Angels of Catastrophe: A Novel Read online

  “Me and everyone else in this goddamn neighborhood.”

  “The cops asking?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They pull you in?”

  Durrutti knew he shouldn’t talk about it. He knew it the minute he gave way to the impulse. “Yup.”

  “You tell them anything?” Jimmy demanded.

  “No.”

  “I hope you didn’t because I’d hate to have to kick your ass for you. Did I tell you they talked to me, too?”

  Durrutti’s pulse did a mambo. “No shit? What did you say to them? That’s what I have to talk to you about. They said you told them Paul Stevens—”

  “I ain’t saying what I told them. And I don’t want to hear no more about it from you either. You got that?”

  The threat charmed Durrutti and he laughed it off with a dose of unfelt bravado. “Right. Have you seen Lonely Boy?”

  “Who’s that? The vato who runs with the Mara Salvatrucha? The pinche loco that belongs in jail? He’s got some cousins on Treat Street? That him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know him, but I know who he is and I ain’t seen him since the day he got into a fight with this vato over by the McDonald’s. The fool was messing around with the homeboy’s ruca. Mira, huero, what do you want to find him for?”

  “To ask him about that cop.”

  “Leave that shit alone. That’s all I got to say. And if you want to talk to me, I’ll see you later. Maybe at Hunt’s.”

  “When?”

  “I just told you. Later.”

  Jimmy Ramirez hung up the phone, leaving him alone in the hallway.

  Durrutti retraced his steps across the carpet to his room and found it had been vacated—Arlo and Jackie had departed, leaving a trace of Arlo’s bootleg Revlon perfume in the stale air. A tiny brown mouse peeked at him from under the bed, twitching its whiskers. He sat down on the sagging mattress, suddenly exhausted. A wintery chill went right into his bone marrow, like he was dying. The sunshine in the window colored the room burgundy red; the curtains rustled with the fog. The clock on the nightstand ticktocked loudly. He ran his tongue around the rim of his mouth. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a meal. The thing of it was, he wasn’t hungry. He went back out in the hall to place a collect person-to-person telephone call to Maimonides to ask for his help.

  Chapter Four

  Maimonides had surfaced from a ten year stint at Pelican Bay State Prison, the second time he’d gone down for bank robbery. Doing hard time wasn’t a picnic for a man his age. Not that it was ever easy, even if you were young. Especially if you were young. He was sixty-three years old, ulcer-ridden, twice divorced, formerly handsome and was serving out his parole in a two hundred dollar a week shoebox-sized room at the Royan Hotel on Valencia Street.

  His 1972 Cadillac Seville was idling in impressive silence at the curb when Durrutti stepped out of the lobby of the El Capitán. The Seville was cherried out in a classic drive-by-shooting primer gray paint job with silver trimming, like-new red leather interior, white wall tires, blue tinted windows and a television antenna on the trunk.

  Maimonides didn’t look as well preserved as his car. The truth was, he lavished more love on the Seville than on himself. His receding curly brown hair was shot through with white and shellacked with vaseline. His squirrel-like cheeks were bloodless; huge black rings circled his petulant green eyes. He wore a respectable second-hand Brioni suit, a white J.C. Penney dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar. An unknotted paisley-patterned silk tie was carelessly flung around his fleshy neck. Gold rings flashed on every finger. Gold bracelets dripped from his wrists.

  Getting in the Cadillac, Durrutti wondered what he should tell Maimonides. Settling into the comfortable leather seat cushioning, he weighed his options and decided he didn’t want to divulge too much, not at first—his friend was dyspeptic and lost his marbles when he heard things he didn’t like. He started by revealing just the tip of the iceberg. “You know Jimmy Ramirez?”

  Maimonides looked in the rearview mirror, winced at what he saw, which was himself, and said out of the corner of his mouth, “Who’s that?”

  “You know ... Fleeta Bolton’s homeboy.”

  “Bolton ... now let me see. He’s the black guy with the mushroom-cloud Afro? Him, I’ve seen around. On Valencia Street, right? But I don’t know this Jimmy Ramirez from nobody. Forget it. The name means nothing to me.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m in deep shit and I’ve got to find him.”

  Maimonides’s mouth gave birth to a smirk that boiled over his lips, making his jowls shiver. “I should ask why?”

