The Angels of Catastrophe (18 page)

Addressing Durrutti as if Ephraim were a phantom, Maimonides riposted, “You hear that? Was it the invisible man? Or was I imagining things? Somebody wants to talk
with me. How nice. That somebody didn't want to have shit to do with me for a million years. But things change, no? Now he wants my company. I must be important. But why should I do this? I have to ask myself that. It's like pissing in the wind. A waste of my time.”

Ephraim defended himself with savoir-faire. “Don't give me that shit. Save the speeches for your mother. A waste it ain't, not when we're talking money.”

“But whose money is it? Can we be honest?” Maimonides snarked. “As far as I know and I don't need no crystal ball to figure it out, it ain't your
gelt.
It never was in the first place. So why should I make nice-nice with you?”

“Just because it ain't mine, that don't make it yours.”

“Details, details. I'll leave them to you because they're meaningless to me.”

“That ain't so. You took someone's private property.”

“I didn't see anybody's name on it. Who cares anyway?”

“I care.”

“You and who else?”

“You don't want to know, fat ass.”

Ephraim's tone was getting less deferential and decidedly more belligerent. He finished his doughnut and kicked a chair over to the table, then wrestled his posterior onto it. Nursing his coffee with one hand, he coolly regarded Maimonides over the rim of the plastic cup, eyeing Durrutti as well. Discouraged by the dialogue and how it was going, he targeted Durrutti.

“I hear you talked to Sugar recently. On the phone. She told me. How was it for you?”

Being lonely was an occupational hazard. Durrutti lived with silences more than he did with words. Sometimes he didn't say anything for days at a time. Stealing for a livelihood wasn't something you could bring up at a cocktail party. Being lonely made him talk too much, even to his enemies. “Yeah, we chatted. It was great.”

Rook's flat eyes glistened with savage disrespect. His stocky frame seemed to implode inside his suit. “Don't get in a huff about it. I was just asking.”

Durrutti was fed up. “What are you bringing her up for?”

“She was at my condo again this morning,” Ephraim said with modesty. “We got back together and this time it's for good. Just thought you might like to know. I took her down to Carmel-by-the-Sea last weekend and we worked on our relationship. We played golf, did some swimming and went to a tanning salon. I told her everything would be better with us if she'd let me do things my way and she agreed. She said that shit with you was irrational—never again. Christ, we had a ball. By the way, she sends you her regards.”

Part of Durrutti didn't care. Sugar had nothing to do with him. Part of him was nauseated. He still cared enough about her to get angry at Rook. Part of him was drifting outside his body and was numb. This was unhealthy and he knew it.

Maimonides had remained mute during the exchange, but now that it was winding down, he saw an opportunity to be insulting. “You've got a woman, Ephraim? Whoopee. Incredible. I think she looks like a
fucking drag queen. But what do you want from us? You have one second to explain yourself.”

Rook was terse. He set his coffee cup down on the table. He wiped his fingers with a monogrammed handkerchief. He leveled a hateful gaze at Maimonides. Every line on his face was antediluvian and trench-deep. “The money.”

Maimonides massaged the lapels of the stolen suit, then snapped his fingers together and said softly with a menacing slur, “Just like that?”

Ephraim greedily drank in the Gucci, remembering when he wore it. He echoed Maimonides syllable for syllable. “Just like that.”

“No.”

“No what?”

“No way. You can't have your goddamn money back. Not without a price.”

The stillness in the torpid air had the impact of a head-on collision. Ephraim put his elbows on the table's formica top and leaned forward to give Maimonides a myopic evil eye. “You fucking prick, you're gonna sell my money back to me, is that it? I should have known you would do this to me. I could have you guys killed. It would be easy. And convenient. Just a phone call away. By tomorrow morning the Nicaraguans would have you in a garbage bag in the waters off China Basin. Nobody would even remember you. I would make sure of that. You wouldn't even be able to buy an obituary. I would wipe out all memory of you. But that's the old Ephraim Rook. The new Ephraim wants to live in peace.”

Maimonides engineered his mouth into a fleer's
groove. He chomped so hard on his lower lip, it was bleeding. A pearl drop of sweat rolled down his nose. “Then pay the price of peace. Twenty percent.”

