by Chris Mattix
"But… but I’m here to rescue you."
She shakes her head. "Christ, you are pathetic."
And she slams the butt of the gun against my skull.
Gato Negro
By Chris Murphy
I’m drinking in La Poca Gota, in New Town. The bartender never says anything, just nods. He sells me calling cards and lets me use the phone. He keeps pills under the bar and gives me two-for-one if he knows I need them. I ask for a mixto and he nods.
MacDougal calls and asks for me. "Chupo’s coming back," he says. "You can thank him for the call." MacDougal says that he could use me for security, for good money. He says he’s willing to forget certain things. He sounds sober enough. He asks if I remember how to get to his office. I do, I tell him. "Make sure you come," he says.
On this same phone, Eileen called me last night. She said she was in trouble, money trouble, serious kinds. It was loud in the bar, and I was drunk, but I heard every word. She said if I could find a way to help, she’d be willing to forget certain things. It’s not often people call. Suddenly people were offering to forget. Shine a light on me. I saw it from my seat in La Poca, where I sit every day and get drunk and watch the animals. I saw this little light like a drowning man can see the air above him. I left my seat and came out into the afternoon to meet MacDougal.
After the last time getting hauled in, I always try to keep a hundred on me for the cops. It’s ten in the morning, the tourists are out, and I walk into Old Town with less than that. There’s a dog laying in the gutter outside MacDougal’s office with its guts strung from both ends. The townspeople step over it without breaking stride. This country smells rotten. The smell got in my skin two years ago. I sweat and mezcal comes out. Since then I’ve been in Zihuatenejo.
MacDougal’s office is dingy, poorly lit. A crooked poster of one of the local beaches hangs on the wall, and below that a cockroach crawls among the leaves of a wilting plant. MacDougal’s big Mexican secretary is out front staring at a computer screen and typing with two fingers. She smiles with a big, gappy grin when she sees me and brings me back to the office, shaking her big rear all the way.
MacDougal’s office looks worse than the waiting area. He’s a little whip with a brown mustache and a red crooked nose. He has a fifth of Brown Jug on his desk with two spotted glasses. He pours a drink in one when I come in. The other is by his hand and near empty.
"Hello, Dale."
"MacDougal." I take a seat.
"I got a call from Chupo yesterday," he says. "He’s rolling into town with a crew. He says the wife is allowing him one last fling. He’s rented Gato Negro for Saturday night."
"Did you tell him Gato’s not like it was?"
MacDougal tries to keep his hands steady enough to roll a cigarette. He lights the cigarette and blows out his match with smoke. "I told him. I told him it was going to be tough, and it wouldn’t be cheap. He talked to the owner and bought the whole place out. He asked for you and Boston Bob. ‘Security like Altamont’, those were his exact words."
"Bob, huh?"
MacDougal raises his glass at me, "He hasn’t burnt all his bridges."
"Lucky."
MacDougal goes over the business, five hundred up front and five hundred more once Chupo is safe in bed. MacDougal’s arranged the whores and rooms, and all we have to do is get Chupo from A to B and make sure he’s safe wherever he is.
"He may’ve been gone a while, but Chupo remembers. That’s why he asked for the two of you."
"I’m surprised he remembers how to ride."
"That’s funny coming from you. He’s bringing his buddies, fifteen or so, the Scottsdale Bike Club."
"Jesus."
We finish the fifth and he doesn’t act like he’s had a drop, except the whole time he’s pouring sweat and mopping it up with a gray handkerchief. After business is done, he checks his watch and takes a stained hat from the wall. He asks me if I want to get a drink.
The sunlight outside is violent. I say, "Am I back in the good graces?"
"We’ll see," he says, stepping over the dead dog. "Work on your bridges."
We drive in his rusted Fiat past the tourist traps and swank restaurants of Old Town. New Town feeds like a tick off of Old Town, and the line separating the two is clear. In New Town, bums sit on the street and talk to the sidewalk. Old men walk with their heads down, like they can’t bear to see what’s coming for them. The buildings lean against each other. They’re covered in peeling paint, and all the doors are open.
