Taste of Tenderloin (14 page)

Nausea and
blackness.

Nathan blinked at two
fuzzy
faces. “Uh—”

His gasp was cut short by
assorted hurting: the throbbing of his nose, a duller ache from the
back of his head, and the much sharper pain of his side, like a
sliver of steel lodged between the ribs under his right
arm.

He threw up.

Even after catching his
breath, Nathan couldn’t speak. His throat and mouth burned from his
own vile juices. All he could manage was a slight groan.

“
Okay, okay, take it easy,”
one of the blurred faces said gruffly.

The other face leaned in
closer, speaking in a soothing whisper, “You’ll be okay, Nate, an
ambulance is on its way. You aren’t hurt too bad.”

Not too bad? He felt like
he’d been run over by a truck.

Nathan blinked, squinting
through the veil of pain, trying to see clearly the woman behind
the gentle voice. The fuzzy face slowly took shape: bright, dark
eyes, big smile, and the whitest teeth. It was the young woman who
worked over at St. Anthony’s, who always spoke to him in her
friendly, hoarse voice. He’d seen her that afternoon when he had
eaten over there. Her nametag read...?

LuLu
, that was it.

Nathan tried unsuccessfully
to smile. Instead, he grimaced and groaned, his nose still dripping
blood, his head still aching, and his right side, when he breathed
deeply, feeling like someone was stabbing him with an ice
pick.

The woman leaned closer,
gently wiping his bloody face with a wet cloth of some kind.
“Could’ve been a lot worse. That nutty Eug had a razor and would’ve
cut your throat. This will help.”

She lifted his head,
putting something under to support it, and pushed the palm of her
other hand squarely against his forehead.

Whoa!

Nathan flinched back from
the unexpected sensation. It felt like he’d been hit with an icy
lighting bolt right between the eyes the exact moment LuLu’s bare
palm had touched his skin. He groaned again, his vision tunneling
as the electricity traveled from his head down his spine, cramping
every muscle in his body. His back arched up violently—

Blackness.

Nathan awakened four hours
later
in the trauma center at San Francisco
General Hospital, the nurses confirming LuLu’s initial diagnosis
that he wasn’t hurt too badly and was in little danger from his
assorted injuries, except for the possibility of a bad concussion.
Black Angus and his buddies had broken Nathan’s nose and cracked
two ribs, but that was the extent of any serious damage. The back
of his head and his chest were badly bruised, but internally he was
only shaken up. Nathan made it through the night okay, until the
announcement the next morning when the doctor came in with some
preliminary test results. They’d done a CAT scan and an EEG as
precautionary measures because of the concussion. Through a heavy
drug haze, Nathan learned that he appeared to be okay physically,
but his brain wave pattern was not quite normal. Instead, it
resembled that of an epileptic. The doctor was not sure if this was
caused by the recent beating or perhaps just his normal base. They
wanted to keep him in the hospital, under medication, for a few
days of more observation and testing.

The medical staff learned
little from the additional tests, including a MRI, other than that
the abnormal brain wave pattern was probably “normal” for Nathan.
They would have preferred to study him more, but the city’s main
hospital for street people was understaffed and overworked, so the
doctors reluctantly released him Wednesday afternoon with a
prescription for Tylenol-codeine that Nathan never
filled.

Oddly, from day one back on
the street he experienced no withdrawal symptoms, no booze or dope
calls. None. But on Wednesday night, back at Hotel Reo, Nathan
experienced the first of his seizure-alterations after taking off
his clothes for a warm sponge bath at the rust-stained sink in his
room. The same thing recurred Thursday night. He wandered around,
making faces and gestures at people who couldn’t see him, laughing
like a simple-minded fool.

The night after the
jelly
doughnut escapade, Nathan sat quietly
on the foot of his bed, still trying to get a grip on the
situation.

Obviously, he was a changed
person, gifted with a special ability; a
better
person, if what had happened
had permanently cured his drinking problem. Unfortunately, whatever
was going on hadn’t wiped out the previous decade. When he’d left
the hospital after the accident ten years before, his wife and son
gone, he’d taken up a new life in the Tenderloin and a new career
as a stumblebum. A lifestyle not easy to shed.

Nathan shook his head,
making up his mind to retain the memory of his wife and son, but
realizing it was past time to let go of the guilt. That part of his
life was over. Being a drunken bum did nothing for Geri or Davy
except disgrace their memory. Maybe, with the special ability, he
was being offered a second chance to turn his life
around.

Nathan laughed at
himself.

If he were being offered an
escape from his sordid existence, he was indeed squandering it,
wandering around making stupid faces at people who couldn’t see him
and stealing jelly doughnuts. He should be doing something more
substantial, something that
would allow him
to rehabilitate himself, maybe escape the Te
nderloin, move on, do something significant with his remaining
years.

The thought sobered
Nathan.

What could he do with his
special ability?

Like up at All-Star Donuts,
he could walk into any place he liked and take whatever he
needed.
Money!
The
thought excited him.

Where?

Banks were his first
thought.

But at night, when the
transformation worked?

No. Besides, banks would
cause an uproar and involve the media, the FBI.

What about groceries,
liquor stores?

They’d raise a lot of
attention too, and the cops...

The solution made him burst
out with a laugh because it was so simple, and for sure there’d be
no fuss afterward with the law.

He’d rob Dana
5-Diamond.

A Dealer Known as Dana
5-D

That afternoon, Nathan
finally found
the man he was looking for
hanging out in front of the Korean grocery on the corner of
Leavenworth and O’Farrell. Short Stuff. Double S.

“
Hey, Nate, ya lookin’
good, man, ya gettin’ lotsa sun or somepin’,” the legless black man
on the scooterboard said, knuckling Nathan’s fist.
“Whassup?”

