Angels of Catastrophe

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.”

“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?”

The Mexican sensed trouble and raised his eyebrows and adjusted his sunglasses. He shrank from Durrutti. “I’ve been around. I went down to my cousin’s place in Fresno for a wedding. Got into a fight there so I had to leave. Then I went to San Jose for a car show. Saw some people in Fremont. Mostly I’ve been working on my car. It’s been giving me a shit load of trouble. The fucking thing is so old, I have to keep replacing parts on it all the time. It’s a ‘63 Impala. It rules the highway,” Jimmy said with paternal satisfaction. “So you were looking for me? What the fuck for?”

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.”

“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.”

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.”

“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?”

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?”

“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?”

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

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.”

“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?”

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.”

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.”

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?”

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.”

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 pig 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?”

“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?”

“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.”

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!”

“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.”

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?”

The Mexican got crafty. He pictured Durrutti’s wallet in his pocket. Unfortunately, there was no money in the billfold. “You do, huh? That ain’t hard to guess. What do I get out of it?”

“Orale. That’s what I thought. You ain’t got shit. Fair enough. Okay. Let’s do some thinking here. Do the cops know Paul Stevens is dust? Do they know the motherfucker is dead? Did you tell them that? Is anyone saying anything?”

Jimmy was elated. He opened his mouth in a gory smile. He flung his hands in the air and did a tango. “Presto! There’s your answer. You’re clean. Pin the killing on the dead guy. That way, nobody gets hurt. Who’s gonna know? The only thing you have to do from now on in is keep your damn mouth shut.”

“Wrong,” Durrutti bitched. “If the cops can’t find the perpetrator and talk to him, they’ll drop the ball on me. They’re dogging me.”

Listening to him, Jimmy Ramirez let out a gale of laughter. He showed his mouth with the many fillings in his teeth. “Chale! You want me to rescue you? No fucking way, dude. I ain’t that stupid. Is that why you’ve been looking for me? To clean up after your poo-poo? You want a maid? Fucking Christ, you’ve been wasting your time, boy.”

“But nothing. Keep your shit to yourself. You cover your own ass. I ain’t going to do it for you. I ain’t talking to the cops.”

“I ain’t gonna talk. You think I want to be dead? In a pine box? You think I like the police? I ain’t into that, no how. I got things to do.” Jimmy pitched his Ray-Bans back on his nose and lowered his head, looked up and down, then snuffled, “I’m gonna say something I shouldn’t be saying, because it ain’t like I ain’t got my own troubles, see? But since you is seriously fucked up, here’s something that might help.”

Jimmy did a psychological three-sixty on him, going full circle, shifting from hostility to uncertainty to accommodation in an instant. His neck broke out in hives. “Well, this is fucked up. It really is, because I’ll tell you who did that killing.” His tired face was incandescent with righteousness. He cracked the knuckles on both hands and said, “That punk ass bitch Lonely Boy, that’s who. The vato is a time bomb and he did it.” He went pale and crossed himself and said a prayer in Spanish. Jimmy Ramirez looked like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar. “Madre de Dios. But don’t you ever tell him I said that.”

“That’s right, ese. The hijo de la grau puta is not to be trusted, let me assure you of this. He’ll stab you in the back the first chance he gets. He’s always saying how I should come party with him and his carnales? The motherfucker would turn me into barbecue if I got within a hundred yards of him.”

“Everything. The problem with you, you always be getting into things,” Jimmy sermonized. “You keep doing that, it will boomerang on your shit. Mind your own business and stay away from those Mara Salvatrucha pendejos. ”

“I just did help you ... I dropped some wisdom on you and it was free. It was better than having the winning lottery ticket. I gave you everything I had. What more do you want? Go ahead and tell me.”

Durrutti was unraveling. The bump on his head throbbed. Fear bubbled out of his throat. “I want you to go to the cops and tell them I don’t know anything.”

Jimmy gauged the Jew’s sanity and chided, “Be cool. Don’t be a culo. What you need to do is lay low and ride this thing out. Stay at home and don’t answer the telephone. People ask you about it, don’t tell them anything.” He took a swipe at the lint on his Dickies shirt. “I need to work on my car.”

Durrutti would never forgive himself if he let Jimmy Ramirez out of his sight. Water sprang from his eyes. “Where are you going?”

Jimmy snarled, getting testy, “If the cops want to have a chitchat with Jimmy Ramirez, let them try to find my ass. They’ll need a Rand McNally map. There ain’t nothing else I can do for you. Okay? Now I’ve got to go. Other people be looking for me too. Not just you. And you know what? I blew out the damn transmission on the Chevy. That’s where I’m going right now, to get a new one over on Potrero Street. All right.”

The light went green and Jimmy dived into the intersection without saying farewell. The shadows on Folsom Street were cerulean blue. Gunshots were going off a block away. The Mexican crossed the street, heading in that direction.

Durrutti watched the vato lope with short, angry, tight steps and realized he didn’t have to follow him. Silence would be his alibi. He walked back to the restaurant in a contemplative mood. While his problems hadn’t gone away, at least he’d found Jimmy. It was no mean accomplishment. He had been persistent. He’d achieved his goal. He could move on with his life.

The dinner crowd in Chava’s had dispersed; Maimonides was drinking his fourth cup of coffee when Durrutti flopped in the chair next to him. He waited for his friend to offer a field report, but when Durrutti didn’t speak, he asked, “So? I’m all ears. Was it Jimmy Ramirez? Did you guys have a summit conference?”

Maimonides chewed on this for a full minute, raising his head and lowering it. Then he said, “I don’t think I want to know. I should ask. But I won’t. Let me ask you one question, though. Do you believe him?”

“You tell me.” Durrutti was shattered. Now that Jimmy had come and gone, he was beat. Exhaustion wasn’t even the word for it. He was five miles underwater with tiredness.