sanity.

I can only paraphrase and condense her tirade that night–after all, it was four weeks ago. We were in our apartment, in the fluorescently bright kitchen–me at the table, her in the middle of the tile floor–and she just snapped. She had said something, and I didn’t respond right; I didn’t respond at all. I had been lost in some internal world, thinking about a new angle at work, answering and responding to her in a perfunctory manner: a cursory grunt, a mindless uh-huh.

She said: "That requires a yes or no answer, Mitch." Her tone was clearly aggravated, but I picked up on it too late, buried in thought and completely detached.

"Sure," I said.

She threw down a box of crackers dramatically, or at least as dramatically as crackers can be thrown. "You son of a bitch," she uttered tersely. Riki is not a delicate girl; you’d expect her to explode in a flail of fists. No, her anger is much more scary–because it’s quiet anger. She glowered under her thick, black bangs at me. Unfortunately, I was still halfway in my private world and was only then clueing into the fact that she was about to tear me a new orifice. By doing nothing, or next to nothing, I kept inciting her toward greater rancor.

"That is so typical of you. I’ve always known that you were pretty self-involved, and for all these years I have written it off as a merely a sign of your introspection, or maybe a kind of shyness. Then I thought, a little concerned, that maybe you were just thinking about business or art or something. But I’ve come to realize that, no, you are just totally indifferent to anything that excludes Mitchell Midgard."

"What the hell are you talking about, Riki," I blurted. I was a little dazed, as though she had just bludgeoned me with a blackjack. She picked up the cracker box (which now had a rip in its cardboard seam) off of the kitchen floor and used it as an oratory device.

"Indifferent, Mitch. In-fucking-different." She waved the cracker box threateningly; a Triscuit flew onto the counter. "There is nothing more despicable on this planet than indifference. You could give a good goddamn what I did with my life: if I played the fucking Coliseum, or if I gigged down at the Blue Lamp, or if the band broke up. It doesn’t matter. And if you ever show up to a gig, it’s only because you know it will assuage me. You don’t care about the music; you don’t care about me. You care about yourself and your lousy little business. You care if your comfort is sacrificed. Then suddenly you’re tuned in; only then are you moved to action. But that’s it. Everything else is just you going through the motions. Except, of course, for your precious business. And sex in the last year? What am I?–a sex doll? You don’t even kiss me when we make love anymore. I wouldn’t even get to come if it didn’t take you so goddamn long."

Riki is quite a beautiful girl, in that good-natured, Haight Street-sort-of-way. And she is heartbreakingly gorgeous when she is angry. This made it hard for me to take her seriously, which, in turn, provoked her further. "Why haven’t you complained before?" was the only thing I could think of to defend myself. Like I said, this was a surprise attack on my formerly placid Pearl Harbor of a mindstate.

"You are impossible." She threw the box of crackers on the floor again. Triscuits flew everywhere. "When we found each other–those weeks after my equipment was stolen back at the apartment building on Market–we seemed perfectly matched: forlorn twentysomethingers on a road to nowhere, suddenly in love." She paused; I restrained what might have been an untimely laughing fit. "We sorta rescued each other; we filled the potholes in each other’s lives. We had fun. You quit drinking for a year. Started your business. Now I see that I was just some emotional crutch for you to lean on until you gathered sufficient strength to make it on your own."

Finally, I gathered my wits enough to attempt rebuttal. But I was pretty much on the mat by this time. "This is so out of the blue, Riki!" I raised my voice a little bit, attempting the shocked and outraged pose. "I know I’ve been distracted recently. Everything has been clicking along so fast. Your band started gigging everywhere, and suddenly everyone wanted Magda’s paintings. Then Alec began to sell. But, hey! We still have fun. I took you out on Saturday!"

"Yeah," she spat, "to one your pathetic soc parties. They make me sick. Everybody’s on the take. Dressed like royalty, but acting like trash."

"They’re my clients!"

"Fuck your clients. They stink. When was the last time we took a picnic at the park? Or went shooting? Or went to a nice dinner, not some taqueria in the Mission. When was the last time we went to a movie?"

"We saw a movie on Sunday!"

"It was a video, and you were on the phone for most of it. I’m like furniture to you. A prop. I fill some sort of perverse role–at least I did. We’re through, Mitchy-boy. I’m packing a bag and moving to Jamie’s for awhile."

I stared at the floor. I felt like I had arrived in the middle of someone else’s conversation. "What’s wrong with taquerias?"

"You’re fucked!" she screamed. She kicked at the crumbled crackers on the ground and stormed off to the bathroom. Did I say quiet anger?

I had nothing to say. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was hoping this was some warped test to get me to react. If it was, I was going to fail. I read the label of my beer and tried to remember what I was thinking about before Riki began her tirade. The neighbor was playing his TV too loud; it sounded like a cop show. Then Riki was in the kitchen again, hastily cleaning up the Triscuits with a broom and a blue plastic dustpan. Salty rivulets of mascara coursed down her cheeks.

"If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were seeing someone else . . . fucking asshole," she mumbled acidly.

"Right, Riki." Maybe I had fooled around–but it was completely carnal. She was right about her becoming unnecessary for me. I got together with her after some particularly nasty business went down; maybe I’ll explain about that later. Anyway, now (well, four weeks ago) I was on my feet, confident in the direction of my ascent, and she had become emotionally burdensome. I loved her, and still do, at least as much as I can love anyone. But it had become the love one keeps toward a pesky kid sister, or the family dog that has taken to tearing up the yard: you like the familiarity of their presence, but they have become an annoyance in the back of your mind.

"Get any calls from Jennifer lately?" she whined sarcastically. Jennifer Malley was the daughter of an old family acquaintance who had given me a lot of business in the beginning. "That fucking slut." Riki threw the dustpan, crackers and all, into the trash near the sink. "Come to think of it, I can’t understand what I ever saw in you. Average looks, average mind, average cock. Nothing but mediocrity. Just an illusion I conjured to keep some stupid hope alive."

"You’re probably right," I replied. I wasn’t trying to win anymore. I was trying to keep her on track so I could start anew, be unattached for awhile, or at least until it was no longer convenient. In my head, she had already packed her bags and gone.

"You never loved me." After trying to re-stow the broom between the refrigerator and the wall for the sixth time, she gave up and threw it at me, making me duck, and sending it into the fern in the corner. The plastic pot tumbled to the linoleum, sending rich black potting soil under the kitchen table. I couldn’t help but snigger, which, of course, upset her more. "You are nothing but a goddamn lie! A zero! You’ve never played it straight with me! I know your ‘business’ isn’t on the up-and-up. What are you doing? Laundering money? Selling drugs? Prostitution? What is it?"

"Well–"

"Don’t even start! You couldn’t tell me the truth if your stinking life depended on it. Oh, to you it might be the truth, or in some thin way it might be right, but everything with you is just another veil. Well, get this, asshole: no lie–I’m outta here!!" And she zipped off to our bedroom and locked the door for the night.

I shrugged, lit a cigarette, and drank the rest of my beer.

That incident was the beginning of four trying weeks. Goes to show that my visions of freedom and mental respite from the arduous confines of a relationship were just that–visions. And here I am, shaking, cold, and sweaty with a drink in my hand and the echoes of pistol shots still ringing in my ears.

I take a big breath. Clear the mind, let the empty moment stutter on by . . . . . . . . . . sip the cocktail, order another.

2.

This must be "Riot Grrl" night. Besides Riki’s band, Snippets, there are two other female acts on the evening’s agenda. A Noe Valley extremist with an acoustic guitar is growling angry separatist-feminist folk tunes, a demented amalgamation of Joan Baez, Patti Smith, and Marianne Faithful. That’s a wide range, but I’m in no mood for exactitudes. As one of Snippets’ members drifts by with her cymbal bag, I avoid possible identification and cast my gaze the opposite direction. Billie Black, she calls herself. I think her real name is something like Ilene Goldstein. An adequate drummer, she continually seemed hell-bent on discouraging any relation between Riki and me. I have the feeling that the bandmates got the heavy end of Riki’s emotional baggage during and after our relationship. As a result, they can only see the bad in me; maybe that’s all there is worth seeing.

Where was I . . . oh, explaining the events that led me to this Haight Street rocker bar. Right. The tragedy in four acts. Riki’s departure was Act I; Act II would start shortly, at a certain soiree.

So, the day following the final Mitch/Riki argument (if indeed you could call it an argument), Riki moved in with the bass player. Jamie, a sweet French-Canadian woman, also hated me, but nevertheless was too kind-spirited to ever show me anything but laconic distaste.

Upon Riki’s leaving, a great weight was removed from my heart. For the last two years, I felt I was doing her an injustice by staying with her. But I couldn’t find the excuse nor the motivation to break it off. I despise this laissez-faire method of ending relationships, waiting until it drags itself under, but while I had grown out of my original affection for Riki, I had grown comfortable with our daily life together. She had become a friendly roommate, a roommate who held the conviction that I owed her a romantic debt.

I rose from sleep the following morning, blearily rolling off the long brown leather couch in the living room. As I gained my feet, I realized I was so happy I wouldn’t need my morning cigarette. Our bedroom door was still locked, so instead of disturbing Riki to get a change of clothes, I showered, dressed in the previous day’s garments, and left for work.

I’ve got to come clean to you at least on this account–it’ll make my story easier. I’m a fence. Stolen art, archeological artifacts, expensive jewels, computer chips. I used to deal with the lower end of the criminal spectrum, but I realized, after a string of unfortunate incidents, that I was cheating myself. Why risk prison time over small-time foolery? So I reevaluated my position and decided to try the high-end of the biz. I moved in with Riki to a place on Russian Hill, my current residence, and put out feelers for an art contact. I never thought my degree in art history would be of any use, but it was the only area of knowledge (besides criminal science, maybe) I could fake my way through. The cover was perfect; I patted myself on the back for its creation for well over a year before I realized the cover was like any other identity–an anchor, a liability. Start-up was not easy: reputation is very key in art dealing circles, and at first I wasn’t a very convincing salesman. Twenty-five years old with a measly art degree? Forget it. Fortunately, I had a reasonably large bank account (trust fund, stolen goods), affluent friends, and what I think is a reliable eye for contemporary art. And, most importantly, I had time.

After renting a SoMa office space, printing up letterhead and business cards, filing for a fictitious business name (Odyssey Agency), and dumping money into a fresh bank account, I combed the art school shows of The City, looking for sculptures and paintings that caught my eye. I settled on four eager seniors who were more than willing to let me sell their stuff on consignment. Only one of them was truly gifted; the other three had styles trendy enough to sell. The gifted one, a graduating senior named Max Lazarus, was a strapping ex-middleweight before he turned to the kind of canvas you paint on. He had a caustic wit and favored an expressionistic palette. I’m still friends with him, although he jumped ship after a year. He hit the big time and is causing mayhem in the art world as I speak.

His was my first "sale." Only later did I tell him that his first big sale was merely a result of my illicit practices. Right after I set up shop, I got an assist from my old partner-in-crime, Jack Malley. He is a friend of my father’s and is the catalyst to my original fall from the law. He set me up with a museum curator named Pierceton Proud who had a bad gambling habit and was subsequently predisposed to selling off his inventory to avoid broken limbs. He sold me four, millennium-old Anasazi ceramic bowls for five grand each. It didn’t take long to find a buyer (a St. Francis Woods multimillionaire and a relative of an old prep school buddy), and I unloaded the bowls at twenty grand per piece. To keep the books looking clean, it was my requirement that all sales were paired with a legitimate sale of one of my up-and-comings. I got four thousand for Mr. Lazarus’ painting, a garish, modernist Salome-John-the-Baptist-head-on-the-platter rendering.

Not so long ago, at one of the "pathetic soc" parties, as Riki calls them, that I again met up with Lazarus and intimated, over many, many vodka martinis, the details of his first sale. At first I thought he was going to turn his formerly pugilist fists upon me. But his worried brow flattened to one of hilarity, and we toasted the paradox of his first work being sold for reasons of criminality, not appreciation.

Forgive my rambling–I’m a bit unstrung at the moment. The musician’s angry, anti-patriarchal rantings are not only unnerving, they’re poorly sung.

It was after the Mitch/Riki break-up fight, and I drove to the office in my BMW. Like most everything else in my life, the Beemer was a prop, veiling my activity with an air of legitimacy and success. My look, that of the young, successful hipster, was also fabrication. Long brown hair slicked back into a neat pony tail, silk shirt, sleek wool slacks, Italian leather shoes, pricey gold watch. Any hipness I possess at all is merely a by-product of being a good actor. My last cover was that of a "trust-fund writer," and it suited my down-in-the-mouth, low-key, middling operation. But that character (short-haired, bright-eyed, collegiate) died along with two thieves and a fed five years ago.

