That was it. The whole fight didn’t take ten seconds. The sudden silence was enormous and there was a gunsmoke haze. Blood was spreading on the sidewalk around what was left of the shotgunned guy’s head. Curly’s other pal was sprawled on his back with his eyes open and his legs turned funny and his shirtfront shining red. Curly bent over him and dug a set of keys out of his pocket and yelled at me, “Come on if you’re coming!”
I ran after him. At the end of the street he got behind the wheel of a yellow Cadillac and the engine fired up as I got in on the passenger side. Before I could close the door the car shot backward and went swaying around the corner and braked sharply, snapping my head back against the seat and slamming my door shut. Then the Caddy leaped forward with the tires screaming.
A few minutes later we flashed past the city limits sign. By then he had asked my name and I’d told him—and he’d introduced himself as Rosario Maceo but said I could call him Rose.
W e made Houston before dawn. At the outskirts of the city Rose turned off the main highway. I asked where we were going and he said to see a doctor.
My wound had crusted up pretty good and the bleeding was down to a seep. It still hurt but not as bad as before, maybe because I was slightly crocked from the bottle of rum Rose pulled out from under the seat. He had told me it was the shooter with the automatic who got me—just before Rose nailed him. I’d asked about the two guys on the sidewalk and he said, “Mangan and Lucas. Good men. Hate losing them.”
W
We hadn’t said much else on the drive. We’d watched the road steadily zooming under us as we sped through the night, splattering jackrabbits caught in the headlights, listening to whatever music we could pick up on coming-and-going radio stations, mostly Western swing stuff. We stopped at all-night stations to fill the tank. I didn’t know where we were going and I didn’t care, as long as it was away from San Antonio. The only thing I was sorry to leave behind was the roll of $250 I’d hidden in a baseboard niche under the bed. For most of the ride I just sipped at the rum and kept dozing off.
We drove down a ritzylooking residential street lined with high trees and wide sidewalks. The lawns were big and neatly trimmed, the cars all luxury models. He wheeled into the side driveway of a large two-story and parked deep in the shadows. He helped me out of the car and around to a small side porch and must’ve pushed a secret button or something because a minute later a light came on in the kitchen and the door opened and a neatly barbered and bespectacled man in a shiny black bathrobe said for us to come in.
His name was Dr. Monroe and he was a whiz. Less than an hour later we were back in the car and I was feeling no pain except for a mild rum headache. According to the doc the bullet had passed through the big muscle that ran along my side and had slightly scraped a rib but damaged nothing but tissue. He cleaned the wound and treated it with sulfa and bandaged it up, then gave me an injection to dull the pain and said to take it easy for a few days. He said any doctor or a good nurse could remove the stitches when they were ready to come out. Rose said, “Hell, they won’t be the first I took out.”
We stopped at a café overlooking the ship channel and I waited in the car and watched the reddening sky while Rose went in to buy a sack of beignets. He said the place made the best ones in Texas. It was the first time I’d heard the word and it must’ve shown on my face. As he stepped up to the bakery door he looked back at me and tapped a sign on the window: FRESH BEIGNETS. When he got back to the car he had already finished one and was licking his fingers. I took a look in the sack and saw little thick squares of fried dough covered with powdered sugar. They smelled wonderful. I was still a little dopey from the injection but I was hungry too. The things tasted great.
“It’s the same as a doughnut except it’s square and don’t have a hole in it,” Rose said. He took another one from the sack and held it in his mouth while he worked the steering wheel and gearshift and got us rolling again.
“Yeah,” I said. “Like a circle’s the same as a square except it’s round and got no corners.”
His smile was outlined with powdered sugar. “Got us a fucken wiseguy.”
He’d bought a newspaper from a hawker in front of the bakery and said for me to take a look at the bottom of the front page. The report must’ve just made it under the edition deadline: SIX SLAIN IN SAN ANTONIO GUN BATTLE. He’d already skimmed it but wanted me to read it to him, so I did. The report quoted several witnesses who came to the door of Domingo’s when they heard the gunfire but most of them ducked back out of sight when they saw the gunmen shooting it out in front of the restaurant. Only one patron and a waiter kept on taking peeks at the action from around the door. The patron told police he saw at least a dozen men blazing away at each other, all of them Mexicans, and then some ran away down the street and some drove off in a green Ford touring car. The waiter agreed that it had been about a dozen, but he said only one had run away while another three got in a gray DeSoto to make their getaway. He too was sure all the principals were Mexicans. Police had identified four of the dead as members of a local criminal gang and speculated that the gunfight was the result of a dispute over gambling jurisdictions.
“Eyewitnesses,” Rose said. “God love them.”
“What was it about?” I said.
“Money,” he said. “What else?”
I waited to hear more but that was all he ever said to me about it.
We were on the causeway and I was gawking at Galveston Bay gleaming like pink glass under the low sun when he asked if I wanted a job. I said doing what and he said making sure people didn’t fuck with him or his brother or get away with it if they did.
