Taste of Tenderloin (8 page)

Carefully, you move deeper
and deeper into the quiet, still darkness.

The sound again disturbs
the stillness: a short grunt mixed with a throaty cough. Yes,
that’s it.

An unnatural
sound.

You stop as the clouds draw
apart, and even the end of the alley is flooded with moonlight. You
peer at the dead end, expecting to see the ex-fighter, expecting to
peer into the barrel of his gun. You squint, and even in the dim
light you realize the bodyguard is not there. No, but there is a
shadow, stretching out toward you. As the shadow touches your feet,
you feel the temperature instantly plunge and you shiver.
Strange...

Another cough-grunt and
your gaze is drawn up to the roof of the end wall. You gasp loudly
at the source of the shadow and the weird sound.

The dragon!

The snow dragon, clinging
to the roof edge like some hideous gargoyle, breathing plumes of
steam into the icy atmosphere.

The white monster peers
down on you like a hawk staring down at a mouse. In the moonlight,
it is terrifying but magnificent, its body shining like the finest
alabaster, its penetrating gaze black as ebony. It is the gaze that
holds you locked in place as the great creature unfurls its wings.
The huge span casts a shadow over most of the alley.

Spellbound, you watch as
the creature prepares to leap into the air, its long talons curling
and gripping the roof’s edge, the tremendous wingspan beating a
downblast of icy air that crashes into your face like the wind of
an arctic storm.

Rinnng!
The sound is faint and distant. Too
distant
.

The great snow dragon is
airborne, circling overhead, gaining momentum. Finally, it is
swooping down at you, its fanged mouth open, breathing a fiery ball
of tumbling blue.

You are engulfed in the
ball of blue flame; an invisible, icy hand crushes the life from
your body. But in that last nanosecond of life you smile,
recognizing the irony: the dragon has freed you.

Rudy Sanchez broke in
and
found Richie stretched out on his
mattress the next morning, eyes staring into eternity, a surprising
smile on his face. Beside Richie on the floor, Rudy found a candle,
two empty baggies, a burnt spoon with a cotton ball, a foot of
rubber surgical cord, and a hypodermic.

Rudy shook his head,
knowing that Richie had finally screwed up once too often. He
stared down at his friend, wondering what had caused that
smile.

In addition to Richie’s
smile, there was something else that struck Rudy as odd.

Richie’s pupils weren’t
pinned, the normal condition for a user of opiates. Just the
opposite: they were dilated, arched at the top, squared off at the
bottom.

“
Strange,” Rudy whispered
aloud.

For Gavin, who has battled
the dragon

Bushido

“
They are all
perfect!”

Katsumoto’s final
words,
The Last Samurai

The Ugly Man paused at
the
mouth of his alley and pulled up the
hood of his black sweatshirt. Gathering in the darkness around
himself, he stepped out into the foggy night. He shuffled down
O’Farrell Street like a wounded panther, limping along under the
shadowed overhangs, staying close to the barred and chained
storefronts. As usual, none of the denizens of San Francisco’s
Tenderloin even glanced in his direction. He’d once read, or
probably heard, someplace in the distant past that disfigured or
ugly—
really
ugly—people, instead of drawing attention, were actually
almost invisible. Normal adults looked away, quickly wiping out
what they’d glimpsed and passing by as if the ugly person didn’t
even exist—a subconscious wish fulfillment reaction, perhaps. That
had indeed been the Ugly Man’s experience in the ‘loin. When he
managed to avoid making any but cursory eye contact, he moved about
in the nighttime shadows with complete anonymity, unacknowledged,
unseen, feeling almost like an imaginary creature with no
name.

