It was a basket-weave shoulder holster of ancient, much-burnished leather. Earl pulled it on like a coat, sliding a shoulder into each of the loops of the strap, which was held in place by a leather X-piece at the back. Then he tied the holster down tight against his belt, reached up, slipped out the weapon it concealed, feeling how quickly the holster yielded its grip.
It was a Colt Peacemaker, with the short 45/8-inch barrel in the Long Colt .45 caliber. The finish was so well worn from usage that it was a dead gray, the case-hardening long since faded away, the gutta-percha stocks smooth from much work. It felt familiar to Earl, reaching out for his hand from a past so dead it hardly existed any more. His old daddy had carried this kind of gun as a sheriff and he, Earl, had cleaned it every day for ten years, or got beaten bad. He and the pistol were therefore on intimate terms. Earl had shot it a lot, so it held no surprises, but a good question was, had the old marshal who’d owned it and brought it to the war of 1898 honored it or ignored it? Earl tested the hammer pull and found it slicker than soap, and knew that sometime in the past the old boy had honed its internal surfaces, maybe planted a little leather ringer where the mainspring mates with the frame, to make it better for man-killing work. He noted that the front sight had been filed way down, again for speed-work out of the holster. He shook each cartridge from the cylinder, then cocked—smooth as glass—touched the trigger on an empty cylinder to see what pull dropped hammer, and discovered a trigger as responsive as a cat with its back up. He reloaded, and the Russian handed over an old box of cartridges, which Earl emptied into his coat pocket. It was a gun that had done some good killing work in its time.
“Swagger, here’s the terrible thing,” said the Russian. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you this happy.”
Chapter 59
It is 4 A.M. on Zanja Street, the hour of Odudua, the dark mistress of the underworld according to the cosmology that is Santeria. Odudua is married to Obatala, whose job is to finish creation; hers is to destroy it. As you might imagine, it is not a happy marriage. So she wanders alone at night, deciding whom to take.
The men lounging in the sidewalk cafe in the orange glow of the Teatro Shanghai, sipping coffee and smoking, have no knowledge of Odudua; they don’t believe in her or in the system that created her, a fusion of Catholicism and Nigerian pantheism, so they would consider themselves theoretically immune to her predations. Perhaps they are right; perhaps they are not. This is the evening they will find out.
Captain Latavistada has his feet up on a chair and is smoking a very large cigar. He is well pleased with himself. He enjoys torture, destruction and death as necessary pillars of the state, and tonight he has done his duty. He hopes for more duty to do. He feels marvelous, alive, tingly, his vision sharp and precise. He loves to fight and he hopes he gets to fight some more tonight. The coffee is loaded with sugar, so he is all ajangle. Next to him, on the floor, resting on its bipod, is the formidable Mexican 7mm Mendoza light machine gun. It is cocked and ready; its safety is off. He hopes he gets to use this fabulous weapon again tonight, for its novelty has not worn off. It enchants him.
Across from him, more feral and hunched, his ratty eyes dashing this way and that, sits Frankie Carbine. He has taken his sunglasses off. He is drinking beer. His black tie is tight. He wears leather gloves. He wears a narrow-brim fedora. His jacket is buttoned, all three buttons. In shoulder holsters under each armpit are Colt .45 automatics. Across his knee is the Star machine pistol. It too is cocked, safety off, ready to go in a second. Frankie drinks beer but it doesn’t numb his senses. They are too sharp for that. He is ready. It should happen. The guy, the fella, whoever the fuck he is, he will have heard what they did to the broad.
Now they wait, and people give them a wide berth, out of respect for the seriousness of their commitment to law and order. Though it is late, Zanja Street is not empty. Here and there a whore still trolls for tricks, for often the gringos would come down to Zanja Street not quite brave enough to be with a woman yet. They’d find a place and drink and nurse their courage, and work themselves into a state where they felt beyond their own moral compass and no longer responsible for their actions; that was when they wanted a dark, heavy woman, with large breasts and a willing mouth, and no capacity to judge, no need to forgive, no common language except the fuck and the suck. That commerce is common still at this late hour.
