Zoot-Suit Murders (5 page)

Kathleen stared deeply into her glass of Coke, wrinkles of concern etching across her smooth forehead. From the expression of dread on her face, it appeared she was witnessing within the glass an exploding cosmos that could only be saved by Department A, the One True Voice. Younger was afraid to break her concentration by asking another question, his entire body giving an involuntary twitch as she unexpectedly turned her eyes upon him and broke the silence.

“This is not a mad dream.”

Younger gulped the last of his Coke and coughed noisily, trying to switch the subject. “Why did you leave San Francisco?”

The wrinkles in Kathleen’s forehead faded, her skin peacefully regaining its smooth surface. “Do you know the poem by Carl Sandburg about fog coming in on little cat’s feet?”

“No.”

“Well, no matter. In San Francisco the fog doesn’t come in on little cat’s feet. It roars in like a lion; it spills over the hills and covers the houses something fearful, drowning people in a
damp gray blanket. Sometimes you don’t see the sun for days, even weeks. Everything is cold, isolated.”

“So you left the north for sunny Southern California?”

“No, too much sun can also be dangerous. I left because of my calling. There are fields to be tilled everywhere we find disharmony and distrust. After being here only a few months, I realized if I’d stayed in San Francisco it would have killed me.”

“The fog?”

“I’m asthmatic. I need dry, warm places. Dampness rots my lungs, robs my breath. I’m also hyperallergic to cats and dogs.”

“You mean, not only can’t you be around cats made out of fog, but you can’t be around real dogs and cats as well?”

“Yes, and many other things are just as dangerous to my health, so many things I don’t even know them all, probably wouldn’t until it was too late and I had a fatal attack. It’s kind of like living with a knife to your throat. You never know when you’ll have the attack that will rob your life’s breath and not have the proper medicine to fight it off.”

“You’re kidding! You mean this asthma condition of yours could kill you?”

“Yes.” Kathleen’s eyes played over Younger’s face like she was talking to a small, disbelieving boy. “But that is the least of my worries.” Suddenly a look of concern wrinkled the smooth skin around her eyes. She stood up and held her hand out solemnly for him to shake, like a businessman concluding an arduous meeting. “You must leave now. You shouldn’t be here, really.”

Younger stood to leave, taking the hand offered. Her grasp was slight and slipped quickly from him. “What
are
your worries, Miss La Rue?”

She opened the apartment door, her body blocking the flickering candlelight at her back as she ushered Younger out to the top of the staircase descending into darkness. “To see justice
in this country, Nathan. This war is the last chance for mankind.”

In the empty streets leading away from Kathleen’s apartment Younger could see the sliver of moon cutting a pretty figure over the cement needle of City Hall. Around City Hall the outline of Barrio tenements stood out, shabby buildings stacked clumsily against the sky four and five stories high, their impermanence mocking the heroic proportions of the dominant needle.

“
¡C
ruz no está aquí!
” The woman slammed the door in Younger’s face.

Younger banged on the door again. He was tired of banging on doors all morning; he was tired of beating the pavement up and down the Barrio streets and having doors slammed in his face. He kept beating on the door in front of him, trying to knock it right off the hinges. He had to get to at least one of his boys. They had all stopped coming to practice. He thought they must be on to him, worse, fallen in with the older Zoots. He kept banging on the door. He heard babies crying inside the apartment.

A young girl held the door open a crack against Younger’s
pushing, straight black bangs cut bluntly across her high sloping forehead, a baby balanced on one hip. She was barely sixteen years old, her broken English competing with the wails of the child.

“Mama, she say no
Cruz
. No
aquí
. Please not here.”

Younger wedged his foot inside the door, then flung it back and shoved into the room. Small, dark-faced children playing on the bare wood floor were unconcerned with Younger’s foreign presence, unconcerned by the storm of Spanish swearing shouted at Younger from the clutch of women in the kitchen. With three families living in two rooms the children were not much concerned with anything but the possession of several pitiful toys they fought over. The mothers of the children were crowded together around the kitchen table. The woman who slammed the front door in Younger’s face waved a flyswatter menacingly before him like she was going to kill a big pest, screaming, “
¡Fuera! ¡Bastardo! ¡Fueraaa
!”

