Thirteen Senses (17 page)

Fred Noon shrugged, but then thought a second, licked his lips which had gone very dry, and he nodded again.

Salvador took a deep breath, and then another. He was raging. He didn't need to hear anymore. He was boiling! White people, oh, they were really protected in this country in or out of jail. But Mexicans, Indians, Blacks, and especially the Chinese, they didn't count for shit!

“Okay, Fred,” said Salvador, now licking his own lips, too. Rage quickly dried out a body. “So how much do I owe you?”

“Not a damn thing!” said Fred. “Consider it a wedding present from me to you and Lupe. I swear, Sal, I do believe that Lupe must be the most elegant, beautiful young lady I've ever laid eyes on, and these two old eyes of mine have taken in a lot of beautiful women!”

Salvador nodded. “Yeah, I think you're right. But she's not just beautiful, Fred, she's quick and smart, too.”

“Does she know about your business?”

“No, not yet.”

“Oh,” said the tall, well-known attorney, arching up his right eyebrow, “this might prove very interesting. Be careful, Sal, that agent Wessely son-of-a-bitch is still in the area.”

“Thank you,” said Salvador, remembering how Fred Noon had found out that this Wessely guy had been a Texas Ranger before joining the FBI. And he'd been taken in and raised by a Mexican family, after his parents had died, then he'd raped their thirteen-year-old daughter. This was when he'd started hating Mexicans. He had snake-eyes, like so many
hombres
who'd sold their eyes to the Devil, so they wouldn't have to see who they were or what it was that they'd done.

SALVADOR AND HIS ATTORNEY
, Fred Noon, drove their cars down to Kenny's garage, just down the street on the other side of the railroad tracks. Archie was gone. Salvador went to the back of the garage, where old man Kenny White kept a couple of cases of whiskey hidden for him. He gave Fred Noon six bottles of his finest 12-year-old whiskey.

“Oh, your 12-year-old!” said Noon, grinning ear to ear.

“The best!” said Salvador.

Immediately, Fred Noon opened a bottle and took a swig. “Ah, that's good!” he said. “Hey, you wouldn't mind telling me just how much longer it takes you to make this 12-year-old, would you?”

“No way,” said Salvador, “good whiskey is like a good woman, and if you don't keep the mystery, then the magic is gone.”

“Okay, I'll buy that,” said Fred. He capped the bottle, put the box with the six bottles of whiskey in his trunk, then he gave Salvador a big
abrazo
and took off.

Old man Kenny White and Salvador stood there and watched him drive off. Fred Noon was a real man's man, who lived with honor and eyes open, hiding from no one, especially not from himself. Fred Noon wasn't one of these educated men who hid behind their professional title, refusing to dirty their hands in the aches and pains of the world.

“So tell me, Sal,” said Kenny as they went back into the garage, “how much longer does it take? And I know it ain't no twelve years! Shit, you didn't have any 12-year-old a couple of weeks back, and now you got five cases.”

Salvador only smiled. “See you, Kenny,” he said, changing the subject. “I got to go see a man about a little money.”

“Be careful, Sal!” said the gray-haired old man, laughing. “And don't forget, it's about time for me to service that car.”

Al Cappola, the great magician from Italy, had told Salvador very carefully to never let the customers know the secret to fine liquor making. Hell, with a good professional needle, a man could age a barrel of new whiskey into 12-year-old in less than half a day. All you did was put the whiskey in a charcoal-burned oak barrel, insert your long heating needle, and keep the whiskey at a steady temperature just a few degrees below boiling, so it could take on the flavor of the barrel. Then you added a little coloring and brown sugar, but just a pinch, and let the barrel settle for twenty-four more hours, and you then had whiskey as smooth and well-aged as any 12-year-old from Europe.

If the truth be known, this was the way it was done all over the world, Al Cappola had explained to Salvador. And it didn't matter if it was cognac from France, whiskey from Ireland, scotch from Scotland, or
tequila
from Mexico, liquor was liquor. No magic. No big secret. And yet it was very important to keep it all a secret, or the magic of the aging process was, indeed, lost. Why, even old Archie, who knew a little about bootlegging himself, was in awe when it came to Salvador's fine 12-year-old whiskey.

