The Angels of Catastrophe (19 page)

Made of stone, Lonely Boy didn't budge. He braced the Smith and Wesson with both hands and fixed the semi-automatic's starved muzzle on Zets. The two combatants began to duel in the middle of the taqueria's floor space. Lonely Boy circled slowly to his left, never taking his lava-brown eyes off the service revolver in Zets's fist.

Zets moved counter clockwise in a police academy combat stance. Anger contaminated his reddened venal eyes. The nightstick dangled from a leather loop around his left wrist. “Put the fucking thing on the floor! Right where I can see it! Just do it, goddamn you!”

A spasm coursed through Lonely Boy. His face was a frieze of remorse. He saw the climax with himself in defeat and handcuffed. The return to jail was not going to be a vacation. He doubted if he could even raise the money for his bail. He thought of Spooky and was bereaved. He lowered the Smith and Wesson and said to Zets, “You win. I can't do this no more. I'll give you the gun. Here.”

Flipping the pistol around, he offered the weapon by its barrel. He pointed one foot toward Zets; his left hand was out of view. The Smith and Wesson was parkerized black; it didn't shine in the light.

Zets reached for the proffered gun and saw that evening's headlines on the six o'clock news. He saw his own face on television. The heroic police officer. The savior of a crime-ridden neighborhood. What he didn't see was the half-eaten burrito Lonely Boy had snagged from a nearby plate.

The
vato
hurled the burrito at the cop from point-blank range.
Carne asada,
beans and rice and green salsa pelted Zets in the face, blinding him. The salsa stung him in the eyes; the gooey beans clogged his nostrils. Rice got under the collar of his combat overalls.

Lonely Boy evaluated the scene before him. Women and children were crying, chairs were overturned, food was on the floor. It was time to get out of there. He leaped on a table and flung himself at the front window. The sun coming in from the street contoured his body in a black-rimmed halo. He flew through the air unencumbered by gravity and flailed his legs. His arms were tucked against his ribs. His childishly pink tongue lolled in a silent scream.
He yanked his hoodie over his head and hit the window at full speed.

The pane was pulverized into smithereens as Lonely Boy squeezed through a hole in the glass, leaving behind a trail of blood. He landed outside on the pavement, fell on his left ankle and groaned. He got to his knees and shook himself free of the glass slivers sticking out of his scalp like devil's horns. He turned slowly, favoring what appeared to be an injured leg and threatened a couple of tourists in Bermuda shorts and straw hats with the Smith and Wesson. He stood upright and burst into the street, dodging the cars and zigzagging through the traffic. With a holler of bittersweet rage to accompany his flight he did a vanishing act between two shopping carts into Caledonia Alley and was gone before Zets could get to the sidewalk.

M
ission Street at dawn was a panorama of homeless men foraging through garbage dumpsters near Leed's Shoe Store. The Tower Theater's marquee, green and damp with pigeon shit, was rust-gold in the rising sun. Winos slumbered on flattened cardboard boxes in the doors of the Wells Fargo Bank. Wild parrots chirked as they dive-bombed the telephone lines over Si Tashjians's Flower Shop. The sound of breaking glass and drunken laughter poured from The Sunrest Bar onto the sidewalk through a pair of dutch doors.

The low-slung, seedy, blue-painted tavern was a parole violator's haven. Durrutti had heard through the grapevine Jimmy Ramirez was in there. He ambled into the watering hole only to have his face sandblasted by a cloud of tobacco smoke. The jukebox was churning out a blues number by the late Albert King. Two Muni bus drivers, fresh from the night shift, were throwing dice on the sawdust strewn floor next to the bathroom in the back. A couple of Mexican hookers in sequined blue and orange spandex pants suits were at the bar discussing a john they'd shared. The ponytailed bartender was off to one side purchasing a stolen Sony television set from a fence.

Finishing the picture was Jackie. Costumed in stonewashed Gap jeans, Red Wing cowboy boots and a nondescript generic goose down ski vest. She was sipping on a shot glass of whiskey; five empty Budweiser beer bottles crowded the ashtray by her elbows. A Camel non-filter with a four-inch ash hung from her lips, defying gravitational pull. On seeing Durrutti she lifted her unshaven chin; her face sweetened in a scarecrow's grin and she patted the stool next to her. “Hello, hello ... it's the one and only Ricky Durrutti. Sit down, chicken.”

