Soon the Rest Will Fall by Peter Plate

right?”

EIGHTEEN
    Christmas brought out the best and the worst in people. The holidays had inaugurated a spree of armed robberies in the Tenderloin. The police had roped off the Thai eatery at Sixth and Market after the recent shooting. The law was all over Market Street.
    An electrified blues duo was taking advantage of the sunny weather to perform in the UN Plaza. The bassist was a young black woman in a burgundy windbreaker and jeans. The guitarist was an older white guy with gray side-burns. They played the Chicago gutbucket style popularized by Hound Dog Taylor in the 1950s. The audience was a throng of winos drinking short dogs, cops on bicycle patrol, and homeless men pulling carts of books, blankets, and clothes.
    A sleep-deprived Slatts Calhoun lingered at a pay phone by Seventh and Market, garbed in a musty Santa Claus suit stolen an hour earlier from a Salvation Army volunteer. To go along with the costume he had on a fake white acrylic beard and a stocking hat. A tarnished blue .357 Smith & Wesson revolver—one of Robert’s things—was stuck in his belt.
    Reaching into his pants pocket, he extracted a cloth
billfold and withdrew a photo. The color print was tattered almost beyond recognition. It was a picture from San Quentin. Robert and a bunch of dudes from the Aryan Brotherhood were in the weight yard. Standing around with no shirts on. Everyone looked buffed except Robert.
    Now that Slatts was out of the joint, nothing was the same as before he went away. The black guy from Hunters Point who used to sell him reefer had hepatitis C and was thinking of moving to Florida to get a liver transplant. Two brothers he knew, former Norteño gang members from Twenty-fourth Street named Andy and Jimmy Hernández, had enlisted in the army to avoid prison sentences. They were shipped to Iraq, where Jimmy was killed. Andy, the younger one, was wounded and now lay in hospital in Kuwait.
    Slatts put away the wallet, lit a cigarette, his last one. He eyeballed the medical marijuana club up the block. Ever since weed became legal in the city, pot stores were everywhere. They were a venereal disease. It was impossible to get away from them. At last count, there were twenty clubs on Market Street. This one was a former bookstore wedged between a dentist’s office and a sandwich shop. It had porous concrete walls inscribed with graffiti, a tar paper roof garlanded with razor wire, a hostile surveillance camera, and a tinted window. An outdoors bulletin board had photos of snitches pinned to it. The place resembled a police station.
    Slatts loped to the dope shop, stopped in front of the security gate. He struck a pose for the camera and buzzed the bell. Nothing happened. He waited a second and repeated the procedure. A Mexican hippie in paisley surfer
shorts and a vintage Clash T-shirt came out to inspect him. “Well, well, if it ain’t Santa Claus. How the fuck you doing today?”
    Keeping the gun concealed, Slatts said what came to mind. His first day out of the pen had been a hassle. Between Robert, Harriet, and the dog, everything was haywire. Slatts didn’t even have enough money to take the bus to the welfare office. As a bonus, the beard was making his skin itch. “I’m cool, homeboy. What’s up with you?”
    â€œThe same old bullshit. You got your ID for me?”
    To gain entry into the club, a customer needed a physician-approved Department of Health identification card. Private doctors where handing them out at two hundred dollars a pop. Slatts didn’t have a card, no solid place to sleep, or any food in his belly. “No, I don’t. Can I come in and talk to you about it?”
    The pot worker’s smile became a cynical tic. He was prematurely aged by the needs of dope fiends. “Hell, no.”
    â€œC’mon, vato, give me a break.”
    â€œI can’t do that, dude. It’s against the law. You’ve got to have a card to get