It was long after
midnight—the time of heavy buying and selling in the ‘loin. Music
and laughter blared from seedy bars. The street was littered with
empty bottles, plastic wrappers, and discarded food scraps. Those
law-abiding residents with an indoor address in the ‘loin had long
ago disappeared from the streets for the safety behind closed and
double-locked doors, leaving a handful of cops and the unsavory
crowd of night people. A level of nervous tension hung in the misty
air over the mob of shifty-eyed dealers, dead-eyed junkies, heavily
mascara-eyed hookers, steely-eyed pimps, and the vacant-eyed
homeless, all scurrying about with an agenda like a scattered pack
of abandoned dogs scavenging for scraps. The Ugly Man slipped
along, bypassing a rheumy wino who argued loudly with an imaginary
friend in a littered doorway. He made absolutely no lingering eye
contact, avoiding any communication, a disabled phantom of the
street.

Usually he avoided the late
night crowd in the Tenderloin altogether, but it was the final day
of the month, and he had used up the last of his SSI money two days
prior. He harbored only a wrinkled dollar bill and a pocketful of
change, most of which he’d acquired selling aluminum cans earlier
in the evening over in the Mission. His dire financial
circumstances had forced him to skip his early morning trip down to
Wild Bill’s Liquor Store on Leavenworth. He’d delayed his evening
trip too long. His hands were shaking badly, his mouth dry and
metallic, his body covered with clammy sweat under his clothes
despite the penetrating chill that hung in the air. As he dragged
his aching right leg along, he felt a growing nausea. Still, he
carefully kept to the shadows, shuffling along until the green neon
of Wild Bill’s glowed fuzzily ahead in the fog. Sighing with
relief, the Ugly Man pulled his threadbare black hood down,
completely exposing his horribly disfigured features.

At the doorway he paused
and glanced down, waiting for a pair of customers to leave the
liquor store. Then he limped directly to the counter. The Indian
clerk recognized the Ugly Man immediately and announced with a
slightly British accent, “Ham and cheese sandwich and pint of Wild
Irish Rose, right?”

He shook his head. “No
sandwich,” he answered in a husky, under-used voice, placing the
dollar and a portion of the change on the counter with a noticeably
shaking hand. “Only a half pint,” he added, swallowing
dryly.

The clerk took a step
toward the back display, found the correct half pint, and placed it
on the counter. Then he scooped up the money, carefully counting
the coins before ringing up the sale.

The Ugly Man cleared his
throat and asked, “A favor?”

The clerk frowned slightly.
“What kind of favor?”

“
Use one of those,” the
Ugly Man said, then added a barely audible, “please.” He pointed at
a triangle of dusty souvenir shot glasses stacked on the counter,
but mostly hidden behind the plastic cigarette lighter
display.

The clerk just stared at
him with a kind of puzzled expression after glancing at the stack.
He tentatively picked up the shot glass from atop the
pyramid.

“
Now fill it, please,” the
Ugly Man said, nodding toward his half pint of whisky. “I
can’t.”

Understanding finally
flooded into the clerk’s face and dark eyes after glancing at the
shot glass and then down at the Ugly Man’s badly trembling hand. He
shook his head and explained in a bureaucratic monotone, “I am
sorry, but we are not allowed to uncap any bottle, open any can, or
dispense alcoholic drinks of any kind on the premises, because we
would jeopardize our off sale liquor license.”

“
It’ll only take a moment,
then I’ll disappear,” the Ugly Man pleaded in a pitiful
whisper.

The clerk, looking
uncomfortably torn, glanced out the doorway and then back at the
Ugly Man. Despite his obvious misgivings, he uncapped the bottle of
whisky and poured out a generous portion, filling the shot glass
right to the top. He pushed it across the counter and whispered,
“Quickly,” glancing nervously again at the empty doorway.
“
You
poured it, if
anyone comes in,” he warned. He left the counter and stepped back
into the rear of the store, near the cold cases, wiping his hands
as if disowning any part of the illegal transaction.

