arts, his style similar to the White Crane method of kung fu. A crane can defeat a gorilla, simply by spinning out of its grasp and counterattacking with furious beats of its wings, beak, and claws. But it takes patience, intelligence, and timing. The bird must continuously circle the beast, changing position and attack angles, retreating time and again until it can attack and peck away at the gorilla’s eyes or otherwise discourage it from continuing the fight.
Hector had landed enough rat-a-tat-tats to raise some welts on my forehead, and the back of my skull, where the cue stick had landed without immediate effect, was starting to ache. Pain is like that, sometimes creeping up on you. I’m not exactly immune to pain, but I’ve grown accustomed to its pace. I played ball when a lot of guys got intimate at halftime with the Caine Brothers-Novocain and Xylocaine. It was expected. You played hurt or you didn’t play at all. I resisted the needle until a game against the Bills when I took an elbow through the face mask on a kickoff, and my nose went east and west where it used to be north and south. If we hadn’t been so thin on the special teams, they would have sent me to the locker room, but you don’t tackle with your nose, so you can play- compound fracture notwithstanding-if you control the pain. With the offensive line huddled around me on the bench to block the view of the cameras, the team doc put a shot of Xylocaine right between my eyes, and damned if I didn’t recover a fumble on a kickoff in the fourth quarter. After that, it was Darvocet for a separated shoulder, cortisone for turf toe, and an occasional jolt of my buddies, the Caine Brothers, for assorted twists and sprains.
Now I moved in again, and Hector caught me in the chest with the front snap kick they call Mae keage in karate. Then he spun to his right and tried to connect with the Yoko keage, the side snap kick. His timing was off, and he missed, leaving himself off balance, still spinning toward my left, his body open.
From somewhere in my peripheral vision, I was aware of the faces at the bar, intently watching us. They seemed to be smiling. The jukebox had switched gears, and Paula Abdul was in a rush for a guy who kissed her up and down.
I pivoted from the hips and stepped forward with the left foot. I hit him square in the solar plexus with a left hook that had everything I’ve got behind it. I heard the air wheeze out of him, and as he gasped for breath, I unleashed a right uppercut that started near my shoelaces and ended on the point of his unshaven chin. The punch lifted him off the floor and stretched him out on his back, feet twitching.
Francisco Crespo had gotten up and now stood at the bar, watching without expression. He hadn’t helped them and he hadn’t helped me. He was a good soldier who didn’t want to cross the general. I wondered what he would have done if I’d been in real trouble. But then, I already knew that.
I was aware of some murmuring at the tables, and in a moment, everyone was drinking and talking as if nothing had happened.
I was breathing hard when I paid the tab. I threw in twenty bucks for a broken cue stick and a fifty to cover renting the place as a boxing ring. Another twenty for the waitress, who asked us to come back real soon and bring our friends.
In the parking lot along the canal, an ugly Bufo frog the size of a double cheeseburger burped hello. Or was it good-bye? Some extremely unbalanced druggies are known to lick the Bufo, which secretes a milky hallucinogenic goo. I could never help wondering what bozo discovered this pharmaceutical phenomenon by first putting tongue to toad.
The knuckles of my hands were split and beginning to swell. I sank stiffly into my old convertible and looked at my maniacally macho self in the rearview mirror. Angry knots were already popping out of my forehead. A judge once told me that, based on my trial strategy, I must have played football too long without a helmet. Now I looked the part. Maybe that was good for my buddy Crespo. The trial was two days away, and when the jurors filed into the box, they wouldn’t be able to figure out which guy was the felon.
