Under the Skin (29 page)

I put my hand on her leg and she lost her smile and for a moment
I thought maybe I was pushing things. Then she hooked a hand
around my neck and pulled my face down to hers.

We kissed long and hard. Our tongues got into it. I stroked her
leg and then moved my hand to her breast and she made a low sound.
I pushed the straps off her shoulders and tugged down her top. Her
nipples were erect under my fingertips. I put my lips to them, my
tongue, and she arched her back and pulled my face harder against
her. She slid a hand down my chest and belly and into my trunks and
closed it around my erection.

We slipped off our suits. She sucked a deep breath when I entered
her. Her legs clamped tight around mine and we rocked and rocked and
it couldn’t have been a minute before I came and collapsed on her like
I’d been clubbed, my face against her neck and hers against mine, both of
us gasping like we were trying to inhale each other from under our skins.

After a while we were kissing again, stroking each other’s hips and
ass. My cock hardened inside her. We started rocking once more, this
time more slowly and gently. I had better control now and held myself back until I sensed her getting close—and just as she arched
against me and gave a high moan I let myself go.

We held to each other and didn’t talk much as the night grew
cooler. The moon was a lot closer to the gulf when she whispered that
Señora Avila would be worried. We hugged and kissed and the press of
her breasts and belly started rousing me again. She laughed low against
my ear and then rolled away and stood up and went to retrieve her dress
from the car hood, saying we really shouldn’t make Señora Avila worry.
So I got up and got dressed and put the top up on the Terraplane. We
kissed a few times more in the car and then I got us rolling.

It was a little past ten o’clock. She was right that Mrs. Avila would
be anxious. She snuggled against me and hugged my arm, her legs
folded under her on the car seat, her skirt high on her thighs. Her face
was against my shoulder and her damp hair smelled of the sea. We

rolled along without talking, just listening to the radio—“Temptation,” “Begin the Beguine.” She knew “Red Sails in the Sunset” in
Spanish and softly sang along with the instrumental.

I supposed there was really no reason to be surprised that she was
so bold about sex. Anybody as brave as she’d been with that hammerhead wasn’t likely to be afraid of too many things or be one for
coyness. Except for whores, though, I’d never met a Mexican girl so
sexually direct. Most Mex girls of respectable family made at least a
show of being good girls, and most actually stayed virgin till their
wedding night. But Daniela was no virgin, and I wondered how she’d
lost it, especially since she was hardly more than a kid. But I didn’t
wonder about it for long—because when you got right down to it,
what the hell difference did it make?

he Avila porch light was on, of course, and light showed in all
the windows. At the end of the street the Casa Verde was all lit
up too, the card game still in progress. I parked in the shadows of an
oak in front of the Avila house. We were kissing goodnight when the
screendoor screeched and the señora came out to the top step and
looked at us with a theatrical hand over her eyes like she was scouting the open sea under a bright sun.
In the darkness of the car, Daniela giggled and held my hand

pressed to her breast. She kissed me and said, “I must go.”
“Will you have breakfast with me tomorrow?”
“Of course.” She put a hand to my face and kissed me again.
“Seven?” I said.
“Yes.”
I got out and went around to her side of the car and opened the

door for her and she slung her bag over her shoulder and I held her
hand as we went up the dirt walkway to the Avila porch, where the
señora stood with her arms out to receive the girl.

“Goodnight,” she said. “I had a very lovely time.”
I raised her hand to my lips.
“Ya,
basta
!” Mrs. Avila said, coming down to put an arm around

the girl and pull her away. Daniela said goodnight again and laughed
like a child as she allowed Mrs. Avila to steer her around and up the
porch steps.

At the door she looked back at me to smile and wave and I raised
my hand to her. Then the screendoor slapped shut and the wooden
door closed behind it.

parked the Terraplane next to the rickety fence in front of the
Casa Verde, and as I clumped up the porch steps and entered the
parlor I heard laughter and radio music and good-natured cursings
coming from the kitchen. The house smelled of cigarette smoke and
fried chiles. I went to the kitchen doorway and saw Pablo Lopez
laughing and pulling in a pot at the table. They were all happily halfdrunk. The countertop was littered with empty beer bottles and the
sink crammed with greasy plates.

