Hoodtown Read online

  4

  It wasn’t long before the wagon arrived to break it up. I didn’t want to waste the night cooling my heels in the tigrebako so I figured it was time to powder out. My blood was up and I went looking for some action. Those days action mostly meant El Malasuerte.

  He was a pretty decent trumpet player doing time in the burlesque pit when he wasn’t picking up the occasional collection gig or keeping me satisfied. A young bull with thick wrists, a thick neck and a nice thick verga. He was the thirteenth son of an old school rudo family and his big brothers were some of the best known heavyweights in the biz. At 6’1”, he was the runt of the litter. It always seemed funny to me how dainty and little that trumpet looked in his big thuggish hands.

  Of course the first person I saw when I waltzed in through the talent entrance of the burlesque theater was the comic. He had some sort of wire gag leash made to look like he was walking an invisible dog.

  “Ah, X,” he said holding out his arms and causing the imaginary dog to fly into the air. “I knew you’d change your mind.”

  “No chance, comic.” I smirked.

  “Aw, c’mon baby! What’s that side of beef got that I don’t?”

  I was about to come back with something tart when he held up his palm, using his leash hand to fish a flask from inside his loud polka-dot vest while the imaginary dog hovered some-where above his shoulder.

  “On second thought, don’t tell me. I don’t think my frail masculinity could handle it.” He paused, squinting at me. “Say, que pasó? You been taking your work home with you or what?”

  I ran my thumb over the fresh split in my lower lip.

  “Just a lucky shot,” I said.

  “Well, one lucky shot deserves another, I always say.” He handed me the flask.

  I thanked him and took a deep drink, relishing the burn on the torn tissue inside my mouth. It was then that I realized I had left my hat at The Cobra Room.

  Golden Swan, a stunning dancer in a gold hood and matching gown, hustled past us in a swirl of white feathers and musk-heavy perfume.

  “Hiya, X,” she said, sticking her pink tongue through the slim mouth opening in her ornate, closed chin hood.

  “Knock em out, Goldie!” I said.

  “Knock me out, Goldie,” the comic said and she giggled, rolling her pert little hips. The comic reeled back dramatically, as if punched. Then the music started.

  “Don’t worry, X,” she stagewhispered. “This is the last dance. You’ll have your boy in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  She winked and then crossed herself three times before strutting out onto the stage in a shower of wolf whistles.

  I handed the flask back to the comic and slipped around into the auditorium. The seats were about half full, mostly Hoods with the occasional hairy silhouette of a Skin to break the pattern. On stage, Golden Swan was doing her thing, knockin’ em out. The music was a dirty brass grind full of lewd trombones and of course Malasuerte in the middle of it all, red and blue light glinting off the brass skin of his upraised trumpet. He wore the same cheap white jacket with the black lapels, the same white trousers with the black stripes down the legs as all his fellow musicians, but while they all seemed to favor flashy primaries and lurid lamés above the neck, his hood was matte black like mine and really stood out with its blood red 13 on the forehead and arching black cat earguards.

  When he saw me, he winked, rusty hazel eyes all full of mischief. I was feeling more than a little impatient myself. The music reached a crescendo as the now fully nude Goldie finally peeled off her heavy golden máscara to reveal a lacy-sheer, chinless underhood webbed with sparkles. The crowd was on its feet, howling and stomping and Goldie bowed and gathered up the heaps of discarded gauze and sequins and feathers, blowing kisses as she slipped away behind the curtain. Malasuerte had cased his horn and squeezed past the Japanese conga-player and the scowling bandleader before the last mark was out of his seat. He crosscut through the crowd and made his way to where I stood.

  I didn’t let him speak. I didn’t feel like talking. Instead, I grabbed his worn lapels and pulled him back into the narrow hallway, pulling his mouth down to mine.

  His lips were hot and probably just as sore as mine from four hours pressed against the hard brass mouth of his trumpet, but he didn’t seem to care anymore than I did. I let myself luxuriate in the taste and feel of him for a good long minute and then put my hand on his throat, pushing him back a few crucial inches.