“
Yeah, getting out and
walking during the day and giving up the booze, man,” Nathan
explained, his tone serious. Double S had probably heard this a
hundred times on the street, from a hundred dudes, with ninety-nine
out of the hundred eventually backsliding. But Nathan meant what he
said, and it probably showed in his eyes. The perceptive street
hustler picked up on it.

Double S nodded, grinning
broadly. “Agreein’ wif ya, man. Right on!”

Nathan slipped the man a
couple of bills. “Need some info, Double S. Where’s Dana
5-Diamond’s game tonight? And who’s playing?”

The man squinted, eyeing
Nathan curiously. “Ya don’t plan on takin’ up gamblin’ now, do
ya?”

Shaking his head, Nathan
lied. “No. Location’s for a friend of mine, gambler
friend.”

“
Well he better be holdin’,
ya know what I’m sayin’?” Double S handed Nathan a note with the
address scribbled down. “Buy-in ten large. Only one local,
Herbie-the-Heist, an’ three heavies comin’ over the bridge from
Oakland, unnerstan’?”

Nathan took the address and
nodded. There would be lots of money in Dana 5-D’s game, and
fortunately he knew what the Herbie, the ex-bank robber, looked
like. “Hey, thanks…for my friend,” he said, with a sly
smile.

Double S winked
back.

Around 9:00 p.m. that
night,
Nathan waited beside a gated entry
to an apartment building down on Taylor: eight stories high,
recently painted, looking real nice. But still in the ‘loin. Dana
5-D knew her roots.

After a few minutes, a
black Chrysler limo pulled up and double-parked; the driver hustled
out and around to open the back door. Herbie-the-Heist stepped out,
hatless but wearing a classy grey herringbone topcoat. He stepped
up to the gate, buzzed the bell, and growled something into the
intercom.

The gate popped open.
Unnoticed, Nathan closely followed the gambler into the
building.

Inside a third floor
apartment, Herbie paused just inside a large living room, taking
off his coat as a jacketed big guy carefully swept him with a metal
detector. Herbie was unarmed. Nathan slipped into the room behind
him and looked around.

The dimly-lit place was
sparsely furnished. A bar was set up against the wall next to a
coat rack to the left of the door, manned by another jacketed husky
man. Centered in the middle of the dark room stood a green-felted,
hexagonal card table with drink wells. One shaded lamp hung down
from the ceiling and shined brightly on the green felt, giving it
the appearance of a pool table.

Dana 5-D was dealing, of
course. Her huge bald-headed bodyguard, Pee Wee, stood right behind
her. Stacks of red and blue chips were within easy reach to her
right on the table, and on a chair beside the dealer’s right knee
was a closed dark grey tin box—the bank.

Herbie leaned across the
table to hand the dealer his buy-in, a thin stack of banded
hundreds. She stood to accept both them and his
greeting.

“
Dana, good to see you.
You’re looking gorgeous as usual.”

The tall, pretty brunette’s
cheeks flushed. She sat back down, nodded and smiled, apparently
embarrassed slightly by the offhand compliment, but Nathan saw the
green dollar signs momentarily register in her brown eyes,
betraying the real source of her temporary loss of poise. Dana 5-D
dropped the banded hundreds into the tin box and slid six stacks of
chips across the table to an empty spot.

“
Sit down there, Herb. You
know everyone here?”

Herbie-the-Heist nodded and
shook hands with the other three players from Oakland, who, like
the ex-bank robber, were all middle-aged, nondescript white men
wearing short sleeve dress shirts without ties. Their coats hung in
a row by the bar; none of the men were familiar to
Nathan.

“
What are you drinking,
Herb?” Dana 5-D asked, beckoning the bartender over.

“
Bushmills and water,”
Herbie said, glancing around the table at the other men, their
places marked by their stacks of chips and nearly-full glasses in
the drink wells. He took the empty place indicated beside the
dealer, making himself comfortable. Conspicuously missing from the
table were ashtrays. No one was ever allowed to smoke at the table
in a Dana 5-D game. Nathan grinned to himself, having counted on
the well-known house rule in his simple game plan.

Unnoticed by anyone in the
room, including Pee Wee and the other two obviously armed thugs,
Nathan moved quietly around the table, stopping near the chair
bearing the closed tin box, waiting for his moment.

At about ten-thirty, after
a dozen or so hands, one of the Oakland players stood up, pulled a
pack of Camels from his shirt pocket, and asked Dana 5-D, “Okay to
take a smoke break?”

“
In the hall outside,” the
dealer replied, standing up and stretching her distance-runner’s
body. “Restroom down the hall,” she indicated to the other
players.

As the gamblers all rose
and shuffled around, Nathan snatched up the tin box, tucked it
under his arm, and quietly followed the smoker to the door. The
doorman unlocked it, leaned out and checked the hallway, then
pointed out an urn down near the elevator. “Use that.”

Nathan slipped out the door
close behind the Oakland gambler, the tin box hugged tightly
against his clear-taped ribs. In the hall, he walked quietly past
the man lighting his cigarette near the elevator and continued a
few steps to the stairwell. With his heart thumping, Nathan
sprinted down the three flights of stairs, out the front door, and
finally arrived onto Taylor Street before gasping for breath and
looking back over his shoulder.

No one had
followed.

On the street headed for
home, Nathan couldn’t restrain a loud laugh and a “Hooyaw!” that
startled a pair of tall-legged transvestites loitering arm-in-arm
near a white fire hydrant, waving at passing cars.

I really did it!
Nathan thought, hurrying toward Jones Street and
the safety of the Reo Hotel. It had been easy, a piece of
cake.

A few steps from home
Nathan slowed, suddenly aware of the creepy sensation of being
watched…or followed. It raised the hair on the back of his
neck.
Jesus, not now.