“It’s not a big deal,” I said.
“Fuck it’s not. That’s Leon Payne.”
Payne wrote “The Lost Highway” for Hank Williams. I didn’t want to let on how proud I was, so I didn’t say anything.
“Let’s get a beer,” Saber said. “My best friend plays acoustic guitar for Leon Payne. How about that, music fans everywhere? Hey, those girls over there are looking at us.”
They weren’t, but I didn’t want to disillusion poor Saber. Cook’s Hoedown wouldn’t serve minors, as many of the nightclubs and beer joints did. So we went to a place called the Copacabana, over on Main. It had fake palm trees, the cloth trunks wrapped with strings of white lights by the entrance, and shades made of bamboo on the windows. It was a dark, refrigerated club, with only a jukebox on weekday nights. You could order beer or Champale from the waitress or at the bar; if you wanted anything harder, you had to bring your own bottle and order setups, which meant glasses, a small bucket of ice, and carbonated water or Coca-Cola or Collins mix at premium prices. Also, the bottle had to stay behind the bar. On Friday and Saturday nights there was a jazz trio and sometimes a female singer. There was a uniformed cop stationed by the men’s room, but he never interfered with the sale of alcohol to minors or bothered the patrons unless someone started a fight or he recognized a parolee.
Saber and I sat in the darkest corner of the room and ordered two bottles of Champale from the waitress. Saber lit a cigarette, bending his face to the cupped match, his eyes tiny with secret knowledge. “Did you see who was in the parking lot at Cook’s?”
“Whoever it was, why did you wait until now to tell me?”
“I didn’t want to stoke you up.”
“Then I don’t want to know.”
“It was Harrelson. With three other guys. They were in his pink convertible.”
“What’s Harrelson doing at Cook’s?”
“Girls from the welfare project are always hanging at the back door. He gets them to blow him, then drops them on a country road.”
“Stop making up lurid tales, Saber. The guy is bad enough as it is.”
“Anyway, I shot him twin bones and double eat-shit signs, plus the Italian up-your-ass salute. I don’t know if he saw me or not. Man, it’s cold in here. Check out those guys in the corner.”
A conversation with Saber was like talking to the driver of a concrete mixer while he was backing his vehicle through a clock shop. “Which guys?”
“In the suits. Tell me they’re not gangsters.”
“Lower your voice,” I said.
“The flight from Palermo must have just landed.”
I turned around slowly, as though looking for the men’s room. The waitress had brought out a tray on wheels and was setting silverware and a battery-powered electric candle on a table. Three men sat around a bottle of champagne wedged into an ice bucket. She served steaks with Irish potatoes wrapped in tinfoil to the two older men, although the club had no kitchen and to my knowledge never served food. The younger man wasn’t served a meal; he sipped from a champagne glass, one arm hanging on the back of the chair. None of the men spoke. When the waitress went away, the oldest of the three men tucked a napkin into his collar and bent to his food.
He was Frankie Carbo, my uncle’s business partner, the man who fixed fights the way Arnold Rothstein fixed the 1919 World Series. I had shaken hands with both him and Benny Siegel, and it would take years before I could acquire the words to describe the peculiarity in both men’s eyes. They saw you but did not see you; or they saw you and dismissed you as not worth seeing; or they saw you and filed you into a category that involved use or self-gratification.
Carbo probably was handsome at one time, but his face had become fleshy, his throat distended, his dark hair curling with gray on the tips. I saw his eyes cut toward me. I looked away.
“Told you,” Saber said.
“That’s Franke Carbo,” I whispered. “Don’t say another word.”
“The gangster you met at the Shamrock? I knew it. See the young guy?”
“No.”
“That’s Vick Atlas. The guy who looks like Mickey Mouse without ears is his old man. He’s supposed to be a nutcase. The son is a half-bubble off, too. They’re hooked up with the cathouses in Galveston.”
