Under the Skin (26 page)

where I might have gone, which was of course the truth. There was a
warrant out on me for murder, he said, and there was a reward of five
hundred dollars for information leading to my capture. He said he
could be a rich man if only he knew exactly where I was living. Maybe
he was joking and maybe not. And he said that, in case I didn’t know
it, the señora had sold the ranch.

She had done so only a few days after the funerals of Don Cullen
and Don Reuben. And then a week after the sale, she departed on the
train from Marfa with only two bags of belongings. She told everyone she was going to live with a cousin in Albuquerque and gave her
new address to a few people. But it was common knowledge that
when her bookstore friend Mrs. Morgan had tried to contact her
shortly after she moved, the Albuquerque post office said there was
no such address in town. Where she had truly gone, Esteban wrote,
no one could say.

As for Chente, he had been convicted of assault and sentenced to
six months in the county jail. It was doubtful he would receive an
early release for good behavior, as he was always fighting with the
other inmates. The new owner of the YB—now called the Blue
Range Ranch—was a kind man named Colfax who had become rich
in the oil business but had always wanted to raise horses. Mr. Colfax
had kept on all of the hands and retained Esteban as the foreman. Esteban said he was glad the Blue Range would be strictly a horse
ranch, and he concluded with the hope that I was safe and in good
health and advised me to go with God.

Over the next two months I worked at several different jobs in San
Antonio and hated them all. I carried a hod for a construction gang,
worked with a road-tarring crew, laid sewer pipe on a municipal project, drove a water truck for the city. I didn’t stick with any of them
for more than a few weeks. I was busting my back for peanuts and
choking on the boredom. I was drunk almost every night and getting
into bar fights.

One night in an alley behind a saloon I beat the shit out of a
tough-talking merchant sailor who had a couple of inches and about
thirty pounds on me. He’d been bullying everybody in the bar and
they were glad to see me cool him, and my drinks were on the house
the rest of the night. Among the spectators was a guy who had a
friend who owned a cathouse at the south end of town and was in
need of a good bouncer. The last good one who’d worked there had
got stabbed in his sleep by a jealous girlfriend, and the two he’d hired
since had both got their asses whipped by rough customers. Was I interested in the job? Sure, why not? The next day he took me out to
the place, the Bluebonnet Dance Hall, and introduced me to the
owner, a Mr. Stanley, and told him about the way I’d handled the
sailor. And I got the job.

The place called itself a dance hall and on the ground floor that’s
what it was. The “dance hostesses” did their whoring on the second
floor. I’d check in around five o’clock and usually not leave till three
or four in the morning, depending on how much business the joint
was turning. I’d sit in a chair at the foot of the stairs to the second
floor and keep an eye on things in the dance parlor and I was within
easy call of the floorwoman upstairs if any of the girls had trouble
with a customer.

off for some other reason and thought their three dollars bought
them all the time they’d need to get their satisfaction. But the house
limit was fifteen minutes unless you ponied up another three bucks.
If a customer got unreasonable about it the floorwoman would call
down for me and I’d go up and persuade the guy to get his clothes
on and take his leave. I hardly ever had to get rougher with any of
them than an armlock. Only now and then did I have to punch
somebody in the gut to put an end to the argument. I carried the
Colt under my jacket but Stanley had told me I’d better never pull
it unless some customer pulled a piece first. The job required long
hours, but it paid well and had the added benefit of a free fuck at the
end of the night.

I’d been there about a month when a guy hit one of the girls and
the floorwoman called down for me. The guy was bigger than me but
looked scared and said he was really sorry and he’d give the girl some
money to make up for it and so on. I figured what the hell, the girl
wasn’t really hurt, why rough him up? I told him to give her twenty
bucks and don’t come back. Right, right, he said—and the moment
I took my eyes off him he caught me with a hell of a sucker punch.
He landed another good one before I got my footing and turned the
thing around. Like everybody else in the place Stanley heard the commotion and came rushing upstairs and into the room, but by then it
was all over. The guy was groaning on the floor, his nose broken and
blown up, a front tooth somewhere under the bed. I had a shiner and
was tempted to give him a kick in the balls for good measure but
didn’t do it. But when Stanley saw him he said, “Oh shit.” Turned out
the guy was some kind of assistant to the mayor, a regular customer
who’d been coming to the Bluebonnet once a week for the past several months. He’d been a problem a few times before but not in a long
while, and this was the first time he’d ever taken a swing at anybody.
Stanley and a couple of the girls helped him up and tidied him somewhat but then the guy started threatening to make plenty of legal

or a week afterward I was in a fury. It was partly because of losing a job with good pay and free women, partly because of losing it the way I did. Still, that wasn’t the whole reason for my anger,
or even the main part of it. But even if somebody had put a gun to
my head I couldn’t have explained exactly what it was, and it made
me even angrier that I couldn’t.