  “Let’s go,” I said, laying my finger on his mouth. He closed his eyes and then opened them again, chin down and exhaling hotly through his nostrils.

  “Jeez, X,” he said, lopsided grin curling in one corner of his lips. “Try bringing me some flowers or something sometime. I got feelings, you know!”

  I smiled too, just a little.

  “You want it or not?”

  “You know I do.” He kissed me again. “It’s just…” Again, tongue sliding hotly over the split in my lip. “I got a gig.”

  “Hmmmmmm.” I pulled away. “Too bad.”

  “It’s just a quickie though.” He adjusted his erection beneath his clothing with a pained expression. “$650. Wanna piece?”

  “Well...”

  “It’s El Nezumi.”

  “Again? Bonkura. Don’t he ever learn?”

  “Guess not. Anyway, it’ll be fun. Don’t tell me you don’t need the money.”

  “Aw hell, Lucky, my knuckles are sore.”

  He took my right hand and brought it to his lips, kissing the swollen knuckles and looking up at me with bad-boy eyes.

  “Please?”

  I reached out with my left hand and grabbed his huevos through his trousers. His pupils dilated, a low hiss escaping between his clenched teeth.

  “What’ll you give me?” I asked, tightening my grip.

  “Ah... anything, Mistress.”

  “But you’ll give me anything no matter what, won’t you?”

  His answer was an amazingly sexy groan of helpless desire. Now I was starting to get really worked up and if I wasn’t careful we would be here all night. Nezumi wouldn’t get taken care of and El Jefe would be very unhappy. Since I could get far more enjoyment out of Malasuerte when he was whole and healthy, it was in my best interest to make sure that he kept El Jefe happy.

  “OK, Lucky.” I said, letting him go. He staggered a little as he stepped back. “The sooner we do this, the sooner you can start working on that ‘anything’.”

  5

  El Nezumi was hiding out in a shitty flophouse above a sorry-ass pawnshop on 168th. Now when I say that it was a bad part of town, keep in mind who’s talking. I’m Hoodtown born and bred and even I try to stay away from that neck of the woods. It’s a ghetto within a ghetto, the lowest kind of skid row, populated by long lost alkies and human trash with dead eyes and hideous tendrils of ratted hair snaking out from under vomit stained hoods. The walking dead. The hustles are rudimentary at best, just clutching hands and sometimes a filthy rag across a car window. People have been killed for their shopping carts. I guess Nezumi thought it would be a good place to get lost. His landlady gave him up for five bucks and a bottle of Chupacabra.

  Malasuerte took the stairs and I took the rusted fire escape. The building was a weary stack of bricks that seemed jealous of the empty lots on either side, barely able to hold up its own weight, let alone mine. The whole structure groaned like an old man as I hauled myself up onto the shaky metal ladder leading to the first landing. On the way my foot brushed the pawnshop sign and the ~ over the ñ in empeño dropped down on one side and hung skewed like a bad phony mustache. When I reached the third floor, I found Nezumi squeezing like a cockroach through the partially open window.

  He was two-bit hustler, the kind of guy that had a hundred angles, a hundred sure things that would pay off any day now. He was half Japanese and half American, and lookswise he seemed to have inherited the worst of both. His teeth were huge and crooked in his nearly lipless mouth, his bulgin
g eyes pale and bloodshot. His dirty yellow hood was chinless, exposing a sickly spread of pimples across his weak chin, and open at the top to reveal bleached blond hair that had once been cut into some fashionable style, now hopelessly matted. He also wore a dingy orange suit that might have been flashy several unwashed weeks ago.

  “You’re not leaving already are you, Nezumi?” I stepped on the wrist of his right hand, causing him to drop his switchblade. He made a little animal sound as it tumbled to the asphalt. “We just got here.”

  Malasuerte had him by the ankles and started hauling him back in to the apartment. I opened the paint-sticky window the rest of the way and slipped inside.

