The Angels of Catastrophe (12 page)

“You better hush your mouth. I ain't gonna take no shit from you,” Fleeta said to Maimonides in an earnest voice.

Maimonides carried a Charter Arms Bulldog .44 revolver, a pocket-sized cannon in his jacket. He put his hand on it and curled his fingers around the pistol's rubberized grips. Touching the warm sticky grips sent a thrill up his arm. He said, “And if I don't shut up, what are you going to do about it? Little, I think.”

Fleeta Bolton had a razor blade hidden in his Afro. He could take a man's nose clear off the bone with it—and Durrutti didn't put it past him to resculpt Maimonides's face. The atmosphere around the table was going haywire, compelling him to snap at both men. “C'mon, you guys. We can't be quarreling like this. It hurts business. Let's have some goddamn harmony around here, like pronto.”

The second he mentioned business, Fleeta and Maimonides turned down the heat. Business was the only reason the three of them were alive. No one wanted to lose money and nobody wanted to compromise the scene at Hunt's Donuts. It would be more intelligent to die first.

Fleeta slapped his leg with his hand. “Okay, I'll chill my shit.” He glanced significantly at Maimonides, who faked deafness and wouldn't acknowledge him.

Durrutti said to Maimonides, “Now it's your turn, ace. Talk nice to Fleeta.”

Maimonides was intransigent. He unrolled his shirt sleeve, covering the abcess. “No fucking way. I didn't like what the asshole said.”

Fleeta's shoulders tensed up. “Who's an asshole?”

“Nobody,” Durrutti cut in, scowling at Maimonides. “Nobody's nothing around here.”

Maimonides hemmed and hawed, but seeing that his partner was mad at him, he became insecure. He couldn't burn his bridges behind him, not with Fleeta and not at Hunt's. He had his back to the wall and the only way out was straight forward. He squawked in a gruff heroin-inflected voice, “All right, whatever.
Shalom,
Fleeta. Forgive me. No harm intended.”

The spell was broken. A truce was established and amplified when Fleeta asked Maimonides if he could see one of the watches. Maimonides obliged him, and feeling generous, he gave it to Fleeta as a gift. In a display of uncustomary honesty Maimonides also conceded the watch wasn't a Rolex. Fleeta, to his credit, took no offense.

Having survived another skirmish by the skin of his teeth, Maimonides unsteadily rose to his feet and excused himself, saying he wanted to get some bandages for his abcess at Walgreen's Drugstore.

Durrutti was left alone with Fleeta at the table. The silence between them was familiar, comfortable. Durrutti let it build as he studied the fidgety black man, concluding he had to woo him if he wanted his help in the search for Jimmy Ramirez. Testing the waters, he asked, “So what about Jimmy? What am I going to do?”

“That's easy. Leave it alone,” Fleeta philosophized. “Forget you ever knew him. If you don't, he will drag you down.”

“But I've got to find him.”

“Don't. See, Jimmy's black magic. Anything he touches, it turns bad like he was waving a wand over it.”

“Okay, but if you hear anything about him, you'll give me a ring, yeah?”

“I don't know. I'll think about it. It depends.”

Fleeta's plainly stated reluctance disconcerted Durrutti. “Depends on what?”

“Many things.”

“Like what?”

Fleeta jumped up from his seat and brushed Durrutti's chest with a finger. “Cops be getting killed and you and Jimmy are involved? I wouldn't bet on your asses for anything. Staying away from you two should be public policy. Now I'm going to slide on out of here and pretend I ain't never seen you before.”

D
urrutti met up with Maimonides in the La Cabana Bakery next door to the Instituto Laboral De La Raza on Sixteenth Street. Across the way was a four-storied brick fortress called the Redstone Building. Erected in 1914 the beehive of offices used to be known as the San Francisco Labor Temple, the site where the citywide general strike of 1934 had been planned.

Daylight's last rays had bathed the Rubalcava Flower Shop, the Burger King and Walgreen's Drugstore, Hwa Lei Market and the Kim Yen Restaurant in pornographic sunshine, exposing the unpainted plumbing pipes, jumbled telephone wires, and broken-down satellite dishes.

Durrutti was in a fey mood and remarked, as if he were addressing no one in particular, “Ephraim Rook has an office over there in the Redstone Building, don't he?”