9
A tractor-trailer had collided with a bus on Tamiami Trail, snarling traffic on the way back into the city. A light rain was falling, and it was growing dark. An ambulance sat on the soggy berm alongside the canal where the bus was jammed nose-first into the shallow water, its rear wheels angled into the air. Raindrops slithered down my windshield, glowing blood red with each revolution of the ambulance’s flashing light. From the east, I could hear a siren drawing closer. I know a personal injury lawyer who loves the sound. Whenever he hears an ambulance, he turns to his partner and says, “They’re playing our song.” The same lawyer branched out into divorce work and had a new business card printed: “Broken bones and broken hearts.” And my brethren at the bar wonder why they’re considered bottom-feeding gutter rats.
Eventually, the traffic cleared, and I headed into town, passing Sweetwater, home to several thousand Nicaraguan refugees, heading into Little Havana, then south on Ponce de Leon, through the Gables, and into Coconut Grove. My head was clanging by the time I downshifted into second and pulled onto Kumquat Street. The neighborhood was quiet, except for the buzz and crackle of insects and the warbling of a mockingbird in the marlberry bush in my front yard. By this time of night, most birds were nuzzling their mates and telling whoppers about the fat, juicy night crawler that got away. But here was my mocker chirping midnight melodies. He sang his own song, then a few he picked up during the day from a yellow-billed cuckoo, and if I could whistle “Raindrops Are Falling on My Head,” he’d give that a try, too.
Mimus polyglottos, Charlie Riggs calls my feathery friend. Mimic of many tongues. I like him because he’s a tough bird who chases away crows and cats and even an occasional German shepherd. Charlie says he’s a bachelor, just like me. They’re the only birds who sing at night, crooning their own Personals ad. High-flying male mocker with stunning white wing patches seeks sleek mate for dining, gliding, and more. So far old Mimus hadn’t had much luck. He was still serenading the crickets, but then, who was I to gloat?
My neighborhood is what the guidebooks would call eclectic, if they called it anything, which they don’t. To me, it’s just weird. Not fancy enough for the creme de la crumbs, real estate developers and drug dealers, it is home to a collection of what I call soloists, men and women who reject marital and suburban bliss.
In the blank marked “occupation” on the census form, my neighbors are all “other.” Geoffrey, who lives in the stucco house behind the poinciana trees, is a free-lance cameraman who works the wee hours and peddles videos of late-night car crashes and drug busts to the local TV stations. On the other side of the limeberry shrubs, Mako is esconced in a wooden tree house reachable only by rope ladder. He trades custom-made hammocks for Florida crawfish with Homer Thigpen, a lobster pot poacher down the street. Phoebe with the bright red hair hosts swingers parties complete with nude diving contests in her swimming pool. And Robert and Robert-art gallery owners-keep to themselves behind the hibiscus hedge. All of which makes me the most bourgeois of the bunch.
My parking spot in the gravel under a chinaberry tree was occupied by a red BMW convertible. On my front porch, a lady in a red leather mini and white silk blouse sat in Granny Lassiter’s cherrywood rocker. Granny used to rock while sipping from a Mason jar filled with liquid propane she called home brew. Now the Lady in Red sat there holding a supermarket bag. A loaf of Cuban bread stuck out the top. You hungry? Lourdes Soto asked.
In the glow of a three-quarter moon enhanced by the misty light of the mercury vapor anticrime lights, Lourdes appeared as an apparition, her creamy complexion in soft focus. Her slight smile had the peacefulness of a Madonna, and for a moment I thought maybe I’d been hit harder than I realized. When I got close enough for her to see my face, she let out a low whistle. A fine and dandy lady whistle. “Is this what you downtown lawyers do on weekends? Flex that Y-chromosome, burn off some testosterone?”
“I was working.”
She sniffed at the air and didn’t smell frangipani. “You sure you weren’t runner-up in a beer-guzzling contest?” She showed me a wide smile, giving me a good look at scarlet lips and white teeth. “Maybe I should put something on those scrapes,” she said.
I gestured toward the groceries. “After you cook some dinner.”
“ Cook? What do you think, I came here to make paella and boniatos? I’m not one of those traditional Cuban girls, convent schooling, black beans and rice with Mami, waiting for the men to come home. That went out with
