Taste of Tenderloin (5 page)

“
Are you ready to write for
me, Lucas Somerville?” she asked, moving closer.

He nodded.

“
Come, then.”

Luke followed her into the
alley, chilled to the bone in the foggy darkness, his heart
thumping and his blood racing.

At the end of the alley,
the old woman stopped and produced a felt-tipped pen and a very
thin black book from somewhere in her layers of garments. She
handed the pen to Luke.

“
Now, you copy the old
words from the book.”

She had opened the tattered
book to a page, its border decorated with symbols akin to those
around the box on the wall. It contained only one short
sentence.

Luke took the pen and
squinted in the dim light at the unfamiliar words:
Te adzari mazzeki O
.
Then, with cold, stiff fingers, he slowly transferred the
expression into the blank rectangle.

The bag lady murmured,
“
Akana mukav tut le
Devlesa
,” as she backed slowly away. “I now
leave you to God,” she repeated in English. At that moment the box
on the wall seemed to flare up as if on fire. Simultaneously, Luke
thought he heard the sound of lightning ripping through dry air
behind him.

He pitched forward, his
forehead striking the brick wall and his legs sagging as he
collapsed into semi-consciousness.

Minutes later, a tall,
dark
young woman dressed in a stylish blue
herringbone jacket paused after emerging onto O’Farrell from the
alley. She blinked in the glare of the streetlight and rubbed her
unmatched eyes—one blue, the other brown—then glanced around and
smiled broadly, feeling very young and alive.

Meanwhile, back at the end
of the alley, an old man sat on a piece of cardboard, staring with
a stunned expression into a broken mirror he’d dug out of his
nearby shopping cart. He rubbed his arthritic fingers above his
left eye as if trying to erase the thin silver slash cutting
through his dark eyebrow. After a minute or so, the strong reek of
stale urine made his nostrils twitch, partially clearing his head.
He traced the deeply etched wrinkles in his face, looked down at
his scruffy clothes, and finally stared at the liver-spotted back
of his gnarly hand as it gradually dawned on him what the bag woman
had done with her magic words. Then, feeling a brief surge of hope,
the old man murmured, “The book. I must find that black book,” as
he searched frantically in the surrounding debris.

He never found
it.

Tombstones in His
Eyes

Junkies are hip,

sometimes bold,

often
cool
,

but never old.

—
graffito in the
Haight

Richie O’Brien was in
a
hurry; a
big
hurry.

A summer fog had blown in
from San Francisco Bay as evening settled, cooling off the city,
but Richie’s body was covered with a sweaty film that made his
crotch and underarms feel gritty. His stomach was queasy, his
bowels loose, and as he hiked up Powell into Chinatown, the muscles
in his legs and arms began to ache as if they would cramp any
moment.

Hurry, man,
hurry
, his limbs screamed silently, a mute
chorus of pain.

For most of the
morning
, he had roamed the Haight in vain,
surreptitiously checking the insides of cars, looking for something
to boost. Finally, about eleven, he spotted a Fujiko camera in the
back seat of a white Topaz, the window cracked down nearly an inch.
He glanced about to make sure no one was watching, then had the
door open in a few seconds with a wire coat hanger. It was closed
again even more quickly. Feeling paranoid about the camera under
his shirt, he watched a couple cross the street and stroll his way.
They passed by and paid him no mind, so Richie joined a group of
punk rockers moving the opposite direction, only partially
restraining a giggle of triumph.

When at last he reached the
A-1 Pawnshop
on Mission Street, it was
almost noon, and the Russian had a long line of people waiting to
see him. Richie joined the end of the line, and soon, like most of
the others ahead of him, he began to squirm, feeling uncomfortable,
his crotch itching as if he’d picked up a case of crabs along with
the camera. Ahead in line, a few others were even further gone than
Richie, hopping back and forth on their feet, smoking one cigarette
after another; some were even popping pills and swallowing them
dryly. Richie wished he had some
codeine or
Valium to keep his jones at bay. Like some of the
ot
hers in line, he hadn’t fixed since the
night before.

After forty-five minutes or
so, it was finally his turn.

“
Fif-teen dol-lars,”
announced the heavyset Russian in the wire cage after examining the
Fujiko and looking up with his steely grey eyes.

“
Ah, man,” Richie
complained, his heart sinking, but he knew it was no use arguing.
The Russian
never
negotiated with his early customers. He’d just shrug when one
indignantly demanded more money, push the item back, and gesture
for the next one in line to bypass the disgruntled customer. Richie
snatched up the receipt and money, hustling out of the pawnshop
past half a dozen people still in line. Some of them looked pretty
strung out.

On the sidewalk, Richie bit
the knuckle of his right forefinger, thinking hard. He still needed
ten bucks to score a quarter gram of Mexican Tar.

“
Yeah!” he shouted to
himself, remembering the fake Muni fast passes Rudy Sanchez had
given him the previous weekend. Rudy, Richie’s boyhood friend who
worked in a print shop on Castro, always had some scheme for
turning a quick buck and usually included Richie in his plots.
Right after high school, Richie had taken a fall when a Sanchez
scheme turned sour, getting himself ninety days but not ratting out
on his friend. During the ten years since, Rudy had often
demonstrated his gratitude.

Richie dug out his wallet,
unwrapping the cellophane from the ten fast passes. He’d sell two,
and he’d be in business. Grinning, he took off for Market Street,
deciding on the stop at Tenth.

On the Muni Island, he
looked over the four people standing on the median, waiting for a
bus. Richie decided to hit up the guy in the plaid sport jacket
reading the green section of the Chronicle. Just before he flashed
the phony pass, Richie saw a cop waiting to cross Market, looking
in their direction. He decided to move back a stop uptown before
trying to make a sale.

