Taste of Tenderloin (15 page)

He stopped suddenly and
spun around.

There were plenty of people
up and down Jones, but none of the three thugs from Dana 5-D’s. No
one else seemed to be paying any attention to him or the tin box he
carried. Hell, how could they? No one could even see him, and the
grey box was too dark to spot at a distance.

He ignored the lingering
feeling and continued on to the hotel.

In his room, Nathan
opened
the box and quickly thumbed the
banded money, spreading stacks of hundreds and fifties out on his
bed. Fifty thousand dollars.

His elation over the
successful robbery turned out to be short-lived. Sure, he had a lot
of money, but he had no one to share it with, no friends, no
family. He realized that his special ability isolated him, even
more so than his ten years of drunkenness. He was one of a kind. A
freak. The realization was depressing.

A scream from down the hall
cut into his thoughts.

Still transformed, Nathan
snatched up the small bat that he kept by his bed for protection,
hurried down the darkened corridor, and pushed open the unlocked
door to Sweet Jane’s room.

A partially dressed man and
the naked woman were struggling over a handful of money.

The small but stocky man
punched the aging hooker solidly in the stomach, sending her flying
backward onto her rumpled bed.

“
I tole you, bitch, that
your tired ass ain’t worth no fifty bucks for all night,” he said.
His words slurred as he shook the fist of clenched money in the
women’s reddened face. “I’m leaving. Here, here’s ten back.” He
tossed the bill on the bed at Sweet Jane’s feet, scooping up his
shirt from a chair but eyeing the weeping woman who curled up in a
ball. “I oughtta really kick your lazy ass—”

Nathan slammed the child’s
bat against the back of the drunken john’s head.

The man crumpled in a heap
on the floor, unconscious.

Nathan peeled open the fist
holding the money and tossed the bills next to the ten on the foot
of the bed. Then he hooked his arms under the small man’s arms,
locking his hands on the man’s chest, and dragged him out of the
room, pausing momentarily to glance at Sweet Jane. She was still
curled up crying quietly on her bed, unaware of what had happened.
He closed the door before dragging the john down the hall to the
stairwell.

After leaving the
unconscious man in a heap in the lobby near the barred front
desk—Ferdie would call the cops—Nathan returned to the third floor
and his room for a minute. Then he tiptoed back down the hallway.
He knelt quietly at Sweet Jane’s door and listened. No crying
sounds. He pushed the stacks of banded hundreds and fifties under
the door with a note that read:
Time to
leave the life;
teach little girls to play
the violin
.

Exhausted by the evening’s
excitement and exertions, Nathan returned to his room and managed
to easily drop off to sleep.

That Creepy
Feeling

The next evening, Nathan
walked
out of the Reo after dropping the
curtain, pausing a moment and rubbing his arms and chest. The night
was already foggy, the sidewalk and street damp. Sunday night; not
much of a crowd out yet in the cool mist. Trying unsuccessfully to
forget his nakedness, Nathan couldn’t suppress a shiver. His bare
footsteps made sticking sounds against the damp sidewalk as he
absently wandered in the general direction of O’Farrell Street. He
increased his speed, trying to warm up, then stopped suddenly,
overwhelmed again by the feeling of being watched.

He glanced back.

An elderly Asian lady
carrying a child hurried close behind him, but she didn’t even
glance his way as she passed by.

Nathan looked up, carefully
scanning windows above the street level. There was no sign of the
watcher. He knew it wasn’t his imagination. Someone was watching
him; someone nearby.
But who?

Pee Wee? One of the other
thugs?

He started walking slowly,
his senses keenly alert.

Uh-huh, there.

He heard it, faintly but
clearly: the sticking sound of footsteps following.

Nathan whirled around,
expecting to surprise his stalker.

But the sidewalk was empty
behind him for over half a block.

The faint sticking sounds
continued approaching, drawing his gaze down to the wet
sidewalk.

Footprints.

“
Jesus,” Nathan gasped
aloud, watching as two distinct sets of foot imprints appeared on
the damp sidewalk, walking directly toward him, only ten yards
away. Both figures were completely invisible.

Heart thudding against his
ribs, Nathan would have bolted if his legs hadn’t suddenly betrayed
him, turning to spaghetti. It was all he could do to remain
standing. Still, after a deep breath, he managed to shuffle back a
step, retreating from the advancing footprints.

“
Wait,” a voice whispered
hoarsely as the footsteps closed in. “It’s okay, Nate, we’re your
friends.”

Despite being rattled,
Nathan recognized the disembodied voice.

It was the St. Anthony’s
girl from the other night. LuLu.

Both sets of footprints
stopped less than two feet away.

Just barely visible in the
darkness, leaning up close, appeared two fuzzy dark
faces.

“
You’re not alone,” LuLu
explained, “we are just like you—”

“
W-what do you mean?”
Nathan stammered, barely keeping his wits about him.

“
Well, you’re not one of a
kind, Nathan,” LuLu said. “There are three of us with the same
special ability. You, Michael—the policeman, remember him?—and
me.”

“
That’s right,” agreed a
gruff male voice. “We are exactly like you.”

“
Uh-huh,” Nathan said, his
rapid pulse easing slightly. “
What
are we?” he asked bluntly. “Some kind of
freaks?”

Both of the fuzzy shapes
laughed and backed away, disappearing again from view.

“
We are the next step in
evolution, armed with a very special ability,” LuLu said. “We’ve
been waiting for you to exercise your latent skill, but you’ve been
suppressing its emergence with your lifestyle, the drinking. But
we’ve known for some time you were almost ready to join us. I
helped at Homeboy’s that night, giving you a jolt when I touched
you while visualizing the curtain to myself. We’ve been following
you closely ever since you left SF Gen, waiting for you to answer a
question we had about your nerve. You answered it last night. Man,
you definitely have guts, ripping off Dana 5-D and her stooges
right under their noses, without even a weapon.”

