Gunmetal Black

by Daniel Serrano

  Pelón stopped there. He got up and walked across the living room to the bar again. He added a little rum to his Cuba Libre. Still at the bar he leaned on his cane.

  “My mother didn’t sleep that night. She was up washing my brother’s face. She put the medicine. Lit the candles. Prayed to all the saints. My father went to the colmado to play dominoes.”

  Pelón noticed then that his cigar had gone out in the ashtray atop the bar. He left his drink on the bar and lit the cigar and leaned on his cane and used the cigar to punctuate his words.

  “In the morning my brother burned. My father finally agree to take him to the hospital. He snap at me and make me run to the neighbor’s to fetch a horse. A tobacco farm a couple miles away. You believe that? I never rode a horse in my life. Who sends an impoverished child to get a horse in an emergency?”

  Pelón looked deeply into the ember of his cigar. He turned the volume down. “I’m not gonna lie. I was excited to ride the horse. I was mad at my brother that I had to go straight home. In my mind I imagine running the horse down to the river. Jumping. Flying. But when I got on the horse, it went where it wanted. His name was Pelota. ‘Pelota, Pelota, let’s go! This way, Pelota, vámonos!’ I don’t think that goddamn horse spoke Spanish! I got off and ran back with it, I had to lead it, to pull this giant animal. Goddamn thing slobbered all over the back of my neck. So hot and sweaty. I was covered in mocos from the horse’s snout. Probably the first time I actually wanted to take a bath.”

  Pelón stared into his glass before downing what was left. He spoke slower than ever. “By the time I got to the house, my father, he stood out front. Dressed in his white guayabera. Smoking his cigar with that serious look. Like a big shot. Like he was there to meet the mayor. My other brother sat on a rock by the side of the path with his head in his hands. My father said, ‘Why did you take so long?’ I let go the horse and ran in. Chico was stretched on my parents’ bed. Probably the only time his back ever touched a mattress. My mother was on her knees next to him. She said his name and wrapped a rosary around his hands. I started to cry. Chico was the only one who looked at peace. The mattress soaked up his nightmares.”

  Tony and I were silent. We stopped sipping our drinks. Pelón looked at us. The tension in his crooked posture made it seem that he struggled to keep something in. Then he stood straight and grinned.

  “So that was the first time I ever wore shoes. My mother bought them for me and my other brother to wear at the funeral. They were the wrong size. She bought them big so they would last. First time I ever wore underwear too. I’m sure my father protested. But after my mother let him win the argument about Chico and the hospital, she never let him talk her down again.”

  Pelón lowered himself into his special chair. He cleared his throat. “You boys need to understand something about this country. We have everything. De todo. But nobody’s going to give it to you. And nobody’s going to let you have it either. You gotta reach out with your own two hands.” Pelón showed us his hands. The one with the gold and diamond pinky ring. The other with the missing fingers. “Reach out and grab it,” he said. “Take it. Make it yours. That’s the only way it’s going to happen for you. These people’ve been running things in this part of the world for five hundred years. You think they gonna stop now?”

  He poked the cigar between his dentures, leaned back, and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “Understand what I’m getting at?”

  Tony nodded. I did not say a word. There followed an uncomfortable silence where it seemed that Pelón looked right into me in an effort to read something.

  “¿Sabes qué, Eduardo?” Pelón focused right on me. “You remind me of Brando.”

  Tony perked up. “The Godfather?”

  “No.”

  “Where he plays the boxer?”

  “Tampoco.”

  “I know,” said Tony, “with the motorcycle gang. The Wild One.”

  Pelón wagged a finger. “Ever see One-Eyed Jacks?”

  Tony shook his head.

  I said, “Is that where he bangs the French chick?”

  Pelón twisted his mouth like, You wish. “It’s a Western. Brando plays a robber who gets double-cross by his best friend. He spends five years in jail in México, then comes back to California to kill the best friend. But the best friend is a sheriff now. He’s got the police on his side.”

  There followed an abrupt silence, and I wondered whether Pelón figured my suspicions about Tony, about himself, and about my forty thousand. I wondered whether he meant to taunt me.

