Under the Skin

long hours, but it paid well and had the added benefit of a free fuck at the end of the night.

I’d been there about a month when a guy hit one of the girls and the floorwoman called down for me. The guy was bigger than me but looked scared and said he was really sorry and he’d give the girl some money to make up for it and so on. I figured what the hell, the girl wasn’t really hurt, why rough him up? I told him to give her twenty bucks and don’t come back. Right, right, he said—and the moment I took my eyes off him he caught me with a hell of a sucker punch. He landed another good one before I got my footing and turned the thing around. Like everybody else in the place Stanley heard the commotion and came rushing upstairs and into the room, but by then it was all over. The guy was groaning on the floor, his nose broken and blown up, a front tooth somewhere under the bed. I had a shiner and was tempted to give him a kick in the balls for good measure but didn’t do it. But when Stanley saw him he said, “Oh shit.” Turned out the guy was some kind of assistant to the mayor, a regular customer who’d been coming to the Bluebonnet once a week for the past several months. He’d been a problem a few times before but not in a long while, and this was the first time he’d ever taken a swing at anybody. Stanley and a couple of the girls helped him up and tidied him somewhat but then the guy started threatening to make plenty of legal trouble for the club. The matter was finally settled when Stanley gave him a wad of money and fired me.

For a week afterward I was in a fury. It was partly because of losing a job with good pay and free women, partly because of losing it the way I did. Still, that wasn’t the whole reason for my anger, or even the main part of it. But even if somebody had put a gun to my head I couldn’t have explained exactly what it was, and it made me even angrier that I couldn’t.

I started taking long walks every night and I always carried both guns. Then one chilly January night I was walking down a sidewalk bordering a large park thick with trees and shrubbery when I took notice of a fancy Spanish restaurant called Domingo’s across the street. The place was doing a brisk business and as I stood there it occurred to me how easy it would be to rob it.

The idea got my blood rushing. The cashier’s counter was by the front door and out of view of the dining room. Just stick the gun in the cashier’s face and make him hand over the money. If anybody came in the door or out of the dining room while I was at it I’d point the piece at them and tell them to stand fast…then grab the dough and hustle across the street into the park…then pick any one of a dozen paths out to some other street and mix in with the Saturday-night crowds.

The more I thought about it the simpler the plan seemed and the tighter the hold it took on me. But the smart thing was to wait till the supper rush was over with—let the dining crowd thin out, let the till get a little fatter. Another hour would be about right. I went over and sat on a sidewalk bench deeply shadowed by the trees. There were cars parked along the curbs on both sides of the street but I had a clear view of the restaurant doors. I watched the well-dressed patrons come and go. I was charged up and maybe a little nervous but I was ready.

Over the next forty minutes, more and more people came out of Domingo’s and got in their cars and left. And then a light-colored Buick sedan came slowly down the street and wheeled into a parking spot almost directly across from the restaurant.

I figured them for late-night diners, but after the Buick’s engine shut off and its headlights went dark, nobody got out. Against the glow from the streetlight on the corner behind them I could see the hatted silhouettes of four men sitting in the car. They were looking across the street and had to be watching the restaurant, since it was the only place on the block open for business at that hour. I thought maybe they were waiting to pick up somebody and I hoped it wouldn’t take long. I was about ready to get to it and I didn’t want a car full of witnesses parked in front of the place.

Another twenty minutes or so went by and the guys in the Buick were still waiting. I was getting pretty irked about it. Why didn’t one of those guys go inside and tell whoever they were waiting for that they were there? A few more people came out and got in their cars and left. There were only a half-dozen cars still on the street, including the Buick.

The Buick’s motor suddenly started up and I thought, About time. But then the front and back doors swung open and a guy got out of each one—palookas, both armed, the front guy with a big automatic, the backdoor guy with a sawed-off double-barrel. The night was chilly enough for their breath to show against the light of the corner lamppost. The two men stepped out into the street and the Buick’s other back door opened and one more guy got out, this one holding a revolver.

Son of a bitch. I figured they were going to heist the place.

I stood up and put my hand to the Colt at my back. They obviously hadn’t seen me sitting in the shadows. I was furious that they were going to beat me out of the score. I thought about shooting out one of their tires and scooting into the park.

The guy behind the wheel was looking across the street and still hadn’t seen me either. I followed his gaze and that’s when I saw that the gunmen weren’t heading for Domingo’s but toward three men who had just come out of the restaurant. The three were walking away down the sidewalk and were unaware of the men closing in on them at an angle from behind and holding their weapons low against their legs.

I didn’t know I was going to do it until I hollered, “Behind you!”

The three men on the sidewalk all turned around as the shotgunner raised his weapon and cut loose with both barrels and the hat flew off one of the guys on the sidewalk with part of his head still in it. His buddies pulled pistols and one of them took cover behind a Studebaker as the street guy with the automatic started firing. The street guy closest to me was darkly Mexican and was raising his revolver at me when I shot him twice in the face. He fired a wild round and stumbled backward and dropped the piece and went down. The shotgunner had tossed away the sawed-off and was bringing a revolver out of his coat and I shot him in the side of the head and he did a little drunken sidestep and fell. The guy with the automatic was crouched in front of a Model A and replacing the magazine and looking from me to the guy behind the Studebaker who yelled, “Behind you!” I spun around as the driver came out of the Buick and fired at me twice—my coatflap tugged and there was a buzz past my ear—before I shot him with both revolvers, shot him and shot him as gunfire banged behind me and he slammed back against the open car door and slid down on his ass and slumped over with his head draining blood on the running board. I was punched hard under the arm and pivoted back around to see the guy by the Model A turning away to fire at the Studebaker guy and then he looked at me again like he was surprised to see me still on my feet. My revolvers snapped on empty chambers. He showed his teeth as he swung the automatic toward me—but then his head jerked to the side and he fell over with a hand clamped to the side of his head. The Studebaker guy—hatless, with curly gray hair—rushed over to him and bent down and shot him in the ear. Then hustled over to the guy I’d shot in the face and whose leg was moving slightly and gave him one in the head too.

That was it. The whole fight didn’t take ten seconds. The sudden silence was enormous and there was a gunsmoke haze. Blood was spreading on the sidewalk around what was left of the shotgunned guy’s head. Curly’s other pal was sprawled on his back with his eyes open and his legs turned funny and his shirtfront shining red. Curly bent over him and dug a set of keys out of his pocket and yelled at me, “Come on if you’re coming!”

I ran after him. At the end of the street he got behind the wheel of a yellow Cadillac and the engine fired up as I got in on the passenger side. Before I could close the door the car shot backward and went swaying around the corner and braked sharply, snapping my head back against the seat and slamming my door shut. Then the Caddy leaped forward with the tires screaming.

A few minutes later we flashed past the city limits sign. By then he had asked my name and I’d told him—and he’d introduced himself as Rosario Maceo but said I could call him Rose.

We made Houston before dawn. At the outskirts of the city Rose turned off the main highway. I asked where we were going and he said to see a doctor.

My wound had crusted up pretty good and the bleeding was down to a seep. It still hurt but not as bad as before, maybe because I was slightly crocked from the bottle of rum Rose pulled out from under the seat. He had told me it was the shooter with the automatic who got me—just before Rose nailed him. I’d asked about the two guys on the sidewalk and he said, “Mangan and Lucas. Good men. Hate losing them.”

W

We hadn’t said much else on the drive. We’d watched the road steadily zooming under us as we sped through the night, splattering jackrabbits caught in the headlights, listening to whatever music we could pick up on coming- and-going radio stations, mostly Western swing stuff. We stopped at all-night stations to fill the tank. I didn’t know