Durrutti hopped on the seat, not sure what he was getting into. He didn't foresee a productive conversation. Jackie was high as a kite. She elbowed him with inebriated overfriendliness, intimating they had been talking all night. “What'cha been doing?”

Durrutti saw no purpose in hiding his obsession. He watched the dice players quibble over money and said, “I've been looking for Jimmy. I heard he was in here. But I can see he ain't.”

The scowl on Jackie's visage was why prisons were built. The small-time dealer had murder in the first degree in her eyes. “Jimmy Ramirez,” she said, “is going to hell. He will not get a deferment. He has done me wrong. He has done Arlo wrong. He is a punk. He is the evidence of what everybody knows—these ain't halcyon days.” Jackie reached for the whiskey glass and missed it by three inches. She took stock of her condition, why her coordination had failed. “Shit,” she said self-critically. “I guess it's time for my vitamins.”

Digging deep into her shirt pocket, Jackie removed
a nickel bag of bathtub biker crank. How she handled the speed, you'd have thought it was a hand grenade. Thinking Durrutti coveted the bag, Jackie fended him off by reciting a dope fiend's time-honored dictum. “Sorry, man. There's only enough for me.”

She pried open the cellophane and dumped the contents on the bar top. The crank was a charming pile of ivory crumbs cut with Ajax cleaning powder. Jackie arranged the powder with a toothpick into two neat lines, each one four inches long. Her skill at it was obvious. She rolled a dollar bill into a tight cylinder, genuflected, then hoovered both lines up her nose.

The rush made her legs palsy like they'd been touched with a cattle prod. Her obsidian black eyes were diabolical, out of focus. She slapped herself in the face and tucked and retucked her shirt into her jeans. The cigarette in her mouth had burned down to near nothing; she spat the butt on the floor between her feet. She smoothed down her hair with one hand and wrinkled her nose against the smoke. She said to Durrutti, “Now let me ask you something.”

Even though it was getting light outside, the bar was dim.

“What's that?”

“What you gonna do when you find Jimmy? I'll tell you right now. You won't do shit. Because what can he do for you? Not a damn thing. That's a natural fact. The man is as hollow as an old tree.”

Durrutti didn't agree. “I'm looking for him anyway. If I don't get my hands on him soon, I'm dead meat.”

Jackie's eyes shiwed him like a scalpel, lingered and found nothing to their liking. Flecks of snow white methedrine burned on her nostrils. Her large-pored complexion was slick with dirt and sebum. An evening in the Sunrest had produced twin gullies that ran from her nose to her chin. She laughed at him. “I'm a-gonna whup Jimmy's ass when I see him again over that money he owes me. I did hear he was around. Heard he was on Twenty-fourth Street. Heard he got into a fight over there too. But you should forget this Jimmy shit.”

“How come?”

“Little vanilla boy like you ... and him and the cops? Can't you see what's coming? You need him like you need a hole in your head. Even if you did get a hold of him, it wouldn't matter. You got troubles with the police? You think a Mexican can help you with that? You're insane. Mexicans got their own problems. They don't need your crap too.”

He weighed Jackie's words and found they were heavy on his shoulders. Some people spent their lives looking for martyrs. More searched for someone they could love. He was pursuing Jimmy Ramirez across a landscape of corpses and addicts and drag queens.

“Give it up, Ricky.”

The ridicule in Jackie's grainy voice was unmistakable. Every person in the bar heard her and knocked off what they were doing to check out Durrutti. He was an intruder in their midst. He wasn't a serious felon. He wasn't a parole violator. He wasn't a drug dealer. He didn't have any tattoos. He was Jewish. The only sound was the dice rolling
on the floor in the back. The bartender leaned against a zinc sink with a baseball bat by his side, watching him.

Durrutti pried his hindquarters from the bar stool and meandered to the dutch doors to have a look outside. An egg yolk-yellow sun was climbing the sky and pushing the tenement dwellings along Mission Street into satin ochre shadiness. The windows of the Yip Wing Trading Company, Tak Fok Dim Sum Restaurant and the Acaxutla Restaurant were wet with dew. A rat as round as a soccer ball was getting into the garbage at the curb.