So I got to the office, a converted warehouse loft I share with a portrait photographer named Gerald Clark. Late thirties, beer gut, male-patterned baldness, jeans, t-shirt: a slovenly, anti-yuppie bachelor-for-life. He was smoking a joint when I arrived. This normally would’ve irritated me because it didn’t fit in with my cover of legitimacy, and I was worried that my clients (the real art patrons) might show up and be offended. But my mood was far too solid for a little grass to upset it. He crushed it out the moment I walked in the door.

"Morning, Mitch," he greeted. He waved the smoke away with a plastic negatives sleeve. "Sorry. Needed my morning buzz."

"Quite all right, Ger," I beamed. "Anybody come by?"

"Not a one." He held up the negatives against the gray morning light that issued through the gigantic warehouse windows.

"Many jobs today?" I asked. He often had his clients sit in his studio, set up behind a drywall partition on the other side of the space.

"One this morning, two this afternoon." A mischievous smile crept across his stubbly face. "You might want to assist on one this afternoon. It’s a lingerie vanity portrait for the woman’s husband." He often let me "assist" him on these semi- or full-nude shoots, more to gawk than to help out. He would assure his female clients that I was gay (and his male clients that I was gay!) to set their timid minds at ease. Assisting him would often spice up an otherwise dull afternoon of waiting for the phone to ring.

I thought about his offer a moment. "Maybe if I’m around. I’m supposed to deliver a painting early this afternoon." A painting and a hot twenty thousand-dollar diamond tennis bracelet, that is.

"All right. I’ll be shooting her at three, if you’re interested." And he walked back into his studio.

I sat down behind my desk and huffed out a breath. The desk is stark black glass and distastefully modern–completely apropos for my persona. On the desk is a speaker phone, a picture of my parents, a picture of Riki (sexy and darkly brooding), a crystal clock, and a pen and note pad. A ghastly, greening, five-foot-high copper sculpture by one of my up-and-comings stands in the corner between the desk and the brick wall. On a black metal stand to the side of my desk is my old Apple Macintosh, outdated but still functional. Two comfortable black leather and steel chairs face the desk; a long black naugahide couch is pushed against the bare and rough red brick wall. Paintings and sculptures are everywhere but do not clutter the place. There’s a storage room at the edge of my side of the loft space where I keep most of my young artists’ work. Some of their work is scattered in galleries on consignment around San Francisco, some in New York.

What started as a pretty damn good cover four and a half years ago had, somewhere along the line, turned into a semi-profitable business. Because I deal stolen goods to the richest folk in town, my artists’ paintings and sculptures end up in the finest collections. And now my name is trusted and recognized as a reliable dealer of San Franciscan contemporary art. This makes things complicated for me, as I am terminally lazy and possess the talent of being able to do absolutely nothing for long periods of time. Now I work almost a full forty-hour week. I even stopped advertising to stem the flow of calls. Even then, most phone time is spent with legitimate customers.

All this makes for difficult money management, and I’m deathly paranoid of being red-flagged by the IRS and/or any other government agency. I receive far too much income for me to properly launder through my art business. As a result, I have a friend in Germany manage a Swiss bank account. But there’s still too much cash, and that is dangerous.

After making some coffee in the kitchenette, I answered my phonemail: two legitimate inquiries, a painting sale out of a downtown gallery, the aforementioned Jennifer Malley, asking if I was going to the Thorsten soiree that evening; Riki informing me morosely that she would leave her key with the apartment manager; and a mysterious message from a small-timer with big dreams, Julian Steward, alias Johnny Stone.

Yeah, that’s right–Johnny Stone.

Johnny Stone used to be Julian Steward before he was made by the FBI five years ago. They had a tab on him, although no incriminating evidence. One wants to avoid the watchful eye of the authorities–even if it means renaming oneself like some character out of a canceled TV action series.

How criminally easy it is to exchange identities. The process should be adapted as a New Age psychological therapy. Shedding one’s problems could be as easy as changing names and acquiring the properly forged paperwork. So you become Johnny Stone, and you alert all your reliable clients of the name change and hope the feds don’t identify you in a crowded place.

Changing identities may keep you in business, may even keep you alive, but it won’t make you any smarter. This was unfortunate for Johnny, who needed all the intelligence he could get. I didn’t care for him all that much, but we’d gone through some heavy shit together and I felt an ineffable bond between us. He wanted to start dealing in the higher-end products, like myself, but he was too crass for the clientele. So it was still stereo equipment, televisions, and computers for Johnny. I gave him an ear now and then and would invite him to a party maybe once a year.

Lighting a cigarette and sipping my coffee, I sunk into my high-backed leather desk chair and dialed Johnny’s beeper. Then I called Magda Suarez and told her that her "Moondance III" painting went for fifteen hundred and that I would take my forty-point cut and send her the rest.

The phone rang. I was halfway down on my cigarette. It was Julian . . . er, Johnny.

"What’s up," I asked. I invariably braced myself for insipid dialogue. He rarely cut to the chase–except for this time.

"Can you meet me for a beer at lunch to talk shop?" he asked. Some time during the last five years, he ceased his ungrounded condescension and replaced it with mild obsequiousness.

"Let me check my book," I said. I didn’t have a day-planner; I smiled and stared at a cubist still life of a dildo on the wall. "All right, how about noon at Zeitgeist?"

"Noon it is. Think Intel. Think Pentium–"

"Cool it," I warned.

"Yeah. Noon. Zeitgeist. See ya." He hung up. I stared at the dildo still life a little more and finished my smoke.

Let me indulge in a memory flash. It was my sophomore year in college when I made my first business-oriented phone call to Jack Malley. This guy who lived three dorm rooms away invited me over one evening for a quick snort of some miscellaneous powdered substance and ended up showing me the three boxes of Rolex watches he pilfered from his dad’s warehouse. It was humorous, the great pains he took to rationalize his actions: the insurance company would cover the loss, he owed several thousand dollars to some very mean people. I assured him he didn’t need to rationalize to me, the king of rationalization. I dimly wondered if his dad encouraged him to commit the theft.

So he had all these expensive watches and didn’t know what to do with them. I took a chance and called my dad’s friend, Jack Malley. I had suspected for years that he was on the take, that he was a mobster of sorts. Man, did he have a good laugh at my circuitous questioning. After letting me suffer a few minutes, he got down to business and asked me how much I wanted for whatever it was I was selling. I told him about the watches and, being the professional opportunist that I am, raised the price on him by fifteen percent. He didn’t even flinch; he asked if I could get more. Several months later, I came across a box of stolen jewelry. Then, after that, it was gold bracelets. Suddenly, I was well on my way to wheels, deals, and profit. That’s how it all began.

And I find myself here at a bar, giving confession and trying to get drunk.

3.

I am overjoyed to see the angry woman stop singing. Everyone in the bar is suddenly distracted by the rush and wail of sirens screaming through the Haight, down Lincoln, into the park. I figure they won’t venture into the smoky confines of this establishment; I shudder regardless.

I’ll count away five minutes before I order another vodka martini.

I suppose the natural question to ask would be, What made you sell those watches? How did a trust-fund, prep school boy get mixed up with the sinister San Francisco underworld? My answer: Affluence inevitably breeds ennui. Humanity finds a thrill in challenge, danger, and vice. The materialization of the thrill takes on a plethora of forms, each catering to the psychic predispositions of their author. For her it’s jumping from a plane; for him it’s falling off of a bar stool; for her it’s shooting smack; for him it’s shooting other gang members; for her it’s pain; for him it’s causing pain. Self-admittedly, I’ve always been turned on by doing that which society forbids, disdains. Not uncommon. Then, the logical paradox to pursue would be for Mitch Midgard, rich kid from Saratoga, to become a pseudo-thief, the nefarious middleman, an outlaw salesman. It excites me. And is it not one’s dream that his or her vocation should also be their thrill? I am validated in that I love my work, I’m good at it, I fill a needed role to my customers. In a capitalist society, any money-generating enterprise is validated, justified, affirmed as a useful component. Crime is a necessary evil; it is the by-product of free will. One would not exist without the other.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Midgard Sociological Rule of Thumb Number One: People seek their personal fiction. We make up a story about ourselves, simple or intricate, to give reason and impetus to what we perceive, consciously or unconsciously, as an empty existence. If you can figure out a person’s personal fiction early on, you can manipulate them through their own story. The more romantic a part they play in their personal fiction, the easier they are to manipulate. Johnny Stone is a prime example. He believes in the persona he assumes. This is a classic criminal mistake.

What’s more, if you detect that others are aware (again, consciously or unconsciously) of this basic human tendency, if you can tell that they are trying to figure out your personal fiction, you can mislead them by feigning a false personal fiction. Reading the reader reading you. By creating my image as the young, hip art dealer, I have given the impression that I am absorbed with the idea of being the bon vivant art patron of San Francisco. A young, male Gertrude Stein of sorts. And I know people think that of me. Thus, I have much space in which to maneuver in this life of scam and grift.

All right. The waitress, a bald and pierced lesbian with faded green eyes, picks up my empty martini glass. "‘Nother?" she asks. A shiny chrome tongue-stud gleams inside her mouth.

I nod. "Thanks."

Jamie, black Fender bass in hand, walks past without noticing my presence. Think they will ignore me all night?

So I met Johnny Stone at Zeitgeist, an anti-Harley biker bar on the edge of the Mission District. Heavy metal, good beer, pool table. The patronage (mostly bicycle messengers) were comfortably distant, and the kitchen’s British bangers were superior. Before the switch to his current alias, Julian Steward would not be caught fifty feet from a joint like Zeitgeist. But now he, Johnny Stone, was long-haired and tattooed and dirty and watching MTV nearly everyday. He was almost convincing. He had bought a new Italian motorcycle and had recently got a nose ring. From Remy Martin to rot gut in a few easy steps.

"Hey, bro, what’s shakin’?" he asked gruffly. A pack of Lucky Strikes was rolled conspicuously in the short sleeve of his right arm. A Celtic weave was tattooed around his veined biceps. I would’ve been set at ease if "Born To Be Wild" suddenly blared; it would’ve meant that, yes, indeed, I was in a beer commercial.

"Nice ring," I commented, stripping as much sarcasm from my tone as I could. I sat at the pocket-knife-carved table, placing my pint of Blackhook in front of me.

"Thanks," he said, self-consciously touching his nose ring. He drank a Red Stripe from the bottle, so everyone could see. "You check out my new bike in front?"

"Which one? There are a lot of bikes out there."

"The Ducati. Cool, huh?"

"Yeah, cool."

Once tanned, blonde, and clean cut, Johnny had now gone greasy, white-skinned, and grunge. To me he seemed years too late, but who was I to judge, with my entire persona conceived from a character description in Art Forum. "Microprocessors?" I prompted.

He smiled and nodded. "It’s always right to business with you, Mitch. What I got is two hundred RISC-based dual platforms and three hundred Pentiums. Mr. Tom said he couldn’t move anything for a while–things are hot for him right now."

"That’s the first guy I would’ve called." I thought for a moment. I’m an acquaintance with a honcho at a small IBM PC-compatible company in the South Bay; it was the only call I could really make. I sipped my stout. "I’ll make a phone call. Only guy I know. What’re you asking?"

He made a show of extracting the smokes from his t-shirt. He lit one, picking a morsel of tobacco from his lips. "One hundred for the RISC chips and one-fifty per Pentium."

"Eighty and one-twenty-five," I countered.

"Mmmm . . ." he hesitated. A Motorhead tune rattled the glasses on the bar.

"And I’ll make the call this afternoon and tell you yea or nay," I added. I’d ask my computer connect for one-fifteen and one-seventy-five.

"Ninety and one-forty," he volleyed.

"I’ll see what I can do."

"Done."

We said nothing for two minutes.

"Wanna a celebration blaster?" he offered suddenly.

"Blow? No." I lit my own cigarette. "I’m going to drop off a painting."

"You’ve got the sweetest cover, dude," he said enviously.

"These days it seems less like a cover and more like a full-time job. It’s a drag. Besides, peddling chips isn’t exactly starving."

"Yeah, I guess." He pulled on his nose ring.

For some reason I felt bad; he had once been bigger-time than me. The petty fence was a rut he couldn’t crawl from. "Do you want to go to a soiree this evening? Pacific Heights deal. You might make a connect or two." I regretted the offer even as it fell from my lips.

