Hoodtown Read online

The lock was nothing much, a pickable deadbolt, and as I finessed the tumblers I thought of Gitcho, who taught me how to do this. I wondered if she had been sent up to Radensworth yet, if she knew about Rubia. Funny the things that go through your head when you’re breaking into someone’s house to murder them.

  I tried not to think, concentrating on feeling the sliding tease and then click as the tumblers gave, tiny sound like a gunshot in the silent hall. I eased the door open and gave my eyes a minute to adjust to the dark.

  Neat black humps of furniture, dim yellow light through gauzy curtains and passing cars making surreal shadow theater on the pressed tin ceiling. Very normal. No severed heads, no butcher’s tools, no photos of naked children. One picture on the wall, looked like flowers maybe, the kind of thing that comes with the apartment. Nothing personal at all that I could see. A clean smell like lemons and new fabric. Two doorways, one to a small kitchen and the other a hallway. In the hallway, two closed doors.

  I stood before the doors, unsure. The Lady or the Tiger? The Killer or the Closet? Nothing to do but try one.

  I got the bathroom. It was immaculate, clean as a magazine ad. There was a night light by the sink, a little bear rowing a boat and something about that seemed wrong. What killer is afraid of the dark?

  I was, I’ll tell you that much. The dim illumination from the bear light made the hallway seem that much blacker. What if he heard me come in? What if he’s waiting for me on the other side of the bedroom door, poised and ready to slit my throat and rip off my máscara?

  I pulled my pistola and checked that bullshit thinking. No point to it, really. So what if I was scared? Who wouldn’t be? I’m not some bad-ass asesina or a comic superhero, just the only one left standing when it came time to take care of business. So that’s what I did.

  Despite the tough talk, it still took every drop of guts I could muster to turn the knob on the bedroom door. Scattered panic thoughts fluttered around in my head like hysterical old women — what if he’s not alone, what if he’s awake, what if it’s someone else, some innocent housesitter? — but somehow I did it, pushed it soundlessly open and slipped into the bedroom.

  There was another night light. This one was a crescent moon above puffy, angelic clouds. It gave me enough light to see him, Davis Trent asleep in his narrow, single bed. The blanket matched the night light, jaunty moons and stars and comets, and his pajamas were pale blue with navy piping. He slept on his side, clutching a pillow like a lover. His long, ugly hair was corkscrewed up in uneven cowlicks. On the night stand, a little alarm clock, a bottle of antacid tablets and a novel. It was all so fucking normal.

  I stood there, swamped with icy doubt. Could I be wrong? Were Jasmine and Pi and Cray all wrong? No, it had to be him. I swore I saw something in his eyes when we met on the sidewalk but now I wasn’t so sure. I had been tired, burnt out, maybe I just wanted to believe it was him and now I was about to murder an innocent man in cold blood.

  Doubts were piling up like a train wreck and I was losing my nerve. There was only one thing I could do, the only way to be sure. Wake the fucker up.

  I leapt on the sleeping Skin and rolled him on his back with my knees on his shoulders and Jaguar’s gat pressed up under his chin. He came awake with a breathless holler, flailing hard once like a shock therapy patient and then going dead still when he felt the cold steel kiss of the muzzle against his throat.

  “You listen to me, Black Eagle, and you listen good.” I pressed the gun harder into the soft V beneath his chin. “I don’t give a fuck about Pinkwater or El Jefe or any of that big fish bullshit. I only want to know one thing. Where are the fucking máscaras?”

  His eyes were glazed and empty, giving away nothing.

  “I don’t know what...”

  “Don’t fuck with me, traitor! I’ll blow your precious naked face all over this bed.”

  He said it again, slow like I was deaf or retarded.

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  What did I think I was gonna get, some perfect, wordy supervillain confession like in a goddamn comic book? I was acting like Jaguar for Santo’s sake. I came to kill this murdering hijo de puta and that’s what I had to do. No point keeping up the useless chit chat. He was awake now, staring at me with a white rind of fear around the edges of his eyes and any fantasy of dealing out a quick simple death in his sleep long gone. He knew what was coming and so did I and as we sat frozen with gazes locked I wanted to run, to scream, to beat him until he told me what I wanted to know, anything but what I knew I had to do.