Gregorio looked over at me and said, “Qué tal, joven? Como te va?”
Then he frowned slightly and I remembered what my face looked like.
I said everything was fine as could be, and he shrugged and said,
“Ya lo creo.” I exchanged hellos with the others at the table and they
also refrained from remarking on my bruises. All this time as their
neighbor and I still made them nervous. I fetched a beer from the icebox and leaned against the counter and watched Morales form up the
deck and begin shuffling.
There was an awkward silence while “Arbolito” played on the
radio and then Gregorio asked if I wanted to sit in. The others all
nodded and said yes, join us, please, and so forth. I said no, thanks, I
was tired and going to bed in a minute. Avila’s wife must’ve told him
of Daniela’s date with me, but of course he would make no mention

of it. I was debating whether to tell them of our adventure with Black
Tom when Gregorio asked if I’d seen my telephone message on the
slateboard. I hadn’t. The only messages I’d ever received at the Casa
Verde had been from the office and I hadn’t gotten one in so long that
I rarely even glanced at the board anymore when I came into the
house.

I went down the hall and saw “llamo el clobb—10:06 pm”
scrawled on the slate next to the phone. I picked up the earpiece and
dialed Rose’s number and he answered on the first ring.

“Youngblood,” I said.
“Where the fuck
you
been?”
I started to tell him but he said, “Never mind—just get your ass

down here.”
“What is it?”
“Micks. Now get over here.” He hung up.
I figured I’d better be prepared for anything, so I went up to my

room and packed a small valise. I put the .380 in the bag and took
off my coat and put on the shoulder holster and slipped the Mexican
.44 in it and put my coat back on. Then I went back downstairs and
put the valise on the table by the phone and went into the kitchen.
The game had just broken up and some of them were laughing and
counting their money and some were bitching about their rotten
luck, and then they all shut up and looked at me.

I told Avila that Daniela was expecting me to take her to breakfast in the morning but something had come up and I might not be
able to meet her as I’d said. I said to tell her I didn’t know how long
I would be away, maybe only until later tomorrow, maybe a few days,
but in any case I would call on her as soon as I returned.

hey’d hit the team that made the nightly cash
collection from the joints along the north end
of the county—including all the places where

Ragsdale had put in the Dallas slots. The two Ghosts had
come out of a little club in Dickinson with the next-tolast pickup of the night and had just got in their car in the
parking lot when a black Hudson sedan pulled up beside
them and the men at the passenger-side windows opened
fire with .45 automatics. The Ghost behind the wheel
took hits in the head and died in a blink but our other
guy—a fellow named Dooley—managed to tumble out
the right-side door and run off with the attackers chasing
him on foot and still shooting at him and he made it into
the woods behind the club and hid in the darkness. He
stayed crouched in the bushes and tried not to even
breathe. He wouldn’t know it until after he was taken to
the hospital but he’d been hit three times. He heard the
shooters walking along the edge of the woods and cursing.
He heard one of them say “Pete’s gonna shit.” Then he
heard them walking away on the parking lot gravel and
then somebody yelled something and there were a few

The last few patrons who’d been in the club would tell the police
they heard the shooting and came out and saw two men walking back
toward a pair of cars parked side by side. One of the men fired shots
over their heads and the patrons all ran back inside and the shooter
fired several rounds through the glass front window and they all hit
the floor. The owner of the joint had crawled over to the telephone and
called the police. What the owner didn’t tell the cops was that he also
made a call to the Turf Club. After a while one of the patrons had
peeked outside and saw that one of the cars was gone but the other car
was still there—and then saw another man come staggering from behind the club and into the lot and fall down, but everybody in the club
was too scared to go out and help him. Then the cops showed up.