"Sure." His eyes were suddenly happy. I wanted to sneer. Instead, I wrote down the address on the back of my business card.

"Show up around nine-thirty. If they ask, just tell ’em you’re a friend of mine." Saying those words threatened to bring the Blackhook back up from the depths of my gut.

"Cool, Mitch. Thanks. You’ll give me a beep if you find a buyer?"

I stood up, gulping the rest of my beer. "Yes. I’m not sure what the chances are, but I’ll call you either way." I headed for the door.

"See you tonight, Mitch."

"Yeah."

I had to hand it to Johnny. He had the best luck of anyone I knew–certainly more than me. For instance, if all goes right, he’ll be back on the street in a couple years or so, with only a minor felony mark to his name. If my ticket comes up (and it could soon), I’ll be resting in the big house for years and years. He was lucky because, up until recently, he hadn’t been so much as breathed on by the law. Okay, maybe breathed on. He was lucky because he is a moron who hadn’t been sacked until now.

That’s the way it is in this business: smart, lucky, or moronic. Me–I’m all three. But maybe I’m a special case. Isn’t that what we all like to think, that we’re a special case?

4.

Feliz Zapata was a lecherous old woman. Old Catholic ranching money and a teenager’s libido. This translated into a dirty old lady of Castilian ancestry who bought contemporary art and made frequent sexual propositions. She lived alone, had a butler, maid, cook, and gardener, as well as many young male friends whom she paid by the act. Recently, she had tired of stolen paintings and pilfered artifacts and sought jewelry. So I brought her a gorgeous diamond tennis bracelet.

We sat knee to knee in her sunny drawing room. Her papery, spindly fingers lifted the bracelet from its velvety resting place. It glimmered robustly in the mid-day sun, throwing a spectrum’s worth of sparkles into our eyes.

"Beautiful, Mitchell!" she gasped.

"Fifteen carats of beautiful," I replied. "Made circa 1940, I think." The butler arrived with a silver tray of Earl Grey. He was faded, docile, and bent from years of faithful service. You expected him to leave a dusty wake as he creaked in and out of the room. Feliz weighed the bejeweled bracelet appraisingly, then put it around her wrist.

"What’re you asking, Mitchell?" She held up a finger. "Now don’t cheat an old woman, boy, or I’ll have to give you a spanking!" She winked at me and I smiled.

"Twenty . . . and two grand for the painting I brought. You know how it works." I retrieved the plain wrapped rectangle that leaned against the flowery-papered wall. Feliz was still admiring the diamonds as I ripped the wrapping away. On the canvas was a purplish azure cylinder with a blunt end thrust powerfully into a peach-colored cone that cracked into crimson shards. All on a field of yellow; all done in acrylics. It was, of course, entitled, "Man-Woman."

She looked at it, tilted her head, grimaced and sighed. "Not bad. Fifty years late, though." She put the braceleted hand on my knee and squeezed. "What do you suppose the bracelet will appraise at, my dear Mitchell?"

I put my hand on hers, just to make her little ol’ heart race a bit. "Thirty thousand plus." She nodded and removed her hand. Her fingers found a service button on the wall under the Miró original. The old butler entered, carrying a steel box. I sipped my steaming tea.

"I’ll need a check for the painting," I reminded her. We’d been through the routine a number of times. The butler held the box as Feliz found two stacks of bills, each wrapped tightly with a paper band; they were new and crisp and smelled like cocaine. I had a friend at a check cashing bureau who could miraculously change the cash into money-orders or cashier checks.

When the transaction was done, she dismissed the butler and put her hand back on my knee. In her other hand, she clutched still another banded stack of bills. She licked her thin, dry lips and blinked her old brown eyes. Blood flushed her poorly made-up cheeks. "There’s another ten in it for you if you stay the afternoon with me, Mitchell darling."

"Define ‘stay the afternoon,’ Feliz," I said, knowing full-well what she meant.

"Don’t make me say it, Mitchell." She leaned toward me, eyes half-lidded. I wanted to laugh, but she was too pathetic.

I patted her hand and shrugged. "Sorry, Feliz. Business and pleasure–you know."

She deflated and waved me away mockingly. "Just testing. I have to try once per visit. One day you’ll slip, Mitchell." That was the tenth time she’d tried; she had started at one thousand. Besides the obvious reason, I think she propositioned me to see how much money it would take for me to finally give in. Feliz cackled and drank all her tea in one gulp.

I poured her another cup, feeling the bulge of money inside my suede blazer. "Let’s hope that when I slip, it’s into your arms and not the coppers."

That was the last time I saw Feliz. It was at this point that an unseen catalyst began to deconstruct the San Francisco underworld. As Johnny had mentioned, the heat was on Mr. Tom, as well as other criminal bigwigs in The City. It seemed moles, plants, and other assorted undercover goons were coming out of the woodwork. This is when a rock-solid cover like the one I perpetrated came in handy–provided no one snitched, and not many were foolhardy enough to do that. Nevertheless, it made me slightly nervous to work with Johnny, who was sloppy with his pager number, personally ostentatious, and generally unsubtle.

Feliz Zapata was arrested for tax evasion and money laundering a few days after I sold her the tennis bracelet. Story was that she smiled through the whole affair: good cop/bad cop-style questioning, the arrest, four hours of jail time, and her bailing out. Then, it was told, she absconded with all her cash and jewelry to the San Francisco International Airport, where she was apprehended and taken home, an unmarked police vehicle parked outside to keep watch. My guess is that it was because Feliz was old, tired, and spiteful that she committed suicide. She was seventy-four, had lived a rich and decadent life, and detested anyone who told her how to behave. She didn’t want the hassle, or the scandal, so she overdosed herself on morphine and faded out peacefully. For some reason, this ending filled me with a morbid respect for Feliz. She had won. In the big game of cops and robbers, securing one’s own death is akin to the tradition of the good Roman centurion falling on his sword after losing the battle.

All her possessions, which included many objets d’art (stolen and legitimate) purchased from me, were confiscated. I received a phone call from a fed the following week. The young woman, who had that fresh-out-of-the-academy zeal in her voice, questioned me about the art Feliz had bought. She said nothing about hot paintings or jewelry. I offered to let the cadet go through my books, but she let it drop there.

5.

I free my hair from the rubberband that keeps it from my eyes. My fingers fluff it out; maybe Riki’s bandmates won’t recognize me with long brown hair in my face. Still no sign of Riki, thank God. But her eventual presence is inevitable.

I raise my glass to a ghost. "Here’s to you, Feliz Zapata. Not only did you win, you got the last word." Mmm, good martini. They tend to get better as the tab gets larger, I’ve found.

So I went to the Thorsten soiree; lights up, begin Act II. It was Friday night, ten o’clock. Feliz would be arrested Monday afternoon, right after tea. So it goes, as Mr. Vonnegut would say.

I dressed appropriately slick. My old velvet-collared smoking jacket, gray button down, black flannel slacks, and black cobra skin boots. Hair smooth and tied back. A valet took my keys, and suddenly I found myself in the Thorsten ballroom, glass of champagne in hand, staring at a woman with fashionably messy, short blond hair. Just by her whole presentation you could tell that, underneath the primp, she was nasty in the most desirable ways. She would be my designated object of flirtation for the evening. If I choose a woman to flirt with early in the evening, it makes the length and breadth of the party much more tolerable.

The Thorsten mansion was obscene in its richness. They were trying for a Georgian regalness and were so obvious about it that it ruined what little impact such a design concept might convey. The guests loved it, the failure of the design affirming their post-modern sensibilities. Battle of the rich trendites.

The alcohol flowed.

I searched for familiar faces, wandering from room to garish room, always keeping mental note of where my flirting-object was. I had a passing acquaintance with well over half the seventy guests. Jack Malley had declined Thorsten’s invite, but his daughter was there, and was indeed talking to Johnny Stone, who had done his best to dress like a poor imitation of me.

"Jennifer, Johnny, hello," I greeted flatly. "You two know each other?" In my mind, they seemed almost perfect together. Greed, shallowness, desperation. They must’ve flown to each other like magnetized objects.

"Just met," Jennifer said. She had longish, curly light brown hair, lipo-sculpted curves, and perfect teeth. She hugged me quickly, kissing me firmly on the mouth. She giggled as she used her thumb to wipe a pinkish smear of lipstick from my upper lip. "How are you, Mitchy?"

"Great," I said. I shook Johnny’s hand. "Hey, Johnny. You both look fab," I lied amicably.

"Thanks," he replied. "For this afternoon, too." I had bought all his microchips; my computer executive friend, who happened to be standing twenty feet to the right of Johnny at that very moment, agreed to buy them all.

Jennifer put a hand on her bony hip. "Deals, deals, deals, boys," she playfully chastised us. Now Johnny would find out that Jennifer was on the take as well; I detected suppressed interest on his face.

Four years ago, fresh out of Stanford with a business degree, Jennifer was introduced to the family business, which concerned smuggled and stolen jewelry, with periodic excursions toward illicit petty acquisitions. As I mentioned before, I used to be part of those who acquired petty acquisitions for Jack Malley; then I moved away from Malley’s operations in pursuit of my own larger success in art and artifacts. Malley had no sons, so Jennifer became heir to the criminal legacy that had been part of the Malley heritage for over a hundred years. It was unfortunate that Jennifer was the heiress: she was savvy, but impulsively greedy. She was smarter than Johnny Stone, but lacked the second-sense of her father. Trouble was in her criminal future. After she was indoctrinated, I started to see her at these soc parties. We frequently had brief sexual encounters in the spacious bathrooms while party guests impatiently tapped on the door to release the punch from their bursting bladders.

The petite blonde flirt-object entered the room. She wore the obligatory black knit party dress. Men’s heads swiveled; their dates sneered. She had the body of a late 1960’s model: Twiggy, Lauren Hutton. She spotted me and let her gaze linger for a moment; she made conversation with the aging bartender.

Jennifer spoke at me: "Where’s Riki, Mitch?" She honestly liked Riki, wasn’t jealous. She couldn’t understand what I was doing with Riki and often told me so. Don’t get the wrong idea–Jennifer and I had decided long ago to limit our relationship to doing business and fucking in the bathroom. We enjoyed the arrangement.

"She couldn’t make it. Gig or something." I downed the champagne and shrugged. "Besides, she hates these parties." No need to mention the break-up.

Jennifer laughed. "But they are so obviously hideous, you have to like them. It’s a show."

"I guess she doesn’t get it." That was the truth. Holding up my glass, I said, "Need more beverage. I’ll talk to you in a while." As I leaned over to kiss her cheek (Johnny’s eyes averted to the expensive Persian rug), I whispered, "Upstairs bathroom, first on the right, eleven-thirty."

Off to the bartender. This was the inevitable contact point. The Midgard Flirting Modus Operandi went like this: choose the object of flirtation; make subtle eye contact while relating amusing anecdotes to guests, host, or hostess; linger with all stares; make initial contact at bar or by greeting mutual friend; insert conversational opening; make flirt-object enamored of me; leave party without a phone number or dates or plans. So I was at the initial contact point and needed the conversational opening, which is almost always corny, inappropriate, or amateurish.

"Scotch, single malt, please," I told the bartender, an old Brit with red cheeks. Sidelong glance at flirt-object. "Did I meet you at the Lazarus opening last month?" I asked.

She was quick; she knew it was a line, but seemed to be expecting it. "Possibly, but I showed up late," she replied. Her voice was mid-range, smooth as the fifteen-year-old Scotch that swirled about my teeth. And there was no way in hell she was at the Lazarus opening: I would’ve noticed.

"I’m Tuesday." She held out her hand. I shook it. Her grip was firm, man-like.

"I’m sure there is a snappy reply to your name, but you’ve no doubt heard them all before." I threw her a good-natured grin, as if to say, See, I’m just a regular guy, no smooth moves here! "Mitchell. Very pleased to meet you."

We punctuated the meeting with a simultaneous sip of our drinks.

She had full lips, dark lipstick. I watched them move. "How do you know the Thorstens?"

"They’re clients of mine," I replied.

"You’re an attorney?" She almost looked disappointed.

"I deal contemporary art." Her eyes, dark and hazel, brightened. Aquiline nose, perfect; long neck sculpted athletically.

"That’s a relief. I’ve met about twenty lawyers tonight." Wry smile. "Or twenty guys who think that being a lawyer will get them into the sack with me."

"What will it get them?"

"A plastic smile and a very short conversation."