We stop at Ana’s Infierno. The first time I came to Zihuatenejo, the crew I rode with holed up at Ana’s to drink the States away. Chupo rode with us then. We both worked for MacDougal. He hired us after we fought off three Mexicans trying to rob him outside the bar. That first time I left Eileen, she was pregnant with my boy. When I came back he was two.
Ana’s has old sawdust on the floor clumped around wads of dried chew. MacDougal gets a whiskey. I get a mixto. MacDougal’s got a real deep voice that gets deeper as we drink. In a fight, little as he is, I know he’s trouble. He’s the type to cut your neck and then order a drink with his other hand.
MacDougal leans into me a little. "Hate to say, but its good to see you. There’s a lot of new blood down here, sociopaths, junkies. You keep yourself sound, maybe I start calling again. It’s busy season."
"I’ll be good." I pick up the mixto. It smells clean.
He gets the bartender to put down another round. "Last time you said that, I almost lost my business."
We sit in silence for a while, then he turns to me. I’ve haven’t been drinking with MacDougal in a long time, and I get the feeling he’s been drinking alone a lot. "What was your handle? Golden, right?"
"That’s right."
"Golden, because you had a way with things."
"I did."
He asks what happened to my hair, which is ragged and short. I tell him about getting nailed for pissing on a church. In the New Town lockup they have a row of ponytails tacked up on the wall. Before they put me in a cell with forty other drunks and one hole in the floor, they asked for money, but I didn’t have any. Then they offered to let me go, totally free, if I cut off my hair. On the morning of the fourth day, I asked for the scissors.
He nods throughout the story, never stopping me. When I finish he says, "They took you to Alcerena?" Then he raises his shirt up. There’s a thick white scar puckered right under his ribs. He smiles at me, "I never had long hair."
We drink deep into the night, mostly without talking. I’m liking the songs they’re playing on the jukebox, Billy Joe Shaver and Lefty. The place is full of Mexicans shouting and pouring their pesos down their throats. There’s a few other whites staring into their beers and smoking cigarettes, arranged around the bar like the last teeth in an old man’s mouth. MacDougal’s bought me Monte Alban, a good mezcal. Though I don’t like handouts, I keep drinking. A fight breaks out around us, some Mexican sore about what some other Mexican said. I watch in the mirror behind the bar as one of the guys, all muscle under a torn Mickey Mouse t-shirt, breaks the other guy’s jaw. The bar cheers as he goes down. MacDougal doesn’t even turn around, but I see his hand sneak into his pocket. He pulls it out when they carry the guy with the broken jaw out the door.
I watch a woman in a yellow dress spin around and around. I say, "You know what Zihuatenejo means in indian?"
"What’s that?"
"City of Women in Dirty Clothes."
MacDougal claps a hand on my shoulder. "Golden, Golden." MacDougal spins his glass on the bar. When he talks again, his voice is ragged. "Have you talked to anyone up north?"
"My wife, last night."
MacDougal’s staring at the mirror behind the bar to steady himself. "Nothing but good news."
"She’s in trouble with the bank, owes a bunch with not long to pay it."
"Good news."
"She says if I help her, she’ll let me see my boy."
"Will she?" MacDougal spins his glass
too hard. It flips onto its side and falls to the floor, shattering. The bartender replaces it with another. "What about the police?"
"She says she’ll take care of it." When things were ugly with Eileen, I beat her. She left me, and got an order keeping me from my boy. So, I took the boy and ran. I haven’t seen him since they caught me. I haven’t seen the States since they let me go.
MacDougal pours me a drink from the bottle in front of us, slopping mixto all around my glass. "How old’s your boy now?"
"I think he’s about seven."
"I had a daughter." MacDougal’s got a look in his eyes, like junkies and vets get, like somewhere in the distance he can see a part of himself cut off and lost forever. His voice is barely a whisper." I don’t think I ever told you, but I had a daughter."
He gets up, lays five American twenties on the bar. "An advance. Saturday. Gato. 7 o’clock. Things go well, I’ll get you as much work as I can."
