Hoodtown

by Christa Faust

  I was starting to feel pretty low. The heat was getting to me and I just couldn’t stand the beaten resignation in Lace’s voice. Sure she was out of the life, but was this really any better? Drinking herself to death alone in a place where she was despised? Maybe Dulce was right to leave.

  Anyway that left me at a dead end. No point hanging around for the scenery. I figured I’d better head back to Hoodtown and see if I could find anyone who had seen Dulce in the days after the murder.

  I had my hand on the doorknob when I was struck with a sudden idea. I dug around in my purse and pulled out the little green charm I had pinched from the dead girl at Minnie’s.

  “Just one more thing,” I said, but I didn’t have to say another word.

  Lace’s eyes went huge and she snatched the charm from my hand.

  “Where did you get this?”

  My heart sank. I guess I had been hoping that maybe Dulce really was somewhere off in Hoodtown, dancing on a bar or turning tricks or posing for dirty pictures. Anything but rotting alone in the Hoodtown morgue.

  I didn’t relish the task but I did what had to be done. I told Lace where I found the charm.

  “Goddamn stupid fucking puta baita bitch fucking cunt,” She threw the charm at the wall. “Puta Madre! I fucking told her I goddamn fucking told her.”

  She collapsed back in the chair, arms wrapped around herself and tears filling her eyeholes, rocking back and forth.

  “I told her,” she said over and over. “I fucking told her.”

  “Listen,” I said, trying to keep my voice gentle and non-threatening. “She’s waiting to be claimed at the Hood-town morgue. Why don’t you take her a máscara and get her out of that place. Bring her home and bury her like she deserves.”

  “Fuck her,” Lace hissed. “Fuck that puta bitch. She don’t deserve nothing. She likes it so much in Hoodtown she can fucking rot there!”

  She shut down then, just rocking and whispering “Fuck her.” so I scooped the little charm up off the floor and left.

  28

  The hot, surly day was dying over the downtown spires as I jumped off the bus at 165th, figuring I’d give Nezumi one more try. Anything to get off that airless, stinking deathtrap on wheels and into the cooling dusk.

  The junkies crashed out in Nezumi’s hallway had different hoods but might as well have been the same ones as the night before.

  I knocked, called Nezumi’s name, but got nothing from the other side of the scabby door. Wondering if maybe the rat had ditched this nest for good I turned away, about to leave when I thought I heard a stealthy shuffle in the apartment. I froze, listening. I waited a handful of heartbeats and then went ahead and shouldered the door open. After everything that had happened, knocking around a piece of shit like El Nezumi seemed like just the kind of stress relief I needed.

  The apartment was dark, lit only by a dim, flickering glow — candle? — and it took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust. I saw Nezumi hunched over a tiny fire on the floor and I could smell vile, melting plastic.

  “Dabbling in arson now, Nezumi?” I asked, stepping into the room.

  Several things happened at once. First I realized that the hunched figure wasn’t Nezumi at all. It was a Skin, his pale, naked face turned toward me, mouth open in surprise and shock. Second, I saw Nezumi, or what was left of him, splattered all over the far wall. Third, I saw the Skin was burning what looked like a reel-to-reel tape. That would account for the fire and the awful, toxic smell. I recognized the Skin, just as he started towards me with a kind of arrogant macho swagger. It was the guy with the briefcase, the guy who brought Nezumi the fifteen grand.

  I threw down my pocketbook and settled into a ready stance. He paused, eyebrows arched as if asking me if I was kidding. I wasn’t. He looked me up and down and a tiny smile curled in the corner of his mouth.

  When he came at me I nailed him with a sidestep drop toehold, dodging to one side to let him pass and then using my legs to take him to the ground, slamming the partially open door closed with his face. The move was as natural as breathing but as I hit the disgusting carpet, I found myself instantly regretting it. The stench of vomit and roachspray and old semen and creeping mildew was unbearably vile and I bounced instantly back to my feet, shaking my head in revulsion and resisting the urge to brush myself off.

