The Angels of Catastrophe Read Free

Exiting the Federal Building, he conjured up a plan. He’d commence his search with a visit to Hunt’s Donuts and was confident he would find the man by night-fall. All he had to do was walk the streets and talk to people. Jimmy had a public profile; someone would know where he was. It would be a cinch. A breeze.
    Walking with an awkward limp, a condition that had afflicted him since birth, he toddled south on Mission Street toward the doughnut shop, humping it past Lady Seikko’s Japanese Restaurant. He remembered what Kulak had said about Paul Stevens, him being the prime suspect in the cop’s murder.
    Durrutti had met Paul four years ago while shackled to a modular concrete bench in the city prison’s holding cell at 850 Bryant Street. They were the only prisoners
in the fly-smeared, blood-spattered, whitewashed pen. Paul was wearing a nurse’s medical smock, a pair of dungarees and tan desert boots. Tall and gray-haired with humorous blue-green eyes, his paste-white face was gaunt and covered with a weedy field of beard. He introduced himself by saying, “Don’t listen to any of the assholes in this place. Never do that to yourself. You gotta be careful because everyone in here is just a worthless fuck, swear to God.”
    It made sense to Durrutti. He took Paul’s advice to heart and they started to talk. The hoosegow quickly filled up with parole violators, winos and burglars, the usual Monday night suspects. Booking was slow—the warders were the county sheriffs and they were moving only as fast as their union contract made them—he and Paul Stevens had plenty of time to get acquainted. Durrutti had been busted on a public nuisance charge and for resisting arrest after getting shortchanged by the cashier in a Mission Street taqueria. He expected to be treated with respect. When he didn’t get any, he usually ended up in jail. This was the fourteenth time so far. Paul said he was taken into custody for fighting with a cop by the Midnight Sun bar on Eighteenth Street.
    Paul spoke a little more about himself, declaring how one summer a few years back he’d shot at a cop on Albion Street near the Valencia Gardens housing project. He did seven years in Soledad Prison for it. The policeman was John Bigarani, notorious for repeatedly attacking and beating Bob Kaufman, a union organizer and an outspoken poet. Kaufman had passed away penniless and sick
in the streets at the age of sixty—no doubt helped to the cemetery by what Bigarani had done to him.
    Paul confessed all this in a quick rush. It was a warm night and everyone in the slammer was getting loud and crazy. Prisoners were screaming and the noise traveled the long corridor from the felony tanks to the holding cell. Paul told his story like he was lounging in a cafe on Valencia Street drinking beers. Being in jail didn’t bug him. He was better at it than Durrutti. Penal hardened and more experienced.
    The last time he’d seen Paul alive was on a glorious July afternoon, pollen plagued and steaming hot; no fog anywhere. The sidewalks that day were swollen with French and Irish tourists fresh off the bus from the Mission Dolores Church. Durrutti had been trying to procure an ounce of sinsemilla, but a drought in the Mission had wiped out everyone’s supplies—even the semilegal medical cannabis clubs couldn’t come up with anything. In desperation, he’d gone over to Dolores Park, looked around and noticed the cops had driven the Salvadoreño nickel bag dealers out of the park.
    Moping around the Roxie Cinema on Sixteenth Street, he bumped into Paul Stevens eating lunch at Cafe Picaro. He was having rock cod and broccoli over a bed of white jasmine rice. Paul was modeling a hound’s-tooth check overcoat and smoking a cigarette in his left hand while he ate with his right hand. Durrutti told him what was up and Paul was glad to help. He said, “No problem. You need some fucking