“Parker’s his main muscle,” I said. “Wherever Healy’s at, Parker’s probably with him.”
“One of these days I’d like to have a plan that aint got no prob’ly to it,” LQ said.
“Be nice if Healy was home when we got there,” Brando said. “And if there wasn’t nobody with him but Parker.”
“Yeah, that’d be nice, all right,” LQ said. “And it’d be nice if they got killed in a car wreck today. Or if they both came down with a case of the blues so bad they shot theirselves and left a little note saying they just couldn’t stand it no more and we heard about it on the radio as soon as we got to Dallas. That’d be nice.”
W e passed the city-limit sign at dusk. LQ pulled off onto a side road and stopped the car and Brando got out and poured some Coke in the dust to make enough mud to smear on the license plates. He wiped his hands on a rag and got back in the car and we moved on. By the time we were making our slow way through the streets of Healy’s neighborhood and reading the street signs by lamppost light, the sky was dark and the moon fat and orange and just above the trees.
“It’s the next right,” LQ said from the backseat.
“I know it,” Brando said.
“Don’t slow down when we drive by,” I said.
“I know it.”
We made the turn onto Carpenter Street and I counted three houses down on the right. There was a dark-colored Chrysler parked in the driveway of the third house and a pair of men were just then coming out the front door and down the porch steps. One of them was a blond guy holding his hat and adjusting the crown crease with the edge of his hand. The streetlight showed Healy’s face clearly—he looked just like his picture. The other guy was so big there was no question who he was. He must’ve said something funny because Healy laughed as he put on his hat. Parker gave us a glance as we passed by, but you could tell he was checking nothing but the car speed.
“Sweet Jesus,” LQ said softly. “You believe this luck?”
I turned to look at them through the rear window and saw them getting in the Chrysler, Parker behind the wheel. I told Brando to take a slow right at the next corner, and as we made the turn I saw the Chrysler back out into the street and then head off in the other direction from us. And just-like-that, I had a plan.
“Take a right and floor it, man,” I said. “Get us in front of them before they hit the highway.”
Brando screeched the Dodge around the corner and gunned it down the street running parallel to Carpenter as I told them what I had in mind. LQ and I grabbed up the shotguns and jacked shells in the chambers. There was hardly any traffic on these residential blocks and we zoomed through three stop signs in a row and almost hit a scooting cat. We barreled up to a T-intersection and Brando had to brake sharp for it and take the turn pretty wide and we just did miss colliding with an oncoming car that went veering off the road.
“Yaaaa-hoooo!” LQ hollered.
We went barreling up the block and there was the Chrysler, coming from our right on Carpenter. Brando wheeled a hard left just in front of their car and Parker had to stomp his brakes to keep from ramming us. We came to a halt at the stop sign at the corner, the highway just another block ahead, and the Chrysler rolled up behind us with its klaxon blaring.
Parker stuck his big head out the window and shouted, “You stupid shit! I oughta yank you out of that car and rip your ass in half!”
There was one car coming our way from the direction of the highway and no traffic at all behind the Chrysler.
“Now,” I said. LQ stepped out on one side of the car and I got out on the other and we swung up the shotguns. Behind the glare of the Chrysler’s headlights Healy was just a dark shape on the other side of the windshield for an instant before the glass exploded in the blast of my Remington. LQ’s shotgun boomed at the same time and we pumped fast and fired three more loads apiece and then scooted back into the Dodge. Brando sped us across the intersection and past the car stopped on the other side. Nobody in it could’ve seen our faces under our hat brims even if they’d tried to, especially not against our headlights’ blaze. Hell, all they would remember was the flashing blasts.
Then we were on the highway and headed back south.
“Wooooo!” LQ yelled. “Yall see that big bastard’s face when I pointed the pump at him? The surprise of his goddamn life. Half his head went all over the backseat. Yow!”
“Piece of cake,” Brando said. “Just like I figured.”