  Durrutti explained the entire story to him, leaving out nothing, except the part about Paul Stevens—even Maimonides had his limits. When he was done speaking, he was scared all over again. Maimonides had a bemused look on his face.

  “Nice situation you got yourself into. I couldn’t have done better myself. Filing the numbers off the gun, just marvelous. What a professional you are. Such a criminal. What dreck. Turning serious, he said, ”Kulak, huh? Fuck him. Nobody knows anything and this gives you an advantage. Where do you want to search for this Jimmy Ramirez schmuck?”

  “I don’t know. He said he’d be at Hunt’s. But he didn’t say when. What do you think?”

  Maimonides enjoyed being given some authority. Incarceration hadn’t changed or rehabilitated him; but surviving prison made him think he was smart. A scientist. A saint who deserved to be canonized. He scratched the russet-colored stubble on his chin and said, “He’s into his car? The punk’s a motorhead? Let’s start with the garages on Capp Street.”

  Paul Stevens was another headache for Durrutti. One that had the potential to turn itself into a full-blown psychotic episode. As Maimonides steered the Cadillac north on Mission Street, he thought about it. He didn’t hold faith in goblins or poltergeists. His grandmother did, but not him.

  Bubbeh was from the Moldavanka District in Odessa where ghosts and werewolves roamed the alleys of the ghetto. According to her, Jewish children were kidnapped and killed in the middle of the night by golems. Just in case, he carried a rabbit’s foot in his pocket to ward off evil—but he didn’t believe a dead man could rise out of the ground to murder a cop on Mission Street. The odds were against it. So he hoped.

  He said to Maimonides, “You remember Paul Stevens?”

  The ex-con’s scalded-pink hands were fastened like a vise grip to the Cadillac’s faux-mahogany steering wheel. He drove past the Lucky Star Restaurant and Taqueria El Castillito as if he were in a dream. He was happy to be out of prison. “Paul? The tall fagela? I ain’t seen him in years. But I remember him as dangerous. A real fucking whirl-wind. As your friend, I have to tell you, you want to stay away from him. I like Paul,” Maimonides lectured. “From a distance, mind you. He’s a troublemaker. The type that pulls you into their shit. I haven’t seen his ass for a while. He in jail again? I wouldn’t be surprised to hear it. Even at his age. What’s he doing for money these days, driving a cab?”

  “He’s dead.”

  Maimonides smiled, ancient as a muddy delta. The whites of his eyes were stained yellow from permanent sleeplessness. The lines on his face were unrepentant. His response was tinged with acid. “Don’t joke with me. Some things, they don’t make me laugh. What the hell are you saying here? Don’t bullshit me about this. I have a Rolodex of dead faces in my brain and to be honest? I’ve had enough of that madness.”

  “Okay, okay. He circled the drain three years ago. And there’s another problem too.”

  “What’s that?”

  Durrutti spoke, experimenting with the chemistry between the two of them. “Jimmy Ramirez fucked up. He don’t know Paul is dead and he snitched on him. The cops have made Paul a suspect in the killing on Mission Street.”

  Maimonides absorbed the news with a lyrical grimace. “Oy, this is not good.”

  Maimonides piloted the Cadillac south on Capp Street while Durrutti reconnoitered the sidewalk. An assor
tment of hookers and johns were turning tricks in between parked cars under the sun’s angry gaze. Some of the men leaned against the vehicles with their pants hanging around their ankles. A statuesque woman in her mid-forties, obviously not a working girl, was among them and lurching toward the Uptown bar. Her hair was dyed maroon and cut into a feathered and layered shag. She was clad in a pair of crisp Docker khakis, a natty Banana Republic blazer, zircon earrings and a pair of splendid white buck Eddie Bauer oxfords. How she walked, slightly pigeon-toed, reminded him of an aging prizefighter trudging into the boxing ring, knowing this contest was her last one.

  What his ex-girlfriend was doing on Capp Street, Durrutti didn’t have the faintest notion. He was superstitious enough to believe it was a warning meant for him.

  Sugar had been engaged to a dapper, sixty-year-old racketeering accountant named Ephraim Rook when Durrutti met her. Ephraim was involved with a cabal of right-wing Nicaraguan cocaine dealers in the neighborhood, holdovers from the contras. He did their paper work. Then with the dot-com explosion, he went into property. He bought a couple of Victorians, conducted a few Ellis Act evictions, excising the Mexicans who lived in them. He refurbished the buildings, sold them, and made oodles of money. It didn’t hurt that Sugar was a real estate broker for Zephyr Realty.