Toiling over a pastry, Maimonides was disinclined to respond. Food and talk did not mix. His preoccupation gave Durrutti an opportunity to scope him out. Ricky was no specimen of male beauty, but Maimonides wasn't any prettier. The realization gave Durrutti a moment's ineffable happiness. For a long time, he'd been laboring under the delusion Maimonides was better looking than
him. To find out this wasn't so did wonders for his self-esteem.

“Yeah,” Maimonides grunted. “Ephraim's got a suite in the Redstone. For a couple of years now. Real classy. IKEA furniture. Stained glass windows. A gold samovar. The whole phony bit. He has a lot of money lately, I hear. Tons of it. It's coming out of his ass, he's got so much. And you know him ... if he's got it, he's gonna flaunt it.”

Durrutti bared his innermost feelings. “In case you didn't know, Ephraim is bugging me.”

Maimonides was empathic. “So I notice. He's a shit stirrer and he's got no moxie. But you and him, what is it? Something special? There was always some vibe going on between you guys.”

Durrutti was relieved to get it out on the table. “Damn right there is. Ephraim's been hassling me. We've got some shit going down over his girlfriend. I slept with her.”

“You slept with her? That must of killed him. He's not strong enough to survive these things.”

“Yeah, it's a mess.”

“Who is she? Someone I know?”

“The woman we saw on Capp Street the other day. You asked me about her. I told you I didn't know who she was.”

Maimonides whistled. “That broad? The one with the tacky clothes? You and Ephraim are tussling over her? You're a dork. She looks like a self-hating drag queen. Drop her right now. Leave her to Rook. For Christ's sake, what's wrong with you? Getting involved with her was a mistake.”

“I told him I ain't messing with any of his business no
more. I'm done with her shit and his shit. It's over. But he won't leave me alone. I can't let him get away with that, can I?”

“You gotta protect yourself, that's smart.” Maimonides was melancholy and his chest heaved as he prophesied. “I'm afraid it might get rough with you and him. Maybe it's better this way. And maybe I can get in on the action. I hate to tell you this, but I predict you and Ephraim will have more trouble.”

“Yeah? Who are you?”

“I'm the rabbi of Mission Street. I know everything.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Great. That's brilliant. Thank you very much.”

“You're welcome. And here's how I know. I came up with Rook. We were proficient in violence and we had vast amounts of ambition. We were like one person. I was the left hand. Ephraim was the right hand. But the years changed us. The left hand injected drugs into itself. The right hand began to make a fortune. Ephraim Rook was no longer my friend.

“These days, him doing what he does, handling other people's money for them? He's an accountant, right? And a landlord? Hardly glamorous. The way he dresses and how he acts, like a big shot? The pussy. You'd never know it was the same guy who used to flog televisions at the flea market. Huddling in his car at dawn hoping to sell a portable black and white set by noon so he could eat. He was so poor, all his hair fell out. Me and him, we used to count pennies for coffee. Now he thinks he's the greatest.”

“What should I do about him?”

“For the moment, nothing.” Maimonides was fatalistic and enjoying it. “But just wait. Ephraim won't leave you in peace. It's not in his nature. If he's already got his hooks into you, he'll want a bigger piece of your ass. Something that will hurt. But don't worry. He'll give you a signal first. Ephraim believes in advertising whatever it is he's doing.”

Maimonides's prediction unnerved Durrutti—more
tsouris,
the diminutive Jew didn't need. The dungeon of his heart did not beat. No air passed through his lungs. The faces of Jimmy Ramirez, Sugar, Ephraim Rook, and Kulak rotated in the kaleidoscope of his agitated mind.

He looked out the bakery's window—a summery night had fallen with a guillotine's quickness; the stars in the sky were few and far between. Seeing them made him perversely optimistic, easing his fears—if a star could twinkle overhead, hope lurked in the Mission.

R
ats nested in the palm trees above the Lavadería Sandoval and the Iglesia de Diós on Mission Street. Durrutti heard them as he rambled toward the El Capitán Hotel. Billowing fog darkened the storefront windows of the Palacio Latino Restaurant, the Red Dragon Liquor Store and the An-da Jiang Acupuncture Clinic. The road was deserted, save for a lonely car turning left onto Twenty-third Street.

