by Johnny Shaw
Pop dropped back onto his pillow, as if that had taken everything out of him. He reached out and took my hand. The intimacy of the moment sent a chill up my spine. I could feel tears welling up in my eyes. In those few moments, it had all become real. I thought past the tears, clearing my head and forcing them down.
Pop allowed an abbreviated grin. “You got that look like you think you should say something. You don’t have to. In fact, I don’t want you to. Let’s sit. Let’s just sit.”
Pop let me off the hook. If I had tried to talk, I would have blubbered like a drunk frat brother. And nobody wanted to see that.
We sat together for a while. Pop’s eyes focused on a spot in space. Not drifting, but alert and intense. I don’t know where I was. After maybe an hour, I gave Pop a nod and stood.
“You should have told me when you got sick,” I said.
“And use up all my favors?”
“That’s a big thing to keep from me.”
“Everyone has secrets,” Pop said.
As I moved the chair back to its place against the wall, Pop chuckled under his breath. It was the kind of laugh that comes out of your mouth when you don’t think a joke is funny.
I turned to him, curious. “What?”
“Damn it,” Pop muttered to himself.
“What is it?”
Pop shook his head and then seemed to come to a decision. “I need you to get one other thing for me.”
I didn’t hesitate. “Anything.”
Pop grinned, but his eyes were serious. “I want you to get me a prostitute.”
“You need my help to do what?” Bobby’s voice was groggy on the other end of the phone. I could hear country rock and what may have been a female voice or a small dog in the background. I didn’t ask.
I was standing in the parking lot of the convalescent home, lighting one cigarette off the next and pacing the length of my truck. There was no one around, but I kept my voice low.
“Pop asked me to get him a prostitute,” I said as matter-of-factly as I could. As the words left my mouth, I couldn’t believe what I was saying, let alone that I was enlisting Bobby’s assistance.
“I’ve got company here, buddy. Good joke, but bad timing,” Bobby said. “I’m going back to bed.”
“I’m serious, Bobby. No joke,” I said in my most sincere tone of voice, which actually sounded a bit sarcastic.
“You’re not fucking with me?”
“I couldn’t make this shit up.”
There was five seconds of nothing but tinny guitar twang on the other end of the phone. As I was about to say something, Bobby’s roar of laughter nearly blew my ears out. And even after I’d pulled the phone away, I could hear his distinct machine gun wail.
I kept the phone away from my ear, yelling into the receiver, “Bobby. Look, man. This is embarrassing. I don’t know. Not embarrassing, just fucking weird. Forget it. I’ll do it myself. Go back to sleep. I shouldn’t have called. I just thought we could. Pop asked me, so I’m doing it. Go back to sleep.”
I could no longer hear Bobby’s laughter, so I dared to listen. Bobby was laughing, but the volume was replaced by a chuckle and heavy breathing that quickly turned to coughing. You know it’s a good laugh when you choke on your own spit. Between gasping hacks, Bobby was able to get out, “Sorry, man. What do you need me for?”
“I thought you’d know where to find prostitutes.”
Bobby stopped laughing. His voice got quiet. “Wait a minute. You haven’t seen me in fucking years, you barely fucking know who I am anymore, and you just assume that I have some line on where the hookers are? Now I’m the tour guide driving the Muff Bus down Pussy Road? Is that what you fucking think of me?”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
“Sounds about right.” Bobby laughed, not able to keep up his feigned anger. “It just so happens that I have a little experience in this area. When you want to do this?”
“The way Pop’s looking, sooner’s better than later.”
“So, let me get this straight. Just to make sure. Just so that I can hear myself say it.” Bobby cleared his throat. “Big Jack wants you to find him a hooker. He wants you to find him a hooker and bring her back to his room.”
Hearing it said to me, I let out an involuntary snort. “Yeah, well, not exactly. That would be easy. Pop doesn’t want any hooker, he wants me—I’m sorry, us—to find a specific hooker. Some Mexicali bar girl named Yolanda. Probably not even her real name.”
Bobby cut in. “You ain’t in LA no more, brother. Besides, you’re thinking of strippers. Mexican hookers tend to use their real names. Fun fact.”