Younger turned his back on the women at the table, fearful of their feminine wrath, the seething, unbridled hatred of their words lunging at him like beasts set free from some private hell. He stomped out of the stifling apartment, slamming the door behind him, running without thinking down the long five flights of stairs, almost bumping into the skinny teenage boy stepping from the brightness of the street into the dinginess of the apartment building.

“
¡Cruz
!”

The teenage boy lifted his head, brown eyes staring out in recognition from beneath the broad brim of an oversized fedora; he turned to run. Younger grabbed hold of the long floppy tails of the boy’s purple sport coat and pulled him back into the dark hallway, pinning the boy to the wall as he struggled against the grip Younger had on his bony shoulders beneath the heavy padding of the coat.

“
Ese, ¿qué pasa
? Say, what gives, dude?” The boy snarled, his eyes narrowing, trying to look tough under the brim of a
green hat, but he only looked like what he was, a frightened boy.

“You ask me what’s happening!” Younger shouted back into the tough expression confronting him beneath the hat. “Look at yourself! Wearing a
tando
, and a
pachuco
hat,
tramados
, pants with reet-pleats, dago chains hanging all over, a real Zootie! A
bato loco
, a crazy street-cruisin’ dude!”

“I got a right to dress the way I want. You don’t stop me! It’s a free country, ain’t it?”

“No, I can’t stop you,
chico
, but you know those coppers out there have razor blades on the bottoms of their billyclubs, and they’d just love for you to go cruisin’ by to cut the clothes off your back, shave your reet-pleats wide open.”

“I ain’t afraid of no copper, I ain’t afraid of no
jefe.
”

“You’re in a pinch, Cruz.”

“Don’t be no square peg, Younger.” Cruz shook his padded shoulders free of Younger’s grip and fluffed his long Zoot-suit coat like a cock strutting through a hen yard. “This is still America, ain’t it? Young
bato
dress how he want.”

“How come none of you blades have been to baseball practice—Hernandez, Trujillo, the whole pack?”

“I guess we got other business to take care of.”

“You guess you got other
business.
” Younger nearly spit his sarcastic words on the floor. “What is it you have better to do than stay out of jail?”

“It ain’t no crime to wear a
tacuche
, a Zoot suit, it ain’t no crime to cash it and flash it.”

“Don’t bitch up your life, Cruz. All you blades, you know the probation rules. Every day, three hours, you blades play ball with me. That’s the way the probation judge laid it out, otherwise reform school.”

“I ain’t no criminal, no con-vic.”

“Marijuana’s a crime, carrying stilettos and fellettos to dag people with is a crime, and zip guns are a crime, so’s street fighting a crime. What do you mean, you’re no criminal? Lot of
you blades been to Juvenile Court on all that kind of stuff. If it wasn’t for the CYO going to Juvenile Hall and speaking up for you kids, you’d all be cooling your heels downtown in Juvie right now, and you know it. So don’t bitch up your life,
chico.
”

“
Chale
, no way. I’m hep.”

“Then why haven’t any of you blades been to ball practice? Not one of you show. How do you think we can beat Bakersfield again with no practice? You think the Yankees goof around before World Series time? Just dope it out for yourself, Cruz.”

“
Nel
, no, I won’t play ball. I want a job.”

Younger pulled off his hat, tracing a thumb around the inside band until it was free of sweat. “Baseball is a job. Look at your
carnal
, your big brother, Angel, he’s a model.”

“Angel don’t make nothin’.”

“What do you mean? The Stars pay him twenty bucks a game.”

“What’s that? White
gabachos
get hundreds.”

Younger slipped his hat back on and shrugged his shoulders. “You don’t know, maybe Angel will play big league one day. Maybe he’ll play with DiMaggio; he’s good enough.”