A n hour south of Dallas we stopped at a roadhouse and gorged on barbecue ribs and corn on the cob and shared two pitchers of beer. We were loud and happy and laughing like hell. Everything tasted great, every wisecrack was hilarious. Just being alive was a kind of aching pleasure from way deep inside.
“Listen,” LQ said. “There’s a place called Miss Jenny’s just this side of Waco. Aint all that much out of our way. I hear it’s worth every penny. Hell boys, we deserve us a reward.”
All I really wanted was to get back to Galveston, but Brando said “Damn right!” and I wasn’t about to argue against their fun, so I said, “Why the hell not?”
We took the junction road to the Waco highway and got to Miss Jenny’s an hour later. Because it was Sunday night, business was slower than usual and we didn’t have to wait long before we got taken care of. I picked out a brownskinned girl that looked part Mexican but it turned out she was another one born and raised in the U.S. who couldn’t speak but a few words of Spanish. She was enthusiastic but I had a little trouble finishing up until I closed my eyes and imagined Daniela—and then I came like a shot. But while I was getting dressed I felt even glummer than usual after getting my ashes hauled.
I was the first one back to the parlor. Brando came out a minute later, eager to tell me what a great time he’d had with a six-foot blonde named Queenie. LQ had bought himself two girls and so he took a while longer. He finally emerged from the hallway about a quarter hour later, grinning big and swaggering like a rodeo rider.
“Could be I was wrong about you’re never satisfied,” Brando said. “You looking plenty satisfied this minute.”
“And I’d like to say, Chico, that it’s a real pleasure to hear you say something that’s correct for a change.”
We hit the road again but hadn’t gone thirty miles before all of us were yawning, the adrenaline charge was worn off now and our lack of proper sleep the night before was getting to us. So we pulled into a motor court in a burg called Marlin and got rooms for the rest of the night.
We slept late and then had a big breakfast at a café down the road before we got rolling south once more. We swung east at Houston and got to Sheila’s house at four-thirty in the afternoon. I got out of the Dodge and tossed my valise into the Terraplane. LQ and Brando had started hinting around about maybe spending a little more time in Orange before heading back to Galveston, but I told them to forget it. They were still holding Friday’s collection money and Artie Goldman would be mighty red-assed if it wasn’t handed in today. I gave them the rest of the expense money to turn in too.
Where the hell was I going, LQ wanted to know.
“Got a date.”
“Who with?” Brando said.
“You guys don’t know her. Tell you about her next time.”
“Well, ex-cuse us for asking,” LQ said. He nudged Brando with an elbow and said, “Must be he don’t want you to know he’s took up with your momma.”
“Only because the two-dollar line to see your momma is so damn long.”
I followed them through Port Arthur and Sabine to the coast highway, then down the Bolivar Peninsula to the ferry. While we were crossing the bay we had a smoke at the bow rail and watched a school of porpoises rolling ahead of the ferryboat in the last of the orange sunset. Then we were at the dock and the gate went down and we drove off the boat. LQ and Brando headed for the Club and I turned off toward La Colonia.
I had intended to go to the Casa Verde and get cleaned up before calling on her, but when I saw how dark the Avila
place was I pulled over. Their old Ford wasn’t in its usual spot alongside the house, so maybe they’d all gone out to eat or something, but even so they would’ve left the porch light on. The rest of the neighborhood looked and sounded the same as always—porch lights glowing, lights in the windows, faint music from radios, the sporadic laughter of kids.
I went up on the porch and knocked and knocked but got no answer. I tried the door and it was locked. I went around to the back of the house and there the Ford was, where Avila never parked it. The blinds were down in every window but there wasn’t a show of light behind any of them. I was about to break a pane in the kitchen door, then thought to try that knob too and the door swung open.
I switched on the kitchen light, then crossed into the dining room and turned on that light. The dining table was turned out of place and a corner of it had hit the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. A couple of dining chairs were on their sides and ants were swarming around the sugar bowl on the floor. The living room was such a jumble of skewed and upset furniture and scattered bedclothes that it took me a moment to see Rocha lying on the sofa—hugging a pillow against his stomach and staring at me, his head bandage gone and his face caked with dried blood.
