Plaster City (A Jimmy Veeder Fiasco) (28 page)

“They’ll frisk you at the gate,” Chola said. “Unless you want to fight your way in, you’re going to have to leave your guns here. Or shove them really far up your ass.”

Bobby looked at me. “No guns?”

“We’re going in, grabbing Rudy, and leaving. We don’t need them.”

“If it were easy, it wouldn’t be us doing it.”

Bobby and I handed our hardware to Gabe. He stowed it all under the seat. I slammed the door and we watched Gabe back up, get a running start, and drive through the same gate he had busted through just a few days before.

“He hates that fucking gate,” Bobby said.

Bobby and I turned to each other and said something at the same time, and then we both stopped, started again, and then shut up. I held up my hand.

“You first,” I said. “What were you going to say?”

“It’s stupid. I was going to say, ‘Daddy’s coming home.’ What were you going to say?”

“ ‘Father knows best—the best way to kick your ass.’ ”

I put in the call to Buck Buck and Snout. They knew what they had to do.

Bobby and I walked out of the mangled gate and headed across the street toward the factory grounds to get Rudy.

“ ‘I hope you bought a new tie, because it’s Father’s Day,’ ” Bobby said.

“ ‘Who’s your daddy? Oh, that guy. Yeah, he’s got nunchucks.’ ”

“ ‘Luke, I am your father. The father of . . .’ ” Bobby paused. “No. I thought I had one, but I didn’t.”

“That’s okay. I didn’t have any more either.”

The chain-link gates stood wide-open leading into the factory. Two Los Hermanos dirtbags smoked cigarettes, drank beer, and—I guess—stood watch. But when you’re pretty much letting in other dirtbags who pay to see teenage girls fight, you’re less of a guard and more of a ticket taker.

While one of the bikers patted us down, the other one kept one hand on the gun in his belt. “Fifty bucks.”

I looked at Bobby. It hadn’t occurred to me to bring cash to a rescue mission. But Bobby didn’t flinch. He reached into his pocket, pulled out one of the rolls of bills, found two twenties and a ten, and handed the guy their own money.

“Each,” the biker said.

“Better be worth it,” Bobby said, counting another fifty.

“It is, man. Beer’s free. First fight’s still going. Hurry and you’ll catch the end. If you got five hundred more, you can fuck the loser. All the fight is out of them by then.”

Bobby stared at the guy. If he was thinking what I was, he was concentrating entirely on not beating the punk to death. I grabbed Bobby’s good arm and pulled him onto the factory grounds.

The entire ground of the factory area was bone white, even brighter than the rest of Plaster City and difficult to look at directly. It reflected the sun, causing a desert form of snow blindness.

The deafening Mexican techno soundtrack played a repetitious beat that I could feel in my chest. It seemed appropriate for fighting, but it was hard to believe that anyone on the face of the planet actually liked that shit.

The crowd that roamed the lot consisted of two distinct types. There were the bros, the same shitheads that had been at Driskell’s party. The other group consisted of Mexicans in boots and cowboy hats, the kind of men who grew up on animal fighting and were looking for fresh action. Sifted within the crowd was the occasional Los Hermanos jacket.

The center of the action was deeper onto the factory grounds. A huddle of whooping and hollering men blocked our view of the fight that was under way. In the shade of one of the factory towers, Rudy worked the kegs, a line of men waiting to be served beer. It was nice to see that even at an event where pretty underage girls beat the shit out of each other, the spectators still honored the sanctity of the line. It is ingrained in us early that cutting is wrong. Is there anything more truly American than waiting in a line?

Bobby and I ambled nonchalantly over to the beer line, and not to raise any hackles, we waited. When we reached the front of the line and Rudy spotted us, his eyebrows raised.

Bobby leaned in, whispering to Rudy. “We got to go. Now.”

“It’s done? You got her?”

Bobby nodded.

“Thank God. This garbage they call music is killing me. I’m going to have to listen to six straight hours of Waylon just to antidote it.” Rudy poured one more beer, smelled it, stared at the foam, and poured it on the ground. He started to walk away.