“Don’t put the bite on me, Younger, I ain’t no pug. You know there ain’t no Mexican
batos
playing big league. They don’t let
chicas patas
play.”

“That’s just it.” Younger tried to force his lips into a smile of confidence. “You and Angel are no
chicas patas
, you’re Americans, born and bred in Los Angeles. You’re
eligible.
”

“Then how come we can’t get work in U.S. factories? They truck coons by the melonload into California to work in shipyards and stuff, but you got a Spanish name around here, you don’t work. They don’t care which side of the border you born on anyway, they figure you a greaseball wetback.”

Younger shook his head. “No, that’s not it at all.”

“Why they won’t let us work? We don’t need a green card, we got American birth certificates. Why they keep us in the Barrio? We be better off down in Tijuana taking pictures of drunk sailors on donkeys.”

“I don’t know.” Younger looked straight at Cruz. “Honest to God, I don’t have the answer.”

“Then get off my back about playin’ ball.” Cruz pushed by Younger and shoved the door open, the sudden shaft of outside light knifing into Younger.

“Stop your motor a minute.” Younger tugged at the tails of Cruz’s baggy coat. “Why have you blades stopped coming?”

Cruz moved his thin lips in a straight line of contempt, the slur of his four words coming out in one piece. “Because,
gabacho
, you’re a
Commie
—”

Before the last word was broken off from the end of Cruz’s sentence Younger grabbed the floppy orange bowtie at Cruz’s thin throat, whipped him around, and knocked him flat up against the wall. “So it’s not the Zoots you’ve joined, it’s the Sinarquistas! Say it, Cruz! Don’t clam up on me! Admit it!”

“¡
Chale
! I ain’t saying nothin’.” The tears from Cruz’s large, frightened eyes rolled down his cheeks and off Younger’s clenched fists at his throat. “You can’t get me to cop to it! I’ll kill myself first!”

Younger ripped off Cruz’s floppy tie and tore open his pink-and-black polkadot shirt, the buttons popping off like overripe cherries. He pulled the shirt open, exposing deep razor-blade cuts crisscrossing Cruz’s thin, hairless chest, some cuts old and scabbed over, others open and festering. Cruz’s face blurred before Younger as his own eyes filled with tears. “You
verdolago
, Cruz! You green little punk! You’ve gone and bitched up on me! You’ve gone on the Horse! You’re jacking it right into your bloodstream!”

“T
he Horse is loose in the Barrio again.”

“No job, comin’ the Horse.”

“The Horse is a killer.”

“No job, she’s a killer too.”

“There’ll be jobs, something’s got to open up.”

“If they can’t be making enough job when they be making the wars, then will never be the job.” Wino Boy spoke so thickly the words seemed to trickle as slowly as the red trace of wine from the corner of his mouth.

“It’s that easy, huh?” Younger angrily balled a fresh stick of Juicy Fruit and popped it between his lips.

“
Amigo
, life she’s never what she’s seeming.” Wino Boy held
the wine bottle up to the sun, peering into the empty green darkness of the glass. He tipped the bottle over. One blood-red drop fell to the hot sidewalk, evaporating into nothing on the cracked cement.

Younger looked up to the end of the crowded street. On the roof of Butch Mendoza’s poolhall workmen were covering over a
BUY US WAR BONDS
billboard with a bold black-and-white message:
DIALGOD
.

“Life, she’s never what she’s meaning.” Wino Boy let the empty bottle slip from his limp fingers and roll off noisily into the gutter.

Younger glanced down at the old man slumped against a boarded-over storefront window and shook his head sadly. “You’re right. I thought I knew the meaning of everything, but the longer this war goes on, the less I understand people.”

“The
gente
have a saying in Chihuahua.” Wino Boy held out his open palm expectantly and waited for Younger to put a stick of Juicy Fruit in it. “The man, who all the time thinking he has all the answers, no person’s never asking him the questions.” He chewed the gum Younger handed him.