“Let me tell you, kid, I think maybe it’s the job for you.”
I said maybe it was.
A half-hour later we were in the Club office and he’d introduced me to Sam and Artie and Mrs. Bianco. And then, with just me and him and Sam in the office, he reenacted the gunfight for Sam’s benefit, showing how he’d ducked behind the car when he heard me holler a warning and flicking his fingers beside his ears to show what happened to Lucas’ head when the double load of buckshot hit him. He waved his arms around as he described the bullets ricocheting off the wall behind him and punching holes in the car windows. He made gunshot noises and slapped his hand to his head or chest when he described somebody getting hit. He mimicked pistols with his thumbs and index fingers as he showed how I stood in the middle of the street shooting right and left and how I whirled around to shoot the guy at the Buick about seven or eight times.
He told Sam it was like watching Billy the Kid in action.
“Only this one’s Jimmy the Kid!” Sam said—and he slapped me on the back and then hugged me hard.
W atkins was the referee and a club rat named Wagner was working the bell. It rang for round one and Otis and I came out of our corners and touched gloves and fast as a blink he lunged and hit me with a right lead that made the room wobble. I staggered backward and he stayed on top of me, working the jabs hard in my face, each one stinging pretty good, since we weren’t using headgear—and then bam-bam he drilled me with a left-right to the forehead and under the eye and I slid along the ropes and sat down hard.
The club rats were whooping and hollering and some were yelling for Otis to finish me and some for me to get up, goddammit, get up. They were five-deep around the ring. Otis went to a neutral corner and Watkins started the count over me. I got up on one knee, everything a little blurry at the edges. I took the count to eight and stood up.
Otis popped me some more good ones but I clinched him every chance I got—getting boos from the rats. Every time I hugged him, though, Otis showed how seriously he was taking things by giving me shots to the short ribs and awful close to the kidneys. The round seemed to last three days instead of three minutes before Wagner hit the bell. Otis worked his mouthpiece forward with his tongue and pinched it out with the thumb of his glove and grinned at me.
A rat named Hickey was working my corner. He rinsed
my mouthpiece and sponged my face and said, “You got him now, Jimmyboy. He’s an old man, he’s already wearing out.”
I wanted to say that if he was wearing out it was from hitting me so much, but figured I’d be wiser to save my breath. My right cheek felt bloated and my ribs were half-numb.
The bell clanged and we got back to it. I was still a little fluttery in the legs. We circled and kept trading jabs and he now and then hooked me to the ribs to remind me that they needed protection too. He made me wish I had four arms. We were pretty close to the end of the round when he got careless and threw a lazy right hook behind a jab and I was able to whip a left over his right and catch him solid just above the jaw. He backpedaled into the ropes and I went at him with both hands and the club rats were howling like Indians but Otis covered up expertly and I couldn’t do any more real damage to him before the bell sounded.
“Whooo!” Hickey said, toweling me, giving me water, holding the bucket for me to spit into. “He’s all yours, Jimmy—you about crossed his eyes for good with that left. Wow!”
What I’d really done was make Otis steaming mad—just like the last time we’d sparred. But this time he had a full round left to exercise his displeasure on me.
He knocked me down four times in the next two minutes. I took an eight-count before getting up again each time. I was up on one knee after the fourth knockdown—hearing the club rats’ clamor and Watkins shouting the count as he swung his arm over me—and I looked over and saw Otis grinning at me from the other corner.
He yelled, “Some fun, hey?”
Son of a bitch.
“…Eight!…” Watkins shouted—and I stood up.
Watkins leaned in close like he was checking the laces on my gloves and said just loud enough for me to hear: “Christ, man, enough. It’s a minute to go. Stay away from him.” He stepped back and waved us at each other.
Otis came at me on his toes and rapped me with three hard jabs and easily dodged my hook. Bastard was playing with me, dropping his hands to his waist and juking from side to side like he was daring me to land a punch, smiling around his mouthpiece.
He popped me twice more with the jab and then drew his right hand way back and began whirling it all around like he was winding up a haymaker. He looked over at the rats in the front row and waggled his brows like he was saying Watch this now.
He shouldn’t have taken his eyes off me. I leaped and grabbed him in a headlock and started punching him in the face as hard and fast as I could.
For a second the rats went mute—and then all them were shrieking “Foul!…Foul!”
He twisted and pulled and we reeled around the ring every which way but I kept punching and punching, feeling his nose give way, vaguely aware of Watkins trying to pull me off him.
Otis tried to punch me in the balls and I hit him even harder. I forced his head lower and then clubbed him behind the neck and brought my knee up hard in his face. He sailed back into the ropes and flopped down, losing his mouthpiece, his nose pouring blood.
Like any pro fighter who gets knocked almost unconscious, his instinct was to get on his feet fast, to beat the count, his body trying to get off the canvas even while his brain was still bouncing around in his skull. He got to his hands and knees and fell over on his side, wallowing like a drunk, trying again to get up.
