Angels of Catastrophe

The 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.”

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?”

“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.

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!”

Made of stone, Lonely Boy didn’t budge. He braced the Smith and Wesson with both hands and fixed the semi-automatic’s starved muzzle on Zets. The two combatants began to duel in the middle of the taqueria’s floor space. Lonely Boy circled slowly to his left, never taking his lava-brown eyes off the service revolver in Zets’s fist.

Zets moved counter clockwise in a police academy combat stance. Anger contaminated his reddened venal eyes. The nightstick dangled from a leather loop around his left wrist. “Put the fucking thing on the floor! Right where I can see it! Just do it, goddamn you!”

A spasm coursed through Lonely Boy. His face was a frieze of remorse. He saw the climax with himself in defeat and handcuffed. The return to jail was not going to be a vacation. He doubted if he could even raise the money for his bail. He thought of Spooky and was bereaved. He lowered the Smith and Wesson and said to Zets, “You win. I can’t do this no more. I’ll give you the gun. Here.”

Flipping the pistol around, he offered the weapon by its barrel. He pointed one foot toward Zets; his left hand was out of view. The Smith and Wesson was parkerized black; it didn’t shine in the light.

Zets reached for the proffered gun and saw that evening’s headlines on the six o’clock news. He saw his own face on television. The heroic police officer. The savior of a crime-ridden neighborhood. What he didn’t see was the half-eaten burrito Lonely Boy had snagged from a nearby plate.

The vato hurled the burrito at the cop from point-blank range. Carne asada, beans and rice and green salsa pelted Zets in the face, blinding him. The salsa stung him in the eyes; the gooey beans clogged his nostrils. Rice got under the collar of his combat overalls.

Lonely Boy evaluated the scene before him. Women and children were crying, chairs were overturned, food was on the floor. It was time to get out of there. He leaped on a table and flung himself at the front window. The sun coming in from the street contoured his body in a black-rimmed halo. He flew through the air unencumbered by gravity and flailed his legs. His arms were tucked against his ribs. His childishly pink tongue lolled in a silent scream. He yanked his hoodie over his head and hit the window at full speed.

The pane was pulverized into smithereens as Lonely Boy squeezed through a hole in the glass, leaving behind a trail of blood. He landed outside on the pavement, fell on his left ankle and groaned. He got to his knees and shook himself free of the glass slivers sticking out of his scalp like devil’s horns. He turned slowly, favoring what appeared to be an injured leg and threatened a couple of tourists in Bermuda shorts and straw hats with the Smith and Wesson. He stood upright and burst into the street, dodging the cars and zigzagging through the traffic. With a holler of bittersweet rage to accompany his flight he did a vanishing act between two shopping carts into Caledonia Alley and was gone before Zets could get to the sidewalk.