So Zanja Street is crowded this night. Somewhere a mambo band plays, somewhere a woman laughs, another screams. Knives are carried and used; pimps beat the recalcitrant; whores and tricks eye each other, each waiting to begin the ritual of the barter; sailors drink; the captain and the mobster sip and wait, and the Indian corporal lounges close at hand, silent and watching, not at their table but the one beside it, a loyal servant. They all wait for a man who would be a fool to face their armed might, but they believe he will arrive nevertheless, before dawn.
And Odudua is there, too. She also waits. No one sees her, for she never takes visible form. But she is there and she knows that tonight will be a good night for her and that she will have many to take with her back to the underground in the minutes before dawn.
Earl is of a killing mind. But it’s not rage, with rage’s sloppiness, its rush, its phony bravado, its capacity to deflate, then disappear abruptly. Rather, it’s focus. He knows certain realities: this fight will be short and violent and close. Who shoots first wins. Who’s got the stronger will wins. Speed helps, courage is a plus, righteousness a treat, but this one comes down to who gets closest fastest.
He knows the area, having studied it out the window of Esmerelda’s over those long two days, when there was nothing else to do. He sure isn’t going to walk down Zanja Street like some damned fairy cowboy and announce himself with a cowboy line crafted in a bungalow in the San Fernando Valley. No, instead he’ll slither through the Bambu from the alley side, enter through the kitchen, get in close, and of a sudden start shooting. One first to each gut, then back again higher to the chest, which ought to kill them both; if there’s time and it ain’t gone all to crazy, then put one under each boy’s eye or into his mouth or ear: blow them brains everywhere. Close and fast, at muzzle-scorch range.
He is not particularly scared. He has done a lot of this work. He’s killed in lots of places, in lots of ways. It’s something he knows he’s good at. It only bothers him afterwards, but up front, he’s so intent on getting the job done, there’s no fear or regret. His mind is narrow as a tunnel, and as dark. He thinks only of killing techniques and tactical possibilities; no other impulses flutter in his brain. Son, wife, history, father, mother, sex, money, all that is forgotten utterly. He is so ready to kill.
He gets to Zanja, circles around, sliding through the mob. A dark alley leads to the rear of the Bambu, and he studies it, seeing the door by the garbage cans. A cop lounges there, a rear guard so the boys won’t get taken by surprise. Earl studies on it, then slides back to the street, finds a gal, grabs her hard. She looks at him in fear. With his hand he guides hers to the Colt under his shoulder and with his mean glare he communicates only that she must obey. It’s certainly not polite but Earl doesn’t care or know. He embraces her, whispers, “Drunk, drunk!” and himself begins to wobble this way and that.
They careen down the alley, and the cop watches them approach.
“Hey,” he finally calls, “you can no come this way, señor. No, you must go,” and speaks quickly to the woman in Spanish, in a far more threatening tone, and is so convinced of his moral authority that he doesn’t even see the short, brutal arc of the Colt barrel as it slices through the air and thuds viciously into his jaw at the hinge, instantly blotting out his consciousness. He slips, falls like a sack of shot to the pavement. Earl shoves the girl away, and she ceases to exist for him.
He touches the door, finds it locked; a pocketknife springs the lock and he thinks to fold it before stepping into the kitchen, now largely empty, but there are two Cubans in the corner, talking of love, smoking. One sees him, ma
kes as if to rise but is stopped by the four oily clicks of a Colt hammer ratcheting back. This man sees the snout of the gun and shrinks in its presence; he may be brave or a coward, but clearly there’s killing about to happen and he wants no part of it.
In the cafe itself a few sit at tables, arguing politics or pussy, or possibly even movies or sports, full of the intensity of the moment. A waiter eyes him, notes it as strange that a norteamericano in an abused khaki suit and no tie is walking forcefully from a door that should disclose no norteamericanos, but then sees the blunt nose of the pistola and he too thinks little of his chances to stop what’s coming—and turns instead to his own issue of survival, which he ensures by dropping swiftly to the ground, gesturing to his colleague to join him. In fact, as Earl walks, many people drop silently to the floor, as if he is a black death spirit, as if Odudua walks with him. And they are right: she does.
