Taste of Tenderloin (19 page)

“
Jus’ preachin’ the Word,
Skip,” he said with effort, chopping off the sentence as if he were
short of breath, the hurt obvious in his dark eyes. “Bad times is
comin’, jus’ ‘round the corner for all the sinners here in the
‘loin.” He pressed on in spite of the pain. “The Man be comin’
back. I see it clearer and clearer—”

I held up my hand as he
warmed up, having heard his apocalyptic rant a number of times,
including two weeks before, after a pair of teenage crack dealers
had beaten the shit out of him with a piece of garden hose and a
toy bat down on Taylor Street. He’d apparently broken up a sale
with his spiel. “Okay, save your breath, and take it easy, Gent,
the ambulance will be here any minute now.” I patted his shoulder,
lit up a Winston, and gave it to him, knowing the cigarette would
keep him quiet for a moment or two, hoping the EMTs would hurry.
Benny’s handkerchief was sopping wet with blood, but Gent was not
really in shock or anything—his eyes were clear, he was alert and
coherent despite the deep cut. A tough old geezer, I thought,
shaking my head with grudging admiration.

The EMTs showed up about a
minute later, and I nodded goodbye as they loaded Gent into the
ambulance. It wouldn’t have done much good to press and get a
statement from him because he wouldn’t implicate Big Leroy.
Preacher or no preacher, Gent Brown wasn’t into suicide. Benny and
I would just have to catch the giant on the street sometime and try
to shake him up, which wasn’t too likely; the mean-ass pimp was
tougher than a piece of stale beef jerky .

Anyhow, the iceworm was
resting, maybe even asleep. I felt pretty relaxed myself now that
the 5150 was resolved. I absently watched the ambulance take off
and the crowd disperse, thinking back on The Prophet’s
transformation.

I had first met Gent Brown
when I’d responded to a shoplif
ting call up
on O’Farrell near Van Ness about five years before. He was a common
wethead back then, a Tenderloin stumblebum. He’d tried snagging a
liter of red from the Korean’s liquor store. Big
mistake. Mr. Pak had thrown down on Gent with a
.44 Magnum cannon that he kept within reach under the checkout
counter, stopping the old bum from leaving the store with the
shoplifted bottle and keeping him frozen in place, staring at the
open end of that handgun, as Mr. Pak called 911.

I didn’t think too much
about it at the time, just took Gent Brown outside for a
get-yourself-cleaned-up lecture before I dropped him over at St.
Anthony’s for something to eat—an overcrowded jail wouldn’t have
helped him at all.

But the same kind of
no-account life went on for Gent for the next four years, the old
boy stumbling around the ‘loin, panhandling, shoplifting, doing
whatever it took to keep himself full of antifreeze. Feeling sorry
for him, I slipped him an occasional buck or two at the end of the
month when his social security was long gone. Then something odd
happened to him one night, around midnight in an alley where he had
his cardboard tent set up. The next day, he told me he’d had a
vision, that he’d got “The Call” from a skinny-ass transvestite
named Angel who had died a month previously of some infection
complicated by her AIDS. Which I guess makes you kind of wonder
about the Big Guy’s recruitment staff.

Anyhow, whatever really
happened, Gent cleaned up his act overnight. Got a room in the Reo
residential hotel on Hyde, lived exclusively off his SSI, and
quickly became one of the good guys around the ‘loin. He
volunteered at St. Anthony’s handing out clean needles and condoms
to junkies, helped homeless folks hook up with needed social
services, and preached on the street. Soon after that, he became
known around the ‘loin as The Prophet.

But about six months ago
his preaching turned to hardcore fundamental sermons, and lately
they were laced with hard-edged fire and brimstone rants about the
evils of the city, going off about all the sinners and the coming
of the apocalypse. He turned from helping poor people to getting in
their faces over their weaknesses and vices, becoming a major pain
in the ass to a lot of folks down in the ‘loin. Almost a low grade
5150, usually drawing an audience of little more than parking
meters; folks scattered when they saw him coming.

This was all too much for
me to worry about, because I had a six-pack of troubles of my
own.

