Angels of Catastrophe: A Novel

by Peter Plate

  Chapter Twelve

  A thunderclap of an earthquake rumbled through the neigh borhood before dawn. The temblor left a rash of broken storefront windows on Mission Street, foot-deep fissures in the roadbed and jagged cracks in the unreinforced masonry of the older brick buildings. Mongrel dogs barked from the rooftops and irate sleepy-faced citizens opened their doors to see what the hell was going on. A series of aftershocks shattered more windows and set off a thousand car alarms. No one went back to bed after that.

  The quake set the mood for the rest of the day. Maimonides invited Durrutti to meet a snitch he knew, a forty-year-old junkie named Robert. Snitches were similar to fine wine. You could only find them in certain places. They flourished in select climates. Their availability was limited. Each one had a distinct bouquet and flavor and their price tags varied. Unfortunately, as far as wines went, Robert was expensive and he was not a very good year. The relationship between Robert and Maimonides was complicated.

  Robert was a Persian Gulf War veteran subsisting on a VA pension. He’d gotten ill handling uranium-depleted artillery shells for a National Guard howitzer squad in Iraq. While recuperating at an army base hospital in Germany, he’d acquired a vociferous heroin jones.

  Robert’s pension made him independently wealthy, relatively speaking, and gave him a peculiar status; he didn’t have to rob and steal to get money to feed his addiction. He was a rare junkie. It set him apart from everybody else on Mission Street. Robert was ranking ghetto royalty, particularly on the first of the month when he received his government disability check—you would never know one man could have so many friends.

  Hours after the earthquake, the day turned blazing hot and was daubed in brown smog; the sun was a red ball leering over the apartment rooftops on Capp Street. Durrutti and Maimonides shuffled over to South Van Ness Avenue through Clarion Alley past mounds of garbage and cast-off clothing to rendezvous with the junkie. Maimonides was limping like the hunchback of Notre Dame. He complained loudly, getting wistful. “I’m a fucking wreck. Every part of me hurts. My head. My back. Everything.”

  Durrutti didn’t get it. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Maimonides stopped walking and looked down at his Florsheims and said with spiteful tenderness, “I’ve got arthritis in my foot. And in my knees. And in my hips. You don’t like it? Is it a problem for you? If it is, let me know and I’ll tell my feet to cut it out.”

  Their path was blocked by a passel of sparrows eating a cast-off burrito that had spilled its guts on the ground. A dozen scrofulous birds feasted madly on bits of pork, rice and black beans. Durrutti said, “You? Arthritis? What’s it from?”

  “From being Jewish. From being old and fucked up and in prison for too goddamn long. And from eating too much fast food. McDonald’s. Burger King. El Pollo Supremo. If you want more reasons, consult a doctor. Any doctor. The fucking shysters are all alike. They take your money and leave you bald.”

  “You sound upset.”

  “And why not? Cheerful you want? Never. I’m not one to suffer quietly. My feet feel like I have broken glass inside these damn shoes. Getting old is bullshit. My golden years. What crap.”

  Dumb struck, Durrutti could offer his companion no comfort. “Well, maybe you should retire.”

  Maimonides flipped him the bird. “You are so gentle and wise and thoughtful. A gem of the highest quality. Just incredible. Retire? I’ve got two hundred and thirty-seven dollars to my name. I ain’t ready for no rest home. I need to make some money first.”

  Robert was holding down the fort at the gas station on South Van Ness when Durrutti and Maimonides turned the corner. The junkie stood upwind, giving the two men the full benefit of his body odor. Robert smelled like a massacre. Durrutti had spent a fair amount of time in the morgue at the Coroner’s Office identifying the bodies of dead friends, but nothing had prepared him for Robert. The stink of death surrounded the rail-thin snitch like an aura, the effect heightened by the raggedy seersucker suit clinging to his skeletal frame.

  Maimonides introduced him to Durrutti without any fanfare, saying, “Robert, this is Ricky Durrutti. You might have heard of him. He lives on Mission Street at the El Capitán.”

  Robert’s horsy face was a work of art. A mural peppered with inflamed blackheads. His rainy gray eyes were magnified behind a pair of horn-rimmed prescription glasses. His mouth gaped, revealing gingivitis and teeth spread across his mouth like fence posts. With the timeless and universal gaze of a bloodsucker staring at a mark, the junkie’s gravedigger eyes did target practice on Durrutti.