Earl steps out. Their backs are to him as they concentrate on the street. He walks silently, paying no attention to the other people sitting on the sidewalk, and when he’s close enough he raises the gun and—
It happens so fast.
The gun comes up and neither Latavistada nor Frankie Carbine sees and the range is but ten feet, but someone does see, the Indian, who happens to look over from his table of watchfulness close by. He is as naturally fast and aggressive as Earl, his reflexes maybe even faster, and he comes up from his seat screaming “Arma! Arma! Arma!,” drawing his own automatic from the flapped holster at his waist and in a moment of blind, nearly insane heroism steps between Earl and his targets. And of course Earl must take him first. The heavy Colt leaps against his hand, its old powder flashing brightly in the night, and Earl blows a huge 250-grainer through the Indian’s chest, evacuating ounces of lung tissue and oxygenated blood. A fog erupts from the man as if he’s a balloon full of liquid atomized by the power of the bullet. But no bones have been hit and though fatally wounded, the Indian is not dissuaded from his own mission, and his automatic rises toward Earl, who must then thumb fast into another shot and another, the last of which hits spine dead-on and pegs the dead Indian backward, where he falls and spills Frankie’s table to the ground in a clatter of breaking glass. This takes maybe one full second, but that is enough for both Frankie and Latavistada to overcome their utterly stupefied shock, go to the floor, roll and draw and fire.
They don’t aim. It’s all too close and fast for aiming and that’s why gunfights always involve a lot more shooting than hitting. It’s a part of human nature to shoot and shoot, to lose oneself in the thunder of the gun. This is exactly what the literature of such events tells us: that at such close ranges in such frenzies of adrenaline-crazed trigger-jacking, misses happen with extraordinary regularity. The gunshots rise as one noise, so loud, their reports echoing back and forth in the narrow congress of Zanja. Frankie’s machine pistol has fallen away, so with one hand he pulls a .45 and starts spraying bullets into the night. Latavistada is also shooting, slightly more directionally. He hits a woman in the knee and a man in the arm, both behind Earl, but it doesn’t matter; he can’t stop shooting.
Some of these bullets fly to the street, ripping into windows or autos. A car twists and crashes against curb, then lurches onto sidewalk, slamming finally against Esmerelda’s apartment building. People flee in the orange light but no one in the fight notices, for those without weapons and an enemy are as insubstantial and meaningless as ghosts.
As Earl scrambles sideways to the low wall that marks the cafe from the sidewalk, he throws out three more shots, thumbing them off fast and uncontrollably. Moving, shooting, knowing that moving makes him a hard target, especially for men who are not aiming. Everyone is shooting from instinct. He too misses because that is the way of the gunfight; there’s too much chemistry in his blood and his eyes are swollen, his heart is pumping, his muscles are super in their strength but now clumsy, and he is inured from fear or noise or pain. He gets to the wall, and throws himself over.
The inadequacy of the classic single-action sixgun is at this point exposed. To reload is a good thirty seconds of work, during which time either of his antagonists may approach and shoot him. But both their guns are empty, too. There’s a brief intermission, a strange quietude where not a sound is heard except the scuffle of the men on the cobblestone ground, the tinny ping of still-bouncing shell casings, the slide and scrape of the reloading process as bullets are shoved into guns or magazines, cylinder rotated in a whirr of clicks, magazines inserted with a slam and a clang of heavy metal hitting heavy metal, with a slight vibration into it.
Then, almost simultaneously, the guns are all loaded again.
Earl has meanwhile decided to abandon plan one and move on to plan two. The problem is, there is no plan two. He simply looks around for a place to retreat into, sees that the street is death, forward is death, and the only possible destination lies forty feet away, a doorway lit by the orange lamps of the Shanghai, with Chinese characters running up each side. Without willing it he’s off, running full-out toward the entrance, ducking behind a line of cars which may or may not contain human beings, but certainly aren’t going anywhere soon.
