Taste of Tenderloin (6 page)

The man frisked him quickly
and thoroughly, even brushing his groin.

“
Turn ‘round.”

Richie turned about,
noticing a flashlight in the black man’s hand.

“’
Kay, push up both
sleeves, homes…wanna see some history.”

Richie pushed up the
sleeves of his windbreaker, exposing his bare arms to the strong
flashlight beam.

The man reached out and
roughly fingered Richie’s track marks, halting at the fresh bruise
on his right inner elbow. “Alright, this way.” He gestured with the
flashlight for Richie to follow him to the minivan. He unlocked the
side door but warned, “Be cool, y’all hear?” before he opened the
door.

“
Thank you, Sandman,” a dry
voice whispered from inside the vehicle.

Something about the sound
made the short hairs prickle on Richie’s neck as he slipped through
the door to find the middle seats removed. He squatted on the floor
as the door slid shut, immediately clasping his arms around
himself. The temperature in the back of the minivan had to be
thirty or forty degrees lower than outside.
No air conditioning is this good,
Richie thought, shivering.

In the dim light from one
overhead bulb, Richie stared at a tiny man seated across from him
on the rear seat, his face partially shadowed. He could see that
the man wore a wispy Fu Manchu mustache, but face didn’t really
appear young or old—just Asian. The little man was dressed in
black: a square satin-lined hat and matching high-necked robe. His
hands were crossed in front of him, disappearing into the long,
wide sleeves of the gown. On the left breast of the robe was
embroidered a white snow dragon, its wings folded but talons
extended, its fanged mouth open and its gaze fierce—a striking
adornment against the all-black background.

“
You name?” the man asked.
The whispery, abbreviated English had a quality of implied threat,
reminding Richie of the burring of a rattlesnake. He shivered
again, trying to rub some warmth into his arms.

“
Richie O’Brien,” he
whispered back, thinking,
Jesus, man, turn
up the heat.

The man in black nodded.
“You call me Mis-ter Doom.”

Richie wondered if the name
was Chinese or English.

The interrogation
continued. “You customer of…?”

“
The Cajun in the
Tenderloin.”

Still no expression on his
face, the little man nodded.

“
You do business now with
me.” It was more of a statement than a question.

Richie nodded.

“
You habit…how much a
day?”

“
Quarter wakeup, quarter
nighttime,” Richie answered, wiping his nose.

“
Money?”

Richie dug out his
twenty-five dollars.

The man nodded, withdrew
his hands from the sleeves of his black robe, and reached for the
bills. He took the money in his right hand, twisted, and slipped it
into a concealed cubbyhole in the minivan’s upholstery. In his
other hand, he held two little cellophane bags containing small
amounts of white powder. “This best grade China White, thirty
dollar quarter gram. But, new customer special. Two quarter gram
for you, Mis-ter ah-Brien, twenty-five dollar.” He ran both title
and name together, inflecting the last syllable.

Richie reached for the
baggies.

Mr. Doom snatched both
away.

“
So sorry, just
one
for now,” he said,
leaning forward and handing Richie one baggie. “I know what happen
if you take both. All gone tonight. Come back here tomorrow
morning. I not here, but Sandman, he give you other one.” The
second baggie was no longer in his hand, and Richie would have
sworn it had just disappeared into the frigid air. The man leaned
forward, extending his empty, long-fingered, delicate hand for a
formal shake.

Richie leaned forward, too,
taking the man’s hand in his, unable to restrain another shiver.
Mr. Doom’s hand was colder than if it had been sculpted from a cake
of ice.

But it was the little man’s
eyes that Richie found truly disturbing: no iris, almost all pupil.
And they weren’t round. No, they appeared to be arched and squared
off at the bottom, a shape vaguely familiar. As the little man sat
back, his face again in shadow, Richie shrugged off the unnerving
feeling, telling himself the weird eye shape was only a trick of
the dim light.

“
Goodbye, Mis-ter
ah-Brien.
I
see
you tomorrow night.”

He was back on the street,
standing by the ex-fighter, Sandman.

“
See you, tomorrow
morning,” Richie said, hurrying away down Powell.

“’
Kay, homes,” Sandman
replied in his soft voice.

At the almost-empty
flat
he shared with Lisha in the Haight,
Richie dug out his rig from under the mattress on the floor and
cooked up the China White with trembling fingers. He didn’t even
turn on a lamp, instead working by the light glaring through the
bedroom window from a streetlight on Broderick. He almost forgot
about the recent nightmares he’d had while nodding—

“
Whoa,” he said to himself,
remembering at the last moment. The bad dreams had seemed more
like…an alternate reality. It was getting harder to wake up, to
come back out of them. Before fixing, he got Lisha’s cooking timer
and set it for fifteen minutes. He hoped it would help bring him
off the dope nod, draw him back to the bedroom
from…wherever.

Oh, yeah!

Mr. Doom’s shit was
righteous, grabbing his stomach quickly but gently then sending
wave after wave of stone-ass calm tingling through his body and
finally smoothing out the kinks in his arms and legs. His eyelids
grew heavy and sagged. He was drifting away to a rhythmic
beat.

Tick, tick,
tick.

It is night. Clouds
blot
out the moon and stars. But more than
just dark, the city colors have disappeared, replaced by charcoals,
indigos, and blacks—lots of blacks. There is a peculiar lack of
night sound; no sirens, no cars, no shouting, no laughing. Nothing.
Completely still. It is more than the sense of experiencing a
quiet, dark night; the complete black silence is unsettling. You
find yourself standing, squinting, and peering down the mouth of an
alley, the nearby streetlight out. It is like staring into the
abyss. You shiver, even though it isn’t an especially cold night.
No, but you have a compelling need to search this alley, this
black, forbidding spot; it is this compulsion to step into the
unknown that makes you shiver.

