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with that showy gesture, my climb began. Petard, arrogant and narcissistic, didn’t care about other people’s opinions. He’d preened over me, asking, “How long’ve you been here, Charlene?”

    “Nine months, including my probationary period.”
    “You like working here?”
    “Yeah, it’s very satisfying.”
    “And what about your plans? Are you going to stay here on Otis Street with us?”
    I didn’t know what to say to a man who’d been on the news shaking hands with the President. Everyone knew that Gerald was in favor with the current Administration, that his star was ascending. I gambled with my answer.
    “My future is to be here. I’m willing to give it everything.”
    “I know you will, and let me ask you…are you willing to go for the long run? There’s a lot of work to be done.”
    He stared into my eyes and I could not oppose him. You only live once, and I wasn’t about to say no.
    “I’m prepared for any eventuality,” I said.
    Starting there, Petard began to groom me as his heir apparent.
     
    After parking the car and going inside to my office, I noticed the air conditioner in the building was puttering, struggling to come back to life. Simmons was limping down the corridor, arms slack by his sides, thin-lipped, making a bee-line toward me. My misgivings about him clicked on and began to signify. Even his greeting made me tense.
    “What’s with you?”
    “The same fucked up shit. I went over to Frances Dominquez’s. I hate those home visits, don’t you?”
    “They give me gas.”
    He was a caseworker who didn’t like to give food stamps to his clients. Simmons begrudged his caseload the piddly benefits they sought and I knew he disapproved of my tactics, but would he sell me out?
    “Charlene, are we gonna see you tonight?”

    “What for?”
    “Play some pinball, drink some beer after work. At Clooney’s.”
    “Is it only single men?”
    “No, bring your husband if you want to.”
    Simmons said adios to me and turned into another office.
    Lavoris had tipped her hand, letting me know that my work was being investigated. Since I’d been fortunate enough to pick up on this tidbit at ground level, I could chart and monitor its tangent, gauging how my fellow coworkers treated me.
    Someone was getting ready to rat on me; that was the dynamic central to the issue. My suspects were every other employee in the complex. It was so unfair. I never decried how they did their work, and I didn’t give a hoot about their lives, whether they went to church or worked at a pet shelter over the weekend. Yet, any one of them would roll over on me faster than a hummingbird could fly.
    All because I was giving away food stamps.
    If Simmons or some other social worker was going to fink on me, there had to be another element to complete the equation. With this viewpoint, I soared with paranoia. It gave me goose bumps and to be candid, I began to perspire in a few very personal places.
    The stool pigeon was giving the alert and so naturally, there would have to be a hunt. The falsely accused wrong-doer would have to drop everything, pack her bags and leave town in a hurry. A mature woman dressed in a rabbit fur jacket, patent leather pumps, a boa that had seen its last hurrah and stretch leotards. A female with a face nobody recognized. Who was she?
    I feared that woman was me.

ten
    A panhandler was standing at the red light on Valencia Street, jingling a paper cup half-filled with pennies, dimes and quarters, and holding a hand-printed sign that said, “I’ve lost my African-American Express card.”
    At that same moment across the block, a merchant in a pin-striped suit, with his hair askew, came flying through the doors of the Mission National Bank, screaming, “Stop them! Goddamn it…stop them!”
    If looks could kill, this man would have been a contender for the championship of the world. Pimply, ugly, raw-shaven, his brown eyes were swimming in equal parts of anger and dread when he bounded