Cold Springs(6)

“Yeah, Peewee. Sorry.”

“It's scary.”

“What's scary?”

“The animals. The faces.”

“They're just decorations, Peewee. You've seen them before.”

But Katherine looked up at the house and thought— Mallory's right. The place is kind of creepy at night.

It would've been a normal West Oakland house—a little two-bedroom with yellow siding and a shingled roof—except a former man-of-the-house, an amateur sculptor, had encased the outside in swirls of weird metalwork. Instead of burglar bars, the windows were smothered under fancy iron vines. Cut metal silhouettes covered the walls—wild animals, African-style masks, big-butt women scolding little porkpie hat men. A steel-pipe Santa Claus sleigh with reindeers permanently decorated the roof.

Katherine had loved the metalwork since the first time she'd come here with her boyfriend—God, let's be accurate about that, ex-boyfriend. How he'd found the place, Katherine didn't know. It was much too cool for him. The sculptures reminded Katherine of the clock parts in her grandfather's closet, as if the wheels and gears had been taken out and planted and allowed to grow wild.

“Kaferine?” Mallory said. “Let's go home. Okay?”

Katherine was shivering, her teeth going like a telegraph machine.

She fingered her necklace—her old birthday gift from Daddy. She hated that it was such a talisman for her—so important for calming her nerves, but it had been, ever since he gave it to her, as if it held some of his strength—the silent determination of a giant.

She was crying now. No control over the tears. She had to get inside before she broke down completely.

“I'll be back in a minute,” she told Mallory. “You want to listen to the radio?”

“No thank you.”

“Sure. Listen. Good song.”

She left on the music, and got out of the car. She imagined her dad's voice, This isn't over, Katherine. I want to talk about this when I get home.

And Katherine felt that frantic, just-before-the-darkness smile tugging at her lips. Ephemeral, Daddy. It means dying too soon.

The cold turned her breath to steam as she hurried up the porch steps.

John Zedman f**king loved it.

Just walking through the locker area, the housing commissioner, the supervisor from District 1 and the head of the biggest construction company in town had gone out of their way to shake his hand.

Last year? Same auction. Same John Zedman. But would they talk to him? No way.

It'd been as if the smell of burning ferry engines—the aura of grease and fried pistons that came home on John's father every day from the Embarcadero wharf—still lingered on John's tuxedo, an unwanted odor that came from his pores, straight through the $500 cologne, announcing, I am not a member of your club. I do not have your cell phone number. My wife does not lunch with yours—she only teaches your kids.

That last part was what John hated the most. Because these people—the hell what John thought—to them, there was absolutely no difference between a teacher and a maid. Consuela from Guatemala. Ann Zedman from Laurel Heights. Whatever. You work with my kids, hold their future in your hands? So does my housekeeper.

No matter how John tried, the other parents had always looked at him through the lens of his wife's job, not his. To even see him, they had to make a conscious effort. Saying hello to him was not something that occurred to them, the way he had to think to say hello to the school custodian.

But not tonight. Tonight the richest guests were introducing themselves, telling him that they were remiss in scheduling that lunch. Surely they'd talked about it—when was it, last month?

And John smiled, knowing they were full of shit, but loving it.

Three months since John Zedman made his first million-dollar commission, and he'd been on a roll ever since. He would wake up at night, go to the bathroom, stare at the new Buddy Rhodes concrete counters, the gold sink fixtures, and he would tell himself, “You're a millionaire. You're a goddamn millionaire, John Boy.”

This week, with a $1.2 billion redevelopment deal in the bag, well, John Zedman had arrived. He was never going backwards. His daughter would never know the smell of grease and burning axle rods.

He walked through the banquet room, and every step was on air.

He thought about his old neighborhood, the south side of Potrero Hill. Most of the smarter guys, the ones who lived past eighteen, had all joined the Army or the mob. John had come close to choosing between those paths himself. Even getting where he was today—he'd done some rough things. He'd taken care of problems, some of them recently.

He wondered what the mayor would say if he knew John was carrying right now—the weight of a .22 tugging at his tuxedo coat like a child's hand, nagging for attention.

John had to smile.

Fuck it if he'd made some mistakes. Made some enemies.

He'd been talking to some of his friends at the polo club—they said you could buy a bodyguard, ex–Mexican military, for a couple hundred a month. A friend of a friend had this number. And damn it, but John was liking the idea of a guy behind him, a little muscle to make people sweat. Hell, everybody had bodyguards these days. The Baptist preacher downtown, the local radio talk show host.

It wasn't about being nervous. Not at all. It was about showing your influence. Making a statement.