Then, on Saturday nights, you drive the thing slowly, at three inches off the ground, down around the Plaza at Santa Fe. If you spot a cop—the legal minimum height for a license plate is twelve inches—you flip a switch and your hydro, powered by the extra batteries, quickly pump-hops the car back up to legality. If you spot a couple of cruising chicks, you do the same. It’s a kind of mating dance.
Together, the two cars in the parking lot at La Cantina represented something over thirty-five thousand dollars. That was a lot of money for this neighborhood. It was a lot for mine, come to that.
La Cantina itself represented a good deal less. It needed a coat of paint, although that particular shade of sickly gray would probably be difficult to come by. The planking on the porch, worn down to bare wood, was curling up at the edges and it creaked beneath my feet like rotten ice on a frozen lake. I pulled open the screen door and stepped inside.
Maybe the three men standing at the bar, and the bartender standing behind it, had been silent even before I arrived. They were certainly silent now, watchful and appraising.
I crossed the floor, my footsteps sounding louder than they should. Wooden chairs and tables were haphazardly arranged around the room. To my right was a small pool table. To my left, a pair of video arcade games, one of them pinging inanely away to itself. Overhead, a ceiling fan whispered as it slowly turned.
The three were in their twenties, and before each sat a bottle of Coors. The two men nearest me were so alike they could’ve been bookends. Both were about my height and slim, both wearing jeans and T-shirts and wispy mustaches. The one farthest away was taller, thicker in the body, more muscular, and above his jeans he wore only a buttoned leather vest. No mustache. High, almost Indian cheekbones. A red headband holding down the thick black hair. On the large bicep of his left arm was a tattoo of an eagle.
The bartender, maybe forty years old, was short and fat and wore a shirt that hadn’t been white for some time. His apron had probably never been white. Like the others, he kept his face empty as I approached. Like them, he was waiting.
I felt as if I’d walked into a Gary Cooper movie. Felt as if I should’ve tipped my Stetson and drawled, “Howdy.” I wasn’t wearing a Stetson, so I smiled instead and asked the bartender what kind of beer he carried.
Lip protruding slightly, he shook his head, “No habla inglés.”
The line provoked huge guffaws in the two slim men. The third, with the headband, only smiled faintly and kept watching me.
“Bueno,” I said, still smiling at the bartender. “Una cerveza. Corona, por favor.”
He nodded, his face still empty, and turned and bent down to open the wooden cooler behind him, beneath the cash register. He took out a bottle of Corona, pushed the door shut, turned back, snapped the cap off with a churchkey dangling from his belt, then slammed the beer down onto the bartop. It foamed up immediately, gushing out the spout, down the sides of the bottle, and bubbling along the counter. He produced a glass and set it down, with elaborate precision, exactly in the center of the puddle.
I nodded appreciatively, as though this was exactly the way I preferred to receive my beer.
“Cinco dólares,” he said.
I smiled again, nodded, reached into my pocket, pulled out a five, and handed it to him. Ignoring the cash register, he slipped the bill into his pocket.
“Five dollars,” I said in cheerful Spanish. “This is an excellent beer, but the price seems a little excessive.”
He shrugged. “The beer is cheap.” He waved a hand, indicating the room. “You are paying for the atmosphere.”
More mirth from the two bookends. Despite what was probably a family resemblance, they weren’t really identical. The one nearest, me was better looking, with a sensitive mouth and sharp, intelligent eyes. The second one had a nose that had been broken at least once, a wide mouth that he kept mostly open, and narrow deep-set eyes that seemed faintly glazed. Grass, or beer, or maybe just stupidity.
Smiling at them fondly, watching Headband out of the corner of my eye, I raised the dripping glass. “Salud.”
“Sure, bro,” said the bookend nearest me, in English. He elbowed his friend, and the two of them held up their Coors bottles. “Salud,” they grinned. Headband merely nodded at me, still smiling faintly.
We drank. As I set my glass back down in the puddle, the nearest bookend smiled at me. “So you speak Spanish, huh, bro?”
“A little.”