Latavistada recovers first. He sees the running man behind the cars and knows a pistol hit on a runner at that range simply isn’t in the cards, so he diverts to the big Mendoza next to him on the ground, seizes it, locks it under his arm, pivots, braces and fires. However, the weapon is too heavy and Latavistada can’t quite catch up. The gun pounds, the muzzle flashes, the empty shells spin in the air, the bullets trace their stitchery across the automobiles. Bullets pierce glass, or atomize it, tossing geysers skyward, smearing windshields with a blur of hazed webbing. They sing through steel with a whang, they deflate tires, they shred roofs, they pop doors, they make the cars shiver and rattle and then settle. They don’t touch the running man, for Latavistada is too slow, and then they stop.
He has run dry. He kneels, pulls a big magazine out of his coat pocket, runs through a fast reload and sees Earl as he darts toward the theater. Up he comes, and bzzzzzzzt goes the gun again, and a stitch of geysers pulling yet more debris and dust into the air flies across the building, but the bullets don’t quite intercept as Earl ducks into a doorway whose depth provides enough angle to survive the burst.
The door is locked. Earl leans against it once. It does not give. He blows apart the lock with his .45 and slides through.
Latavistada groans as his prey disappears into the doorwell.
Now he is again out of ammunition. Laboriously he pulls another Mendoza magazine out and slaps it into the magwell up top, throwing bolt so that with a quiver the gun comes alive again. He is aware that Frankie is shooting his guns at the doorway, blowing out quarts of brick dust but accomplishing nothing else. Stupid.
“Frankie, stop, he is inside. We must root him out like a pig.”
When Frankie turns, Latavistada sees his eyes are wild, his lips tight, his face drippy with sweat.
“Calm down, my friend. We have him.”
Frankie gets control of himself and reloads. He looks around for his machine pistol but can’t locate it in the welter of upturned tables, broken glasses and plates, knives, forks and napkins, and groaning, squirming citizens that litter the cafe floor.
Both guns reloaded, he turns to Latavistada for guidance.
“You go, my friend, in the door through which he went, the side entrance. I’ll go in the main. We’ll pinch him and kill him inside.”
“But aren’t there other people there?” Frankie wonders.
“What of it?” asks Latavistada. “Such is the cruelty of life. Let’s go.” He laughs madly. “Isn’t this fun! Jesu Cristo! is this fun!”
Frankie squirrels away fast, all urgency. Latavistada is more lumbering, less mobile; after all, he has eighteen pounds of light machine gun in his hands, plus three more magazines, each filled to brimming with ammunition. He has to pick his way around the automobiles, two or three of which are now disgorging wounded or terrified people.
“Vamos!” he cries, “out of the way, fools.”
On top of that, he hurts in a dozen places, he suddenly realizes, bruised and scraped and bumped where he’d hit the ground, where he’d rolled hard, where he’d squirmed or crawled on the stone floor. His knee aches; he seems to have skinned it badly.
He hears a crackle, a hiss, and the orangeness of the universe flickers off then back on. He realizes it’s the blinking orange lamp that casts its fireglow on the Chinese characters at the door of the Shanghai. An impulse strikes him so strongly he cannot deny it. And why should he deny it? Is he not Latavistada, Beautiful Eyes of the SIM? Is he not the state itself, is he not responsible for all the little children of Cuba? He raises the muzzle of the heavy weapon, getting his arm under it for leverage, and squeezes off a magazine. The bullets sail to his target, the orange neon lamps splatter sparkily into oblivion then slide in an orange sleet to the sidewalk amid a most satisfying tintinnabulation of breaking glass. It is fabulous! But why this gesture of sheer nihilism? He doesn’t know. It felt right. It’s what had to be done.
He kneels briefly, dumping the magazine, reloading another. Then he too heads into the theater.
Earl crashes into grim brick darkness and sees that he’s in some sort of tunnel that must run alongside the theater’s auditorium. It must lead to dressing rooms where the G-string gals go to relax between sets. Now it is empty. But he spies down the way just a bit a black curtain marking off an entrance where in an American theater there’d be a door, and some low light creeps around its margins. It’s the whitish light of projected imagery, identifiable instantly to any man, woman or child in civilized neighborhoods of this planet.
Earl races to it, ducks through, and finds himself at the head of a jammed auditorium. Yet all there are men, and all are in rapture, their faces lit white by what they see.