"Clint," Tommy interrupted, "clean-up in the produce aisle." He went to the front door, unlocked it, and went outside to wait for the fire department. The bay was socked in with fog and the beam from the lighthouse on Alcatraz cut a swath across Fort Mason and the Safeway parking lot. Tommy thought he could make out the figure of someone standing under one of the mercury lights. Someone thin, dressed in dark clothing.

A fire truck pulled into the parking lot, siren off, its flashing red lights cutting the fog. As the fire truck's headlights swept across the lot, the dark figure dodged and ran, staying just ahead of the lights. Tommy had never seen anyone run that fast. The thin guy seemed to cover a hundred yards in only a few seconds. A trick of the fog, Tommy thought.

Chapter 12 Fashionably Doomed.

There were five police cars parked at the Van Ness Motel when Tommy got off the bus across the street. He thought: They've come to get me for turning in a false alarm to the fire department. Then he realized that only Jody knew that he was coming to the motel. Pity, he thought, I would have gotten a lot of writing done in prison.

He crossed the street and was met at the office door by a uniformed police woman.

"Crime scene, sir. Move along unless registered."

"Am registered. Need shower," Tommy said. He'd learned his lesson about saying too much when he had talked to the angry fireman at the store. They didn't want to hear why it happened, they just wanted to be sure that it didn't happen again.

"Name?" the cop said.

"C. Thomas Flood."

"ID?".

Tommy handed her his Indiana driver's license.

"Says 'Thomas Flood, Junior.' No 'C.' "

" 'C' is pen name. Thomas is writer," Tommy said.

The cop adjusted her baton. "Are you trying to give me a hard time?"

"No, I just thought you wanted to talk that way. What's going on?" Tommy looked over the cop's shoulder at the motel manager, a tall, balding guy in his forties who was wiping fingerprints off his bulletproof window with a towel, looking as if he was going to start crying any minute.

"Were you in the motel last night, Mr. Flood?"

"No, I just got off work at the Marina Safeway. I'm night-crew leader there."

"You live in the City then?" The cop raised an eyebrow.

"I've just been here a few days. I'm still looking for a place."

"Where can we reach you if the detectives need to talk to you?"

"At the store from midnight to eight. But I'm off tonight. I guess I'll be here. What's going on?"

The cop turned to the motel manager. "You have a C. Thomas Flood registered?"

The manager nodded and held up a key. "Room two-twelve," he said.

The cop gave Tommy back his license. "Get that changed if you're going to stay in the City. You can go to your room, but don't cross any of the yellow tape."

The cop walked out of the office. Tommy turned to the manager. "What's going on here?"

The manager motioned for Tommy to come closer to the window. The manager bent over and whispered through his talk hole: "The maids found a woman's body in the dumpster this morning a woman from the neighborhood, not a guest."

"Murdered?" Tommy whispered.

"Her and her poodle. This looks horrible for the motel. The police are talking to all of the guests as they check out. They knocked on your friend's door, but she didn't answer." The manager pa.s.sed Tommy's key through the slot, along with a business card.

"They want her to call the detective at that number when she gets in. Would you give it to her?"

"Sure," Tommy said. He took the key and stood there trying to think of something to say to relieve the manager's anxiety. "Uh, sorry about your dumpster," he said.

It didn't work. The manager burst into tears. "That poor little dog," he sobbed.

On the bed were a stack of official-looking papers, a map of San Francisco, and a thick envelope filled with cash. There was a note clipped to the papers. It said: Dear Tommy, Here's the stuff to get my Honda out of impound. Use some of this cash to pay the fines. I don't know where the impound lot is, but you can ask any policeman.

You will have to go to the Transamerica Building to get my last check. (I marked it on the map.) I've left a message on the personnel department's voice mail that you are coming.

Good luck finding an apartment. I forgot to mention that you want to avoid getting a place in the Tenderloin (also on map).

Sorry I'm being so mysterious. I'll explain everything tonight.