“Anyway, Pop says she sometimes used to work weekends at Morales. I got a kind of description. I figured we could start there.”
“He say why he wanted to see her? Her specifically. Beyond the obvious.”
“None of my business,” I answered brusquely.
“Good enough. Fucking Big Jack.” Then Bobby didn’t say anything for a few seconds.
I used the silence to try to absorb the fact that I was going to find a hooker for my dying father. The few seconds weren’t nearly enough. I had the feeling I was going to need a few years.
Then Bobby’s voice roared from my phone, “Your dad is fucking awesome. I am so in on this. Beats the shit out of bringing flowers. Jack wants a piece, let’s tear him off some chonch.”
“Delicately put, Bobby.”
“I am excited about this. I mean, this is fucking awesome. Let’s do this.” Bobby was positively giddy about the whole idea.
“You free tonight?”
“I’m supposed to be irrigating, but I can get Buck Buck to change the water. He owes me a favor.”
“Meet me at the house. We’ll walk over to Morales,” I said.
As I shoved down my second Pine Market tamale, I heard Bobby’s Ranchero pull into the driveway. I left my plate on the table and was out the door. I walked through the front gate as Bobby was getting out, beer in hand.
The sight of Bobby’s car made me laugh. The same car he drove in high school. A late-seventies Ford Ranchero. Orange with a red and yellow racing stripe that had come stock when the car was new. I wish I could say that Bobby keeping such an ugly car cherry was a testament to something, but I can’t and I won’t. Even when we were young, it was sad how much he loved that car.
The smile on Bobby’s face said it all. It had probably been there since our conversation a couple hours before.
We shook hands. “Thanks, Bobby,” I said, gripping his shoulder in a manly alternative to a hug.
“No, thank you. I am honored. That I can do something this awesome. Seriously. For Jack. It’s awesome.”
I was starting to worry. I looked Bobby square in the eyes. “I don’t want anybody to know what we’re doing. Pop doesn’t usually give a shit what other people think, but this might be an exception. You know that, right, Bobby? Nobody else is ever going to hear about this, okay?”
“Of course.” Bobby smiled. “You know what they say—what happens in El Centro stays in El Centro.”
“I mean it. You can’t tell anyone.”
Bobby’s face got serious. That’s how you knew Bobby was serious. He made his serious face. “I’m not a fucking idiot. You think I don’t know that? This is between you, me, Jack, and—what’s the name of the señorita?”
“Yolanda.”
“Between you, me, Jack, and Yolanda. Nobody else’ll ever know.” Bobby held up his hand as if swearing an oath. “You got a plan of some kind?”
I shook my head. It hadn’t even occurred to me. A plan would’ve probably been a good idea. “Don’t know. Play it by ear. Make it up as we go?”
Bobby nodded. “Kinda what I figured. How hard could it be to find one Mexican woman in a city of a million people? We know her first name and everything. Piece of cake.”
Bobby and I started walking down the driveway toward the bar across the street. Bobby gave me a light shove. “What was it you used to
say? Slapdash, but not half-ass, right?”
“That’s the Veeder promise.”
We walked across the road onto the dirt patch that passed for a parking lot next to Morales Bar. Ford, Chevy, and Dodge pickups parked wherever there was room with no visible sense of order. Morales Bar was a field-worker bar with no sign, just a couple of neon Cerveza lights in the darkened windows. The Ash Canal ran along the back where an old corral had been transformed into a cockfighting arena, then abandoned entirely. Lettuce fields were on one side with a few salt cedars lining the road on the other. Once a windbreak, now their acid needles rusted out the abandoned cars below them.
Bobby and I kicked past a few stray chickens that had been trying to catch some shut-eye by the front door. I reached for the handle, but Bobby held the door.
Bobby said, “I forgot to tell you. Last time I was here, there was some trouble.”
“Trouble?” I asked, not really wanting to know. My hand dropped from the door handle.
“A smidge.” Bobby shrugged.
“How long ago?”
“While. I ain’t been back. Maybe like three, four years.”