The witnesses had all been smart enough not to spill too much to
the police. They all said they’d never seen either of the two victims before. None of them had been sure of the make of car the shooters were
in or if there had been another man in the car. Dooley the wounded
Ghost feigned unconsciousness to avoid being questioned. Then one of
Rose’s lawyers showed up ahead of the ambulance and had a private
moment with Dooley before the ambulance guys took him away. He
got the story from Dooley and told him what to tell the cops when
they questioned him in the hospital. The lawyer then had a talk with
the sergeant in charge of the investigation. Then he and the sergeant
went to the station and chatted with the captain. When the official report was released it detailed a homicide by unknown assailants during
the commission of an armed robbery and said the perpetrators stole
nothing more than the wallet of the murder victim. The report made
no mention of the Maceo name or that the guys in the Hudson had
made off with more than two grand of collection cash.

cased the route. They picked the Dickinson club for the hit because
it’s on an open stretch of road, not much else around there, not many
witnesses passing by. It makes for an easy getaway.”

It was nearly eleven-thirty and we were sitting in the office, me
and him and Sam. I asked Rose what made him so sure it was the Dallas micks.

Dallas fucks think belong to them. It aint coincidence.”
“What if the robbers were just anybody and didn’t know what
route they were hitting?” I said. “And if it
was
Dallas, what would be
their point? They couldn’t expect the take to cover the worth of the
machines they lost.”
“Their
point,
” Rose said, “is to try to fuck with our business, to
scare the piss out of our customers, make us think it can happen
again, make us wonder when and where, maybe get us to reconsider
their offer to negotiate.
That’s
their fucking point. Or maybe they just
wanted to do something to
feel
better about losing their goddamn
machines. That would sure as shit be
my
point.”
He blew out a hard breath and ran a hand through his hair. He was
smoking mad. Outsiders had not only robbed his men, they had done
it on his own turf.
“We’re not just guessing it was them,” Sam said. He slid a photograph across the desk to me. I turned it around and regarded the picture of a beefy, well-dressed blond guy sitting in a circular booth and
showing his big white teeth at the camera, a goodlooking woman on
either side of him. He was close to handsome even with a small scar
over one eye and a nose that had been broken sometime. His eyes
were so lightcolored they seemed to have no irises at all.
“That’s Healy,” Sam said. “
Peter
Healy. Pete Healy. As in ‘Pete’s
gonna shit.’ ”
I looked up from the picture and Rose was showing that smile of
his that had nothing in it that smiles are supposed to have.

“I don’t move on just a guess, Kid,” he said. “You oughta know that
by now. And I aint been sitting on my hands these last few days.
While they been checking us out I been checking
them
out. This
Healy’s got a rep. He’s a comer, a hardass. Got his start on the loading
docks in New Orleans but the word is he killed a guy and took off to
Fort Worth. Got in with the Carlson bunch. Then he moved over to
the Burke outfit in Dallas. Went on his own over a year ago and took
a gorilla named Parker with him. Parker used to do muscle and clipwork for Burke. Six-four, two-seventy they say, scares everybody shitless. Healy was already getting a piece of most of the slots in both
Tarrant
and
Dallas County. Now he owns
all
the machines up there.”

“The Fort Worth and Dallas outfits are afraid he’s getting too ambitious,” Sam said. “Afraid he might start moving in on their gambling clubs, maybe the cathouses.”

“Those Dallas guys are pussies in cowboy hats,” Rose said. “Too
scared to put the fucker in his place—six feet under.”
“Healy keeps beating them to the punch,” Sam said. “He popped
Lou Morgan, Carlson’s main muscle—and I mean
he
did it. Went up
to Morgan in some little sandwich joint and boom-boom, two times
in the head and walked out cool as could be. Broad daylight, a dozen
people in there, and nobody saw a thing. The Parker guy’s a piece of
work too. He took down two of Burke’s biggest palookas in an alley
fight. Bit one’s nose and ear off. Broke the other one’s back.”
“It’s getting close to a fucken war up there,” Rose said. “A month
ago one of Healy’s biggest joints burned down. Next day three of
Burke’s best boys vanish. A week later one of them pops up in White
Rock Lake. They drag the lake and bring up a car with the other two
guys in it. All three had a bullet behind the ear. Persons unknown,
the cops said, but the outfits know who it was.”
“With so much going on up there,” I said, “why would Healy start
trouble with us by moving his machines down here?”
“That was Ragsdale’s doing,” Sam said. “Willie Rags contracted