“Look,” Al Cappola told Salvador, “the priest has his tricks for keeping the truth of God all full of mystery, women have their tricks for keeping a man excited for more years than it's worth, but the greatest magician of all is the fine liquor-maker!”

And it was true. For this big organization outside of Fresno, which controlled most of the West Coast, had brought in Al Cappola from Italy and treated him and his family like he was a king!

Knowledge was power!

IT WAS EARLY YET
. Lupe wasn't expecting him home for about an hour, and so Salvador decided to drive up to San Clemente and collect the money that Carlitos Chico owed him. Carlitos was behind three payments, so no doubt, he, too, like Tomas, figured that Salvador was out of the picture now that he had gotten married. But was Carlitos Chico in for a surprise.

Salvador lit up a cigar, truly enjoying his drive up the coast. Then arriving at Carlitos Chico's place, a little ranch house just this side of San Clemente—in the big, fertile valley where a lot of farming was done for the Santa Margarita
Rancho
—Salvador got the idea that he'd just put a scare into this little bastard Carlitos, like he'd done with Tomas. So that once and for all, everyone would stop counting him out just because he was in love and married!

Parking down the hill from Carlitos's house, Salvador got out of his car, .38 in hand, and came walking up quietly, then suddenly kicked open the front door, yelling, “I've come for my money, you son-of-a-bitch!”

And there was Carlitos Chico, meaning “Little Tiny Charles,” or “Chuck” as you'd say in English, naked and down on one knee, making a fire in his little wood-burning stove with a naked woman lying on his bed.

Seeing Salvador come crashing into his home with pistol in hand, Carlitos leaped to his feet like a tiger, yelling, “
Mira! Mira! Cabrón
! You found me hot and hungry!”

Salvador's eyes shot huge, staring down at the largest human organ that he'd ever seen hanging on a male human. Some thousand pound horses didn't have a cock on them like this!

The damn fool little
Indio cabrón
from Guanajuato now came rushing forward, attacking Salvador with a piece of firewood in hand, and his huge, thick organ swinging from side to side like a third leg between his skinny thighs.

“But I'm armed, you fool!” yelled Salvador. “Don't you see?”

“I see your gun,” yelled back the naked man, “and I'm going to take it away from you and shove it up your ass! I, too, know how to castrate pigs!”

Well, Salvador was now the one who was in shock and he backed up toward the door as he fired two times into the floor to stop the crazy little Indian—not wanting to kill him, because Carlitos, was, in fact, a good man. A foreman on the Santa Margarita
Rancho.
A man of respect! But the two bullets didn't slow the little crazy-
loco
Indian down and he took a swing at Salvador's head with the piece of firewood.

Salvador was experienced, so he ducked, taking the blow with his left shoulder as he stepped in, hitting Carlitos Chico across the side of his skull with the .38 Smith and Wesson.

The man went down hard, and at first Salvador thought that maybe he'd killed him, but he checked his breathing and found that he was all right. What a fool he, Salvador, had been! What had ever possessed him to come charging into a man's house. Carlitos, damnit, had done the right thing in defending his home.

Then Salvador remembered the naked woman, and he glanced over and realized that she hadn't made a sound. No, she'd just covered herself with the blankets and now lay there quietly.

He nodded to the woman, put his gun away, finished making the fire, and put on the coffee. Then he hunched down Indian-style, warming his hands to the fire. He waited until Carlitos came around.

“How's your head?” asked Salvador.

“How do you expect, you son-of-a-bitch!”

The woman came over with a blanket wrapped around herself, and she took Carlitos in her arms, covering his nakedness with her blanket, too.

“You had no right breaking in like that, Salvador! I owe you money, but this isn't right!”

Salvador nodded. “You're right. I was wrong. I'm sorry.”

“I'm no two-bit pimp like Tomas,” continued Carlitos. “I'm a foreman! A worker! A man of respect! You come in like that on me, then you got to be prepared to kill me!”

Salvador nodded again, fully realizing that Carlitos was absolutely right, but also, Salvador realized that if they'd been alone, Carlitos would have already accepted his apology. With this woman present, Carlitos had to put on a big show. And he was right to put on this show. After all, no woman wanted a man who wasn't
un hombre de estaca
!

