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“You have any idea where Brinkley is now?” I asked.
“I saw him hanging out in front of a bar about a month ago,” Jones said. “He was looking pretty ragged. Beard all grown out. I made a joke that he was returning to the wild, and he got a wacky expression on his face. Wouldn’t look me in the eye.”
“Where was this?”
“Outside the Double Shot Bar on Geary. Fred doesn’t drink, so maybe he was living in the hotel over the bar.”
I knew the place. The Hotel Barbary was one of the several dozen “tourist hotels” in the Tenderloin, rent-by-the-hour rooms used by prostitutes, junkies, and the nearly destitute. It was one step above the gutter, and not much of a step.
If Fred Brinkley had been living at the Hotel Barbary a month ago, he might still be there now.
Chapter 18
THE WEATHERMAN SAID it would rain, but the sun was high and milky overhead. When Fred Brinkley held out his hand, he could see right through it.
He headed for the dark of the underground, jogging down the steps into the Civic Center BART, where he used to go when he still had his job.
Brinkley lowered his eyes, marking off his paces on the familiar white marble-tiled floor with black granite borders, walking steadily across the mezzanine, not looking up at the corporate slaves buying their tickets and flowers and bottled water for their commute. He didn’t want to pick up any thoughts from their hamster-wheel brains, didn’t want to see the prying looks coming from their hooded eyes.
He took the escalator down to the tunnels, but instead of feeling calmer, he realized that the deeper he went, the more agitated, angry, he became.
The voices were on him again, calling him names.
Ducking his head, Brinkley kept his eyes on the floor, and he sang inside his mind, Ay, ay, ay, ay, BART-a-lito-lindo, trying to quash the voices, trying to shut them down.
As soon as he got off the escalator on the third level down, he realized his mistake. The platform was packed with deadheads going home from work.
They were like thunderclouds, with their dark coats, their eyes boring into him, closing in and trapping him where he stood.
Pictures he’d seen on the wall of TVs in the electronics-shop window streamed into Fred’s mind: the images of himself, shooting the people on the ferry.
He did that!
Brinkley sidled through the crowd, mumbling and singing under his breath until he stood at the edge of the platform, standing on one square only, his toes curled over the void.
Still, he felt the hate and condemnation all around him, and his own fury rose. The white tile walls seemed to pulse and billow. Fred could see, out of the corners of his eyes, people turning toward him, reading his mind.
He wanted to yell, I had to do it! Watch out. You could be next.
He stared down onto the rails, not moving or looking at anyone, keeping his hands in his pockets, the right one curled around Bucky.
They know, the voices roared in unison. They see right through you, Fred.
A sharp voice called out from behind him, “Hey!” Brinkley turned to see a woman with a sharp jaw and tiny black eyes shaking a finger at him.
“He’s the one. He was on the ferry. He was there. That’s the ferry shooter. Someone call the police.”
Things were breaking up now. Everyone knew the bad thing he’d done.
Dog shit. Loser.
Ay, ay, ay, ayyyyyyy.
Fred pulled Bucky out of his pocket, waved it above the crowd. People all around him screamed and shrank away.
The tunnel roared.
Silver-and-blue bullet cars streaked into the station, the noise obliterating all other sound and thought.