I give the bartender ten and tell him to leave the bottle. Johnny sings "Ring of Fire" and I sing along. One of the whites a few seats down tells me to keep quiet. I keep quiet. I don’t feel like hurting anyone. I pour and I pour. After "Ring of Fire" comes Wagoner doing "Green, Green Grass" and I start to singing again. The guy who took issue with my singing decides to join in. The place has grown dark with smoke and silent from everyone stewing in their own drunk. The rowdies have left for mariachi and a chance at free pussy. The bottle, half empty to start, is down to the dregs, so I knock it back, leave a big tip, and get up to go. The bartender comes up to me and sees the tip. He says, "Do you like a woman?"
"A woman?"
He holds his hands out to show breasts and nods. I say yes. He signals to one of the heavies at the back of the bar and I follow the guy, a bruiser with burn scars all over the back of his neck. He takes me to a hallway I’d forgotten about, then a door with a small slot. He knocks and the slide opens to a pair of yellow eyes. The door opens to another hallway, which leads to another, then another. Each hallway gets narrower and darker until I’m staggering from wall to wall holding my hands out in front of my face. There’s doors to every side. I can hear old bedsprings and the scream of a whore faking it. He stops in front of a door near the end, "One hour. Forty dollars."
Inside there’s two candles burning, and a girl curled on the bed wearing a dirty nightgown that opens as she sits up. She’s tiny, more rib than breast. She begins to unbutton my shirt from the bottom up. She looks to be about sixteen. She’s wearing thick makeup around her eyes, and lipstick the color of wet mud. She’s not pretty and never will be.
She pulls my shirt off and runs her fingers along the scars that stretch over my gut, my arms. I tip her head up, holding her face in my hands. She’s got brown eyes that catch the twin flames of the candles. She reaches for my zipper but I grab her. I hold both her little wrists with one hand at the top of the bed and take off my pants with the other. She turns her face to the side, but I force her to look at me. Those big brown eyes get bigger and wetter, like Eileen’s did when she got scared or hot or both. I lay into her, seeing my wife underneath me. My little Mexican Eileen cries out and I don’t know if its pleasure but I know it’s not fake.
When I finish she wipes her eyes, and then runs a hand across my cheek. Her tears leave a cold trail on my face. Her lipstick is smeared, and she stares up at me. I want to choke this girl because she won’t stop looking. She looks up at me and all I can think of is my boy. He has those eyes, as if the earth had sunk into them. Brown eyes like his mother’s, brown eyes like mine. I lie down next to the little whore and put my arm around her neck. She touches her lips to the back of my wrist so I can feel her whispering, "Descansar." I spend the rest of my forty dollars thinking of home.
*****
There’s a small crowd outside Gato Negro when I arrive on Saturday night. The last three days I’ve been holed up drinking mixto and listening to my landlord pound on the door. I can’t bear the sunlight, the weight of the heat. I sweat in my bed listening to the mariachi band on the street below. They play the music of the town, music to give the dead a thirst. Every day I get drunk enough that the town could be home. Every night I sit on the floor and look at all the bottles around me and think of the money they cost, money that could buy me my son. Tonight I put on my chaps and my black leather jacket with the Kevlar elbows, Christmas gifts years ago from my wife. She said they were from her and my son. I want to look the part for the job. I haven’t worn my leather in months.
I make my way through the crowd to the front and a man at the door grabs my shirt to push me back. He’s got a milky eye that’s half-open and crusted along the edges. It’s Boston Bob. He doesn’t recognize me.
"Get the fuck back!" He says. "Private party."
"I’m here to work, Bob."
"Christ, Golden Dale!" He pushes my shoulder. "Gonna be a good night!"
He lets go and stares at the crowd with his good eye. The crowd is getting restless, and their language is getting foul. I find MacDougal alone at the bar. Gato is lit with Christmas lights in red and orange, and there’s a sign up that reads "Happy Fucking 40th!"
"What’s going on?"
He rubs a hand over his face, looking sober and haggard. "Apparently Gato has never been rented out before. And the regulars," he waves a hand to the door, "are feeling territorial."
"It’s a rough place."
"So I’ve been told." He hands me a small bundle of twenty-dollar bills. "You start by clearing the door." MacDougal puts his hat on and moves to the back entrance. "I’ll be sitting back here. The party starts at eight."