I took a fast look for her—in the bathroom and in the Avilas’ bedroom. The couple was lying facedown on the sagging mattress in a furrow of dark jelled blood. The smell was getting high.
I went back out to Rocha and righted a table lamp and turned it on. Under its light his eyes were bright with pain. The bandage off his head was lying at the foot of the hallway. In addition to the head wounds I’d given him he now had knife cuts on his scalp and face. The worst wound was in his stomach.
“Cómo te parece?” he said in a rasp.
I said it didn’t look too bad but he needed a doctor and I’d get him to one. But first I wanted to know where the girl was.
They took her, he said. Two of them, both Mexicans, both big. One with a pencil mustache and the other with a big bandido and a squinteye scar.
Did he know who they were?
Well hell yeah. They had to be the rich fuck’s guys.
What rich fuck?
Calveras, who else?
Who was that?
I didn’t know about Calveras?
“Dígame,” I said.
He said that on the drive from Brownsville she had told him a story she’d already told his aunt and uncle about getting kidnapped down in Veracruz by a rich guy named Calveras. Had a wooden leg and only one eye. Had a hacienda in Durango or Chihuahua, he couldn’t remember where she’d said. Las Cadenas, the place was called—after a river it was next to. She’d been a prisoner for months before she escaped and went to hide in Brownsville with Rocha’s aunt and uncle, who’d known her since she was little. Rocha thought she might be pulling their leg about the rich guy—she seemed the type to overdramatize things, didn’t I think so? But his aunt and uncle believed her, and when she said she was afraid of being so close to the border because Calveras might find her, his uncle Oscar invited her to come to Galveston. Then the Avilas heard her story and they offered her a place to stay. Rocha himself still hadn’t believed her, though—not until those pricks showed up last night.
They’d come in the back way. One-thirty, two o’clock. Quiet as cats. Daniela was sleeping on the sofa, he was on the floor. He woke up as one of them was starting to crouch over him and there was just enough light to see the knife. His shotgun was in the closet and might as well have been on the moon. He kicked the guy and they tangled up and Daniela let out a scream that got cut short. They went crashing all around and the guy was cutting at his head and trying for his throat and then stabbed him in the stomach before Rocha locked on the guy’s knife arm and got his teeth in his ear. The guy pulled away as the hall light came on behind Rocha and he heard Avila say “Qué pasa? Quién es?” and that’s when he got his look at them—the other guy was holding Daniela from behind with a hand on her mouth. Then the light cut off and a door slammed and Rocha threw a shoulder into the guy and sent him crashing and bolted through the kitchen and out the door. He ran across the yard and tore through the hedge into the neighbor’s backyard and fell down, choking bad, then realized he had a piece of ear in his throat and managed to spit it out. He had to keep wiping blood from his eyes but the real pain was in his gut. The neighbor’s house was still dark—probably nobody in the neighborhood had heard a thing. He was expecting them to come through the hedge looking for him and he lay still to keep from giving himself away. He had no idea how long he’d been lying there before he heard the Avilas’ car start up beside the house and then pull into the backyard. A moment later he heard whispering at the Avila back door but he couldn’t make out what was being said. He heard a low cry and one of them cursed and said to shut up and he knew they were taking her. He heard them moving off through the grass. And then he didn’t hear anything until a car started up somewhere down the street and drove away.
He didn’t know any of the neighbors, didn’t know if they could be trusted, so he went back into the Avila house. He found them with their throats cut. There was no telephone but even if there had been he wouldn’t have called the police. He’d been a cop himself—which came as news to me—but it wouldn’t help him much, since he’d been fired and now had an arrest record for various felonies. He figured the police would find it easier to charge him with killing the Avilas than to believe his story. He’d stretched out on the sofa to ease the pain in his gut and to think things over but he must’ve passed out. When he came to, he could tell that it was late in the day. His belly hurt bad but the bleeding had slowed down to an ooze. And then he was out again. The next time he opened his eyes, there I was.