“That’s a long time. You really think anybody’d remember or care?”
“It was a lot of trouble.” Bobby looked like a seven-year-old who just got caught stealing candy. “I ain’t pussin’ out. I’m still going in. Just thought it fair you knew is all.”
Bobby reached past me and opened the door, careful not to pull the rickety piece of plywood off its hinges.
It was just as hot inside, except the air was stagnant, dead, and smoky. The whole place smelled like a hangover—alcohol sweat, cigarette ash, and stale beer.
In a movie the music might have stopped and everyone might have stared us down. The six-foot-four longhair and the Mexicanish dude with a white pompadour walking into the desert hard bar. Luckily this was real life, and in a real bar people were there to drink and not give a rat’s ass who came in. We didn’t warrant a single glance. There is something to be said for the aggressive indifference of the plastered and soon to be plastered.
There wasn’t a single woman in the place. Not even a slightly effeminate guy prettying up a barstool in the corner. A couple dozen Mexicans were scattered at tables, mud still on their boots, playing cards and drinking. They yelled and laughed over the banda tune that blared on the jukebox. There were a few white faces in the back keeping to themselves, most likely because they were underage. They looked like high school kids in their letterman jackets and store haircuts. Probably brothers or even sons of the guys I used to come here with in high school. Some traditions never die.
Bobby found a table just to the side of the vacant pool table. He grabbed a seat against the wall, wiping off whatever was on the table with a sweep of his forearm. He gave me a nod, holding up two fingers, and then ducked his head into his chin in a ridiculous effort to look inconspicuous.
The one face I did recognize was Mr. Morales. I probably looked completely different. He looked exactly the same. A short, powerful man with massive forearms and a barrel chest, Mr. Morales was built like a Pemex oil drum. A bushy mustache and deep crevices made up the terrain of his face. I’d never once seen him smile. But I’d also never seen him angry. A good neighbor, I’d known him since I was a kid. I remember walking across the street, and for a quarter plus the deposit, I would buy a bottle of 7-Up. Mr. Morales would put salt on the rim of the bottle, a detail I could only appreciate in hindsight.
Morales Bar didn’t have beer on tap. Mr. Morales would buy cases of beer in Mexicali and then sell them by the bottle. When you have to piss in a hole out back, why bother with a liquor license.
“What’ll it be, Jimmy?” Mr. Morales said, as if I had been in just the other night rather than twelve years ago. He pulled a weathered half of a cigar out of the breast pocket of his checkered short-sleeve shirt and lit it. Not the only bar in California that you can smoke in, but probably the only one that doesn’t know it’s against the law.
“Four beers. Gracias, sir.”
He dug his bare hands deep into the ice bucket behind the bar. “How’s Big Jack doing?”
“Could be better. You know.”
Mr. Morales set four wet beers on the counter, his dark arms burned red from the ice water. “Jack’s a tough son of a bitch, don’t you worry. Never seen him lose a fight in the fifty years I’ve known him. A few he didn’t win maybe, but he never lost. Anyone kick cancer’s ass, it’s him. You need anything, you ask.”
I nodded, having no interest in getting further into the conversation. If only the optimism of an old Mexican could cure cancer.
I held up a ten. Mr. Morales shook it off. “It’s good you came back down.”
He squinted past me, spotting Bobby against the wall. Bobby caught Mr. Morales’s eye line and quickly looked in the opposite direction at nothing. Mr. Morales cursed softly to himself in Spanish, and then he looked at me with his stern stare. “You tell that Maves boy the only reason I’m letting him in here is because he’s with you. Remind him I got a shotgun behind the bar.”
“Bobby said there had been some trouble.”
“That what he said?”
“Three, four years ago though. That’s a long time.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Maybe he’s changed. People change. I’ve changed.”
“I doubt it,” he replied.
I nodded and then began to ask whether he was talking about Bobby or me or both of us. But Mr. Morales was already on his way to the other end of the bar, getting a couple of beers for one of the letterman jackets.
I brought the four beers over to Bobby, two in each hand. Bobby finished leveling the table with a folded napkin. He gave the table a shake, satisfied with its stability, and reached out, grabbing his two beers. He quickly drained half of one by the time I sat down.
