Angels of Catastrophe

August waned into September. Following months of fruitless investigation, Agent Kulak told Durrutti with a straight face that Paul Stevens was never considered a viable suspect. The Fed said he’d known Paul was dead from the start—Durrutti had been baited and manipulated by the cop to draw Jimmy Ramirez into the open.

Ricky did what he was supposed to do and kept his lips sealed. Kulak harassed him, but he said he wouldn’t talk again without a lawyer. The summer seemed to have been a furious dream and he wasn’t sure if any of it had been real.

Maimonides assured him over a monk’s breakfast of black coffee, saltine crackers and margarine and Marlboro cigarettes in Hunt’s Donuts. “Hell, Ephraim Rook and his wife are in Hawaii. On Maui. I hear Ephraim has angina. Got it from playing golf. He’s in the hospital. Some honeymoon.”

Durrutti visited Arlo in her room. The exquisite she-boy counseled him as the two of them reclined against dowdy kapok pillows on the bed. “Just because the girl married that old man doesn’t mean you have to stay all depressed. You’ll bring yourself down that way, sweetie. Think of what she did as a gift. She wants money and security? She wants to be a breeder? So do I. But good riddance to both of them, that’s what I say.”

Arlo was sporting a black silk Frederick’s of Holly-wood negligee. A pink boa was draped around her swan’s neck, cascading over her fragile shoulders and falling to her knobby knees. She hadn’t shaved in days; a brown stubble streaked her cheeks, highlighting the pallor on her face.

Her husband was at the sink shaving her head; Jackie’s gigantic skull was covered with a layer of Noxema shaving cream. The rest of her was sheathed in a yellow silk bed sheet that she’d tied around her waist. The Ruger was on the dresser next to an unlit votive candle.

“See,” Arlo said, trying to comfort Durrutti. “When a girl gets tired of a man, it has to do with a lot of things. Money—how much she needs. The future and what she wants from it. Then there’s her history with her daddy and her family’s expectations. And the good times she thinks she has to have and the rest of the goddamn stuff. She might not even know what she wants. Most people don’t. And never will. But I’ve got the antidote to all that nonsense. Brewed just for you. Now do you want this new type of dust that I’ve been talking about? This is truly magical shit. It’ll take you to Sirius.”

Arlo scared up a sherm from her bra and ran the length of it under her nose while claiming, “This motherfucker is vibrating with a unique spiritual power. Can you feel its karma?” She handed it to Durrutti, clicking her fingers and saying in a demanding treble, “That’ll be ten bucks.”

Durrutti forked over the ten spot. While relieving him of his money, one of Arlo’s negligee straps fell off her shoulder, exposing a nipple pierced by two gold rings. She vogued, conscious of Durrutti’s eyes on her. Feeling sympathetic, Arlo reached out and patted his arm indulgently, making a cooing noise. “You be a good girl and smoke that sherm and get some sleep. When you wake up, you’ll feel a whole lot happier.”

Durrutti slinked down the hall to his room, closed the curtains and locked the window. He dragged the dresser across the floor and propped it against the door. He uprooted the mattress from the box springs and put it on the shag carpeting. Then he sat down on the mattress with the sherm, an ashtray and a matchbook.

It was a cozy nest with pillows and a wool Army blanket. Cigarettes in his lap in case he wanted them. He clutched the sherm between his fingers and lit a match. One last smoke and that was it.

He ran the match over the tip of the sherm and inhaled. Before he could push the fumes out his nose, everything went pitch black, as if the electrical power in the El Capitán Hotel had been shut down. He was panic-stricken, but a knock on the window diverted his attention. Durrutti craned his neck to see who it was—a guy was outside on the fire escape. He pointed at himself, then at Durrutti. He gestured at the window’s latch, wanting Durrutti to open it for him.

A closer look at the stranger shortened the Jew’s life by a decade. A short, dark-skinned man with a mop of ebony hair cut across his forehead and dressed in a pair of San Francisco policeman’s combat overalls was kneeling in his own blood. He turned toward Durrutti as the late afternoon sun conjugated his face—there was a bullet hole between his eyebrows. A deep red hole surrounded by a ring of saltpeter.

His eyes were covered with cataracts. The skin around his mouth had been eaten away by worms. A six inch stalactite of spittle hung from his upper lip. His bedraggled cop’s uniform was granulated with whorls of blood. His holster was empty; his badge had been riven from his tunic. He rapped on the pane with both hands and begged Durrutti to let him in.

It was a hundred degrees outside. The sun roasted Mission Street with an intensity that made Durrutti’s throat hoarse and scratchy. Indian summer’s last gasp was the hottest of days. The dead narc pressed the remains of his face against the window and cried. His tears streamed down the pane, splashing on the sill in salty driblets. He talked, not even caring if Durrutti listened.

