Квентин Тарантино - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - The First Novel By Quentin Tarantino

In a gangster story, he’d have been known as an “Out-of-Town Torpedo.” In an earlier chapter of the big man’s story, he could have been the hero, and he had been. But on this page—today—he sold his gun arm to the highest bidder. And in this story, that bidder was Caleb DeCoteau.

Johnny climbed down from his horse and tied it to the hitching post located in front of the Hotel Lancaster. The big man in black folded up his pocketknife and put it away in his pocket. Johnny started crossing the main street of Royo del Oro in the direction of the saloon. The big man in black placed the little horse figurine he was carving on a tiny barrel in front of him and rose out of the rocking chair, moving toward the front of the patio. Johnny was nine steps away from the bottom stair of the three-stair porch steps that led to the saloon’s front porch when he heard the big man in black call out, “That’s far enough, Jughead.”

Johnny stopped walking. “Name’s not Jughead,” Johnny corrected.

“Whatcha doin’ round here, boy?” the big man asked.

“I’m thirsty,” Johnny answered, pointing his finger at the establishment. “That’s a saloon, ain’t it?”

The big man in black turned around and glanced up at the big sign that read SALOON, hung up over the entrance, then turned back to Johnny and said, “Yeah, that’s a saloon. Only you can’t come in.”

“Why?” Johnny asked. “Y’all closed?”

The big man smiled and patted the grip of his pistol, which rested in the waistband of his trousers, right up against his belly. “Oh no, we’re open for business.”

Johnny, getting the picture, smiled right back and asked, “So it’s just me can’t come in?”

The big man smiled even wider, this time showing teeth, and said, “That’s right.”

Johnny asked, “Why?”

The big man in black explained, “Well, you see, we only serve ladies on Ladies’ Night. ”

The other three owl hoots on the porch laughed at his little joke.

Johnny laughed a little too and said, “That’s a good one. I’m gonna hafta remember that one.”

The big man warned, “You take another step near this saloon, you ain’t gonna be remembering nothin’ ever again.” Placing his hands on his hips, the gunfighter in black explained to the young man in the sangria-red ruffled shirt the immediate future.

“Now, looky here, Jughead, you’re gonna climb back up on that nag you rode in on, and you’re gonna hightail your ass outta here—you hear me, boy?”

Johnny squinted his eyes and said, “Oh, I hear just fine, but apparently you don’t. ’Cause I done tole’ you, the—name—ain’t—Jughead.”

That’s when Johnny’s hand lowered to the pistol that sat in the holster on his hip, and he unhooked the tiny leather loop wrapped around the hammer of his widow-maker.

In response, the big man’s hand lowered down his front, where the grip of his smoke wagon rested inside the waistband of his trousers.

Then, as the porch, the street, the town, and the state got quiet while the two men twitched into their killing stances—SUDDENLY—the squeaky batwing doors of the saloon were flung open and out stepped the villain of this piece, Caleb DeCoteau.

The outlaw gang leader was dressed in a brown rawhide jacket with leather fringe running down the sleeves, and he was eating a fried-chicken drumstick. Johnny felt Caleb step out on the porch, but he was committed to his staring contest with the troublemaker, so he didn’t raise his eyes to greet his old friend.

“Mr. Gilbert,” Caleb said, addressing the big man from behind his back, “don’t let me stop you from earnin’ the money I pay you—I know how bored and restless you get when you run outta tamales .” Caleb took a big bite out of the chicken leg, and as he chewed the greasy meat he said with his mouth full, “But if I were you, I’d find out that Jughead’s name.”

Gilbert asked his boss, “Who is he, Caleb?”

Caleb leaned in the doorway of the saloon, swallowed the meat in his mouth, and said, “Allow me to introduce the two of ya.”

Pointing at the man in black’s back with his chicken bone, Caleb said, “This here is Bob Gilbert.”

So that’s the Businessman , Johnny thought.

“The Businessman?” Johnny asked.

“That’s right,” Bob said. “Business Bob Gilbert. And who might you be?”

Before Johnny could answer, Caleb tore with his teeth another big piece of meat and skin off the chicken bone and said, “That’s a fella named Madrid. Johnny Madrid .”

“Who’s Johnny Madrid ?” Bob asked sarcastically, repeating the name in a mocking ridiculous fashion. The other three porch owl hoots laughed, until Caleb shot them a shut-the-fuck-up-when-grown-folks-are-talking look. They piped down.

Business Bob was confused, irritated, and beginning to get a little concerned. He was hired by Caleb to shoo off or kill fellas like this jughead in red. And he was paid handsomely in gold coin to do it. So why, all of the sudden, is the man who paid him actin’ all cute?

“I mean it, Caleb, who the hell is this joker?”

Caleb tossed what was left of the chicken bone into the street between the two men and said to his hired gun, “You’re about to find out, Businessman .”

And with that, Caleb disappeared back behind the batwing doors. Johnny Madrid turned and faced Bob sideways, his showdown stance, demonstrating to the Businessman that Johnny meant business. Bob Gilbert’s throat went dry as Johnny, standing still as a statue, said, “Ready when you are, Gil-bert .”

Bob’s hand inched toward his holster.

Johnny blinked.

Bob’s body jerked left as his hand grabbed the grip of the pistol, then his body violently jerked right as Johnny’s bullet burrowed smack-dab into his pumping heart.

The pistol he had just cleared tumbled out of his useless fingers, bouncing off the wood porch into the powdery brown dirt. The big man dressed in black teeter-tottered on his black shiny bootheels and fell face forward down the steps into the street, tipping over a pickle barrel, spilling pickles and pickle water into the dirt.

And so ends the impressive career of Business Bob Gilbert , Johnny thought. The man in the sangria-red ruffled shirt standing in the street with pickles by his feet pointed the still-smoking barrel of his gun in the direction of the three porch owl hoots, asking them in Spanish, “Anybody else?”

When Johnny entered the saloon, seven of Caleb’s other land pirates, who were playing poker at tables, smoking cigars, or drinking booze at the bar, raised their eyes to see the fella in the red ruffled shirt who put Bob outta business. No one looked too angry at the turn of events. I guess Bob didn’t make it his business to make friends. Then, from way above his head, Johnny Lancer heard shouted out, “Johnny Madrid!”

His eyes rose and he found his ole’ buddy Caleb DeCoteau standing on the second-floor landing, leaning against the impressive wood banister, looking down at him with a smile on his hairy face as big and wide as Texas.

“How long’s it been?” the bad man in brown asked the bad man in red.

Johnny didn’t have to think; he knew. “Oh, since that time in Juarez. ’Bout three years ago.”

Caleb blew out smoke from the cheroot in his mouth and said, “Well, come on in and have a drink.”

As Johnny crossed the saloon floor heading toward the foot of the staircase, he asked, “So I don’t gotta wait till Ladies’ Night ?”

The two tough guys made their tough-guy jokes. “Well, rules were made to be broken.”

Ha ha , Johnny thought. “Well, in that case,” Johnny offered, “buy ya a drink, Caleb?”