of intertwined figures. He studied us as we came in. Chollo spoke to him in Spanish and Dolly answered. He put two glasses up on the bar and poured some tequila in them. Then he walked down to the far end of the bar and stood, staring at nothing. Chollo and I ignored the tequila.
After a while the guy with the tequila and beer stood up and yelled something in Spanish at one of the beer drinkers. The beer drinker muttered something back, and the tequila drinker started toward him. He was a squat guy with thick hands that suggested a lifetime of heavy labor. The beer drinker stood. He was a tallish guy, with a medium build. A very large and startling belly pushed incongruously out under his dingy white ice shirt like something he'd hidden under there. The tequila drinker grabbed him by the shirt front.
'They are arguing about whether the guy with the belly is a fucking faggot,' Chollo murmured.
Without a word Dolly lumbered out from behind the har. He took the sawed-off baseball bat out of his hip pocket and hit the tequila drinker hard behind the knees. The tequila drinker howled and fell over backwards. Dolly took him by the collar and dragged him howling to the front door, into the parking lot, dropped him, hit him hard once on each knee with the sawed off bat and came back in, closing the door behind him. He put the sawed-off bat back into his hip pocket and went back behind the bar.
'Forceful,' Chollo said.
'Well, he didn't bite him,' I said.
'But, oh so gentle,' Chollo said.
The door to Santiago's office opened and the grayhaired guy with the horn-rims nodded for us to enter. Santiago was there, behind his desk. Besides the gray-haired man and Santiago there were four gunnies ranged on the back wall. One of them, the guy Chollo had knocked down last time, had a sawed-off shotgun in his hands. Nobody invited us to sit. The guy with the shotgun said something in Spanish to Chollo. Chollo smiled.
'He says if this time, I would like-to see if I can get my gun out before he pulls the trigger, he would be happy to try it.'
Without looking at him, Santiago said, 'Silencio!' to the guy with the shotgun.
'He's telling him to shut up,' Chollo said.
'Is that what that means?' I said.
Santiago looked at me.
'You have a proposition?'
'If something happened to Luis Deleon, who would be in charge?' I said.
Santiago smiled. 'Eventually I would be.'
'In the short run?' I said. 'Ramon Gonzalez, but he would not last very long.'
'Because?'
'Because Ramon Gonzalez is a jitterbug, a man who runs on cocaine and angel dust. Luis is the one holds out against me. It is hatred, as if somehow it is my fault about his mother. If he were not there, sooner or later the others would be happy to join with me for a better Proctor.'
Whatever he said was tinged with self-mockery so that it was never easy to know what he cared about and what he didn't. Which, I suppose, might have been the point.
'But they won't go against him?'
'They fear him more than they fear me. He is so crazy. It makes him'-he looked at Chollo-'feroz?'
'Ferocious,' Chollo said.
'Si, ferocious. Everyone is afraid of him, because he is so ferocious, and because no one knows what he will do. He is able to bring a lot of business in because so many fear him.'
'What happened to his mother?' I said.
'She O.D.'d here, in the ladies' room,' Santiago said. 'Got hold of some uncut heroin and it popped her. Luis would not believe his mother was a junkie as he would not believe his mother was a whore. So he says I killed her.' He shrugged. 'Why would I bother to kill her? She was just a whore.'
'One of yours?' I said.
Santiago smiled.
'Most things in Proctor are mine.'
'Except San Juan Hill.'
He nodded.
'Except that,' he said softly.
'That could change,' I said.
'All things do,' Santiago said.
'We're going to take him out,' I said.
'If you can.'
'We can, but we'd like a little help from you.'
'I do not wish to be seen as one who turns on a fellow Hispanic,' Santiago said. 'It would not help people to think of me as the liberator of Proctor.'
'Of course it wouldn't,' I said. 'We'll be the ones who turn on him. What we want from you is logistical support.'