“
How did you recognize me
as one of you?” Nathan said, still shaken by what he was hearing.
Before either answered, he added, “How could you follow me if I
can’t be seen?”

“
We may not be able to see
each other except up very close, but we can
recognize
each other’s presence,” the
gruff voice replied. “Close your eyes, face our direction, and
relax.”

Nathan followed Michael’s
instructions. After squeezing his eyes shut, he felt an odd
sensation, a kind of warmth generating the distinct images of two
individual figures in his mind—a sixth sense? He
blinked.

Michael said, “You see, no
one else can sense our presence when the curtain is dropped, only
one of us three, and only at very close range—no more than fifteen
yards.”

“
I know how you must feel,
Nathan, a little overwhelmed by the uniqueness of all this,” LuLu
said.

“
The curtain, what about
it?” Nathan asked, beginning to calm down as their answers made
sense of what had been happening to him the past four
days.

LuLu chuckled again. “Well,
it’s just a mental triggering device to activate the physical skin
change and transformed state,” she said, her voice growing serious.
“A state Michael and I can maintain for about ninety minutes after
months of practice. But you, Nate, already you are able to drop the
curtain for four or more hours. With this much ability, you can’t
be wasting time robbing gamblers. No, the city is full of many more
dangerous predators, preying on the weak and poor.
Garbage
. We hope you will
lead us in a big clean-up, beginning here in the Tenderloin—an
undercover, low-key operation.”

“
Yeah, man,” Michael added
gruffly. “We start tonight.”

Nathan noticed something
shiny hovering in the nearby shadows, three black-enameled
nightsticks. Michael smacked them loudly into his invisible hand
and said, “We are going to start with three scumbag crack dealers
up at Homeboy’s. Remember them? Uh-huh, skull thumping time.
Here.”

As he clasped the weapon in
hand, Nathan felt a surge of power race through his veins, as if
the baton were really the magic sword Excalibur. The sense of
empowerment was accompanied by a strong feeling, almost like a
booze call, a craving; but for what?

Revenge
, he thought, grinning wryly to himself. He closely followed
his companions’ wet footsteps up the street. No, it was more than
simple payback for the beating he’d received, more than petty
vindication for all the indignities suffered for ten years. LuLu
was right: it was time to begin a vigilante cleanup, time to
permanently remove the garbage from the Tenderloin.

“
Yes, indeed,” Nathan McKee
said aloud with fierce enthusiasm. His footsteps took the lead,
guiding his invisible cohorts toward Homeboy’s
and the beginning of The Cleansing.

Bruised Soul

You have only one friend
in the ring, boyo: a clinch
!

—
Danny Boy Doyle

Micky D saw a
Visitor
his first night back in the
Tenderloin, but at the time he didn’t recognize her as one of
them.

He’d finally made it to the
address on Jones Street just off O’Farrell around ten o’clock at
night on Monday—the time of heavy buying and selling in the ‘loin.
He paused halfway up the steps of the six-story building, turned
and listened to the din of traffic for a moment, then looked back
down on some of the street people roaming Jones like stray dogs:
skimpily-dressed hookers, furtive dealers, dead-eyed junkies,
shuffling winos, fast-talking hustlers, and the smelly homeless.
The forgotten and the never known.
The
faces change
, he thought, smiling
wryly,
but no one ever
escapes
. But what about him? He shrugged
his shoulders, sucked in a deep breath, and lingered for another
moment, letting the early summer fog creeping in from San Francisco
Bay whirl around him, hoping the familiar sights and sounds and
smells and mist would help dampen the jittery edge he’d developed
on the long Greyhound bus ride. He felt wound pretty tight, like in
the early days of anxiously waiting for his trainer, Danny Boy, to
tape his hands before a four-rounder. His vision was tunneling
slightly, but he hadn’t seen or heard anything really weird. Still,
he could almost hear Dr. Gee’s warning:
Michael, remember to take your meds religiously at breakfast,
lunch, and dinner
.

Of course it was long past
the five o’clock dinner hour up at Napa State Hospital, and he
hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Even though he’d been released from
the hospital before noon, there’d been no Greyhound service out of
Napa. He’d waited and bummed a ride with one of the psych techs
from his ward who got off at four o’clock and lived in Vallejo.
He’d caught a bus out of there at six-thirty, making long stops in
Richmond and Berkeley before finally heading west on the last leg
across the Bay Bridge and into the city.

He turned and climbed the
remaining front steps, and then rang the manager’s bell—apartment
two, main floor. Cecil Robinson had been eating, but he answered
the door quickly. He wiped his mouth, introduced himself, and gave
Micky D his key along with all the “dos and don’ts” before
directing him up the stairwell.

“’
Member, mon, no smokin’
inna buildin’,” the manager repeated in his lilting Caribbean
English. “Go up on de roof if ya gonna blow one, ya hear
me?”

He nodded and slipped past
the heavyset black man, through the strong smell of curry that
clung to the walls of the dingy hallway.

“
That’s all ya
stuff?”

Micky D looked back over
his shoulder and said, “Yeah, that’s it.” He held up his old
training bag, no larger than the normal airline carry-on. He hadn’t
accumulated much in his six-month stay at the state
hospital.

He climbed the narrow
staircase to the sixth floor, checking the apartment numbers on the
doors to the left as he walked down the hallway. His place, number
sixty-six, must be the last one near the roof stairs.

Just after he had inserted
his key and fiddled with the sticky lock, a woman came along the
hall leading a young man. She paused in front of the door across
from Micky D, number sixty-five, and smiled. “You must be my new
neighbor,” she said, her voice strangely accented and
smoky.