A drunk wearing a sleeping bag for a coat—he'd cut holes in it for his arms—was consecrating the new day by vomiting in the gutter at the corner by the check cashing store. The recoil nearly bowled him off his feet. Done with his puking, he saw Durrutti was taking an interest in what he was doing and he gave him a hearty middle finger. Durrutti smiled politely to indicate he was on the same wavelength.

M
idsummer moved into the Mission and baked the streets. Each day was hotter than a match head, in tune with the flow of current events: Maimonides had gained ten pounds in two days while slacking off heroin. Chamorro's funeral had gone down without a hitch—the dead narc was sleeping comfortably in a marble crypt.

Maimonides and Durrutti were in Chava's Restaurant on the evening after the cop's burial. The sky was ribbed with pink and tangerine puffs of cloud over Potrero Hill. Maimonides was in an experimental mood and he was noshing on a pupusa, the Mexican version of the piroshki. “You should try one,” he said. “It's delicious and they decrease your lifespan by five years.” He wiped his lips with a paper napkin and pointed a finger out the window to someone passing by the Pacific Gas and Electric company utility yard. “Who's that guy? Don't he seem familiar?”

A slim
vato
in Navy surplus brogans was diddy-bopping east toward Folsom Street. Baggy, sharply creased brown Ben Davis work pants were slung low on his hips. A navy blue Dickies workshirt was buttoned up to his collar. Black framed Ray Ban sunglasses covered most of his knife-thin face. He walked with a swagger, dipping his head every third step as if he were moving to some internal rhythm
or song. His luxuriant black hair had been swept up and brushed back into a pompadour with a fourteen inch peak. Three gold crucifix earrings hung from his left earlobe. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbows and revealed a variety of India ink jail tattoos.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Durrutti whispered in awe. He crushed the cigarette he'd been smoking into the tabletop, listening to it sizzle as the dying cherry burned a hole in the formica. The Mexican's appearance was a minor miracle. An event that would have reduced a lesser man to tears. Ricky couldn't believe his fortune. The tyranny of hope beat in his heart. “Either I'm seeing things or that's Jimmy Ramirez.”

Maimonides crammed the rest of a pupusa in his mouth. He was pleased with himself, secretly so. Eating was better than doing drugs. “What are you waiting for? You better go get his ass while you can.”

Durrutti was in nirvana. One image jounced through his mind as he skedaddled out of Chava's on the run: Kulak's congealed face. How the cop had smiled at him with his missing teeth. How his toupee moved when he talked. Jimmy had a fifty-yard head start on him and his tongue was hanging out of his mouth when he caught up with the Mexican at the red light on Folsom Street. He was intoxicated by the sight of him. “Jimmy! Goddamn, man! Wait!”

At the sound of his name Jimmy Ramirez did a precise about-face and reacted as if a strange assailant were going to shoot him. He ducked his chin, humping his shoulders. His mouth thinned in a set line and he stuck his hands in
his pockets. He turned his head as though his neck were lubricated with ball bearings. A single muscle twitched on his forehead. There was no expression on his yellowy face. He glanced at the stoplight, then at Durrutti. It sank in the Jew was an acquaintance. Not a friend or an enemy. Simply someone who wouldn't gun him down in cold blood. This didn't warrant a hello and Jimmy said nothing.

A welcoming party Durrutti didn't expect, but Jimmy Ramirez didn't seem to want to recognize him. The Mexican stared down the street toward the Rite Spot bar. He unbuttoned and rebuttoned his work shirt. He cleaned his fingernails with a pocket knife. It was all Durrutti could do to keep from crying while he tried to configure his face into an expressionless shroud. He said evenly, “I'm Ricky Durrutti. Remember me?”

Jimmy decided to keep his
simpatico
side to himself and merely shifted his weight from one foot to the other. His shoes were lace up oxfords with two inch soles. He tinkered with his fly. He stroked his goatee with his fingertips. An impish, not-so-compassionate grin scored his lush mouth. Then he said, “Uh huh, you that white guy.”

Durrutti was mystified by Jimmy's standoffish behavior. “So how're you doing?”

“I'm cool,” Jimmy sniffed.

“Listen, you got a second?” Durrutti was frantic and could hardly contain himself. He was so excited, he was on the verge of an asthma attack. “I wanna discuss something with you.”

Jimmy assessed Durrutti—friend or foe—and made a vague smile that signified a compromise. His smile was a
move toward detente. The foggy breeze riffled through his pompadour. “I got a minute. Just keep it short. What's up?”