Watkins had me in a bearhug from behind, pulling me back from Otis and cussing me. I said to let go but he didn’t—maybe he couldn’t hear me for all the racket the rats were making. I stomped on his instep and that did the trick. He let out a yelp and hopped over to the ropes to keep from falling.
Our gloves weren’t taped, so I clamped one in my armpit and yanked my hand free of it, then pulled off the other glove. Otis was up now and he swayed against the ropes for a second and then his eyes focused on me. Blood was running over his mouth and off his chin.
I raised my taped hands and gestured for him to come at me. For a second I thought he’d do it—but he must’ve read my eyes, and he wasn’t stupid. He spat a mouthful of blood on the canvas between us and stayed put.
“Some fun, hey?” I said.
“Fuck you,” he said, his voice thick.
He managed to climb down from the ring without help, then walked stiffly across the gym and into his little office and closed the door.
Watkins was tearful with pain, sitting on the canvas and holding his foot. The rats had shut up and were gawking at me. They backed away as I stepped out between the ropes.
I got a towel from the stack and started for the showers—and caught sight of Rose turning away from the gym door.
W hen I went to the office a little later, Sam was in the outer room chatting with Mrs. Bianco. He grinned big when he saw me. Mrs. Bianco looked pained.
“Well hell, Kid, I can see why Otis got you a little peeved. You looked in the mirror lately?”
Of course I had. And seen my swollen ears and eyebrows, the large mouse under my right eye.
“I hear you might have a little trouble finding sparring partners from now on,” Sam said. He put up his fists and made a bob-and-weave motion, then slapped me on the shoulder. “Jimmy the Kid! By hook or by crook, goddammit, he don’t lose.”
Mrs. Bianco nodded toward Rose’s office and I went on in.
Rose looked up from some papers in front of him. His face had no expression—which meant he was mad as hell and trying to hide it.
“Good thing Otis had better sense than you and walked away,” he said. “We don’t need headlines about somebody getting crippled in our health club. A health club is supposed to be good for your fucken health. Guy gets the shit beat out of him in a health club in front of a bunch of witnesses—especially a guy supposed to be in charge of things—well, word gets around, people say, What the fuck kinda health club is that?—know what I mean?”
It wasn’t a question so I kept my mouth shut.
“You want to use the gym from now on, you do it at night, when there’s nobody else there—except maybe me. And no more sparring, not with nobody. Let’s give Otis and the squarejohns a chance to settle their nerves.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. “Heard anything that might connect to Dallas?”
He always could switch the subject that fast. One thing done with, on to the next.
“Nothing,” I said. “I’d say Sam called it right.”
“Maybe so. Stick around the Club for another coupla days. If Dallas don’t move by then, I got some out-of-town jobs need your attention.”
“Just say the word.”
Then I thought of Daniela, and the idea of leaving town for a while lacked its usual spark.
I was at the door when he called out, “Say, Kid,” and I turned.
“Next time we’re in the gym, teach me that move with the knee.”
“Sure thing, Don Rosario.”
S he answered my knock on the Avila’s door at exactly six-thirty—and her smile fell away when she saw my face.
“Ay, dios. Qué…What happened?” Her hand started for my face and then withdrew uncertainly, as if she were afraid of causing me pain.
“Sparring at the gym,” I said, clarifying the word for her by raising my fists and tucking in my chin. “Boxeando. I should’ve known better than to spar with a pro.”
“Pro?”
“Professional.” I told her the sparring had gotten a little too intense, that an amateur should never get intense with a pro. I said I had used bad judgment. “It looks worse than it feels,” I said.
She gingerly touched the mouse under my eye. When she put a fingertip to my bruised lip I kissed it. Her eyes widened—and then she drew her hand away when Señora Avila called from the kitchen, asking if I was at the door.
The señora came into the room, drying her hands on a dish towel—and then saw me and said, “Ay, hijo—pero que te paso?”
I had to explain again about the sparring. She shook her head and said men should not fight for fun, that there was already too
much real cause for fighting in the world. She asked if I would like something to eat, if my mouth did not hurt too much. I thanked her and said I’d already eaten. I’d seen her husband at the Casa Verde before I left. Gregorio was having his weekly neighborhood poker game in the kitchen, the radio tuned loudly to a Mexican station out of Houston, the icebox packed with beer, the counter full of bowls of fried chiles and chicharrones. Back during my first weeks in La Colonia, I’d accepted the group’s invitation to sit in on the game, but right from the start I sensed the other men’s nervousness and I could tell that none of them was playing his best—except for Gregorio, whose best wasn’t worth a damn anyway. They weren’t raising me when they should’ve, they weren’t calling my bluffs. After an hour of play I made some excuse and took my leave, and although I was invited to the game every week for weeks afterward, I always begged off, and finally they were able not to ask me anymore.
Under the Skin Page 21
