"That's the way it is in the city," Eddie said. "Souls burning. All day long, all night long, souls on fire."
"Don't let it get to you."
"Don't it get to you?"
"… Yes. Sometimes."
He bobbed his head up and down. "You want to do something, you know? You want to try to fix it somehow, put out the fires. There has to be a way."
"I can't tell you what it is" I said.
He said, "If we all just did something. It ain't too late. You don't think it's too late?"
"No."
"Me neither. There's still hope."
"Hope, faith, blind optimism-sure."
"You got to believe," he said, nodding. "That's all, you just got to believe."
Angry voices rose suddenly from outside; a woman screamed, thin and brittle. Eddie came off the bed, hauled up the window sash. Chill damp air and street noises came pouring in: shouts, cries, horns honking, cars whispering on the wet pavement, a Muni bus clattering along Mission; more shrieks. He leaned out, peering downward.
"Look," he said, "look."
I stretched forward and looked. On the sidewalk below, a hooker in a leopard-skin coat was running wildly toward Howard; she was the one doing the yelling. Chasing behind her, tight black skirt hiked up over the tops of net stockings and hairy thighs, was a hideously rouged transvestite waving a pocket knife. A group of winos began laughing and chanting "Rape! Rape!" as the hooker and the transvestite ran zigzagging out of sight on Howard.
Eddie pulled his head back in. The flickery neon wash made his face seem surreal, like a hallucinogenic vision. "That's the way it is," he said sadly. "Night after night, day after day."
With the window open, the cold was intense; it penetrated my clothing and crawled on my skin. I'd had enough of it, and of this room and Eddie Quinlan and Sixth Street.
"Eddie, just what is it you want from me?"
"I already told you. Talk to somebody who understands how it is down there."
"Is that the only reason you asked me here?"
"Ain't it enough?"
"For you, maybe." I got to my feet. "I'll be going now."
He didn't argue. "Sure, you go ahead."
"Nothing else you want to say?"
"Nothing else." He walked to the door with me, unlocked it, and then put out his hand. "Thanks for coming. I appreciate it, I really do."
"Yeah. Good luck, Eddie."
"You too," he said. "Keep the faith."
I went out into the hall, and the door shut gently and the lock clicked behind me.
Downstairs, out of the Majestic, along the mean street and back to the garage where I'd left my car. And all the way I kept thinking: There's something else, something more he wanted from me… and I gave it to him by going there and listening to him. But what? What did he really want?
I found out later that night. It was all over the TV-special bulletins and then the eleven o'clock news.
Twenty minutes after I left him, Eddie Quinlan stood at the window of his room-with-a-view, and in less than a minute, using a high-powered semiautomatic rifle he'd taken from the sporting goods outfit where he worked, he shot down fourteen people on the street below. Nine dead, five wounded, one of the wounded in critical condition and not expected to live. Six of the victims were known drug dealers; all of the others also had arrest records, for crimes ranging from prostitution to burglary. Two of the dead were Baxter, the paraplegic Vietnam vet, and his bodyguard, Elroy.
By the time the cops showed up, Sixth Street was empty except for the dead and the dying. No more targets. And up in his room, Eddie Quinlan had sat on the bed and put the rifle's muzzle in his mouth and used his big toe to pull the trigger.
My first reaction was to blame myself. But how could I have known, or even guessed? Eddie Quinlan. Nobody, loser, shadow-man without substance or purpose. How could anyone have figured him for a thing like that?
Somebody I can talk to, somebody who'll understand-that's all I want.
No. What he'd wanted was somebody to help him justify to himself what he was about to do. Somebody to record his verbal suicide note. Somebody he could trust to pass it on afterward, tell it right and true to the world.
You want to do something, you know? You want to try to fix it somehow, put out the fires. There has to be a way.
Nine dead, five wounded, one of the wounded in critical condition and not expected to live. Not that way.
Souls burning. All day long, all night long, souls on fire.
The soul that had burned tonight was Eddie Quinlan's.
Bomb Scare
He was a hypertensive little man with overlarge ears and buck teeth-Brer Rabbit dressed up in a threadbare brown suit and sunglasses. In his left hand he carried a briefcase with a broken catch; it was held closed by a frayed strap that looked as though it might pop loose at any second. And inside the briefcase…
"A bomb," he kept announcing in a shrill voice. "I've got a remote-controlled bomb in here. Do what I tell you, don't come near me, or I'll blow us all up."
Nobody in the branch office of the San Francisco Trust Bank was anywhere near him. Lawrence Metaxa, the manager, and the other bank employees were frozen behind the row of tellers' cages. The four customers, me included, stood in a cluster out front. None of us was doing anything except waiting tensely for the little rabbit to quit hopping around and get down to business.
It took him another few seconds. Then, with his free hand, he dragged a cloth sack from his coat and threw it at one of the tellers. "Put all the money in there. Stay away from the silent alarm or I'll set off the bomb. I mean it."
Metaxa assured him in a shaky voice that they would do whatever he asked.
"Hurry up, then." The rabbit waved his empty right hand in the air, jerkily, as if he were directing some sort of mad symphony. "Hurry up, hurry up!"
The tellers got busy. While they hurriedly emptied cash drawers, the little man produced a second cloth sack and moved in my direction. The other customers shrank back. I stayed where I was, so he pitched the sack to me.
"Put your wallet in there," he said in a voice like glass cracking. "All your valuables. Then get everybody else's."
I said, "I don't think so."
"What? What?" He hopped on one foot, then the other, making the briefcase dance. "What's the matter with you? Do what I told you!"
When he'd first come in and started yelling about his bomb, I'd thought that I couldn't have picked a worse time to take care of my bank deposits. Now I was thinking that I couldn't have picked a better time. I took a measured step toward him. Somebody behind me gasped. I took another step.
"Stay back!" the little guy shouted. "I'll push the button, I'll blow us up."
I said, "No, you won't," and rushed him and yanked the briefcase out of his hand.
More gasps, a cry, the sounds of customers and employees scrambling for cover. But nothing happened, except that the little guy tried to run away. I caught him by the collar and dragged him back. His struggles were brief and half-hearted; he'd gambled and lost and he knew when he was licked.
Scared faces peered over counters and around corners. I held the briefcase up so they could all see it. "No bomb in here, folks. You can relax now, it's all over."
It took a couple of minutes to restore order, during which time I marched the little man around to Metaxa's desk and pushed him into a chair. He sat slumped, twitching and muttering. "Lost my job, so many debts… must've been crazy to do a thing like this… I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Poor little rabbit. He wasn't half as sorry now as he was going to be later.
I opened the case while Metaxa called the police. The only thing inside was a city telephone directory for weight.