Valencia Street on a Friday night is an hormiguero. Suburbanites afraid of their own shadow crawling around in groups of ten. Sometimes more. One of them was standing on the corner, speaking into his little cell phone, asking for directions, looking like a character in that TV show
Lost
. It’s for them the ruins are being created, the families forced out, the murals destroyed. The other night I overheard one of them ask, “What’s this neighborhood called?” And her blond friend replied, “I don’t know, but it used to be called the Mission.”
I slid behind the counter at the Havana Social Club, the walls covered with the photos of poetas, famous and obscure, many of them dead. I ordered the specialty of the house,
ropa vieja
. Don Victor had the box booming “Chan Chan” by Compay Segundo. I’d just heard that Compay had checked out after ninety-three years of smoking cigars and that his real name was Francisco Repilado. This year my poet-friend-brother Pedro Pietri had moved to the other barrio, too. And today was the anniversary of my
comadre’s
death, whom I’d known thirty years. Now there were seven more checked into the other barrio.
The dead were all around me, urging me to keep on living, to keep their memory alive.
I paid up about midnight and still had two hours to kill.
I stepped outside and there was a white SUV with its engine running at the curb. Two creeps with necks like wrestlers sat inside. The uglier one rolled out.
“You Morales?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Mike Callahan wants to speak with you.”
“I’ll have to check my social calendar.”
The creep said nothing but opened the back door for me. He was maybe six-feet-four, three hundred pounds with his suit on.
“I was going that way myself,” I said.
I named the muscle-head driving
Huey
, and the ugly one
Dewey
. I knew Callahan, Irish Mafioso, head of a renegade builder’s association; he moved around City Hall like a man with a lot of muscle behind him, which he had. Muscle, but not the brains. The thugs he’d sent to pick me up were quiet the whole time they drove. Except when Dewey farted and Huey said to him in all seriousness, “God bless you.”
We drove to another part of the city. We were in that industrial area near the freeway. A long time ago, we used to play in these empty lots as kids; riding our bikes down Pot Hill, as we called it. Now, giant commercial buildings, all chrome and steel, were in the throes of birth. We went under the freeway, took a side road behind a construction site, and parked. We were in Mission Creek. I knew this place well, another childhood hangout where we’d gone swimming. Now, fancy houseboats were docked with an occasional massive catamaran or sailboat. The pier creaked like backpacks on Guatemalan Indians. Nearby, the freeway roared with traffic headed downtown, and I could see the skyline of the city like a giant neon dollar sign flashing billions.
Huey indicated I should go to dock number 10. It was a fancy houseboat, but without any class; in fact, it was painted whorehouse-red. Callahan was alone in the back room, the air thick with scotch I could smell from where I was standing, ten feet away. He indicated I should sit down.
“You smoke cigars, Morales?” He was about to light a big stogie with a gold-plated lighter.
“I hate cigars and Republicans.”
“Don’t be so uptight. We’re relaxing…follow me?”
“Okay. So we’re relaxing…”
“You know what these are?” He handled the stogie like a pool stick in his big hamlike hands. “
Cohibas
. The finest of all Cuban cigars.” He let that sink in for a moment. “And—illegal in this country.”
“What’s it to do with me?”
“Hey—I’m trying to show you that we all have our imperfections. But you’re not listening. So what you pissed off about? Go on, spit it out.”
“I cited the Apache Hotel.”
“The one that burned?”
“But never for a fire hazard. Because none existed.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“It burned on my watch. I’m the fall guy, and I don’t want to be the fall guy.”
“If that’s what you’re worried about…”
“You don’t get it. Seven people died. I don’t think it was an accident.”
“It was a fleabag hotel. Everything changes.”
“It’s against city ordinance to tear down low-income housing.”
He shrugged. “Someone was careless…that’s the way to look at it. It won’t be an inconvenience to you.”
The way they looked at people as an inconvenience made me sick.
“Why don’t you explain it to the seven stiffs in the morgue?”
He rose from his chair, cigar swinging in his mouth. “Take a look outside. There, out the window.” He gestured to the lit-up skyline, the buildings glowing, sucking up whole dinosaur herds of energy, perched like toxic towers spewing radiation. “That there, let me tell you, is the highway to the future. You can ride it or you can, well…be run over by it.” He laughed at his own joke, his jowls trembling with fat.
