Under the Skin

So LQ gave Sheila a call. And discovered that she still lived in the same place and she wasn’t married. Yes, she was glad to hear from him, and yes, she would like to see him again too. Yes, tomorrow night would be just dandy—just be sure and bring a little something to drink because she was running low and payday was a long way off. And yes, she remembered his friend Ray Brando, and yes, she could get a friend for him.

“I aint heard so much of yes in a coon’s age,” LQ told us back at the table. His spirits were vastly improved.

Brando was as pleased about the phone call as LQ. “You think she’ll be goodlooking, the friend?” he said.

“She’d have to be a goddamn calendar girl to be any better looking than Sheila,” LQ said.

“I wouldn’t object any to a calendar girl,” Brando said.

“You know, if things go good tomorrow night,” LQ said, “we ought make a damn weekend of it.”

“Be all right with the office if we don’t turn in the pickup money till Monday?” Brando asked me.

“I’ll square it with Mrs. Bianco. Just leave me this Sheila’s phone number and don’t wander off from her place for too long.”

“Shitfire, man—if things go right, we won’t leave her place at all for the whole two days.”

“Things go right I aint even leaving the bed,” Brando said. “I aint coming up for air.”

“Better days,” I said, raising my glass.

“With no damn memories of Zelda,” Brando said to LQ as our three glasses came together.

“Zelda who?” LQ said.

Friday crawled by even more slowly than the previous two days. None of the Maceo informants had heard so much as a hint that the Dallas guys were planning any kind of move on us. Rose was starting to think Sam and I were probably right—they weren’t going to try anything. “Guess I’m getting jumpy in my old age,” he said.

I spent the rest of the morning in the gym. While I was going through my workout, Otis reminded me of our sparring session for ten o’clock the next morning.

“I could use that ten o’clock slot to make me some lessons money if you can’t make it for some reason,” he said.

“I’ll be here, Otis.”

He grinned big. “Well all right then.” He couldn’t wait to get me back in that ring.

I had lunch on the Strand again, then took in another movie, The Bride of Frankenstein, which mostly made me laugh. Then I went over to the beach and took off my coat and shoes and walked along the edge of the water for a while. It was about time for my twice-a-month swim. In winter the gulf usually got damn chilly, but I always made my swim anyway, even though I had to muster as much grit just to bear the coldness of the water as to swim way out and back in the dark. But the early part of this winter had so far been generally mild and the light surf on my feet felt only a little cooler than usual.

I took supper at a seafood joint across the street from the shrimp docks. They made the best red snapper in town, basting it with a sauce of garlic and lime. While it was being prepared I had a frosted schooner of beer and a platter of raw oysters on the half shell, dabbing each one with horseradish before slurping it down, then I finished off a mess of cold boiled shrimps the size of my thumb.

I checked in with Rose at the Club again, then ran into Sam at the bar and we had a drink together.

“Say, Jimmy. What do you call a girl who’s always got the clap, the syph, and a bush full of crabs?”

“I give.”

“An incurable romantic.”

He checked his watch and said with a wink that he had an appointment to keep and took off. I finished my drink and called it a night and headed for La Colonia.

On the past two nights, the whole neighborhood had been dark and asleep by the time I got in, but at this earlier hour the Avila house were still showing light in some of its windows when I came walking down the lane.

As I passed by the Avila place I sensed a movement in the shadows alongside the house. I stopped and pretended to be trying to read my wristwatch by the Mechanic Street lamppost’s weak glow of light through the trees, turning my wrist this way and that, all the while checking out the shadows across the street from under my hatbrim.

A dark shape moved by the bushes beside the house, and then I lost sight of it. It couldn’t be Avila or anybody in his family. What would they be doing out there in the dark? Even if it had been one of them, they would’ve seen me in the lane and recognized me and said something. A prowler, I figured, some passing tramp just in on a freight car and looking for an easy grab. The neighborhood had been without a watchdog ever since the Gutierrez brothers’ mutt had chased a stray cat out into the railyard and been run over by a train.

I strolled on down the lane until I came abreast of the hedge between the Ortega and Morales properties where a fat oak momentarily blocked my silhouette from the Casa Verde porch light—and then I ducked behind the hedge and ran in a crouch till I was out of the line of sight of the Avila house. I cut over into the Morales backyard through a break in the hedge where the kids always crossed, then paused low to the ground and listened hard, but I heard only the brief groan of a ship’s horn from the docks across the tracks. It was another cloudy night and the moon was a dim glow hard to spot through the trees. The darkness behind the houses was deep as a well.

I advanced slowly across the Morales yard to the shrubbery bordering the Avila sideyard, where I’d seen the prowler. I pulled the .44 from its shoulder holster and held it uncocked down against my leg.

I stood in a half-crouch and listened. Nothing. Maybe the guy had seen me duck behind the hedge and figured that I’d be doubling back. He could’ve hustled out of the Colonia while I was crossing the Morales yard. On the other hand, he would’ve had time to set himself for me. I stared through the shrubbery without trying too hard to fix on anything, letting my lax focus catch whatever movement it might.

Nothing.

I slowly stepped through the shrubs and into the Avila sideyard, the damp leaves brushing my hand, my face. I paused and listened again. I thought I heard something in the backyard. I eased over toward the rear of the house, then stopped at the corner and leaned around to look. Nothing but unmoving shadowy forms. I knew that the large bulky shape toward the rear of the yard was a toolshed. Could be he was hiding in its deeper shadow, looking my way as hard as I was looking his, having as much trouble making anything out clearly. I figured I’d cross the yard at an angle, then come around behind the shed.

Midway across the yard, I saw a low dark form ahead of me. Was that him? Crouching in wait for me to get closer so he could make out my shape a little better? See where my head was so he could take a swipe at it with a club? Take a slash at my throat?

I put my thumb on the Colt’s hammer and kept my eyes on the shape and edged up to it, ready to cock and shoot the instant it came at me. But it didn’t move. When I got up to it I could see it wasn’t a man but still couldn’t tell what it was. I crouched and touched it. A wheelbarrow.

I should have been watching the toolshed. He came out from behind it and said, “No te mueves, carajo.”

I stared up at his vague dark shape and froze in my crouch.

And then he was suddenly and starkly illuminated in a flood of light from behind me—thick-bellied, large- headed, and hatless, heavy-jowled, the muzzle of his double-barreled twelve-gauge a foot from my face. In the instant that he gaped blindly into the glare, I lunged up and snatched the shotgun barrel aside and both barrels discharged, the muzzles flaring yellow.

I hit him on the head with the Colt and he wavered but clung to the shotgun and I hit him again and he lost his grip and fell to all fours. I couldn’t believe he was still conscious. I was about to whack him once more but voices were hollering in Spanish, yelling my name and saying stop, stop, don’t hit him, he’s a friend.

I squinted into the blaze of the open kitchen door and saw Avila and his wife standing there. Then Avila ran down and started helping the guy to his feet. I tucked away the Colt and gave him a hand, still holding to the shotgun. The senora was urging us from the kitchen doorway to hurry because someone surely heard the gunblast and might be calling the police, but I wasn’t too worried about that. Nobody in La Colonia was going to report a shot, and even if somebody out on Mechanic had heard it, it was unlikely they’d notify the cops either. In this part of