Chapter 2
A bus groans by, its door hissing open long enough for debarkations. A bum staggers toward the gaping door... too slowly. The watchful bus driver eyes the foul passenger with disgust and spinning off, spits dirt in his swollen eyes.
Such insult brings no emotion; the leather skinned man shrugs his shoulders and swaggers meaninglessly back to the sidewalk where he slumps against a paint-chipped storefront. "Peep Shows 25c" the sign above him reads. The bum squints at the words dripping before his dizzied eyes, and collapses in a ragged heap on the vomit-stained cement.
Typical vignette in San Francisco's Tenderloin. How ironic the name. Loins here are hard and practiced. Doubtlessly, the inhabitants of that dank area never considered the irony, most have never seen beyond.
Stepping over the snoring wino, one enters the storefront. Nostrils itch with dust; eyes bug with alarm. Attention is instantly drawn upwards toward neon bulbs sprinkled rectangularly around a faded and outdated photograph of a naked woman in white plastic knee boots and beehive hair-do. Below a sign in handpainted letters reads: "Peep Shows 25c." One wonders if this is the main attraction, no sound of gurgling delight or screaming sadism filters through the dust-heavy opera curtains. The eye falls to rows of cellophane-glossy magazines with puppy-eared corners. Human flesh, naked and raw, is strewn along the shelves like smudges of dog excrement. Every act of carnage known to man and animal lives on those shelves. Eyes dart to the opposite wall where glass cases containing plastic sex toys are lined up like so much army ammunition. A defensive glance to the face behind the cash register, and one realizes this is no play pen.
Shaker Jones fingered the bills in the cash register drawer with the precision of a man accustomed to counting large sums of cash. The muscles in his square black jaw meshed, adding unneeded strength to his face, smooth as rattlesnake skin... except for a jagged knife scar left as a trademark of San Quentin race riots. One paw readied up to stroke his chin, and thick lips pooched out in cogitation. Nostrils Flared stentoriously, eyes fixed in space. A crease cratered his high, wide brow stretching to a shaven skull.
Fingers the length of cigars, and just as thick, pulled a cigarette from the pack on the counter and. Emptied, he crushed the cellophane wrapper and dropped it heedlessly. Fleshy black lips parted reluctantly, for his instinct was drawn elsewhere. The sinews in his neck pulsed as he turned his head to squint in the direction of the velvet curtain below the peep show sign.
A peal of lusty laughter, heinously feline, stung his ears. Disapprovingly, he squinted, slipped the bills into his Levi pocket and headed with panther predatory strides towards the darkness beyond.
The bald headed Negro pulled aside the dust-heavy curtain and stared into the dark, musty confines that smelled of unwashed laundry, cigarette ashes and emptied whiskey bottles. The curtain fell from his clutch, shutting out muffled street noises.
The room darkened drearily, save for a fugitive beam of unwashed sunlight falling diagonally over the rumpled bed shoved against the wall. A hydra of ebony arms and legs, showing slow movement gradually untangled.
Shaker's eyes focus on the tarnished four-poster brass bed which looked schematically out of place as if it were the central stage for a coming attraction.
"Uhhh... babe..." chimed a voice belonging to a black woman stretched prenatally on the bed, her slinky dress wrinkled across her hips. One swollen, ruby-tipped breast spilled out of the v-necked dress which shone of warm satin in the errant sunlight. A woolly patch of hair raised from the pillow, head dizzy with drugs. She turned her head slowly, as if aware of an ominous presence. Movement intensified, as eyes focused on the black giant towering above the bed.
She scrambled to her knees, pulled the dress tidy and cleared her throat in instant contriteness. "Sh-Shaker... hi..." An urgent glance in the direction of the man stretched out on the bed, pants straddling his ankles, electrified the room.
Wearily a man's head rose from the pillow. "Wha' the fu-..." In a flash of black motion, a man sprang to his feet, yanked up the zipper to his pants, and grabbed for the wrinkles mass of his shirt on the floor. The clatter of a spilled ashtray cut the silence.
Shaker remained reticent, eyes, deeply penetrating and directive, speaking for him. The cigarette fell from his fingers; he stomped it out with his shoe and crossed his arms over his thick chest.
"Jus' takin' some time off, Shaker... tha's all..." laughed the other nervously. "Ain't been nobody come in the store nohow..."
Shaker's jaws started working as if he had a mouthful of popcorn. "You been shootin' my shit again Daisy, ain't ya?" came the rhetorical statement in an easy tone.
The black woman sniffed and stared at the floor, cringing.
"Don' you lie to me!" Rows of even white teeth glowed in the darkness, creasing an angered face.
"N-n-n-no, I been good, really I been Shaker...I..." Daisy's voice rang with a confidence she didn't feel. Unsteadily, she rose to her feet, smoothed her dress and patted the wooly hair in dire effort to make herself presentable. "There ain't been nobody in, Shaker... business ain't been so..."
He stepped closer, casting an ominous shadow over her withering presence. Daisy's eyes widened fearfully and a wail of anticipatory pain cut in the air.
A black arm shot out to grab her, twisting her arm behind her back and bringing her to her knees. She let out a wail and fell sobbing, her black melonous breasts tumbling unheeded from the low-cut faded pink satin gown she wore.
"Don' lie to me... you been pinchin' dough outta the drawer to buy shit..." his voice crescended like a slow starting engine, primed for take-off.
