Angels of Catastrophe

Rats 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?”

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?”

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.”

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.

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.

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?”

Being smart earned him a whack in the ulna with the nightstick. At first, the hurt was tolerable, just a blow to the bone. All he had to do was grit his teeth and smile through the pain. A second later, it felt like the entire solar system had landed on his arm.

Zets regarded himself as benevolent and said to Durrutti, “See? That didn’t feel too good, did it? It made me feel bad, too. Your pain is my pain. Did you know that? Now just tell me where the fuck that goddamn wetback is.”

Durrutti gasped, wringing his arm and wishing he were dead. “I don’t know. I don’t even know who he is.”

Zets was eloquent with the baton and cut an arabesque across Durrutti’s face with it, smacking him upside the cheekbone with the stick, then backhanding him in the jaw with the pommel. Durrutti capsized to the pavement—Zets yanked him back onto his feet like he was an accordion. He dug his fingers into Durrutti’s waistband and spread-eagled him on the hood, then pressed up against him from behind. His superior weight and his Kevlar body armor squeezed the air from the other man’s lungs. “Let’s try it again. Tell me where Lonely Boy is.”

Durrutti desperately wanted to move, but couldn’t. The policeman’s cock was wedged against the cleft in his buttocks. The gun belt abraded his tailbone. “I don’t know him. How can I tell you where he is?”

Zets looped one of his water buffalo-sized arms around Durrutti’s neck and wrenched his head to an angle that wasn’t anatomically possible. The cop said in a monotone just a degree shy of bedlam, “Now talk to me.”

Proof of Zets’s disbelief was immediate. He socked Durrutti in the ear with one of his lead-lined riot gauntlets, caroming his head off the hood. It hurt, but not too bad. Since Durrutti wasn’t holding any drugs or weapons, Zets wouldn’t arrest him. He didn’t even have any warrants out on him. Legally, he was clean as a whistle. The only thing he had to worry about was whether or not the cop was going to kill him.

In a technique he must have learned from the devil, Zets hooked the baton around Durrutti’s emaciated neck, flush with his adam’s apple and gave him a good choke. All the colors in the street became brighter for Durrutti. The storefront neon lights blinded him. Sounds were muffled; a woman’s laughter echoed in his head. The circulation of oxygen in his lungs came to a halt. His pulse tolled like a church bell.

Out of the corner of his eye Durrutti caught a glimpse of the cop’s scarred complexion, a landcape so ravaged, it had turned his opponent’s face into the cratered topography of a lost continent. He was so busy admiring the policeman’s skin, he never saw Zets thwack him in the noggin with the nightstick.

It was curtains for him. A velvety descent to nowhere. The blow knocked him to the ground and before he went unconscious, the image of Sugar’s moony face emerged from the red and bloody haze. She was apple-cheeked with excitement. “Aww, you got a boo-boo? That’s terrible! Do you want me to kiss it for you? Hey, guess who I brought with me? You’ll love it!”

Behind Sugar and moving slowly in her wake and seeming as if he owned everything under the sun was Ephraim Rook. He had on his best suit, a gold-threaded Gucci. An embossed Star of David shimmered from a chain neatly and discreetly laid over a brocaded blue and white silk tie. His orange hair was glazed with scented pomade. His suntanned face was creased in a fraternal greeting that somehow failed to reach his barracuda eyes. “Good to see you again, Durrutti. Good to see you. How are you feeling?”

Rook’s tinny voice burst like a hemorrhage in Durrutti’s brain and he blacked out, falling face first to the pavement.