by Peter Plate
She pried open the cellophane and dumped the contents on the bar top. The crank was a charming pile of ivory crumbs cut with Ajax cleaning powder. Jackie arranged the powder with a toothpick into two neat lines, each one four inches long. Her skill at it was obvious. She rolled a dollar bill into a tight cylinder, genuflected, then hoovered both lines up her nose.
The rush made her legs palsy like they’d been touched with a cattle prod. Her obsidian black eyes were diabolical, out of focus. She slapped herself in the face and tucked and retucked her shirt into her jeans. The cigarette in her mouth had burned down to near nothing; she spat the butt on the floor between her feet. She smoothed down her hair with one hand and wrinkled her nose against the smoke. She said to Durrutti, “Now let me ask you something.”
Even though it was getting light outside, the bar was dim.
“What’s that?”
“What you gonna do when you find Jimmy? I’ll tell you right now. You won’t do shit. Because what can he do for you? Not a damn thing. That’s a natural fact. The man is as hollow as an old tree.”
Durrutti didn’t agree. “I’m looking for him anyway. If I don’t get my hands on him soon, I’m dead meat.”
Jackie’s eyes shiwed him like a scalpel, lingered and found nothing to their liking. Flecks of snow white methedrine burned on her nostrils. Her large-pored complexion was slick with dirt and sebum. An evening in the Sunrest had produced twin gullies that ran from her nose to her chin. She laughed at him. “I’m a-gonna whup Jimmy’s ass when I see him again over that money he owes me. I did hear he was around. Heard he was on Twenty-fourth Street. Heard he got into a fight over there too. But you should forget this Jimmy shit.”
“How come?”
“Little vanilla boy like you ... and him and the cops? Can’t you see what’s coming? You need him like you need a hole in your head. Even if you did get a hold of him, it wouldn’t matter. You got troubles with the police? You think a Mexican can help you with that? You’re insane. Mexicans got their own problems. They don’t need your crap too.”
He weighed Jackie’s words and found they were heavy on his shoulders. Some people spent their lives looking for martyrs. More searched for someone they could love. He was pursuing Jimmy Ramirez across a landscape of corpses and addicts and drag queens.
“Give it up, Ricky.”
The ridicule in Jackie’s grainy voice was unmistakable. Every person in the bar heard her and knocked off what they were doing to check out Durrutti. He was an intruder in their midst. He wasn’t a serious felon. He wasn’t a parole violator. He wasn’t a drug dealer. He didn’t have any tattoos. He was Jewish. The only sound was the dice rolling on the floor in the back. The bartender leaned against a zinc sink with a baseball bat by his side, watching him.
Durrutti pried his hindquarters from the bar stool and meandered to the dutch doors to have a look outside. An egg yolk-yellow sun was climbing the sky and pushing the tenement dwellings along Mission Street into satin ochre shadiness. The windows of the Yip Wing Trading Company, Tak Fok Dim Sum Restaurant and the Acaxutla Restaurant were wet with dew. A rat as round as a soccer ball was getting into the garbage at the curb.
A drunk wearing a sleeping bag for a coat—he’d cut holes in it for his arms—was consecrating the new day by vomiting in the gutter at the corner by the check cashing store. The recoil nearly bowled him off his feet. Done with his puking, he saw Durrutti was taking an interest in what he was doing and he gave him a hearty middle finger. Durrutti smiled politely to indicate he was on the same wavelength.
Chapter Twenty-four
Midsummer moved into the Mission and baked the streets. Each day was hotter than a match head, in tune with the flow of current events: Maimonides had gained ten pounds in two days while slacking off heroin. Chamorro’s funeral had gone down without a hitch—the dead narc was sleeping comfortably in a marble crypt.
Maimonides and Durrutti were in Chava’s Restaurant on the evening after the cop’s burial. The sky was ribbed with pink and tangerine puffs of cloud over Potrero Hill. Maimonides was in an experimental mood and he was noshing on a pupusa, the Mexican version of the piroshki. “You should try one,” he said. “It’s delicious and they decrease your lifespan by five years.” He wiped his lips with a paper napkin and pointed a finger out the window to someone passing by the Pacific Gas and Electric company utility yard. “Who’s that guy? Don’t he seem familiar?”
