Mario half-turned in his seat and saw him coming. “Dammit,” he muttered. “It’s the deputy sheriff.”
The big man laid a hand on his shoulder. “I thought you might be in here. What’s this about your brother? Move over, eh?”
Mario slid reluctantly into the corner. “Your guess is as good as mine. Joe doesn’t tell me his plans.”
The deputy sat down heavily beside him. Mario leaned away as if contact with the law might be contagious.
“You had some trouble with Joe, I hear.”
“Trouble? What kind of trouble?”
“Take a look in a mirror, it might stir up your memory.”
“I haven’t seen Joe since last Friday night.”
“Friday night, eh? Was that before or after you got your face ploughed under?”
Mario touched his cheekbones with an oil-grained finger. “Hell, that wasn’t Joe.”
“Who was it?”
“A friend of mine. It was a friendly fight.”
“You got nice friends,” the deputy said with sarcasm. A downward smile drew his sun-wrinkles deeper. “What about Joe?”
“I told you I didn’t see him since Friday night. We got in from a fishing trip and he beat it back to L. A. He lives in L. A. with his wife.”
“If he doesn’t live in Davy Jones’s locker with a mermaid. I heard he dropped out of sight last Friday, hasn’t been back here since.”
“He came back this morning,” I said. “His wife drove him down.”
“Yeah, I mean until this morning. I got in touch with the wife, she’s on her way. She didn’t see the other one, though.”
“What other one?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” he snapped, and turned his flat red face on Mario: “Were you down here this morning? Aboard your boat?”
“I was home in bed. The old lady knows I was home in bed.” Mario looked bewildered, and his words were whisky-slurred.
“Yeah? I was talking to her on the telephone. She didn’t wake up until seven. Your boat went out around four.”
“How do you know that?”
“Trick Curly, he’s a lobsterman, he just got in from the island. You know him?”
“Seen him around.”
“He was up early this morning, and he saw the skiff go out to the Aztec Queen. The skiff is still there, by the way, tied to the moorings. There were two men in it when it passed Trick’s boat.”
“Joe?”
“He couldn’t tell, it was dark. He hailed them but they didn’t answer him. He heard them go aboard, and then the boat went out past the end of the breakwater.” He turned on Mario suddenly, and rasped: “Why didn’t you answer him?”
“Me? Answer who?”
“Trick, when he hailed you in the skiff.”
“For Christ’s sake!” The appalling face looked genuinely appalled. “I was home in bed. I didn’t get up till nine. Mama gave me breakfast in bed, you ask her.”
“I already did. That wouldn’t stop you from sneaking out in the middle of the night and coming down here.”
“Why would I do a crazy thing like that?” His upturned hands moved eloquently in the air.
“There was bad blood between you and Joe,” the deputy said dramatically. “That’s common knowledge. Last week in this very bar you threatened to kill him, in front of witnesses. You told him it would be a public service. If you killed him, it would be the only public service you ever did, Tarantine.”
“I was drunk when I said that,” Mario whined. “I don’t know what happened to him, sheriff, honest to God. He took my boat and wrecked it and now you’re blaming me. It isn’t fair.”
“Aw, shut your yap.”
“Okay, arrest me!” Mario cried. “I’m a sick man, so go ahead and arrest me.”
“Take it easy, Tarantine.” The deputy rose ponderously, his wavering shadow climbing the opposite wall as high as the ceiling. “We haven’t even got a corpus delicti yet. When we do we’ll come and see you. Stick around.”
“I’m not going any place.”
He sat slack and miserable in the corner. The only life in his face came from the small jumping reflections of the candle in the black centers of his eyes. I waited until the deputy was out of sight, and steered him out to my car. Mario cursed steadily under his breath in a mixture of English, bracero Spanish, and Italian.
Chapter 19
We drove down Sanedres Street on the way to Mario’s house. From a distance I could see a small crowd gathering in front of the arena, clotting in groups of two and four and six. A string of naked bulbs above the entrance threw a onesided light on their faces. There were many kinds of faces: the fat rubber faces of old sports wearing cigar butts in their lower middle, boys’ Indian faces under ducktail haircuts, experienced and hopeful faces of old tarts, the faces of girls, bright-eyed and heavy-mouthed, gleaming with youth and interest in the kill. And the black slant face of Simmie, who was taking tickets at the door.
Mario clutched my right forearm with both hands and cried out: “Stop!”
I swerved and almost crashed into a parked car, then braked to a stop. “That wasn’t very smart.”
He was halfway out of the car, and didn’t hear me. He crossed the road in a loose-kneed run. The faces turned toward him as he floundered into the crowd. He moved among them violently, like a killer dog in a flock of sheep. His hand came out of his pocket wearing metal. There was going to be trouble.
I could have driven away: he wasn’t my baby. But a light jab to the head might easily kill him. I looked for a parking place, found none. Both sides of the road were lined with cars. I backed and turned up the alley beside the arena. The faces were regrouping. Most of the mouths were open. All of the eyes were turned toward the door where Mario and Simmie had disappeared.
I started to get out of my car. The exit door in the wall in front of my headlights burst open with sudden force, as if a rectangular piece of the wall had been kicked out. Simmie, in a yellow shirt, came out of the door head down and crossed the alley in three strides. Mario came after him, running clumsily with his striking arm upraised. Simmie had one knee hooked over the top of the fence when Mario overtook him. The glaring whites of his eyes rolled backward in terror. The metal fist came down across his face. The black boy fell in slow motion to the gravel.
I took hold of Mario from behind. His metal knuckles flailed my thigh and left it numb. I shifted my grip and held him more securely.
“Calm down, boy.”
“I’ll kill him,” he cried out hoarsely between laboring breaths. “Let me go!” His shoulders heaved and almost took me off my feet.
“Take it easy, Mario. You’ll kill yourself.”
Simmie got onto his knees. The blood was running free from a cut on his brow. He rose to his feet, swaying against the fence. The blood splashed his shirt.
“Mr. Blaney will shoot you dead for this, Mr. Tarantine.” He spat on the gravel.
Mario cried out loudly, making no words. His muscles jerked iron-hard and broke my grip. His striking arm swung up again. Simmie flung himself over the fence. I pinned Mario against it and wrenched his metal knuckles off. His knee tried for my groin, and I had to stamp the instep of his other foot. He sat down against the fence and held the foot in both hands.
The Negro woman I had seen the day before came around the corner of the building on the other side of the fence. She was the first of a line of Negro men and women who stood at the end of their row of hutches and watched us silently. One of the men had the black-taped stock of a sawed-off shotgun in his hands. Simmie moved to his side and turned: “Come on over here and try it.”