Taste of Tenderloin (Balance)

Balance

G

ENE

O’N

EILL

63

A

t 6:55 a.m., when Declan

Mulcahy first stepped outonto O’Farrell Street from his apartment building,San Francisco’s Tenderloin district appeared sunny and warm butuncharacteristically deserted—a brief lull between changing shifts.Most of the dealers, junkies, and hookers had called it a night; thehomeless were still asleep in their cardboard tents, and theneighborhood street cops were all up at Happy Donuts doing police work.Declan walked a block up the street from his apartment andmet only an old Asian lady coming from the opposite direction.She pulled a little red wagon stacked with two baskets of dirty clothes, obviously headed for the nearby You Do It laundromat.He crossed the street and saw one other person, a black dude waiting for the Korean’s grocery store to open. The guy wasabout Declan’s age, late twenties to early thirties, sporting dread-locks and frayed camouflage utilities—no name tag or unit desig-nation, only the faded Army patch remained intact over his heart.Declan had seen him around in the past month or so, often leav-ing the Korean’s with a small brown sack. Sometimes he won-dered if the guy had been in Desert Storm, too. But he neverasked, only nodded.Declan was wound pretty tight that morning. He’d been upmost of the night, his mouth almost too dry to ask anything, hisunderarms and crotch gritty and damp with clammy sweat. Hesniffed, reminded that sweat smelled different, depending on thetype. Work sweat had kind of a neutral odor, mildly offensive at worst; sex sweat lingered on you, smelled good, especially whenmixed with traces of perfume; booze or dope sweat the morning after had a stale, nauseating smell; but the absolute worst smell of all was nervous fear sweat—sharp, sour, and biting. At that mo-ment the sharp stink was flaring his nostrils, making them itch.He rubbed his nose, sucked in a deep breath, closed his eyes,and centered for a moment to settle his nerves. Then, at 7:00sharp, Declan followed the guy in Army cams into the store.Mr. Pak himself had opened the front door and stepped back

64 T

ASTE

OF

T

ENDERLOIN

behind the service counter. He bowed politely to his two early morning customers in his self-deprecating way, an old-world man-nerism that neither of his teenaged children practiced. Both hadgrown up on the mean streets of the ‘loin, attending local publicschools. Declan nodded back, wandered over to the video ma-chine, and waited impatiently for the black dude to pick out hisOld English forty-ouncer from the drink box, pay, and get thefuck out of the grocery. Then it would be only Mr. Pak, alone inthe store, and his two kids either in back where goods were storedor in the family flat upstairs getting ready for high school.Declan slipped to the back of the store and took a quick peek through the round window in the swinging door leading to thestorage area. The boy was back there, occupied with cutting opencases of various canned items. Declan tilted his head, listened in-tently, and could just make out the girl moving around upstairs. The entire family was on the premises and accounted for at thisearly hour, just as planned. Yes, indeed. After the dude in the Army cams carefully counted his changetwice and finally left the store with his brown bag, Declan steppedup to the counter. The middle-aged Korean grocer looked at him curiously.“You no find something?”Declan shook his head, closed his eyes, and concentrated.

Mr.Pak, you know the reason I am here, right?

he thought. Then heblinked, steeled himself, reached under his dark green USF sweat-shirt, and slipped the recently purchased Colt Python .357 out of the front of his Levi’s. At first Mr. Pak nodded and smiled, as if answering Declan’ssilent question; then the smile froze on his face and his eyes wid-ened when he spotted the gun. Both hands flew up in a defensivegesture as he said in a shaky voice, “You no stealy-boy. Why youdo this?”Declan didn’t answer as time, movement, and his thinking seemed to alter dramatically into super-slow motion. On akind of pre-programmed autopilot, he gently squeezed thehandgun’s trigger. The gunshot made a sharp, high-pitched whine, characteristic