Taste of Tenderloin (21 page)

Choked up, teary-eyed, but
able to move on automatic pilot, I bent over the frail woman I had
once loved dearly, and I pressed a pillow over her face.

She struggled frantically,
but I pushed down with all my weight. Her feet made a few weak
cycling movements, kicking off the sheet…then nothing. Diane was
gone. She wasn’t going to suffer anymore.

I tiptoed back down the
hall, past my sleeping sister-in-law, and then let myself quietly
out of the house while the neighborhood still slept in the early
morning fog.

Back in the apartment
in
the ‘loin, I sat sipping a Bud, thinking
about the plan in the pre-dawn darkness.

I felt better about doing
something good for a change, helping both Nicki and Diane, their
iceworms stilled. I sighed and looked down at the table, the Glock
wiped clean and just sitting there waiting next to my beer. I
picked up the can and drained the Bud. Surprisingly, my devil had
been quiet all morning, ever since Nicki had tumbled down the
elevator shaft.

“
Uh-huh, running a low
profile, you shitty bastard,” I said aloud, grinning wryly to
myself. “Well, it’s too fucking late, boyo!” I picked up my gun,
jacking a round into the chamber. Time to take care of step
three.

But I faltered, an intense
wave of fear washing over me, speeding my heart rate and pulse. My
eyelid twitched out of control; my hands grew slippery and shook
badly.

“
You can do it, man,” I
whispered unconvincingly, my grip on the Glock baby
weak.

That’s when I heard it. A
faint scratching sound at the hallway door.

Then a familiar
mewling.

“
No way,” I whispered,
shaking my head in denial but lacking any real
conviction.

I stood up, slipping the
gun into my belt, and crossed the room, nervously easing open the
front door.

Smokey, tail standing up,
walked in and brushed himself against my right ankle. He looked
exactly the same; maybe a little scuffed up and dirty, but
unhurt.

Shocked, I remained in
place for a few moments, rubbing my eyes. The kitten purred around
my ankle. What the fuck was going on? An icicle stabbed into my
gut, the iceworm waking in a frenzy. Momentarily ignoring the pain,
I leaned out into the hallway, peering left down toward the shaft,
half expecting to see Nicki.

Nothing.

But the cat was there, no
question about that.

Suddenly, it took off
running, back out the door and into the hallway.

“
Wait, Smokey!” I shouted,
following the grey kitten down the stairwell.

Out on the street, I pulled
up short, stunned and gasping for breath.

The whole frigging
Tenderloin appeared to be on fire from where I stood, smoke and
flames leaping up from the nearby buildings into the
darkness.

Sirens wailed in the
distance. A fire truck appeared, sliding around the corner, and
then pulling up in front of my building, spilling out its crew.
They pulled off their fire hoses and hooked up to the nearby water
hydrants.

A screaming patrol car
braked just up the street.

Looking that direction,
past the firemen and cops, I spotted Smokey among the crowd. Folks
from nearby apartments milled in the street, many only
half-dressed, peering around wide-eyed at the inferno raging around
them.

On some silent cue,
everyone began to move
en masse
downtown.

I followed the crowd for
several blocks. At the corner of O’Farrell and Market Street I
paused, looked both ways, and watched what looked like all of
downtown San Francisco spilling out from the nearby streets that
fed into Market—hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people.

What is going
on?

9/11 flashed into my
head.

Another terrorist attack?
Maybe one of those suitcase nuclear devices going off around in a
building, setting everything afire, people lit up with
radiation?

I noticed that some of the
crowd did look kind of funny, not glowing with radiation, but
wearing peculiar, stunned expressions, their clothes dirty and
scuffed up. They shuffled along as if they’d stepped out of one of
those George Romero movies.

At that moment the ground
bucked and the street in front of me cracked open with a loud
snapping
pop
. The
sidewalk rolled as if it had turned to Jell-O, knocking people to
their knees.

I grabbed the closest
parking meter and hung on, looking up in awe as streaks of jagged
lightning ripped across the sky. Lower, just above the building
tops, neon blue balls of psychedelic fire were tumbling over and
over, rolling westerly in the direction of Civic Center.
Accompanying the spectacular light show was an orchestra of chaos:
thunder, boulders crashing into nearby canyons, more sirens wailing
from every direction, sporadic explosions in buildings. Debris tore
away overhead and crashed down onto the street. Cars braked and
collided; frightened people shouted and cried. Some were struck
down by falling objects and screamed out in pain.

Still clutching the parking
meter as an anchor, I looked around at ground level, trying to take
it all in.

That’s when I
spotted
them
, down
by the Ferry Building: black-cloaked horsemen astride ebony steeds
thundering up Market Street, the magnificent beasts’ eyes crimson,
nostrils flaring and snorting fire, the riders scattering the crowd
as they galloped by, four abreast, toward Civic Center.

“
Yo, Skip.”

Stunned by the whole
phantasmagoric scene, I finally dropped my gaze, looking down at
the foot of the parking meter.

It was Short
Stuff.

I couldn’t speak for a
moment, but eventually managed a raspy whisper, “What’s happening
here, Double S?”

He wasn’t wearing his
normal laid-back, half-assed cynical expression. Instead, he looked
kind of whacked-out, awestruck himself. Still, he spoke calmly in
spite of all that was happening around us. “Hey, this gotta be the
shitstorm The Prophet been rantin’ ‘bout.”

“
Shitstorm?” I repeated as
fragments of building material crashed just a few yards away from
where we stood, flattening a Volvo station wagon parked on the
street and covering us with a thin layer of dust.

“
Yeah, ya know, that
pocket-leaps jive he been preachin’ ‘bout,” the crippled man said,
wiping his dirty face on his sweatshirt sleeve. “Dead raisin’
up…that’s them muthahfuckahs out there, ya know, the
stupid-lookin’, scuffed-up ones, shufflin’ along like a chain
gang.”

