Джо Горес - Cases

“Stop that!” cried Gerald. “She’s engaged to me!”

Johnny laughed. One big hand began massaging her breasts. She tried to bite it. The other big hand planted itself in Gerald’s face, pushed. Gerald windmilled backward into the sand.

“You can have her back tomorrow, but tonight—”

But another man had materialized from the darkness, six inches shorter than Johnny but equally broad. Johnny let go of Penny and spoke in a soft, pleased voice.

“Hey, great, next to fuckin’ I like fightin’ best!”

“Dunc?” asked Penny in belated recognition.

Gerald got shakily back on his feet. How many men did...

Johnny came in a rush, heavy arms swinging like clubs. Dunc ducked and weaved desperately, but one of the haymakers caught him on the forehead to open a shallow cut with the silver ring. Despairing, panicked, Dunc aped one of Ned’s special three-punch combos: a slashing left jab to the nose, a hook to the heart, a right cross to the back edge of the chin.

As if by magic, Johnny went down, nose blossoming blood.

And just for an instant, Penny’s soft lips were pressed fiercely on Dunc’s as in another dream, then she was gone. Johnny, a surprised look on his face, was sitting on the sand, legs wide, waggling his jaw gingerly with one hand.

“Fuck you hit me with, man? A Mack truck?”

“A Nitro Ned Davenport combination,” said Dunc happily.

But Penny, after all, had gone home with the wrong guy. Dunc still didn’t know how to reach her. After washing the blood off his face in the Anchor Room’s john, he had a beer at the bar.

“Get in a brawl down on the beach?” asked Billy.

“Yeah. You look like you’ve gone a few rounds yourself.”

“Thirty-six fights, but to tell the truth I never was much of a boxer.” Billy waggled his chin with one hand. “Glass jaw.”

Glass jaw. That must have been why Johnny had gone down so easily. Couldn’t take a punch. Talk of fighting inevitably led to thoughts of Nitro Ned. As Dunc drove north along the Coast Highway I, in no mood to go home to bed, he thought: for a minute there tonight Ned had been guiding his fists.

At the trailer park everyone’s lights were out. Pound on Birdie’s door? Gus might not even be there, and the fog made it too cold to sleep on the beach. He would sleep in his car by the Church of the Order of Melchizedek. Maybe Penny would show up in the morning to attend Rephaim’s service.

He parked behind the manzanita bushes at the foot of the road, at 6:00 A.M. sat up yawning and shivering. Had the cold awakened him? Or the smell of beans and chili? He got out, shut the car door carefully and quietly, and whizzed in the weeds, shivering in his light windbreaker. Why so stealthy? Why hadn’t he parked behind the motel last night?

The grass soaked his shoes and pant legs as he swished through it. The massive old surplus army six-by-six loomed up through the drifting ground mist like a misplaced rhino, so abruptly only an outthrust palm against the wet hood kept him from walking into it.

The smell of Mexican cooking got stronger. Through the thin wall of a boarded-up cabin he heard low male voices speaking in Spanish. The farmworkers. Hector had already picked them up; the food was for them. Except the hood of the six-by-six had been stone-cold. That engine hadn’t been fired up in hours.

A Mexican about Dunc’s age materialized from the mist, just buttoning his fly. He had a narrow-jawed face and aquiline nose and brown liquid eyes that would have been gentle had one upper lid not been pulled awry by an angry red scar like a knife cut.

“Buenos dias,” said Dunc.

The Mexican broke for the front of the cabin. Dunc shrugged. He’d go find something to eat, return; the little diners that dotted the ocean side of the Coast Highway I would be open for the surfers. The door of Rephaim’s church opened and Hector came out. His whole manner was different from their first meeting, and his voice was bellicose.

“Hey, you. What are you doing snooping around here?”

Dunc just nodded, waved an airy hand, and kept on going. At the stand of manzanita, he looked back. Hector had gone back inside, the door with the cross over it was shut.

When he got back from breakfast, Rephaim was on his diving board, arms wide, well into his spiel; Dunc recognized the knife-cut Mexican among the Latins, but none from last week. Neither Penny nor her relatives had showed. Not even any of the coven.

He left. He needed the order, assurance, and peace of Sunday Mass. The phone book gave him noon High Mass in Santa Monica. Back in Eagle Rock he found a singularly unrepentant Gus full of lurid sexual adventures he didn’t want to hear about. He went to bed early. They had a pour tomorrow, had to be on-site at 7:30, which meant up at six.

It was after eight when Osvaldo showed up with the back of his old pickup filled with a new complement of workers.

“Where’d he find another crew so quick?” Dunc asked Joshua.

“There’s lots of wetbacks looking for work,” said Samuel.

“Does the union know they don’t have green cards?”

“Course the union knows they’s wetbacks, but they keeps their traps shut, they gets fifty dollah a man ’nitiation fees.”

Something about this bothered Dunc, he didn’t know why — not yet. Another thought hit him. “Does Donovan know?”

“Wa’m bodies, that’s all he care ’bout.”

As if on cue, Donovan yelled, “Get back up on those forms!”

At the lunch break the Mexicans clustered together in the shade, eating rice and beans and tortillas out of folded pieces of newspaper. One of the brown-skinned men had a narrow jaw, aquiline nose, gentle brown liquid eyes — except the right upper lid had been pulled awry by the scar of a knife cut.

“Buenos dias,” Dunc said to him.

Again, surprised and scared. But he said, “Buenos dias."

Osvaldo sprayed him with rapid-fire Spanish, turned to Dunc with a big grin. “No Eeenglish, no use talking with heem, señor. ”

How did the slender Mexican get from the boarded-up motel out by the beach to a construction site in the valley in just one day? Being there at Rephaim’s Sunday morning service made no sense anyway. The man had no English, he wouldn’t know what Rephaim’s sermons were about.

Who could Dunc ask about it all? Gus wouldn’t know any more than he did. Joshua. He waylaid the lanky Negro.

“Lordy, child!” Joshua slapped his knee with delight. “This here was all in place befo’ you show up, gonna be here long after you’s gone.”

That was that, Dunc thought. The guys were illegals, after all, most of them would try again, a lot of them would make it.

On Wednesday night he was lying on his bed reading a copy of Faulkner’s Sanctuary he’d borrowed from the Pasadena Public Library when Uncle Ben called up the stairs.

“Dunc! Telephone.”

He yelled his thanks and rolled off the bed. Now that they knew where he was, his folks were calling once a week. He picked up the receiver off the table in the downstairs hallway.

“This is Penny.”

It was like getting punched in the stomach it was so unexpected. “Penny! I thought... I didn’t... Hey, hi, it’s great to hear your voice. Listen...” He reached over to snag the L.A. Times sports section out of the wicker magazine basket beside the table. “I don’t have your phone number there.”

He wrote it down on the edge of the sports page and blurted out, “How does your boyfriend like California?”

“Gerald? He left Sunday. Actually he’s not my boyfriend anymore.” She laughed that wonderful laugh. “Aunt Goodie says she’d like you to come over on Friday night so we can all thank you for saving me.”