Taste of Tenderloin (12 page)

“
Tall tranny, speaks
funny?”

He nodded.

“
Hey, man, whatcha want
with that fake shit?” she asked, reaching down with one hand and
making a lewd grabbing gesture at her own crotch. “You know you got
the real thing right here.”

“
Nah, it ain’t like that,”
he explained, embarrassed by her implication. “This ain’t actually
a partying deal. He owes a friend some money.”

Sweet Jane smiled and
winked. “Okay, man, see you later then?”

“
We’ll see,” he said, not
explaining that he’d given up all forms of partying. No drugs,
booze, or women since he’d first been visited by Lady
Justice.

The redhead moved away,
exaggerating her hip swing for Declan’s benefit. He watched her
walk half a block, then wave at an emerald green Mercury Topaz that
braked and pulled over to the curb. A moment or two of negotiation,
then Sweet Jane hopped into the front seat of the car. She’d caught
a live one.

Around 11:00 p.m., Declan
spotted
his amputee friend pushing his way
on his scooterboard along the sidewalk.

“
Yo,” Declan said, offering
his fist.

“’
Sup, Irish?” Double S
said, lightly punching Declan’s knuckles.

“
Just kicking here at the
hotel, watching for Edwina,” Declan said, trying to sound casual.
“You know the dude? He owes my friend money.”

“
Yep, jus’ seen him workin’
traffic ‘round the corner by Homeboy’s ‘bout ten minutes ago,”
Double S answered, firing up a smoke.

“
All right, bro, buy
yourself a taste,” Declan said. He tapped Double S’s fist again and
slipped him a couple of bucks before limping off for the liquor
store around the corner.

Declan lured Edwina down
an
alley half a block up from
Homeboy’s
with a $20 bill paid in advance
for quick sex. As the tall transvestite kneeled on a piece of
cardboard in the darkened alley, Declan carefully slipped his Colt
from the back of his Levi’s and aimed the handgun down at Edwina’s
blonde wig.
Time for Lady Justice to be
served, man
, he thought as movement and
perception shifted down into super slow-motion.

As if privy to the thought,
the Chilean glanced up from unzipping Declan’s jeans with a
frightened expression, just a long moment before the trigger
squeeze and the sharp crack of the .357.

This time Declan had
inserted two pieces of cotton into his ears. Protected from the
deafening crack of the weapon, he watched the kneeling man slump
forward at his feet. Slowly, he moved back to a dumpster, selected
a sheet of cardboard, and covered the skimpily-dressed
transvestite. Again, he felt little emotion. He realized that
Edwina Sanchez had been terminated as one unit, a small part of a
larger plan—a self-sacrificing volunteer.

Time, perception, and
movement all quickly returned to normal as Declan slipped away from
the dead body. He paused at the mouth of the alley to ensure
bypassers had not heard the shot. No one paid him any attention as
he left the alley and headed for his apartment.

The figure materialized on
the
grey screen, her scales perfectly
balanced.

Declan was jumpy the
next
evening, worrying the police would
come by. He didn’t want them picking him up and interrupting his
participation in Lady Justice’s secret operation.
Not now,
he prayed
silently.
I am finally doing something
worthwhile, something good.
Yes,
indeed.

At 9:00 p.m. he went out to
walk off his unease.

It was Friday night and the
‘loin was rocking. The sidewalks were crowded with people shouting,
laughing, buying and selling; music blared from the bars and second
story open windows along the street. Cars squealed, braking and
honking. Buses deposited clouds of diesel fumes over it all. Noisy,
sweaty, smelly.

Declan wandered for a few
minutes, ending up at the alley near Homeboy’s, surprised there was
no crime scene yellow tape around the site. He glanced down the
alley; the cardboard shroud was gone, the body of the dead
transvestite obviously removed. Apparently no big deal, no big
loss…almost like it hadn’t really happened.

The last thought struck a
negative chord.

Declan could hear Ms. L’s
admonition about taking his meds very clearly over the street
hubbub:
You will freak out again, hear and
see shit that isn’t really there
.