“You know those little gangsters that hang out by Ritmo Latino? The Mara Salvatrucha? That’s where all this shit began. I set them up by hinting I’d sell dope for them. They thought because we were raza or some bullshit like that, I’d be down with them. They trusted me. We made a deal and I fucked them over. I had to. It was my job. I took their money and then I hauled them off to jail. They didn’t like that. And when I kept some of the cash for myself, that caused a brouhaha. They put a hit out on me. But I never thought they’d kill my ass.”

Chamorro spat out a tooth and slivers of flesh as he spoke. He was distracted and couldn’t stop fidgeting. Below him, three stories down, was the hum and the bustle of Mission Street. A Public Health Service ambulance was in front of the hotel; two medics were helping an old lady into the back of the van. He said, “Who the fuck is that? I know everybody in this pinche neighborhood and he ain’t on my list.”

“Oh, the maricon. He shot Bigarani years back, right? Fuck, I hated his guts. The bitch used to give me this stone cold vibe when I’d see him in the street,” Chamorro said. “Thought he was better than me. Shit, he didn’t kill me, I can say that much. He was made into a scapegoat because of that Bigarani thing. You know how the police are. Once you do them wrong, they never forget you. They’ll never let you be. Even when you’re history. That’s the way of the world and it ain’t never gonna be any different.”

Chamorro continued his yarn. “After the bust I didn’t see the little fuckers for weeks. Making bail must have been a bitch for them. Then one night the homeboys said they wanted to speak with me. They sent a messenger. A pinche pelon called Lonely Boy. He met me at Taqueria El Toro on Seventeenth Street. I was in there trying to grab something to eat and he tells me a meeting is planned for later that night down on Mission Street. I think, cool. Now the shit’s gonna hit the fan. But I had those punks by their cojones so I wasn’t too worried. The funky thing was, when I got to the spot where we’re suppose to have this chat, there ain’t nobody around. There ain’t no meeting. So I waited.”

While he told his tale, he kneeled on the fire escape, his hands on the guard railing. Every time he made a sudden move, the nickel-plated handcuffs on his gun belt jangled. His ammunition clips creaked in their leather pouches.

“I was just standing there by Hunt’s Donuts waiting for the homeboys. It was a pretty night. Sort of cold. Patches of grayish fog. The sky was getting all purple with the wind blowing. The air was fresh and clean. People were going to Bruno’s and all these fucking white dudes in their BMW’s were cruising the street. Everybody was dressed up to the nines and feeling good.

“Then these two guys come up to me. They had their hoodies down over their eyes so I couldn’t see their faces. They motioned for me to step into a doorway with them. Something about it didn’t feel right. But what the hell, I did it anyway. I figured ain’t nobody gonna mess with a cop.

“The next thing you know, the first guy pins my arms from behind. The other guy steps up to me and sticks a gun between my eyes. I can’t say anything because I’ve got this pistol on me. All I remember is the look in the homie’s eyes, just a zombie. He squeezed the trigger and kapow, I got a bullet in me. I’m hot, then I’m cold, real cold. And then, fuck, it was over. I was shit.”

The narc’s tormented face was no more than a few inches away from Durrutti. His breath misted the window between them, getting the pane specky with blood as he hunkered down on his knees. “Just before I went under, one homeboy said to the other one, get rid of the gun. Throw the fucker in the bay. Then someone else came up to me. I thought it was a priest. Somebody to give me last rites. I was so thankful I began to weep. But it wasn’t no Catholic priest. Nobody was there to save my soul. It was none of that shit. It was that loco Lonely Boy. He kicked me in the leg and let out a horselaugh like he was stoned or whatever. He got down on one knee and opened my mouth and stuck a dead rat in my throat and said, tu madre. And that’s the end of it—they tossed the gun off the Bay Bridge. No evidence and no witnesses. What else can I tell you? I got shafted. Fuck it all.”

Durrutti closed his eyes and bit down on his tongue to keep from screaming. When he opened them, Chamorro had retired from sight. The fire escape was deserted, save for a ceramic pot of sunburned lobelia. Nothing remained of the narc, not a trace. No shreds of his uniform and no blood. A slight electric tingle passed through his fingers—the only clue the cop had ever been there at all.

He belly flopped onto the mattress, sure he had laid eyes on the murdered man. He was overheated, certain he had a fever. The walls in the room undulated; the carpet was alive with cockroaches. He recalled how he and Sugar used to make love, that when she came, he’d always smiled. She never saw this and he regretted it. There would be no sleep for him. Not now, not ever. He stayed awake throughout the night and listened to a police car’s siren have a nervous breakdown on Mission Street.