“Mr. Morales still seems a little miffed at you,” I said. “What happened?”
“Things just got a little out of hand, that’s all,” Bobby said. “You remember Tomás?”
I nodded. “Tomás Morales? Mr. Morales’s grandson? Yeah. Last time I saw him he was maybe fourteen. He’s like four, five years younger, but we hung out a lot. The only two out here. Good kid. You get in a fight with him?”
“No. I was trying to change the subject.” Bobby smiled. “Trying to get back to business. We’re here for the dying father whore hunt, remember?”
“Very tactful, Bobby. What does Tomás got to do with it?”
“Tomás is in his twenties now. Obviously. That’s how time works,” Bobby said. “Anyway, he seems to have built a bit of a border business. Last time I was here, he was the guy who brought the girls from Chicali. Girls like Yolanda. Bar girls, strippers, hookers—whatever, all the same. And there you have it. Saturday night entertainment. Six ladies doling out blowjobs in the shadows of the walkway to the shitter. It turns a sandwich into a banquet.”
“Are you telling me what happened to you, or are we discussing Yolanda?”
“I’m getting to it. Word is Tomás has moved up. Bigger, better, illegaller. His hand in a lot of galleta potes. That’s ‘cookie jars’ to you.”
“You and Tomás have some beef?”
“Don’t think so. Maybe. Probably not. Who knows? I drink a lot.”
“So?”
“So. When there’s booze, Mexicans, and hookers, trouble is whistling around the corner. Not some maybe or outside chance, but probably definitely something’s going to happen. On the nights it’s too hot to fuck, it’s never too hot to fight.
“Maybe some lonely campesino gets drunk enough to fall in love, sees el pocho cabrón getting friendly with his future bride he met a half hour before. Maybe a lettuce knife makes its way out of a boot, then maybe a pool cue gets broken over a head and maybe it’s no longer fun and it’s six against one and the only way you see of getting out alive is to forget about looking stylish and get creative.”
“That can’t be good.”
�
��I accidentally lit Mr. Morales’s pool table on fire.”
“Accidentally? How does that even happen?”
Bobby shrugged, almost embarrassed. “I had a bottle of 151 in my hand. Broke it over a guy’s head. He must’ve been smoking, ’cause ‘Flame on!’ The splash of the alcohol soaked into the felt. Fire-face fell onto the alcohol-soaked table. Whoosh. The place filled with smoke. It happened pretty fast.”
Bobby took a big pull, polishing off bottle number one. “Mr. Morales can’t really blame me. It was self-defense. I sent him money for the table, but he probably took a ton of shit from the law. They never came out to my hut, so I know he didn’t mention my name.”
“You ever thank Mr. Morales for that?”
“I was afraid he’d shoot me. He keeps a shotgun behind the bar, you know?”
“Yeah, he told me to remind you.”
“No rock salt load either. Morales don’t fuck around.” He nodded seriously, as if he was giving me sage advice.
We sat drinking our beers. I lit a cigarette and looked at the corrugated tin ceiling above the pool table. Sure enough, a black Rorschach scarred the metal.
Bobby belched, staring at his empty beer bottle. “So, what I was getting at is, we got to talk to Tomás. Don’t know if he still brings girls, but he’s connected. He’d know where the ladies come from. Mr. Morales don’t know where the girls come from, but he knows where Tomás is, right?”
I nodded. “Okay, here’s what you do. Go apologize to Mr. Morales, and then make up some story and see if you can find out where Tomás is.”
“Why me? You go ask him.”
“He ain’t going to shoot you. Least not with me here. Take the chance to square it. Talk to him. Make it right, and then find out about Tomás while you’re talking.”
Bobby stared at me, trying to think of a good reason not to. Failing, he stood up.
“And grab a couple more beers.” I sat back in my chair smiling, sticking my pinkie out as I drained the last of my beer.
Bobby walked to the bar. I lit a cigarette and watched. Bobby stood at one end, head down, waiting for Mr. Morales. He made no motion to call him over, allowing Mr. Morales to take his time.
