Under the Skin (15 page)
into a movie house showing
A Night at the Opera.
The Marx
Brothers could always get a laugh out of me.
When I got back to the Club, Mrs. Bianco said to go on into the
office. Rose was on the phone and Big Sam was in an easy chair,
puffing a cigar and sipping a glass of wine. Sam gestured for me to
sit in the chair beside his. I took a Chesterfield from the case on
the desk. Rose did too and I leaned over and lit it for him. I sat
down and Sam punched me lightly on the arm and said, “Jimmy
the Kid.”
“Right,” Rose said into the phone. “Louisiana Street. They’re expecting you this afternoon. Just fill in the forms and get the signatures. I told them if they signed today the machines would be there
tomorrow afternoon.”
He listened for a moment. “Yeah . . . Yeah . . . Right. Railyard
warehouse got plenty in stock. Soon as they sign, let the warehouse
know and they’ll get the shipment out to Houston... Okay. Yeah.”
struck me as a touch theatrical.
“I swear to Christ, there’s times I wish I was still a barber,” he said.
“A barber can whistle while he works, know what I mean? Can sing
while he does his job. Shoot the shit with the customers. Talk about
sports, pussy, stuff in the papers.
This
. . .” He gestured vaguely at the
big desk in front of him. “Nothing but fucken
deals
all day. Phone
calls. Arrangements. Nothing but
business
.”
Sam looked at me and winked. It wasn’t the first time we’d heard
this complaint from Rose—but it was sentimental bullshit. He
wouldn’t last two days back in a barber shop before he’d be scheming
at how to outfox the big-time crooks at their own games, both the
legal and the illegal ones, just like he and Sam had been doing all
these years.
He saw how Big Sam and I were smiling. “Go to hell, both you.”
He poured me a glass of wine and refilled his own. Then held his
glass across the desk and said, “Salute,” and Sam and I clinked ours
against it.
He wanted to know if I’d picked up on anything today that might
connect to the Dallas guys. I said I hadn’t.
“I keep telling you,” Sam said to him, “you’re worrying for nothing. I was on the phone with our ears in Dallas ten minutes ago. None
of them have heard anything.”
“Everybody knows we got ears all over,” Rose said. “If they’re
planning a move they’re keeping a tight lid on it.”
“They got no reason to make a move on us,” Sam said. “Ragsdale
lost their machines to us, we didn’t steal them. They made a bet on
Willie Rags and they lost.”
“Could be they’re sore losers,” Rose said. “Could be they don’t give
a rat’s ass it’s Ragsdale’s fault.”
“What can they
do,
come get the machines back?” Sam said. “As
soon as they tried it we’d hear about it and be there before they got
the first slot loaded on the truck. They can’t do anything except forget the slots or buy them back. You got them over a barrel, Rosie.”
Rose arched his brow at me in question.
“I’m with Sam,” I said.
He nodded but didn’t look convinced. “Well... keep a close tab
with the ears,” he said to Sam.
“And you,” he said to me, “just keep close.”
ucio Ramirez is about to close his bakery for the
day when the little bell jingles over the door and
two men enter. One of them flips the sign hanging inside the glass door to the side that says
CERRADO
and
Angel Lozano and Gustavo Mendez are large men in
finely tailored suits and snapbrim fedoras. They could pass
for brothers, their chief distinction in their mustaches—
Angel’s thick and droopy, Gustavo’s thin and straight—
and in Angel’s left eye, which is held in a permanent
half-squint by a pinched white scar at its outer corner.
Apodaca is a small pueblo and these men in smart city
clothes are obvious outsiders. Even as Ramirez asks how he
may serve them, his apprehension is stark on his face.
Angel asks if he is related to Maria Ramirez, who until
recently was in the employ of La Hacienda de Las Cadenas.
The baker can see that the man already knows the true
answer—and sees as well that he is not a man to lie to—
and so he admits that Maria is his daughter and asks what
they wish with her.
At that moment his rotund wife emerges from a curtained
short at the sight of the strangers.
Ramirez tells her who they are and she turns back toward the curtain but Gustavo catches her by the arm and yanks her to him and
claps a hand over her mouth. Ramirez starts toward them but Angel
grabs him by the hair and rams his forehead against the wall and lets
the baker fall to the floor unconscious, his forehead webbed with
blood.
