San Fransisco, 1978. I was 18 years old and working in the tenderloin
as a night clerk in a red light hotel. Mostly my job was to see that
the drug dealers and the pimps did not tears the joint up. There were
a few drag queens in the place and they stayed out late working the
sex trade and when they came in the drug dealers would follow them.
There were no cell phones or pagers then so face to face was the norm.
They would always give me a time when they came in, offering to buy
me for the evening or inviting me to come and party with them. Even
though I put up a good front they worried the hell out of me. I was
starting to dislike some of them.
One night one of them came back down and demanded that I call the
police. I told him to shove off and leave me alone. A while later he
and a friend were back at the desk demanding the police immediately.
When I asked what for they told me there had been a murder upstairs.
Lack of concern was my response and I asked them which of there
friends had been killed and how. They said it was not one of them but
had happened upstairs. I got mad and told them I would come out and
thump them if they did not go away thinking this was a way for them to
get me to leave and go with them. Looking at there eyes I could see
that they were not seriously fucked up yet but they did look scared.
How do you know there was a murder on the floor above you was my last
question. Because there is blood coming through the ceiling. Still
skeptical I was going to take a look before I called the police.
It was the room of a gay couple and the door was opened when I
knocked. everything looked fine, just a guy watching TV. I asked
about the room mate and was told that he was taking a bath and
everything was fine. Let me hear him yell out or something and tell
me this because there is a complaint from down stairs about blood
coming through the ceiling. When he went to go to the bathroom he
discovered that the partition door had been shut and locked. I went
back out in the hallway and kicked in the door to the other half of
the room so I could get to the bathroom. At night when something loud
happens I had a few friends that would show up and see what was
happening. My friend came running in the room behind me as I was
staring into the bathroom at a tub full of blood and a body. I had
found the problem.
The guy in the tub had slit his wrists and then cut open his stomach.
It was messy. We pulled him out of the tub and layed him on the bed.
My friend had been a medic in Viet Nam he checked for a pulse and went
to work pushing his intestines back in and tournequeting his arms. He
told me to keep pressure on the guys stomach while he went and called
the fire department. When they arrived I stepped aside and watched in
horror as they threw him on a stretcher like a sack of potatoes and
took him away. I thought I was a hero and they did not even ask my
name. In fact the fireman gave me a look of disgust that I can still
remember as if I had done something wrong.
Four hours went by and it was just before sunrise when the doorbell
rang at the hotel. There was a lock the doors at night policy to
control the street from sneaking into the hotel and causing mayhem at
night. When I got there it was the guy who had gone out on a
stretcher before. I thought you were going to die and what are you
doing back here I asked him. Not allowed to stay in the hospital
because I have been caught stealing drugs there before. So he was
stitched up with wire, given a shot of speed and sent back to whence
he came.
A few weeks later I was watching a mugging take place in the entry
foyer. It looked brutal and appeared to be a personal assault. I did
not interfere in fights outside the building, I got in enough of them
inside. When it was over I went to see who was laying there and it was
the suicide again. He had been beaten, robbed and raped. I went to
his room mate and we got him together and carried him back to their
room.
A few days after that I found him nodding off outside the building and
talked him inside. He mumbled about not wanting to live anymore but I
had my own problems and did not connect to him. Really he was more of
a nuisance than a problem.
One night my friend Dennis was hanging out with me and we were eating
some peyote I had scored. We smoked some weed and at midnight I hung
up the no vacancy sign and we decided to go to the corner bar to get a
few drinks. I could disappear from work for a while on shift and not
get caught at it. Usually I did not go drinking but I was feeling
pretty good.
On our way up the street we found the suicide (his name was David)
sleeping in a window. I told Dennis about the things that had
happened with him and Dennis said we should take him back to his room.
We went to move him and the smell was terrible, he had lost his
bowels and was messy. We grabbed him by the ankles and drug him down
the block. I remember his head bouncing on the doorstop as we drug
him into the building.
He was living in the back on the first floor in a different room and
we brought him in and threw him on the bed. The roommate was upset
and excited at the same time. He asked us if we wanted to do anything
to him before we left. Dennis was bi and thought about it but I said
we needed to go drink before the bar closed and I had to be back at
the desk so we left.
We went up to Riordans Bar on the corner and started drinking rum and
whiskey. The peyote was kicking in and I kept thinking I was hearing
sirens. Three drinks later I heard a siren going down the street and
stopping so I Iooked out the door and saw every emergency kind of
vehicle the city had blocking off the street in front of the hotel.
Dennis said he was going to the Castro and would ask me what was
happening tomorrow.
As I walked down the block I could see people coming and going from
the hotel which I had left locked. I saw my boss who was supposed to
be sleeping, I saw the owners of the hotel, ambulances,
police,firetrucks and the coroners wagon. I was so high I did not put
these pieces together when a woman came out of the crowd and pointed
at me yelling he's the one! Policemen drew their guns and ran at me
yelling to get down on the ground. All of the drugs and alchohol
kicked in and the world turned into a kaliedascope of color and noise.
The police handcuffed me and threw me in the back of a car and went
back to the hotel entrance.
I watched as somebody who was strapped to a gurney was brought out
screaming his head off. The police made a note and people shook their
heads. Then a stretcher with a covered body came out and my boss and
a fireman looked at who was covered then talked to the policeman.
Heads nodded again and more notes were taken. My senses were
returning so I started banging my head against the window to get some
attention, I had no Idea what was going on, I knew I was in trouble
for not being there but I wanted to know why I was handcuffed in a
police car.
A cop opened the door and I asked him why I was there. He told me I
was under arrest for murder and to keep my mouth shut. MURDER I
screamed at him what do you mean
MURDER...?
Earlier... Someone was screaming in an air shaft and disturbing
people. When the desk was found to be empty they called the police.
The police called the fire department to get him out of the shaft with
a ladder. His leg was broken and he was in some kind of psychotic
state so the ambulance was called. Apparently he had attempted a
suicide by jumping out of his window but only fell one floor to the
basement and broke his leg. He was raving on about a dead body and
the desk clerk (me) so the police went into his room to investigate.
There was a dead body in the room. It was the guy we had brought in
earlier. Apparently he had attempted sex with the corpse and when he
realized what he was doing freaked and jumped out of the window
thinking he was in his old room higher up.
So now we have a dead body, a maniac necrophiliac in an air shaft and
reports that I had been seen dragging a dead body into the hotel. I
told the cop that I had just saved this guys life and could prove it
by the fireman who was there. They were taking the bodies temperature
to determine the time of death. I had an alibi at the bar and with
the firemen who remembered me. The guy had been dead for hours when
we drug him into the hotel, who knew? The cop told me the next time I
found a dead body to leave it alone. I did not get fired or even
yelled at by my boss.
I smoked a big joint and waited for Dennis to get back to tell him the
latest tale from the dark side. It was one of many.