  The threesome became close friends and he viewed them as his surrogate mother and father. Sugar said once that she wasn’t committed to Rook, even though he was spending money on her like he owned the Mission National Bank. Ephraim was just an interesting older gentleman, good for a laugh. Durrutti started to notice how selfish Ephraim was. Sugar could have been twice as selfish, but Durrutti wasn’t noticing.

  It got so that the mere sight of Rook brought out the pure worst in him. The old man made him feel small. Made him feel competitive even when there was no need for it. Left him feeling bruised and vulnerable every time he went near him. Romancing Sugar started out as a way to balance the three-way friendship, but it had been an error of Biblical proportions. Nonetheless, things might have worked out except that he was always in hot water. Their brief affair was marred by his tenth, eleventh and twelfth arrests. Going in and out of jail made him grumpy. Handcuffs. Court appearances. Bail bondsmen. Probation hearings. He hadn’t been raised with affection and he didn’t know how to give it. But his legal difficulties made him not even want to try. He felt cursed with the soul of a refrigerator and the tender touch of a polar bear. Even at the zenith of their liaison, Sugar had pined for Rook. As she pointed out to Durrutti, Ephraim never went to jail. It was beneath him.

  Maimonides saw him scrutinizing her and asked innocently, “Who’s the chick? Pretty face. Nifty figure. Cute, ha?”

  “Who? The woman?”

  “Yeah. The one that ain’t a hooker.”

  “Her?”

  “Yeah, her.”

  Durrutti hadn’t seen Sugar in weeks and he was deflated by the sight of her. How she walked, her shoulders all jaunty, she was doing fine without him. She sailed through life like an armored car, no sign of defeat in her. It made him disgusted with himself. He answered Maimonides, more than a little annoyed. “That lady? How the fuck would I know who she is?”

  Maimonides was startled by the hostility. “No harm intended, all right? I was just asking.”

  Jimmy Ramirez wasn’t at any of his usual haunts. He hadn’t been to the Social Security office on Valencia Street or to the Otis Street food stamps office. He wasn’t in the fly-by-night repair shops on lower Shotwell. He wasn’t socializing with the hookers and the nickel bag dealers in Alioto Park on Twentieth Street. He hadn’t stopped in at El Faro taqueria on Folsom Street for lunch and he wasn’t at El Tico Nica Cocktails or at McCarthy’s, his favorite bars.

  Maimonides suggested they redirect their efforts and search for his buddy Fleeta Bolton. This sounded like a promising alternative to Durrutti and he seconded the scheme. The plucky duo went to the Jerry Hotel, the Casanova Lounge on Valencia Street, the Crown Hotel and the Cafe Macondo on Sixteenth Street, but to no avail. Fleeta Bolton and Jimmy Ramirez had dropped off the face of the earth.

  Maimonides noticed Durrutti was anxious and sought to pacify him. “Relax. This is a piece of cake. We’ll find the guy before tonight. You ain’t got a thing to worry about. Where’s he gonna go? Nowhere, that’s where. Worse comes to worse, he’ll be at Hunt’s. Before the evening’s done, you’ll be celebrating.”

  Durrutti wasn’t convinced, not by a long shot.

  His last encounter with Jimmy Ramirez prior to today’s phone call had been a month ago. At the time it hadn’t been a significant meeting. Jimmy had been explaining—and Durrutti could hear it now: “I’m going to do something motherfucking magnificent, you wait and see. I’m going to make some shit fly.”

  If he didn’t find the Mexican, he might as well put his head in an oven and turn on the gas. Kulak and the Feds would dig a graveyard just for him if they couldn’t pin the gun and the cop killing on a plausible suspect. Regardless of what Durrutti had done or didn’t do—the facts were irrelevant. The only thing that counted was the murder’s own momentum and it was heading straight at him like a bullet.

  The Cadillac was adrift, stuck in the rush hour traffic on Sixteenth Street next to the Altamont Hotel. Crackheads and winos congregated under the trees in front of the Wells Fargo Bank. Maimonides leaned on the horn while Durrutti watched two junkies fight over a loaf of bread in the mouth of Wiese Alley. Maimonides exhibited his customary impatience and said, “This is getting stupid. Forget I ever said anything. I don’t know where that little fuck Jimmy Ramirez is. The putz has disappeared into thin air.”

