Padillo grinned at her. “Yet there’s much to be said for the rewarding freshness of improvisation.”
“Oh, Christ,” I said, “let’s go.”
The house had no front yard. It was flush with the sidewalk and its bay window bellied out over it for a foot or so. The door was to the left of the window at the top of three wooden steps. Padillo slouched toward it and I followed, a little unsteadily, my left arm around Wanda who clutched her purse to her breasts, one hand inside of it, her finger probably on the trigger of the Walther PPK.
Padillo was leaning toward the door, his left palm resting on its jamb. He banged on it with his right fist. When no one answered, he banged again and in Spanish yelled for the crazy goats to open the door.
That got a response. The door opened about ten inches and a sleek young male head with a welter of long black, carefully combed hair popped out and yelled at Padillo to shut up. Padillo became all charm. He could do that when he wanted to. This time his charm was a little tipsy, but it was still there. In quick, idiomatic Spanish accompanied by a number of leers and gestures, he described what he wanted—a room where he and the two gringos could have fun. The young man with the long black hair looked at us with distaste. I nibbled Wanda Gothar’s right ear. She smiled at the young man. He seemed to want no part of us until Padillo started to wave a twenty-dollar bill under his nose. The young man looked at us again, grimaced, shrugged, said something to Padillo in Spanish that I didn’t catch, and then jerked his head toward the interior of the house.
Padillo started to go in first, but the young man blocked his entrance until the twenty-dollar bill changed hands. We followed Padillo into a hall. To the right was the living room with its bay window. The young man waved his hand toward it and told Padillo, “Go in there and wait. Someone will come to attend you.”
“How long, friend?” Padillo said.
“Only a few minutes.”
“That could be a long wait without something to drink.”
“It will cost extra.”
“The large foolish fat one will pay.”
They were speaking Spanish, but it was simple enough for me to follow and I saw no cause for Padillo to be quite so graphic. He turned to me and said in a carefully accented voice, “We will all have a leetle drink, no? But it will cost.”
“How much, pal?”
He shrugged. “Ten dollar.”
“We oughta have a hell of a lot of little drinks for that,” I said, but fumbled in my pocket, took out a crumpled wad of bills, and extricated a ten with all the careful concentration of a drunk. Padillo took it and handed it to the young man who tucked it away in a pocket of his tightfitting bell-bottomed black jeans. He wore a white nylon see-through shirt that was open to the waist so we could all admire the coiled rattlesnake that was tattooed on his hairless chest. He was all of nineteen and cute as a young scorpion.
The living room wasn’t much. A large, color TV set was the principal attraction surrounded by a miscellany of furniture, most of it worn. There was a round oak table with four chairs at the end of the room near a door which led into the kitchen. We sat at the table.
“I’m going to argue with whoever comes in,” Padillo said. “I’m going to insist on seeing the young punk again. When they both come back, we take them.”
I nodded at him. Wanda Gothar didn’t nod nor did she say anything. She merely sat at the table, the purse on her lap, staring at the door and looking a little impatient and a little prim, as if wondering why the tea were late.
They came in fast, quite fast, the slim young one with the tattooed chest and the other one, bigger, older, and mean-looking. They separated quickly; the young one remained by the door and the other one, the mean-looking one, almost sprinted across the room. We didn’t move, primarily because of the revolvers that each of them pointed at us. We stared at the two men and they stared back. The younger one with the see-through shirt started to say something, perhaps Put your hands up or Keep them where they are, but he never got it out because Wanda Gothar shot him in the chest, right through the head of the tattooed rattlesnake.
The man with the mean look turned to stare at the younger one. He had an opportunity to note the surprise that flitted across the young man’s face before pain moved in, twisting the features into a caricature of agony that stayed there as he crumpled to the floor.
The older man started to turn back toward us, but Padillo was already across the room. His automatic slashed at the man’s right wrist and the man’s revolver flew away and I remember hoping that it wouldn’t go off when it landed. The man yelled and grabbed his wrist and started to look around wildly, but then decided that there was nothing half so interesting as the automatic that Padillo held three inches away from his nose. The man had to cross his eyes to focus on it.
I looked back at the young man on the floor and the agony had gone from his face. He looked relaxed now. Relaxed and dead. Wanda Gothar wasn’t looking at him. Instead, she examined the hole that she had shot through her purse. It wasn’t a big hole and she seemed to be wondering whether she could have it repaired.
“Where are they?” Padillo asked and when the mean-looking man said, “No comprende,” Padillo lifted the man’s heavy chin with the slide end of his automatic so that the man had nothing to look at but the ceiling. Padillo switched to Spanish and in twenty-five words or less told the man what was going to happen to him unless he spoke truly. Most of Padillo’s Spanish threat went far too fast for me, but what little I got didn’t sound pleasant.
The man nodded, or tried to, but the automatic got in the way. Padillo lowered it and the man brought his head down, glanced once at the dead body on the floor, and said, “Okay. Okay. It’s no skin off my ass.” He spoke without accent.
“Where are they?” Padillo said again.
“They ain’t here.”
“Were they?”
The man nodded. “You mean the fat bald young guy and the tall skinny one?”
“That’s right.”
“They were here. Doc Asfourh sent them over and me and the kid were supposed to look after them till morning. It was just a one-night deal, you know.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened. They stayed here for maybe thirty or forty-five minutes and then they left.”
“Just like that?” Padillo said.
The man decided to rub the right wrist that Padillo’s automatic had slashed. “Just like that,” he said. He wasn’t a very good liar.
“Does your wrist hurt?” Padillo said.
“Damn right it hurts.”
“You want your other one to hurt?”
The man shook his head.
“What’s your name?”
“Valdez. José Valdez.”
“Bullshit,” Padillo said.
The man shrugged. “Rogelio Quesada.”
“All right, Señor Quesada. Let’s hear it all.”
The man glanced around the room again. He had deep-set narrow eyes and unless he opened them wide not much white showed. Above the eyes was a scant inch or so of forehead and below them was a spreadout nose and a mouth that snarled when it spoke and sneered when it didn’t. He looked ugly and mean and big enough to back up his looks.
“What the hell am I gonna do with him?” he said, staring at the dead body.
“Call the cops,” I said.
“Shit,” he said.
“From the beginning,” Padillo said.
Quesada tore his eyes from the body and sent them darting around the room again as if searching for the secret passage that would open up and let him through so that he could make it to San Diego by dawn. When he didn’t find it he let his eyes settle on Padillo and snarled as he spoke. “Ah, Christ, it’s no skin off my ass.”
“You said that.”