Thin Air Part 27

"How did she die, Luis?"

"She was killed by Freddie Santiago."

Chapter 37.

It was 8:30 in the morning when we entered Club del Aguadillano. There were six people in the place, drinking beer mostly, though one guy appeared to be drinking tequila and washing it down with beer. Made decaf seem better. Even inside the club, you could smell the river smell lurking behind the beer smell, and hear the faint thunder of the falls upstream, as a kind of undertone to the harsh sounds of the juke box. Dolly the bartender was wearing an attractive green tee shirt today, with the sleeves cut off. His ma.s.sive upper arms were illuminated with tattoos of intertwined figures. He studied us as we came in. Chollo spoke to him in Spanish and Dolly answered. He put two gla.s.ses up on the bar and poured some tequila in them. Then he walked down to the far end of the bar and stood, staring at nothing. Chollo and I ignored the tequila.

After a while the guy with the tequila and beer stood up and yelled something in Spanish at one of the beer drinkers. The beer drinker muttered something back, and the tequila drinker started toward him. He was a squat guy with thick hands that suggested a lifetime of heavy labor. The beer drinker stood. He was a tallish guy, with a medium build. A very large and startling belly pushed incongruously out under his dingy white ice shirt like something he'd hidden under there. The tequila drinker grabbed him by the shirt front.

"They are arguing about whether the guy with the belly is a f.u.c.king f.a.ggot," Chollo murmured.

Without a word Dolly lumbered out from behind the har. He took the sawed-off baseball bat out of his hip pocket and hit the tequila drinker hard behind the knees. The tequila drinker howled and fell over backwards. Dolly took him by the collar and dragged him howling to the front door, into the parking lot, dropped him, hit him hard once on each knee with the sawed off bat and came back in, closing the door behind him. He put the sawed-off bat back into his hip pocket and went back behind the bar.

"Forceful," Chollo said.

"Well, he didn't bite him," I said.

"But, oh so gentle," Chollo said.

The door to Santiago's office opened and the grayhaired guy with the horn-rims nodded for us to enter. Santiago was there, behind his desk. Besides the gray-haired man and Santiago there were four gunnies ranged on the back wall. One of them, the guy Chollo had knocked down last time, had a sawed-off shotgun in his hands. n.o.body invited us to sit. The guy with the shotgun said something in Spanish to Chollo. Chollo smiled.

"He says if this time, I would like-to see if I can get my gun out before he pulls the trigger, he would be happy to try it."

Without looking at him, Santiago said, "Silencio!" to the guy with the shotgun.

"He's telling him to shut up," Chollo said.

"Is that what that means?" I said.

Santiago looked at me.

"You have a proposition?"

"If something happened to Luis Deleon, who would be in charge?" I said.

Santiago smiled. "Eventually I would be."

"In the short run?" I said. "Ramon Gonzalez, but he would not last very long."

"Because?"

"Because Ramon Gonzalez is a jitterbug, a man who runs on cocaine and angel dust. Luis is the one holds out against me. It is hatred, as if somehow it is my fault about his mother. If he were not there, sooner or later the others would be happy to join with me for a better Proctor."

Whatever he said was tinged with self-mockery so that it was never easy to know what he cared about and what he didn't. Which, I suppose, might have been the point.

"But they won't go against him?"

"They fear him more than they fear me. He is so crazy. It makes him"-he looked at Chollo-"feroz?"

"Ferocious," Chollo said.

"Si, ferocious. Everyone is afraid of him, because he is so ferocious, and because no one knows what he will do. He is able to bring a lot of business in because so many fear him."

"What happened to his mother?" I said.

"She O.D.'d here, in the ladies' room," Santiago said. "Got hold of some uncut heroin and it popped her. Luis would not believe his mother was a junkie as he would not believe his mother was a wh.o.r.e. So he says I killed her." He shrugged. "Why would I bother to kill her? She was just a wh.o.r.e."

"One of yours?" I said.

Santiago smiled.

"Most things in Proctor are mine."

"Except San Juan Hill."

He nodded.

"Except that," he said softly.

"That could change," I said.

"All things do," Santiago said.

"We're going to take him out," I said.

"If you can."

