Taste of Tenderloin (10 page)

With a slight shudder,
thoughts of the two thugs again flooded his thoughts. The Ugly Man
shuffled along quickly down his alley, past his cardboard tent to
the very end. There, he squeezed in to hide behind the dumpster and
collect himself.

He expected to hear
footsteps any minute. He knew he should be paralyzed, but after
searching his feelings and thoughts, he detected little sense of
fear in himself. No, he wasn’t scared at all. His fear had been
replaced with…something else. In fact, he had only positive
thoughts and feelings, partly because of the series of events of
the past ten minutes or so, concluding with his discovery of the
extraordinary star-filled night. But he was also acutely aware of
the itchy, dry skin cracking along his arms and legs as he slumped
down behind the dumpster. Another weird feeling, too, centered on
his back—the just-noticeable sensation of something crawling.
Giddy, he knew the remarkable change, whatever it signaled, was
nearing completion. And he also knew that the transformation wasn’t
just physical; no indeed, he was dramatically changing inside, too,
growing stronger. A really positive feeling about
himself.

At that moment, The Ugly
Man drifted; for a second or two he could almost hear his friend’s
mystical advice from long ago:
Follow the
Way.

Blinking, he sucked in a
deep breath and looked about his cramped enclosure, assessing his
immediate situation. He realized that if Big Foot and Sleepyboy
tracked him back there, he would be trapped in a dead-end alley.
But, then again, so would they. The thought almost made him giggle,
but he restrained himself, cocked his head, and listened intently,
lurking like a shadow in the night.

Another minute or so
dragged by.

Overhead, the mist had
thickened, again blotting out the stars.

Then came the sound of
footsteps in the alleyway, cautiously approaching.

Closer.

The Ugly Man completely
shed the last of his ugliness.

Transformed, he gazed back
down on the alley as Big Foot and Sleepyboy paused at the cardboard
tent and peeked in.

The big man angrily kicked
over the dwelling place, scattering things. “Ugly dude done gone!”
he said, his mean features scrunched into a dark scowl. Sleepyboy
tapped the big man’s shoulder and pointed to the nearby dumpster,
his face deadpan.

Big Foot grinned and
shuffled forward. He cautiously looked behind the dumpster and
swore under his breath. “Oh,
shit
! Looky here, Sleeps.”

The thinly built sidekick
peered around the wide leader.

In back of the dumpster,
there was only a pile of smelly clothes and a threadbare hooded
sweatshirt resting atop the wrinkled shirts and pants.

With a puzzled expression,
Big Foot leaned over and flicked through the pile of clothes,
finally exposing what looked like a pile of discarded, cracked,
marked skin, like something a huge diamondback rattler might have
shed.

“
What the
fuck—?”

He found a stick and used
it to lift up some of his discovery to show his cohort.

Revealing little emotion,
Sleepyboy nodded. “The ugly ole fool done shed all his ruined skin,
man. That’s it right there.”

Amazed, Big Foot discarded
the shed skin on the pile of clothes. He shook his head, his face
even more puzzled. “Fuck him, Sleeps. Let’s find the skinny-ass
deadbeat, an’ slice his apple.” He slipped something from his
pocket, flicking it back and forth in the air
threateningly.

The dim light glinted off
the blade of the straight razor.

Sleepyboy nodded his head
and began to turn away. “’Kay. Let’s do him.”

Overhead, the Ugly Man
thought,
No
,
they aren’t doing
anyone
. He fanned his wings.

The two drug dealers froze
in place, noticing the air whirling down and stirring the alley
debris into a hurricane about them. Startled, they looked up at the
rooftop of the two-story building at the end of the alley. He was
poised on the lip of the overhang, his fearsome red gaze glaring
down at them, paralyzing both in place.

Before either hoodlum could
even twitch a muscle to run, he sprang off the building with an
ear-shattering roar, swooped down, and engulfed both men in a
blistering inferno that lit up the cool night.