Uh-oh, she really was quick. My hormone-o-meter was going crazy. The little glove-like black dress was crippling me with lust. My eyes were glued conspicuously to her face, which wasn’t a bad place for them to be glued.

"How do you know the Thorstens?" This was going well. Not one word about the weather or politics.

"They’re clients of mine," she said, mimicking my arrogant, nonchalant tone. Then she added, "I’m an attorney."

I laughed. "No, really . . ."

"Really." She let me suffer a moment. "Really, I just opened a little curio shop over on Union in Cow Hollow. I have one or two shrunken heads for sale. It is rumored that they are the heads of lawyers."

I laughed again. Mmmmm. She drank citron vodka and tonic. Her hair, short, sculpted haphazardly on her head, glistened with some unnatural chemical.

Mr. Thorsten (I’m not sure of his first name; everybody calls him Thorsten or Mr. Thorsten), drunk and rambunctious, suddenly appeared in the middle of the ballroom with one of the orchestra’s trombones. He went into "76 Trombones," the guests clapping and cheering. He stopped and shouted at the band leader, "Louis Armstrong, puh-leeeze!" They complied with a number unfamiliar to me. Mr. Thorsten, lanky, Norwegian and bald, strutted and soloed.

Tuesday and I flirted at each other: eyes locked, little smiles, drinks surreptitiously sipped. Three minutes later a waltz commenced; this was my chance, for I could waltz.

"Dance?" I asked, putting my empty cup on the bar.

"Well . . . " She looked uncertain. Waltzing can be scary to those who can’t.

"Don’t worry. I’ll lead." I grabbed her hand and sailed out onto the wood parquet.

I held her close, my leg between hers, guiding her. Sex standing up, in front of a crowd. She did pretty well, considering.

"You don’t even count," she joked. "The dance steps, I mean." She laughed. I really wanted to kiss her, at least the alcohol in my veins wanted me to. I resisted.

"All those dance classes in prep school paid off."

"Prep school, huh?"

"Embarrassing, isn’t it?"

We glided, glided around the room until the end, then back to the bar. I checked my watch; it was eleven-twenty-five.

"Thank you," she said, fanning herself with her small hand. No wedding ring. "And no broken toes."

"Well, your heels look expensive, so I was careful. Would you excuse me? I need to visit the boys’ room."

"Certainly. Let me just re-apply my anti-lawyer lotion while you’re gone."

Through the gregarious throng, up the wide, circling stairs, up the hall. Jennifer stood outside the bathroom door, waiting with patient lust. She, like me, reeked of liquor. She wiped off her lipstick as I locked the bathroom door behind us. The bathroom was all mirrors, gold fixtures, and white tile.

Lip-lock. Tongues wrestling, my hand on her breast, rolling her pert nipple between my thumb and forefinger.

"Do me," she commanded, her hand snaking toward my zipper.

"Uh-huh." Tuesday had made me hot, hot, hot.

On her knees, she engulfed me for a minute or two before I turned her around and hiked up her flowery skirt. Her dampened panties fell to her thin ankles. Grabbing her by the hair, I prodded and pushed my way in. The house-of-mirrors bathroom exaggerated our lewdness with infinite reflections. I held off for as long as I could, which really wasn’t very long, and pulled out, emptying myself into the gold-plated sink. She climbed up on the edge of the counter and finished herself off with dexterous fingers. Moments later, we were zipped up, washed, exiting the bathroom, and beaming with éclat.

"Just what I needed," she told me quietly as we started down the stairs.

"Yes. What a relief!" I said loudly.

And there goes Riki. Black jeans, white t-shirt (no bra), open leather jacket. My hair trick worked; she failed to notice me. The couple at the small table in the darkened corner left, and like a vulture, I swoop down on their vacated spot. Now I’m really hidden.

The alcohol has made me considerably more relaxed, more the vociferous narrator–not that I haven’t been talkative already.

Our obligatory restroom coupling out of the way, I went downstairs in search of Ms. Tuesday. She was gone. I was satisfied, however, since I had completed the flirtation checklist and had got my bathroom nookie. The evening had been a success.

Ah, sweet diversion. We fill the vacuum of our lives with it. Vocation as diversion, sex as diversion, sin as diversion. Literature, art, music: diversion. Trite but true that we seek to divert our blindly groping consciousnesses from a sense of death. I seem to (it has been made apparent through the milemarkers in my short history) find diversion in the weaving of a complicated web. A web of tenuous half-truths; and a half-truth is a half-lie.

Self-pity for the criminal?

As much as anyone else. See what alcohol does? I haven’t thought of my death in nearly five minutes.

6.

The next morning, Saturday, I walked down to local café for the paper, a coffee, and a bagel. To the café owner I had sold, legitimately, nearly all the art on the café walls. Consequently, I almost never had to pay for coffee and bagels. My morning dose of caffeine and information thus sated, I journeyed up Union Street, on the other side of Van Ness, to see if I could find Tuesday’s curio shop, if indeed she hadn’t been serving me a platter of bullshit.

The day was cool, the fog burning off. I decided not to let the ostensible quaintness of Cow Hollow ruin my mood; indeed, the lush trees and Victorian shops and couples holding hands and consumers consuming did not for a moment strip the lightness from my mood.

Riki had really gone, moved out, vacated. Never mind that, rolling across the bed that morning, I had no life-preserving female form to save me from the sea of sheets. Nothing except my hand to quell my morning randiness. Then again, there was no one to disappoint either.

So I meandered through a store or two, a book shop, a smokeshop. I sighted Tuesday through the window of a little store tucked back from the street; she flipped a brightly stenciled sign around so that it read OPEN. The shop’s name was Treasure Chest Curios. African, Southeast Asian, Polynesian trinkets; Native, Latin and South American artifacts, antiques, curiosities, and junk. The place was like a store room for a crazy, world-traveling pack rat, a wealthy, eccentric aunt who’d gone on a seemingly random global shopping spree. This made for a very interesting, if not dusty, shop.

Tuesday was decked-out as the properly laid-back San Francisco small shop owner: brown leather Timberland shoes, Gap denim, white satin button-down, black suede vest, hair combed soberly. She had a sprightly energy I failed to notice the night before.

"Mitchell!" she greeted, opening the noisy, bell-laden door. "Somehow it isn’t a surprise."

"We didn’t have a proper good-bye last night," I said. The shop lights were dim, lending it a magical, treasure-trove atmosphere. The place reeked of atmosphere, literally. "So this is yours. I wasn’t sure if you really were a business owner or if we were trading party lies."

"Maybe a little bit of both," she replied. Behind the narrow wooden counter, she powered-up a small cash register. "I have some coffee ready in the back if you’d like a cup."

"One more couldn’t hurt." I looked around. The shop was much bigger on the inside. "Swell place. Run it long?"

"A few months," she called from the back. "Got it cheap when the bank foreclosed on it. The former owners were in tax trouble, and I was in the market." She brought me a cup strong enough to make my nose hairs curl. I watched her face; it was Nordic, a bit on the Slavic side, maybe. There was good humor hidden there by what I would later come to know as the best poker face I’d ever encountered: it hid many things. "I got a degree in business, a minor in anthropology, and a father who left me a considerable inheritance. It seemed the right thing to do."

"Perfect. Get much business?"

"More than you’d think, tucked back here off the street. And it’s getting better." She sipped from a wide, bowl-like cup. I gave her the patented Mitch Midgard-blue-eyed-sexual-death-ray-lingering-stare; she held it, asking, "How did you get mixed up in the art scene?"

"Art degree, trust fund, rich friends, good connections." I broke the mutual stare by slurping the thick coffee.

"That’s all you need, I guess."

I could feel her eyes still upon me. I felt a wave of romantic anticipation. Or maybe it was just lust.

I asked, "Did you acquire all this stuff yourself or did it come with the shop? You would have to do a lifetime of traveling to get this much . . . stuff." I turned my eyes back on her, timidly now. She continued to stare at me easily.

"A combination of several things. Yeah, I traveled quite a bit. So did said deceased father. I combed San Francisco, Marin, and the peninsula for appropriate curiosities and such. The former owners dealt antiques, so I kept some." I studied her smooth, rosy face as her eyes rummaged over the objects on the shelves, walls, and floor. Then the two beautiful hazel orbs met mine again.

An elderly couple wearing bad multi-colored sweat suits and over-burdened fanny packs lumbered in off the street. Tuesday greeted them warmly, told them to have a look around, served them tea.

"What time do you get off?" I chanced. That bed of mine was awfully big, terribly desolate.

"Are you asking me out?" Cheshire cat grin; a vulpine smile.

"Yeah, I’m asking you out. Dinner, drinks, jazz."

"Okay. But I request dinner, drinks, and rock."

"You got it. Should I pick you up here, at home, or meet you somewhere?"

"How ’bout if I pick you up. Seven o’clock?"

"Great. I live up the street." I wrote my phone number and address on the back of an old receipt.

"See you at seven, Mitchell." She waved good-bye and I was out the door walking home, head humming from caffeine and victory.

7.

I watch Snippets set up. I forgot to tell you that I greatly admire Riki. She grew up in lower middle-class San Jose, out near Campbell, and put herself through junior college before moving to San Francisco to follow her rock star dream. She worked for every accomplishment, every failure; they were all solely hers. I never worked hard for anything, had never known financial desperation, had always had an assist on some level. She stands on the edge of a dream-come-true; I stand on the brink of self-destruction.

Like I said, I enjoy weaving a tangled web. It seems the more I involve myself in the complex workings of society, the easier I forget about my own doomed plight. It would’ve been easy (and boring) to find an entry-level position in a nameless, faceless corporation fresh out of college. Instead, I found an entry level job as a fence. Then I wrapped myself snugly in the complicated tangles of mob families and low-life. The web snapped, and I started over. It took me five years to weave the new web and again the strands have been spun too tightly. Will I get a chance to weave another?

They set up their gear, and I order another drink. Spark a cigarette, inhale. No more sirens outside. Will they glance in here? Will they be looking for me? Depends on if she lied to me, if she used her poker face yet again.

Now they are doing their soundcheck. Crash of the high-hat, snap of the snare, slap of the bass, "test, test, test, one, two," crunch of the guitar. I’m going outside to take a peek at the street scene, see if there’s any commotion, buy some smokes.

Ah, moist, fresh air. Riffraff everywhere; but it’s familiar riffraff–harmless Haight Streeters.

"Doses."

"Spare a quarter?"

"Greenbud?"

"Doses."

"My car just ran outta gas . . . spare some change?"

"Camel filters, box, please," I ask the fat black storekeeper. He says nothing and rings me up. Back out on the street.

"Killer green."

"Spare change?"

Two doors down from Club Boomerang, I smoke, hiding in the recess of a criss-cross gated store front.

Tuesday Smith was her full name. Great name. She picked me up in a red Jeep Wrangler. She said we were going to Morty’s in North Beach. They serve Italian until nine, then the heavy metal starts. Garage bands and their little sisters.

After devouring heaping plates of pesto tortellini, we worked on the rest of the cabernet.

"Men are pigs, inherently," I said. I’ve found that women love to hear such bold self-effacement from a member of the oppressing class; it also confuses them.

"Not all men. My father was not a pig." Her hair was fashionably messy again. Mine was tied back like usual. She had on Levi’s and a natty cream wool sweater, covered by a drab thigh-length oil-skin coat. Strange and rough, but it was a cold spring. I wore loose-fit jeans, a solid navy blue t-shirt, and my leather jacket.

"That’s the thing. Some of us are very good at concealing it. We claim to be reformed, to be feminists, to worship woman. Repenting male feminists. We donate to breast cancer research. We read Alice Walker. We openly disdain professional sports. We are sensitive to our straight white male failings. But it is like alcoholism: you can recover but you’re never cured–you’re always a sexist pig. Just ask Andrea Dworkin."

Tuesday nodded, shook her head, smiled. "I don’t buy it. You can’t generalize. Besides, you’re just making fun. You don’t even care if anyone considers you a sexist pig or not."

"You’re right."

"But it’s a handy way of finding out if I’m an angry woman, isn’t it?" She was playing, just like I was.

"Is it?"

"Sure. If I agree with you–and especially if I go off on an anti-men tirade–you find out if I’m hung up. If I’m a man-hater, I’m probably insecure. If I’m an anyone-hater, it suggests that I’m insecure . . . probably. If I adamantly disagree with you–you know, men are great, people are wonderful, that sort of thing–then I’ve got the rose-colored blinders on."

"To mix metaphors."