He nodded, eyes narrowed, lips pursed, thoughtful. “Too bad you speak it so shitty, huh.”
The second bookend laughed.
“It certainly is,” I said. “It’s a good thing you speak English so well.” I drank some beer. “You know,” I said earnestly, “maybe you can help me. I’m trying to find someone.”
Bookend Number One looked at me. “And who’s that, bro?”
“Guy named Chavez. Benito Chavez.”
He squinted, looked off at the ceiling, considered for a moment, then shook his head. “Never heard’a him.”
At the mention of the name, Bookend Number Two had dropped open his mouth and glanced at his near-double. Now, turning away, his shoulders were tight to stop them from shaking and he was trying to hide an excited grin behind a long pull of beer. From such subtle clues I deduced that Bookend Number One was most probably Benito Chavez.
Headband was still smiling. Waiting to see how I handled the two cholos before he stepped in.
I said, “No, I didn’t think so. You look too smart to be involved with a guy like Chavez.”
He frowned. “How’s that, bro?”
I shrugged. “From what I’ve heard, Chavez is a real loser. He was dealing coke to a guy named Biddle down in Santa Fe, and Biddle got blown away. Word is, Chavez is involved.”
He nodded thoughtfully and said, “And this Chavez dude, you’re lookin’ for him.”
I nodded. “I need some information.” I took a drink of beer. A few drops from the bottom of the glass plopped onto my windbreaker.
“Hey, careful, bro,” he said. Grinning, he brushed at my chest with the back of his fingers. Forcefully.
I smiled at him. “Thanks.”
“Hey, no problem.” He punched at my shoulder, pretending at playfulness but going for the nerve endings along the curve of the joint. I smiled some more.
He turned his back to the bar and leaned up against it, hooking the heel of his boot over the rail, holding the beer bottle loosely. He nodded to my cheek. “Some bruise you got there, bro.”
I nodded. “Fell off a horse.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “So what kind of information you lookin’ for?”
“Information about Biddle.”
“That dude that got blown away.”
“Right.”
“I can tell you one thing about him, bro.”
“What’s that?”
He grinned and pronounced the words like a redneck cowboy: “He’s daid.”
This inspired more hilarity in Bookend Number Two.
I was getting a little tired of playing straight man. And if Bookend here was Chavez, he wasn’t going to tell me anything worthwhile with his two compadres hanging around. “Well,” I said, and reached into my windbreaker pocket. Headband didn’t react at all, but the other two stiffened for a moment, then relaxed as I brought out one of my calling cards. I set it on the bar. “If you run into Chavez, give him my card. Tell him there may be some money in it for him.” I moved to leave. Bookend Number One put the hand holding his beer against my chest.
“You can’t leave now, bro. You didn’t finish your beer.”
“That’s all right. I’ll come back later.”
“No later, bro.” He smiled at me and dropped his hand, nodding to the glass. “Finish the beer.”
I smiled back. “You’re right. Why waste good beer.” I picked up the glass, drained it. I nodded at the three of them. “See you later.” And then I moved again to leave. Again his hand came up.
He called
out over my shoulder to the bartender, “Jose, another Corona.”
I shook my head. “No thanks.”
“Hey, bro, relax. Take it easy. We’ll have a few beers, we’ll talk, we’ll smoke some good grass, we’ll pass some time. Later maybe we’ll go out and find ourselves some women. What you say?” Leaning forward, grinning, he poked me in the chest. “You like the Spanish women, bro?”
“Maybe some other time.”
Behind me, the bartender picked up the empty beer bottle and put a full one in its place.
Bookend Number One was facing me now, his foot off the rail, his left hand holding the beer bottle, his right resting along the bar. Setting himself up to pull off a trick that’d been old before he was born.
“What’s the matter, bro?” he said. “Spanish women not good enough for you?”
“Spanish women are swell.”
“Maybe you like boys better, huh, bro?” His eyes were narrowed and I could smell the stale beer on his breath.
“Not especially,” I said.
“Maybe you just a fuckin’ faggot, huh, bro? You like doin’ little boys, that what it is?”