The Ugly Man breathed in
and out deeply, gathered himself, then reached down and encircled
the glass ever so carefully, keeping his shaking hands firmly
grounded against the counter as if he were attempting to gently
restrain a baby bird from flying off. During the process, his coat
pulled up, exposing the lower several inches of his tattooed
sleeves, the mosaic badly disfigured by thickly layered burn scars.
Sucking in another breath to further steady himself, he leaned over
and slurped from the glass, which still rested firmly on the
counter between his grounded hands. He closed his eyes, swallowed
the raw whisky, and held his breath as the fiery liquid made its
way down to his stomach. After a moment, he blinked, shuddered, and
carefully lifted the shot glass with his still slightly trembling
hands. He only spilled a few drops of the precious liquid before
downing the remainder of the poured drink. Licking his dry lips, he
nodded toward the clerk as he set the empty glass back down.
“Thanks, man,” he said. He picked up and carefully capped the
remaining half pint of Wild Irish Rose.

Stepping into the doorway,
the Ugly Man looked about fu
rtively while
secreting his purchase in the pocket of his scruffy sweatshirt. He
could already feel the “medicine” beginning to take effect,
settling his stomach. A warm glow slowly worked its way out to his
extremities, even quelled the almost constant ache in his lower
right leg.

Feeling better, he made his
way back up the street, heading home to his cardboard
tent.

As he neared an
apartment
entryway just before reaching
O’Farrell, the Ugly Man heard a loud skin-on-skin
smack
, followed by
snuffled crying.

He stopped, tilted his
head, and cautiously peeked into the back of the deep, darkened
doorway.

There was Mad Marco, the
badass bald-headed pimp, dressed in his expensive black leather
coat, holding up and waving a pair of wrinkled ten-dollar bills in
his left hand. “I warned you earlier, you lazy bitch, didn’t
I?”

A scantily dressed young
woman fingered a bloody nose. She shivered visibly in the cold,
nodding contritely.

“
Now, you get your raggedy
ass out there and hustle up at least another hundred bucks before
morning, you understand me?” Mad Marco said, pulling up his leather
coat and pointing at a wide metal-studded belt. “If you don’t, you
know what I’m gonna have to do?”

The bleeding woman nodded,
murmuring, “Don’t do that, Marco. I’m sorry.”

“
Sorry?” the scowling pimp
repeated angrily. “Sorry don’t hack it, girl. You get out there and
shake your lazy-ass booty, get them johns’ noses opened up, attract
some bidness, you hear?” He paused a moment, then ordered, “Here,
clean yourself up.”

The young woman took a
powder blue silk handkerchief from the pimp and wiped at her bloody
nose. Stoically, she sucked it up, trying to smile and put on her
game face while still shivering. She looked to be sixteen years old
at best. Most others like her would be begging for spare change
over in the Haight or maybe streetwalking on Capp Street. There
were few fresh-faced, bright-eyed hookers in the ‘loin. She should
be making a ton of money, the Ugly Man thought. Maybe that was what
pissed off Mad Marco. The girl might be too timid to really exploit
her innocent assets and hustle up customers. Could even be her
first night on the street. He didn’t recall having ever seeing her
before, but he usually paid little attention to the hookers,
regardless their ages or innocence.

It was none of his business
anyhow. Glancing away, the Ugly Man slipped past the darkened
doorway unnoticed.

Maybe sometime in the past
he would have intervened, back during the good times when he’d
practiced the Seven Virtues and still had some self-respect and his
night watchman job over at the warehouses in China Basin. But he’d
been fired nine or ten years ago, after the accident, when he’d
been discovered asleep and drunk on the job. He smiled wryly to
himself as he limped along, shaking his head. Thinking about it, he
wasn’t sure he’d have said anything, not even back then. Probably
just idle fancy.

He glanced absently up the
darkened street, reflecting back.

Even as a child in the Napa
Valley he’d been reclusive, avoiding most interpersonal conflict.
In his heart, he knew it wasn’t in his nature to have risked Mad
Marcus’s wrath any time in the distant past, much less the present.
The pimp was scary tough, always carried a straight razor, and was
known to use it with the least provocation.

No,
the Ugly Man admitted to himself, slinking off into the fog
like a cowardly dog with its tail between its hind legs.
Mind your own business, stay invisible, take care
of number one, stay out of harm’s way
. That
was his credo now. He hadn’t even thought about the Seven Virtues
for years.