Having slept three hours in four days, Durrutti was seeing double. It took him a second to realize Zets had pulled up alongside him in his bullet-riddled squad car. The cop leaned out the driver's window, aimed a flashlight in his eyes and cackled like an escapee from a mental asylum. His blemished face was ablaze with a policeman's lust for small details. “Look who we have here,” he wheezed. “The shit himself. Where you going, you fucking midget?”

Durrutti got enraged when he was reminded how short he was. He froze in his tracks and didn't breathe. He didn't know if it was Halloween or just a nightmare. His sphincter twinged with fear; a trickle of sweat ran down his thigh. “I was going home. To the El Capitán.”

Zets was wearing his riot helmet; his wooden face was obscured by the helmet's brim. His voice was moist and had more bass in it than a foghorn. “Where have you been?”

“Getting a doughnut,” Durrutti said. “You know ... at La Cabana.”

The answer didn't quench Zets's thirst for information. His irritation was overt. The distaste on his face was plain to see. “You don't expect me to believe that, do you? Stay put. I want to have a word with you.”

The patrolman rocketed out of the squad car, maneuvering his bulk like a ballerina on steroids and swung around the front fender. The baton was in his arms. His blue combat overalls were a canvas of catsup stains, Pennzoil mechanical grease, chocolate chip cookie crumbs and lightning bolts of dried blood. The acne on his cheeks was three-dimensional, as if his welts were illuminated with high-grade track lighting.

Durrutti was frightened—Zets was the ugliest man on Mission Street. His face belonged in a museum of horrors. “What's going on here? I ain't doing anything.”

The Jewish cop's eyes glittered off-kilter as he approached Durrutti. The air was fetid with rotting garbage. A car whizzed by the policeman, inches from his back—Durrutti prayed a passing driver would broadside him. Zets gabbled at him, “Don't give me that shit. You got any identification on you?”

“What for?” Durrutti quailed. “You know who I am.”

Zets flicked the nightstick an inch away from Durrutti's nose, testing his reflexes. “The law requires that you show proof of identity. Failure to do that will force me to arrest your ass.”

Durrutti was in a no-win situation and he didn't bicker. He reached for his wallet and found a driver's license, one that had expired two years ago. He handed
the tattered document to Zets like it was a used condom. The cop turned the flashlight on it and griped, “Are you pulling my leg? This is worthless. It ain't no good.”

“It's got my name and picture on it. What more do you want?”

“But it's not valid. You got anything else?”

The conversation was turning into a contest of wills. Durrutti manufactured a hardness he didn't feel and stuck out his jaw, mad that Zets was making a mountain out of a mole hill. He had to go to the bathroom so badly, he wanted to cry. “No, I don't. I've got nothing. What's going on here, anyway?”

Zets said the magical words everyone on the wrong side of the law dreaded to hear. The voodoo that wrecked lives. The spellbinding incantation which cost women and men their freedom. The divination that killed. “Step over to the squad car, Ricky and spread your legs. Put your hands on the hood where I can see them.”

No matter what language you spoke, a policeman's patter was the same. The idiom of law enforcment was universal, like Esperanto. You did what he requested or you paid a penalty. Since Durrutti acted deaf, Zets gave him a poke in the ribs with the nightstick to motivate him, a jab that sent a rill of torment into his armpit.

“Empty out your pockets,” Zets brayed. “And put everything on the car.”

Durrutti went through the drill and tossed the wallet, a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, a key chain and a fistful of one dollar bills on the black and white's hood. Zets rummaged through the possessions, engrossed in the poetry of his job.
He read every scrap of paper in the wallet. He examined each key and he tried on the sunglasses. Before he could pocket the money, it blew off the hood and into the street, disappearing under the nearby cars parked at the curb.

“Okay, Ricky. Where is he?”

“Where is who?”

“Where's Lonely Boy?”

Popping unexpected questions at you was a cop's favorite ploy. His notion of martial arts. One way to deal with it was to remain mute. Another option was to play dumb. A third avenue was to get smart. Just for kicks, Durrutti chose the latter. With his hands on the hood and his head periscoped between his shoulders, he grated through his teeth, “Who's asking?”