"So I’d have to say that nobody is inherently anything. People are either more or less interesting. We have to judge on an individual basis."

"If we choose to judge."

"We all judge, consciously or unconsciously, Mitch."

"I choose to judge consciously, when I can." I ordered another bottle of red. The place was filling up with leather-clad youngsters. Rock clubs have gotten increasingly less tolerable as I gain in years, I’ve found. Too bad. "Okay, how ’bout all men have the inherent potential to be pigs."

"Only if all women have the potential to be catty bitches."

"Catty bitches. What a paradox." I laughed. "I’ll agree with that." I searched the room. "Allow me to begin." I pointed to a young woman with very large breasts. "Look at the cans on that little number."

Tuesday smirked. "Little slut probably got a boob job." We gazed at each other and broke up with chuckles.

"Quick, Tuesday. Quick."

"And your conversation is ambiguous–on purpose."

"Equivocal. Keeps you on your toes."

"The edge of my seat," she said dryly.

"I wouldn’t go that far."

"How far would you go, Mitchell?"

"Maybe further than you think."

"I think you’ll go pretty far."

"That’s what my folks always said."

"I was talking about tonight."

"Then I’ll go as far as you permit."

"See, you’re not a pig. A pig would go as far as he wanted."

"Okay, not a pig, but I have potential."

So you can see we had a rapport. Why say something plainly when you can be circuitous. We made it to the last song of the first band before we decided to leave. We had another drink at the Savoy Tivoli, laughed at the beret-wearing Euro-trash, and finally necked in the doorway of some paint-peeled Victorian. It was easy being with her; our expectations of one another were nil, or flowed with the moment.

On the way back to my place, we picked up vodka martini fixings. We shook them up and poured them out and left them standing on the antique coffee table in front of the couch as we rolled around on the floor, removing each other’s clothing one piece at a time. Then came condom time, a precaution I hate but offer nobly, always hoping they’ll say it isn’t necessary for reasons of hygiene or baby-making.

"I’m covered," she said, nubile body squirming below me sexily. The thought of her tight body still stirs me even now. "Unless you have something I should know about." She rubbed her breast and wrapped a strong leg around mine.

"I’m as clean–" as Jennifer Malley? "–as they come."

"Good."

She flipped me over, I tossed her off, we wrestled, I pressed my face between her thighs, she bit my ass, I chased her onto my bed.

"Hold my wrists," she whispered from under me." Cool, I thought. I worked myself inside her; I felt plugged into some cosmic electric socket. We rolled some more. Sitting atop me, she took my hand and put in to her delicate throat. "Choke me," she said, eyes closed. Weird, I thought. My hand closed around it. She ground around on top of me more energetically. "Harder," she gasped. Jesus . . . whatever. "I’m coming," she croaked. Letting myself climax, I let go of her throat. She collapsed on top of me.

So that was her kink. I was wondering all night long what her twist would be. Not the average B and D monger, just into being physically restricted–and constricted. I don’t think it was the oxygen-deprivation-heightened-orgasm trip. She just liked the feeling of a strong hand on her throat as she was fucked. One time she lost consciousness through this method, and I was reluctant to comply further with her need for this pseudo-asphyxiation. But it seemed mostly harmless and it even turned me on a little bit.

8.

Crushing the smoke under my boot heel, I show my hand-stamp to the doorman. The first drawn-out bar chord to a Snippets song entitled "Face Destruction" rolls through me. Riki hesitates with the first line ("You destroy me with your lying tripe.") as she sights me pushing my way to the bar. Her expression remains cool but floods with redness. Then the drum and bass kick in, and I order another martini.

There are no more open tables so I find a place against the wall in the shadow of a thick pillar papered with ragged band advertisements. I know this song, know the source of its origin (me), and sentimentality nearly chokes me up. I watch them somberly from my dark niche.

"The City is crawling with feds right now, Mitchy-boy," Malley told me as he lovingly coddled his Baretta 9mm. "You know that painting that was stolen several months ago from The Netherlands? ‘The Shriek’ or something. They traced it into the United States and to the West Coast. They think it’s in San Francisco. They’re watching Seattle, L.A., and San Diego as well. They’re trying to make sure it doesn’t get outta the States and into Asia, where they’ll lose it for good."

"Sigmar Mooch. ‘The Shriek.’ Stolen in about fifty seconds by two burglars with a ladder. Worth about six million. So that’s why Mr. Tom is so edgy lately." I inserted round after round into the clip. We were at a private target stall in Los Altos. Jack Malley and I had been meeting this way for years.

"You still deal with that chink?" He sounded almost jealous.

"I don’t care what flavor they are, Jack, as long as they bring in the cash. You should be so wise." Me giving him advice–now that was a switch.

"I hate fucking chinks, Mitch. They’re like yellow Jews."

"What? They better business people than you?"

He grumbled some feeble disgruntlement and inserted the clip into his pistol. Donning our ear protectors, we turned to our respective targets and blew them full of holes. Somewhere along the line, my eyes had gotten sharper while his hands had become palsied. He could barely hit in the black anymore; I hardly strayed from it. I used to respect Malley, until I realized what a boorish, close-minded, racist, sexist, failing, dinosaur-of-a-crime lord he was. But we still gave one another business, and Jennifer was working The City for him. Our clips empty, we winched back our targets and appraised the results. Malley shook his head at his inconsistency; I shrugged and replaced my target with a new one.

"I’m just saying to be careful. They’re watching everything going in and out of the airport, everything on the streets." Malley sat on a wooden stool, removed his thick glasses, and rubbed his waning, bloodshot eyes. His body had taken on a defeated slouch lately. It pleased me.

"Thanks for the warning." I leaned against the counter where our plastic gun cases lay. "You missed the Thorsten party. Too live for you?"

"Thorsten irritates me. He acts like a goddamn twenty-year-old after a few drinks. He’s almost seventy for Chrissake."

"Aren’t you two the same age?" I was in a petty and vicious mood, and Malley was particularly vulnerable that day. He once told me that old and sick criminals get eaten by the rest of the pack.

"He’s three years older than me!" he blurted. He attempted to stare me down, but I just smiled. "And I think he’s a fruit, even if he does have a wife. Besides, Jenny can quite capably handle my social responsibilities as well as my business ones. Parties just make me angry."

"Sorry I brought it up. Know anybody who might want an ancient Egyptian artifact for their collection? Gotta line on a gold-inlaid bow from the tomb of someone named Min-Nakht or Nim-Macht or something. Almost priceless."

"Nothing’s priceless."

"Point taken."

"I’ll ask around. How much?"

"Very steep. Something like five hundred."

Malley whistled and raised his eyebrows. "Crazy. But I’ll put a feeler out. I know a few people in L.A. who might be interested. And a Jap I know."

"Thought you didn’t like Asians?"

"Chinks, I said."

"Oh."

Ready for the Midgard Sociological Rule of Thumb Number Two? People are what they seem.

This isn’t a popular notion, and I admit, it isn’t typically true, maybe even a lie. But I’ve found it important and helpful to live as though it is true. This is an observation which is connected to several of my other long-held self-concocted rules of sociology. My personal survey, my private longitudinal study of humanity and its behavior, has instructed me that if I hold onto my first impression of people, I won’t get into trouble. You may argue that I’m a touch more observant than most in this area, since it is a part of my profession to be able to read people. I have found that when I have given others the third dimension they deserve in their personality assessment, I become overladen with second-guessing. From then on out, I think too deeply about their motivations. This almost always leads to trouble.

Jack Malley was a prima donna crime boss, blinded by ego and greed and herd arrogance; likewise his daughter, but add feminine folly and vulnerability. Johnny Stone was stupid, shallow, image-conscious, amateurish–overdue for a fall; Riki was tough-mindedly naive, headed for musical greatness with her lower middle-class integrity and haughtiness. So of course I would slip and allow Tuesday to become a three-dimensional being. The monkey-wrench of lust and infatuation never ceases to warp my good judgment.

9.

Thus, an affair with Tuesday Smith ensued. Don’t judge too quickly. I hate to admit it, but the affair happened in part from the rebound effect of losing Riki, though I lost her happily enough. A week flew by at warp speed. The saga of Feliz Zapata came and went. Jennifer and I made it in a Fairmont Hotel bathroom stall at Feliz’s wake. Later, as I waited outside for the valet to retrieve my car, peering down at the City from the top of Nob Hill, Johnny Stone picked her up on his gaudy Ducati. He saluted me with two fingers and drove off with her. I shook my head; the two of them together made sense.

Magda Suarez, my highest money-making up-and-coming, threw a party that week, and I invited Tuesday. Here’s the story of it, if you don’t mind making a slight detour while I wait for my drink to arrive.

Magda Suarez is just another freak of Valencia Street. Second-hand clothes, no discernible sexuality, paint wedged permanently under her fingernails. She loved three things: to paint, snort cocaine, and throw parties. Her latest party was themed a "come as your parents" party. That’d be easy, but I wasn’t going to cut my hair.

I picked up Tuesday at nine. I was shocked by her appearance. She wore a man’s suit and was painted white like a corpse, with black circles around her eyes. I had to laugh.

"That’s almost in poor taste, Tuesday." I smirked. "You’re your dead father, right?"

"You win the prize," she said, locking her apartment door. "It was easier than buying a mu-mu and stuffing it with pillows. My mom was a fat, home-tied, romance-novel-reading hypochondriac. Somehow dressing as her would’ve been even more depressing than this get-up."

"You’re warped." I kissed her and we walked to my car.

"Thanks. Tell me about the famous Magda Suarez."

We got into the car and drove off. "Magda’s not quite famous yet. She’s a gawky Latino with neck-length black hair and a cocaine habit. Loves the stuff."

"How old-fashioned."

"She’s retro through-and-through. Even her drugs. And she loves playing hostess." She loved playing–period. I’d had an encounter or two with her before, drunk and drug-addled. She went through men and women like she went through tubes of paint.

"Well, this will be fun. I haven’t gone to a ‘normal’ party in years."

"Only in San Francisco is a Magda Suarez party ‘normal.’"

"Except maybe in New York."

We arrived to 70’s disco, polyester suits, and a mix of straights, gays, and lesbians. A clawfoot tub, filled with beer, was placed near the entrance. The punch, Magda later told us while snorting lines off of a picture of her mother and father, was laced with ecstasy. Her flat was fairly crowded with grotesquely dressed partiers. I wore a sober three-piece and had tucked my hair under the collar of my starchy Arrow button-down.

We found Magda and she took the straw out of her nose long enough to greet us. "Mitchell, so glad you could make it. Or should I call you Mr. Midgard?" Her voice is raspy and crow-like. She was dressed in a peasant dress and black shawl; a black, mop-like wig covered her hair. "And who is this? A new girl? My, my . . . we work fast, don’t we?" She took Tuesday’s hand. "I’m Magda Suarez."

Tuesday shook her hand and said in a stiff, manly tone, "My name is Mr. Smith. I’m dead." That broke Magda up good. She offered us drugs. We accepted. When in Rome . . . and it was about as Roman as you could get–that is, if ancient Rome had glittery disco balls and platform shoes and the Bee Gees. Magda threw her wig onto the cheap chandelier above her head and asked Tuesday to dance. As they pushed their way to the middle of the living room, I recalled how Magda loved competition. It would be interesting to see Tuesday react. As they discoed, I scoped the crowd for familiar faces. There was a found-object sculptor I’d sold a few pieces for. There was a guy I’d slept with ten years ago; I avoided him. Through with that scene. There was my office-mate, Gerald, puking over the railing outside on the deck. I sidled up next to him. He was dressed as a train conductor.

"Your dad worked on trains?"

He looked over at me bleary-eyed and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "Hey, Mitch." He dry-heaved, then said, "He was a brakeman on the SP commuter for thirty years. Careful of the punch."

"There are a lot of drugs in it, I heard. When did you start . . . the party, I mean." The color was returning to his cheeks.

"At about seven. I helped set up. Never mix coke, pot, ecstasy, and tequila."

"Thanks for the advice." Back inside I went. Tuesday dragged me out onto the dance floor. Magda whispered in my ear, "I love your girlfriend, Mitchell. Wanna share?"

Tuesday watched us. "I think you’d have to ask her. I’m not totally sure about her preference." Everybody did everything, as far as I was concerned. I left them for another beer, and to let Magda make her move unimpeded by my presence. On the way back, Tuesday headed me off and abducted me to the bathroom.

She glowed with sweat and cocaine. Kissing me, she undid her trousers and said, "What did you tell Magda? She just made a pass at me. You have my makeup all over your face."