Angel passes through the curtain and sees the girl sitting on the
edge of her bed, her sewing sliding off her lap, her eyes large. Before
she can scream, Angel is on her, pinning her down, a hand on her
mouth and a knife blade at her neck.
He tells her he will ask her only once—where is the wife of Don
César?—and tells her that if she lies he will see the lie in her eyes and
he will cut her throat to the neckbone.
He eases his hand from the girl’s mouth but she is terrified to incoherence. He tells her to calm down, for Christ’s sake, and she tries,
but as she talks she continues to weep and partially choke on her
mucus and he permits her to sit up so she can speak more clearly.
She is at last able to tell him that la doña paid the stableman Luis
Arroyo with jewelry to escort her to the border town of Matamoros.
At the Monclova station, Maria Ramirez took leave of them and
caught a train to Monterrey and from there took a bus to Apodaca.
She doesn’t know—she
swears
she doesn’t—where in Matamoros la
doña was going or why. She knows nothing more to tell except that,
on the train trip to Monclova, Arroyo had spoken of a brother who
owns a cantina in Matamoros, a place called La Perla.
left Rose and Sam talking business in the office and
went into the lounge and ordered a bottle of beer.
At that hour, there were only a few guys at the bar,
a few couples at the tables. The place would start filling
fast by suppertime and would as always be packed at midnight.
“Say, Kid!”
At the rear of the lounge, LQ stood in the doorway to
the billiards room, a cue stick in one hand. He waved me
over. Brando leaned into view around the door jamb and
gave me a high sign, then stepped out of sight again.
I went to join them. They were shooting eight ball,
best of three for five bucks, and had split the first two
games.
“Got winners,” I said, and started searching the wall
holder for my favorite cue.
“Why not just say you want to play me next?” LQ said.
He was in good spirits. Brando had a fresh shiner under
one eye.
“Quit the bullshit and shoot,” Brando said.
“Hard to tell who’s winning, aint it?” LQ said to me.
I found the cue I wanted and dusted my hands with talc and
slicked up the stick.
The table was showing all of the stripes and only two solids other
than the eight ball. LQ laid his cigarette aside and leaned into the
light under the Tiffany tableshade and set himself to try banking the
six ball into the side. He squinted in the shadow of his hatbrim,
sighting and resighting on the six as intently as a surveyor peering
through a transit.
He missed by half a foot. The six caromed off the cushion and
went banging into several other balls and smacked the eight into a
corner pocket.
Brando hooted and said, “Pay up, sucker.”
For all their bluster with a cue stick, neither of them could play
worth a damn. I’d seen them knock the balls all over the table for
more than half an hour before somebody finally scratched, which was
the way most of their games were decided. It was rarely a matter of
which of them would win, but who’d be the first to lose.
LQ peeled a five from a wad of greenbacks and flung it fluttering
to the table. “Lucky bastard,” he said.
Brando laughed and tucked away the bill. “Like the man said, talent makes its own luck.” He turned to me and said, “Next!”
I fished the balls out of the pockets and racked them, then eased
the wooden rack off the balls and returned it to its hook at the foot of
the table. There had been a pool table at the ranch and over the years
I’d become a fair hand with a cue. I was no match for the hustlers, but
Brando and LQ wouldn’t play me for money anymore unless I gave
three-to-one odds.
The strong point of Brando’s game was his break. As usual, he
broke the balls with a crack like a sledgehammer. They ricocheted in
a wild clatter, the seven falling in a corner, the four dropping in a
side.
“Yes
sir
!” Brando said.
He called the two in the corner, straight and easy, and made it.
Then cut the five into another corner. Then tapped the three in the
side. He grinned at me and blew across the tip of his cue like he was
clearing smoke from a rifle muzzle.
LQ groaned in his chair behind me and said, “Shooting out his
ass.”
“One in the corner,” Brando called. It was a clear shot but he
stroked it way harder than necessary and the yellow ball spasmed in
the rim of the pocket before it dropped in.
Brando laughed and banged the heel of his cue on the floor.
“Somebody stop me before I kill again.”
The only shot he had with the six was a cross-corner bank. He
came close, but it didn’t fall.
“Son of a bitch,” he said.
“Finally back to your normal game,” LQ said.