  Durrutti felt a warmth for his friend, a glow in his solar plexus. Somebody understood what he was experiencing. The pent-up frustration. The idiotic suspense. The shaving rash on his neck it was causing. “I know, I know. That’s what I was trying to tell you. I’ve got a problem here.”

  Maimonides wasn’t impressed. He never was by anything. His powers of detachment were acute, honed by years of solitary confinement in prison. “Oh, yeah? Well, that’s too bad because I’m gonna take you home. I don’t want to do this no more.”

  The warmth Durrutti had kindled for Maimonides was extinguished on the spot. Anger flowered from him. “What for? You gonna desert me now, just when I need you? What’s going on here?”

  Maimonides paused to give his friend a chary look. “What’s going on here? I need to do some chores around the house. Do you mind? And to be candid, you look like shit. Go take a vitamin or something and just stop worrying so goddamn much. You’re gonna wear yourself out.”

  Durrutti was less than thrilled about the delay, but there was nothing else he could do at the moment. He was too tired to argue. Too frustrated to plan another move. Too woozy to think clearly. Maimonides drove him back to the El Capitán, using Guerrero Street to avoid any further traffic. He said, “Get some rest and we’ll talk in a few hours.”

  Chapter Five

  Instead of going to his room, Durrutti hit the street. He was mad about having given the gun to Jimmy. What kind of craziness had prompted him to do that? He was infuriated with himself for ever having bought the gat in the first place. He’d never even used the piece-he was scared of guns—and now he was facing the possibility of going to prison over it. He was sick to his stomach and he felt dizzy. He walked, blinded by the midday sun, not caring where he went. Ten minutes later he ran into Lonely Boy at the corner of Sixteenth and Mission Streets.

  Heroin alley, the police called it.

  Catholic school kids were milling at the bus stop; the junkies next to the BART hole and the Parisian-style public toilets peddled syringes. The Honduran abuelitas—since the temperature was skyrocketing—were selling homemade tamales from under the shade of a multi-striped beach umbrella by the California Savings and Loan Bank.

  Lonely Boy had shaved his head to the scalp; his round brown-skinned skull gleamed to perfection like a chrome hubcap. He was wearing blue Nike trainers, white athl
etic socks pulled up to the kneecaps, a pair of ankle-length overalls and a starched black Fruit of the Loom T-shirt. He unhooked the bib on his overalls, fingered his armpits and said to Durrutti, “You know the pendejo, the cop who got himself killed? Let me tell you something about that.”

  The dead policeman was named Chamorro, a Nicaraguan born kid assigned to the narc squad. He was twenty-six years old when he bit the dust—missing his next birthday by three weeks—and he had left behind a wife and two kids. People on the street were saying he’d double-crossed a clica, some gangsters he was in cahoots with. His body had been discovered propped up against a tiled wall next to the Ton-Jo Cocktail Lounge with a dumdum bullet planted between his eyes and a rat stuffed in his mouth.

  The bullet had torn his skull apart, making sure there would be no open casket at his funeral. The rat let everyone know he was a snitch. Chamorro’s death had been coming; no one was surprised when it happened. The growing tension in the Mission between the gangs and the police was one piece of the mosaic. Every day you saw more homeless, more nouveau-cuisine restaurants catering to the Silicon Valley clientele, more cops in their squad cars and another low-income residential hotel succumbing to fire.

  Lonely Boy’s fatigued brown eyes shined when he turned to Durrutti and grinned, saying almost shyly, “I shouldn’t be speaking about this shit, but I know who did the shooting.”

  He was teasing Durrutti and he knew it. Ricky could ask him directly who it was and Lonely Boy would never tell. He was too disciplined, a veteran soldado. He might insinuate and drop a coy hint, but his self-restraint would never permit a full confession so the air between the two men felt heavy with unspoken meaning.

  A murder was a murder. Durrutti was no stranger to it. When he was a dope dealer, his nearest competitor had been a kid named Bobby Matlock. They were both eighteen and had attended the same crappy public school. He controlled the distribution of weed in the neighborhood and Durrutti dominated whatever LSD was being sold. Another dealer ripped off Bobby for two thousand dollars worth of sinsemilla and he had the kid assassinated for eight hundred and fifty bucks. No one batted an eye and Bobby Matlock was never caught.