And it was then, after he’d got himself worked up for it, that he tried.
The trick is simple. As you talk, you suddenly drop your beer bottle, or your glass, whatever you’re holding. The person you’re talking to is distracted, his eyes instinctively following the bottle, and that’s when you sucker punch him.
He dropped the bottle and I hit him with a very good left along the cheek.
As he went spinning off, face awry, his friend came bulling in, head lowered, fists up. I smashed down on his instep with the heel of my boot. He screeched and doubled over. I pounded my fist against the back of his neck, grabbed at his shoulder and hurled him off to the right, out of the way.
Because Headband was dancing toward me now, his hand snaking out of his pocket. The knife was a Balisong, the Filipino fighting knife that can whip open as quickly as a switchblade if it’s handled properly.
He handled it properly, but by then I had the .38 out, pointing it at his nose. I pulled back the hammer and it made a satisfying click.
“Nice knife,” I said. “You wouldn’t want to get brains all over it.”
TWELVE
HEADBAND LOOKED for a moment at the gun. Then he smiled, straightened up, and tossed the knife casually to the floor. From the way he shrugged, he might’ve been making a comment on the weather. “Otra vez,” he said. Another time.
I nodded. “Otra vez.”
Bookend Number Two was out for the count, slumped in a fetal ball on the floor, but Number One was pulling himself to his feet, and from the anger in his face I knew he was going to try a rush at me.
I said to Headband, “Tell him to lie down. Face to the ground.”
“Calma te,” Headband told him. Bookend hesitated, and Headband snapped, “Acostado de suelo.” Bookend lay down.
I heard the floorboards creak behind me, on the other side of the bar. Still watching Headband, I called out in Spanish over my shoulder, “Do not even think about it, Jose. I will shoot your friend and then I will shoot you. Does your insurance cover such situations?”
Silence.
I said, “Come out here, José.”
After a moment, he shuffled around the bar, his hands wringing at his apron. “It is not a good thing,” he said in Spanish, and nodded nervously to the gun, “to bring that in here.”
“It is not a good thing,” I said, “to charge five dollars for a glass of beer. Lie down.”
He looked down with distaste. After all, he knew better than anyone what had been on that floor over the years.
“Lie down,” I said again. Muttering to himself, grimacing, he got down onto the floor. I turned to Headband. “You, too.”
Headband shrugged again, and then slowly, eyes never leaving mine, lowered himself to the floor. I crossed over to Bookend Number One and told him, “Hands out. Straight above your head, palms along the deck.”
“Maricon,” he said.
Gently, silently, I released the hammer on the pistol. I didn’t particularly care for the guy; but the revolver, cocked, has a very light trigger pull, and I didn’t want to turn him into a mess that Jose would have to clean up. I bent over and put the snout of the barrel against the back of his neck. “Hands out.”
He slid his hands out.
Holding the gun to his neck, keeping an eye on Headband, I squatted down and reached into his back pocket, slipped out his wallet. I flipped it open. The driver’s license was behind the plastic window. The photograph was a good likeness.
I stood up and tossed the wallet to the floor. “Well, Benito,” I said, “I don’t suppose there’s anything you want to tell me about Frank Biddle.”
He hissed a few colorful unpleasantries about my mother.
“I didn’t think so,” I said. “Otra vez, maybe.”
I turned to Headband. “I think it’d be a good idea if the three of you stayed where you are for a while. Don’t get up. Don’t go outside. You understand?”
He nodded.
“Good. Adios.”
I backed across the room and out of it, punching the screen door open with my elbow. The door swung shut and I turned and sprinted off the porch, down the steps, and across the parking lot, the gravel clicking and clittering beneath me. At the lowriders, I raised the.38 and fired at all four front tires. Three hits, a miss, another hit. Splendid shooting. But the tires were blown and the front ends were sagging.
I ripped open the door to the Subaru and jumped in, tossing the gun to the passenger side. Found the keys, jammed them in the ignition, started the car, slammed it into reverse, backed out, slammed it into forward, hit the gas, took off with a rattle of pebbles.