Numbers, Ephraim could understand. They were erotic to him. He dreamed about them. He made love to them. He conversed with them. He prayed to them. They guided his existence. Extortion, he did not approve of. He raised his eyebrows, producing tremendous fissures in his papery forehead. His rodent-bright eyes twinkled with an unfiltered yearning to exterminate Maimonides.

“Twenty percent of what, I should ask?”

“What we took off you. Plus the suit.”

Ephraim rubbed his snub nose and smiled. It was a disingenuous smile with more angles than a slalom course. He said with magnanimity, “The Gucci is a gift. I knew the second I saw it on you, it was you. How you got it from me, I will forget this. Consider me generous. What can I say? I'm a
mensch
. The money is another matter. That, I can't help you with. I'm sorry.”

“What do you mean, you can't help me?” Maimonides seethed. “You seem to forget one thing.”

“What's that?” Rook was short with him. “I never forget anything. Did I leave out a detail? Please tell me. I'm here to listen.”

“The money is mine now.”

Ephraim's cheeks swelled dangerously, showing off the sunspots on his skin. The flame in his eyes burned away, leaving a bleached out emptiness in his pupils. He went livid, evidently having high blood pressure problems. “You shouldn't talk to me like that.”

“What choice do I have?” Maimonides said. “This is life.”

Ephraim tried a more diplomatic line. He waggled his hands to demonstrate his good intentions. Sweat rings had soaked through the armpits in his suit. “I come here bearing the olive twig or whatever,” he protested. “And you guys want to gimme grief? What's wrong? I'm into conflict resolution. Ain't you?”

“Resolution?” Maimonides declaimed. He made the word sound like dung in his mouth. “What would you know about it? You got rich while I was in jail. I have nothing. I have a room at the Royan Hotel on Valencia Street. The ceiling leaks when it rains. Do you care? No.”

“Now wait a minute,” Ephraim said. “You don't have to get all goddamn nasty with me.” He was so angry, he lost the thread of what he was saying. The veins on his cheeks turned blue. “Getting personal with me ain't gonna change shit.”

Maimonides contradicted him. “You're mistaken. This is about science. The irrefutable truth. What goes around, comes around.” He drubbed the tabletop to make his point. “You hurt me. I hurt you. That's the beauty of science. The price for this lesson is twenty percent. Take it or leave it. You have five seconds to decide.”

“You guys don't know. The money belongs to these people and they—”

“Then there's nothing to talk about is there?”

Ephraim offered a panicked compromise. “I'll go to five, but no more.”

“Never. You're sickening me with the low figure.”

The seconds ticked away and with them went Rook's sangfroid. He blenched as if he was being anally penetrated. He was between a hard place and a rock. Maimonides was turning him into salami. “I'm trying to be, what-do-you-call-it, democratic. You know, I'm here talking. But it ain't working.”

“Then leave.”

Two more chilling words had never been said in Hunt's Donuts. Ephraim took the cue and prepared his retreat. “All right, all right. This has been awful.” Wearily he stood up, vanquished. His age was showing as the lights in the bakery ruthlessly interrogated his complexion, displaying everything wrong with it. His posture was stooped as he shook an index finger at Maimonides and Durrutti. “I'm outta here. But I'm telling you guys this is a big boner you're pulling. Next time you see me, I might not be so congenial.”

Maimonides was finished with Ephraim Rook. His cheeks shone with contentment. He intoned with certitude, “Life is short. The money stays with me and the hell between us, you can take that to your house.”

T
he instant Durrutti barged in the doorway of Taqueria Pancho Villa he got a whiff of the friction in the atmosphere. A group of Salvadoreño dope dealers in blue Nike windbreakers, khakis and San Francisco Giants baseball hats sitting at a table whirled around to stare at him. Everybody knew about the dead narc on Mission Street and how he was tied into it. Nobody wanted to be around him. People were cutting a wide swathe to avoid him. He was a cop magnet.

Maimonides was only partly disconcerted by the negative reception. He was used to life-threatening vibrations. For him, hostility was nutritional. Conflict was a sonnet. Hate fed his ego. He glanced at the dealers sulking at their table and showed Durrutti his chipped yellowed teeth in a piranha's smile. “You hungry? Myself, I'm fucking ravenous.”