I looked at the white splotches on my chin and mouth in the mirror and replied, "I said I didn’t know your preference." I made no move to undress. She was already out of her underwear. She stole my beer and guzzled half of it. Painted up like she was, she looked like a little dead boy.

"My preference is you . . . and people of the male gender in general." She placed herself on the edge of counter, half in the sink, and spread her legs, exposing her lightly haired triangle.

"Is this a subtle hint?" I asked ironically.

"Coke really makes me horny." She took my hand and guided it toward her box. I inserted a finger, then two.

"Funny, I’m not aroused at all," I told her. I mostly wasn’t.

"I don’t care." She put my other hand on her throat as I attempted four fingers. Tuesday whined. I kissed her deeply, choking her with one hand, thrusting with the other. My hand was too big for all five fingers, and besides, she was climaxing hard already. Her face was red and her eyes bulged, and she shook with waves of pleasure. Then she slumped back against the mirror, eyes closed. I removed my hands. Now she really looked dead–she was out cold.

"Tuesday?!" I blurted. Her eyes fluttered and opened. I let out my breath. "Jesus Christ, Tuesday! Are you okay?" I shook her shoulders, took her face in my hands.

"Uungh, yeah, I’m okay." She breathed deeply for a minute or two. She kissed my hands that cradled her head and face. She looked at my perplexed expression and said "That may have been the best orgasm I’ve ever had. My God."

I pursed my lips. "I don’t think it was worth it, Tuesday." I couldn’t believe it when she climbed down off the bathroom sink and slipped into her slacks, underwear, and zipped up.

"I’m fine. It’s happened before." She casually straightened herself in the mirror, adjusted her tie and collar and asked, "You want to dance some more?"

"You’re such a freak, Tuesday. I’ll join you in a sec." She zipped off into the rowdy revelers. I smelled my hand, then washed both, watching the makeup swirl down the drain. I noticed the smears still on my face, shrugged, and went to join the festivities.

It had been a night of irony. I’m talking about how we dressed up as our parents, representatives of a generation we utterly loathe; about how we continue to celebrate a decade that hands-down wins the most-hated decade award. And, of course, Tuesday in her dead person’s outfit. Irony. Irony is a key component to any tragedy. While we often recognize it as the spice of an incidental life, we despise it as salt in this wound of consciousness.

I didn’t fall in love with Tuesday–I’m sure of that now–but I was infatuated. She seemed free of emotional baggage, or at least reticent to reveal enough of herself to be exposed. I appreciated her playing it safe. But she wasn’t what she seemed; the few things I believed about her were completely false. Yes, like me, she had an easy social veneer, a genuine surficial outgoingness. But all of this was built on a foundation of deceit. Fortunately, I found her out before I really lost a grip and fell in love with her. Love skews one’s vision, and I had poor eyesight already.

10.

Let me start by saying it had been a bad day. I went to City Hall to pick up some business tax forms and walked to where I parked my car on Golden Gate. As I walked past Stars Café, I sighted Johnny and Jennifer at a table, her shoeless, nyloned foot caressing his denimed calf. They were cozy, lovey-dovey even–and they sighted me. Jennifer blushed because she’d been caught. Johnny waved me inside. I shook my head from the other side of the glass, but he insisted. He wanted to flaunt his new connection, his new fuck. Okay, so I was a little jealous, but I had no grounds to be so. I went inside, but declined a chair.

"Hey, you two," I said as casually as possible.

"Mitchy . . . what a surprise," Jennifer returned, voice full of restrained embarrassment.

"Hey, bro," Johnny said. "We were just talking about you."

"Full of compliments, I hope." The waiter offered to get me a drink, but I declined.

"Yeah," Johnny replied. "Business."

You motherfucker, I thought, my face a cool display of nonchalance. This is what irked me: the Malley clan was my connection. In Jack’s eyes, I would always be the San Francisco contact, but Jennifer was overseeing the area and she could divert many things into Johnny’s lap.

"Interesting," was all I could muster. Jennifer shifted her gaze into the golden liquid of her wine glass. They said nothing so I shrugged. "Well, I have to get back to the office. See you two around." And I walked out.

I was not going back to the office, I was going to Tuesday’s shop. I sped over, cutting in front of tourists, aggravating cab drivers, making pedestrians run for cover. I was upset and hoped Tuesday would appease me.

I arrived and swept her into my arms, kissing her face and neck. Mysteriously, she stopped me and went to the front door, locked it, and put up the BACK IN FIFTEEN MINUTES sign. Then she shuffled me into the cluttered back room.

After groping each other for several minutes more, she said, "Hold on, I’ve got something to show you. You may be able to help."

With a large screw driver, she pried away a wood panel in the wall. From the dark hiding place she pulled a three foot by four foot painting. Many thoughts can be processed in five seconds, and if you respond right, it’ll buy you a few more seconds to make a decision. I felt several things at once: confusion, betrayal, sadness–but mostly anger, since that particular emotional blaze had been stoked earlier by Jennifer and Johnny. It was an early twentieth century oil by Brach, a cubist rendering of a saxophonist called "Jazz Musician." I knew because I had sold it to Feliz Zapata two years ago.

Fallen through the FBI’s hands?

Improbable.

Auctioned off a mere one day after Feliz’s funeral?

Unlikely.

Tuesday was attempting to set me up?

Uh-huh.

She saw the slack-jawed expression on my face and hastened to explain. "An acquaintance of mine wants me to get rid of it for him. It’s hot. I thought you might know somebody."

Was my heart palpitating? A terrible sense of déjà vû swept through me. A similar experience, the tumultuous string of circumstances which preceded my change of cover five years ago, came to mind. I was perplexed. To my good fortune, Tuesday read my reaction wrongly.

She sighed. "Forget it." She began to return it to the hiding place.

"Wait a sec," I finally said. I decided to stave off the anger until I could be face to face with a bottle. There was something in me–a heart wrenching desperation. "Whom did you say you got it from?"

She didn’t bat an eyelash. "I didn’t say. The illegality of this isn’t freaking you out, is it, Mitchell? I’m sorry I got you involved."

"I could give a good goddamn about the law, Tuesday. I do give a damn about my dealer’s license. Who gave you the picture?"

Mistake number two: she said, "A guy named Julian Steward gave it to a friend of mine to sell. He wants thirty grand for it, and I thought I could possibly get rid of it for him."

By that name-drop alone, I was convinced she was a fed, or at least affiliated. She used his old alias, which means they hadn’t a clue about his current whereabouts. She took a bad risk by dropping that name; she thought me clean. They must’ve checked me out and came up with nothing. This was the only bit of encouraging news.

"This is bad, Tuesday." I played the disappointed, semi-moralistic lover. "You know how many people like that approach me a year? Just the other day, a guy asked if I could help him for a cut of the profit. I can’t afford to do that; my clients can’t afford for me to do that. I’ve worked too hard." I’d like to thank the Academy . . .

She examined my face intensely. She was searching for doubt, for evidence of deceit. Poker face against poker face, and she put the picture back behind the panel.

"Forget I brought it up," she said, leaning against the peeling wooden counter. We listened to the nothingness of the back room.

I sighed. "Ignore my high-horse." I snaked an arm around her tiny midsection and kissed her eyebrow.

"It’s okay. I’ll get rid of it," Tuesday reassured.

"I’ve got to get back to work."

"Call me tonight."

"Okay." And I slipped out the back.

Snippets slides into another song, "Geriatric." Shuffling alternative blues rock. My back is one with the cold plaster wall. Riki is searching the small audience for my face.

After that incident with Tuesday, I felt cheated–by my own sense of faith, by my gullibility. I had trusted, and I had promised myself I’d never do that again. I avoided Tuesday that night, made some lame excuse and toxified my liver at an Irish bar on Geary. One in the morning, stupefied by liquor, I was cut off and kicked out. I stumbled to the next pub.

All I could think of was reparations. Tuesday was going to get herself killed if she stayed on her current track. Though I harbored a lover’s grudge, I was still enamored of her, still cared about what happened. I developed a vague plan. Johnny Stone was involved. I never had to use the plan because another was constructed for me and was played out.

The oftmentioned similar circumstance of five years ago haunted me. I had always considered that I handled the previous scenario poorly. Now I was getting a second chance; the delicate components, the clockwork of authority and criminality, needed to be manipulated just right so that when that dire hour struck, the machinery, with all of its intricate psychological and sociological workings, kept ticking.

I tap the bald waitress’ shoulder as she passes. She regards me amicably, "Another martini?" She shifts her head so that she can see me in my shadow.

"Maybe in a minute. Can I order a tequila shot for the singer after her next song?"

"You know her?" she inquires, looking over at Riki, who twists her low E-string back into tune.

"Ex-girlfriend."

"I don’t see why not. As long as you’re not stalking her or something."

"Hardly."

She goes off and, sure enough, after the next song, brings the tray with the tequila shot on it to Riki. Someone in the crowd whoops. She’s asking who bought her the drink; the waitress points at me, half-obscured behind the flyer-covered pillar. Some of the crowd turn and look toward me. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Riki handles the shot, sniffs it, and, sneering contemptuously, makes a show of dumping it out at the foot of the stage. The small crowd hoots and moans ominously.

That is the story of my life. I often find myself trying to do the right thing; it always ends badly. Maybe because my existence is rooted in bad behavior, all attempts at goodness inevitably end in calamity. Maybe I should get used to being the bad apple, act the criminal, revel in deceit, dishonor. Then the worst that could happen would be that I would accidentally be kind, and that doesn’t seem like such a bad mistake.

11.

Mr. Tom is the head of the Wo Hop To, the Chinese crime syndicate in San Francisco. He works closely with the Italian mafia, has a third of the city chiefs, judges, cops on his payroll. He is a respected civic leader.

The Sunday following my discovery of Ms. Tuesday’s true profession, I met with Mr. Tom’s eldest son, Vincent, at Vincent’s home in North Beach. Vincent had been a flippant, arrogant, impulsive, not-very-bright-youth until a car accident two years ago: a wreck caused by cocaine and carelessness, rendering him a half-blind paraplegic. Since then he had assumed a venerable quality, a soft-spoken wisdom caused by the sudden ill-turn his wild life had brought him. He seemed to think about things now; he was a captive audience of life. Strapped into a wheelchair, forced to pay attention, obliged to give orders instead of take them, he’d become an integral part of his father’s program, crippled at thirty.

Yes, there was a certain sagacious air about him. Long Fu Manchu mustache and Van Dyke, crazy, ragged scar sealing his left eye permanently. Pale skin and Chinese patterned silk; he was a mysterious character from a dime store novel.

I sat across from him in a traditional Manchurian living room. A maid-servant brought us herbal tea and sugar cookies.

"So Vincent, can you tell me why the City is jammed with feds and cops?"

Strange oriental music twanged and boinged from an unseen radio. I half expected him to pull an opium pipe from his sleeve.

"That is why I called you here, Mitchell." He spoke slowly, carefully, without inflection. "We need to move something, something very valuable, and we need to draw the attention of the FBI away from a sensitive area."

I played a trump card. "Does this have something to do with Mooch’s painting, ‘The Shriek?’"

Vincent said nothing. He looked out the iron-barred window to his left and told the young maid-servant to leave us be. His silence indicated that, yes, indeed, "The Shriek" was in possession of the family and no more questions about it should be asked.

"Our plan is to create a rumor that something big is coming into San Francisco, through the airport. Oakland, San Jose, San Francisco–it does not matter. In fact, the rumor has already begun."

"What do you want me to do?" That I had a choice in the matter didn’t cross my mind. Besides, it was good for business to lend a hand to the local kingpin–and good for your health.

"We need someone reliable to take the fall. We don’t want a Chinese. We want to set a certain date. A package will come into SFO, not the object we’re trying to protect, obviously, and we need someone to be there to receive it. We want every fed in the Bay Area–in California–knowing about that mysterious package–an art work–coming in on that date. Can you help us?"

The pieces fell into place with precision. Not like a puzzle; like a beautiful stained-glass mosaic. Okay, so maybe spite was fueling me a bit. I certainly wasn’t going to take a fall, and Johnny Stone was a believable fall-guy, someone the feds vaguely knew (as Steward), someone the Tom family couldn’t care less about.

"I have exactly the man for you." I thought of something else, something to mollify my recent unrest. "And I have the perfect mole to feed misinformation to."

Vincent Tom nodded his big round head slowly. The wizened monk, the criminal sage. Gray strands peppered his black hair. "Who?"

"Johnny Stone."

