Plains, it was now the Alhambra here on Harris. The tickets cost..."
... twenty dollars each, which is practically giving the seats away. The promoters don't expect a lot of money on the gate. What's twenty two-fifty? Five K? So what's that? Where the real money is selling food and alcohol. And, of course, the betting. Thousands of dollars are wagered on each of the fights. During a typical night, there can be anywhere from twenty to thirty matches, depending on the ferocity and duration of each contest. The average match will run minutes, but some will end in five and more popular ones with the crowd can last as long as half an hour or even forty minutes, the birds tearing themselves apart in frenzy.
There is a huge indoor parking garage across the street from the Alhambra, and it is here that the customers park their cars, hidden from the eyes of prying police officers though on this Friday informers have already been paid, and a massive is in preparation even before the first of them arrives. Inside, there is joviality and conviviality, atmosphere reminiscent of the old days on the where cock fighting is still a gentleman's sport. can remember attending his first fight when he was seven years old. His father was a breeder of fighting birds, and he recalls feeding them special diets of meat and eggs supplemented with vitamins for their stamina and strength. Now, here in this city, owners of fighting birds sometimes pay three, hundred dollars a month to hide their roosters clandestine farms in neighboring states. These
areexpensive birds. Some of them are worth five, ten thousand dollars.
"It's a gentleman's sport," he says again.
Drinking rum at the bar, eating cuchifritos, speaking their native tongue, the customers mostly men, but here and there one will see a pretty, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman dressed elegantly for the occasion relax in an ambiance of total acceptance and fond recall. There could easily be tropical breezes blowing through this converted theater, the swish of palm fronds outside, the rush of the sea against a white sand beach. For a moment, there is respite for these transplanted people who more often than not are made to feel foreign in this city.
The fights are furious and deadly.
This is a blood sport in every sense.
The roosters are crossbred with pheasants to fortify their most aggressive traits. Nurtured on steroids that increase muscle tissue, dosed with angel dust to numb pain, they are equipped with fighting spurs and then are moved into the carpeted cockpit to kill or be killed. In India, where the sport enjoys wide popularity, the birds fight "bare-heeled," using only their own claws to shred and destroy. In Puerto Rico, the trainers attach to the birds' heels along plastic apparatus that resembles a darning needle. Here in this city, the chosen device is called a slasher. It is a piece of steel honed to razor-sharp precision. These spurs are fastened to both claws. They are twin weapons of mutilation and destruction.
Luis himself can't bear to watch the final moments of a fight, when the roosters, doped up with PCP, rip
and tear at each other with their metal talons, and feathers flying, the crowd screaming for a More often than not, both birds are killed.
"It's a sad thing," Luis says. "No one likes to animals hurt. This is a gentleman's sport."
The police who raided the theater at eleven-twenty-seven P.M. last Friday apparently with his premise. Captain Arthur Forsythe, Jr., led the team of E.S. officers who spearheaded operation, later told the press that the forced these birds was nothing less than barbaric, a criminal act that had to be abolished if this city were ever to call itself civilized. His men had taken out the lookouts posted at the entrance, handcuffing them putting them down on the sidewalk before they sound an alarm. They then went in wearing vests and carrying machine guns, followed by the Four-Eight, the Task Force, and the
"There's cameras and guard dogs," Luis don't know how they got in so quick and easy."
Even so, by the time the raiders broke into the ring area upstairs, some of the false walls had been moved back and the event's organizers fleeing over rooftops and through tunnels, one out to Harris Avenue, another running under a beauty parlor adjacent to the parking garage. police caught only one of the promoters, a man Anibal Fuentes, who was charged with two counts.
"This shouldn't be allowed to happen," Luis shaking his head. "Kings and emperors used to cockfights, did you know that? Even Am
presidents! Thomas Jefferson! George Washington! The father of the nation, am I right? He liked to watch cockfights. This is a sin, what they're doing. Persecuting people who enjoy an honest-to-God sport!"
In his report to the Police Commissioner, Captain Forsythe noted that on the street behind the theater his men had found twenty-five bloodied roosters, all fitted with metal talons, twenty of them dead, the rest still alive and twitching in agony. In rooms behind the false walls, officers from the Four-Eight found another forty birds in cages, pillowcases over their heads to keep them calm in the dark before they were tossed into the ring.
"They came from all over," Luis said. "Florida and Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Washington, D.C. Some trainers brought their birds all the way from San Juan and Ponce! This was a big event, man! There were birds coming to the ring from all over! Like toreadors arriving!"
"You didn't happen to notice a black limo, did you?" Carella asked.
What the hell, he thought, toreadors arriving!
"Oh sure," Luis said.
"What kind of limo?" Carella asked at once. "A Caddy." "Where'd you see it?"
"Back of the theater. When I was walking over from the garage. The door we came in before. Where the trainers take the birds in, you know? The stage door, I guess they call it. The one that's busted now."
"You saw a trainer taking a chicken out of a Black Caddy limousine, is that right?"
"Not a chicken. A rooster. A fighting cock!" "Trainer drove him up in a Caddy, is that right?" "That's right. Took him out of the backseat." "In a cage, or what?"
"No cage. Just a pillowcase over his head. Just legs showing."
"You wouldn't know this trainer, would you?" "Not personally." "Then how?"
"I looked up his name." "I'm sorry, you did what?" "On the card." "The card."
"Yeah, the owners' names are on the card recognized him when he was carrying the bird in the ring. Remembered him driving up in the Caddy. Figured he was a big shot, you know? Caddy I mean, a movie star bird in a limo, am I right? So I looked up his name on the card."
"And what was his name?" Carella asked, and held his breath.
"Jose Santiago," Luis said.
Priscilla and the boys could not find the club.
Their taxi drove up and down Harris Avenue forever, passing the darkened marquee of the Alhambra theater more times than they cared to count. On their last swing past it, two men in heavy overcoats, both of them bareheaded, one of them a red-head, were climbing into an automobile. Priscilla thought they looked familiar, but as she craned her neck for a better look through the fogged rear window, the car doors slammed shut behind them. A third man, smaller, slighter, and wearing a short green barn coat that looked as if it had come from L. L. Bean or Lands' End, stood on the sidewalk, watching the car as it pulled away.
"Back up," Priscilla told the cabdriver.
"I'm not gonna spend all night here looking for this club," the cabbie said.
"Just back up, would you please?" she said. "Before he disappears, too."
The cabbie threw the car into reverse and started backing slowly toward where Luis Villada, his hands in his coat pockets, was walking away from the Alhambra. At this hour of the morning, in this neighborhood, Luis would have run like hell if this was anything but a taxi. Even so, he was wary until he saw the blond woman sitting on the backseat, lowering the window on the curbside.