Under the Skin (31 page)

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
re
ward.”

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.

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.

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

“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

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

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.

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.

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.

“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?”

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.