  Tony seemed to pick up on this. “Yo, what is it about Eddie that reminds you of that guy?”

  Pelón left the charge in the atmosphere by stalling. He grinned and turned the cigar in his mouth, like a true puppet master. “The way he watch everybody. Like he waiting his turn. A hungry young cobra waiting for blood. No te ofenda. Is a compliment.”

  Pelón’s words hung for a second over the glass-topped coffee table. I let him watch as I finished my Cuba Libre and licked my lips.

  I said, “So, Pelón? Does Brando kill the best friend?”

  Pelón bit his lip. “Think I gonna spoil it? Watch it all the way to the end.”

  Just then, the phone rang.

  Pelón excused himself. When he answered, his eyes darted over to me and Tony. “Sí, sí, espérate.” He covered the receiver.

  “Private call?” I said.

  Pelón made a face like he appreciated that we understood, and gestured toward the other room. “Vayan a jugar billar.”

  The pool table was sleek, black, the slate dressed in green felt. Tony racked, I broke. Nothing went in. I went to the floor-to-ceiling windows. Cars sped below on six lanes along the shore. Beyond the lights the Lake was an immense cauldron of black ink.

  Tony worked the table. Crack. Crack. Crack-crack. I’m confident that Tony never recited one law of physics, but he manipulated several with his cue stick.

  Each of my balls was still on the table. “What the fuck, Tony, save some for me.”

  He pointed the stick. “Maybe in the next life. Eight ball, corner pocket.”

  He soft-banked it at an impossible angle. Of course it rolled in.

  I high-fived Tony. “You’re a genius.”

  Tony blew blue chalk off the tip like a gunslinger. “My secret is logical: I spend way too much time in bars.”

  I placed the balls inside the triangle. “Pelón lays it on thick, huh?”

  Tony chalked the tip again. “What you mean?”

  “I smell a snow job.”

  “He’s just making conversation.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “When’s he gonna get to the point?”

  “Meaning?”

  “The heist.”

  “Eddie, I told you he was gonna feel you out. Slow your roll.”

  Just then, Pelón interrupted: “Stick ’em up!”

  He stood at the entrance to the room and pointed his cane at me like a tommy gun. He was fully dressed in a pin-striped navy suit, pink shirt, red silk tie, polished shoes. On his head was a navy fedora, tilted to the side. There was no way to know exactly how long Pelón had been standing in the room, listening.

  He winked. “Let’s go.”

  We followed him.

  Tony popped his gum. “So what’s on the menu?”

  Pelón smiled. “No te preocupe. You find out when we get there.”

  We stopped by the elevators. Pelón gave me that same look from earlier. Like there was something that we were both in on. I had no instinct as to what it was. He held me in his gaze long enough to make me wish that he would stop. Then he used the tip of his cane to call the elevator. The little arrow pointed down.

  CHAPTER 09:

  SLINGSHOT

  We rode in the limo to the suburbs.

  “I taking you boys to the track.”

  Tony mixed drinks. “I don’t know shit about playing the ponies, Pelón.”

  “Don’t worry, I teach you.” He snapped his fingers
. “Pay attention.”

  Pelón took out the racing form and went into a long lecture about win, place, and show, across the board, daily doubles, exactas, trifectas, and superfectas. He talked a lot about the history of certain horses, their jockeys and trainers, and whether they liked one type of track or another. His tone was scientific. Especially when he unspooled the string of equations for eliminating risk.

  In Spanish he said, “You get all that?”

  If Tony and I had been cartoons, our eyeballs would’ve been pinwheels.

  Pelón laughed and slapped his own knee. “Listen, tonight the only thing to remember is Curly-Q to win in the fifth.”

  I raised my eyebrow. “Curly-Q?”

  “In the fifth.”

  Tony crunched an ice cube. “That a special horse or something?”

  Pelón leaned back. “The trainer’s a friend. Curly-Q come from a strong bloodline. But he had a little accident.”

  Tony said, “He peed himself?”

