She thought, This is what it is to be an animal. Just experience — direct, instant, and wordless; memory and recognition, but no words. A poet with my senses could spend a lifetime trying to describe what it is to hear a building breathe and smell the aging of concrete. And for what? Why write a song when no one can play the notes or understand the lyrics? I'm alone.
Cavuto came through the double doors of the emergency room and joined Rivera, who was standing by the brown, City-issue Ford smoking a cigarette.
"What was the call?" Cavuto asked.
"We got another one. Broken neck. South of Market. Elderly male."
"Fuck," Cavuto said, yanking open the car door. "What about blood loss?"
"They don't know yet. This one's still warm." Rivera flipped his cigarette butt into the parking lot and climbed into the car. "You get anything more out of LaOtis?"
"Nothing important. They weren't doing their laundry, they went in looking for the girl, but he's sticking with the ninja story."
River started the car and looked at Cavuto. "You didn't rough him up?"
Cavuto pulled a Cross pen out of his shirt pocket and held it up. "Mightier than the sword."
Rivera cringed at the thought of what Cavuto might have done to LaOtis with the pen. "You didn't leave any marks, did you?"
"Lots," Cavuto grinned.
"Nick, you can't do that kind of —"
"Relax," Cavuto interrupted. "I just wrote, 'Thanks for all the information; I'm sure we'll get some convictions out of this, on his cast. Then I signed it and told him that I wouldn't scratch it out until he told me the truth."
"Did you scratch it out?"
"Nope."
"If his friends see it, they'll kill him."
"Fuck him," Cavuto said. "Ninja redheads, my ass."
Four in the morning. Jody watched neon beer signs buzzing color across the dew-damp sidewalks of Polk Street. The street was deserted, so she played sensory games to amuse herself — closing her eyes and listening to the soft scratch of her sneakers echoing off the buildings as she walked. If she concentrated, she could walk several blocks without looking, listening for the streetlight switches at the corners and feeling the subtle changes in wind currents at the cross streets. When she felt she was going to run into something, she could shuffle her feet and the sound would form a rough image in her mind of the walls and poles and wires around her. If she stood quietly, she could reach out and form a map of the whole City in her head — sounds drew the lines, and smells filled in the colors.
She was listening to the fishing boats idling at the wharf a mile away when she heard footsteps and opened her eyes. A single figure had rounded the corner a couple of blocks ahead of her and was walking, head down, up Polk. She stepped into the doorway of a closed Russian restaurant and watched him. Sadness came off him in black waves.
His name was Philip. His friends called him Philly. He was twenty-three. He had grown up in Georgia and had run away to the City when he was sixteen so he wouldn't have to pretend to be something he was not. He had run away to the City to find love. After the one-night stands with rich older men, after the bars and the bathhouses, after finding out that he wasn't a freak, that there were other people just like him, after the last of the confusion and shame had settled like red Georgia dust, he'd found love.
He'd lived with his lover in a studio in the Castro district. And in that studio, sitting on the edge of a rented hospital bed, he had filled a syringe with morphine and injected it into his lover and held his hand while he died. Later, he cleared away the bed pans and the IV stand and the machine that he used to suck the fluid out of his lover's lungs and he threw them in the trash. The doctor said to hold on to them — that he would need them.
They buried Philly's lover in the morning and they took the embroidered square of fabric that was draped on the casket and folded it and handed it to him like the flag to a war widow. He got to keep it for a while before it was added to the quilt. He had it in his pocket now.
His hair was gone from the chemotherapy. His lungs hurt, and his feet hurt; the sarcomas that spotted his body were worst on his feet and his face. His joints ached and he couldn't keep his food down, but he could still walk. So he walked.
He walked up Polk Street, head down, at four in the morning, because he could. He could still walk.
When he reached the doorway of a Russian restaurant, Jody stepped out in front of him and he stopped and looked at her.
Somewhere, way down deep, he found that there was a smile left. "Are you the Angel of Death?" he asked.
"Yes," she said.
"It's good to see you," Philly said.
She held her arms out to him.
Chapter 21
Angel Dust
The bed of Simon's pickup was full of beer-sodden Animals enjoying the morning fog and speculating on the marital status of the new cashier. She had smiled at Tommy when she arrived, driving the Animals into a psychosexual frenzy.
"She looked like she was being towed through the store by two submarines," said Simon.
"Major hooters," said Troy Lee. "Major-league hooters."
Tommy said, "Can't you guys see more in a woman than T and A?"
"Nope," said Troy.
"No way," said Simon.
"Spoken like a guy who has a live-in girlfriend," said Lash.
"Yeah," Simon said. "How come we never see you with the little woman?"
"Seagull! "shouted Barry.
Simon pulled a pump shotgun from under a tarp in the truck bed, tracked on a seagull that was passing over, and fired.
"Missed again!" shouted Barry.
"You can't kill them all, Simon," Tommy said, his ears ringing from the blast. "Why don't you just cover your truck at night?"
Simon said. "You don't pay for twenty coats of hand-rubbed lacquer to cover it up."
The shotgun went under the tarp and the manager came through the front doors of the store. "What was that? What was that?" He was scanning the parking lot frantically as if he expected to see someone with a shotgun.
"Backfire," Simon said.
The manager looked for the offending car.
"They were heading toward the Marina," Tommy said.
"Well, you tell me if they come back," the manager said. "There's a noise ordinance in this city, you know." He turned to go back into the store.
"Hey, boss," Simon called. "The new girl, what's her name?"
"Mara," the manager said. "And you guys leave her alone. She's had a rough time of it lately."
"She single?" Troy asked.
"Off limits," the manager said. "I mean it. She lost a child a few months ago."
"Yes, boss," the Animals said in unison. The manager entered the store.
Simon ripped a beer from a six-pack ring. He held another out to Tommy. "Fearless Leader, another brew?"
"No, I've got to get home."
"Me too," said Simon. "I've got to clean the bird shit off the beast. You need a ride?"
"Sure, can we stop in Chinatown? I want to pick something up for Jody."
Simon shook his head. "You worry me, son. Men have been pussy-whipped to death, you know." He downed his beer and crushed the can. "Out of the truck, girls; Fearless Leader and I have to shop for tampons."
"Pull!" Troy shouted.
A half dozen beer cans arced into the air. The shotgun came out and Simon pumped out two quick shots. The beer cans fell to the parking lot unharmed. The shotgun went under the tarp. The manager came through the front door.
Simon said, "I saw it, boss. Was a baby-blue 72 Nova with a stuffed gerbil on the aerial. Call it in."
Jody's hands were covered with a greasy dust: the remains of Philly. The body had decomposed to dust in seconds after she finished drinking, leaving a pile of empty clothes. After staring at the pile for a moment, she shook off the shock and gathered the clothes into a bundle, which she carried into a nearby alley.