“Keep your eyes on me, Saber. Do not look at that table again. Do you hear me? And lower your voice.”
“Don’t get in a panic,” he replied, his fingers drumming the table. “You should go on medication. I won’t always be here to get you out of trouble.”
“Let’s go back to Cook’s,” I said. “Harrelson and his friends have probably left.”
Saber’s gaze shifted sideways and stayed there.
“What is it?” I said.
“Bogies at two o’clock.”
“Who?” I said, not wanting to look, my stomach on fire.
He grinned painfully. “Harrelson left Cook’s, all right. My ram-it-up-your-ass semaphore usually gets their attention when all else fails.”
GRADY AND HIS friends took a table by the jukebox, close to Carbo’s table, and Grady went over to shake hands with Vick Atlas. Then he returned to his table. At first I thought he was going to ignore me. I should have known better. He pointed at me, then said something to his friends.
“Don’t react,” Saber said. “Watch me and go with the flow. Look upon this as an opportunity. It’s time Harrelson got exposed in public.”
“Exposed for what?”
“I don’t know. A guy like that has all kinds of secrets. All you’ve got to do is tap on the right nerve. Relax. I’ve got it under control.”
The waitress brought a round of longneck beers to Harrelson’s table. He sipped from the bottle, hunching his shoulders forward as he told a story to his friends. Each time they laughed, he glanced at me, smiling. I heard a sound inside my head like someone tightening a treble string on a guitar. Harrelson got up and walked toward me. He wore black drapes and a thin crimson suede belt and tasseled loafers and a Hawaiian shirt with blue birds on it, the top of his shirt unbuttoned, a gold chain and cross around his neck. He fingered a pimple on his chest.
“What do you want, Grady?” I said.
“She eighty-sixed you?” he said.
“Who eighty-sixed me?”
“Valerie.”
“Where’d you get that?” I said, my heart turning to gelatin.
“She called me. She didn’t put it in those terms, but that was her drift.”
“You talked to Valerie?”
“What did I just say?”
“I don’t believe you.”
“So how do I know she gave you the gate? Want the rest of the story?”
“Not interested.”
“I bet. I motored on over and calmed her down.” He took a swig from his bottle. “She hadn’t been long-dicked in a while.”
I saw the look on Saber’s face, and felt his hand grab my forearm and hold it tight against the table. “You’re a lying bastard, Harrelson,” he said. “Go back with your greaseball friends.”
“What did you say?”
“Look at your threads,” Saber said. “You couldn’t cut it in the Corps, so you wear drapes and Mexican stomps and pretend you’re a hood. When did you start hanging with Mickey Mouse, Jr.? It’s a drop even to be seen with that guy. By the way, I got some pix of you getting it on with that broad, what’s-her-name. That’s sick stuff, man.”
“You asked for it,” Grady said. He crooked his finger at his friends. “You got to hear this, y’all. Tell Vick to come, too. This guy here wants to repeat something he just said about Italians.”
Saber knew how to do it.
“Your beef is with me, Grady,” I said.
“No, it isn’t. You’re out of the picture and out of the saddle, Broussard. Got it? Anything you had going with Valerie is over.”
“I don’t believe you were at her house. I don’t believe she would let you in.”
“You need a blow-by-blow? She put
s her tongue in your mouth when she comes. She likes to get on top. She can have three climaxes in one session. Sound familiar? Or did you get that far?”
I stood up from the chair, knocking it backward, and hit him across the face with the flat of my hand, hard, snapping his chin on his shoulder. He stepped back, a smear like ketchup on his mouth. I had never seen anyone’s eyes look at me the way his did at that moment, as though I had awakened a darkness in him that no one else knew about.
Vick Atlas stepped in front of him. He was short and thick-bodied and looked full of contradictions. He had a damaged lip and whiskers like a patina of steel filings etched with a razor, as though he cultivated an unshaved look; he wore elevator shoes and a pressed suit without a tie and a rumpled white shirt with a belt and suspenders. He was probably in his early twenties but could have passed for forty. “That’s my friend you hit,” he said to me.