"We can, but we'd like a little help from you."

"I do not wish to be seen as one who turns on a fellow Hispanic," Santiago said. "It would not help people to think of me as the liberator of Proctor."

"Of course it wouldn't," I said. "We'll be the ones who turn on him. What we want from you is logistical support."

"I could consider that," Santiago said. "Have you a plan?"

"Nothing so formal," I said. "But I've been thinking."

Santiago smiled. "Tell me," he said.

"You tell him, Chollo, in Spanish. I want everything clear when the time comes. Give him the layout, make sure he knows where everyone is likely to be."

Chollo spoke in Spanish.

When he was through, Santiago said, "That is all? A show of force?"

"And nothing more. And when we say so," I said.

"Do you wish me to have the police to seal off the area?"

"You," I said. "Your people. I don't want the Proctor cops within a mile of the place."

"Certainly," Santiago said. "Will you tell me how this fits into your plan?"

"No," I said.

Santiago nodded.

"If I were you, I would say the same. Plans are best when few people know them."

"You are very wise, Jefe," I said.

Santiago smiled.

"Si," he said. "But you should remember that I am a very vengeful man, and if things turn out to be different than you promised that they would be, I will find each of you and kill you..." He paused, made a searching gesture with his hand, and looked at Chollo.

"Pavoroso?"

Chollo grinned. "Gruesome," he said. "Terrifying."

"Gee," I said. "I can't speak for everybody, but that sure seems fair to me."

"I enjoy laughter, too," Santiago said. "But don't mistake me."

"I think I'm getting it," I said.

"Good," Santiago said. "When do we, ah, cause this diversion?"

"Soon. How much time you need to put your men in the field?"

Santiago smiled gently and looked at the gray-haired man with gla.s.ses.

"Five minutes," he said.

"I'll give you more notice than that," I said. "Just remember, everything goes right and you get San Juan Hill to keep."

"Everything will go right," Santiago said.

"If it does, all will be hunky-dory. If it doesn't, I may get a little pavoroso myself."

"That might be interesting to see," Santiago said.

"No," I said. "It wouldn't be."

She sat on the floor still, leaning forward, hugging her knees. Luis stood and walked back and forth slowly, never very far from her. He was calmer now. There were no tears, though his face was still childlike.

"How did you change from Angela to Lisa?" Luis said.

"Pomona Detox," Lisa said. "Couple of Sheriff's deputies picked me up and took me there. Booze, mostly. The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree, you know? There was a social worker, used to talk to me every day, and after a while when I was sober and walking around she pa.s.sed me on to a woman shrink, real upper cla.s.s, had a little French accent, lived in Beverly Hills, and made a fortune listening to movie stars whine. Once a week she did pro bono work with whatever they swept up and dumped in detox. She liked me, or felt bad for me, or whatever, and she started seeing me two, three days a week. She saved my life."

"Pro bono?"

"Yeah, for free, you know? Good works."

"A woman?"

"A woman doctor," Lisa said.

"What did she do?"

"We talked," Lisa said.

"That's all?"

Lisa smiled softly. "That's all."

"This Woody," Luis said. "Do you know where he is?"

"No."

"I will have him killed."

"He doesn't matter," Lisa said. "All of that doesn't matter now."

"What did you talk about?"

"Where I came from, where I was going, what I wanted, who I was, who I wanted to be. I didn't know much of anything about any of that."

"How could you not know who you were?"

"It's a way of talking, Luis: Certainly I didn't know who I wanted to be or what I wanted to do. The doctor said I could start by taking care of myself I said I didn't know how. She asked me what I could do. I said I gave a h.e.l.l of a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b."

"Lisa, don't talk like that," Luis said.

"I was telling her the truth," Lisa said.

"What did she say? Did she punish you?"

"She said it was a useful skill, but not for making a living."

"A woman said that to you?"

"A woman doctor," Lisa said. "And we talked some more and she found out about how I was a stripper DJ, and we talked about that and she got me to enroll in some radio and television school on the west side, and I got an apprentice job, Sundays only, at a 5,000-watt station in Barstow, and after a while, when I thought I could leave the shrink, I came home and changed my name and got the job at the radio station and started over."