I looked where he pointed,
out into the crowd. Every other person indeed looked stoned,
marching along in lockstep, zombie-like. But arisen from the
dead?

“
Oh yeah, Skip, the shit
done hit the fan, big time, ya unnerstan’ what I’m sayin’?” Double
S continued over the hubbub, snorting and spitting mud out into the
gutter. “Uh-huh, and check
him
out, now. Guess he ain’t jus a prophet no mo’.
Uh-uh, he gotta be Da Man!”

I glanced in the direction
of his gesture; the crowd was gathering back in the street after
the horsemen galloped by, coalescing tightly around a nearby
figure.

Gent
Brown
.

All dressed up in a flowing
golden robe, so bright it made me squint. He sure didn’t resemble
any Tenderloin wethead or stumblebum now, nor any street preacher
either. No way. He drifted up Market Street, gathering people
behind him. The crowd moved in the general direction of Civic
Center.

Holy shit!

Close behind Gent, in the
middle of the crowd, was Nicki, wearing a dazed expression,
shuffling along in step with the others. “Hey, babe!” I shouted and
waved uselessly as she disappeared from view, lost in the
hubbub.

“
C’mon, Skip, guess we
bettah fall in our ownselves. Maybe get the word at Civic Center,
ya hear me?” Double S pushed off on his scooterboard, not waiting
for my response.

At that moment the iceworm
reared up, thrashing about in a frenzy, doubling me over. I grabbed
my stomach, the pain incredible, and looked down, half expecting to
see the devil explode out of my body like that gut-wrenching scene
in the movie
Alien
.

God Almighty!

I had indeed gone around
the corner, for sure. The iceworm had driven me crazier than a
shithouse mouse. This must be some kind of crazy-ass shit, an
elaborate, grand delusion. No, I wasn’t following any hallucination
to Civic Center or anywhere else. And even if they were real, I was
going to do what was right. Finish what I’d started with Diane and
Nicki. Take care of the iceworm
now
, once and for all, and worry
about salvation and resurrection later.

Sweat soaking my shirt,
vision tunneling, and my right eyelid going bananas, I choked up. I
was in bad shape.

The revelation hit me
hard:
I could not do it
. No way.

As I had suspected
earlier,
before Smokey’s scratching had
distracted me, I just did not have the stones to go out the
traditional cop way. The admission brought tears to my
eyes.

“
You lousy, fucking
pussy—”

Wait.

Maybe, just maybe, I could
still go out stand-up. A good chance
if
all this was bogus, just happening
in my head.

With heavy legs, I stumbled
past the debris on the sidewalk to a corner phone kiosk and dug two
quarters from my pocket, hoping the damn thing still worked.
Amazing: a dial tone.

I called dispatch at the
station, and, surprisingly, someone picked the phone up on the
first ring. After identifying myself and giving my badge number, I
laid it on them, the whole maryann.

“…
That’s right, a total
5150 going fucking ballistic on lower Market…I’m at the corner of
O’Farrell…Yeah, armed,” I finished in an exhausted voice, letting
the phone slip out of my trembling left hand. I slumped down on my
butt, back against the phone stand, and waited, the Glock resting
in my lap. Something crashed nearby behind me, covering me with a
thick coating of dust.

I didn’t turn, just
squeezed my eyes shut against the pain in my gut and took several
long, deep breaths. I concentrated on the white circle, blotting
out everything around me.

Quiet now, real
quiet.

Shitstorm gone.

Iceworm still.

Afterword

Seven or eight years ago,
I’d completed maybe two of these Tenderloin tales. Steve Savile, an
underrated Brit writer and one time publisher of the press,
Imaginary Worlds, had read both stories. He suggested that I write
more Tenderloin stories and call the collection:
A Taste of Tenderloin
.
Shortly after that Gord Rollo, the editor for
Unnatural Selection
, a fine anthology
that sank almost unread by very many readers also thought it was a
pretty good idea. Over the past five years I have concentrated
mostly on novellas or novels, but occasionally finishing a short
story. Each year or so I’d write another Tenderloin story. Last
year I realized I had stories about quite a few different ’Loin
residents, and enough tales for a good collection. Jason Sizemore
of Apex Books agreed. So you have in hand the results of an
eight-year process.

Thank you Steve for the
idea, and Gord for the encouragement.

A paragraph about each
story might be informative and of reader interest:

“
Lost Patrol” is the most
recently written tale but the events stretch back farthest in time
to the early 60s. In my experience, when folks first come under
hostile fire in the military they immediately become superstitious,
reaching out for almost any good luck charm or soon developing
beliefs in incredulous things. That’s the case with the Lost
Patrol, a legend from Vietnam. I think I still believe that platoon
is still wandering around the jungle over there.

“
Magic Words” was written
for the publication
Dark
Wisdom
, a slick magazine with colored
illustrations for each tale. It also was written as a kind of
counterpoint to my story “Magic Numbers,” which appeared in
Borderlands 5
, a Stoker
anthology winner. Both tales begin and end in alleys. Maybe I’ll
write another story some day and call it “Magic Colors,” or some
such, which of course will have to also end in an alley.
Hmm….

“
Tombstones in His Eyes” is
full of well-researched drug lore that eventually has a place in
several of my novels. Heroin is a big time problem in our country,
no more so than in San Francisco, which authorities estimate has at
least 12,500 addicts. A favorite charity of mine is the non-profit
Walden House which does good work in San Francisco and throughout
the California prison system in the area of drug rehab. The title
of the story comes from street advice: How do I find a connection?
Look for the guy with tombstones in his eyes.