Naomi Hirahara - Santa Cruz Noir

The main reason I picked the shooter out was that he, at least the guy I’d made as the shooter, didn’t look at me even for an instant when I came in through the front door. All the other drinkers had at least given me a side-eyed peek as I walked in; some glances had been bored, some had been hostile in a macho sort of way. The pistolero, however, didn’t turn his head, didn’t glance at me in the mirror, or didn’t, in any other way that I could discern, check me out.

I knew immediately that he’d instantly sensed everything he needed to know about me — and about every other man doling out quarters to Hildegard as she patrolled her beat behind the stick. He focused on no one. Hildie pocketed some cash from pitiful little stashes on the bar and nodded the other customers toward a beaded curtain that led to the toilet and to the rickety stairway to the rooms upstairs.

As I was on my second Four Roses, Blue Ribbon back, Hildegard came up to me for a good hard stare. Like every barkeep, she was polishing a smudged glass — one of those squat cocktail glasses that you can’t tip over because they’re wide and weighted at the bottom even when they’re empty — with a rag so soiled that no customer in his right mind would have noticed on purpose unless he was eyeing it to use as a fly swatter.

“Hey, amigo ,” Hildegard whispered loudly enough that the guy to my right had to act like he couldn’t hear, “Maruca’s workin’ tonight!”

“Why you telling me?”

“’Cause you and Maruca could be making some sweet music upstairs instead of you and the gunsel down the bar making a lot of racket down here.”

I nodded; I understood.

A minute or two later, a beefy fieldworker, still tucking a short-sleeved cowboy shirt into his Roebuck jeans, six-inch cuffs rolled tightly up over the tops of his work boots, came out through the beaded curtain and headed for the front door. Maruca followed him, sidling into the barroom, where she saw me and smiled. She then strode to the jukebox and slipped in a couple of nickels. She played “Bell Bottom Trousers,” the Moe Jaffe version, but no one made a move. Then, with her second nickel, she played Lalo Guerrero and his band harmonizing on “Los Chucos Suaves.” Maruca was a Filipina close to my age who thought she still looked like a teenage señorita. She sashayed — and that’s the right word; that’s exactly what she did, shaking her skinny hips like a hoochie-coochie girl — right up to where I was sitting.

“Hey, mister,” Maruca said. She knew my name all too well. “Hey, mister,” as she waited for me to light her Lucky Strike, “you wanna screw?”

I put my Zippo flame to her Lucky. I did want to screw, but not right now. I wanted to keep an eye on the shooter sitting a few feet down the bar. Killing this vato was what I needed to do as well as wanted to do. Maruca could wait for another time.

“Maybe later,” I said loud enough that Hildegard flashed her tired-looking eyes at me, then at the gunman.

“Maybe now!” Hildie demanded.

Maruca grabbed my arm and started to pull toward the string of beads hanging beneath the hand-painted sign that read Baños . “He still be here when we come back, bud,” Maruca said.

Hildegard nodded in agreement. “ M á s tarde !”

Maruca, having figured out the whole scene, gritted her teeth, nodded, and walked away, not sashaying the slightest bit. She walked along the bar until she reached the pistolero who was so obviously paying no attention at all to me or her or Hildegard. She whispered in the guy’s ear and he whispered something back and slowly, slowly he stood and followed the woman across the room and through the strands of beads. I could hear their footsteps starting up the stairs. Goddamn him all to hell.

After the Lalo Guerrero tune ended, I crossed to the Seaburg jukebox and popped in a coin of my own. Following a quick look at the selections, I pushed a couple of buttons and put on another Lalo special, “Marihuana Boogie.” I went back to my drinks, made sure my shoulder holster was sitting comfortably beneath my armpit, and sipped my beer.

I waited.

A few minutes later I heard Maruca’s footsteps coming back down the stairs. She passed through the doorway, looked at me, and nodded at someone behind her on the steps. Then she walked to the other end of the bar. Ordered three fingers of aguardiente. Our drink.

Hildegard gave her a glance, then gave me the evil eye. “I told you, Nelson. Take it easy.”

The shooter walked back into the room. No one had taken his place at the bar so he returned to his stool and nodded at Hildegard for another cerveza. As the bartender turned to grab a cleaner glass, the shooter looked at me for the first and only time.

In an instant he stood, reached under his jacket, jerked his automatic from its holster, and fired two quick shots in my general direction. But I’d known it was coming and I had my Smith & Wesson in my hand before the shooter even got to his feet.

He pumped one long spurt of blood right through the hole I’d shot in his forehead, then slumped to the barroom floor.

“Ah, Jesus, Nelson,” Hildegard spat at me. “Jesus Christ, why’d you have to do that?”

“You saw him,” I shouted, “you saw him grab his gun! What the fuck was I supposed to do?”

I watched as Maruca ran back through the beads, no doubt to vanish upstairs so she could tell the coppers that she’d missed the whole thing.

In a few seconds the bar was empty. I could hear car engines turning over and tires screeching as a half-dozen drunks and their passengers tried to back out of the dusty parking area without turning on their headlights before heading back into town, or out toward the shacks where they rented beds by the week. Hildegard was on the phone and two or three minutes later I could hear sirens coming from the direction of town.

I sat back on my barstool and finished my drink. I slapped down a few bills to cover the costs and then stood and headed toward the door.

The sirens got closer.

“ Buenas noches , Hildegard,” I called out. “Say goodnight for me to Maruca.”

The dead man’s Studebaker was still parked in the dusty lot. I thought about shooting out a couple of the tires for practice, but on second thought left it.

I got in the Plymouth, turned the key, and stomped on the gas till the motor caught. As I headed down Riverside, I looked in the rearview mirror. A squad car, siren loud and red lights flashing, turned into the parking lot. I lit a Chesterfield and tuned the radio to a Mex station out of Salinas. Some Trio Los Panchos tune was playing.

San Juan Road

My papa died when I was a baby, shot in the crossfire between the cartel and the police.

This, I only heard from my mama, later. What a way to die, I always thought — innocent and found by a bullet not meant for you.

Mama worked the streets, but she had tried to raise me better, tried to keep me in school. It did not work. The wary respect I was given, with a gun in my hand, was intoxicating.

The police found Mama blindfolded in the trunk of a car, tied up, her throat cut. I was seventeen, and hadn’t seen her in years when this happened. By then, I had already risen from a charoliar , a wannabe, to a halc ó n , a lookout runner. I was twenty when I became a narco soldado , a soldier of the cartel de Arellano Felix and the right hand of pez gordo , a big boss. Arellano Felix was all I knew, all any of us knew in Tijuana. If you were ruthless, if you were smart, if you were loyal — Arellano provided.