Love, Jody Why in the h.e.l.l was was she being so mysterious? He opened the envelope and took out a stack of hundred-dollar bills, counted them, then put them back in the envelope. Four thousand dollars. He had never seen that much money in one place. Where did she get that kind of money? Certainly not filling out claims at an insurance company. Maybe she was a drug dealer. A smuggler. Maybe she embezzled it. Maybe it was all a trap. Maybe when he got to the impound lot to pick up her car, the police would arrest him. She had a lot of nerve signing her note "Love." What would the next one say? " she being so mysterious? He opened the envelope and took out a stack of hundred-dollar bills, counted them, then put them back in the envelope. Four thousand dollars. He had never seen that much money in one place. Where did she get that kind of money? Certainly not filling out claims at an insurance company. Maybe she was a drug dealer. A smuggler. Maybe she embezzled it. Maybe it was all a trap. Maybe when he got to the impound lot to pick up her car, the police would arrest him. She had a lot of nerve signing her note "Love." What would the next one say? "Sorry you have to do hard time in the big house for me. Love, Jody." But she did did sign it that way: " sign it that way: "Love." What did that mean? Did she mean it, or was it habit? She probably signed all of her letters with "Love."

Dear Insured, We are sorry but your policy will not pay for your barium enema as it was done for recreational purposes. Love, Jody. Claims Dept..."

Maybe not.

Maybe she did love him. She must trust him, she had given him four grand.

He shoved the money in his back pocket, picked up the papers, and left the room. He ran down the steps to the ground level and tripped over a large black plastic bag full of dead woman. A coroner's deputy caught him by the arm before he fell.

"Easy there, fella," the deputy said. He was a big, hairy guy in his thirties.

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay, kid. She's sealed for freshness. My partner went to get the gurney."

Tommy stared at the black bag. He'd only seen one dead person in his life, his grandfather. He hadn't liked it.

"How did it... I mean, was it murder?"

"I'm betting creative suicide. She broke her own neck, drained out her blood, then killed the dog and jumped into the dumpster. The ME's betting murder, though. You pick."

Tommy was horrified. "Her blood was drained?"

"Are you a reporter?"

"Nope."

"Yeah, she was about a gallon low, and no visible wounds. The ME had to go into the heart for a blood sample. He was not pleased. He likes things simple decapitation by cable car, ma.s.sive gunshot trauma you know."

Tommy shuddered. "I'm from Indiana. Stuff like this doesn't happen there."

"Stuff like this doesn't happen here either, kid."

A tall, thin guy in coroner blues came around the corner pushing a gurney with a small, gray, dead dog on it. He picked up the dog by a rhinestone leash. "What do I do with this?" he asked the big hairy guy. The dog spun slowly at the end of the leash like a fuzzy Christmas ornament.

"Bag and tag it?" said Big Hairy.

"A dog? That's a new one on me."

"I don't give a s.h.i.t. Do what you want."

"Well," Tommy interrupted, "you guys have a good day." He hurried away to the bus stop. As the bus pulled up he looked back and saw the two coroners tucking the little dog into the woman's body bag.

Tommy got off the bus at a coffeehouse near Chinatown where he had seen guys in berets scribbling in notebooks and smoking French cigarettes. If you were looking for a place to sit and stare into the abyss for a while, always look for guys in berets smoking French cigarettes. They were like road signs: "Existential Crisis, Next Right." And the incident with the body bag had put Tommy in the mood to contemplate the meaninglessness of life for a few minutes before he started hunting for an apartment. They had treated that poor woman like a piece of meat. People should have been crying and fainting and fighting over her will. It must be some sort of protection mechanism, more of that ability that city people had for ignoring suffering.

He ordered a double mocha at the counter. A girl with magenta hair and three nose rings frothed it up while Tommy searched though a stack of used newspapers on the counter, separating the cla.s.sified sections. When he paid the girl she caught him staring at her nose rings and smiled. "Thought is death," she said, handing him the mocha.

"Have a nice day," Tommy said.

