Chapter Eight

Treat Street, where it split off from the Harrison Street artery, was a dusty jungle of two-storied row houses, pastel aluminum and plyboard live-work lofts and weed-ridden vacant lots filled with abandoned cars, plus a crop of dead trees planted in the sidewalk next to the occasional warehouse. Garbage was piled up on the pavement in picturesque heaps. The potholes in the roadbed were ankle deep. Homeless winos napped sprawled on the cement. BMW’s and Land Rovers, fleets of them, hogged every available parking space. Wealthy white people dwelled there. Some Mexicans, too.

A few years ago, no one wanted to live on Treat Street. Not even the junkies. A dog wouldn’t lay down to die there. Nowadays Silicon Valley magnates were moving in, thinking zip of laying out a million dollars for one of the decrepit turn-of-the-century Edwardian Victorians on the block. You could almost comprehend their logic—living on Treat Street was far better than a mortgage in one of San Jose’s suburban wastes.

Lonely Boy’s ramshackle unpainted home overgrown with bougainvillea brambles was the third building from the bodega at the corner—it stood out like a stiff middle finger to real estate speculators. You couldn’t say it was a Victorian, though at one time it had been. The house was tilted, sinking in on its own foundation. Cardboard slats were stuffed in the broken windows; a mountain of beer cans were rusting on the browned front lawn. Rap en Espanol was blasting from the living room. Two late model Hondas sat on cinder blocks in the oil-soaked gravel driveway. The telephone lines in front of the place were laden with blackbirds cawing loudly.

Double-parked next to Lonely Boy’s house was a beat up black and white police squad car. In the front seat was a cop on solo patrol, a member of an elite unit investigating the Mara Salvatrucha. A hard-nosed, muscular, twenty-seven-year-old Jewish cop nicknamed Zets because of his lousy complexion—his skin resembled the surface of the moon up close. Zets was broad in the hips, waist and shoulders and bald with a pugnacious forehead.

He had the disposition of a bulldog on amphetamines, and was ambitious. Some cops had a decent attitude toward the lowlife in the Mission—they wouldn’t push you around if you kept out of their way. Zets was as heartless as a public bathroom. He just didn’t like people. Which made him no different than a lot of folks in the neighborhood.

Aside from a Filipino kid riding by on his bicycle, Treat Street was a vista of yesterday’s newspapers strewn on the macadam. A very pregnant calico cat slithered across the asphalt, shimmying under a parked car. Zets glanced at Lonely Boy’s crib, certain his man was at home. He removed his riot helmet to admire his hairdo in the rearview mirror. Most policeman modeled conservative hair stylings like your traditional crewcut, though a majority of the old-timers went for the flattop-with-fenders style. Others preferred the anti-semitic skinhead cut, big with the ladies. Zets had gone overboard by giving himself a mohawk. The outcome had been tragic. The mohawk, waxed with an unguent, refused to remain spiky, due to the riot helmet, and looked like a polyester throw rug.

He inspected the dents in his riot helmet, reminding him of all the times he’d banged it trying to get out of the car. Then he slid it over his head and strapped it under his chin. Squirming out of the squad car with a nightstick in his gloved hand, he kicked the driver’s door shut with the heel of his riot boot. He was breathing heavily and unhappily remembering he’d forgotten to put on his nicotine patch that morning. He looked to his left and to his right as he stomped over to the cement walk that led to Lonely Boy’s front door.

Your basic police nightstick is a model known as the PR-24. It is the king of nightsticks, revered worldwide. It is three feet long, made of hard wood and in pre-inflationary dollars, costs about seventy-five bucks. It is oblong and curved to resemble a sword; if you ever have the misfortune of getting hit on the head by one, you are guaranteed large medical bills.

Zets went to the door and bumbled with the doorknob and gave it a rattle. A couple of minutes went by as he continued to stare at it. His face was bleak with confusion. Nobody was answering his summons. Not knowing what else to do, he hefted the billy club and had a bash at the door’s plywood paneling, wielding the cudgel in a two-handed stance.

An upstairs window opened with a yawn. Lonely Boy, shirtless and barefoot in a pair of dirty khakis with a gun stuck in his belt, jumped out of the window and onto the roof. His chest was heaving; his ribs clung to his skin. A fine sheen of sweat glazed his drawn features. Zets’s persistent banging away at the front door had made him jittery. He slipped and nearly fell, sliding a few feet toward the rain gutter. Skittering wildly, he teetered at the roofs edge, windmilling his arms and losing his balance.

At the last possible moment—in the fraction of a second when you know you’re going to die—in the instant when you stop caring—he regained his footing and leaped over a smelly air shaft to the adjacent building. He flapped his arms in midair, as if he were never coming down. Framed by an aureole of sunshine, he hung crucified in between the two houses, his hands reaching for the sky. His eyes were wet with redemption. His face was hard with exultation. Then he landed on the roof next door, scaring the shit out of a nest of pigeons. He vanished behind a brick chimney to make his escape, leaving Zets dumbfounded.