On the way to my
apartment on O’Farrell, I picked up some taco
chips, bean dip, a quart of vodka, and a twelve-pack of Bud:
dinner. The bean dip was my concession to health food.

Inside the shabby digs, I
flicked on the TV—Steve McQueen movie, one of my favorites, the
Devil’s Island one—and settled into my easy chair, popping a can of
beer, relieved that the call hadn’t turned shitty, not like that
fiasco at the Bluenote four years ago last month.

Michael James, my long-time
partner back then and a good man, had taken a .22 hollow point in
the head after we’d rolled on the 5150 and walked into the open
door of the seedy bar over on Jones. A homeboy, dusted-up good with
PCP, had his piece out and capped Mike, who had strolled in a
half-step ahead of me. At the sound of the gunshot, I had hit the
deck and dug in, my equipment belt twisted around and my holstered
piece trapped underneath me. I’d stared into Mike’s frozen
expression, shaking like a dog shitting peach pits. The bartender
had finally slipped out from behind the bar and subdued the perp
with a baseball bat to the back of his head.

For months after that night
I’d had nightmares, seeing Mike’s surprised face with that innocent
tiny blue-ringed hole in his forehead oozing just a drop or two of
blood, then waking up in a clammy sweat. After that, I got up close
and personal with some serious boozing. I called in sick often or
showed up for work hung over, and of course I drank on the job.
Before that I had always been a decent blue, cited twice, a
half-assed hero on one occasion when I had saved a toddler in a
hostage situation. But that all changed when Mike bought it. After
that night every 5150 froze my shit.

Then, a little over two
years ago, the ballbuster.

We’d responded to a 5150 at
a neighborhood market down on Hyde. My heart had been hammering, my
pulse racing, my asshole puckered up, and my judgment messed up big
time.

A Latino wearing a blue
bandanna around his forehead bolted out the front door of the
market just as we pulled up in front. My partner jumped out of the
patrol car, weapon drawn, and shouted, “Halt! Halt! Halt!” He fired
off a warning round into the air, following the book,
SOP.

The guy pulled up to a stop
after that, not quite a half a block away. He turned to face us,
wearing that blue headband and a grey Pendleton shirt outside his
baggy tan pants.

It turned surreal at that
moment, everything moving in super slow motion, like I was detached
from it all, watching an NFL replay on Sunday. My partner ordered
the guy to raise his hands. Instead of obeying, he smiled
goofy-like and reached inside his Pendleton near his belt. His hand
came up and out, holding something dark—

And then he flew backward,
looking startled as a big wet crimson stain spread across the front
of his grey Pendleton. His knees gave way as the strength drained
from his legs, and he collapsed.

I looked down in disbelief
at the gun clutched in my sweaty
hand. God
Almighty!

In shock, I shuffled closer
to the crumpled figure.

My partner bent over and
lifted a black comb from the guy’s hand.

Turned out the dead Latino
was a twelve-year-old kid from the neighborhood. After sniffing
glue with a pair of friends, he had entered the grocery and scared
the owner with his erratic behavior. The frightened storekeeper had
called 911. As we’d arrived, the boy had bolted out of the store
right into us, confused, only reaching for his stupid-ass comb,
apparently a nervous habit. All I had seen was a .38
Special.

Of course there was an IAD
investigation and hearing, but I was cleared after two months. I
took an additional two months off after that, not getting much from
the visits with the head doc
tors. Just sat
around home, often fighting with Diane, mostly
ge
tting well acquainted with various brands
of cheap vodka and shaking hands with a steady supply of Bud tall
boys. I checked out all the HBO and Showtime movies, seeing some of
them two, three times in one day, remembering nothing. Eventually
economics forced me back to work. I tried several times to transfer
out of the Tenderloin. No luck. They stuck me with a series of
rookie partners like Benny, who would move on soon; nobody wanted
to partner up steady with me.