  “Who the fuck are you?” I asked.

  Instead of answering, he started to stand and made a swift reach inside his jacket. I had no idea what he was reaching for but I didn’t intend to wait around and find out.

  I tackled the bastard, throwing my full weight into his midsection and the two of us went over into the corner. I ducked back in a crouch but as soon as that hand started reaching again, I grabbed for his wrist.

  I managed to catch hold of it, but it was like trying to hang on to a pissed-off rattler. He wrenched his hand out of my grasp with surprising strength and hit me with a fast, stiff punch in the face.

  That hurt. Stinging tears filled my left eye but I shook it off, remembering suddenly that this wasn’t the fucking Telco Arena. This was real, real as that corpse that used to be Nezumi. Feeling the old icy calm take over, I gave him one back, with everything I had behind it.

  Must not have been enough because he staggered to his feet and came back with another punch right away. This one I was ready for.

  I ducked under the blow and reached between his legs, wedging my shoulder into his gut, lifting and rolling him over with a fireman’s takedown. Now I gotta admit, it had been a good ten years since I’d been in a real match. Back then I was thirty pounds lighter, working out every single day. There were a whole lot of tacos between then and now and this guy was no lightweight, easily pushing two hundred unwilling pounds. He wasn’t throwing himself into the move like a sparring partner either. I felt every muscle in my body screaming as the cold electricity of adrenaline jolted them into lifting him up over my shoulders and tossing him as hard as I could into the middle of the floor. He landed on his ass with a sharp thud.

  No time to think, no time to breathe, so I kicked him in the back, stiff, Japanese-style kick slamming the length of my shin against his spine and then right into a furious headlock.

  “WHO.” I panted. “THE FUCK.” My lungs burned, winded and choking on the thickening smoke. “ARE YOU?”

  I felt like I would die, like my heart was gonna burst in my heaving chest. I held on to his hairy head like a life preserver, squeezing his throat with everything I had left while he scrabbled against my arm and spluttered. Then he went still and slack in the hold, giving me the split second notion that he might have been choked-out. That thought was neatly murdered by the bright sting of a blade slicing into the meat of my forearm.

  I cursed and leapt backwards. The Skin rubbed his neck and stood, lashing out at me with a straight razor. I saw his eyes flicking to the door and as we danced around each other, I worked to keep my body between him and the exit. His wide eyes were all over the room and when they caught the open window, I should have seen it coming, but what can I say. My cut arm was like a screaming kid, demanding my attention and I nearly let him get away.

  He made a break for the window, half out onto the fire escape before my sludgy brain could register what was happening. I threw myself after him, grabbing one of his slithering legs and tying it up with an ankle lock.

  He twisted like he was gonna lash back at me with that razor so I slammed the window on his squirming body and then slammed it again and a third time for good measure. Furious, he kicked at my head with his free leg and I staggered back but I wasn’t gonna give up the leg I had so I pulled him back with me. Together we tumbled into the cold, bloody lap of Nezumi.

  That familiar raw meaty stench of blood and the memory of room twelve coiling, nauseously vivid in my guts. Nezumi’s stiff dead limbs digging into me and the gaping yawn of his fresh cut throat inches from my face and I rolled away, horrified, taking the Skin with me.

  Out of the frying pan and into the fire, we r
olled from the lake of Nezumi’s blood into the smoldering heap of burning tape. The melted plastic stuck to my skin and sparks of burning carpet touched down on my neck and arms as I fought to keep that razor away from my face. Eventually our wet bodies smothered the little fire, sending up a roiling cloud of black, choking smoke.

  I let him go and leapt back, hacking and retching and brushing embers from my cleavage. Then he was up too, coughing but ready for more. I seriously didn’t know how much longer I was gonna be able to keep this up but took my stance anyway, gesturing to him to bring it on. That’s when the sprinklers went off.