“He asked for it,” I said.
“Wrong thing to say, kid.”
“Who are you to call anybody kid?” I said.
“You know who you’re wising off to?” he said. “You just get in town from the South Pole? You got a penguin stuck up your ass?” A drop of his spittle struck my chin.
“I’ll take care of this later, Vick,” Grady said.
“You made a crack about Italians?”
“His friend called you Mickey Mouse, Jr.,” Grady said. “Believe me, Vick, this guy is going to be walking on stumps.”
“I think y’all came in here to make your bones,” Vick said.
I wanted to believe he was a caricature, that his black satinlike hair was a wig, that the mindless ferocity in his glare was a reflection of the light and not an indicator of bottomless rage because of his father’s abuse or a plastic surgeon’s failure. Minutes earlier we had been worried about dealing with a collection of spoiled rich kids; now we were a few feet away from men who fixed prizefights and trafficked in narcotics and prostitution and committed murder for no other reason than greed.
“Grady slandered my girlfriend,” I said. “What would you do in my situation?”
“I wouldn’t ever be in your situation. You and your friend mouthed off about Italians. A lot of my friends are Italian. So there’s principle involved. The question is what we should do about it. Hey, you listening to me?”
“Yeah, and we’re leaving,” I said.
Vick Atlas looked at Saber. “You’re the one called me Mickey Mouse, Jr.?”
Saber squinted at him. “Yeah, I guess I did.”
“A guy with slits for eyes shouldn’t be calling other people names.”
“I apologize.”
“You looking at my lip? You think I’m a freak? The sight of me offends you?”
“No,” Saber said.
“You’re saying you feel pity? That’s why you got a change of attitude? You think that’s going to save you? Don’t look away from me. I’ll pull your nose off.”
“I told you I’m sorry. If you won’t accept my apology, blow me,” Saber said.
I saw Frankie Carbo turn in his chair and snap his fingers at the uniformed police officer by the men’s room. The officer was a huge man, one shirt pocket stuffed with cigars, his shield pinned to the other. He walked toward us, an avuncular smile on his face.
“How you doin’, Mike?” Vick Atlas said, shaking hands. “Everything is okay here.”
“Little discussion, huh?” the policeman said.
“You know how it is,” Atlas said. He took a money clip from his pocket. “I’m going to buy these guys a round so we can get out of here. At least if they’ll let me. How about some Champale, you guys?”
“Screw the round,” Saber said.
“See what I mean?” Atlas said.
Saber started to get up.
“Whoa,” the policeman said. “I need y’all to keep me company. It’s a lonely job.”
“We just want to go home, Officer,” I said.
“You will. All things come to those who wait. Trust me,” the officer said.
He winked at me and patted Vick on the shoulder and walked away. Then Vick and Grady and his friends went out the front door in a group. The senior Atlas and Carbo never looked in our direction. I put a dime into the jukebox and went back to the table. The police officer smiled at me from his station by the men’s room.
“My stomach’s sick,” Saber said.
“I think we can go now.”
“We can go now? Listen to yourself. I feel like somebody held me down and put his spit in my ear.”
“It could be worse.”
“How?” Saber said. He waved at the policeman. “Hey, Officer, is the coast clear?”
The policeman gestured at the front door as though telling us the world was ours.
“Thanks! Keep up the good work!” Saber said. “The eyes of Texas are upon you!” He punched the air with his fist. The policeman looked at us sleepily.
Grady had outwitted us. He had managed to make us the personal enemy of Vick Atlas while pretending to be Atlas’s friend and protector. Saber had walked right into it, but as always, I couldn’t be mad at him.
