Under the Skin

From the moment we’d been introduced I’d been wondering how I might go about seeing her again. And now, before I knew I was going to do it, I said, “Con permiso, senorita. Me gustaria invitarle a—”

“I speak English,” she said, with only a mild accent. And smiled at me for the first time.

I was so surprised, I said, “Yes, you do”—and felt like a moron.

Everyone was looking from me to her, her to me.

“Well,” I said, “I was wondering…there’s a cafe just a few blocks from here, over by the train station—the Steam Whistle, it’s called—and, ah, they serve a pretty good breakfast, and…I was wondering if you might want to go with me tomorrow. For breakfast.”

Smooth, I thought, really slick. You babbling jackass—what the hell’s with you?

“Que le dijo?” Rocha said. He was looking from Avila to his wife, but they were both staring at me and ignored him.

“I would be pleased to accompany you to the cafe,” she said. “What time should I expect you?”

“Well, is…seven o’clock? That okay? I mean if that’s too early…”

“Seven o’clock is…o-kay,” she said, sounding the word like she hadn’t used it before and like she found it fun to say. “I shall be ready.”

I was tickled by the “shall” and grinned like a fool.

“Okay then,” I said. “Seven it is.”

Rocha looked angry. The Avilas seemed confused. I tipped my hat and said, “Buenas noches a todos,” returned her smile across the room, and took my leave.

I skipped down the front steps and practically danced all the way to the Casa Verde.

They find La Perla cantina on a muddy street in a ramshackle neighborhood on the swampy east side of Matamoros. A windless rain falls steadily from a black sky. They step out of the taxi and Gustavo curses the mud on his new shoes and the cuffs of his tan trousers, the rainwater spotting his Stetson. The air is heavy with the smells of muck and rotted vegetation. Angel tells the driver to wait for them and gives him the slightly smaller half of a torn bill of large denomination.

The place is dimly lighted and roughly furnished. A radio on the backbar plays ranchero music. There are only three customers on this miserable night, two of them at a table and a solitary drinker at the end of the bar. The bartender is reading a newspaper spread open on the bartop. He has a fresh black eye swollen half-shut and his lips are bruised and bloated. He doesn’t look up from the paper until they are at the bar—and then his battered face comes alert. La Perla receives few patrons so well dressed as these two.

He puts aside the paper and spreads his hands on the bar and asks their pleasure. Gustavo pulls open his coat just enough to let him see the pistol in its holster and tells him in a low voice not to move his hands from the bar or he will shoot him where he stands.

Angel turns to look at the three drinkers, who all cut their eyes away. “Oigan!” he says, and they return their attention to him. He tells them he and his partner are policemen and the bar is being closed for improprieties. Anyone still in the place in one minute will be arrested. The three men bolt out the door and Angel goes over and locks it.

Gustavo asks the bartender if he has a gun hidden anywhere on the premises and the man says no. He says that if this is a holdup they’re going to be disappointed with the take.

Gustavo tells him they are collectors for the Monterrey gambling house called La Llorona and they have been searching for him all over the states of Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas. And now, thanks to a tip, they’ve finally found him.

Angel asks if he really thought he could get away with owing La Llorona ten thousand pesos.

The bartender’s face is pinched in fearful incomprehension. He swears he doesn’t know what they’re talking about, that he’s never been in La Llorona.

“Ah, Victor,” Gustavo says, “no me digas mentiras.”

Victor? the bartender says. Who the hell’s Victor? They’ve got the wrong guy. His name’s Luis. His brother Guillermo owns this place and maybe he knows this Victor son of a bitch. They can ask him when he comes in later in the evening.

Angel laughs and asks Gustavo if he can believe the nerve of this guy, denying he’s Victor Montoya.

“Pero yo no soy Victor Montoya,” the bartender says. He swears it on the Holy Mother. “Me llamo Arroyo, Luis Arroyo.”

Angel and Gustavo smile at him. And only now does Luis Arroyo begin to understand that he has been tricked—and to sense that he has seen these men before. And then he remembers. Yes. At Las Cadenas. They were driving up to the casa grande in a convertible with a dead man tied across the hood. He feels a sudden urge to urinate.

Gustavo goes around the counter and Luis Arroyo tries to turn to face him without moving his hands from the bartop. Gustavo hits him hard in the kidney and Arroyo collapses into a whimpering heap. Gustavo takes off his coat and hands it to Angel who drapes it over a barstool. Then Gustavo squats down behind the bar to interrogate Luis Arroyo.

The thing is done in less than ten minutes. Cursing softly, Gustavo stands up and wets a portion of a bar towel with water and dabs at a small bloodstain on his shirt. Angel gestures for a bottle of tequila and Gustavo sets it and a couple of shot glasses on the bar. Angel pours them both a drink and they toss them back and Angel refills both glasses.

They have learned that Arroyo agreed to help la senora effect her getaway and get over the border in exchange for several pieces of jewelry that she assured him would fetch a sizable price. She had given him part of his payment before they set out and the rest when he delivered her to a certain house in Brownsville, Texas, which he accomplished with the help of a smuggler acquaintance who showed them where to ford the river upstream of the international bridge. When he crossed back to Matamoros, however, Arroyo had been set upon by robbers who beat him up and stole his jewelry. He cursed the meanness of this goddamned world and the brute injustice of life until Gustavo painfully brought him back to the matter at hand and such germane details as the address of the Brownsville house.

He described it as a yellow house on Levee Street, just off the main boulevard, with a short fat palm in the middle of the yard. La senora said the place belonged to friends of hers, but she had not told anything about them, not even their names.

Now Angel leans over the bar and looks down at Luis Arroyo. He says for Luis to have a drink and pours a stream of tequila into Arroyo’s upturned bloody face and open unseeing eyes, onto his head, comically angled on the broken neck.

A deep-orange sun was breaking over the trees and rooftops when I returned to the Avila’s front door. I’d shined up my boots and I was wearing a white suit fresh from the cleaners and a brand-new fedora. It had taken me a long while to fall asleep the night before, but it hadn’t occurred to me till I awakened that I should’ve gotten up earlier and gone to the Club to get a car. If Rose was already there he would’ve let me use the Lincoln.

She answered the door herself, and good as her word she was ready.

“Good morning,” she said. The sight of her set a butterfly loose under my ribs.

Senora Avila stood behind her, looking pleased. Whatever had been worrying her the night before, she was over it. Avila rose from his chair at the dining table and called hello. He was in visibly better spirits also. He invited me in for a cup of coffee but I said I had an appointment this morning and had just enough time for breakfast.

Rocha was still sullen, staring hard at me from the sofa where he sat with a cup of coffee. A white pad bandage on top of his head was held in place with a cloth strip knotted under his chin so it looked like he was wearing some kind of ridiculous bonnet. He knew what I was smiling at and gave me a rude hand gesture, which only made me chuckle.

It was another unseasonably warm morning. The only clouds were to the south, far over the gulf. She was