He smiled. "Julian Steward."

"That’s right. He’s a dope, but he will be willing to help. I can set it up. Just give me a date and time and terminal. The money-in-the-safe-deposit-box-routine would work well. I can almost guarantee every fed in the area will be there."

He licked his thin lips. "Tell me how. Tell my why Mr. Stone will help you." Somewhere amongst his robes he found a gold cigarette case; he cracked it open and lit a cigarette.

"You guys may not know it, but Johnny and I contracted a hit five years ago to protect not only ourselves, but our benefactors–the Tom family."

"We know, Mitch."

How in the hell could they know? Unsettling. "Did Johnny tell you?"

He shrugged benignly. "We have our sources. Continue."

Whatever.

"So Johnny owes me because the feds made him, not me, and I set up the hit and saved his ass. That’s why he changed his alias. The mole who was offed had a friend who survived. I believe it was him who was the true fed. The other was his personal mole."

Vincent almost looked concerned as he ashed his cigarette in a gold ashtray. "Why was this man not . . . removed?" He blew a gray-white smoke ring.

"Bad luck. And it didn’t seem important. He was on the periphery."

"Sounds messy. You sure you weren’t fingered?"

"Positive. That was five years ago. They would have tried to set me up long ago if that were the case. But listen: I was recently made an offer by a woman who dropped the Julian Steward name. This means their information is about four or five years old. She’s a fed–I can smell it."

"And the offer she made?"

"I declined self-righteously. Brilliant acting, if I must say so myself."

"Very good. You have always been sharp, Mitch. Not so Mr. Stone."

"So if you don’t mind Stone taking the fall, he’ll be our man."

"He is a good choice."

"And I’ll feed info to the fed, like I overheard someone talking, or was approached."

"Be careful."

"She trusts me implicitly; she’ll buy it."

"Your lover?"

I said nothing, lit my cigarette.

"I repeat, be careful, Mitchell."

"Yes."

He took an envelope from the bottomless folds of his red silk robe. It was thick with crisp, green bills. There was the symbol of the Triad, the Wo Hop To, stamped on it: a triangle, within it three horizontal lines–the Chinese character for the number three. A nasty, money-laden calling card. I smoked a whole pack of cigarettes that day.

I had found a table and was shredding a paper napkin while smoking a cigarette when Riki sat down at my table. The band was on their break.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" she raged. God, she was gorgeous when her ire was up.

"You do something different with your hair?"

"Nothing. Nothing for a month, and you show up here." Her lips were pursed, which wasn’t an easy feat with pouty lips like hers. "Not even a ‘how ya doin’?’ Not even a drunken phone call. Did our relationship really mean so little to you?"

Our relationship. The word ‘relationship’ seems demeaning to me, as if you could sum up the entirety of the experience, all the high and low points of five years, in one measly, overused word. Sex, love, hatred, boredom, routine, happiness: relationship. No way.

"I’m here, aren’t I?"

"You were probably just passing by." She snorted, rolling her lovely brown-black eyes. "Or you were cruising for a piece of ass. The fact that we’re playing here is purely coincidental."

Okay, so she had me tabbed. Even in all her anger, after all this time, she was immensely attractive to me. I smoked my cigarette and tore the rest of the paper napkin to pieces.

"Look, Mitchy-boy, just make sure you’re gone by the time we finish our last set. I don’t want to have to look at your pathetic mug when I load my shit into the truck. Can that be arranged?" Jesus, she was really pissed-off.

"You bet, Riki."

Now she’s changing a string that broke during their last song. The yellow glare of the stage lights makes the band bigger than life, removed, separate. Another martini comes my way. How many is that now?

It was bitterness that led me to complicate my life to such proportions. For the following two and a half weeks, my life became pure performance; every move, each lie, was carefully orchestrated. I was bitter with the bile-tinged discovery that my lover was a fed–again. And I was bitter that Mr. Stone was receiving Jennifer Malley’s attention–and her business. Most of all I was bitter at myself because in the end, we can only blame ourselves for the fate that befalls us.

12.

Act III: duping Mr. Stone. Vincent Tom willingly provided the necessary ingredients needed to set Johnny up, the envelope full of goodies.

So I got to the office on a Monday fourteen days ago and beeped Johnny Stone. From the big loft window I watched Gerald smoke a joint down on the sidewalk, hiding it with a user’s sleight of hand with his photo-chemical-stained fingers, and glancing up and down the street. Later in the day, I would pick up a Jackson Pollock minotaur from a heroin dealer in Marin for twenty-five thousand. I paced the office, sipped coffee and waited. An hour later, Stone buzzed back. It was ten o’clock.

"Take your time, why doncha?" I remarked irritably.

"Sorry, man–it’s fuckin’ early," he grumbled. I thought I heard Jennifer Malley’s voice in the staticky background of his cordless. "What is it?"

"Meet me at Zeitgeist around noon." A flaring match lit my lip-clenched cigarette. "Alone," I emphasized. "It is very, very important and very, very sweet."

He seemed to wake up. "Yeah, all right. Noon. Zeitgeist."

"Later."

After delivering a few sculptures (Fluxusesque pieces of a hatchet, a suitcase, and a circular saw from the Serial Killer Series by Alec West, a recently successful up-and-coming) to a Sutter Street gallery, I whizzed over to Zeitgeist where I found Stone leaning picturesquely against his motorcycle, scruffy and unshaven.

"Hey, bro."

"Hi, Johnny."

Again, we settled over two ales in the backyard beer garden. Traffic rumbled and squawked from the nearby freeway.

"So what is it, man? I had to break a lunch date with Jennifer."

Fuck you, Stone! "Something big. Something risky. A pick-up for Mr. Tom."

His pale face suddenly glowed with enthusiasm. His nose ring glimmered. A semi-truck roared over the flyway. "Tell me more, dude."

"Well, you know how the Tom family has been keeping a low profile lately?" He nodded. "Have you ever heard of a painting called ‘The Shriek’?" My voice was inflected with intrigue, low and private.

"Naw."

"Sigmar Mooch. Dutch. Worth millions. A national treasure in the Netherlands."

His expression grew exponentially alive with greedy expectation. I believe that if he was unclothed, he would have had a gigantic erection. "Yeah?" he prompted.

"It was stolen last month. Mysteriously lifted from an Amsterdam museum. The feds caught a rumor that it is in America, somewhere on the West Coast, on its way to Asia."

"Is it?" He sucked a huge gulp of beer, drooling some of it down his stubbly chin.

"Not yet. But it will be. Shipped via air from a New York Triad to the Wo Hop To of San Francisco. Coming through SFO."

"Jesus!"

It was like throwing dog-treats to a mongrel who sees the box tucked under your arm. Slavering anticipation.

I said, "I mistakenly took myself out of the running to make the pick-up by meeting with Mr. Tom. By their instructions, the courier cannot be in direct contact with the Tom family. No traces, and they don’t want Chinese directly involved. With me out of the bidding, I suggested you. Vincent jumped on the idea because you have proven so reliable to them in the past."

"Mitch, you are a fucking God!" he stage whispered. I thought he might kiss me.

I extracted the envelope from my suede blazer and set it atop the beaten wood tabletop. "In this envelope is a post office box number, a hangar number, a locker number, a combination to the locker, a time, a date, an airport employee badge, and the combination to another locker in a self storage facility on Geary."

"How much is in the P.O. Box?"

"Fifty."

He whistled, bobbing his head in affirmation. "How much they give you?"

"Fifteen." Twenty-five, really.

"So let me get this straight. I pick up the painting at the designated time and date, and deliver it to the storage locker on Geary, and I get to keep the fifty K."

"You get to keep it provided you can avoid an airfield full of agents."

"Awww–that’s the catch. Will they be checking vehicles at the gate?"

"That’s what the laminated badge is for. Just flash it at them and roll on through."

"But there’s a slight chance they might."

Einstein! "That’s what the fifty grand is for: risk."

He was back to bobbing his well-maned head. The dog who’d been given the whole box of treats.

"Because if I’m caught, there’ll be a long stretch in prison."

"Yes. But chances are you won’t be. Just play a part. Act confident. Wear a mechanic’s jumpsuit. Get grease stains under your fingernails. Rent a Ford Econoline, borrow a friend’s work truck or something. Blend in and you won’t have any troubles." I was imparting on him a timeless Midgard credo. I should’ve charged him a consulting fee.

"It almost sounds too easy."

"I don’t think so."

"No?"

Somehow, inferring a greater risk seemed to make the offer more valid–and more enticing. If he could pull this one off, he’d get all the big jobs, all the sweet deals . . . just like Mitchell Midgard. I could see the dollar signs in his eyes: the idea of a new bike and a new leather jacket flitted about in his puny imagination. He took the envelope from the rough wooden table. We finished our beers in silence.

Outside Zeitgeist, at his motorcycle, we shook hands. He looked me in the eyes and said, "As usual, I owe you. Thanks."

"No problem. Thank Vincent Tom when it’s all over." Just don’t hug me.

"I’ll throw a soiree of my own."

Yeah, I thought as he started his cycle, a jailhouse rock party.

"Good luck, Johnny."

13.

I was pretty young when I arrived at Basic Sociological Tenet Number Three. People want to be manipulated. They want to believe: you, them, authority. Because we are in the practice of accepting information as true until that information is updated or negated, we live our lives on a precarious string of misinformation.

To avoid the misinformation trap, I never rely on one piece of information. It is inevitable that you end up leaning on one piece of information more than another (and I admit that I believed Tuesday Smith was a curio shop proprietor), but one is asking for ruin if the foundation of our actions relies upon one perceived truth.

There is a God.

Money is valuable.

I will wake up tomorrow.

People are good.

People are bad.

Ours is a free society.

Everything will be all right.

Somehow, I am still stone sober as my martini count approaches double digits. Riki is droning on, an incessant back-beat complaint of life and love: modern rock. The patrons have reached critical mass, and they are drunk enough to want to dance. Sweaty waves of pierced, tattooed, shaved, long-haired, naive, jaded, drugged, hapless youths overflowing, stumbling within the ring of small tables surrounding the stage area.

I slide my table back from the dancers, trying to keep my drink from dumping itself onto the cement floor. As I do this, I happen to glance toward the front door. There’s a cop, helmeted and leathered, and two plainclothes just inside the doorway. One of the plainclothed guys, a shaggy gray fed-looking type, asks the doorman a few questions. He shrugs and invites them to look around with a sweep of his meaty arm, be his guest. They enter, stopping about ten feet in, and realize there is no chance that they will identify the suspect (me) in the crowd. They are not even sure for whom they are looking. They exchange words. I sip my martini, watching surreptitiously through my hair. They say something more to the doorman and leave.

The doorman told them, "Man, everybody in here looks like that."

And that piece of information was too vast for them not to believe. So they left.

Stone was set. I hadn’t a doubt in the world that he would show up at the airport dressed as a mechanic or something, find the locker, find the whatever-it-was Vincent Tom had put in there, and load it into his van or truck. And the feds would be on him faster than you can say "Guilty!"

But the feds would have to get there, and I would be their "snitch." I worried about how to do this for a day or two. Like usual, the solution was presented to me neat as a wrapped present. Isn’t is always like that when one has tapped into the fated vein? The events unravel easily, draw you in smoothly, and bleed you dry at the end. I’m in the bar and it’s near the end.

We’ll call Act Three ‘Opening the Vein.’

Two days after I set up Stone, and a week before the scheduled airport pick-up, I surprised Tuesday in her shop. By now I had grown comfortable with the fact that I was dealing with a fabrication and not Tuesday Smith at all. Smith?–I must’ve been blinded by my lust. Somehow it didn’t make me like her less, there was just an almost palpable barrier between us.

I surprised her in the shop. She was counting the money in the register, sitting on a stool, looking as beautiful as ever, framed by the reddishness of the dying sun. She looked up, startled. I was about to smile back at her when he walked out of the back office.

Five years ago I had my lover killed because she was a mole for the FBI. She hadn’t been looking for me; I was just part of a hideously cruel coincidence. She had a partner who was wounded in her hit; his name was Gary. And it was Gary, medium height, darkish Mediterranean good looks, who walked out of the back room of Tuesday Smith’s curio shop.

I swooned against the door jamb. Wanted to fall, wanted to run, wanted to puke my guts out. Instead I just stared at him, he at me.

"M-Mitch?" he asked, my name a vague memory.

Tuesday was horrified. Glancing at Gary in amazement, she rushed from behind the counter, took my shaking hand, and guided me to an antique cherrywood chest to sit on.