“Somebody’s got to have the answers to why the Horse is loose in the Barrio. Nothing ever happens in the Barrio that isn’t political.”

“
Sí, en el
Barrio,
en la
Zona Roja,
la
Virgin Mary.”

“The Virgin Mary has always refused to even talk to me. Why now?”

“Because,
compadre
, the Horse is loose.”

Younger could see the near toothless smile of Wino Boy’s face in the shadow. “What does the Virgin Mary care about the Horse being loose?”

Wino Boy’s laugh came up out of the shadow. “Because the Horse steal this.” His hand grabbed insistently between his legs over the half-open zipper of his pants.

“I don’t have any friends left in the Zona Roja. Nobody there will talk to me since the night the FBI guys were shot. I’m afraid
to even go in there. The whole place has changed since the war. The Barrio has changed so much, nobody trusts anyone anymore. People used to have faith things would get better.”

“No jobs, no faith,
amigo.
The
gente
no laugh when coming the sailors at night to taking their
niñTas.
And you,
amigo
.” Wino Boy squinted seriously at Younger. “You no have the friends, the
gente
telling you are
un Comunista.
”

“That’s crazy.” Younger doubled his fists and slammed them into his pockets. “I have a brother in the United States Navy. Why the hell would I be a Red?” He glared down at Wino Boy. “You know I’m lots of things, old man, but I’m no stinking Commie.”

“
Sí
, but Sinarquistas, they say different.”

“Sinarquistas are Fascists; they say their own mothers are Communists. If Sinarquistas are on the square, why don’t they come out into the public? Why do they always sneak around like cowards, never telling anybody who they really are, always having secret meetings, hiding behind closed doors, scattering leaflets in the night? Why don’t they stand up and be counted?”

“Because they be arrested,
amigo.
Sinarquistas are no born stupid.”

“Then let them come out into the open and take their lumps like men.”

“And them.” Wino Boy pointed to the new billboard blocking the sun in a giant square on the roof of the poolhall: DIALGOD. “Sinarquistas saying those too be
Comunistas.
”

“That makes about as much sense as
my
being Red.” Younger turned his back on the sign as if it didn’t exist.

“Life is never what she’s seeming.”

“Come on, Wino Boy, stop giving me all this claptrap. You’ve got a grandson in this war, we’re on the same team. Whatever you tell me helps the American cause.” Younger nervously peeled the wrapper from another stick of gum.

“If I no have to mooch all day and have
moola
to going to the Santa Anita Racetrack and I be betting on the horses …”

“Who would you bet on?” Younger interrupted Wino Boy impatiently.

“Sea Biscuit.”

“Sea Biscuit?” Younger repeated the words under his breath as if they were a question, quickly looking up and down to guard their secret meaning from anyone who might have overheard him. He knelt on one knee, whispering to Wino Boy intimately, “This Sea Biscuit is a real horse?”

“How much you be betting me?” Wino Boy’s breath weighed heavily in Younger’s face.

“On what? I don’t understand.”

“This Sea Biscuit, is being a
real
horse.”

“Okay.” Younger dug five dollars out of his pocket. “Here’s a nickel note, that’s all I’ll bet till you tell me more.”

“Ask
la
Virgin.” Wino Boy’s cracked lips clamped tight. “Now help me up.” He grabbed hold of Younger’s shoulder for support.

“No.” Younger pushed the old man back against the wall. “I just gave you five bucks and all you can say is ask the Virgin. I already told you, I can’t get to see the Virgin.”

Wino Boy’s shaky hand stretched out and tugged at the bottom of Younger’s coat. He pulled himself up on wobbly legs, wincing as blood cut from his feet while sitting against the building stung back to life. He didn’t look at Younger. He squinted at the black-and-white DIALGOD billboard blocking the sun up at the corner on the roof of the poolhall. He licked his cracked lips. His voice had no humor in it as he gazed at the sign. “Go to
la
Zona Roja, saying to those people you wanting
la
Virgin Mary so you can be making the bet on Sea Biscuit.”