“Wait,” Bobby said. “I didn’t get my beer.”

“Are you serious?”

“We waited in line. We’re right here.” Bobby reached over and filled up a cup himself, beer spilling and foaming everywhere. He took a swig and then refilled the cup to the top.

I turned to the line that had formed behind us. “Bartender quit. It’s self-serve.”

And immediately the line deteriorated and the crowd circled the taps. That’s the thing about lines. They operate on a delicate balance. People respect them but hate them. First chance, anarchy triumphs.

Bobby, Rudy, and I walked toward the gate. But, of course, it couldn’t go that smoothly. It surprised me that I was the one who made things more difficult. Fifty yards from the gate, I stopped and turned to look at the men watching the fights. Bobby and Rudy stopped abruptly.

“What about them? Those girls?” I asked.

Bobby stopped. He laughed loudly. “Why not? If it was too uneventful, it wouldn’t be a satisfying Mavescapade.”

Rudy slapped the two of us on the back. “Ain’t nothing more satisfying than whooping a younger man.”

So with six balls and no plan, we stomped toward the makeshift fighting pit. But who needs a plan when chaos intervenes?

Before we got there, I saw a familiar face staring at me through the crowd. Cold Sore. I had forgotten about him. But he hadn’t forgotten me. His cold sore looked as angry as his expression. Campho-Phenique would only cure one of those.

Cold Sore yelled something, but I couldn’t hear anything over the music. He looked around frantically, and then pointed and pushed the two bikers next to him toward us. They both pulled pistols, but in the thick crowd they kept them trained at the ground.

I took off in the direction of the fight, hoping to get lost in the mob of men. But I was alone. Bobby and Rudy weren’t runners. Unless they were running toward a fight. Which is what they did. By the time I realized they weren’t with me, they had met the two bikers halfway.

Bobby risked later ridicule for being a kicker by jumping feet first into the stomach of one of the bikers. The guy folded in half. Bobby twisted his body to land on his good shoulder, but still hit the ground hard. Rudy clotheslined the other biker in the neck hard enough to give me a bruise at this distance. That guy fell to the ground choking for air. Rudy hit him again just to make a point.

Lost in the immediacy of their violence, it took me a few seconds to realize that I wasn’t doing anything.

Some of the spectators roaming around grew interested in the melee, maybe thinking it was part of the entertainment. Guys shoved other guys out of the way to get a better look. Shoved guys took umbrage and shoved back. And very quickly, a couple completely unrelated fights broke out. Violence begets violence. Go to an MMA match and see how many parking lot skirmishes start from the deadly cocktail of testosterone and beer and stupid.

Not literally. That would be a disgusting cocktail. I’d call it a Hot Couture.

I lost sight of Bobby and Rudy in the growing melee, but I did spot Cold Sore leading Goyo and a few of the remaining upright Mexican bikers to the mess that we had wrought. They tried to break up the fights, but they didn’t seem prepared. They had no bouncer moves, mostly clumsy shirt-pulling and dragging men that were already out of the fray.

As a full-blown riot blossomed, I dodged a couple fists, got kicked in the shins, and barely missed getting puked on by a gut-punched drunk. When I broke off from the men, I ended up next to the two girls who had been the former center of attention. No longer fighting, the two bruised and bloody girls watched, confused and a little frightened. I held up my hands to show that I was harmless.

“It’ll take too long to explain, but if you stay here, you’re in danger. You want to get out of here? Come with me.”

“Is there free cotton candy in your rape van, too?” LaShanda said. “Fuck off, creep.” She rubbed at the side of her mouth, blood painting the back of her hand and wrist.

“We already escaped the other girls. Julie, too. I ain’t fucking with you.”

“Yeah, and I would trust you why?”

I remembered how Chola had reacted to Tomás’s name. “Because Tomás Morales is coming here to fuck shit up.”

The two girls looked at each other, the realization that there was danger in every direction. The other girl spoke up. “Where’s your car?”

“About that. I don’t have a car.”

