I drove south on Bayshore, took the San Bruno Avenue exit. This was one of the city’s older residential neighborhoods, workingclass like the one I’d grown up in in the Outer Mission. During World War II, and while the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard humped along for twenty-five years afterward, it had been a reasonably decent section in which to live and raise a family. Then the shipyard shut down, the mostly black wartime work force stayed on, and a variety of factors, not the least of which were poverty and racism, combined to erode Hunters Point into a mean-streets ghetto. Now, with the crack-infested Point on one side and the drug deli that McLaren Park had become on the other, this neighborhood had eroded, too. Signs of decay were everywhere: boarded-up storefronts, bars on windows and doors, houses defaced by graffiti and neglect, homeless people and drunks huddled in doorways.
The Blacklight Tavern fit right in. It was aptly named: From a distance the building looked like one that had been badly scorched in a fire. Black-painted facade, smoke-tinted windows, black sign with neon letters that would blaze white after dark but seemed burned out in the daylight. I parked down the block and locked the car, not that that would stop anybody who thought it might contain something tradeable for a rock of crack or a jug of cheap sweet wine.
Inside, the place might have been O’Key’s or any other bottom-feeder bar populated by the usual array of late-afternoon drinkers. Two hustlers, one black and one white, gave me bleary-eyed once-overs as I moved up to the bar. The bartender had a head like a redwood burl and a surly manner. All he said when I caught his eye was, “Yeah?”
“Nick Kinsella. He in?”
“Who’s asking?”
I passed over one of my business cards. He didn’t even glance at it.
“Mr. Kinsella know you?”
“He knows me. Tell him it’s a business matter.”
“Be a few minutes, maybe. Drink while you’re waiting?”
“Beer. Whatever you have on draft.”
He drew the beer, slid it over, and took my card to a back-bar phone.
The white hustler, a chubby blonde in her middle thirties, came sidling over and rubbed a meaty breast against my arm. “Big,” she said. Whiskey voice, as deep as a man’s. “Big all over, I’ll bet.”
“You’ll never know,” I said.
“Oh, now, don’t be like that. Be friendly. This is a friendly place. Buy me a drink?”
“I’m here on business.”
“So am I, honey. Buy me a drink?”
“No.”
“One little drink, just to be friendly.”
“I said no. I’m not interested in company.”
“Buy the lady a drink, for Chrissakes,” somebody behind me said. “What the hell?”
I turned halfway to look. He was young, wearing the stained overalls and cap of a painter; the looseness in his face and the shine in his eyes said he’d been here awhile. He wasn’t alone in his afternoon bag. He had a friend, similarly dressed, similarly red-faced, perched on the stool next to him.
“What the hell you lookin’ at, Pops?” the same one said.
Terrific. Another small man with a small mind, the kind of two-brain-cell cretin who turns mean and belligerent on an alcohol diet and looks for an excuse to flex his bloated machismo. I turned away from him without answering. Anything I said would have been provocative.
“Hey, I ask you a question.”
The other one had some sense left. He said, “Let him ’lone, Marty. We don’t want no trouble.”
“I ask him a question.” Hard and tough. He poked my elbow and said, “Hey, you old fuck, I ask you a question. Why don’t you answer me, huh?”
Old fuck. The same thing Baldy had called me last night. I could hear the clicks again, loud and clear. And the rage that surged into my throat was so sudden and virulent it surprised me; I had to almost literally hold it down, using the beveled edge of the bar and both hands as a surrogate.
“Let him ’lone, Marty, goddamn it.”
“Old fuck comes in here, gives me a look, don’t answer me when I talk to him. Who’s he think he is?”
Back off, I thought. Back off!
No. He said, “Hey, lookit, he’s marked up. Somebody else dint like his looks. Hey, Pops, you want some more marks on that ugly face of yours?”
I turned again, even more slowly, and faced him square on. It was an effort to keep my voice even when I said, “I’ve had enough of your bullshit. Mind your own business.”
“What you say to me?”
“You heard what I said. You don’t want any part of me, Marty. Not now, not ever. Start something and you’ll crawl out of here bleeding. Guaranteed.”
He made a bullish noise and started clumsily off his stool. The other one caught his arm, held him down. “Jesus,” he said, “Jesus, Marty, he means it. Lookit his face. He means it.”
The bartender was back. He said, “He’s not the only one means it,” and he leaned over and cuffed Marty on the side of the head, not lightly.
The blow caught the drunk by surprise; it also confused him. He blinked half a dozen times, rubbing his head. “Hey, Pete, what’s the idea, hah?”
“Shut up. Stick your nose in your drink and keep it there, you know what’s good for you.”
“Sure. Sure, I doan want no hassle with you, Pete.” He aimed one last weak glare my way, then hunched down and wrapped both hands around his glass. Pouting now, with his lower lip poked out like a three-year-old. He wasn’t seeing anybody or anything except his own alcoholic haze.
“Okay,” the bartender said to me in a different, almost respectful tone. “Nick’ll see you. First door past the ladies’ crapper.”
“I’ve been here before.”
“I ain’t surprised.”
I went back there, conscious of eyes following me, and knocked on the door and walked into a mostly barren office that stank of cigar smoke and fried food. It had two men in it, Kinsella and a lopsided, three-hundred-pound giant with a heavy five-o’clock shadow and a gold earring that gave him the look of a dim-witted pirate. One of the shark’s enforcers, no doubt. Kinsella sat bulging behind a cherrywood desk. He had three chins and a waistline as big as the giant’s, though he was seven or eight inches shorter. The two of them wore grease on their mouths and fingers, courtesy of a bucket of fast-food fried chicken squatting on the desk.
I shut the door behind me. “Long time, Nick.”
“Long time,” he agreed. “You want some chicken? We got plenty. Extra-crispy.”
“No, thanks. Not hungry.”
“Wish I could say the same. I got the curse — I’m always hungry.” He hoisted a wad of soiled paper towel off his lap, wiped his fingers and dabbed almost delicately at his mouth. “I won’t ask how you been. I figure I know the answer. I figure I got a pretty good idea why you come around to see me.”
“Is that right?”
“I read four papers every day,” he said, “watch the TV news every night. I like to know what’s going on. You come close to it last night, my friend.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Close.”
“I’m relieved it’s only close. I don’t like funerals, and I figure I’d’ve had to go to yours out of respect.”
“I guess I should be flattered.”
“Nah. I don’t like funerals but I go to a lot of ’em because I know a lot of people that die sudden.” He pulled a chicken leg out of the bucket, tore off a chunk of meat with teeth so white and perfect they had to be implants. “Go ahead, eat, Bluto,” he said to the giant. “You don’t have to stand there like a lump with drool on your mouth.”
The giant helped himself. Chewing, Kinsella said to me, “Bluto ain’t his real name. I call him that on account of he reminds me of the guy in Popeye. You sure you don’t want some chicken?”