I sank seven in a row—bank shots, rail shots, combinations—and
just like that, there was nothing left standing but Brando’s six and
the eight ball.
But I hadn’t played the last shot well. The eight was positioned at
one end of the table, near the center of the rail and an inch off the
cushion, while the cue ball had ended up at the other end of the table
and up against the rail.
“Got too cocky, hotshot,” Brando said. “Left yourself hard.”
“Five-buck side bet, two to one, says I sink it.” I tapped the corner pocket to my left. “Here.”
“Too much green and a bad angle,” Brando said. “You’re on.”
I formed a thumb bridge for the stick and set myself, then laid
into the cue ball. It zoomed toward the eight and caught it just right
and the black ball jumped off the cushion at an angle and came barreling down the table like it had eyes and vanished into the corner
pocket.
“Whooo!”
LQ hollered.
“Shit!”
Brando said. He dug two fives out of his pocket and tossed
them on the table. “That’s it. I aint playing you anymore. I don’t need
this kind of humiliation.”
“Kind you usually get’s plenty enough, huh?” LQ said.
“Kiss my ass,” Brando said. “Let’s see
you
take him.”
I arched my brow at LQ and gestured toward the table.
“No thanks,” he said. “I’m short enough at the moment. I can just
about make it to payday tomorrow.”
“Well hell,” I said, “if nobody’s going to play, let’s go park our
asses in the bar and have a few.”
“Winners buy,” Brando said.
“It’s how come you always drink for free,” LQ said.
Out in the lounge I got us a pitcher of beer and we took a table in
the corner. I filled the three glasses and we touched them in a toast
and drank.
“Kinda surprised this morning when Momma Mia said we’d just
us two be going to Alvin with a slot man,” LQ said. “I asked where
you were and she just shrugs like she always does. Like she don’t
know the time of day.”
“Poppa got you on a secret mission?” Brando said.
“Wish he did,” I said. I told them all about Rose’s talk with the
Dallas guys and his suspicion that they might try to retaliate.
“You got to hang around all week?” Brando said. “Man, I like the
Club, but I’d go crazy if I had to be here all the time for a
week
.”
“I agree with you and Sam,” LQ said. “Them Dallas peckerwoods
aint gonna do a damn thing, not after how we done Willie Rags.
They’d have to be the biggest dopes in Texas, and that’s saying plenty.
Shit, let ’em try something. I could use the action.”
“Looks like you-all maybe got some action today,” I said, pointing
at the bruise on Brando’s face.
“Oh man, the Shoes place,” LQ said. He cut a look at Brando.
“Some fun, huh, Ramon?”
Brando shrugged and lit a cigarette.
LQ said that when they got to the Red Shoes Cabaret that morning, along with a slot mechanic named Freddie, the place was closed,
of course, but there was an armed security guard at the door. LQ told
him what they were there for and the guard said he couldn’t let anyone go in without permission from Mr. Dunlop or Mr. Garr, the partners who owned the place, and neither one of them was there at the
moment. He expected them to show up sometime later but didn’t
know exactly when.
“Jesus, what’s
that
?” LQ said, looking over the guard’s shoulder
into the club. When the guard turned to look, LQ snatched the guy’s
pistol from its holster and shoved him inside.
Brando took a quick look around the premises but there wasn’t
anybody else around except a grayhaired Negro janitor. LQ made him
and the guard sit down out of the way.
Freddie was almost through with his inspection of the machines
when they heard a car drive into the lot. LQ pulled the guard up to
the window and drew the blind aside just enough for them to peek
out and see a Cadillac stop beside the Dodge. There were two men in
the Caddy, and the guard said it was Dunlop and Garr.
The car doors opened and the men got out. They stood there looking at the Dodge a minute and then headed toward the cabaret’s front
door. LQ told the guard to sit back down at the table and he and
Brando took positions on opposite sides of the door with their guns
ready.
The one named Garr came in first and stopped short when he saw
Freddie standing at the bar with a toolbox beside a dismantled slot
machine and the guard and janitor sitting there with their thumbs up
their ass. He said “What the fuck you think—” and then shut up
when LQ’s gun pressed against the side of his head.
The Dunlop guy had been a few steps behind Garr and stopped at
the door when he saw what was happening. Before he could haul ass,