  Now this shitpile probably didn’t have a decent working toilet in the whole fucking building, yet miraculously, the dinky little sprinklers actually worked, drenching us both with a sudden chilly gush of rusty-brown water.

  Guess he thought that was his cue to take me out for good but I saw the gleam of the razor coming at me through the smoke and spray and dodged to the side. I was pissed off, sore and fucking tired of this game so as his momentum carried him past me I shot my far arm in an arc up and around his body, bringing my full weight down on his shoulder while slamming my other arm up against his forearm. Maybe you remember this one, it’s called the Fujiwara Armbar and I had used it in nearly every match. Of course, back then as I was dropping to the mat, torquing my opponent’s arm backward, against the natural bend of the elbow, I could give the arm some slack, making the hold look nasty without any danger of serious injury. There, in that shitty room after everything that Skin had put me through, I had no qualms about pouring every drop of strength I had left into wrenching his arm from its socket. As we went down, I heard that crisp, solid snap of breaking bone and his scream of pain ratcheted up into nearly feminine octaves, razor flying from his useless fingers.

  If that carpet was bad when it was dry, let me tell you, with Nezumi’s blood and other less savory fluids mixed in with all the old dried-up crap freshly reconstituted by the gushing sprinklers, it had created this nasty, odiferous soup that splashed up between my legs as my ass hit the floor.

  Sure I was finally really gonna puke, I rolled away and stood. Amazingly, the Skin actually started to stagger to his feet, reaching with his good arm for the razor.

  “Oh no,” I said and kicked him in the shoulder. “I don’t think so. I’ve had it with this and I’ve had it with you. You better start talking right fucking now.”

  He didn’t answer, showing me blood-webbed teeth and reaching again.

  “Tough fucker aren’t you? You want to keep going, chingón?” I kicked him again, this time square in the floppy, ragdoll arm. He hollered and rolled backward, dragging himself to his feet. I just could not believe this guy. “Goddammit, tell me what the fuck is going on here! Tell me, Skin fuck, before I make your neck match your arm.”

  “What the hell?!?”

  This from the doorway and I made the mistake of turning towards the new voice. That was all it took.

  Punch like an anvil, slamming into my nose with all the crazy, panicked strength of a last chance and huge, blinding pain as I felt the sickening crunch of breaking bone inside my head. My eyes watering and blood in a hot gush, soaking my hood and I crumbled to my knees.

  When I could focus again I saw Malasuerte charging through the door and the Skin squirming out the open window. “Get em, Lucky” I growled. “Don’t let that fucker get away!”

  Malasuerte wrenched the window up high enough for his big shoulders to squeeze through and took off down the fire escape outside. No time for relaxation, so I grabbed my soaking wet purse and slung it over my shoulder, shaking my head and sending drops of blood flying as I dove out the window after him.

  The Skin was already two stories down, with Malasuerte right behind him. In addition to our happy trio, the fire escape was also crawling with half-dressed tenants, clutching bathrobes around themselves, lacing their máscaras and craning their necks toward Nezumi’s smoking window, too drunk or too stupid to get out of the way. The flimsy fire escape did a menacing, earthquake shimmy under my feet and I could hear the scream of metal bolts giving up their tenuous hold on the ancient brick. The Skin had reached the ladder at the bottom when the top of the fire escape wrenched loose from its moorings. Frightened tenants screeched and grabbed their windowsills as the whole wobbling structure peeled away from the side of the building with us like monkeys clinging to it as it fell. The Skin rode the ratcheting ladder to the street with Malasuerte coming down behind him like a ton of bricks. Me, I was higher up, almost to the second floor.

  I had less than a heartbeat to think. I was going down one way or another and I found myself hearing the brash, bitchy voice of my old maestra calling up to thirteen-year-old me poised nervous up on the ring post like a cat up a tree:

  “Come on, nalgona, jump!”