"Ga-ry," I finally managed. If I had any doubts about Tuesday’s FBI involvement . . .

Gary stood over me, Tuesday on her haunches next to me. A coffee mug of water was suddenly in my hands.

She asked timidly, "What’s going on?"

I let Gary explain, for fear of revealing too much, or, in my unsteady and perplexed condition, letting slip a critical piece of information.

"Do you remember, Tuesday, I told you about that friend of mine that was killed five years ago . . . in a drive-by shooting?" I saw his foot nudge Tuesday’s complicitously. "Penelope was her name. This was her boyfriend at the time. The last time we saw each other was the night Penny was killed."

I looked up at him. His lips were pursed in a pretty good imitation of grim concern. We three let a few leaden moments thunk by. Finally, I said, "I didn’t expect to see you. You’re the last person I . . . " Now I was pulling myself together but lingering in the grief-mode for the sake of my federale hosts. Tuesday stood up.

"But wasn’t this Penny a . . . ," she said almost accusatorially, looking at me, then Gary.

"There’s a few things you don’t know about me, Tuesday. For instance my past–which is a closed case as far as I’m concerned."

Gary was smiling now. He said in a half-laugh (his voice slipped into what I like to call queer-ese: semi-effeminate and lilting), "Steered yourself to one side of the tracks, did you, Mitch?"

I glanced up at him and said, "Let’s just say I became resolved." This wasn’t necessarily true–as they’d both find out later in the evening. I’d merely made a preferential decision and had stuck with it.

"Too bad–you’re looking better than ever." He raised an eyebrow in an attempt at flirtation.

"Look, guys, I don’t want any competition here," she uttered in mock indignation.

Gary held up a scolding finger to her. "Didn’t your mama ever tell you to share? I saw him first!"

"Five years ago! He’s mine!"

"Mine!"

"Am I going to have to separate you two," I interrupted, standing between them. "Now let’s settle this matter over a few drinks." This was my chance: in feigned drunkenness I would "let slip" what I knew about an art thief and an airport pick-up. "I wanna hear about how you two know each other." I bowed my head. "But let’s not bring up Penelope–it hurts too much."

So we closed up Tuesday’s shop and drove to the Café Du Nord in the Castro where there were dark recesses in which to sink and converse. Speak-easy hipness and cool jazz. A table full of empty highball and martini glasses later, our tongues were properly loosened. Their story–more precisely, their cover–was that they’d met while in college and reunited as friends a few years ago. Gary’s story was a vague one of here-and-there employment, here-and-there affairs, and a here-and-now take on life. He said nothing of Penelope or being wounded in the hit or anything substantial that would peg him as anything definite. These are the components of a deep cover, where possibilities are left open so that no explanation can go awry.

At last I reached an opening in which I felt comfortable. It had just been revealed that Gary knew of Tuesday’s "stolen" painting. He was the "friend" Johnny "Julian Steward" Stone enlisted to sell the Bräch painting. "Listen, Tuesday. I have an intriguing little story. Suspense. Cops and robbers." I hunched over confidentially. "Remember when I told you about the con-man who sometimes tries to sell me paintings? Well, I was having a cappuccino at Stars Café yesterday, and he was there. I sat in the corner, sort of behind this big umbrella plant. He can’t see me. He gets seated with this brunette woman, his back to me, and starts bragging to her about some deal that he’s about to pull off."

I detected restrained enthusiasm in both their expressions. They memorized every syllable that slunk from my lying mouth.

Gary inquired boldly. "Cool. I wonder if I know the guy–do you know his name?" He casually stirred the ice in his highball. Tinkling jazz piano trickled through the dark and nearly empty bar.

"Johnny something–like a made-up name. Don’t all those scumbags have made-up names? Aliases they call them. So he’s bragging like a big shot, trying to impress this dame. Talking about some pick-up at SFO. I guess it’s a painting, but I couldn’t think of any piece that was lifted lately that made it into the art magazines or paper."

Gary nodded, trying to sound slightly jealous. "God, I wish I could get a deal like that. I’ve tried to sell stuff before but it never pays off. Did he say when he was picking this mysterious art work up?" He couldn’t help sounding awkward with such a question. Tuesday covered him.

"What? Are you wired or something, Gary? Pat him down, Mitch, I think we gots a stoolie on our hands! Let’s waste ’im, Mitch, and run with the loot." We laughed. They had slipped a bit, but they were very greedy for information.

"Stone!" I blurted. "That’s his name: Johnny Stone. Isn’t that ridiculous? And he looks like it, too. Long blondish hair and a motorcycle jacket. Like a fucking costume." I chuckled to show them how absurd I thought he was. He was absurd, after all. "Inspector Gary," I went on, "no, he didn’t give me a date–we could nab his stuff and fly to South America!" I elbowed Tuesday playfully. "But he said he’d be taking a long vacation in the Caribbean come next Wednesday. Said he was going to take her with him and they’d live it up. He was working her, trying to get into her pants. Man, was he a dope. We’ll probably read in the paper that he gets caught–runnin’ off at the mouth like he was."

Tuesday raised her martini glass. "Here’s to the bad guys–may they always be heroes."

"Cops and robbers!"

"Detective novels!"

"Comic book villains!"

"Johnny fucking Stone!"

And that was it. Maybe I was too indulgent in my story to them. They took it in stride, though, conspicuously not bringing it up for the rest of the evening. The rest of the night was a drunken string of sexual provocation. We ended up at Tuesday’s apartment undressing each other, caressing naked body parts, kissing, rolling around in her big bed. Gary amateurishly attempted male-female intercourse with Tuesday; it definitely was not his sexual forte. She was mildly surprised when I let Gary handle me, when I handled him. I noticed he had a small circular scare just below his navel. The highlight of the evening was he and I on opposite ends of Ms. Smith. Bet they didn’t teach them that at the academy. No, I retract that; the highlight of the night was that the feds, my comrades of the moment, took my bait like the hungry bottom-feeders they were.

14.

What I’m about to tell you is what I’ve figured out after the fact. Call it an after-the-fact dramatization, with as little embellishment as I can muster. Now would be a good time to put on some light-hearted piano jazz and think about the Keystone comedy of it.

So Johnny Stone gets this great deal from his pal Mitch. Pick up a hot painting from a locker in an airport hangar and deliver it to another locker in a storage facility in the City. All in all, it should be an hour and a half tops, from leaving the stoop of his outer Mission digs to clicking shut the combination lock on the Geary Street storage locker. Fifty grand in cool crisp bills is already in his hands. Fleetingly, the thought of just absconding with the cash to some foreign land in the southern hemisphere crosses his half-baked mind. But he knows that would be like filling out his own death certificate. The Wo Hop To could find you anywhere.

But that’s not all, no, my friends. Johnny’s got a new girlfriend, in the same business as him–almost. She’s the supply side; he’s the middleman. This girl is a fox, and smart, too. He can trust her, sure, so he tells her about the deal, but not about Mitch. Johnny is pretty sure this girl–we’ll call her Jennifer–Johnny is almost certain Jennifer and Mitch had a fling at one time. Frankly, Johnny feels a bit inadequate in comparison to Mitch. Plus, he wants to appear to be the main man in the job, not the second hand delivery boy he really is. Or would be. He doesn’t tell Jennifer about Mitch; he tells Jennifer that he’s making a delivery for the big boss, Mr. Tom. He tells her it’s the great painting, "The Shriek," that he’s delivering. Mr. Tom trusts Johnny with valuable assignments, touchy jobs. Johnny’s almost his right-hand-fucking-man. While Jennifer only half-believes the components of the story (she’s about 50 IQ points in front of Johnny), she is truly impressed and agrees to ride shotgun on the job, drive the truck out of SFO, keep an eye out.

(Allow the narrator a comment, please. I had no idea idiot-Johnny would bring Jennifer into this comedic fiasco. I should’ve anticipated such a move; Johnny’s far too much a coward–insecure is what I mean–to go it alone. If it wasn’t her, it would’ve been one of his moronic friends. But since he was still in the impress-the-chick-mode, he pulled Ms. Malley into the fire with him. If I had known that she too was going to take a fall, I might’ve suggested someone else besides Johnny.)

They wore matching blue mechanics’ jumpsuits. Johnny paid an airport custodian a hundred dollars to pilfer two mechanics’ uniforms, SFO emblems embroidered on the left breast pockets. He’d used his brain a wee bit. Jennifer had a small .38 caliber semi-auto tucked in a little holster clip inside the zipper of the jumpsuit. Johnny had a .357 Python in the tool chest he planned to carry with him into the hangar. Jennifer would wait outside, ready to lean on the horn should anyone suspicious come around. Johnny guessed correctly that she wouldn’t need a badge if he had one; the field security guards waved them through.

I forget which hangar the storage locker was in, but Johnny drove there, mindful of the posted speed limit. No fuck-ups. Things were slicker than pig shit. He drove up to the hangar door. A door? he thought. I have no key to a door, he worried. But he didn’t want Jennifer to see him falter, so he went right up to it and tried the handle–it was open! He went in. The place was vacant of personnel, but filled with light aircraft in various states of repair. Walking along the perimeter of the hangar, he located the low wall of wire-meshed storage units. He found the locker number that matched the digits scribbled on the piece of paper that he held in grease-encrusted fingers (he had changed the spark plugs in his bike to give his hands that blue collar roughness). He set down the tool chest, dialed the combination to the lock and opened the door. He pulled the narrow crate from its hiding place: it was the shape of a medium-sized painting. Things were going according to the plan. Snapping shut the lock, he discovered he could not carry both the tool chest and the crate at the same time, so he dug his magnum out of the chest and unzipped the jumpsuit, nestling the pistol between his belt and belly. Johnny wasn’t taking any chances. Johnny made his way toward the door, laden with a future jail term.

When the group of ten feds pointed their pistols at his head yelled "Don’t move! FBI!" Johnny dropped the crate. It cracked open, throwing shards of wood and small bags of china white heroin all over the tarmac. The feds were as amazed as Johnny Stone. As they patted him down, and removed his gun (add a few years onto that sentence), Johnny stared incredulously at the smashed crate. An empty picture frame, three feet by four feet, lay amidst the splintered wood, many bags of white powder taped to a thin stretch of plywood within the frame’s borders. The feds cursed. Johnny cursed. Jennifer Malley cursed herself for ending up with the likes of Mr. Stone.

On the other side of things (and again, I’m surmising with as little embellishment as possible), the feds received a tip from one of their undercover San Francisco operatives: the painting would be picked up from a hangar locker early the next week, probably Tuesday. There were many hangars at SFO, many lockers. Still, they found what they thought to be the right hangar and right locker (they didn’t want to touch the evidence before the pickup); now they would wait.

All airport vehicles’ plates were recorded, all were marked with a special sticker. Employees were given special ID tags that week. Security checks were run on everyone. Any vehicle entering the facility would be closely monitored, even the tagged ones.

When Johnny Stone piloted his big white unmarked van through the security gate that Tuesday morning, and showed the wrong type of ID, flags were waved, radio code words were given, binoculars were extracted from binocular cases.

The van stopped at the suspect hangar. A tallish blond man in a blue airport jumpsuit stepped away from the van with a tool box. He entered the unlocked hangar door (bless those feds for making things easy for poor Johnny!). Before Jennifer Malley could alert her counterpart with a blast of the van’s horn, she found many semi-automatic pistols pointed at her pretty face. She cursed Johnny Stone as they eased her into the caged back seat of an unmarked sedan.

She watched helplessly as a dozen feds surrounded the hangar door. Two circled to the other side of the hangar, which was sealed but uncovered. The blond guy emerged from the hangar and, in his astonishment, dropped the large, flat crate. Like the suspect, the feds had been duped. Instead of that for which they had taken great pains to recover (i.e., the painting), they got an empty frame and many bags of heroin. An empty frame.

In their over-confidence, they had lightened (if not removed) FBI airport operations all over the western United States. Sometime that morning, a plane with illicit cargo took off from the Stapleton Airport in Denver on its way to Hong Kong. The Wo Hop To had increased not only their status as the leaders of organized crime on the Pacific Rim, but had increased their bank accounts many millions of dollars.

If things happened that smoothly all the time, I might not be sitting here indulging you with my tale, my Tragedy in four acts. The set-up worked without a hitch–except for Jennifer Malley. Shortly, I would come to greatly mourn her involvement. Because of her father’s influence over the years, I am much richer and much deeper into the hierarchy of crime. His connection to me is severed. It is possibly only because of the Tom family that I am still breathing. Family ties such as t