  The place was as charming as its owner. The walls were a vile, sick mucus color, cracked and stained. All the flimsy furniture had been shoved up against the door in a pathetic barricade that Malasuerte had swept easily aside when he entered. It stank like the inside of an unplugged refrigerator. There was a scatter of empty pill bottles around an old record player on the floor in the center of the room. The song coming from the dying speakers was something Latin and smoochy, full of scratches.

  Malasuerte held the flailing man in a solid, patient llave.

  “Now look, Nezumi,” he said, his voice quiet and reasonable. “You’re just making this harder on yourself.”

  I stepped forward, hauled up the hem of my dress and kicked Nezumi in the stomach. Figured I might as well save my knuckles. He whooped like an asthmatic donkey and lowered his head so I kneed him in the face too. Nice crunch and blood from his nose and then he was slumped in Malasuerte’s arms. Malasuerte let the whimpering bundle collapse to the floor and I put a foot on his neck. Nezumi flailed and clutched at my ankle. Malasuerte crouched down beside him.

  “Fifteen thousand dollars, Ratboy.” He sucked air between his teeth. “You’re in big time trouble now.”

  Nezumi’s eyes had rolled up into his head and he was turning purple. I took my foot off him and stepped back.

  “Hey don’t pass out on me, Nezumi. C’mon, compadre, you really want to pay attention to this part.”

  “Wha... wha...?”

  “Listen to me now, OK.” Malasuerte leaned even closer. “This is my second visit. Next time it’s not gonna be me. Next time it’s gonna be a guy that you don’t wanna know. A guy that nobody alive has ever seen. You understand what I’m telling you? El Jefe’s been very generous up until now, but you’re really starting to piss him off. You have until tomorrow noon, Nezumi.”

  “I can get it!” Nezumi blubbered.

  “Then get it.”

  “It’s coming I swear! Later tonight. I got a sure thing lined up...”

  Malasuerte stood.

  “We’re gonna have to beat you up some more now, Nezumi. You remember what I said.”

  “Nonononono!” Nezumi started to crawl away but he didn’t get far.

  We worked him over, Malasuerte with fists and me with feet. He seemed to be nearing terminal hurt and we were about to let him go when a tall Hispanic Skin showed up in the splintered doorway, his naked face haloed by a dull orange glow as he sucked on the cigarette clamped between his teeth.

  “Pardon the interruption,” the man said. His voice was accentless, radio announcer smooth.

  We let Nezumi go and he stumbled away, slamming into the wall and sliding down into a dazed heap.

  “I brought your money, Nezumi,” the Skin said, dropping his cigarette on the unspeakable carpet and presenting an expensive briefcase.

  He arched a thick eyebrow and laid the case beside the mumbling pile that was left of Nezumi. Grabbing the bloody lapels of Nezumi’s orange suit he spoke low in Nezumi’s ear, but not too low for us to hear.

  “Fifteen thousand dollars.” The magic number. “Now where is it?”

  “There...” Nezumi tilted his chin towards a torn shopping bag by the window.

  The Skin took the bag, peered inside, then turned to us and nodded. Without the light from the cigarette his face seemed masked in shadow. He left as quietly and inexplicably as he came.

  Nezumi was cackling now, spitting blood.

  “I told you I had it coming.” His fingers skittered over the case. “Fifteen fucking grand.”

  Malasuerte frowned and reached for the case, plucking it out of Nezumi’s grasp. When he popped the latches he found neat stacks of bills. He counted twice and sure enough; Fifteen grand.

  “Well what do you know?” Malasuerte said. “Too bad your buddy didn’t show up a few minutes earlier.” He slapped Nezumi’s bony shoulder. “No hard feelings.”

  He motioned with his head towards the door. Nezumi was giggling and raving in incoherent Japanese and I was already beyond ready to get the hell out of that hole.

  “Stay outta trouble, willya?” I said over my shoulder.

  We took the money and left.

  Somewhere in the weird hush before dawn, I found myself on the fire-escape outside Malasuerte’s window with an empty bottle of tequila and a troubled frown. Inside, Malasuerte slept sprawled across his disheveled futon, spent and untroubled, but I was restless, apprehensive. I could still smell him on my fingers and in the fabric of my hood. There was no reason why I shouldn’t love him, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I just didn’t have it in me. I tried that whole love thing once when I was young and stupid. At 43, I knew better.