Jesus, was he just freaking
out again?

Maybe the whole thing was
just in his head—seeing Lady Justice on his blank TV, the Law of
Catastrophic Isostasy, the whole special operation. Summarized
simply like that, it did sound kind of crazy.

Could that be?

For a moment, Declan was
confused. Then he recovered his poise and told himself
emphatically, “No, Ms. L. is wrong!”

Declan was one hundred
percent sure he’d scored the Colt from a street hustler, Big Henry,
the previous week over on Turk Street. He was positive that a week
ago he’d really terminated the Pak family. Last night he’d shot
Edwina, too.

“
Whassup, man?”

The dude in the Army cams
had come out of Homeboy’s with his brown bag and slipped up quietly
enough to startle Declan.

“
You a Marine?” the guy
asked, gesturing toward the faded USMC patch on Declan’s field
jacket.

“
Yeah, I was
once.”

“
You do the Gulf and the
Storm?”

Declan nodded.

“
What unit?”

“
Force Recon.”

“
Heavy,” the guy said, as
if approving the answer. “I did the Storm, too, but as regular Army
infantry. Buy you a drink?” He held up the brown bag and gestured
toward the alley.

Declan hesitated a
second—he’d drunk no alcohol since becoming part of the secret
operation.
Why not?

“
Sure.”

He followed the Storm vet a
few steps into the darkness. The dude slipped the brown paper bag
down off his bottle, unscrewed the top off the half-empty
forty-ouncer, then wiped the mouth clean before he handed it over
to Declan.

Declan nodded, accepted the
bag, and took a long pull on the Old English malt liquor. It was
cold and sharp. Wiping his mouth, he said, “Hey thanks, man, that
hit the spot,” and handed the bagged forty-ouncer back.

That’s when Declan saw
it.

The guy was pointing a .45
automatic, military issue, at his chest.

Lady ordered up your
raggedy ass, man. You prob’ly didn’t see the bombing on the news
from Belfast?

Pulse racing, Declan just
shook his head numbly.

I.R.A. action last night at
a pub in the downtown protestant section. Bomb wasted three,
including a member of parliament, and wounded another dozen. No
telling how many’ll get whacked during payback.

Declan opened his mouth to
speak aloud and complain that the Lady hadn’t contacted him. He
wasn’t a volunteer for this end of the operation, even though he
was indeed Irish-American. Was this how his role in the operation
ended, so suddenly? His last contribution to the cause a
self-sacrifice? He smiled wryly and nodded acceptance, closing his
mouth without speaking. After all, who was he really? An
unemployed, scruffy, disabled vet—probably even mentally ill, like
the shrinks all agreed. He was indeed insignificant. Even so, he
was still a small cog in a much greater mechanism.

The .45 flashed in the
darkness.

Declan never heard the
shot.

Despite his gritty
resignation to
a grim fate, Declan didn’t
die instantly in that alley. The .45 round hit him in the chest,
breaking a pair of ribs, puncturing a lung, tearing a saucer-sized
exit wound in his back, but remarkably missing his heart and all
other vital organs. Three hours after being shot, Declan still
clung to life, in critical condition, on full support in the trauma
ward at San Francisco General Hospital.

Alive, but unconscious and
completely unaware of the 6.4 earthquake that rattled the city that
morning at 12:25 a.m.

The Apotheosis of Nathan
McKee

Jelly Doughnuts

Nathan McKee sat
completely naked
, except for his taped
ribs, on the foot of his bed in his drab room in the Hotel Reo.
Tiny beads of sweat popped out on his pale body, forehead, and
upper lip as he waited with a rising sense of nervous anticipation.
He wondered if the altered state would hit him again that evening—a
rare emotional and speculative state of mind.

