After a few blocks Chico leaned his head back and asked Ralph in Spanish if he wanted to stop by Number Fourteen, since we were passing by. Ralph checked his gold Rolex and said sure. Then he got Mr. Subtle out from under the driver's seat and loaded it. Mr. Subtle is his. 357 Magnum.
"The homeboys been making noise," he said. "Pinche kids."
"Number Fourteen," I said. "Catchy name."
"Hey, man, you get over twenty pawnshops, you try naming them all."
He stuck Mr. Subtle in his jeans, underneath the guayabera. Most people couldn't wear a Magnum like that and look inconspicuous. Most people don't have Ralph's girth and his XXL linen shirts.
Chico found a Def Lepard song on the radio and turned it up. Probably still on the Top Ten in San Antonio.
"So," Ralph said, "you see my niece when you were up in Austin?"
"She's doing fine. Good worker, just like you said."
Ralph ticked. "She's going through this con crema phase, man. I don't get her sometimes."
"Con crema?"
"You know what I mean. She won't speak Spanish. Only dates white guys."
"No kidding."
Ralph nodded, shifting a little in his seat. I shifted in my seat. We stared out the windows. He decided to change the subject.
"Speaking of con crema, man, you hanging out again with that cabron, Chavez?"
I hadn't told Ralph anything about the case. Not that that mattered. Ralph had probably found out about my meeting with Chavez the day it happened. Anything that went on within the city limits, Ralph usually knew about it in time to start placing bets.
"Milo's tangled into something, Ralphas. I told him I'd try to help out."
"Yeah." Ralph grinned. "Pinche bastard ever figure out what he wants to be when he grows up?"
I had never been quite sure when or how Milo and Ralph had met. They'd simply always known and disliked each other. All three of us had gone to Alamo Heights, of course, but as far as I knew the two men had never exchanged a word, never acknowledged each other. I'd never been in a room with both of them at the same time. Aside from being North Side Latinos, the two could not have been further apart.
Ralph had come from poverty, from a factory shantytown where his father had died of cement dust in his lungs and secondgeneration natives still kept fake green cards because it was easier than making La Migra believe their nationality. Ralph had made it through high school on the strength of his football playing and cunning and a straightedged razor and the certain unwavering knowledge that someday he would be worth a million dollars. Milo had come from a placid, welloff family. He was one of the few Latinos who had been accepted in the white circles, been invited to Cotillion dances, even had a white girlfriend. The news that he'd toyed with music after high school, then business, then finally persevered through a law degree caused no surprise among his old friends, no excitement. No feeling that he'd tackled insurmountable odds. The fact that he'd changed jobs again, gone into the country music industry, would generate, at best, a few amused smiles.
"Milo's doing all right."
Ralph laughed. "Isn't he the one almost got you killed out in San Francisco?"
"That's one interpretation."
"Yeah. You remember that shit we used to drop in water in chemistry class? What was that-"
"Potassium."
"That's it. Boom, right? That shit is you and Chavez, man. I can't believe you're talking to that pinche bastard again. You thought about that offer I made you earlier?"
"I wouldn't be into it, Ralphas. I got enough worries."
Ralph blew a line of marijuana smoke against the window. He shook his head.
"I don't get you. I been trying since high school and I still don't. You push a guy off a smokestack ten stories up"
"Special circumstances. He was going to kill me."
"You break some pendejo's leg just because an old lady asked you to, for no money."
"He was ripping off her social security checks, Ralphas."
"Now you work for Chavez when you know he's going to fuck you up, man. Then I offer you five hundred a week easy, doing the same kind of shit, and you tell me you're not into it. Loco."
Chico had been quiet so far. Now he turned his head slightly and said, "Fuck him."
I looked at Ralph.
Ralph took another toke. "Chico's new."
"I got that."
Chico kept his eyes on the road, left hand on the wheel, and huge right arm draped along the top of the bench seat. He had LA RAZA tattooed in very small letters on his deltoid. His hair was covered with a yellow bandanna, tied in back, piratestyle.
"Fuck him," he said again. "What you need his pansy ass for, man?"
Ralph smiled at me. "Eh, Chico, this guy's okay. I saved his ass from some shitkickers in high school."
"You saved me?"
"Yeah, man. You remember." Then to Chico: "Changed his life, man. Became this martial arts badass. He's good."
Chico grunted, unimpressed. "Guy I knew in the pen did tae kwon do. Kicked the shit out of him."
We kept driving.
Pawnshop Number Fourteen was in a fiveunit strip mall just off Hillcrest, sandwiched between the Mayan Taco King and Joleen's Beauty Shop. Number Fourteen's bright yellow marquee said WE BUY GOLD!!!! The windows were painted with pumpkins and witches and smiling cartoon dollar signs that didn't quite go with the burglar bars and the shotgun displays aside.
A gallery ran in front of the mall, covered by a metal awning held up by square white posts. Leaning against the posts outside Number Fourteen were two young Latino guys, maybe seventeen, both in black jeans and Raiders jackets. They would've made good fullbacks if they'd been in school. Sitting on the sidewalk between them, leaning back on his elbows, was a much skinnier kid who'd evidently done his clothes shopping with the fullbacks. On all of them the clothes were huge and baggy, but especially on the skinny guy. The three of them looked like a family of elephants who'd gotten a group rate on liposuction.
Ralph and Chico walked up to them. I followed.
None of the kids moved, but the skinny one in the middle smiled. He had the pointiest chin I'd ever seen, with a little spiky tuft of adolescent beard at the tip. It made the lower half of his face look like it had been fashioned out of a stirrup.
"Boss man," he said. "? Que pasa?'
Ralph smiled back. "Vega. You want to take your Chiquita’s here and play somewhere else? You're cramping my business, man."
I got the feeling Ralph and Vega had gone through this a couple of times before. They looked at each other, both smiling, waiting for something to break.
What broke was our new man Chico's patience. He detached himself from Ralph's side and said, "Fuck this."
He walked up to the skinny kid and lifted him by his jacket with one hand. Maybe that would've been impressive if the kid hadn't weighed ninety pounds, or if Chico hadn't planted his legs apart and given Vega a beautiful opportunity to knee him in the balls.
Vega's knee was mostly bone, and what he lacked in weight he made up for in ferocity.
As he kneed Chico, Vega's face tightened and his teeth clenched so hard his tuft of beard almost touched his lower lip.
Chico grunted, dropped the kid, then doubled over and started turning around in slow motion. Chico's face was the same colour as his bandanna. One of the fullbacks kicked him from behind and Chico went sideways onto the asphalt groaning: "Mierda, mierda."
I looked at Ralph. "He's new."
"Yeah."
Vega adjusted his baggy clothes and sat back down, smiling again. He rubbed his little beard and told his buddies what a big tough pachuco Chico was. They laughed.
"Oh, man," said Vega, "you had some customers come by today, Boss, but they didn't look like a good type of people, right? We told them no way. We're looking out for you good."