I started taking long walks every night and I always carried both
guns. Then one chilly January night I was walking down a sidewalk
bordering a large park thick with trees and shrubbery when I took
notice of a fancy Spanish restaurant called Domingo’s across the
street. The place was doing a brisk business and as I stood there it occurred to me how easy it would be to rob it.

The idea got my blood rushing. The cashier’s counter was by the
front door and out of view of the dining room. Just stick the gun in
the cashier’s face and make him hand over the money. If anybody
came in the door or out of the dining room while I was at it I’d point
the piece at them and tell them to stand fast... then grab the dough
and hustle across the street into the park . . . then pick any one of a
dozen paths out to some other street and mix in with the Saturdaynight crowds.

The more I thought about it the simpler the plan seemed and the
tighter the hold it took on me. But the smart thing was to wait till
the supper rush was over with—let the dining crowd thin out, let the
till get a little fatter. Another hour would be about right. I went over
and sat on a sidewalk bench deeply shadowed by the trees. There were
cars parked along the curbs on both sides of the street but I had a clear
view of the restaurant doors. I watched the well-dressed patrons come
and go. I was charged up and maybe a little nervous but I was
ready
.

Over the next forty minutes, more and more people came out of
Domingo’s and got in their cars and left. And then a light-colored
Buick sedan came slowly down the street and wheeled into a parking
spot almost directly across from the restaurant.

I figured them for late-night diners, but after the Buick’s engine
shut off and its headlights went dark, nobody got out. Against the
glow from the streetlight on the corner behind them I could see the
hatted silhouettes of four men sitting in the car. They were looking
across the street and had to be watching the restaurant, since it was
the only place on the block open for business at that hour. I thought
maybe they were waiting to pick up somebody and I hoped it
wouldn’t take long. I was about ready to get to it and I didn’t want a
car full of witnesses parked in front of the place.

Another twenty minutes or so went by and the guys in the Buick
were still waiting. I was getting pretty irked about it. Why didn’t
one of those guys go inside and tell whoever they were waiting for
that they were there? A few more people came out and got in their
cars and left. There were only a half-dozen cars still on the street, including the Buick.

The Buick’s motor suddenly started up and I thought,
About time
.
But then the front and back doors swung open and a guy got out of
each one—palookas, both armed, the front guy with a big automatic,
the backdoor guy with a sawed-off double-barrel. The night was
chilly enough for their breath to show against the light of the corner
lamppost. The two men stepped out into the street and the Buick’s
other back door opened and one more guy got out, this one holding
a revolver.

Son of a bitch
. I figured they were going to heist the place.
I stood up and put my hand to the Colt at my back. They obviously hadn’t seen me sitting in the shadows. I was furious that they
were going to beat me out of the score. I thought about shooting out
one of their tires and scooting into the park.

The guy behind the wheel was looking across the street and still
hadn’t seen me either. I followed his gaze and that’s when I saw that
the gunmen weren’t heading for Domingo’s but toward three men
who had just come out of the restaurant. The three were walking
away down the sidewalk and were unaware of the men closing in on
them at an angle from behind and holding their weapons low against
their legs.

I didn’t know I was going to do it until I hollered, “Behind you!”
The three men on the sidewalk all turned around as the shotgunner raised his weapon and cut loose with both barrels and the hat flew
off one of the guys on the sidewalk with part of his head still in it.
His buddies pulled pistols and one of them took cover behind a
Studebaker as the street guy with the automatic started firing. The
street guy closest to me was darkly Mexican and was raising his revolver at me when I shot him twice in the face. He fired a wild round
and stumbled backward and dropped the piece and went down. The
shotgunner had tossed away the sawed-off and was bringing a revolver out of his coat and I shot him in the side of the head and he
did a little drunken sidestep and fell. The guy with the automatic was
crouched in front of a Model A and replacing the magazine and looking from me to the guy behind the Studebaker who yelled, “Behind
you
!” I spun around as the driver came out of the Buick and fired at
me twice—my coatflap tugged and there was a buzz past my ear—
before I shot him with both revolvers, shot him and shot him as gunfire banged behind me and he slammed back against the open car
door and slid down on his ass and slumped over with his head draining blood on the running board. I was punched hard under the arm
and pivoted back around to see the guy by the Model A turning away
to fire at the Studebaker guy and then he looked at me again like he
was surprised to see me still on my feet. My revolvers snapped on
empty chambers. He showed his teeth as he swung the automatic
toward me—but then his head jerked to the side and he fell over with

a hand clamped to the side of his head. The Studebaker guy—hatless,
with curly gray hair—rushed over to him and bent down and shot
him in the ear. Then hustled over to the guy I’d shot in the face and
whose leg was moving slightly and gave him one in the head too.

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.

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.”