A slim vato in Navy surplus brogans was diddy-bopping east toward Folsom Street. Baggy, sharply creased brown Ben Davis work pants were slung low on his hips. A navy blue Dickies workshirt was buttoned up to his collar. Black framed Ray Ban sunglasses covered most of his knife-thin face. He walked with a swagger, dipping his head every third step as if he were moving to some internal rhythm or song. His luxuriant black hair had been swept up and brushed back into a pompadour with a fourteen inch peak. Three gold crucifix earrings hung from his left earlobe. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbows and revealed a variety of India ink jail tattoos.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Durrutti whispered in awe. He crushed the cigarette he’d been smoking into the tabletop, listening to it sizzle as the dying cherry burned a hole in the formica. The Mexican’s appearance was a minor miracle. An event that would have reduced a lesser man to tears. Ricky couldn’t believe his fortune. The tyranny of hope beat in his heart. “Either I’m seeing things or that’s Jimmy Ramirez.”
Maimonides crammed the rest of a pupusa in his mouth. He was pleased with himself, secretly so. Eating was better than doing drugs. “What are you waiting for? You better go get his ass while you can.”
Durrutti was in nirvana. One image jounced through his mind as he skedaddled out of Chava’s on the run: Kulak’s congealed face. How the cop had smiled at him with his missing teeth. How his toupee moved when he talked. Jimmy had a fifty-yard head start on him and his tongue was hanging out of his mouth when he caught up with the Mexican at the red light on Folsom Street. He was intoxicated by the sight of him. “Jimmy! Goddamn, man! Wait!”
At the sound of his name Jimmy Ramirez did a precise about-face and reacted as if a strange assailant were going to shoot him. He ducked his chin, humping his shoulders. His mouth thinned in a set line and he stuck his hands in his pockets. He turned his head as though his neck were lubricated with ball bearings. A single muscle twitched on his forehead. There was no expression on his yellowy face. He glanced at the stoplight, then at Durrutti. It sank in the Jew was an acquaintance. Not a friend or an enemy. Simply someone who wouldn’t gun him down in cold blood. This didn’t warrant a hello and Jimmy said nothing.
A welcoming party Durrutti didn’t expect, but Jimmy Ramirez didn’t seem to want to recognize him. The Mexican stared down the street toward the Rite Spot bar. He unbuttoned and rebuttoned his work shirt. He cleaned his fingernails with a pocket knife. It was all Durrutti could do to keep from crying while he tried to configure his face into an expressionless shroud. He said evenly, “I’m Ricky Durrutti. Remember me?”
Jimmy decided to keep his simpatico side to himself and merely shifted his weight from one foot to the other. His shoes were lace up oxfords with two inch soles. He tinkered with his fly. He stroked his goatee with his fingertips. An impish, not-so-compassionate grin scored his lush mouth. Then he said, “Uh huh, you that white guy.”
Durrutti was mystified by Jimmy’s standoffish behavior. “So how’re you doing?”
“I’m cool,” Jimmy sniffed.
“Listen, you got a second?” Durrutti was frantic and could hardly contain himself. He was so excited, he was on the verge of an asthma attack. “I wanna discuss something with you.”
Jimmy assessed Durrutti—friend or foe—and made a vague smile that signified a compromise. His smile was a move toward detente. The foggy breeze riffled through his pompadour. “I got a minute. Just keep it short. What’s up?”
“Ah, nothing much. I’ve just been trying to find you. To have a talk and stuff. What’s going on with you?”
The traffic on Folsom Street was a blizzard of vehicles. Durrutti had a hard time hearing himself. The sun was falling on his face, making him perspire. “It’s about that gun I gave you. Do you know where it is? The cops are asking me about it.”
Jimmy took off his sunglasses and stared hard at Durrutti. His mouth went limp, the bottom lip touching his chin. His lard-soft eyes were wounded with anxiety. He played innocent, letting his face go slack, not showing anything except a manic disdain for the truth. He was liking what he was hearing less and less. “What gun? I don’t know shit about no gun. What are you talking about? I don’t know what the heck you’re saying.”