  I grabbed his pillow girlfriend and squashed it down over his hoodless face, burying his living, fearful eyes. Pressing the pistola into the center of the pillow I took a deep, shaky breath, hesitating.

  It was only a second, only a tiny slice of time but I swear it felt like my whole fucking life. I mean sure I’ve hurt a few thugs pretty bad in my time and one or two may have died from what I did to them but I didn’t plan it that way and I sure as hell didn’t stick around to see them off. And I know, what about Blue Velvet, you say, but listen that was night and day compared to this. When I took that stuck-up toddler down into the martinete — that illegal, deadly headfirst piledriver that I had used a hundred times before — I thought she knew how to take it. She had told me in the locker room that she was fine with that as the finish and I didn’t find out until it was too late that the pretty little hometown favorite had never done it, had no idea how to take it and was too embarrassed to admit it in front of a former Angel City star. She was the one who had wanted to work stiff, to prove to her yokel buddies that she could shoot with the best of them. The match was tough on her, I could see that, but she just kept no-selling my stiffest chops and coming back for more. When it came down to the finish she was winded and bloody as I took her up and into my infamous martinete, I could feel it going wrong as I lifted her, could feel her head was too low, stupid open-top hood with this tangled mess of red hair swinging between my legs, and she wasn’t wrapping her arms around my thighs, palms ready to push up off the mat when she hit, her arms were just flopping around like broken wings. I knew it was wrong but I went ahead anyway. Slammed her down on her head as hard as I could, thinking I would teach little Miss Cowtown Cutie a thing or two about how we do things in Angel City. She was dead before the rest of her body hit the mat.

  Huge silence in the pokey little hall and my heart stopped. I had held her as close as a lover, feeling her heart beating under her tacky powder blue singlet and now, a split second later she was gone, cold egoless meat and all the regret in the world couldn’t undo that stupid, heartless mistake.

  But that was a mistake. I only meant to hurt her, to teach her a lesson, not break her stupid neck but this, this was something altogether different.

  I knew exactly what would happen when I pulled that trigger. This was not a lesson, a stern talking to, this was a hit, a cold blooded hit and I was just going to have to live with that.

  I shot him.

  Puff of bloody feathers like a miniature explosion and his body wrenched viciously, like a valiant hero trying to kick out of the finish. I held my ground, grimly hanging on while the spasms lessened and then finally stopped.

  I climbed off and his body rolled to the floor with a weighty thump. I was jumpy, nervous about neighbors, but I still needed to find those hoods, something to prove I was right, to try and make what I had just done OK somehow.

  I tore his nice neat apartment to shreds. Riffled through clean, folded shorts and drawers of meticulously sorted nails and screws. I dumped out silverware and searched behind stacks of plain white dishes. There was no hole under the carpet, no secret hiding place with his old hood and the hoods of all his victims. There was a recent paper with an article about the latest murder on the coffee table, but it was folded open to the sports page. Everything in the house was utterly, agonizingly ordinary.

  In my frustration and twisted fury I kicked his corpse again and again. I lost it, really finally lo
st it, all the pain and anger and everything I’d kept crushed down inside me gushing out like lava, like vomit as I smashed in what remained of his naked face in a kind of fugue state, whispering through my teeth;

  “Where are they?” Punctuating the words with kicks. “Where.” Kick “The fuck.” Kick. “Are they?”

  Nothing. In the end nothing at all and I finally slid, exhausted to the floor beside that dead and bleeding mess that might have been a killer, warm gun clunking heavily to the floor as I put my head in my bloody, murdering hands.

  That’s when Jaguar showed up.

  42

  “Jaguar,” I said, in a small exhausted voice. “What are you doing here?”

  He ignored me, just dropped his gym bag and ran to Black Eagle’s crumpled body.

  “You killed him,” he said, something strange and shaky in his voice, like he couldn’t believe I really did it. I couldn’t believe it myself.