The fighting grew around us. I shoved at men as they crowded our space. It looked like all hundred-plus men in attendance had joined the free-for-all. Most of the fights had become divided along racial lines, the bros squaring up against the Mexicans. And for all the swearing and peacocking anger, there was definitely a contingent that was having fun.

“How you going to get us out without no car?”

As if on cue, the theme to the
A-Team
in car-horn form blared. I looked to the factory gate to see Snout’s dumbass van bounce onto the grounds. It skidded to a stop before it reached the boiling pit of brawling men. Buck Buck sat in the open side door, strapped into a chair that Snout had welded to the floor. He pointed a shotgun wherever his eyes landed, trying to figure out who needed to be peppered with birdshot.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” LaShanda said.

“We couldn’t get a Batmobile on short notice,” I replied. “Come with me if you’re coming.”

The only way to the van was through the tumult. I put up my dukes and swung wildly, wading into the crowd. The girls followed. When one less-than-brave bro tried to tag the back of my head, the quieter girl kneecapped him with her heel.

I got hit a few times, but overall I gave more than I got. And with a torn shirt, slightly more blood on the outside than the inside, and an increasingly dimmer view of the male of the species, I reached the van with the girls right behind me.

Buck Buck pulled the cigar out of his mouth. “I love it when a plan comes together.”

“Even the teenage girls think you’re ridiculous,” I said.

“Teenage girls think everything is ridiculous,” Buck Buck said in his defense.

I looked at the two girls. They nodded in agreement. We all climbed into the van.

“Rudy and Bobby are somewhere in the mosh pit,” I said.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” Snout said from the front.

We all looked out the windshield to where he pointed. It looked like a haboob, a huge cloud of dust coming at us from the northeast. I hopped out and climbed the ladder on the back. Standing on top of the van, I confirmed the worst. The fleet of black SUVs that had been sitting in the dry wash was now in motion. The vehicles drove toward Plaster City, four across and three deep.

“Fuck me,” I said.

I slid down the front windshield, rolled off the small hood, and fell to the ground.

Snout screamed, “Hey, watch the paint!”

I ignored him. “We have to get the fuck out of here. Now. Right now. This place is about to get bloody.”

A gun fired. A bullet pinged off the side of the van.

“The hell?” Snout said.

“Get down,” I shouted.

I dropped to the ground and scanned the crowd. Finally, I spotted Goyo about twenty yards away, aiming his pistol and firing again. Buck Buck fired back. Goyo dove behind a low wall.

The gunfire stopped the fight. The crack of a gun had that power.

“Buck Buck! Fire a couple shots in the air,” I said.

“Tonight long stick goes boom,” he shouted.

The shotgun thundered. Men scattered from the sound. I caught sight of Bobby and Rudy, bloody and bruised, but still dishing punishment. Bobby’s shoulder was saturated in blood, the bandages and sling frayed and torn. He finally caught sight of the van. I waved him over, pointing quickly to the dust cloud closing in. Bobby swore and grabbed Rudy by the collar, moving toward the van.

Goyo stood up and lined up his shot, aiming at the running Bobby.

Without thinking, I took off toward Goyo. He fired at Bobby. I didn’t look to see if he hit his mark. By the time he caught sight of me, I was right on him. He turned and fired. I felt my arm get warm, but I didn’t let it stop me, tackling him at the waist. We hit the ground hard. He tried to raise the pistol, but I grabbed his wrist with one hand and punched him in the ribs with the other.

He hit me with a shot to the neck that rocked me and relaxed my grip. He brought his knees up and pushed, knocking me off him. I rolled to a knee, but he was already standing and pointing his pistol at me. I closed my eyes and saw Juan’s face.

He fired.

But I didn’t die. I opened my eyes to see Goyo slump down onto the ground, blood pouring from what was left of his head. I looked around, confused.

The first black SUV had breached the factory grounds, men with rifles standing in the open sunroofs. Men with pistols pointing out windows. They fired into the crowd, men wearing Los Hermanos jackets falling.