“C’mon, dude.” Durrutti persisted, bearing down. His shaving rash prickled, but he resisted the desire to scratch his skin. “The gun without the fucking serial numbers. The revolver I turned you on to, remember? You took it to a gunsmith.”
Jimmy nervously bridged his fingers together and shook his head from left to right. He was such a clever liar, a polygraph test on him would break the machine. “I didn’t take nothing to no gunsmith. Ain’t never been to a gunsmith in my fucking life.”
Dealing with Jimmy you had to have the persistence of the Pacific Ocean to get what you needed from him. Dealing with himself was even harder for Durrutti. He was losing control and he wanted to throw his hands up and scream. He said, “That’s crap. You know you went to the goddamn gunsmith. Don’t fuck with me like that.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Prove it.”
“I don’t have to. The gunsmith called the cops.”
“He did?” Jimmy whipped out a comb and ran it through his towering pompadour. “The double-crossing motherfucker. I told him to call me first if he was gonna do that.” His bushy eyebrows did a jig, knitting his forehead with stress. “But who cares? It don’t mean shit. Fuck him. And fuck you, too.”
Durrutti exhaled. He’d been waiting to say it for days and he said it with vehemence. “The cops want to know more about the gun.”
“So?”
“You told them it was stolen from you, right?”
The question pressed Jimmy’s buttons and made him borderline paranoid and more talkative. “Oh, you mean that gat? That was a bummer. The pigs came to my crib in the middle of the fucking night and woke me up to ask me about it. They thought I had it. I said I didn’t. They didn’t believe me so they dragged me down to the station and grilled my ass. Had me in a room with these plainclothes dudes, trying to scare me. It didn’t work—I told them all kinds of shit. I lied like a motherfucker.”
“What did you say to them?”
“I didn’t tell them nothing. They wanted that fucking gun but bad and I didn’t have it no more. But what’s it to you anyway? Here you are. I ain’t seen you in a century and you want to know my personal business, the details. I think that’s queer as fuck.” Jimmy’s face was impossible to read, but the dread was coming off him in tidal waves. “What do you want from me?”
“Where the fuck is the gun, man?”
Jimmy Ramirez grimaced heroically and sniggered. “Don’t know. Let me break it down for you, homeboy. I say a lot of things I don’t mean. Shitjust sort of slips out when I ain’t thinking. You can’t hold that against me, can you?”
“But you gave the police a name. Get it?”
“They said that?” Jimmy hit his leg with the comb for emphasis. “That’s a lie. I don’t rat on people. Besides I can’t even recollect ever talking to the pigs in the first fucking place. I don’t even remember talking to you. Who’d they say the guy was that took my gun?”
“Paul Stevens.”
“The maricon? The mofo that hangs out at K&H Liquors? Well, shit, he’s a punk supreme. I never did like him. Me and him, we never did click. He has this vibe, like he’s a bad ass or something. He don’t like me either and I know he’s the thief. Damn right I told the cops he took my motherfucking gun.”
Durrutti stung the Mexican with a bruising stare. “He’s dead. Long dead. It wasn’t him. You gave up the wrong guy.”
“Don’t be talking foolishness here, Ricky. I ain’t got the time for it. I don’t make mistakes. I know when a man is dead and I know when he’s alive. Give me credit for that much, okay?”
“He’s been dead from AIDS for years.”
“Chale! ”Jimmy’s mouth dropped two inches. His skin seemed suddenly pale. “I knew he wasn’t feeling so hot, but I thought I saw him the other day down there on Sixteenth Street. You know, by the phone booth and shit because I swear, he came up to me and asked for a quarter.”
“He died three years ago. Now the cops are on my butt about him. Where else have you been?”
Jimmy was noncommittal. A crown of deceit hung over him, visible in the day’s light. “Oh, here and there. I went up to Yuba City to see my relatives. The youngest boy there, my cousin, he just got out of the joint. Been in Marion, Florence and Terminal Island. Then I went to Sacramento. My car broke down and I got hung up with that.”
“You know Fleeta Bolton has been hunting for you.”