We went outside into the humidity of the night and the smell of road tar and the heat stored in the asphalt. Somehow the club seemed shabby, the bamboo blinds crooked, the neon lighting shorted out. I could see my car where I had parked it under a light pole, its windows down, its doors unlocked. Back then we believed in our own mythology about the safety of the places we lived, and we didn’t worry about car break-ins. Fortunately I had put my Gibson in the trunk.
THE INTERIOR WAS crosshatched with urine. The driver’s seat was puddled with it, the dashboard and steering wheel dripping. We had no way to wipe it off or wash it out in the parking lot. We sat down in a world of beer piss and drove to a filling station and hosed out the interior. Then we stripped off our shirts and trousers behind the station and washed ourselves in the lavatory and got back in the car wearing only our boxers while bystanders gaped and cars on the road blew their horns. I saw Saber pick up a half piece of brick behind the station and drop it onto the car floor.
“What are you doing with that?” I asked.
“I’m tired of being shoved around,” he said.
“Get rid of it.”
“The best defense is a good offense.”
“That’s the kind of thing people say when they develop jock rash of the brain,” I said.
“There’s a lot of wisdom in a locker room.”
“Saber!”
“Lighten up and get us out of here, will you? I feel sick. We’ve got their piss all over us.”
I started the engine and pulled out of the station into the street, almost hitting an oncoming car. Saber hunched forward, his ribs stenciled against his sides. He turned on the radio, then turned it off.
“Don’t let these guys get to you,” I said. “You did great in there. You tried to take the heat off me.”
“Those guys need a lesson,” he said.
“What kind?”
“One they’re not expecting. We need to put our mark on them. If we don’t, we’re going to be anybody’s pump.”
I didn’t try to argue with him. I had never felt comfortable with the pacifism of my father, as much as I respected it. He had earned his in the trenches. When I tried to forgive those who transgressed against me, I felt weak and insignificant and deserving of the injury done to me. Now the seats and door handles and steering wheel, and even the radio knobs of my car stuck to my skin like adhesive tape, courtesy of Grady Harrelson and his friends.
We drove down South Main.
“Go to Herman Park,” Saber said.
“What for?”
“Harrelson rat-races out there. He’s probably going to give Atlas a thrill.”
“What are we going to do when we get there?”
“I’ll think of something.”
“No.”
“There’s a faucet and a garden hose by the zoo. I cain’t go in the house smelling this way.”
/> Herman Park was a spacious urban forest full of live oaks and pine trees, located right off South Main Boulevard not far from Rice University; it contained a zoo and a playground and picnic tables and barbecue pits. It sometimes hosted another culture at night, one in which kids fought not for the fun of fighting but to do felonious levels of injury to one another. It also offered crowned asphalt-paved roadways that wound through acres of trees strung with Spanish moss, their leaves flickering in the headlights, their shadows as shaggy as the outlines of mythic behemoths.
I heard two cars coming fast beyond a bend. One sounded like a smaller vehicle, the engine whining, the driver squeezing everything he could from his lower gears, shifting up and then down, squealing into the turn, a bigger car coming hard behind him, the chassis swaying on the springs, a hubcap bouncing loose, clanging on its rim along the asphalt.
“It’s him,” Saber said.
“How do you know?”
“I got a sense. It’s us against them.”
“We’re not talking about the big picture, Sabe. This is about Grady Harrelson and his punks.”
“You saw the look on his face after you hit him. I’d like to do him in. I’d like to pop a cap on every one of them. Pull over. Here those cocksuckers come.”
He was right. A red Austin-Healey came around the bend, sliding sideways, three guys in the front seat. They were laughing and had beer cans in their hands. Hard behind them was Grady’s pink convertible, one guy standing up, holding on to the windshield. I thought he was yelling and shaking his fist. He wasn’t. He was holding a firecracker while a guy in back was lighting it. He threw it just before it exploded, almost in his face.
I pulled onto the grass and cut the lights. Both cars went past us.
“We’re going to find that hose and get out of here,” I said.
“You know the edge they’ve got on us?”
“They don’t have an edge.”