Under the Skin

of green paint as pale as lettuce.

“Look at that rattletrap,” LQ said. “Thing could use a pair of crutches.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” I said. “Some of those old T’s don’t look like much but they run like a Swiss watch.”

In the glow of the streetlamps I saw that the driver of the heap was a Mexican with a drooping gray mustache and wearing a straw hat. A burly guy sat beside him but his face was obscured by the shadows. Another passenger sat in the darkness of the backseat.

As the Model T passed by directly in front of us, the passenger at the near window leaned forward to look out and the lamplight fell full on the face of a girl. Blackhaired, darkskinned. Our eyes met—and for that brief instant I felt naked in some way that had nothing to do with clothes. Then the old car was clattering away down the shadowed street.

“Whooo,” LQ said. “You see that?”

“What?” Brando said from the backseat. His attention had been elsewhere.

“That was some finelooking chiquita,” LQ said.

I busied myself lighting a cigarette. I wasn’t one to get caught off guard by things, including some dopey sensation I didn’t understand, and it irked me that the girl’s look had ambushed me like it did.

The light turned green and LQ got the Dodge rolling, looking to his left at the fading single taillight on the Model T. I took a look too—then told myself to cut the crap. The world was full of goodlooking girls.

“You shoulda hollered something at her in Mexican,” LQ said to me. “Maybe get a little something going.”

“It’s Spanish, not Mexican, you peckerwood,” Brando said. “How many times I got to tell you?”

“And how many times I got to tell you,” LQ said. “Spanish is what they talk in Spain. Let me ask you something: what do they talk in Germany? German, aint it? And in France? I do believe they call it French. In China they talk Chinese. Get the picture? Anybody’s a peckerwood in this car it’s you.”

“You are one ignorant hillbilly,” Brando said. “What do you call what we talk in America, for Christ’s sake— American?”

“Goddam right,” LQ said. He gave me a sidelong wink.

“Jesus Christ,” Brando said.

“You shoulda seen her, Ramon,” LQ said, grinning at Brando in the rearview. “Finelooking thing. I always heard them young beaner girls prefer doing it with Americans on account of we know how to treat their hairy little tacos so much better than you boys.”

“Go to hell,” Brando said. He kicked the back of my seat and said, “Why do you put up with that kinda talk?”

I always got a kick out of how easily LQ could rile Brando with some crack about Mexicans, or even by calling him Ramon. It was funny because, despite his Mexican looks, Brando was a naturalborn American. He couldn’t even speak Spanish except for a few phrases of profanity, and he spoke those with a gringo accent. At twenty-four he was three years older than me, born and raised on a dairy farm just east of Austin, where his wetback parents had worked. They were the only Mexicans on the place, and because they’d wanted their son to be a good Yankee citizen they named him Raymond and encouraged him to speak English from the time he learned to talk. They’d made it a point to converse with him only in English, like everyone else on the farm, even though they themselves could barely get by in it, and so even though he never learned Spanish, his English had a touch of their accent, which only added to the impression that he was Mexican.

People usually took me for Mexican too, until they got up close enough to see my eyes. Then they knew I was even more of a breed than most Mexicans—most of them being mestizos, of Spanish-Indian mix. There were Spaniards with blue eyes, of course, and some of their kids by Indian women had the same eyes as daddy. But more often than not, when you saw blue eyes in a brown face they came from Yankee blood. Unlike Brando, however, I could speak Spanish pretty well, and my only accent in either language was a touch of border twang.

We turned off Broadway onto 23rd and drove toward the neon blaze of the Turf Club a few blocks ahead at Market Street. The Club did good business late into the evening every night of the week, but tonight being New Year’s it was even busier than usual.

LQ honked his horn at the traffic crawling along ahead of us. He’d started to worry that he was running late for his date with a redhead named Zelda. She worked as a hostess at the Hollywood Dinner Club and he’d already taken her out once but hadn’t been able to score. She was impressed that he was one of Rose’s Ghosts, but she’d been around some and she made it clear to LQ she wasn’t any pushover, that she expected to be wooed. She was pretty enough that LQ thought she was worth the effort. She came off her shift at ten-thirty and he was taking her for Chinese at a Maceo place called the Sui Jen that was on a pier jutting out into the gulf. Then down the street to the Crystal Palace to ring in the New Year with some dancing and champagne. Then to her place for a nightcap. He was sure tonight would be the night.

Brando had a hot date too. He was going to a party with a long-legged thing he’d met at a dance the week before. She’d told him her name was Brigitte and she was French. He said she spoke with a slight accent but he suspected she was really just some bullshitting hustler out of New Orleans. Of course he had been bullshitting her too, claiming he was a partner in the Big Trinity Oil Company, which was about to be bought by Texaco.

“With golddiggers,” he said, “the idea you got money works better than Spanish fly.”

“Too bad Mexican flies don’t work as good,” LQ had said. “You always got plenty enough of them on you.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Brando said.

“If I only could,” LQ said with a sigh. “I’d finally be doing it with the best there is and somebody I truly love.”

He stopped the car in front of the Club and Brando and I got out. I carried Ragsdale’s valise and one of the briefcases, in which I was carrying my revolver and the .380 I took from Ragsdale. LQ waved so long and drove off.

Brando punched me on the arm and asked if I was sure I didn’t want to go to the party with him. “Frenchy can prob’ly get a friend.”

“Thanks, anyway,” I said. “I’ll find my own fun.”

“Suit yourself, bud,” he said, and walked off to the parking lot in back where he’d left his car.

The Turf Club was a three-story building where the Maceos kept their headquarters. Everybody just called it the Club. On the ground floor was a restaurant called the Turf Grill, and as restaurants go it was fairly flashy and the food was always good. On this night the place was packed and there was a line of diners out on the sidewalk, waiting to be seated. A hostess named Sally gave me a wink when I went in, and some of the harried waitresses smiled at me in recognition as I made my way across the room to a doorway leading to the real attraction on the lower floor—a large betting room where you could lay money on any horse race at any track in the country. The day’s major races were broadcast over the parlor’s wall speakers and the hollering in there could get pretty intense when a race was in progress.

Anybody could get into the betting room, but the upper floors were exclusive. The elevator and the narrow stairway were in a hallway at the rear of the room. The stairway doors on every floor locked automatically from the inside, and there was always a palooka posted at the elevator to make sure nobody but special customers or friends of the Maceos got on it. Rose and Sam had their offices on the second floor, which also contained a billiards room and the Studio Lounge—a small restaurant with a dance floor and a long bar and a backroom gambling hall for big- money card and dice action. The third floor was a health club equipped with a boxing ring and all kinds of exercise equipment.

The only raids the local cops ever pulled were of course just for show. They always let the Maceos know they were coming and they never hit anything but the ground-floor betting parlor. Whatever equipment they confiscated they returned on the Q.T. a few days later. Every now and then, however, the Texas Rangers would come calling. That’s when the elevator man would push a hidden button to buzz a warning to the upper floors. The band in the Studio Lounge would strike up a blaring rendition of “The Eyes of Texas,” which everybody knew was the signal of a Ranger raid. The staff in the gambling room would fly into action, covering the gaming tables with expensive tablecloths and setting them with dinnerware and platters of food. The back bars would swivel around to hide the