My hands were shaking. Adrenaline buzz. No wonder I’d missed.
The shaking didn’t stop until I was far below the town, until I was past the village of Truchas. It stopped right about the time I spotted the two new lowriders behind me.
FOR A FEW MINUTES after I noticed them, they maintained their speed, keeping the distance between us to about a hundred yards. They could’ve been kids or a pair of young couples, out for an afternoon spin. On the other hand, the three men back at the bar could’ve used a telephone or a C.B. radio to call in reinforcements.
Below Truchas the road goes downhill almost all the way to Santa Fe, coiling and uncoiling, turning and winding through the high desert. It’s a good road with a firm solid surface, except when the winds dump drifts of sand across the tarmac, or when a storm slicks it up with rain. There was no sand today, but the storm that’d been threatening all morning looked ready to deliver. Far ahead of me, to the south and just about the location of Santa Fe, I could see where the black rolling cloud cover ended; shafts of bright yellow light hit the mountains aslant and made them gleam with green and gold. I was wondering if I’d make it there without getting drenched when I glanced into the rear-view mirror and saw that the lowriders were moving up.
I was going a little over sixty on the straights, in direct violation of the national speed limit. Coming at me that quickly, the two cars had to be violating it by at least thirty miles an hour.
If these two were after me, there was no way I could outrun them. The little Subaru engine, game as it might be, was no match for even a small-block Chevy eight.
When they both got within thirty yards of me, the rear lowrider dropped back, and at that point I was pretty sure they weren’t just a couple of kids out for a ride. And it was just then that the rain started, fat round drops splatting against the windshield.
One eye on the mirror, I flipped the wipers on. Magically, this made the rain fall harder.
It was a nifty situation. Chased by two big Chevies, either of which could run rings around the Subaru, at exactly the time when the rain was starting to lift the embedded oils up off the road surface, turning it into a skating rink.
The rain was drumming against the windshield and, despite
the frantic thrashing of the wipers, smearing away the landscape. But ahead of me, barely, I could make out a sharp leftward curve coming up in about half a mile. I kept my speed steady at sixty as the lowrider behind me moved into the other lane and began sailing up alongside. There were two men in the front seat.
The driver was cocky. He’d seen car chases at the drive-in, and thought I was dead meat. He and his passenger were both grinning as he swung the massive bulk of the Chevy toward the Subaru. I braked and let him shoot past me.
He was almost at the curve, where the road dropped off on both sides, when I flipped the Subaru into four-wheel drive and floored the gas pedal. The little wagon surged forward. I was braced, fingers tight around the wheel, elbows locked, when it smacked into the left side of the Chevy’s rear fender.
Suddenly propelled faster than his wheels were moving, the driver lost his rolling traction, and then, only a moment later, he lost the road. He went over the side and down the slope.
I didn’t have time to congratulate myself. Going into the curve too quickly, I could feel the tires sliding away beneath me. I let up on the gas, countersteered, ignored the brakes, and felt the tires bite into the road again. I steered back onto track, and let out my breath. Okay.
Now if the second lowrider stayed to help the first get his machine back onto the road, I was safe for a while.
No. He had slowed down, maybe, but not stopped. He was right behind me, and coming up fast. If he had any imagination, he could do the same thing to me that I’d just done to his friend.
Either he didn’t have any imagination, or he was trying to prove something that didn’t require it. He began moving up on my left. I glanced in the side mirror, saw the silhouette of his head behind the swishing windshield wipers.
When he was nearly level with me, I tapped the brake, dropped back a few feet, then jerked the steering wheel to the left, held it firm, and hit the gas. The Subaru’s bumper smashed into the Chevy’s right front fender, crumpling it and jamming it up against the tire. With his front wheels suddenly locked in place, he went into a skid.
Accelerating past, I watched in the rearview mirror as he tried to ride it out. There wasn’t much he could do—his steering wheel was useless. He stayed on the road for fifty or sixty yards, and then the road made a gentle curve, sweeping off to the right, and, like his friends, he was gone.
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