“You're right again,” said Salvador, “you are a man of respect, and I did wrong. But that damn Tomas, he told me that you decided not to pay me, and well—”

“But you're no fool,” said Carlitos Chico, cutting Salvador off, “so how could you take that pimp's word without coming to see for yourself? I got your money ready for you. I'm a man, damnit,
un macho
!”

“You are,” said Salvador, glancing at the woman. And he suddenly thought that he'd seen this woman before, but he couldn't place her. She was in her late twenties, probably just a few years older than Carlitos, and she had a hard look to her like she'd been around, but you could also see that she had a lot of respect for her man. She was tough. The whole incident had not unnerved her.

Salvador felt like such a fool. What if someone had burst in on him and Lupe? It was true, they would have had to kill him.

“Look, Carlitos, I agree with you, I did wrong; I'm sorry, and I tell you what I'll do. How much do you make per day working as a foreman at the Santa Margarita
Rancho
right now?”

“Well, I don't get paid by the day anymore, Salvador,” he said, proudly “I get paid by the month.”

“Okay, well how much a month?”

“It's a lot, Salvador.”

“How much?”

“Thirty dollars, month in and month out,” said Carlitos, proudly. “Rain or shine, it don't matter.”

“Oh, that is a lot,” said Salvador. “But what the Hell! I made a big mistake and so I'll pay for it. You pay me the money you owe me, and we'll deduct one month's wages that you don't pay me.”

“All right!” said Carlitos, “now you're talking! But you remember who I am next time, Salvador! I'm not some little run-away pimp who abuses women and who's afraid of work or guns or castration!”

Carlitos then paid Salvador the money that he owed him, deducting the thirty dollars, and said that he needed another barrel. They parted
como hombres de estaca.
But, also, Salvador fully realized that when this story got out, it was going to hurt his reputation, opening up the door for a lot of fools to think that they, too, could challenge him.

But what could he have done? Kill Carlitos when it had been he, Salvador, who had been entirely in the wrong? The ins and outs of power had to be reevaluated on a daily basis, or reality, she did it for you in a very forceful, unceremonious way. Long ago, he'd learned that Lady Luck was not a woman who accepted the courtship of fools for long.

The Sun,
la cobija de los pobres,
was slipping, sliding into the sea by the time Salvador started back down the coast. He'd been a fool! A stupid fool! Tomas was one thing, but this Carlitos Chico was a whole other animal! And this animal, my God, had the biggest human cock probably in the whole world, and guts, too! Why, Salvador had never seen anything like that on any human being!

Suddenly, Salvador remembered where he'd seen that woman before. She was the wife of the owner of the big, famous Mexican restaurant up in San Juan Capistrano. She wasn't in her late twenties. Hell, no! That woman was probably closer to forty years old, but my God, after being with Carlitos, he'd ironed out all of her wrinkles from inside out, making her look twenty years younger.

Salvador now felt very happy. Carlitos wasn't going to tell anyone about their little incident. And she wasn't either. Because her husband was a big shot—not just among
los Latinos,
but
los gringos,
too—and so there was no way that Carlitos or that woman wanted anyone to know about their wild excursions.

Just north of Oceanside, Salvador pulled over to take a leak. The stars were out by the millions. Life was truly full of twists and turns. Never would he have guessed what Carlitos was really famous for—he was such a small-bone, wiry, little Indian.

Salvador got a pint bottle out of his trunk, and took a few good swigs, then capping the pint bottle, he breathed deeply. Hell, Carlitos was a regular walking, talking fountain of youth for a woman whose husband called himself Spanish, when he was really a Mexican from Zacatecas and was well known for chasing after every new, young waitress he hired.

It was dark by the time Salvador came into downtown Carlsbad, and he realized that he was late, but so much had happened. He hoped Lupe wouldn't be too mad at him. But, well, what could he have done? After he'd pistol-whipped the man, he'd had to stick around and work things out.

Then he remembered his .38 and he slipped it out of his pants and put it under his seat as he turned right into the orchard where their little cottage was located.