  As his fingers wandered across the corpse’s crooked throat in a pointless search for signs of life, I noticed Jaguar’s wrists were both bruised and bloody. He must have ripped the headboard loose from the bed frame to get to the key for those cuffs. I shook my head.

  “Why did you come here?” I staggered to my feet, every muscle in my body aching with bone deep fatigue. In spite of everything I was still secretly glad to see him. “Are you out of your mind?”

  He turned back to me and punched me in the face.

  I couldn’t have been more surprised if Orchidia had decked me. The shock of it was worse than the pain, which of course was horrible. My goddamn nose, again. I staggered backward and tripped over the dropped bag, sprawling on my ass and sending the bag’s contents tumbling across the floor.

  “What the fuck?” I spat through the fresh blood dripping into my mouth. Then I registered what had been inside the bag.

  It was hoods. Not Jaguar’s spotted golden hoods. These were all different, different colors and patterns but when I recognized one I recognized them all. Dulce’s, Kitsune’s, Jasmine’s and Rubia’s. And Black Eagle’s. And in the midst of them all, stained and stiff with blood, one of mine.

  My brain did not want to process what I was seeing and my head was full of jagged agony. I felt short-circuited, shell-shocked and stupid and I couldn’t take my eyes off my own crumpled hood, thinking lamely “Did he get that from Orchidia?” but I knew. I didn’t want to know but I knew, truth an inevitable gush, like blood from my tortured nose as he turned away from me, slamming his fist into the wall just like he did that night in the showers when he told me he was getting married.

  “Why do you have to ruin everything?” he said. “We could have run away together and everything would have been perfect.”

  “It was you,” I said, staggering to my feet and wiping blood on the back of my hand. I was stunned, utterly coldcocked by the horrifying enormity of what Jaguar had done. The pain was gone, replaced by numb icy dread. “Sweet fucking Santo, it was you all along.”

  “Twenty years I tried to get you out of my head,” he said, taking a step towards me. “I tried getting other women to wear your hood for me but they just weren’t you. They were never you. I’ve killed you a dozen times but it’s like you put some kind of fucking spell on me.”

  I took an involuntary step back away from him.

  “Now,” he said. “After everything I’ve done to get you back, to have this second chance...”

  “Second chance?” I hawked a wad of bloody saliva onto the carpet. “You worked me like a pinché mark from day one. I never loved anyone like I loved you, not ever.” My eyes narrowed to angry slits against the burning threat of tears. “It felt so good to be with you again, and all this time it was nothing but a fucking angle.”

  “That’s not true, X. You know I love you. I always have. Don’t you see, I did this for you?”

  He reached for me and my chilly paralysis shattered. I nailed him as hard as I could. It wasn’t nearly hard enough. He took it like a granny’s kiss and he had me down on the carpet in a heartbeat, locked up tight. I knew I didn’t stand a chance against Jaguar in hand to hand. He was younger and stronger, a first class luchador at the top of his game. I was old and fat and utterly exhausted, both physically and emotionally. I had used up every bit of energy to take Black Eagle out and now I was like a spent round, cold, empty and useless.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be this way, X,” he said, mouth inches from my ear and my traitorous body still responded with this nauseous kind of desire for him that made my skin crawl. “We were supposed to die together.” I could feel him working to unfasten his belt with one hand. “Now you’ve ruined everything. We have no time to do this right.”

  “Chinga tu máscara,” I spat, my voice nothing but a gritty ghost of a whisper. “You murdering son of a bitch!”

  His response was the chilly edge of a knife against my throat. I froze.

  If he had looked crazy, like some kind of evil, drooling maniaco, it would not have been nearly as awful. But he still looked so beautiful, so perfect and I knew right then he was going to kill me. There wasn’t a fucking thing I could do about it. It was over.

  As I lay beneath him, waiting for the inevitable thrust of killing steel, I looked up into his eyes. They were as dark and passionate as ever, filled with bright and jagged love. I whispered;

  “Please...”

  I don’t even know what I was asking for. Please stop? Please do it and get it over with already? I still have no idea. There wasn’t a thing I could do to stop him, but he still did nothing for what felt like ages. I thought I saw a flicker of conflict down in the depths of his bright eyes and the pressure on the blade against my neck eased up a barely perceivable fraction. I’d like to say that I was so tough, so cool that I planned what happened next but in truth it was really nothing more than blind reflex.

