Under the Skin (27 page)

We hadn’t said much else on the drive. We’d watched the road
steadily zooming under us as we sped through the night, splattering
jackrabbits caught in the headlights, listening to whatever music we
could pick up on coming-and-going radio stations, mostly Western
swing stuff. We stopped at all-night stations to fill the tank. I didn’t
know 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 café 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 AN
-
TONIO 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.

atkins was the referee and a club rat named
Wagner was working the bell. It rang for
round one and Otis and I came out of our corners and touched gloves and fast as a blink he lunged and

hit me with a right lead that made the room wobble. I
staggered backward and he stayed on top of me, working
the jabs hard in my face, each one stinging pretty good,
since we weren’t using headgear—and then
bam-bam
he
drilled me with a left-right to the forehead and under the
eye and I slid along the ropes and sat down hard.

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
up
. They were five-deep around the
ring. Otis went to a neutral corner and Watkins started
the count over me. I got up on one knee, everything a little blurry at the edges. I took the count to eight and
stood up.

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.
Wo w !
”

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
playing
with me, dropping
his hands to his waist and juking from side to side like he was daring
me to land a punch, smiling around his mouthpiece.

He popped me twice more with the jab and then drew his right
hand way back and began whirling it all around like he was winding
up a haymaker. He looked over at the rats in the front row and waggled his brows like he was saying Watch
this
now.

He shouldn’t have taken his eyes off me. I leaped and grabbed him
in a headlock and started punching him in the face as hard and fast as
I could.

For a second the rats went mute—and then all them were shrieking “Foul!...
Foul!
”
He twisted and pulled and we reeled around the ring every which
way but I kept punching and punching, feeling his nose give way,
vaguely aware of Watkins trying to pull me off him.
Otis tried to punch me in the balls and I hit him even harder.
I forced his head lower and then clubbed him behind the neck
and brought my knee up hard in his face. He sailed back into the
ropes and flopped down, losing his mouthpiece, his nose pouring
blood.
Like any pro fighter who gets knocked almost unconscious, his instinct was to get on his feet fast, to beat the count, his body trying to
get off the canvas even while his brain was still bouncing around in

Watkins had me in a bearhug from behind, pulling me back from
Otis and cussing me. I said to let go but he didn’t—maybe he
couldn’t hear me for all the racket the rats were making. I stomped
on his instep and that did the trick. He let out a yelp and hopped over
to the ropes to keep from falling.

Our gloves weren’t taped, so I clamped one in my armpit and
yanked my hand free of it, then pulled off the other glove. Otis
was up now and he swayed against the ropes for a second and then
his eyes focused on me. Blood was running over his mouth and off
his chin.

I raised my taped hands and gestured for him to come at me. For
a second I thought he’d do it—but he must’ve read my eyes, and he
wasn’t stupid. He spat a mouthful of blood on the canvas between us
and stayed put.

“Some fun, hey?” I said.
“Fuck you,” he said, his voice thick.
He managed to climb down from the ring without help, then

Watkins was tearful with pain, sitting on the canvas and holding
his foot. The rats had shut up and were gawking at me. They backed
away as I stepped out between the ropes.