Nathan hadn’t felt or
thought much of anything since his wife, Geri, and their son, Davy,
had died in an automobile accident near Kezar Stadium ten years
before. For most of the past decade he’d aimlessly wandered the
Tenderloin district of San Francisco in a numbed daze, his
sensibilities usually anesthetized by liberal dozes of Old English,
Gallo Tokay, and Wild Irish Rose. Once a hard-charging tailored
suit on Montgomery Street in the financial district, he’d
squandered everything since the accident, lucky now to even own a
threadbare, greasy navy blue topcoat. If it weren’t for the monthly
SSI checks, he would have been sleeping in a cardboard tent in an
alley. As it was, Nathan always found himself panhandling at the
end of each month just to make ends meet—a fifty-year-old drunken
bum.

He’d been booze-free for an
entire week, ever since he’d been badly beaten and experienced a
grand mal seizure over on O’Farrell Street near Homeboy’s on
Friday. The ass-kicking had resulted in a heavily medicated
four-day stay in San Francisco General. Yes, indeed, still clean
and sober after being back on the street unsupervised for three
days—in-
fucking-
credible.

Nathan waited, relishing
his accelerated pulse rate, the slight adrenaline rush, and his
heightened sensibility. He gazed with interest out the sixth story
dirty window that faced westerly over Jones Street, watching the
sun as it began to drop out of sight behind the buildings along Van
Ness hill, streaking the clouded sky with neon oranges and
violets.

He knew he didn’t have long
to wait.

As dusk settled over the
‘loin, Nathan again experienced the familiar onset of the
anticipated seizure, exactly like the two
nights since being released from SF Gen: a sudden, painful
tigh
tening of the muscles in the pit of his
stomach that doubled him over, followed immediately by a rapid
increase in his heart rate. A moment later, an apparent
forty-degree drop in the room temperature chilled his sweaty body,
making him clench his teeth. He groaned, upright but partially
paralyzed, his breathing labored. His vision tunneled, and Nathan
slipped into that other place…

Disoriented, dizzy,
nauseated…surroundings surreal, deep in a cold, dark cavern. Drawn
toward blinding lights, then stopping suddenly…like standing in the
dark backstage of an empty theatre and peering into glaring
floodlights, frozen like a deer caught in the headlights of an
onrushing car.

Abruptly, the stage curtain
began to silently lower, dropping ever so slowly, gradually
blocking out even the tiniest glimmer of light. Total blackness,
like a starless night fallen in on itself. Alone in the dark. After
a few moments, he felt the sensation of sinking, as if he were
being sucked down a black drain.

Consciousness
slipping…

Nathan awoke, still sitting
completely nude on the foot of his bed. In the fifteen or so
minutes he’d been unconscious, night had begun to settle heavily
over the city, cloaking his room in darkness.

Taking a quick personal
inventory, he felt pretty good—his breath, vision, and pulse rate
were all back to normal, and his skin temperature had warmed up
considerably. But, like the past two nights, his deathly pale body
and limbs had been altered during the seizure, taking on an inky
mottling with a peculiar 3-D blurring effect. Staring into the palm
of his hand was like looking into a deep black pool of water that
absorbed all light, reflecting nothing back; his hand and fingers
became indistinct. Even close up, only a foot or so from his face,
his hand looked blurry. After stretching his arm out, the hand and
wrist disappeared completely, blending in perfectly with the room’s
increasing darkness. Nervously, Nathan flexed his lower legs and
toes and fingered the clear tape just under his right armpit, still
tightly binding the two cracked ribs. With a dry chuckle, he
concluded, “Guess I’m still in one piece.” It never occurred to him
to call the doctors about his nightly skin alteration. Over the
years he’d learned to accept whatever the Tenderloin dealt him with
fatalistic resignation.

Nathan stood up, but
stumbled and had to reach out to steady himself for a few seconds
against the wall, his legs drained of energy, unsteady. He took a
deep breath, then stepped cautiously across the small room, pausing
for a second and glancing with boyish glee into the cracked dresser
mirror a yard or two away. He saw an empty, unlit room, and only a
slight distortion of the dark atmosphere where he stood, as if a
slight breeze had disturbed a wave of heat rising from a floor
vent.