  I got my legs bent between us in a sliver of a second and planted my feet against his chest, shoving him back with every drop of strength I had left. My legs have always been my ace and they sent him across the room and hard into the wall. Without stopping to think, I rolled over and grabbed the pistola, training it on the center of his golden faceplate.

  Again that weird expansion of time and again hours seemed to pass, my body so wracked with exhaustion and emotion that Jaguar’s gat seemed to weigh a ton in my unsteady hand. Never taking my eyes off him, I reached across the mess of máscaras and picked up my own. It was an old workhood, beat-to-shit and stained with the dying blood of other women. It had been immaculate the day I gave it to him, the day I promised I would love him forever.

  “I’m sorry, X,” Jaguar said, voice so soft I might have imagined it.

  He closed his eyes and hung his head, waiting. I stood there hating him for making me love him, for being the one, the only one, in spite of everything. For manipulating me from the get go, meticulously setting up Black Eagle, using Dulce and the others, murdering them so that I would come back to him and die with him in some melodramatic pulp novel fantasy. It was monstrous but looking down at him, washed in fury and disgust at what he had done, I could not erase the way I felt about him, the dark pull that still wrenched my heart beneath my aching ribs. I hated him, but I didn’t know how to stop loving him. I lowered the barrel to the center of his broad, beautiful chest and pulled the trigger.

  Full, throaty roar of the gun like Armageddon in the tiny room as a bullet smashed through his sternum, decorating his expensive custom shirt with a swift-blooming blossom of crimson.

  If the cops weren’t on their way before, they were now. As the only man I’ve ever loved lay dying from a slug I put through his heart, I didn’t cry. I didn’t sob and wail and rend my clothes. I stood, cold and silent and looked around the wreck of the room. The body of the man once known as Black Eagle was sprawled by the bed, bludgeoned beyond recognition and surrounded by the hoods of murdered women. At my feet, the soon to be lifeless body of handsome, heroic Jaguar de Juarez. Idolo de los Niños. I clenched my fist around my old hoo
d and stuffed it into my pocket. I knew what I had to do.

  As sirens drew closer and closer outside the curtained window, I knelt beside Black Eagle, pulling his old hood over the pulped remains of his head and snugging the laces tight. Then I stood, looking down at the corpse. Thinking of Malasuerte, I emptied the gat into his masked face, bullets punching through the glossy black wings of his patent leather faceplate. Official fists were pounding on the door, deep, authoritarian voices demanding to be let in as I bent down and placed Jaguar’s pistola in the dying hero’s hand.

  EPILOGUE

  Standing just behind the silvery curtain at the threshold of the entrance ramp in Arena Quetzales, my heart was a jackhammer beneath my brand new singlet. The singlet was made from that luscious, iridescent material I’d always wanted and had the A.C.L.L. logo stitched just above the small of my back. My new workhood matched and also featured the familiar logo just above the laces.

  I hadn’t been to Neo Guanajuato in years but the Arena hadn’t changed one bit. Same huge tiered space like a hollow wedding cake with the same weird spilled beer and damp concrete smell and the same old ring with that ugly, faded Tio Chango logo on the mat. Same long, geometrically disturbing hallway leading down to the entrance ramp, down to where I stood, anxious as a rookie, peering through the curtain. The current match had spilled out into the crowd, nearly over now, but I felt distracted, haunted by the events that brought me there.

  When the story broke that Jaguar de Juarez had bravely sacrificed himself to stop the evil hood-stealing maniac Black Eagle, I got a visitor at Orchidia’s.

  I was holed up in her overnight ward again, propped up on pillows and stupid from her pain suppressant tea, when she came in and told me I had a special visitor. Minnie, who had been there fussing over me at my bedside, patted my cheek and told me she would wait outside.

  Orchidia looked at me with a strange, searching gaze and asked if I was sure I felt up to this. When I nodded, she stepped aside and my breath caught in my throat.