Well hell. It wasn’t like I didn’t know how fast things can change.
What I wanted to know was why the Avilas hadn’t told me the goddamned truth?
Because she told them not to tell anybody, Rocha said. She came up with the stuff about being orphaned and the Picachos being her godparents, and the Avilas went along with it because she said the truth was too complicated and shameful and didn’t matter to anybody around here anyway. Besides, who the hell was I they had to tell the truth to? All they knew about me was I was a pistolero with gringo eyes. They were afraid of me.
She wasn’t. Why didn’t she tell me?
Christ sake, she was a woman—who the hell knew why a woman did anything? He gave a raspy chuckle and said maybe she trusted some guys more than others.
I asked if that was why he’d stayed in Galveston—in some longshot hope that she’d give him a tumble.
He said to go to hell. Maybe she would’ve, if I hadn’t shown up with my goddamn fancy clothes and boots and cars.
I said if he was waiting for me to apologize for spoiling his plans he was going to bleed to death first—and we both grinned. Then his face clenched in pain, and I got busy.
I called Rose from the Casa Verde.
The phone picked up and he said, “Yeah?”
“Youngblood.”
“Why the hell aint you here?” He said LQ and Brando had told him about how smooth the Dallas job had gone. He sounded tickled pink.
I said I’d be there but I was with a guy in bad need of a doctor who wouldn’t ask a lot of questions or pull the cops into it.
“What? Bullet?”
“Knife in the belly. Bunch of other cuts.”
“One of our guys?”
“No, just a friend.”
There was a second’s silence on the line.
“Warrants?”
“No, but he’s Tex-Mex with a record and he’d be an easy fall guy if they connect him to the thing. Double killing. The guys who did it are long gone.”
“Cops onto it yet?”
“No. Once the guy’s safe I’ll phone the cops with an anonymous tip about the bodies.”
“Christ, Kid, what the fuck company you keeping? Hold on.”
It took about fifteen minutes but it seemed like an hour before he
was back on the line and saying my guy was cleared for admission to the hospital and nobody there was going to be asking the wrong questions or calling the cops.
“Just tell the guy at the emergency desk your man’s name is Johnny Garcia. They’ve got him down as a driver for Gulf Vending and he’s coming in for an appendectomy. All taken care of. And listen: soon as you drop him off you get your ass over here. We got something here belongs to you.”
U p in the Studio Lounge LQ and Brando were at the bar with Sam. They waved me over and I saw Sam say something to the bartender. A bottle of beer and a double shot of tequila were waiting for me when I got to the bar.
LQ and Brando had been drinking since they’d turned in the collection money to Mrs. Bianco and they were loudly happy and slightly buzzed. Sam was in high spirits himself. He clinked his shot glass against mine and said, “Nice going, Kid. Here’s to success.”
He ordered another round for all of us and said, “Hey, fellas, what do you call a woman who’s having her period and owns a crystal ball?”
We looked at each other and shrugged. “We give up,” LQ said.
“A bitch who knows everything.”
He said for us to come on and we followed him to the office.
Rose was at his desk when we came in. He took three envelopes from a drawer and handed them to Sam and Sam passed them out to us. Each envelope held ten fifty-dollar bills.
“A little something to show our appreciation for a job well done, fellas,” Sam said. “Enjoy.”
I hadn’t told LQ and Brando about the bonus and they were happy as longshot winners. I slipped the envelope into my coat pocket. All I wanted now was to get going.
But then Rose said to me, “So? Who’s the guy in the hospital? Friend of yours, you say?”
I’d intended to have a good story to explain Rocha if I had to, a story that wouldn’t promote too many questions or involve mention of Daniela. But on the way over from the hospital I’d had other things on my mind. All I could think to say now was, “He’s the cousin of a friend. They’re damn grateful for what you did.” I hoped that would get me off the hook for having to know anything more about the guy. The last thing I wanted was to get into a discussion about any of it.
Under the Skin Page 24