Balance

At 6:55 a.m., when
Declan
Mulcahy first stepped out onto
O’Farrell Street from his apartment building, San Francisco’s
Tenderloin district appeared sunny and warm but
uncharacteristically deserted—a brief lull between changing shifts.
Most of the dealers, junkies, and hookers had called it a night;
the homeless were still asleep in their cardboard tents, and the
neighborhood street cops were all up at Happy Donuts doing police
work.

Declan walked a block up
the street from his apartment and met only an old Asian lady coming
from the opposite direction. She pulled a little red wagon stacked
with two baskets of dirty clothes, obviously headed for the nearby
You Do It laundromat. He crossed the street and saw one other
person, a black dude waiting for the Korean’s grocery store to
open. The guy was about Declan’s age, late twenties to early
thirties, sporting dreadlocks and frayed camouflage utilities—no
name tag or unit designation, only the faded Army patch remained
intact over his heart. Declan had seen him around in the past month
or so, often leaving the Korean’s with a small brown sack.
Sometimes he wondered if the guy had been in Desert Storm, too. But
he never asked, only nodded.

Declan was wound pretty
tight that morning. He’d been up most of the night, his mouth
almost too dry to ask anything, his underarms and crotch gritty and
damp with clammy sweat. He sniffed, reminded that sweat smelled
different, depending on the type. Work sweat had kind of a neutral
odor, mildly offensive at worst; sex sweat lingered on you, smelled
good, especially when mixed with traces of perfume; booze or dope
sweat the morning after had a stale, nauseating smell; but the
absolute worst smell of all was nervous fear sweat—sharp, sour, and
biting. At that moment the sharp stink was flaring his nostrils,
making them itch.

He rubbed his nose, sucked
in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and centered for a moment to
settle his nerves. Then, at 7:00 sharp, Declan followed the guy in
Army cams into the store.

Mr. Pak himself had opened
the front door and stepped back behind the service counter. He
bowed politely to his two early morning customers in his
self-deprecating way, an old-world mannerism that neither of his
teenaged children practiced. Both had grown up on the mean streets
of the ‘loin, attending local public schools. Declan nodded back,
wandered over to the video machine, and waited impatiently for the
black dude to pick out his Old English forty-ouncer from the drink
box, pay, and get the fuck out of the grocery. Then it would be
only Mr. Pak, alone in the store, and his two kids either in back
where goods were stored or in the family flat upstairs getting
ready for high school.

Declan slipped to the back
of the store and took a quick peek through the round window in the
swinging door leading to the storage area. The boy was back there,
occupied with cutting open cases of various canned items. Declan
tilted his head, listened intently, and could just make out the
girl moving around upstairs. The entire family was on the premises
and accounted for at this early hour, just as planned. Yes,
indeed.

After the dude in the Army
cams carefully counted his change twice and finally left the store
with his brown bag, Declan stepped up to the counter.

The middle-aged Korean
grocer looked at him curiously. “You no find something?”

Declan shook his head,
closed his eyes, and concentrated.
Mr.
Pak, you know the reason I am here, right?
he thought. Then he blinked, steeled himself, reached under
his dark green USF sweatshirt, and slipped the recently purchased
Colt Python .357 out of the front of his Levi’s.

At first Mr. Pak nodded and
smiled, as if answering Declan’s silent question; then the smile
froze on his face and his eyes widened when he spotted the gun.
Both hands flew up in a defensive gesture as he said in a shaky
voice, “You no stealy-boy. Why you do this?”

Declan didn’t answer as
time, movement, and his thinking seemed to alter dramatically into
super-slow motion. On a kind of pre-programmed autopilot, he gently
squeezed the handgun’s trigger.

The gunshot made a sharp,
high-pitched whine, characteristic of a .357, shattering the
stillness in the store. The sound made Declan’s eardrums vibrate
painfully. He hadn’t anticipated this trait of the gun and had
neglected to use cotton earplugs. He ground his teeth against the
pain.

The grocer tumbled backward
into the wall behind the checkout counter, a crimson flower slowly
appearing over his right eye as he finally slid inelegantly to the
floor.