To me it seemed like a nightmare. “I intend to find the source of the Apache Hotel fire…in case you’re wondering.”
His eyes turned gray like those of a great white shark. “You have a loft that’s not warranted. It’s, ah, how shall I say?…a safety hazard.”
“I have the permits.”
“That’s a matter of opinion. One of your neighbors might file a complaint. Claim it was illegal.”
“We’re all illegal here. Except the Rammaytush. And we killed them all.”
“So you’re a do-gooder, is that it? Look, Morales, nobody appreciates a smart-ass like you stirring up trouble for other people. Let me remind you—with your illegal loft, your shit smells just as bad. So think about it.”
He went back to his cigar and I knew the interview was over.
Huey was waiting for me.
“That’s all right,” I said. “I’ll walk.”
At 2:00 in the morning, Sixteenth and Valencia is a current of human electricity, AC-DC all the way. I’d caught the last show at Esta Noche, the tranny club on Sixteenth. I wanted to see “La Jessica,” advertised as one of the most beautiful illusionists in the world. The soft spotlight in the smoky club made her indeed seem beautiful, at least the illusion of beauty, draped in sequins and sheer glittering gowns that gave the impression she had a body like Angelina Jolie.
But at 3 a.m., when La Jessica was out of costume, she looked like any other vato hanging around waiting to pick up a drunk to bounce or bed for money.
She smoked a filtered cigarette and the apple in her throat bobbed with each phrase.
“Mira, I was standing right here,
mismito
. And the flames just shot up at once, dios mio, it was like a
woosh
, licking up the side of the building.”
“The flames didn’t come from inside of the hotel?”
“No, chulo, from the outside.”
“What else you see?”
“Two men running away.”
“You sure of that?”
“I’m sure they were men. As sure as I’m La Jessica.”
That was proof enough for me. That and the burned-out hulk of the building across the street, standing like some pre-Hispanic ruins in the jungles of the city.
“These men, could you identify them?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe? Did you get a good look at them?”
“Well, they had big muscles, they were you know, muy fuerte.”
I thanked La Jessica and went home to Alabama Street. I would have to return the next day, sift around for evidence. I walked into my loft without turning on the lights, without checking for messages, just letting the glow from the street fill up the emptiness inside me.
I had nightmares, screams and bodies burning, people leaping from buildings to their deaths. I woke up early and reached for my file. There wasn’t much there—kinda like Oakland. The notes on my three visits, including the one Wednesday, three days ago, described the minor stuff I’d cited. The listed owner was
F. Delgado, et al
. The address was on South Van Ness, one of those old Victorian mansions in the heart of the barrio. It was on my way to the ruins of the Apache Hotel, so I dropped by on the off chance F. Delgado might be around. I didn’t know what I was going to say, but I can look someone in the eye and right away tell you if they’re up to something evil.
In another century, the nineteenth to be exact, South Van Ness was millionaire’s row. Victorian mansions lined the blocks, ornate ladies in wood lace and wrought-iron curlicues. Even old man Spreckles, the sugar baron, had his digs here, on the corner of Twenty-first and South Van Ness. Later, after the earthquake, most of these notable scoundrels parked their hats on Snob Hill, leaving the best weather to us poor folks in the flats.
At the door of one of these mansions from that era, all restored and pretty, I knocked once, twice, nothing happened. After I leaned on the doorbell, a maid finally cracked the door, but kept the security chain latched.
“Look lady,” I said, “I carry no stinking badges.”
She blinked once but didn’t budge. So I repeated: “No soy policía. Busco a un tal F. Delgado.”
“No Delgado here…this Señora Lopez house.”
Then a voice came from behind the door: “What’s the matter, Carmen?”
A woman I had not seen in years and thought I would never see again stepped out. Sofia Nido was beautiful as ever. And seeing her brought back that summer in Puerto Escondido, so long ago it seemed like another lifetime. Ten years ago we had spent a torrid summer together, dancing on tables, making love on the beach, living like the apocalypse was here. But to her it had been a fling; she had come back to her fiancé, and we had gone our separate ways. I had never gotten over her and had drunk many a beer in her memory.