He sat down and began flipping though the cla.s.sifieds. As he read through the apartments for rent, the money in his pocket seemed to shrink. Here was the reason why people seemed so distracted. They were all worrying about making rent.

An ad for a furnished loft caught his eye. He was a loft kind of guy. He imagined himself saying, "No, I can't hang around, I've got to get back to the loft and write." And, "Sorry, I left my wallet in the loft." And writing, "Dear Mom, I've moved into a s.p.a.cious loft in fashionable SOMA."

Tommy put the paper down and turned to a beret guy at the next table who was reading a volume of Baudelaire and building up a drift of Disc Bleu b.u.t.ts in the ashtray. "Excuse me," Tommy said, "but I'm new in town. Where would I find fashionable SOMA?"

The beret guy looked irritated. "South of Market," he said. Then he picked up his book and cigarettes and walked out of the cafe.

"Sorry," Tommy called after him. Maybe if I had asked him in French...

Tommy unfolded the map Jody had left him and found Market Street, then a neighborhood marked "SOMA." It wasn't far from where Jody had marked the Transamerica Pyramid. He folded up the map and tore the loft ad out of the cla.s.sifieds. This was going to be easy.

As he prepared to leave, he looked up to see an enormously fat man in a purple velvet robe enter the cafe carrying a leather sample case decorated with silver moons and stars. He sat at a table near Tommy, his bulk spilling over either side of the cane chair, and began removing things from the sample case. Tommy was captivated.

The fat man's head was shaved and there was a pentagram tattooed on his scalp. He covered his table with a piece of black satin, then placed a crystal ball on a pedestal of bra.s.s dragons in the center. Next he unwrapped a deck of tarot cards from a purple silk scarf and placed them by the crystal ball. Last he removed a sign from the sample case and set it up on the table. It read: "Madame Natasha. Palmistry, Tarot, Divination. Psychic Readings $5.00. All proceeds go to AIDS research."

Madame Natasha was sitting with his back to Tommy. As Tommy stared at the pentagram tattoo, Madame Natasha turned to him. Tommy looked away quickly.

"I think you need a reading, young man," Madame Natasha said, his voice high and feminine.

Tommy cleared his throat. "I don't believe in that stuff. Thanks, though."

Madame Natasha closed his eyes as if he were listening to a particularly moving pa.s.sage of music. When he opened them again he said, "You're new to the City. A little confused and a little scared. You're an artist of some kind, but you don't make your living that way. And you've recently turned down a proposal of marriage. Am I right?"

Tommy dug into his pocket, "Five dollars?"

"Have a seat," Madame Natasha said, waving him to a seat at his table.

Tommy moved to the seat across from Madame and handed him a five-dollar bill. Madame Natasha picked up his tarot cards and began shuffling. His hands were tiny and delicate; his nails painted black. "What shall we ask the cards today?" Madame said.

"I've met this girl. I want to know more about her."

Madame Natasha nodded solemnly and began laying the cards out on the table. "I don't see a woman in your near future."

"Really?"

Madame pointed to a card on the right of the pattern he had laid out. "No. You see the position of this card? This card rules your relationships."

"It says 'Death.' "

"That does not necessarily mean physical death. The Death card can be a card of renewal, signifying a change. I would say that you recently broke up with someone."

"Nope," Tommy said. He stared at the stylized picture of the skeleton with the scythe. It seemed to be laughing at him.

"Let's try again," Madame Natasha said. He gathered the cards, shuffled them, and began laying them out again.

Tommy watched the spot where his relationship card would fall. Madame paused, then turned the card. Death.

"Well, well, what a co-in-kee-d.i.n.k," Madame Natasha said.

"Try again," Tommy said.

Again Madame shuffled, and again, when he laid down the relationship card, it was Death.

"What does it mean?" Tommy asked.

"It could mean a lot of things, depending on your other suits." Madame waved to the other cards in the pattern.

"Then what does it mean with the other cards?"

"Honestly?"

"Of course. I want to know."

"You're f.u.c.ked."

"What?"

"As far as relationships?"

"Yes."

"You're f.u.c.ked."