  The air was still, no birds were singing. It was earthquake quiet and even though the temperature in the street was ninety-eight degrees Robert was trembling like it was winter in Siberia. He made a weak fist with his right hand and said, “I ain’t talking about nothing until I see some goddamn money first. Ain’t nobody gonna take advantage of me, no sir. I’m a businessman.”

  Maimonides pulled a Ben Franklin from his alligator-skin wallet and gave it to the dope fiend, making sure his fingers avoided physical contact with the junkie. Prison had taught him the value of proper hygiene. He was squeamish about unwanted touching and washed his hands at least twenty times a day.

  Having been paid, Robert became Mister Sunshine. A beauty queen contestant in his attitude. A candidate for public office. He licked his fleshless lips with the furriest tongue Durrutti had ever seen on a human being and said, “That’s better. Ain’t nothing like a little green to make things more tolerable.”

  Maimonides folded his arms over his chest, grinding his teeth against the arthritis stabbing the bones in his flat feet. “I’m happy for you. So what’s new?”

  Robert acted virginal and uneasily shuffled. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? I must be hearing things. How can that be? Don’t you have anything to tell me?”

  Flirtatious as a rattlesnake, Robert said, “About what?”

  “Oy, ”Maimonides chuckled without mirth. “You want to play games. How cute. Let’s start with Jimmy Ramirez? You seen him?”

  Mentioning the Mexican’s name stirred Robert. A flame warmed his cold eyes. Maybe it was the memory of something pleasant. A moment of truth and reconciliation. “Jimmy?” Robert said. “I ain’t seen him, not since he smoked up all those sherms Jackie fronted to him. I hear he ain’t even in town.”

  Maimonides fawned at Durrutti, wanting his approval, then he glared at Robert. “You sure of that? I don’t want no mistakes. We want accuracy here, okay? Have you heard anything else about him?”

  Robert sensed he was about to say something important and knowing it might earn him extra cash, he gulped hard. “Jimmy’s a motherfucker who swims through shit and it sticks to him like a wet suit.”

  “I don’t need you to analyze his personality,” Maimonides gibed. “You a psychiatrist? I hope not. Now what do you know about the cop who got shot?”

  Robert’s pointy ears perked up. “A bit.” His accent was Midwestern, somewhere on the border between Missouri and Kansas. He rubbed his chin and sniffled, cranking his head in a delicate bird-like gesture; you could almost hear the junked out cogs whirring in his brain.

  Maimonides wanted his money back. Robert was worthless. “What’s a bit? You measure these things?”

  “People are talking about it.”

  “What people? The man on the moon? What are they talking about, these losers? Are they talking about the killer?”

  Robert was direct, saying without inflection, “Everyone keeps bringing up the Salvadoreños.”

  “You mean the Mara Salvatrucha or the Sureños?”

  “The Mara Salvatrucha.”

  Maimonides got sardonic. “Yeah, well, everybody’s talking about those kids. They’re gonna be in People magazine this year. Them and all the movie stars. But what’s your schtick? You doing commerce with these goniffs?”

  Like any class-based society, junkies defined their pecking order by income and status. Brand names were important—like who
was your dealer. Some dope fiends dwelled in the ghetto and were homeless—they were at the bottom of the ladder. Other junkies lived in the suburbs and drove big cars. They were at the top of the heap. Robert represented the median. He replied, “Yes, I am. It’s part of my work.”

  “Hoo boy, his work, he calls it. What is it that you do?”

  Robert knew Maimonides wasn’t feeling well—the snitch’s eyes gleamed with opportunism—akin to a buzzard circling a dying elk on the prairie. Maimonides’s tundra-white face was a burning contrast to the black wool suit he wore. His arches were screaming with pain. As Maimonides unfolded his arms, the pinkie ring on his left hand scintillated in the sun.

  “What do you think I’m doing?” Robert told him, getting riled. “It’s as plain as day. I’m buying and selling narcotics, you idiot.”