“Fleeta?” Jimmy chimed with happiness. “I ain’t seen him in a month of Sundays.” The thought of his friend made Jimmy reminisce. “Me and the vato ... shit, back in the day, we were a thing of beauty. I had my car. He had his. It was good. What’s going on with him?”
“He’s interested in the money you owe him.”
Jimmy tittered. “The hell he is. I hope he ain’t holding his fucking breath for it because I ain’t got none to give him. All people do is worry about their money. I’m getting sick of it.”
Durrutti was abrupt. His tongue was leaden. The pain in his chest was sodden, garroting him from the inside. “The police keep wanting to tie me and that fucking gun into that cop killing.”
“With the fool who died on Mission Street?”
“Yeah, him.”
How Jimmy Ramirez gazed at him, you would have thought Durrutti had just given him a venereal disease. Jimmy flinched and took a step away from him, like he was contagious. “I’m sorry to hear that. Real sorry. But what does it have to do with me? Not a damn thing.”
“They said you told them things.”
Jimmy’s eyes ballooned in their almond-shaped hollows. “I didn’t say shit to them!”
Durrutti took it one step further, cutting deeper into Jimmy’s defensiveness. “You gave them Paul Stevens’s name, you jerk. A fucking dead man. What did you do that for?”
The Mexican made a dull attempt to deceive him. “Yeah, maybe I did say that to them. And maybe I didn’t. I don’t remember. Maybe I put the pinche pistola somewhere safe when nobody was looking. You ever think of that, asshole?”
“That ain’t what you told the cops.”
The blitz of knowledge dazed Jimmy Ramirez; he drowned his confusion under a layer of bluster. His face soured as he ingested the news. He wanted no involvement with what he’d just heard. “You saying I’m a snitch?” He pulled off his belt to do battle. His earrings jingled in the wind, reflecting the sun. “We’re gonna have to throw some chingasos here, goddamn it.”
Tired of the bantering, Durrutti cut to the chase. He went for Jimmy’s throat. “So who shot that cop?”
The silence that followed the question was volcanic. The space between the two men was taut with disquietude. Jimmy answered lazily, studying his fingernails. “I know this. It ain’t like things have gotten any better now that there’s one less pi
g on the street. You get rid of one, ten more take his fucking place. That’s the law of physics, you hear where I’m coming from, ese?”
“Do you know who did it?”
“The shooting? Who wants to know? You? You ain’t nobody. You ain’t even that. If I know anything, I ain’t verbalizing it to you. You wanna know why?”
“Why?”
“If I tell you, then you’ll blab it to someone else. That’s the domino theory. How many times have I told you: don’t talk to nobody. That’s the golden rule. You wanna get ahead in life? You gotta cheat and be discreet.”
Jimmy’s reluctance to be forthright called for stronger measures.
“The police think Paul Stevens did the shooting with the gun stolen from you. That means you’re involved.”
The conversion Jimmy Ramirez went through was memorable. An elegy to the flexibility of the human face. One moment he was deadpan, sanguine, happy to play Durrutti for a sucker. The next moment he was on his toes, raging at the top of his lungs. “That’s total bullshit! Everybody knows who done that killing!”
Durrutti gave Jimmy a piece of advice. “Pipe down, dickhead. You want everyone to hear this?”
“I don’t give a damn.” Jimmy did an abbreviated tap-dance, holding his belly as if he had indigestion. “Hell,” he said. “That maricon, that Paul Stevens or whatever, he didn’t kill no cop.”
The conversation was turning in Durrutti’s favor and he went for Jimmy’s jugular vein. “I know he didn’t. But where is that .32? The Feds want it.”
Jimmy swatted a fly and gave off the impression what he’d just heard had taken place on Mars. “The Feds? Heavy duty. You’re fucked.”
“No shit. That’s why I needed to talk to you.”
Jimmy stared at Durrutti. The lack of trust between the two underfed criminals was magnetic. A dense forest of cynicism divided them. He ciphered the Jew’s face and gurgled, “You can’t even prove you gave that revolver to me. And if the cops ask me about you, I’m gonna say I don’t even know who you are. So none of this touches me. That makes it your problem, not mine. Anything else you want?”