“
Papa…Papa!” a voice
screamed to Declan’s far left. The teenage daughter stood frozen on
the bottom step of the staircase leading to the family flat. She
held her hands up to either side of her round face as if holding
her head on her shoulders. A shocked, disbelieving expression
glazed her dark eyes.

Swinging his gun hand
slowly around in her direction, Declan squeezed the .357’s trigger
again; the round hit the young woman in the chest.

Unlike her father, she fell
forward, face down, after her right leg buckled and slipped off the
last step. Declan watched as a thick pool of blood spread out from
her upper body.

For a brief moment, he
closed his eyes, feeling time and place slipping away from his
mental grasp, like so many other times in the past few years. He
felt himself pulled back to the Storm, the night his Force Recon
unit was surprised, almost wiped out under a thundering barrage of
friendly rocket fire.

“
No,” Declan whispered
hoarsely, blinking and resisting the pull of the past. He did not
need to relive the pyrotechnic horror show again.

Turning his back on the
fallen father and daughter, Declan glimpsed a frightened face in
the round window of the door at the rear of the store. Still moving
in slow motion, he took five giant steps down the nearest aisle and
pushed the storage room door open with his free hand, pointing
inside with the Colt.

The boy tried to escape,
bounding slowly up and down, heading for a rear exit into the alley
behind the store. Declan’s third shot hit him in the lower back,
sprawling the teenager forward onto all fours, a red stain
spreading across the back of his white T-shirt. Legs useless, the
boy struggled for a moment or two toward the alley exit, pulling
himself along the floor with his arms in an awkward swimming
motion. Making little progress, he looked back over his shoulder,
his face a grimace of pain, and said something. It appeared like
lip-synching, because by then Declan was completely deafened by the
three high-pitched blasts. He moved alongside the boy, leaned down,
and gently pressed the weapon to the back of the young boy’s head.
He fired a fourth time, ending the teenager’s agony.

The operation was over,
mission completed. Probably less than two minutes. Declan slipped
the weapon back into the front of his Levi’s.

Weak-kneed and shaking
slightly, he managed to make it to a sink in the corner of the
storeroom. He expected to throw up, like after the slaughter of his
unit during the Storm, but he was only slightly nauseated. He used
his finger and gagged forcefully twice, managing only to make his
eyes water heavily. He should feel some remorse for the Pak family,
who had always been polite and helpful. Kind, even.
No,
he chastised
himself,
you can’t think like that.
They had all three been volunteers, helping
counteract the Law of Catastrophic Isostasy.

Sometime shortly after the
last shot, Declan’s thinking and perception had sped back up to
real time. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, took a deep
breath, and washed his face with cool water. As he straightened up
from the sink, the ringing in his ears began to subside.

Declan pushed the swinging
door back into the store, about the same time a neighborhood bag
lady shuffled in the front door and looked around, frowning
angrily. “Say, boy, where’s that ole Gung Ho or one of ‘em
young’ns? I needs a coffee, bad.”

Declan shrugged, turning
his face down and away as he pushed by the impatient old woman on
the way to the street, mumbling, “Dunno.”

He crossed O’Farrell,
looked anxiously back over his shoulder once, and realized no one
was following. He hurried down the block back to his building, the
street still relatively empty of pedestrians and traffic.
Everything had gone real smooth, according to plan. Yes,
indeed.

Inside his studio
apartment, Declan
glanced around
cautiously. The tiny room, sparsely furnished, appeared
undisturbed. He stepped over to the chipped desk his social worker
had given him and re-aligned the three pencils parallel with the
edge of his writing pad. Yes, everything was neat and simple, just
like his room had been at the VA hospital in Martinez. Except there
he’d had to go into the dayroom to see TV. Here in his apartment,
Declan sat down on his one folding chair and stared at the portable
black and white set with its rabbit ears. But he didn’t turn on the
TV, just stared intently at the blank grey screen and waited
patiently, a skill he’d developed over the years during his stays
at Martinez.