Durrutti rained on his parade. “Let's leave. I can't deal with this place. Look at the Salvadoreños. They hate me. I wanna go back to my room.”

“Don't be a wuss. They don't like you? Fuck them. They got a problem with you? They should go see a psychiatrist.”

Durrutti did a double take when he saw Zets wolfing
down a spartan meal of rice and beans and tortillas at a table by the wall. The white riot helmet and the PR-24 nightstick were on the seat next to him. His midnight blue combat overalls were speckled with flecks of mud and his riot boots were unlaced. Durrutti gave Maimonides a tap on the shoulder and said, “You see him?”

His friend's plunging blood sugar made him snappy. “You get me nervous when you touch me. God knows where your hands have been.”

Durrutti apologized for his error. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You see Zets over there in the corner?”

“What? You think I'm blind? Of course I see him.” Maimonides commiserated with Durrutti. “No Jew should ever become a cop. He's a traitor to our people. Cannon fodder. But what can you do? Take it out on yourself? Absolutely not. You must eat and stay strong. Cops or no cops, we need to have some goddamn lunch.”

Maimonides waddled over to the counter and ordered a vegetarian burrito with braised tofu chunks, black beans and brown rice in a whole wheat tortilla. He paid the cashier and traipsed into the dining area with Durrutti close behind. There was nary a vacant seat in the taqueria—the joint was packed with social workers from the welfare office on Otis Street, Wells Fargo Bank employees and the junkies from the BART hole on Sixteenth Street. Maimonides said over his shoulder, “You didn't get anything? Why not? Are you a dolt? The food is good here. Big portions. Adequate quality. Cheap too, eh? I paid only three-ninety-five for this.”

Durrutti was about to tell him that he had no appetite
when Lonely Boy made an unscheduled solo appearance in the door. All five feet of him. The loco bopped in the taqueria swiveling his head left and right. He stared down the unaffiliated non-gang Salvadoreño dealers and took his place in the line of customers. His paranoid antenna was up, but it somehow failed to register Zets.

Lonely Boy had on a blue hoodie, his best Pendleton, thick-soled oxfords and his freshest khakis. His hair was shaved to a quarter-inch suede stubble. A .40 Smith and Wesson bulged under the shirt. His golden brown face beamed with effervescent joy as he chattered with the countergirl while he made an order for a steak burrito. He talked to her in lilting tones that shimmered like silver, playing off the shyness in the girl's eyes.

Zets looked up from his plate of tacos—the cop almost had a stroke when he saw the Mara Salvatrucha outlaw was standing ten feet away from where he sat. His personality being what it was, seeing Lonely Boy was like waving a free dime bag in front of an addict. The policeman reached for his riot helmet, nightstick, and his gun, straightened up and collided with a table and a chair. His clumsy advance sent the Salvadoreño dope dealers in the vicinity sprawling to the floor in his wake.

“You! Goddamn you, motherfucker! Stay where you are!”

The cop's inflamed tenor was not music. Lonely Boy heard it and wheeled around and ducked into a crouch, taking cover behind two Honduran women. He whipped out his Smith and Wesson as he dropped onto the floor under their table.

Every customer in Pancho Villa made a hegira for the door. The fleet-footed dealers, made fast by years of running from the police, were the first to get to the exit. Since there were too many of them, with all the pushing and shoving, nobody made it outside. Lonely Boy flipped over the table he was beneath and fired a shot into the ceiling; plaster dust showered onto the cash register and the blueaproned workers.

The mariachi music on the sound system was playing at a decibel level high enough to cause cancer. Lonely Boy struggled to his feet, wagging his gun at anyone who got in his way. The music went dead, leaving a disquieting silence in its stead as he stopped and turned to challenge Zets. With his back to the street, he flaunted his weapon and howled at the policeman. “C'mon, fuckface! You think you bad? You want my ass?”

Every muscle and nerve in Zets was aching to arrest Lonely Boy. He tripped over his unlaced boots and yammered, “Drop the gat, you shit! You hear me!”