“Roberto—what are you doing here?”
“I guess I could ask you the same thing. I came to see a certain F. Delgado. Ring a bell?”
“Can’t say that it does. But maybe my aunt might know. I’m her attorney.”
“Any chance I can talk to her?”
“What’s this about Roberto? Are you with the police? That is so unbecoming of you.”
“It’s a bit complicated.”
“I see. My aunt is very ill. She really can’t see anyone right now.”
“Maybe when she feels better?”
“Perhaps. But Roberto, excuse me, I’m late for an appointment. Can I give you a ride anywhere?”
“I’m on my way to Sixteenth and Valencia.” It didn’t faze her, which was a good sign. I wanted to see how she’d react to the fire scene. But I forgot all about that watching her drive, her profile like an Indian goddess, her eyes big and dark.
She drove a red roadster and moved smoothly into traffic headed down South Van Ness. “I hardly recognize you, Roberto. So, you’re with the city?”
“Department of Building Inspection. I go after deadbeat landlords who don’t provide habitable housing. And with rents so high, many landlords are ripping someone off. Especially in this barrio. And you—why such short hair?”
“I’m between men. Short hair makes me feel in control.”
“Yes…and my girlfriend just left me.”
“You mean you’ve lost your touch with women?”
“It happened when I lost you.”
She looked at me hard and I wished I hadn’t said that.
But she didn’t slap me, so I changed the subject and took a crazy chance. “Say, there’s a band playing tonight from Nueva York. You feel like maybe…?”
She shook her head, in exasperation, I guess. “I can’t believe you asked me that. I guess I’m an idiot, but sure, why not? Haven’t gone salsa dancing in years.”
I bailed out at Sixteenth and Valencia. “Pick me up around 9:00, in front of the old can factory. Later, alligator.”
I watched her drive away. My emotions were so tangled up knowing how dangerous it was to be involved with her. And yet, that was exactly what I was doing. It wasn’t till later that I realized I’d forgotten to check her reaction to the smoldering remains of the Apache Hotel.
A chain-link fence surrounded the area. Two cops were guarding the site, looking bored. A big tractor inside the gates was headed for the burned-out walls. I whipped out my camera, but one of them jumped in my face.
“Morales—what the hell you want?”
“Photos of the site.”
“For your scrapbook? Get outta here.”
Then the tractor slammed into the building and knocked down half a wall.
“Hey, you’re destroying evidence. Who gave you the right?”
“You’re a day late. The D.A. has all the photos they need.”
“How can he, if you’re knocking down the building?”
“Are you doubting me, you flat-assed Mexican?”
“Look, Johnson, I know you hate my guts, but seven people died here. I want to know why.”
“I bet you do. It’s on your ass, isn’t it? You’re the one that overlooked the fire hazards. This is on your conscience. If liberals like you have a conscience.”
“Have it your way, pin-head.”
The word was already out on the street, the frame was on. The bulldozer had knocked down the side of the building facing Valencia Street, but the fire had started on the Sixteenth Street side. I stood in front of Esta Noche and shot a whole roll, clearly showing the charred side of the building where La Jessica claimed to have first seen the flames. It was obvious to me what had happened. Something had caught on fire in the passageway, right underneath the fire escape. The bastards could have spared the fire escape, giving those inside a chance to get out.
I saw Johnson on his walkie-talkie, so I made myself scarce.
I wanted to meet with La Jessica again. Show her the photos and have her mark where she saw the two men and the flames.
I went back to the bar on Twenty-fourth Street to drink a beer with the yellow dot on the neck and mull over the file. I went over my notes and wrote down everything that had happened. It was clear someone was trying to bury this thing, and quick. It was too messy for them. But who were they? Who was F. Delgado and the
et al
? They owned the Apache Hotel; their business address, the one on South Van Ness. I figured Sofia’s aunt was part of the
et al
, and Sofia was lying to protect her. Or, Sofia didn’t know anything about it—but as her aunt’s attorney, that seemed far-fetched. As a precaution, I left my files, my notes, and my camera with Miss Mary, and just kept the empty briefcase.