  So I bailed, falling like second nature, like a plancha off the top turnbuckle, aiming for an open dumpster on the street below and hoping there weren’t too many broken bottles and needles in there.

  I landed hard, the horrible sound of the fire escape crashing, metal against cement, getting mixed up in my head with the jolt through my bones as I hit the trash. A hundred stiff, hurtful things gouged me and sliced my skin but I didn’t stick around to see what they were. I hauled my aching carcass out of the dumpster to find Malasuerte staggering down the street after the fleeing Skin.

  There were hurt and bleeding people all over the street and screaming from open windows, chaos and madness all around us. We must have looked like zombies from one of the old Santo pictures, limping and dragging our hurt and sorry asses down 168th street. I kept having to stop and lean against a street sign for a few seconds to see if I was gonna puke after all. The Skin was sliding along the wall, cradling his broken arm and leaving a bloody stripe while Malasuerte followed, limping heavily and occasionally reaching out to grab the guy and missing the back of his jacket by inches. All in all it wasn’t much of a chase scene.

  We had gathered a small audience of curious street people, the most coherent of whom would occasional yell “Get em!” or throw things it seemed best no to look at too closely. Eventually what brought the whole pathetic drama to a conclusion was a bag lady with a kid’s red wagon full of stuffed animals and dolls. Somehow she got in the middle of things. Malasuerte tripped over the wagon, sending dirty little pandas and dogs and giraffes flying and giving the Skin a spare second to duck into a parked car.

  With the last bit of energy I had, I flung myself toward the car as the engine coughed into life. I grabbed for the driver’s door but the guy pushed it open and the corner of the door frame caught me in the chin. I went down amid the ratty toys as the car sped away.

  Malasuerte was in the middle of the street, cursing at the top of his lungs. He threw a baby doll after the Skin and it bounced off the wheel well as the car squealed around the corner.

  “Sweet fucking Santo!” Malasuerte said, offering me a big hand and helping me to my feet. “What the fuck was that about?”

  I leaned into him and told him everything that had happened.

  “How did you know to come looking for me?” I asked, fishing for my handkerchief before I remembered I had given it to Zopilote.

  “I didn’t,” Malasuerte said, handing me his, a nice silk one with an embroidered 13. “I was looking for Nezumi.”

  Together we limped back towards Lutteroth, and Malasuerte told me how Nezumi had come looking for him at the burlesque theater.

  “Now I thought that was weird enough,” he said. “El Nezumi looking for me. Actually wanting to see me.” He shook his head. “Goldie said he was real shook up. He left a package for me, told her if anything happened to him, he wanted me to have it.”

  “So, what was it?”

  Malasuerte shrugged.

  “Just that cheap record player of his. I can’t figure why he would want me to have anything of his in the first place, let alone that piece of shit that couldn’t get ten cents down at the pawn shop. So I came looking for him.
”

  “And now he’s dead.” This was making my head hurt, far worse than the beating I’d taken. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ll tell you this much. I think we better take a closer look at that record player.”

  I groaned.

  “The only thing I want a closer look at right now is the headrest of Orchidia’s chair and the bottom of a tequila bottle.”

  29

  Back at Lucky’s I sat curled up on his old, broken-in sofa, scratching at the splint under my hood that held my busted nose in place and swigging from a mostly empty bottle. I had been planning to stop by Minnie’s but I didn’t want to scare her by showing up all beat to shit so I gave it a miss, figuring I’d try and see her the next day. At that point it was all I could do to stay vertical.

  Malasuerte was at the table, bulky fingers wandering over the dinky record player, searching for anything out of the ordinary and finding nothing. We must have listened to the record it came with a dozen times. One side was the same awful tune that had been playing the day we roughed Nezumi up and got the fifteen grand. The other side was something equally syrupy and pointless. Neither side had lyrics or anything that might contain some kind of clue. The titles were “Flor de Mi Vida” and “Xiomara.” Nothing we could make heads or tails of. We were both hurt, exhausted and out of ideas.