The baker can see that the man already knows the true answer—and sees as well that he is not a man to lie to—and so he admits that Maria is his daughter and asks what they wish with her.
At that moment his rotund wife emerges from a curtained doorway to the living quarters in the rear part of the bakery and stops short at the sight of the strangers.
Ramirez tells her who they are and she turns back toward the curtain but Gustavo catches her by the arm and yanks her to him and claps a hand over her mouth. Ramirez starts toward them but Angel grabs him by the hair and rams his forehead against the wall and lets the baker fall to the floor unconscious, his forehead webbed with blood.
Angel passes through the curtain and sees the girl sitting on the edge of her bed, her sewing sliding off her lap, her eyes large. Before she can scream, Angel is on her, pinning her down, a hand on her mouth and a knife blade at her neck.
He tells her he will ask her only once—where is the wife of Don César?—and tells her that if she lies he will see the lie in her eyes and he will cut her throat to the neckbone.
He eases his hand from the girl’s mouth but she is terrified to incoherence. He tells her to calm down, for Christ’s sake, and she tries, but as she talks she continues to weep and partially choke on her mucus and he permits her to sit up so she can speak more clearly.
She is at last able to tell him that la doña paid the stableman Luis Arroyo with jewelry to escort her to the border town of Matamoros. At the Monclova station, Maria Ramirez took leave of them and caught a train to Monterrey and from there took a bus to Apodaca.
She doesn’t know—she swears she doesn’t—where in Matamoros la doña was going or why. She knows nothing more to tell except that, on the train trip to Monclova, Arroyo had spoken of a brother who owns a cantina in Matamoros, a place called La Perla.
I left Rose and Sam talking business in the office and went into the lounge and ordered a bottle of beer. At that hour, there were only a few guys at the bar, a few couples at the tables. The place would start filling fast by suppertime and would as always be packed at midnight.
“Say, Kid!”
At the rear of the lounge, LQ stood in the doorway to the billiards room, a cue stick in one hand. He waved me over. Brando leaned into view around the door jamb and gave me a high sign, then stepped out of sight again.
I went to join them. They were shooting eight ball, best of three for five bucks, and had split the first two games.
“Got winners,” I said, and started searching the wall holder for my favorite cue.
“Why not just say you want to play me next?” LQ said. He was in good spirits. Brando had a fresh shiner under one eye.
“Quit the bullshit and shoot,” Brando said.
“Hard to tell who’s winning, aint it?” LQ said to me.
I found the cue I wanted and dusted my hands with talc and slicked up the stick.
The table was showing all of the stripes and only two solids other than the eight ball. LQ laid his cigarette aside and leaned into the light under the Tiffany tableshade and set himself to try banking the six ball into the side. He squinted in the shadow of his hatbrim, sighting and resighting on the six as intently as a surveyor peering through a transit.
He missed by half a foot. The six caromed off the cushion and went banging into several other balls and smacked the eight into a corner pocket.
Brando hooted and said, “Pay up, sucker.”
For all their bluster with a cue stick, neither of them could play worth a damn. I’d seen them knock the balls all over the table for more than half an hour before somebody finally scratched, which was the way most of their games were decided. It was rarely a matter of which of them would win, but who’d be the first to lose.
LQ peeled a five from a wad of greenbacks and flung it fluttering to the table. “Lucky bastard,” he said.
Brando laughed and tucked away the bill. “Like the man said, talent makes its own luck.” He turned to me and said, “Next!”
I fished the balls out of the pockets and racked them, then eased the wooden rack off the balls and returned it to its hook at the foot of the table. There had been a pool table at the ranch and over the years I’d become a fair hand with a cue. I was no match for the hustlers, but Brando and LQ wouldn’t play me for money anymore unless I gave three-to-one odds.
The strong point of Brando’s game was his break. As usual, he broke the balls with a crack like a sledgehammer. They ricocheted in a wild clatter, the seven falling in a corner, the four dropping in a side.
“Yes sir!” Brando said.
He called the two in the corner, straight and easy, and made it. Then cut the five into another corner. Then tapped the three in the side. He grinned at me and blew across the tip of his cue like he was clearing smoke from a rifle muzzle.
LQ groaned in his chair behind me and said, “Shooting out his ass.”
“One in the corner,” Brando called. It was a clear shot but he stroked it way harder than necessary and the yellow ball spasmed in the rim of the pocket before it dropped in.
Brando laughed and banged the heel of his cue on the floor. “Somebody stop me before I kill again.”
The only shot he had with the six was a cross-corner bank. He came close, but it didn’t fall.
“Son of a bitch,” he said.
“Finally back to your normal game,” LQ said.
I sank seven in a row—bank shots, rail shots, combinations—and just like that, there was nothing left standing but Brando’s six and the eight ball.
But I hadn’t played the last shot well. The eight was positioned at one end of the table, near the center of the rail and an inch off the cushion, while the cue ball had ended up at the other end of the table and up against the rail.
“Got too cocky, hotshot,” Brando said. “Left yourself hard.”
“Five-buck side bet, two to one, says I sink it.” I tapped the corner pocket to my left. “Here.”
“Too much green and a bad angle,” Brando said. “You’re on.”
I formed a thumb bridge for the stick and set myself, then laid into the cue ball. It zoomed toward the eight and caught it just right and the black ball jumped off the cushion at an angle and came barreling down the table like it had eyes and vanished into the corner pocket.
“Whooo!” LQ hollered.
“Shit!” Brando said. He dug two fives out of his pocket and tossed them on the table. “That’s it. I aint playing you anymore. I don’t need this kind of humiliation.”
“Kind you usually get’s plenty enough, huh?” LQ said.
“Kiss my ass,” Brando said. “Let’s see you take him.”
I arched my brow at LQ and gestured toward the table.
“No thanks,” he said. “I’m short enough at the moment. I can just about make it to payday tomorrow.”
“Well hell,” I said, “if nobody’s going to play, let’s go park our asses in the bar and have a few.”
“Winners buy,” Brando said.
“It’s how come you always drink for free,” LQ said.
Out in the lounge I got us a pitcher of beer and we took a table in the corner. I filled the three glasses and we touched them in a toast and drank.
“Kinda surprised this morning when Momma Mia said we’d just us two be going to Alvin with a slot man,” LQ said. “I asked where you were and she just shrugs like she always does. Like she don’t know the time of day.”
“Poppa got you on a secret mission?” Brando said.
“Wish he did,” I said. I told them all about Rose’s talk with the Dallas guys and his suspicion that they might try to retaliate.