“His drawings are nothing like the Watts towers, honest.”
Suddenly sober, she hugged him close. “Oh, Dunc, time’s getting so short.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Dunc was driving over to see Penny every night and getting home at one or two in the morning. Each day he knew he’d have to stay in and sleep that night; but when quitting time rolled around, he could hardly wait to go see her.
They took long rambling walks along darkened neighborhood streets, making up stories about the people behind the lighted windows. They’d see a movie, sit in a soda fountain, watch TV, swing on the old-fashioned porch glider. Always they ended up parked in a little wooded area across the parkway, feverish and excited, going a little further each time in mutual need.
Friday, Gus’s last day in L.A., he skipped work to spend time with his relatives, particularly Grandma Trabert; she had aged over the summer. Donovan gave Dunc a big ration of shit about the missing Gus, but labor was plentiful, he’d have no trouble getting a replacement for Monday’s pour.
Without Gus, Dunc went to Joshua for help getting the Mexicans hidden away in case Immigration came earlier. The lanky Negro gave his high laugh and clapped Dunc on the shoulder.
“Osvaldo!” he yelled. “Mr. Donovan says you an’ me, baby, we gotta go wait for the truck to bring the cement.”
Dunc led the others out to the edge of the field farthest from the building site, in case Osvaldo had learned where they’d been hidden last time. And sure enough the immigration agents arrived at 9:15, an hour early. When they saw no Mexicans, they stormed right over to Dunc. Osvaldo obviously had been talking.
Thick-Neck’s close-set eyes were angry slits.
“Okay, wise guy, where are they?”
Again, Dunc was all innocence. “Who?”
This time all four agents ranged around him like the hyenas around the dying writer in The Snows of Kilimanjaro. And like the hyenas their jaws were mighty: scavengers, Dunc thought with a touch of alarm, but also government men.
“We know you hid them in the cornfield last time.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Thick-Neck said, “We can arrest you for obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting federal fugitives.”
“I have to get back to work. We’re shorthanded today.”
Just then Joshua, shaking his head over the cement truck that mysteriously hadn’t arrived, returned with Osvaldo. The immigration agents halfheartedly poked around in the cornfield without success, finally drove off in a cloud of dust.
Dunc felt shaky. This had been just a game to him, but the agents’ anger had been personal and vindictive. Maybe they did have a quota. What worried him even more was Osvaldo. Dunc had expected open hostility from the Judas goat, but Osvaldo just looked scared. Of what? Of whom?
At the hod carriers’ office were just the deskman and the chairman, whom he had learned were Tony and Luigi. He laid down his check. “Take out thirty, I’m paying Trabert’s dues, too.”
Tony counted out his money, stamped the union books. His eyes shifted, and a heavy shoe slammed into Dunc’s kidney. He yelled in pain and arched back at the same time that he was driven forward, half running, into the wall. He fell down.
“Smart little fuck!” exclaimed Tony.
They were advancing on him, coming in from either side. Dunc staggered to his feet and backed up against the wall.
“We’re gonna show you what happens when you fuck around in union affairs,” said Luigi.
Suddenly, too late, Dunc saw it all with blinding clarity. Who Osvaldo was afraid of. Who had worked out the scam in the first place, who had been profiting from turning in the illegals every two weeks, even why the immigration agents’ anger had been so focused and personal. He held up placating hands.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute, I didn’t know—”
“Well you’re gonna know now, fuckface.”
He charged them as he’d done so often in football when double-teamed by blockers protecting the quarterback, hoping to burst out between them and run for his life. He didn’t make it.
Luigi smashed an elbow into his jaw. He used his own elbow, felt a satisfying jar. But Tony’s arm was around his neck from behind in a chokehold, he was hauled bodily upright; Tony outweighed him by seventy pounds.
Dunc clawed at the tree trunk arms, couldn’t get any leverage. The kidney kick had weakened him, the half nelson was cutting off the blood to his brain; Luigi, in front of him, looked blurry.
“Hold him still. Fucker broke my nose.”
A pile-driver fist smashed into Dunc’s gut. His abdominal muscles were so work-toughened it didn’t quite rupture anything.
Tony said behind him, “Shit, you can hit him in the gut all day. He’s tough from working, this baby. Go for the face.”
Luigi’s right cross to the side of his jaw sagged his knees and blurred his vision even more. The next one would put him on the floor, where they could kick him to death if they wanted to.
Then Dunc heard a grunt of effort and Luigi drifted up off the floor in slow motion. He was spun into Samuel’s rising boot at the apex of his kick. It put him on the floor flat as a pancake, arms and legs wide, face full of blood.
In his place was Joshua, a surprisingly baleful grin on his ebony face.
“You bes’ let go of him,” he said to Tony.
But Tony warned, “I’ll break his fuckin’ neck!”
Joshua made a graceful movement too fast for the eye to follow, and was pointing his switchblade finger at Tony’s ample middle, as he had done to Samuel the day he’d been doused with water. Only now his finger was an opened-out straight razor, the gleaming blade making little eager circles in front of him.
“I takes me a swipe with this here razor, Mr. Union Man, an’ when you tries to nod your head you be in fo’ a big surprise.”
Tony stepped back, arms out wide from his sides. Obviously neither he nor Luigi had thought they’d need a gun to beat somebody up. Dunc gulped in great lungfuls of air.
“International’s gonna be mighty innersted in whut you been do in’ in this local,” Joshua said. “I hear they be as tough as you guys pretend you are. Dunc, we be goin’ now.”
The three of them backed out the door. Samuel’s rattletrap was alongside the Grey Ghost with both doors hanging open.
“I thought... you guys... were already gone,” panted Dunc.
“We figured you might need a little help when you went to cash your check.” Samuel was thoughtfully rubbing his boot in the dust to rid it of Luigi’s blood.
Dunc’s kidney burned, but it was not as bad as a kidney shot he’d taken from an opposing lineman’s helmet during his high school football days. Then he’d pissed blood for a week.
“You guys... knew all along... what was going on.”
Samuel shrugged. “Near enough.”
“Figgered you was havin’ a lotta fun workin’ it out your own se’f,” said Joshua. “But we think maybe you won’t wanna work here no mo’. Those guys gonna have long memories.”
“But what about you? If you lose your jobs over this—”
“Shit, man,” said Samuel, “we can work anywheres we want.”
Joshua gave his hee-hee-hee laugh. “We be the dynamic duo!”
“You go on now, Dunc,” said Samuel. “Jes in case they got some life in them yet.”
They didn’t. No one appeared at the open door of the tract house serving as a union office. It was all over. Joshua stuck out his hand; Dunc hugged him instead, the way he hugged his dad when he hadn’t seen him for a while. He repeated with Samuel.
“Christ, you guys, you — you saved my life!”