Joe Gores: Menaced Assassin

The man bent on murder had spent most of a week wandering around the clubs, the waterfront, innocuous, friendly, his Spanish quite fluent and serviceable, even if of a workingman sort. How he loved to talk. But he loved to listen even more. His dark eyes missed little, his ears missed no fact, no nuance.

Hotel Pez Grande. During the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Hotel Pez Grande. Alone.

So this was his third evening here on this beach, in the sagging canvas deck chair, sipping beer he didn’t want and eating Mexican junk food he didn’t need. Waiting.

He straightened up. A huge motor yacht whose silhouette he knew was coming in with the last rays of the sun, water purling gently below its cutting prow.

Tosca.

He arose, threw the paper plate in a trash can set in the sand beside the cafe, shook the sand out of his shoes, went back up to the slanting earth street where he had parked his ancient battered yellow VW bug. There were no streetlights but it was not quite full dark yet. He was obsessed with the killing urge. He had to do it. Forty little miles away.

Tomorrow Dante’s folks were coming up from Modesto, Rosie’s coming over from the Marina. Julie was home from school for the holidays, out with her friends. Tony was out with his. The in-laws were due at noon tomorrow. The tree was up, he and Rosie were doing the preliminaries for the big holiday dinner.

Dante always made the stuffing, roasted the turkey, did the gravy, the mashed potatoes. Bread stuffing made with ground round and sausage and a lot of herbs and onions, moistened with the stock the giblets for the gravy had been cooked in, then left to stand overnight. He’d browned the flour for the gravy, too.

The women did everything else, but these were his. He’d be up at six-thirty in the morning to salt the bird down, inside and out, stuff it, dot it with Crisco, cover it loosely with foil, pop it into the roasting pan breast-up at 325 degrees.

“This is the mother of all turkeys,” he said to Rosa as he manipulated it back into the fridge where they had taken out one of the trays so it would fit. “Twenty-two damn pounds! I won’t be turning this baby in the oven tomorrow.”

She was dressed in a red dress for Christmas and was pulling on her red winter coat. She wore red Christmassy earrings, too. “Will it be done by three, Dante?”

“Done by two-and-a-half,” he grinned. He noticed her coat as he turned from the fridge. “That time already?”

“If we aren’t there by eleven-thirty, we’ll have to stand all the way through mass.”

He’d put the stuffing down in the garage when they got back. There wasn’t room for it in the fridge and it had to be kept cold. He clipped his gun and holster to his belt without conscious thought; it was what he did when he left the house. Put on his topcoat; he’d just put the lining in it last week. He remembered just in time Rosie’d been to the hairdresser’s.

“Your hair looks wonderful, Rosie.”

“Do you really think so?” She checked herself in the small wall mirror beside the front door, touched the hair gently.

“It shows off your earrings, too.”

She gave him a little kiss, he opened the door, they went out. He pulled it shut, checked that it was locked. Used the key to shoot the dead bolt home. They started down the concrete stairway; it was wide enough so they could go down arm in arm. A car was parked across the street with the motor running, a lighted pizza-delivery sign attached to the roof above the open driver’s window. Rosie gave a disdainful little snort.

“Who wants to eat pizza on Christma- Dante! ”

She yelled his name in outrage as he shoved her back against the concrete steps and fell on top of her, even as the pistol his conscious mind hadn’t even seen yet started firing. Bullets were ricocheting off the concrete, whining through the night. His only thought was to shield Rosie with his body. Something struck him a terrific blow on one cheek, jerked his head around. Rosie cried out beneath him as the pizza-delivery car accelerated up Greenwich for the left turn into Grant at the top of the hill. Rosie’s face was smeared with blood.

Oh dear God, no! “Rosie, are you-”

“I’ve run my new panty hose,” she said, and started sobbing. Then she saw Dante’s face. She shrieked. “You’ve been shot-”

“Concrete chip.” He had realized the blood on Rosie was his own, from the cut on his cheek.

They clung to each other there on the stairs, safe on Christmas Eve. Dante thanking God with some part of his mind, thinking with another part, some cop. Didn’t get a round off. Didn’t get a license plate. Didn’t get a look at the shooter. Didn’t even know for sure what kind of a car it was.

Hey, a hell of a cop at that. Rosie was unhurt, wasn’t she? Merry Christmas.

Hotel Pez Grande-literally Hotel Big Fish-was a quarter of a mile in from the highway on a sandy road barely wide enough for two cars to pass. The adobe main building holding the dining rooms and bars and offices was set facing the bay, its back to the parking area. The living units were in double rows down the slope to the beach, each with a concrete patio in back for sunbathing out of the wind.

There was horseback riding, a pool, but Pez Grande, as the name suggested, catered to serious deep-water fishermen; the dining room walls were covered with trophies, and the menu always featured that day’s fresh catch. Their summertime “biggest fish” contest drew anglers from all over the United States.

Now, in December, the wind was gritty with sand from the shore, blowing hard and cold up the hill. Anybody wanting to sunbathe in that during the day was out of their skull. But Hotel Pez Grande gave Prince his only true vacation each year during this jolly week between Christmas and New Year’s. Thing was, the Feebies had no legal jurisdiction down here, and now that he and the governor had come to a meeting of the minds, their clout would be even less. The DEA had a little juice, but they were after drug-cartel Latinos, not vacationing Mafia dons.

So they left Prince alone down here.

He and Miguel had brought in a good marlin; after it had been strung up by its tail from the block and tackle on the dock for that purpose, and photographed, it had been laid in the back of Miguel’s pickup to be taken up the hill and cleaned. Part for the hotel kitchen, the rest was to be sold at market the next day. Mr. Prince was widely known and liked by the locals because of his generosity with his catches. A true caballero.

Midnight mass was finished, Prince was sitting in Pez Grande’s upstairs bar with most of the rest of the hotel guests, having a few postprandial jolts. It was, after all, Christmas Eve. There was even a tree. He raised a beckoning forefinger at the lean Mexican behind his array of bottles and gleaming glasses inside the horseshoe-shaped bar.

“A Christmas drink for everyone, Jose, por favor.”

Jose had been a bartender for two years in San Diego before La Migra caught up with him and shipped him back home. He affected a drooping gunfighter mustache, sideburns an inch below his ears, and red suspenders.

“And a Merry Christmas to you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Prince.”

Jose got busy with the drinks. Prince was at a table by one of the front windows, where he could look down the lighted walkways to the darkness of the water. No lights showed out on the bay. At the far end of the room was a TV getting a country music video show by satellite from Memphis. Tomorrow it would be showing an NFL game Prince planned to watch.

Tex came limping in; Prince gestured and the hard-bitten old cowboy sat down across from him with a sigh. Tex had been a rodeo rider of some note until he had retired, semi-crippled, down here in the sun.