where we were going and I didn’t care, as long as it was away from San Antonio. The only thing I was sorry to leave behind was the roll of $250 I’d hidden in a baseboard niche under the bed. For most of the ride I just sipped at the rum and kept dozing off.
We drove down a ritzylooking residential street lined with high trees and wide sidewalks. The lawns were big and neatly trimmed, the cars all luxury models. He wheeled into the side driveway of a large two-story and parked deep in the shadows. He helped me out of the car and around to a small side porch and must’ve pushed a secret button or something because a minute later a light came on in the kitchen and the door opened and a neatly barbered and bespectacled man in a shiny black bathrobe said for us to come in.
His name was Dr. Monroe and he was a whiz. Less than an hour later we were back in the car and I was feeling no pain except for a mild rum headache. According to the doc the bullet had passed through the big muscle that ran along my side and had slightly scraped a rib but damaged nothing but tissue. He cleaned the wound and treated it with sulfa and bandaged it up, then gave me an injection to dull the pain and said to take it easy for a few days. He said any doctor or a good nurse could remove the stitches when they were ready to come out. Rose said, “Hell, they won’t be the first I took out.”
We stopped at a cafe overlooking the ship channel and I waited in the car and watched the reddening sky while Rose went in to buy a sack of beignets. He said the place made the best ones in Texas. It was the first time I’d heard the word and it must’ve shown on my face. As he stepped up to the bakery door he looked back at me and tapped a sign on the window: FRESH BEIGNETS. When he got back to the car he had already finished one and was licking his fingers. I took a look in the sack and saw little thick squares of fried dough covered with powdered sugar. They smelled wonderful. I was still a little dopey from the injection but I was hungry too. The things tasted great.
“It’s the same as a doughnut except it’s square and don’t have a hole in it,” Rose said. He took another one from the sack and held it in his mouth while he worked the steering wheel and gearshift and got us rolling again.
“Yeah,” I said. “Like a circle’s the same as a square except it’s round and got no corners.”
His smile was outlined with powdered sugar. “Got us a fucken wiseguy.”
He’d bought a newspaper from a hawker in front of the bakery and said for me to take a look at the bottom of the front page. The report must’ve just made it under the edition deadline: SIX SLAIN IN SAN ANTONIO GUN BATTLE. He’d already skimmed it but wanted me to read it to him, so I did. The report quoted several witnesses who came to the door of Domingo’s when they heard the gunfire but most of them ducked back out of sight when they saw the gunmen shooting it out in front of the restaurant. Only one patron and a waiter kept on taking peeks at the action from around the door. The patron told police he saw at least a dozen men blazing away at each other, all of them Mexicans, and then some ran away down the street and some drove off in a green Ford touring car. The waiter agreed that it had been about a dozen, but he said only one had run away while another three got in a gray DeSoto to make their getaway. He too was sure all the principals were Mexicans. Police had identified four of the dead as members of a local criminal gang and speculated that the gunfight was the result of a dispute over gambling jurisdictions.
“Eyewitnesses,” Rose said. “God love them.”
“What was it about?” I said.
“Money,” he said. “What else?”
I waited to hear more but that was all he ever said to me about it.
We were on the causeway and I was gawking at Galveston Bay gleaming like pink glass under the low sun when he asked if I wanted a job. I said doing what and he said making sure people didn’t fuck with him or his brother or get away with it if they did.
“Let me tell you, kid, I think maybe it’s the job for you.”
I said maybe it was.
A half-hour later we were in the Club office and he’d introduced me to Sam and Artie and Mrs. Bianco. And then, with just me and him and Sam in the office, he reenacted the gunfight for Sam’s benefit, showing how he’d ducked behind the car when he heard me holler a warning and flicking his fingers beside his ears to show what happened to Lucas’ head when the double load of buckshot hit him. He waved his arms around as he described the bullets ricocheting off the wall behind him and punching holes in the car windows. He made gunshot noises and slapped his hand to his head or chest when he described somebody getting hit. He mimicked pistols with his thumbs and index fingers as he showed how I stood in the middle of the street shooting right and left and how I whirled around to shoot the guy at the Buick about seven or eight times.
He told Sam it was like watching Billy the Kid in action.
“Only this one’s
The club rats were whooping and hollering and some were yelling for Otis to finish me and some for me to get up, goddammit, get
Otis popped me some more good ones but I clinched him every chance I got—getting boos from the rats. Every time I hugged him, though, Otis showed how seriously he was taking things by giving me shots to the short ribs and awful close to the kidneys. The round seemed to last three days instead of three minutes before Wagner hit the bell. Otis worked his mouthpiece forward with his tongue and pinched it out with the thumb of his glove and grinned at me.
A rat named Hickey was working my corner. He rinsed my mouthpiece and sponged my face and said, “You got him now, Jimmyboy. He’s an old man, he’s already wearing out.”
I wanted to say that if he was wearing out it was from hitting me so much, but figured I’d be wiser to save my breath. My right cheek felt bloated and my ribs were half-numb.
The bell clanged and we got back to it. I was still a little fluttery in the legs. We circled and kept trading jabs and he now and then hooked me to the ribs to remind me that they needed protection too. He made me wish I had four arms. We were pretty close to the end of the round when he got careless and threw a lazy right hook behind a jab and I was able to whip a left over his right and catch him solid just above the jaw. He backpedaled into the ropes and I went at him with both hands and the club rats were howling like Indians but Otis covered up expertly and I couldn’t do any more real damage to him before the bell sounded.
“Whooo!” Hickey said, toweling me, giving me water, holding the bucket for me to spit into. “He’s all yours, Jimmy—you about crossed his eyes for good with that left.
What I’d really done was make Otis steaming mad—just like the last time we’d sparred. But this time he had a full round left to exercise his displeasure on me.
He knocked me down four times in the next two minutes. I took an eight-count before getting up again each time. I was up on one knee after the fourth knockdown—hearing the club rats’ clamor and Watkins shouting the count as he swung his arm over me—and I looked over and saw Otis grinning at me from the other corner.
He yelled, “Some fun, hey?”
Son of a bitch.
“…Eight!…” Watkins shouted—and I stood up.
Watkins leaned in close like he was checking the laces on my gloves and said just loud enough for me to hear: “Christ, man, enough. It’s a minute to go. Stay away from him.” He stepped back and waved us at each other.
Otis came at me on his toes and rapped me with three hard jabs and easily dodged my hook. Bastard was