The Angels of Catastrophe Read Free Page B

watched an indigo blue dusk settle over the cars and the pedestrians at the intersection of Castro and Seventeenth Streets near Orphan Andy’s hamburger shop and the Twin Peaks bar.
    A few minutes later Paul stepped out of Scott’s door and clambered down the staircase to where Durrutti was sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk. In his hands was a spotty brown paper bag. He punched Durrutti in the chest with the bag, saying matter-of-factly, “Here you are, kiddo. I hope you like it. If you don’t, what the fuck. It was the only thing he had.”
    Paul’s wan face was dappled with sweaty lines, acne buried in his stubble and sleepless smudges under his eyes. Durrutti opened the bag and had a glance at the weed. It was as bad as Paul said it would be. Brown-green Sinaloa cartel pot sprayed with pesticides. Paul bundled his coat around him and swaggered a step down the sidewalk, turning to beam at Durrutti with a sudden mischievous light in his eyes. He mashed his chewing gum and blew a spastic pink bubble. “Let’s go to K &H Liquors. I have to get me some cigarettes.” Paul consulted his wristwatch,
then coughed. “Shit, on the other hand, it’s later than I thought. I need to get back to the All-Star. Some people are coming over to sell me a radio.” He smiled again. “Days like this are a bitch, aren’t they?”
    Three weeks later he was dead.

    Hunt’s Donuts straddled the corner of Twentieth and Mission Streets advertising itself with a two-storied neon sign that had been broken for years. Floor to ceiling windows gave it the appearance of a fishbowl. Featuring cheap coffee and a wide selection of pastries, the doughnut shop was the home base of every minor league criminal in the Mission District, including Jimmy Ramirez. A slender, yellow skinned Mexican rigged out like a jazz musician in Sta-Prest green slacks, a sateen fedora, imitation Italian loafers, red lensed sunglasses and a droopy black leather coat, Jimmy wore a moderate pompadour and a fuzzy goatee. Sometimes he sold drugs, sometimes he didn’t. His bread and butter was moonlighting as a mechanic South of Market and as a lucrative sideline, he traded stolen car parts at flea markets in San Leandro and Watsonville.
    Jimmy’s partner was a black dude with a skyscraper Afro named Fleeta Bolton. Fleeta was prone to manic depressive mood swings and was more versatile than Jimmy when it came to making money. He hawked downers, burgled the nouveau antique furniture stores on Valencia Street and held a day job working as a sous chef in a chi-chi restaurant, the Foreign Cinema on Mission Street.

    Arriving at Hunt’s, Durrutti noticed it was half past noon. Except for the Salvadoreño ghetto cowboys who hung out there night and day, the fragrant bakery was vacant. Disappointed, Durrutti cursed under his breath. “Shit, I’m fucked.” He turned around and walked out the door, losing himself in the midday crowd as he moseyed toward the pseudo-Moorish spires of the El Capitán Hotel.

    In the industrial boom era after World War Two, the Mission District had been a honeycomb of residential hotels. The eastern corridor of the neighborhood had been laced with printing plants, warehouses, light manufacturing. All that had vanished, gone overseas to cheaper labor pools. The remaining single-room-occupancy hotels were getting burned down to the ground, arsoned by landlords wanting quick insurance settlements. The property was too valuable to let poor people live on it.
    The El Capitán was one of the few SRO’s left standing—the adobe brown building was an icon from the time when Mission Street had been known as the Miracle Mile. The hotel’s former grandeur was in its ornate facade, thrusting itself toward the sky, head and shoulders above the newer shops and prefab condominiums. Durrutti had been holed up in it for six months.
    After checking with the front desk for mail, he