I got up from the chair,
stumbled across the room, and flipped off the TV—McQueen was
floating away to freedom on a raft. I really liked that final
image. Half a dozen empty beer cans were sitting on the TV tray I
used as an end table next to my Eazy Boy recliner. The chair had
been the only piece of furniture I’d brought along when I left
Diane and our Sunset place a couple months ago.

She’d come home last April
with the bad results from Doctor Serra at Kaiser. They’d said colon
cancer, inoperable, but of course I knew better. She had the
iceworm, same as me; I must have infected her sometime before that
doctor’s visit.

So I left Diane, not
wanting to watch her die. Or maybe just to get away from her
nagging about my drinking. Who knows? My thinking was not too clear
at that point. In any event, I’d moved into this studio dump on
O’Farrell on the edge of the ‘loin. Oddly, the medical experts at
Kaiser could find nothing wrong with me even after several GI
probes and X-rays with that barium crap. The fucking iceworm only
burrowed deeper, able to hide from the doctors and the tests.
Hibernated sometimes. For sure, the damn thing wasn’t killing me
fast like it was with Diane.

I sighed and shuffled into
the tiny bathroom to take a piss, glancing at my mug in the mirror
over the toilet. It said fifty-two on my California driver’s
license, but my reflection was a stranger, some beat-up old guy, at
least sixty-five. “Man, hang on,” I instructed the reflection. “Two
more weeks, dude.”

At that moment, the front
door burst open, startling me.

A familiar voice said,
“Hey, Skippy, you home?”

Nicki Machado, my
roommate.

“
Yeah, babe, in here taking
a leak.”

She peeked around the
corner, trying to raise her eyebrows like Groucho Marx and leer
lustfully at my johnson. She was a little worse for wear; her
mascara was smudged, her lipstick not quite centered on her usually
attractive full lips, and only one cheek had been rouged, making
her look clownlike, silly not sexy.

She frowned
uncharacteristically. “Couldn’t find Smokey anywhere again today,”
she said, referring to her kitten that had disappeared two nights
ago. Of course I knew what had happened to the cat. In a drunken
frenzy I’d tossed it down the old elevator shaft at the end of our
hall, through the doors permanently stuck apart eighteen inches or
so. The kitten hadn’t made a peep, just a sickening, echoing
wet
splat
. So I’d
restacked the two big cardboard boxes in front of the open
shaft—management’s idea of hi-tech security. The boxes may have
been too heavy for a toddler to move, but were easily scooted clear
by the three elementary school age Asian kids who sometimes played
out in the hallway. So far the owners hadn’t been cited for safety
violations, or if so, management had ignored the
citations.

Nicki had probably done
most of her evening’s searching down at The Greek’s, the bar around
the corner.

My roomie was in her late
forties, a cop on disability for the last year or so—shot up in a
botched liquor store robbery over in the Haight. Still had a trim,
athletic body, except for her two extra belly buttons—the ugly red
9mm scars near her navel. She had dark, sexy good looks when she
was sober and dressed nice, which wasn’t too often
anymore.

She spotted the groceries
and vodka on the counter. “Hey, Skippy, fix you a drink?” she asked
cheerily, sampling the taco chips and bean dip.

I nodded.

We each had a couple of
generous hits from the bottle, and then Nicki got friendly. Kissing
me. Exploring the inside of my mouth with her tongue. Placing her
hands under my T-shirt, caressing my chest and stomach, tentatively
edging her hand inside my shorts. She broke off and whispered
huskily, “You wanna do the short yo-yo tonight, Skippy?”

I nuzzled her neck.
Yeah, not a bad idea,
I
thought. It had been quite a while since a one-on-one.

A few minutes later, the
radio station K-FOG played backup to our rassling match. The two of
us lay naked and sweaty on the bed, Nicki on top like she
preferred, pinning my shoulders down with her hands. She moved her
hips slowly in time to the Eagles’ long instrumental introduction
to “Hotel California,” her eyes closed, her expression dreamy. As
the song ended, Nicki bucked, shuddered, moaned, blinked, and
smiled; then she kissed me sloppily on the lips.

“
Skippy, you’re a stud,”
she rasped. “You lay right there and I’ll get you a
drink.”