  Fireworks went off behind Durrutti’s eyes as he recognized the future and how it would be. The Salvadorenos and the Nicaraguans had inherited the Mission, intent on making the barrio their home. The Mission’s Jews had retreated to the suburbs decades ago and he was alone in a community that had no use for him. He was a dinosaur without a place to call his own. He couldn’t get the ghetto out of his blood—too many centuries of inner-city diaspora living had left its stamp on his genes. The insight made him uneasy and he wanted to get away from Robert and go have a drink somewhere peaceful and quiet.

  Maimonides interrogated Robert, rocking back and forth on his sore heels. “Who do you go through when you score dope from the vatos?”

  Robert’s eyes crinkled into pellets of anger. “This shit they call Lonely Boy. He’s a nobody and I mean nobody.”

  Unpleasantness between a junkie and a dope dealer is common. The heroin marketplace, like the stock market, is volatile. Maimonides swarmed on Robert’s obvious discontent with the agility of a lion, drilling into the informant’s opiate-addled ego with effortless sarcasm. “Aw, that’s sad. What did this here Lonely Boy do to you? Did he steal your money?”

  Robert held a hand over his face so they couldn’t see his shame. He whispered with morbid self-hatred, thoroughly enjoying the memory of his humiliation, “Yes, he did. The mojado took all my cash. Then he took all my drugs. I couldn’t even get loaded on the product. It was outrageous. Have you ever been on Mission Street when you weren’t high? I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  Extracting information from a snitch required an artistic skill most people couldn’t even imagine. Maimonides didn’t have the knack and neither did Durrutti. A combination of intuition and manipulation with a skosh of physical violence had to be employed to get a stool pigeon to warble. A snitch was an orchestra—you played certain strings to get certain sounds. Only a maestro could do it.

  Maimonides shrugged. “Fine. Wonderful. God bless America. Now we know who Lonely Boy is. You said you also knew something about the cop that got snuffed. Tell me more.”

  “What about it?”

  “Don’t be a dunce. Who shot him?”

  “You know who did it, you big lug.”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t be fucking around asking you, believe me.”

  “I can’t tell you.” Robert shook his head, averting his eyes. His posture collapsed and he became as jumpy as a three year old on Ritalin. The ruling emotion on his face was now doomy fear.

  “You can’t tell me?” Maimonides vexed. “That’s bogus. I pay you good money to talk, you fink.”

  “Not enough to answer that question.”

  Maimonides thumped Robert in the chest with the heel of his palm, drawing attention to the junkie’s bolo tie. The tie’s centerpiece was a scorpion mounted under a glob of honey-colored resin—it was California penitentiary inmate jewelry at its finest. He asked again, “Who did it?”

  “The Mara Salvatrucha.”

  “Yeah, but which one?”

  Robert stuck out his tongue and screeched, “You trying to get me killed? I ain’t saying!”

  Robert was a control queen—he’d never talk. He was a most uncommon snitch. An aberration in the species. You could tear out his fingernails one by one with a pair of pliers and he wouldn’t say anything. Durrutti admired him for his obstinacy. But enough was enough. He motioned to Maimonides that Robert was jerking them off. “Forget this shit. He ain’t going to tell us jack.”

  Maimonides was flabbergasted. He was thrifty and did not like to misspend money. Robert was an investment that was yielding no gain. “I paid the asshole a hundred dollars and I haven’t gotten anything to show for it.”

  “Well, that’s the breaks. Robert ain’t worth the heart-ache right now. ”

  “All right, all right,” Maimonides said, capitulating to the younger crook’s wisdom. “He can kiss my ass. Fuck him. Let’s go.”

  Robert was left at the gas station without a good-bye. The interview with him had taken the better part of an hour, causing Maimonides to declare he was late for his HIV test at the health center on Shotwell Street. He was stressing out about it. Getting tested for the virus was not enjoyable. Waiting two weeks for the test results was even more aggravating. Sometimes, after all the trouble, there was a snafu and you received somebody else’s findings.

  To console him, Durrutti asked, “When you’re done at the clinic, you want to get something to drink?”

  The thought of alcohol cheered Maimonides. “Who’s paying?”

  Durrutti added up the change in his pocket and replied, “I’ve got ten dollars. We’ll go to La Rondalla and get a couple of margaritas.”

