Brian Freeman - The Crooked Street

Denny Clark emerged through a cloud of steam into the cold darkness of Chinatown.

The fragrance of ginger and jasmine, and the spitting sizzle of hot oil, chased him into the alley. His shoes tracked footprints outlined in pig’s blood onto the stone. He slammed the metal door behind him, silencing the chorus of voices bellowing in Mandarin from the restaurant kitchen. With sweat on his forehead, Denny breathed hard and nervously eyed the shadows. On either side of the walkway, brick buildings rose six stories over his head, and fire escapes clung to the walls. The alley-front shops were barred and padlocked. It was ten o’clock on Friday night.

He’d come here to deliver a warning, but he was too late. Mr. Jin was already gone. So was his son. No one had seen or heard from them for three long days.

Denny squinted at the faces in the alley. Two Chinese teenage girls chirped to each other as they zigzagged toward him in short skirts and high heels. A hooker serviced a bald client in the doorway of a massage parlor. Barely ten feet away, a homeless man bared his yellowed teeth and banged a copper mug against the pavement. Denny threw him some change from his pocket.

He clutched a phone in his damp palm. He’d written the number for Zingari on the back of his hand because he knew he might need it later. He struggled to read the numbers; the moisture on his skin had made the ink run. He dialed and waited as the phone in the busy Tenderloin restaurant rang and rang.

Finally, an impatient voice answered. Denny could hear a clarinet warbling jazz in the background.

“Is Chester there?” Denny asked.

“What?”

“Chester,” Denny repeated loudly and urgently, trying to cut through the noise. “I need to talk to Chester.”

“Hang on.”

The noise of the restaurant disappeared. He was put on hold, and he gripped the phone tightly as he waited. Maroon 5 kept him company, and he listened to “Payphone” all the way to the rap by Wiz Khalifa before a new voice came on the line.

“This is Virgil. Talk to me.”

“Virgil, it’s Denny Clark. I was looking for Chester.”

“Well, well, Denny. It’s been a long time, stranger. How come you haven’t had me out on the boat lately? I’m hurt. Devastated. In need of tequila.”

“I’m sorry, but this is important. I need to talk to Chester right away.”

I need to warn him, Denny thought.

“Well, you’re too late, amigo,” Virgil replied.

“What? What do you mean?”

“Chester decamped. Disembarked. Departed. Hit the highway. He decided San Francisco wasn’t cosmopolitan enough for him. He moved to — are you ready for this? — Pocatello, Idaho. As if that’s even a real place. He texted the manager yesterday and said he wants to be closer to his parents. Appalling. Not even a farewell drink.”

Denny squeezed his eyes shut. “Are you sure?”

“I’m staring at the bar now. The new bartender is some scary brunette with a lot of ink.”

“Okay. Thanks, Virgil.”

Denny hung up the phone. He squeezed his hand into a fist and pushed it against his forehead. Everything was crashing down around him. He knew Chester hadn’t moved to Idaho. He’d hung out with Chester since high school and knew that his parents were both dead. The text was a lie.

Chester was gone.

Mr. Jin and his son, Fox, were gone.

So was Carla.

Carla, his ex-wife, who’d been in and out of Denny’s life for a decade, who’d loved and hated him in equal measure. They’d gotten her, too.

Denny had taken BART under the bay three hours earlier to visit Carla’s apartment in Berkeley. The police were already there with squad cars and an ambulance outside the building. Suicide, they told him. Her roommate had found her in the rose-colored water of the bathtub. Carla had cut her wrists in two deep vertical slashes and bled out.

Another lie.

Carla hadn’t killed herself, not like that. As long as he’d known her, she’d been scared sick of the sight of blood. Even if she’d intended to kill herself, she would have chosen another way. And she would have left a note to make sure he felt guilty about what she’d done.

No, she’d been murdered. Just like the others. Carla, Chester, Mr. Jin, and Fox. To Denny, that meant only one thing.

He was next.

Denny hurried north through the Chinatown alley. Red-and-black graffiti painted the brick walls, and empty paper bags made cartwheels along the pavement. Banners with Chinese characters snapped like flags in the stiff breeze. He passed a Christian mission. A tea shop selling herbs and ginseng. A fortune cookie factory. Ahead of him, protesters pounded a war beat on their drums.

When he was almost to Jackson Street, a sixth sense made him spin around. He backed into a doorway out of the neon glow and watched the kitchen door of Mr. Jin’s restaurant. Something was wrong. Something had changed in the seconds since he’d walked away. Then he realized: The homeless man with the copper mug had vanished. He’d disappeared after Denny left.

There were no coincidences now. Denny was being watched. His enemy had eyes everywhere.

He waited for a gap among the pedestrians, then burst from the alley and ran. He weaved uphill, dodging past fruit markets and dim-sum restaurants. He veered across Jackson, drawing horns from the cars jammed up at the intersection. At the corner, he stopped and looked over his shoulder. The faces of the people on the sidewalk glowed red under paper lanterns hung over the street. He watched for someone breaking from the crowd in pursuit, but he saw no one. He turned and quickly walked away, head down. Two blocks later, he turned again. And then again. He kept going until he found another alley where the neighborhood was quiet and deserted.

He made a second phone call.

“It’s Denny,” he said.

“Denny? What’s up? Are you okay?”

“They’re all dead, you bastard. He killed them. Even Carla. And now he’s coming after me.”

There was a long pause on the line. “Slow down. What are you talking about? Who’s dead?”

“Everyone, all of them,” Denny replied. “Except me. I’m the last one. You think he’s going to let me walk away?”

“Where are you right now?”

“Chinatown.”

“I’ll come get you.”

“You?” Denny said. “No, I don’t think so. You got me into this.”

“Look, find a place to hide, and I’ll be there in half an hour.”

Denny didn’t reply. The only noise on the street was the raspy whistle of his own breathing. He stood next to a secondhand clothing shop and peered around the corner at the empty block. A streetlight illuminated the sidewalk close to him, but the opposite side was dark. Then a tiny flame came and went in the shadows, and the wind carried the smell of a cigarette across the asphalt.

He wasn’t alone. They’d already found him again.

Denny stared at the phone in his hand. “Are you tracking me?”

“What?”

“You gave me this phone. Did you tell him where to find me?”

“Denny, don’t be crazy. I can protect you.”

“This was a trap all along, wasn’t it?” Denny insisted. “You’re working for him. You planned this whole thing from the beginning.”

“No, stop, listen to me—”

Denny threw the phone sharply to the ground, where it smashed into pieces. He sprinted toward the far end of the alley. When he got to the next street, he shot a glance over his shoulder. In the same place where he’d made his phone call, a lone silhouette watched him from between the buildings. The man made no move to lay chase, as if he knew Denny had no way to escape. Denny ran anyway, as fast as his pounding heart allowed. He crossed Powell Street and climbed the next block to Mason, where cable car tracks stretched along the pavement. He’d left Chinatown behind him. He was in the Russian Hill neighborhood now. From here, the streets climbed into the sky, as steep as mountains.