Under the Skin

against their fun, so I said, “Why the hell not?”

We took the junction road to the Waco highway and got to Miss Jenny’s an hour later. Because it was Sunday night, business was slower than usual and we didn’t have to wait long before we got taken care of. I picked out a brownskinned girl that looked part Mexican but it turned out she was another one born and raised in the U.S. who couldn’t speak but a few words of Spanish. She was enthusiastic but I had a little trouble finishing up until I closed my eyes and imagined Daniela—and then I came like a shot. But while I was getting dressed I felt even glummer than usual after getting my ashes hauled.

I was the first one back to the parlor. Brando came out a minute later, eager to tell me what a great time he’d had with a six-foot blonde named Queenie. LQ had bought himself two girls and so he took a while longer. He finally emerged from the hallway about a quarter hour later, grinning big and swaggering like a rodeo rider.

“Could be I was wrong about you’re never satisfied,” Brando said. “You looking plenty satisfied this minute.”

“And I’d like to say, Chico, that it’s a real pleasure to hear you say something that’s correct for a change.”

We hit the road again but hadn’t gone thirty miles before all of us were yawning, the adrenaline charge was worn off now and our lack of proper sleep the night before was getting to us. So we pulled into a motor court in a burg called Marlin and got rooms for the rest of the night.

We slept late and then had a big breakfast at a cafe down the road before we got rolling south once more. We swung east at Houston and got to Sheila’s house at four-thirty in the afternoon. I got out of the Dodge and tossed my valise into the Terraplane. LQ and Brando had started hinting around about maybe spending a little more time in Orange before heading back to Galveston, but I told them to forget it. They were still holding Friday’s collection money and Artie Goldman would be mighty red-assed if it wasn’t handed in today. I gave them the rest of the expense money to turn in too.

Where the hell was I going, LQ wanted to know.

“Got a date.”

“Who with?” Brando said.

“You guys don’t know her. Tell you about her next time.”

“Well, ex-cuse us for asking,” LQ said. He nudged Brando with an elbow and said, “Must be he don’t want you to know he’s took up with your momma.”

“Only because the two-dollar line to see your momma is so damn long.”

I followed them through Port Arthur and Sabine to the coast highway, then down the Bolivar Peninsula to the ferry. While we were crossing the bay we had a smoke at the bow rail and watched a school of porpoises rolling ahead of the ferryboat in the last of the orange sunset. Then we were at the dock and the gate went down and we drove off the boat. LQ and Brando headed for the Club and I turned off toward La Colonia.

I had intended to go to the Casa Verde and get cleaned up before calling on her, but when I saw how dark the Avila place was I pulled over. Their old Ford wasn’t in its usual spot alongside the house, so maybe they’d all gone out to eat or something, but even so they would’ve left the porch light on. The rest of the neighborhood looked and sounded the same as always—porch lights glowing, lights in the windows, faint music from radios, the sporadic laughter of kids.

I went up on the porch and knocked and knocked but got no answer. I tried the door and it was locked. I went around to the back of the house and there the Ford was, where Avila never parked it. The blinds were down in every window but there wasn’t a show of light behind any of them. I was about to break a pane in the kitchen door, then thought to try that knob too and the door swung open.

I switched on the kitchen light, then crossed into the dining room and turned on that light. The dining table was turned out of place and a corner of it had hit the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. A couple of dining chairs were on their sides and ants were swarming around the sugar bowl on the floor. The living room was such a jumble of skewed and upset furniture and scattered bedclothes that it took me a moment to see Rocha lying on the sofa—hugging a pillow against his stomach and staring at me, his head bandage gone and his face caked with dried blood.

I took a fast look for her—in the bathroom and in the Avilas’ bedroom. The couple was lying facedown on the sagging mattress in a furrow of dark jelled blood. The smell was getting high.

I went back out to Rocha and righted a table lamp and turned it on. Under its light his eyes were bright with pain. The bandage off his head was lying at the foot of the hallway. In addition to the head wounds I’d given him he now had knife cuts on his scalp and face. The worst wound was in his stomach.

“Como te parece?” he said in a rasp.

I said it didn’t look too bad but he needed a doctor and I’d get him to one. But first I wanted to know where the girl was.

They took her, he said. Two of them, both Mexicans, both big. One with a pencil mustache and the other with a big bandido and a squinteye scar.

Did he know who they were?

Well hell yeah. They had to be the rich fuck’s guys.

What rich fuck?

Calveras, who else?

Who was that?

I didn’t know about Calveras?

“Digame,” I said.

He said that on the drive from Brownsville she had told him a story she’d already told his aunt and uncle about getting kidnapped down in Veracruz by a rich guy named Calveras. Had a wooden leg and only one eye. Had a hacienda in Durango or Chihuahua, he couldn’t remember where she’d said. Las Cadenas, the place was called— after a river it was next to. She’d been a prisoner for months before she escaped and went to hide in Brownsville with Rocha’s aunt and uncle, who’d known her since she was little. Rocha thought she might be pulling their leg about the rich guy—she seemed the type to overdramatize things, didn’t I think so? But his aunt and uncle believed her, and when she said she was afraid of being so close to the border because Calveras might find her, his uncle Oscar invited her to come to Galveston. Then the Avilas heard her story and they offered her a place to stay. Rocha himself still hadn’t believed her, though—not until those pricks showed up last night.

They’d come in the back way. One-thirty, two o’clock. Quiet as cats. Daniela was sleeping on the sofa, he was on the floor. He woke up as one of them was starting to crouch over him and there was just enough light to see the knife. His shotgun was in the closet and might as well have been on the moon. He kicked the guy and they tangled up and Daniela let out a scream that got cut short. They went crashing all around and the guy was cutting at his head and trying for his throat and then stabbed him in the stomach before Rocha locked on the guy’s knife arm and got his teeth in his ear. The guy pulled away as the hall light came on behind Rocha and he heard Avila say “Que pasa? Quien es?” and that’s when he got his look at them—the other guy was holding Daniela from behind with a hand on her mouth. Then the light cut off and a door slammed and Rocha threw a shoulder into the guy and sent him crashing and bolted through the kitchen and out the door. He ran across the yard and tore through the hedge into the neighbor’s backyard and fell down, choking bad, then realized he had a piece of ear in his throat and managed to spit it out. He had to keep wiping blood from his eyes but the real pain was in his gut. The neighbor’s house was still dark—probably nobody in the neighborhood had heard a thing. He was expecting them to come through the hedge looking for him and he lay still to keep from giving himself away. He had no idea how long he’d been lying there before he heard the Avilas’ car start up beside the house and then pull into the backyard. A moment later he heard whispering at the Avila back door but he couldn’t make out what was being said. He heard a low cry and one of them cursed and said to shut up and he knew they were taking her. He heard them moving off through the grass. And then he didn’t hear anything until a car started up somewhere down the street and drove away.

He didn’t know any of the neighbors, didn’t know if they could be trusted, so he went back into the Avila house. He found them with their throats cut. There was no telephone but even if there had been he wouldn’t have called the police. He’d been a cop himself—which came as news to me—but it wouldn’t help him much, since he’d