  And of course, there was the dead girl.

  I was sure I had put that image out of my mind, at least for tonight. But as I looked out over the drowsing city, I saw her battered, naked face, her hemorrhage-red eyes and her broken scalp. A vital, living girl with friends and dreams and a favorite song, all the mundane details that make a human being, reduced to anonymous meat.

  A dame was walking alone down the empty street below. Her máscara was pink, like Flamingo’s, and her skinny body seemed painfully young. I wondered if she had heard about the murder, if she were walking a little faster than usual. I rubbed my eyes with my thumb and forefinger and then turned my head away and climbed back inside.

  6

  Eventually the sun came up. As I squeezed back into last night’s clothes and slipped my dresshood over my less-than-daisy-fresh underhood, I found myself lingering a little too long over the sleeping form of Malasuerte. He snored away, muscular arm thrown across the rumpled space in the bed where I had spent the last few restless hours. He was a good kid, and probably deserved better than me. Maybe it was best to break it off, to move on before he started getting too attached. I shook my head, fastened the last of the hooks on my dress, and headed out into the morning.

  Hoodtown was brushing off last night and getting in gear for the day. Vendors were laying out their wares and working stiffs gathered around a coffee truck, tightening their mask laces and rubbing their necks as they downed quick café con leches on the way to jobs in the textile mills, driving buses or garbage trucks. Masked mothers shepherded clusters of hooded children off to school with brown-bag lunches and tiny wrestling boots tied together by the laces while shopkeepers cranked down awnings and swept trash into the gutter. Garment workers pushed carts piled high with luscious fabrics and fastidious maskmakers rubbed the weave between thumb and forefingers, haggling over bolts of purple and gold and green. Older luchadores whose battered bodies hadn’t quite warmed up to the morning limped to the Barber or the gym while younger, eager beaver types jogged by with towels around their necks and weights strapped to their wrists and ankles.

  I shouldered my way into the coffee truck crowd and ordered a double. I considered the concept of breakfast as an old Hood peddled by on a rickety mobile grill with a rough wooden hand-painted sign reading “tacos y soba,” but instead I just downed my good, strong coffee and headed back to my place.

  On my way there was a bit of a commotion down Ruvinski Street in front of one of the big fabric warehouses. I was in no rush so I let the tidal pull of the curious crowd suck me in.

  In the center of it all there was a stiff on the sidewalk, laid out under a bloodstained sheet.
The dicks were questioning a surly lot of mobster types when a flashy custom ride pulled up between the cop cars. An enormous ox in a sharkskin suit and matching máscara unfolded himself from behind the wheel and hustled around to open the back door.

  Unsurprisingly, it was El Jefe. He pretty much owns the entire fabric and textile business in Angel City. You might have bought that expensive, upscale jacket from a snooty, Skins-only joint like Bitterman and Bitterman or Gala’s but you can bet the nice summerweight wool, the silk lining and even the thread holding it together all came from someone who works for someone who works for El Jefe.

  Even though I knew it was him, I could barely see El Jefe’s glittering red and gold hood between restless bodies of the shuffling crowd. He’s maybe three feet tall, tops, but he always carries himself with a kind of confident swagger that makes him seem like a giant. He sauntered up to the dicks and beckoned them inside, soothing them with smooth reassurances that I couldn’t hear but didn’t need to. It was just business as usual.

  The crowd started to melt away so I continued home, stopping by my place for quick shower, a fresh hood and clean set of clothes before heading over to the Barber.

  My Barber’s shop is down at the far end of Lutteroth, a hell of a walk but I would never consider switching. I mean, the woman delivered me for fuck sake, slapped a tiny hood on my bloody naked head as soon as it was clear of my mother’s omé. She knows me, probably better than anyone.

  Orchidia has been my Barber since before I was born. She saw me through lost teeth and chicken pox, through broken bones and unwanted pregnancies. She’s the closest thing to a mother that I’ll ever have and she always lets me run a tab.