  Thinking about drinking inspired Durrutti. He was going to buy a margarita for Paul Stevens too—and take the drink from the bartender and go outside into the street with it. At the corner of Twentieth and Valencia, three blocks south of the police station and besieged by the traffic’s din, he’d tilt the long-stemmed glass and pour the liquor in the gutter. The frothy beverage would coruscate under the streetlights, honoring his long gone friend.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The next morning was no better than its predecessor. Hunt’s Donuts was awash in a sea of men and their muted conversations. Maimonides and Durrutti were ensconced at a table in the back near a dying potted palm tree. Where they sat afforded them a bird’s eye view of Mission Street.

  Maimonides had his right arm on the tabletop, resting it on a newspaper. He had his shirtsleeves hiked up and he was probing an abcess that was colonizing his forearm, the backlash from hitting up black tar heroin with a dirty spike. Like a lot of old-timers, Maimonides had walked out of Pelican Bay with an energetic habit.

  The abcess was orange and blue, the size of a softball and because of it, he was having difficulty bending his elbow. He said matter-of-factly, like he was mentioning the stock market reports, “I ought to get it drained. I don’t want get a blood clot or whatever.”

  To punctuate the drama Fleeta Bolton tramped in the door. He lingered for a second in the entrance, modeling a pair of purple leather pants, Tony Lama ostrich skin cowboy boots and a red silk shirt unbuttoned to the waist. Dangling between his chocolate colored nipples was a gold medallion. His Afro glowed like a forest fire in the sunlight.

  Durrutti nudged Maimonides. Fleeta’s arrival was serendipitous. “Psst. Guess who’s here?”

  “Who?”

  “Fleeta Bolton.”

  Maimonides’s response time was on delay. Whenever Durrutti said something to him, he heard it five seconds later, as if his friend’s voice went through a reverb chamber to get to him. He replied, “Oh, yeah? I look forward to this. Fleeta brings out the best in me. We make beautiful music together. We’re a symphony. World class.”

  Fleeta did a reconnaissance on the coffee shop, drawing less-than-approving glances from the Salvadorenos. Black men with known criminal records were frowned upon. He turned his head carefully and scanned the room. Sighting the two Jews, he let out a triumphant hurrah and shouted, “Durrutti! Just the motherfucker I wanted to see!”

  The ardor in Fleeta’s voice made Durrutti suspicious. Enthusiastic people were troubl
e. The black man wended a path toward him with a hard smile enameled on his mouth and calculated vitriol in his eyes. These things meant Fleeta was on a business call and Durrutti prepared himself for difficulty. His nerves went into overdrive, ready for additional turmoil.

  Fleeta found a chair, dragged it over to the table and dropped himself into the seat. His platinum dental work glittered as he smiled sideways at Durrutti. “Yeah, man, I’m glad I found you. I’ve been meaning to talk to you. Lots has been happening since I last seen you. What’ve you been up to?”

  Durrutti slouched in his chair and took Fleeta in with an expressionless bug-eyed stare, betraying nothing. Fleeta wasn’t easy to decipher and he wondered how much he could tell him. The issue of trust was always on his mind; he did a constant inventory—who was at his back and who wasn’t. He drawled, “Not much, Fleeta. Things are slow.”

  Disappointed by the lack of candor, Fleeta got the message Durrutti wasn’t talking. Subdued, he pivoted in his seat and refocused his attention on Maimonides. He scrutinized him and said, “Baby, you got any reefer for a brother? I need to get leisurely. My head is torqued tighter than a missile cone.”

  Maimonides was concentrating on his arm, testing the abcess with his index finger, watching it change colors when he touched it. He was immersed in the act and didn’t care for the interruption. Without looking at Fleeta, he said, “I ain’t got no weed. What do you smoke that shit for? It’s too expensive and it makes you drool.”

  Fleeta pursed his mouth to summon up a retort, an insult that would send Maimonides reeling. Then he saw the abcess and his jaw dropped as he shrieked in sheer repulsion, “What the fuck is that! Cover that damn thing up! It’s disgusting!”

  Maimonides rested his catty green eyes on Fleeta’s mug with cold-lidded indifference. Fleeta didn’t exist as far as he was concerned. He said with considerable equanimity, given the pain he was in, “We live in a democracy. You have choices here. You don’t like my abcess? That’s awful. Do me a big favor. Don’t fucking look at it.”