“Congratulations,” Abatangelo said. “How’s it feel?”
Waxman sat down and tasted his coffee. “We bump a piece on the American Atheist Society. Twenty column inches somewhere between the obits and the weddings. No art.”
Abatangelo shrugged. “From tiny acorns,” he offered. He would have liked a stronger bid out of Waxman, but he told himself, Be patient. He slid the manila envelope containing the best of his prints- of Shel, the ranch house, the cars coming in and out- across the counter. “Just in case,” he said, trying to sound optimistic. Waxman accepted the envelope, then fingered the article lying out before him, folding it into sixes.
“One o’clock deadline,” he said. “This still needs tuning.” He removed his glasses and put his fingers, short and thick and freckled, to his eyes, massaging them in circles. “Take it to the tabs, Jew,” he murmured.
“You ride yourself too hard,” Abatangelo told him.
Waxman smiled wanly, finished his coffee and put his glasses back on. Away from his face, his hands shook.
“I’ve got two cats to feed,” he announced. He rose and searched his pockets for his keys.
They bid each other good night. Abatangelo, outside the cantina, watched while Waxman trudged uphill along Delores Park, brightened one moment, darkened the next, as he passed through successive wastes of lamplight. When he vanished finally into the shadowed doorway of his apartment building, Abatangelo turned away to find his car.
Steering toward home, he fidgeted with the radio and found a nightfly playing Ellington’s “The Midnight Sun Will Never Set”- winking horns, a Johnny Hodges solo insinuating flesh and romance. At Market and Church, streetlights flashed overhead in a winter mist. Derelicts and leather queens ignored the crosswalks, wandering the street in defiant oblivion. In a high lit window, a man with a sheet gathered around his neck got a midnight haircut from a woman in a red slip.
Abatangelo pictured Shel lying awake in his bed, dressed as he’d left her, in his sweatshirt and boxers. He imagined she’d be restless, staring at the walls. Probably her headaches had kept up. It still seemed a miracle of sorts she was even there.
He stopped at a corner market for another liter of Stolichnaya. Two Lebanese brothers manned the store- one scowled, the other offered a smile of dizzying falsity. Abatangelo asked the two brothers where the pay phone was, and in sudden, familial unison they pointed back toward the ice machine. He dialed his own number, preparing to apologize for not calling sooner. It rang ten times. Eleven times. Behind the register the smiling brother, mimicking a baseline fade-away, ash-canned a crumpled candy bar wrapper from ten feet.
“I not be stopped,” he shouted, fists in the air. “I am Hakeem.”
Abatangelo hung up, barged out of the grocery, threw himself behind the wheel of his car, and headed for North Beach. Don’t go off till you know there’s something to go off about, he told himself. She’s not your secretary, why would she answer your phone? She’s unplugged the damn thing. She’s asleep. He turned onto Columbus recklessly, tires catching the film of fresh oil the rain had lifted off the pavement. Abreast of The Smiling Child Market he braked so suddenly the car fishtailed across the center stripe. He nearly tagged the 30 Stockton heading downtown.
He parked and charged up the stairs. The door was locked, like he’d left it; he tried to believe that was a good sign. He opened and closed the door quietly, in case she was sleeping. Leaving the vodka in the kitchen, he continued back to the bedroom. A note rested atop the pillow on the unmade bed.
Dear Danny:
Don’t hate me, okay? I love you. I mean that. Bottom of my heart. Now and always. But there are people after me, people I don’t wish on anyone. Least of all you.
Don’t follow. You won’t find me.
– Shel
He read it twice, the paper rattling in his hands as he told himself not to panic. You won’t find me, she says. It wasn’t meant as a tease, he realized, she was trying to warn him off. But there was no way he could do as she asked. Follow? You bet. And I know just the place to start.
All things considered, though, a little insurance was called for.
He found a nearby pay phone and dialed. A vaguely toasted voice responded in a tone that suggested availability. “I’m here.”
“This is Dan. Dan Abatangelo.”
Surf music wailed in the background. After a moment, the voice on the other end shouted, “Right. Sure. I’m here.”
The man’s name was Jimmy Toretta. Abatangelo had met him at Dominic’s café. Toretta had introduced himself with an air of breezy respect and said they’d met in the neighborhood long ago. “I was just a kid, but you were a legend, man. Bad Dan. We all knew you around here.” Abatangelo took him for undercover and kept his distance. Then Marco, Dominic’s bartender, gave the all clear. “He’s nobody to worry about,” Marco said. “He’s just him. He operates. Talk to him, don’t talk to him. You’re good either way.” And so Abatangelo talked to him. Just once, at Dominic’s, over wine. Toretta had a boutique operation. Psychedelics. Exotic companions. Weaponry, for discriminating folk. Call anytime, Toretta said. You and me, we’re neighborhood.
“It’s late,” Abatangelo said, “I realize.”
“Not at all,” Toretta responded, turning the music down. “Nighttime. The right time.”
“This is sudden, too.”
“I can deal with sudden. I can deal with late.”
“Can we meet?”
“Sure,” Toretta said. “Absolutely. Know your way to the zoo?”
The zoo, Abatangelo thought, smelling a joke. “Be there in fifteen,” he offered. “West lot.”
“Whoa, chief.” Toretta chuckled. “Make it thirty. Walk, don’t run. Am I right?”
“Yeah. I’ll be there.”
“Me too. In thirty.”
Abatangelo made way for the park, then west on Cross-Over Drive to JFK. At Stern Grove he turned right onto Sloat then out to Ocean Beach. He parked in the west lot near the reflecting pool, spotting Toretta’s maroon Aerostar parked in the cobbled distance near the Irish Cultural Center. For all his talk about slowing it down, Abatangelo thought, he was the first to get here.
He walked to the van’s driver side window. “Anybody here?”
“Door’s open,” Toretta called out.
Inside the van, in the back, two refitted bucket seats faced each other across fireproof carpeting, with padlocked cabinets along each wall. Nothing lay in plain view. A slide window communicated to the front, also locked.
Toretta had a low-key visual style: Top-Siders, corduroy slacks, v-neck cardigan with a white T-shirt underneath. His hair was thick, his skin shone. Every woman’s idea of: Oh. The only thing- sometimes, fresh from the psychedelic kitchen, he smelled of ether.
“Mind if I smoke?” Toretta asked. The perfect host. Abatangelo waved his hand as a go-ahead, and Toretta lit his cigarette. His face yellowed, the eyes hollowed into shadow. He blew out his match, then drummed his fingers on his knee.
“I presume we’re talking a piece here,” Toretta said. “You know I can’t advance you, right? A straight five, up front.”
Abatangelo was at a loss at this, so he laughed. “I thought we were neighborhood, Toretta.”
Toretta exhaled smoke. “You can always try Anthony’s Gun Rack. Except, oh yeah, you’re a felon.”
“So you quote me a prick rate.”
“I smell risk.”
Abatangelo tapped his hands together uneasily. This was arrogance, not caution. He felt an urge to make a scene. “I need a piece. For protection. Where’s the risk in that?”
“I’m not hunting you down for my money.”
“Who says I’m going anywhere?”
Toretta trimmed the ash of his cigarette against the edge of his ashtray. “Just for the sake of knowing, why the rush?”
“It’s not your problem,” Abatangelo said. “Besides, you said sudden was no hassle, remember?”