Cities of the Plain(76)

Billy jerked his arm away. Where’s Eduardo? he said.

Excuse me, the man said. He tried to take Billy’s arm again. Mistake. Billy took him by the front of his shirt and slammed him against the wall. He was so light. There was nothing to him at all. He put up no resistance but seemed to be merely reaching about him as if he’d lost something and Billy turned loose of the handful of black silk knotted up in his fist just in time. The thin blade of the knife snickered past his belt and he leapt back and raised up his arms. Tiburcio crouched and feinted with the knife before him.

You little son of a bitch, said Billy. He hit the Mexican squarely in the mouth and the Mexican slammed back against the wall and sat down on the floor. The knife went spinning and clattering down the hallway. The old woman at the end of the hall was watching with her fingers in her teeth. Her eye closed and opened again in a huge and obscene wink. He turned to the pimp and was surprised to see him struggling to his feet holding a small silver penknife still fastened to the chain draped across the front of his pegged black trousers. Billy hit him in the side of the head and heard bone crack. The pimp’s head spun away and he slid several feet down the hallway and lay in a twisted black pile in the floor like a dead bird. The old woman came down the hall at a tottering run crying out. He caught her as she went past and pulled her around. She threw up her hands and closed her good eye. Aiee, she cried. Aiee. He gripped her wrists and shook her. Dónde está mi compañero? he said.

Aiee, she cried. She tried to pull away to go to the pimp lying in the floor.

Dígame. Dónde está mi cuate?

No sé. No sé. Por Dios, no sé nada.

Dónde está la muchacha? Magdalena? Dónde está Magdalena?

Jesús María y José ten compasión no está. No está.

Dónde está Eduardo?

No está. No está.

Aint a damn soul está, is there?

He turned her loose and she threw herself on the fallen pimp and raised his face to her breast. Billy shook his head in disgust and went down the hall and picked up the knife and stuck the blade between the door and the jamb and snapped the blade off and slung the handle away and turned and came back. The criada cowered and held up one hand over her head but he reached down past her and snatched away the silver chain from the pimp’s waistcoat and broke off the blade of the penknife also.

Has this son of a bitch got any more knives on him?

Aiee, moaned the criada, rocking back and forth with the pimp’s oiled head in her bosom. The pimp had come awake and was looking up at him with one walled eye through the woman’s stringy hair. One arm flailed about loosely. Billy reached down and got him by the hair and pulled his face up.

Dónde está Eduardo?

The criada was moaning and blubbering and sat trying to unclamp Billy’s fingers from the pimp’s hair.

En su oficina, wheezed the pimp.

He turned him loose and straightened up and wiped his oily hand on the leg of his jeans and walked down the hallway to the far end. Eduardo’s foilcovered door had no doorknob to it and he stood looking at it for a minute and then raised one boot and kicked it in. It came completely off the hinges in a great splintering of wood and turned slightly sideways and fell into the room. Eduardo sat at his desk. He seemed strangely unalarmed.

Where is he? said Billy.

The mysterious friend.

His name is John Cole and if you’ve harmed a hair on his head you’re a dead son of a bitch.

Eduardo leaned back. He opened the drawer of his desk.

You better have a shoebox full of pistols in there, said Billy.

Eduardo took a cigar from the desk drawer and closed it and took his gold cigarcutter from his pocket and held up the cigar and clipped it and put the cigar in his mouth and the cutter back in his pocket.

Why would I need a pistol?

I’m fixin to point out several reasons if I dont get some sense out of you.

The door was not locked.

What?

The door was not locked.

I aint studyin your damn door.

Eduardo nodded. He’d taken his lighter from his pocket and was wafting the flame across the end of the cigar and rotating the cigar in his mouth slowly with his fingers. He looked at Billy. Then he looked past Billy. When Billy turned the alcahuete was standing in the door, one hand on the splintered jamb, breathing slowly and evenly. One eye was swelled half shut and his mouth was puffed and bleeding and his shirt was torn. Eduardo gestured him away with a small toss of his chin.

Surely, he said, you dont believe that we are unable to protect ourselves from the riffraff and drunks that come here?

He put the lighter in his pocket and looked up. Tiburcio was still standing in the doorway. Ándale pues, he said. Tiburcio looked at Billy for a moment with no more expression than a pitviper and then turned and went back down the hall.