Why?

You don’t remember. You
have no explanation for this need, no clue of what may lie
ahead.

You take several tentative
steps into the blackness, your right hand lightly touching the
brick wall on the right side as a guide. You stop, sucking in
several deep breaths, trying to calm your racing pulse. After a
moment or two, your eyes adjust to the blackness, and you are able
to make out things on your side of the alley for a few feet ahead.
You move forward cautiously, keeping your hand in contact with the
wall, which feels grimy, filthy. After a few more steps you come to
the first of the garbage cans lining this side of the alley.
Careful not to touch or rattle the cans, you slip around the
obstacles. A few more steps and you become acutely aware of a
smell, a clinging, sweet smell of decay—the familiar smell of
something dead. It hangs in the air, growing stronger as you move
deeper into the darkness. By now, you can just see across the alley
to the other brick wall. Along that side there are a few cans, but
mostly stacks of cardboard boxes.

In the dark ahead, just out
of sight, you hear something move.

Not a footstep, nothing
human like that. No, it’s more like something brushing lightly
against a cardboard box, a furtive sound, animal-like. You pause,
cock your head, and listen carefully, straining to hear the sound
again, searching for another movement from whatever lurks
ahead.

Nothing.

Except for the cloying odor
of death.

You shiver again but plod
ahead, forcing yourself to take each careful step, compelled by
some deep inner need. You move out away from the right wall,
cautiously treading the center of the narrow alley.

The sound comes again, and
it raises the short hairs on your neck.

You have no idea what type
of creature would make such a sound, but you have the sense it is
something very dangerous. Overwhelming panic saps the strength from
your legs and loosens your bowels.

You are
terrified.

Straining, you try to
penetrate the darkness ahead, to locate the source. It is too
dark.

Then, as if in response to
your need, the clouds part slightly and the moon illuminates the
remaining length of alley, its angle shadowing only the last three
feet or so.

It is a dead end, and you
strain to penetrate the darkness at the very back.

Nothing. There is nothing
there.

The alley is
empty.

A paper bag, pushed free by
a sporadic breeze, separates from a pile of cardboard in the
shadows and tumbles along past you, making the strange sound. You
breathe a sigh of relief.

But then you realize that
you are alone at the dead end…trapped if something enters the alley
now.

The gap in the clouds
closes, shrouding the moon. A wave of panic overwhelms you in the
sudden darkness.

Gasping for breath, you
struggle to regain control of your senses, calm your thumping
heart. Your pulse rate slowly drops down. Then, at the moment you
seem back in control of yourself, you feel that creepy intuitive
sense of being spied upon.

Someone is watching
you.

You must get out. You turn
and stumble back toward the dim light at the mouth of the alley,
looking about frantically for a window, a doorway, trying to locate
the person watching. There is nothing. The mouth of the alley seems
so far away, so far. You try to run; your legs are still rubbery
but finally respond to your will. In the back of your mind you are
pleading silently: where is it, that sound that will draw me
back?

Run, run, run,
faster.

You stop, spotting the
silhouette in the mouth of the alley. A man, a huge man, just
standing and watching.

Then: running! The faint
sound punches through the darkness.

And you are being pulled
back, back, back.

Rinnnng!

Lisha’s timer was ringing,
a jarring, grating sound, but so welcome and wonderful.

Richie sat up as the
ringing ceased, the sheet over him soaked with sweat.
Jesus, that was so real
,
he thought. Where was that place—a place where the blackness of
night settled and smothered all sound?

The next morning, Richie
returned
from Chinatown early and fixed
again.

The nightmare in the alley
recurred, but this time the feeling of being watched was so strong
that almost from the moment he entered the alley, he felt like
someone was stalking him.

Who? And why? He didn’t
know for sure, but he continually glanced back at the mouth of the
alley, expecting to see the giant silhouette again. No one was ever
there.

Finally, the timer pulled
him back to safety.

Later, Richie rinsed away
the
dried sweat of fear. He stepped out of
the shower physically clean, but his mind remained unsettled by the
nightmare.

Wrapped in a towel, he made
his way into the kitchen and stopped at the table. There were two
chocolate doughnuts sitting on a folded piece of paper. He took a
bite of one of the doughnuts and opened the note:

Richie,

Ice cream in the
freezer.

Miss you, but you got to
get clean. I talked to your mom and told her about the farm. She’ll
get most of the money. Aunt Elva will help with the rest. You can
do it, like me. It’s going good, a day at a time.

Love you.

Lisha

A month or so ago before
he’d hocked most of their furniture, Lisha had bailed out on him,
going to her Aunt El in the Sunset. With the old lady’s financial
help, she had entered a treatment program up in Glen Ellen at
Truman’s Mountain Vista Farm, where she’d apparently gotten her
mind right. She had been back from the farm at Aunt El’s for about
five days, but had called him only once. She had told him she had a
sponsor now and was working a twelve-step program. She said she
couldn’t see him until he was clean. A few days ago she’d left a
receipt for the paid rent.

Richie made himself a
milkshake with the ice cream Lisha had left. He washed down the
other chocolate doughnut with the thick drink.
Holy crap
, he thought,
she’s blown the whistle to my
mom
. His mother had thought everything was
cool since Lisha and he had gone through the methadone detox
program back in December. What a joke. Each day they’d cut back the
dosage at the clinic. As they had gotten down to where they could
feel the new jones kicking in—about day twenty-six—they’d both
started using shit again. And kept using steady for the next six
months, until the day that had shaken Lisha so badly she had taken
the action to get herself straight.