Richie hit up a dozen or so
people before he finally sold two passes.
Guess I gotta work on my sales technique,
he told himself, shrugging off the lack of immediate success
as he headed north.

By the time he reached the
Cajun’s flat off Eddy and Jones in the Tenderloin, Richie was still
in pretty good shape. His nose was running a little and he felt the
hint of a cramp in the pit of his stomach, but he would be okay
after he did some business with his connection.

No one answered the knock
at the second floor door. Strange. The Cajun was always home, or
his lady, Sweet Jane, was—even holidays. They were both carrying
major joneses and needed to take regular care of a large number of
customers daily to feed their own habits. But even though he was a
heavy user, the Cajun was a good
connection; he always gave fair weight, and he and Sweet Jane
never cut the tar. Not like those dope fiend assholes over on
Sixteenth who worked the street, selling four balloons for one free
one from their connections. Those balloons
never
weighed out to a quarter gram,
and were sometimes cut with who knew what. You always had to be
alert that you were actually getting good shit and not being ripped
off. Besides the hassle, it was really easy to get busted doing
business out on the street.

No, Richie knew he was
lucky to have the Cajun for a safe connection.

He waited, sitting on the
top step of the landing, noticing the faint but unmistakable odor
of urine in the hallway, and getting edgier and edgier as the
afternoon waned. Funny no one else had shown up to score their
evening fix. Richie stood and stretched out his legs, which were
beginning to get more than just a little stiff. Finally, he sucked
in a deep breath, almost gagging on the nearly forgotten smell, and
went back to the door to knock again.
Maybe they were asleep the first time
, he told himself, grasping at an explanation.
Bang, bang, bang
.

But no one answered the
door this time, either.

He knew he had to do
something soon. Even if it meant taking his chances over on Mission
and Sixteenth.

“
Yo, Richie,” said a voice
at the bottom of the staircase. “’Sup, man.”

It was Short Stuff, a
legless black dude who made his way around the Tenderloin on a
scooterboard. Short Stuff always knew what was
happening.

“
Say, Double S,” Richie
replied, walking down a couple of steps, “you seen the Cajun or his
squeeze, man?” He could feel the sweat beginning to trickle down
both sides of his ribcage from under his arms.

“
Nobody be seeing them two
for a while, man,” Short Stuff answered. “They busted.”

“
What do you mean?” Richie
said. “The narcs got ‘em?” He hoped he was wrong.

“
Tha’s right,” the legless
man said, a sympathetic expression on his round black
face.

“
Oh, man,” Richie said,
unable to restrain the despair in his voice.

“
Say, Richie, why don’t ya
try the dealer they calls Doom?” Short Stuff suggested.

Richie moved down the
remaining steps. “I don’t know him.”

“
Chinatown dude,” Short
Stuff explained, exchanging a handshake as Richie reached ground
level and bent over. “He supposed to be doin’ that good white shit,
man. ‘Bout same price as tar.”

“
Where’s he set up?” Richie
asked. An edge crept into his tone as his spirits
lifted.

“
Chinatown…one of ‘em
tourist minivans, parked upper Powell someplace, just ‘fore the
cable car turn.” He jerked on Richie’s pant leg. “But they say you
don’t wanna fuck with the man call Doom, ya unnerstan’?”

Richie nodded. “I got you,
Double S.” He slapped the man’s raised hand. “I’m light now, my
man, but I owe you a shooter of Jack Daniels.”

“
All right!”

Richie hurried up Powell,
the
T-shirt under his ragged Giants
windbreaker completely soaked and sticking to his back as darkness
settled over the city, the unusually thick fog shrouding even the
street lights. The tourists had thinned out by this time; only a
pair of couples waited for the cable car at the corner to take them
back down to Fisherman’s Wharf.

He slowed his pace after
reaching Washington, where he spotted a black Chrysler minivan with
all its side windows shaded.
That’s it,
man
, he thought.

“
Say, homes, ‘sup?” a huge
black man asked.

He scared the shit out of
Richie, appearing from the dark alley like that. Richie had known
there would be lookouts, maybe even bodyguards, but he’d expected
them to be Asian gang members. The black giant was out of context.
In his frantic state of mind, Richie didn’t dwell on it. He’d have
dealt with Frankenstein’s monster to get to his
connection.

“
Come to see the man,”
Richie replied after regaining his composure. He nodded at the
minivan but didn’t take his eyes off the guard, who was picking his
teeth with the point of a pocket knife. His face bore the marks of
a prize fighter—a flattened nose and scar tissue around both
eyebrows.

“
That right? Hmmmm…whatcha
wanna see him for?” His voice was soft, the words slurred and
almost soothing, at odds with his intimidating size and
features.

“
Business,” Richie snapped,
growing even more edgy, shifting his weight from one leg to the
other and trying to kick out the aching kinks.

“
I see.”

The big man folded the thin
blade and put it away, flashing the butt of an automatic in his
belt. “Y’all sweatin’, homes. How come? It ain’t hot.”

“
Not feeling too good, man,
you know what I mean?” Richie said, wiping his nose and
sniffing.

The guy finally nodded,
then moved backward into the darkness of the alley, gesturing for
Richie to follow. “How much bidness y’all got planned?”

Richie followed a step or
two, keeping a little space between them. “A quarter,” he replied,
holding up one finger.

“
Lemme see the
bread.”

Richie dug out the ten and
three fives, holding them out front where the man could
see.

“’
Kay. Open your coat and
‘sume the position, there.” He pointed to the dirty brick
wall.

Richie did as told,
unbuttoning his windbreaker, spreading his feet, and leaning up
against the wall.