Bite Me

that you could not only not tell, but that no one would believe if you did.
    “Hey, you know why there’s so many one-legged whores in the Tenderloin?” asked one guy who was wearing a down sleeping bag like a cape.
    Rivera and Cavuto turned toward the hope of comic relief like flowers to the sun.
    “Fuggin’ cannibals,” said the sleeping bag guy.
    Not funny at all. The cops trod on. “If you only knew,” said Rivera over his shoulder.
    “Hey, where is everybody?” asked a woman in a dirty orange parka. “You fuckers doing one of your round-ups?”
    “Not us,” said Cavuto.
    They moved past the cafeteria line and a sharp young Hispanic man in a priest’s collar caught their eyes over the heads of the diners and motioned for them to come around the steam tables to the back. Father Jaime. They’d met before. There were a lot of murders in the Tenderloin, and only a few sane people who knew the flow of the neighborhood.
    “This way,” said Father Jaime. He led them through a prep kitchen and dish room into a cold concrete hallway that led to their shower room. The father extended a set of keys that were tethered to his belt on a cable and opened avented green door. “They started bringing it in a week ago, but this morning there must have been fifty people turning stuff in. They’re freaked.”
    Father Jaime flipped on a light and stood aside. Rivera and Cavuto entered a room painted sunny yellow and lined with battleship gray metal shelves. There was clothing piled on every horizontal surface, all covered, in varying degrees, with a greasy gray dust. Rivera picked up a quilted nylon jacket that was partially shredded and spattered with blood.
    “I know that jacket, Inspector. Guy who owns it is named Warren. Fought in Nam.”
    Rivera turned it in the air, trying not to cringe when he saw the pattern of the rips in the cloth.
    Father Jaime said, “I see these guys every day, and they’re always wearing the same thing. It’s not like they have a closet full of clothes to choose from. If that jacket is here, then Warren is running around in the cold, or something happened to him.”
    “And you haven’t seen him?” asked Cavuto.
    “No one has. And I could tell you stories for most of the rest of these clothes, too. And the fact that clothing is even being turned in means that there’s lot of it out there. Street people don’t have a lot, but they won’t take what they can’t carry. That means that this is just what people couldn’t carry. Everyone in that dining room is looking for a friend he’s lost.”
    Rivera put down the jacket and picked up a pair of workpants, not shredded, but covered in the dust and spattered with blood. “You said that you can link these clothes to people you know?”
    “Yes, that’s what I told the uniformed cop first thing this morning. I know these people, Alphonse, and they’re gone.”
    Rivera smiled to himself at the priest using his first name. Father Jaime was twenty years Rivera’s junior, but he still spoke to him like he was a kid sometimes. Being called “Father” all the time goes to their head.
    “Other than being homeless, did these people have anything in common? What I mean is, were they sick?”
    “Sick? Everyone on the street has something.”
    “I mean terminal. That you know of, were they very sick? Cancer? The virus?” When the old vampire had been taking victims, it turned out that nearly every one of them had been terminally ill and would have died soon anyway.
    “No. There’s no connection other than they were all on the street and they’re all gone.”
    Cavuto grimaced and turned away. He started riffling through the clothing, tossing it around as if looking for a lost sock.
    “Look, Father, can you make us a list of the people these clothes belong to. And add anything you can remember about them. Then I can start looking for them in the hospitals and jail.”
    “I only know street names.”
    “That’s okay. Do your best. Anything you can remember.”Rivera handed him a card. “Call me directly if anything else comes up, would you? Unless there’s something in progress, calling the uniforms will just put unnecessary steps in the investigation.”
    “Sure, sure,” said Father Jaime, pocketing the card. “What do you think is going on?”
    Rivera looked at his partner, who didn’t look up from a dusty pair of shoes he was examining.
    “I’m sure there’s some explanation. I don’t know of any citywide relocation