  I chuckled, but Pelón said, “No seas tan pendejo.” He continued: “After Curly-Q fell, people thought he finished. The trainer, he look in the animal’s eyes. You know what he saw?” Pelón tapped himself in the chest. “Amor. Hierro. Corazón. He knew that horse was gonna come back.”

  Tony sat up. “Don’t they normally shoot jacked-up horses?”

  “Not this time. My friend took the horse away. Let it recover. Took care of him with some special vitamins. You know what? The beast is faster now than before. More confident.”

  Tony whistled.

  Pelón said, “The trainer’s no fool. He bring that horse back, but he tell the jockey, ‘Aguántalo.’ Go dead every race.”

  I said, “You mean, hold the horse back?”

  “Sí.”

  “Why?”

  Pelón looked at me like, You really don’t understand caca, do you? “To drive up the odds. Curly-Q race eleven times since he come back. He move like his balls weigh fifty pounds. Everybody think it’s because of the accident. Tonight the jockey gonna let him fly. El dinero está twenty-one to one.”

  The scheme took shape in my mind. Except for Pelón’s role.

  “Why’s the trainer telling you all this, Pelón? What do you contribute?”

  Pelón rolled his eyes. “I gotta explain everything?” He looked at his watch. “We gotta get to the window and post.”

  It was a long ride to the track. Pelón looked out the window and checked his watch every three minutes.

  He tapped Tony on the knee. “¿Y tú, Antonio? What’s gonna happen with this revolú?”

  Tony sounded like a scolded teenager. “You see a mess anywhere?”

  Pelón said, “You think I don’t hear? I’m here, but I see what happen here, there, and over there. I got eyes that see backward and forward and to the side.”

  I said, “You’re like a fly, ha, Pelón? All up in the shit.”

  He pretended not to hear.

  Tony shifted. “Listen, Pelón, if Roach wants a piece of me—”

  Pelón interrupted Tony by asking him outright: “¿Quieńn mató a ese muchacho?”

  “The little soldier in the park? I don’t know. I didn’t punch his ticket. None of my people did.”

  Pelón said, “That’s not what I heard.”

  Tony shot back, “You shouldn’t listen to gossip.”

  Pelón said in Spanish, “I don’t understand why you in this business right now. You make enough money with me.”

  “Hey, school’s out, Pelón, OK? Whyn’t you go back to lecturing about horses?”

  “It don’t make sense, Antonio. With this thing we got coming up? Why risk it? You gonna earn more in one night than that business gonna bring in five years.”

  And there it was. For the first time Pelón himself put the casino heist in full view.

  Tony focused on himself. “Look, Pelón, Roach is gonna come after me, regardless. It’s war now. This is what I do.”

  “Do it smart then. Negotiate for territory. Maybe you make peace with him and you two put in together, you and Roach, buy in bulk, lower you own costs. You can even agree to keep the prices up. That’s the way the big companies do it. Why you think gasoline costs so much? Use your head. Make a monopoly. Start collecting more money and forget about the pistolas.”

  “Number one,” said Tony, “there ain’t enough corners in the hood no more. Yuppies gobbled up so much turf, and the narcs keep baggers off their blocks, so it’s almost all gone. Customers been squeezed off. It ain’t like the eighties where you could throw product from any corner. You drive by Humboldt Park in the morning now? All you see is white people jogging.”

  I jumped in. “Don’t they get high, though?”

  “Of course. They just don’t tolerate street pushers. You need a whole ’nother network to get to them. And I’m working on that, but right now the street is my bread and butter.”

  I said, “So what’s number two?”

  “Huh?”

  “You said number one was not enough turf and street junkies left to share.”

  “Right.”

  “So what’s number two?”

  “Oh. Number two is: fuck Roach. He can eat a dick. I been in and out of this game before that faggot was jerkin’ off his first nickel bag.”

  Pelón said, “Coño, Antonio, pero you never make nothing out of it. Let’s face it. What you got to show for all them drug deals? And you too old now to play cowboys and Indians.”

  “It ain’t about that.”

  I finished my drink. “Pelón, you’re telling a dog not to lick his own balls.”

