“Go to hell,” Brando said. He kicked the back of my seat and said, “Why do you put up with that kinda talk?”
I always got a kick out of how easily LQ could rile Brando with some crack about Mexicans, or even by calling him Ramon. It was funny because, despite his Mexican looks, Brando was a naturalborn American. He couldn’t even speak Spanish except for a few phrases of profanity, and he spoke those with a gringo accent. At twenty-four he was three years older than me, born and raised on a dairy farm just east of Austin, where his wetback parents had worked. They were the only Mexicans on the place, and because they’d wanted their son to be a good Yankee citizen they named him Raymond and encouraged him to speak English from the time he learned to talk. They’d made it a point to converse with him only in English, like everyone else on the farm, even though they themselves could barely get by in it, and so even though he never learned Spanish, his English had a touch of their accent, which only added to the impression that he was Mexican.
People usually took me for Mexican too, until they got up close enough to see my eyes. Then they knew I was even more of a breed than most Mexicans—most of them being mestizos, of Spanish-Indian mix. There were Spaniards with blue eyes, of course, and some of their kids by Indian women had the same eyes as daddy. But more often than not, when you saw blue eyes in a brown face they came from Yankee blood. Unlike Brando, however, I could speak Spanish pretty well, and my only accent in either language was a touch of border twang.
We turned off Broadway onto 23rd and drove toward the neon blaze of the Turf Club a few blocks ahead at Market Street. The Club did good business late into the evening every night of the week, but tonight being New Year’s it was even busier than usual.
LQ honked his horn at the traffic crawling along ahead of us. He’d started to worry that he was running late for his date with a redhead named Zelda. She worked as a hostess at the Hollywood Dinner Club and he’d already taken her out once but hadn’t been able to score. She was impressed that he was one of Rose’s Ghosts, but she’d been around some and she made it clear to LQ she wasn’t any pushover, that she expected to be wooed. She was pretty enough that LQ thought she was worth the effort. She came off her shift at ten-thirty and he was taking her for Chinese at a Maceo place called the Sui Jen that was on a pier jutting out into the gulf. Then down the street to the Crystal Palace to ring in the New Year with some dancing and champagne. Then to her place for a nightcap. He was sure tonight would be the night.
Brando had a hot date too. He was going to a party with a long-legged thing he’d met at a dance the week before. She’d told him her name was Brigitte and she was French. He said she spoke with a slight accent but he suspected she was really just some bullshitting hustler out of New Orleans. Of course he had been bullshitting her too, claiming he was a partner in the Big Trinity Oil Company, which was about to be bought by Texaco.
“With golddiggers,” he said, “the idea you got money works better than Spanish fly.”
“Too bad Mexican flies don’t work as good,” LQ had said. “You always got plenty enough of them on you.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Brando said.
“If I only could,” LQ said with a sigh. “I’d finally be doing it with the best there is and somebody I truly love.”
He stopped the car in front of the Club and Brando and I got out. I carried Ragsdale’s valise and one of the briefcases, in which I was carrying my revolver and the .380 I took from Ragsdale. LQ waved so long and drove off.
Brando punched me on the arm and asked if I was sure I didn’t want to go to the party with him. “Frenchy can prob’ly get a friend.”
“Thanks, anyway,” I said. “I’ll find my own fun.”
“Suit yourself, bud,” he said, and walked off to the parking lot in back where he’d left his car.
The Turf Club was a three-story building where the Maceos kept their headquarters. Everybody just called it the Club. On the ground floor was a restaurant called the Turf Grill, and as restaurants go it was fairly flashy and the food was always good. On this night the place was packed and there was a line of diners out on the sidewalk, waiting to be seated. A hostess named Sally gave me a wink when I went in, and some of the harried waitresses smiled at me in recognition as I made my way across the room to a doorway leading to the real attraction on the lower floor—a large betting room where you could lay money on any horse race at any track in the country. The day’s major races were broadcast over the parlor’s wall speakers and the hollering in there could get pretty intense when a race was in progress.
Anybody could get into the betting room, but the upper floors were exclusive. The elevator and the narrow stairway were in a hallway at the rear of the room. The stairway doors on every floor locked automatically from the inside, and there was always a palooka posted at the elevator to make sure nobody but special customers or friends of the Maceos got on it. Rose and Sam had their offices on the second floor, which also contained a billiards room and the Studio Lounge—a small restaurant with a dance floor and a long bar and a backroom gambling hall for big-money card and dice action. The third floor was a health club equipped with a boxing ring and all kinds of exercise equipment.
The only raids the local cops ever pulled were of course just for show. They always let the Maceos know they were coming and they never hit anything but the ground-floor betting parlor. Whatever equipment they confiscated they returned on the Q.T. a few days later. Every now and then, however, the Texas Rangers would come calling. That’s when the elevator man would push a hidden button to buzz a warning to the upper floors. The band in the Studio Lounge would strike up a blaring rendition of “The Eyes of Texas,” which everybody knew was the signal of a Ranger raid. The staff in the gambling room would fly into action, covering the gaming tables with expensive tablecloths and setting them with dinnerware and platters of food. The back bars would swivel around to hide the booze racks and display nothing but seltzer bottles and tea sets and urns of fresh coffee. The elevator was also equipped with a secret switch that turned it into the slowest mechanical conveyance in Texas. By the time the Rangers arrived at the second floor the only booze they’d find was what the customers had brought in—which was legal to do—and there wouldn’t be so much as a poker chip in sight.
At this hour the day’s races were long over, and the betting parlor was pretty quiet. A few guys sat around with bottles of beer, gabbing and telling each other how close they’d come to winning big today in the first or the fifth or the last race at such and such a track.
Guarding the elevator tonight was an ex-pug named Otis Wilcox who’d once lasted six rounds with Tunney before the Gentleman Marine coldcocked him. Otis said he couldn’t remember his own name for an hour after he came to. He worked as both a Turf Club guard and a trainer in the gym. He gave boxing lessons to health club members and still liked to spar, but he wasn’t one to pull all his punches, so regular partners were hard for him to come by. I was his favorite sparring buddy because I could take it. Besides, I was a fast learner and had gotten good enough to make it interesting for him. The lumps I took were worth it to me for the chance to box against somebody who knew what he was doing. We rarely got a chance to work out with each other, though, because of our different schedules, and we hadn’t been in the ring together in a month. We’d gone three rounds the last time, and we got pretty serious in the third. With about a half minute left in the round he’d got careless and I nearly knocked him down with a right. For the rest of the round he went at me with everything he had. By the time the bell rang, my headgear was in a lopsided twist and my ribs felt like he’d used a ball bat on them. But Otis took a lot of kidding from some of the boys about the right hook I’d hung on him, and I knew he couldn’t wait for our next session so he could get back at me.