His eyes fell on the littered nightstand where a single silver needle caught an errant ray of sunlight filtering from the window overlooking the trash can laden alley beyond. Beside it lay a match book and a thin belt.
Shaker's leg drew up, his knee shot out and caught Daisy below the chin, tossing her backwards on the floor where she lay in a sobbing, drugged stupor.
"We got work to do," he growled in a deep, menacing voice that could have belonged to God himself. "Jarvis be gettin' hungry for more stuff. Get your ass outta here and find us kids." Then to Daisy: "Better straighten up, woman, or that needle's gonna be hangin' outta yo' asshole... insteada Carter's dick."
The corner of Carter's mouth twitched. "I thought we's done with that kid shit. Shaker... we can't go on doin' that crap forever..." He laughed nervously and shrugged. "Maybe we push a little mo' 'H' and Forget the kid shit... you know, man, like I got kids-a my own..." He wiped his nose with the back of his hand; a pearl of blood from the needle's track surreptitiously disappeared in the wrinkle of his sleeve which he anxiously unrolled to cover the marks.
"I say we get kids... business's too hot now..."
"You, you be the boss, Shaker," repeated Carter with ripe conviction, quickly buttoning his sleeves with trembling fingers.
The bald headed black man dipped the full six-foot six-inches of muscularity beneath the faded opera curtain, leaving behind a weeping woman falling into drugged slumber behind him.
Carter's eyes fixed on the black hulk whose departure had left the room one shade lighter in temperament and conviction. He hated the idea of risking that one slender thread of fate that could put him behind bars again. Money was loosing its attraction for him.
His concerned eyes fell on Daisy. That she'd been stealing money from the register was no surprise to him. Poor dumb bitch, he thought, fastening his belt. What a helluva life... and he'd been more than witness to her demise.
When he, Jarvis and Shaker had teamed up in San Quentin and were later paroled, Daisy had been his first lover. One thing led to another, one petty crime to one graver vice...until this.
Carter's shoulders quivered with unsung regret, manifesting itself as a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach. The merry-go-round of crime had him spinning... too fast to get off.
The curtain rose and fell, leaving Daisy a crumpled heap on the bottle-strewn floor.
Ruby red lips chewed thoughtfully on the pencil's eraser, blue eyes fixed on nothing. Butterfly wing eyelashes flickered, bringing the television news reporter back to planet earth and back into the teleprompter clacking confines of Channel 2's newsroom.
To circumvent Bill Potters' daily inquisition into the proposed penetration of Shaker Jones' operations, flashed an emergency signal in her brain. More detailed strategies shouldered that concern. How to station the mini-cam to catch suspicious, incriminating movements about the Peep Show Palace... how to get inside the store unobtrusively without sticking out like a Nordic on a slave trade block.
Decisively, she glanced up at the clock announcing noon, and slapped shut the reporter's notebook sitting at her elbow. The rich swell of her bosom heaved a sigh of determinism. A tingling sensation tickled her puffy nipples, puckering them into little nubs poking through the loose knit of her snug sweater.
Methodically, she reviewed the facts. Fact number one: He was suspected of kidnapping male youth and forcing them into disgusting acts of oral and anal copulation somewhere near his storefront. In a sleazy prostitute's apartment, maybe? Or a heroin dealer's den. Fact number two: Once convicted of heroin dealing, chances were the filthy maggot used some illicit drug to subdue his victims and lessen their pain.
Obvious as the facts remained, the man shielded himself with an invisible wall of confidence and security.
How to get to Shaker... how...how...how?
Sherrie's lips pursed in frustration. Two cubicles away, Bill Potter's booming voice challenged the teletype computers and rose above the noontime clank of reporters spewing out copy for the noon news now three minutes away. Pressure was on. By this afternoon, Potters wanted a plan of action.
Bill Potters rubbed his nose and glared over two partitions to where the blonde haired nymphet of the news department sat chewing on her pencil. Christ, what a set of lips... The sensational thought cut through the iceberg of news trivia clogging his mind with titanic force. He itched his nose, cold from an illicit snort of cocaine in the control booth moments before, and leveled his eyes on her. A corner of his mouth twisted up in merriment. Shit, her nipples are hard again... must be thinking about the Shaker Jones story. A little pang of guilt centered in his bloated groin stung his brain. Something didn't sit right with handing a gutsy assignment to a delicate rose like Sherrie. Still, if she succeeded in breaking the story, Christ the Nielsen ratings! Life was a chancy game, he convinced himself at last and he hadn't become news director by playing every television station general manager's deck of cards. You had to have something raw and real up your sleeve to survive this business; he only hoped he wasn't using Sherrie as the Queen of Spades.
Sherrie nibbled at her lip and ran down the alternatives. Do I use all the available facts (based on supposition, really), and build a case around suspicious action in hopes of catching him in the act? That this approach would require a part-time mini-cam operator and Potters daily monitoring quickly squelched that idea. Besides, I'd run the risk of making a complete ass of myself in front of Potters and the whole newsroom. We're dealing merely with suspicion, Sherrie Williams, so don't let your ambition short-circuit on you!
Or... she further cogitated, pooching out her bee-stung lips in an erotic pose that made Bill Potters groan softly. Or do I snoop around on my own (without Potters consent) and piece together the tawdry snippings of corruption with hopes of breaking the case live on Channel 2's "Two Is There" newscast!
Was there really any choice?