  Pelón shook his head. “I know.” In Spanish he said, “The affliction of youth.” He checked his watch and pushed the button to lower the partition and addressed his driver. “Oye, Gordo, if we don’t make post, I swear to Lázaro, I gonna leave you face in a pile of horse shit.”

  Pelón raised the partition and rattled the ice cubes in his glass. Tony refilled it with gin and soda. The limo driver found a hole in the stream of traffic and took off.

  It was natural in the cushy backseat of that limo to reflect on my history with Pelón. We had known each other a long time and done things together we both wanted to forget.

  After the first deal that Tony made with Pelón in the mid-eighties, Pelón became a regular customer. Every month or so he’d stop by for two hundred, three hundred, or five hundred dime bags of weed. For me and Tony and our crew, it was always a fat, unexpected jump-off when Pelón rolled through in his fancy gleaming white Excalibur.

  One day, about a year or so into our relationship, Pelón rolled up with a bag of breaded Ricobene’s steak sandwiches.

  I licked my fingers. “Damn, you could write a poem about these.”

  Pelón smiled and wiped sauce from his handlebar mustache. “You boys don’t leave the neighborhood much, do you?”

  Teenage Tony talked with his mouth full. He glanced down at his jacket, which was in our gang’s colors. “Too many enemies.”

  Pelón shook his head. “There’s a whole universe out there, and you putting up a cage. Finish eating. I gonna show you something.”

  We rode in the Excalibur with the top down. Pelón steered it up Lake Shore Drive past condos with views of the water. He drove to some North Shore suburbs. Huge mansions lined the coast. On the street people stared at us, and I couldn’t tell if it was the wild car or the strange fruit inside that intrigued them.

  Pelón pointed at a house barely visible behind the trees. “Some houses got swimming pools inside. Saunas. A private beach just for the house.”

  I wanted to see that. I asked Pelón how he knew this.

  Pelón chuckled. “They got a lotta nice things too. Paintings, silverware, jewelry, cameras, stereos. Easy things to carry. And sell.”

  I adjusted my Super Bowl XX baseball cap. “You got a point, Pelón?”

  “I’m saying this is a easy place to go shopping.”

  Tony wiggled his fingers. “Five-finger discount?”

&nb
sp; “Better. I’m working on a deal. These people, they want somebody to rob them.”

  Now I knew Pelón must be full of shit. “Pelón, these people been sniffing glue? Why would they want you to steal their shit?”

  “Because they smart. Is between them and the insurance company. They no gonna be home. They let me know which window they forgot to lock. We comin’ in a van dressed as painters. One, two, three.” Pelón snapped his fingers.

  “Why would we do this?”

  “Because I gonna pay you five hundred dollars each. Plus, I let you take one thing from the house. Is gonna be fun.”

  Five hundred was a nice chunk. “What happens when we get caught?” I said.

  “We won’t.”

  Tony said, “Make it a thousand dollars.”

  Pelón shook his head. “Are you crazy? Six hundred.”

  “Eight-fifty.”

  Pelón took a deep breath. “Yo no sabía que tú era judío, Antonio. Seven-fifty, that’s it.”

  Tony and I looked at each other. They shook hands.

  I looked at the house. “Do your friends got an alarm?”

  “Is broken and they no gonna fix it.”

  “Do they have a dog?”

  Pelón grinned. “These people got so much money, they take the freaking dog on vacation.”

  We pulled the white van right into the driveway and up to the front entrance. Pelón bought the three of us coveralls that he splattered with different colored paints to make it seem like we worked in them. He went around the back while Tony and I waited in front. In a minute Pelón opened the front door.

  “Unload the equipment,” he ordered. “Move.”

  The three of us took a bunch of empty five-gallon paint buckets from the van into the house. We brought in some tarps, and shut the door.

  We stood in the foyer and looked up at the chandelier in the high ceiling.

  Tony whistled. “Who are these people?”

  Pelón got right to business. “We gonna be organized how we do this. We start upstairs and work down. Focus on things that fit in the bucket. There’s some paintings and a couple of carpets that we can disguise with the tarps and some blankets, but that’s it for big things. Remember, it all has to fit in the van.”