"What about cops?" I ask.
"Have you ever seen one here?"
I join Boston Bob in staring down the crowd.
Boston Bob is down in Zihuatenejo because he rode drunk on 182 outside Sioux City and killed a man and his daughter. As he tells it, he was playing chicken and they bit first. As told by others, he got lucky in the crash and drove to Mexico on a half-wrecked Softtail, shitting himself because he wouldn’t risk the time it took to go to the bathroom. The story goes that he stopped in the last gas station before Laredo and washed out his pants. He’s repented by drinking and picking fights with old men.
"Look here, Dale, what do you think we should do with this here." Bob sucks at his teeth and cracks his neck side to side.
I look at the crowd. At the front, there’s a little guy yelling puta this and chingado that. Behind him, a lanky longhaired Mexican rocks back and forth with his arms crossed. He has a gang tattoo on the side of his neck, the cross and the eagle for La Nuestra Familia. I met a few Familia members in a brothel a year back. They took offense at everything, and when one of them found trouble they’d all start crawling from the woodwork to join in. There’s about five feet separating us, and the little guy keeps edging closer. "Beberemos. Ahora!" He’s almost spitting in our faces, "Picaflors. Muerdealmohadas!"
I stand behind Bob. "The tall one is Familia."
"I know it. I’ve had issues with them since Berrenos. Back me up" Bob pops his shoulder joints. I grab Bob’s arm but he shakes me off, already started towards the Familia member with his hands up.
"Gato’s closed, motherfuckers. No beberamanos tonight." There’s a decent chance that the Familia is carrying. The skinny one’s still yelling.
"Bochillos. Gato es nos."
Bob stands straight up against Familia, chest to chest and leans forward. "There a problem?"
Familia headbutts Bob. His forehead hits Bob’s mouth with the crack of split melon. Bob drops to his knees. The little guy starts at him, still talking. I grab the little guy’s face in my hand and push him backwards. I can feel his mouth moving against my palm. Bob comes up with his hands clenched together, hammering Familia in the balls then kicking him in the shoulder as he goes down. The rest of the crowd backs off, with the little guy standing behind Familia, still talking. Familia groans, but gets to his feet, holding his crotch with both hands.
"We know you." Familia says.
"Bikers, tough guys. Dead."
He backs up facing us. The loud one trails behind, shouting down the street how he knows where we drink, where we sleep, how we’re dead.
Bob rubs the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing blood across his teeth. He’s smiling and out of breath, "Good. That was good." I go inside and get a drink. MacDougal’s out back, sitting on a stool. "Trouble?"
"Boston Bob decided to mix with a Familia."
"Shit. Did you handle it?"
"It’s handled."
MacDougal rubs his temples. The loose cigarette he’s smoking drops little flecks of cinder on his lap. "Alright. Keep an eye on things. Earn your money."
"Yeah."
"Dale. Keep it together."
I go back out front to stand with Bob and wait for the party to show. They roar up in a big, glowing line that looks more like a parade than a bike crew. Their bikes have flame details on the gas cans and long chrome exhaust pipes. Most ride touring bikes, Hondas and Yamahas, and from the look of the bikes and riders most are making their first trip out of Scottsdale. One of them rides a 60’s style chopper, and he has hair like Peter Fonda. As they get off their bikes and go into the bar, their leather creaks like new furniture. They ignore me and Bob.
Chupo brings up the rear. He rides a dirty Ultra Classic Electraglide. He’s an old forty, with grey in his beard and a long, dyed black ponytail. His leathers are dusty and creased. He comes up and claps Bob on the shoulder.
"You all are security? Jesus, trouble follows." He puts a hand in my direction. "How’s it been, Dale?"
"It’s been alright." I shake his hand and he grabs my shoulder. I say, "Happy Birthday, Chupo."
"Christ, I haven’t been called that in years. People call me Mr. Anders now, or boss."
"You remember how to ride, boss?"
He stares at me with one eye shut "You ever get your bike out of hock?"
"I’m a settled man."
He laughs. He’s got a straight collection of white teeth. "Settled? That’s funny. Golden Dale, the homebody."
