Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(20)

"Yeah sure," said Tattoo. "We heard you’re one of those faggots from San Francisco. That true?"

He was about six inches away.

"You asking me to dance?" I blew him a kiss.

He almost decided that was worth punching me for, but Red stopped him.

Behind me I heard Mother call my name again. She was trying to decide whether she should come back for me or not. I knew she would eventually walk over and give these goons a piece of her mind. Whatever went down, I needed to make it happen before she did that.

"How hard you want to make this, buddy?" said Red. “I’d hate smashing a guy’s face in front of his own mom. The message is simple: Get the f**k out of town. Nobody wants you here."

"And whom are these joyous tidings from?" I said. I slid my left foot back slightly, rooting my weight more solidly.

“Anybody you want to guess." Red sneered. "Just go back to Pansyland if you want your face in one piece."

"And if I don’t," I said, "I suppose Tattoo here will chest-bump me all the way out of town?"

“You little shit—" Tattoo moved forward, meaning to grab my shirt with both hands.

The thing about bodybuilders is that they tend to be top-heavy. They can be incredibly strong, but their overdeveloped chests make their center of gravity, which should be right around the navel, much higher and surprisingly easy to unbalance. It’s also easier to grab someone who has lots of muscles; it’s like walking around with built-in handles all over your body.

I swept my forearms up under Tattoo’s wrists before they connected and redirected his arms out. When he was wide open, I brought my left leg up and knee—kicked him in the groin. Then I pushed. He went backward stiff as a cut tree. Red got my left elbow in his nose as he came in to tackle me. I grabbed him by his triceps and twisted my waist, shifting his momentum so he flew over my knee and landed on top of his friend instead of me.

“Tres!" my mother called. She was coming toward us now.

Tattoo wasn’t used to having his balls kicked. He stayed doubled over, communing with the pavement . But Red got his balance much more quickly than I’d expected. He came at me, more cautiously this time, taking a boxer’s stance, right fist out. I let him miss twice, turning my body in quarter circles out of the line of his punches. That screwed up his guard. He tried a left hook but forgot to follow with his right. It was easy to step inside the punch, turn into his chest as I grabbed his wrist, and send him flying over my shoulder.

Holding on to his arm, I twisted the joints so he had no choice but to roll over on his stomach or snap a bone. I put my knee into his back, then pinched down on the nerve just below the elbow joint with my thumb. He yelled.

"You want me to hold this until you black out?" I asked. “Or do you want to tell me a little bit about yourself?"

"‘Go f**k yourself," he groaned.

It must’ve taken a lot of stamina for him to speak. Or maybe he just knew that his buddy wouldn’t be down on the ground forever. In fact, Tattoo was staggering to his feet now, and we both knew I couldn’t pin Red down and deal with Tattoo at the same time.

I didn’t like it, but I twisted Red’s arm sharply. He screamed. Maybe I broke it, maybe I didn’t. But I had to give him something to worry about while I was busy with his compadre.

Tattoo was still walking funny. He tried his best to get me in a wrestler’s hold, but I slid underneath and hit him in the gut with my shoulder. I pushed up and forward, lifting him off his feet. He fell backward again, harder this time.

I stepped back toward my mother, catching my breath. Her face was hard to read. Her eyes were very wide, but not exactly frightened. It was more the look of someone who had believed in ghosts for years, but had finally had one shake her hand.

Red and Tattoo were still on the ground, cursing. I asked my mother for a pen and paper. She stared at me, then rummaged in her purse. On a large magenta Post-it note, I wrote: RETURN TO SENDER. Then I signed my name.

I stuck it on the front of Red’s shirt.

"Thanks anyway," I said.

Before they could decide they weren’t so badly hurt after all, I took my mother’s arm and we walked down Queen Anne. I got her into her car before she decided it was time to talk.

"Tres, what exactly—"

“I’m not sure, Mother," I said, a little harsher than I meant to. “I’m sorry you got involved. It’s probably some friends of Bob Langston, the old tenant I had to kick out. Rivas said he was Army. So were those guys, probably. That’s all."

I must not have sounded very convincing. Mother kept looking at me, waiting for a better answer. I felt tired, the hazy crashed feeling you get when adrenaline stops flowing. I tried to muster up a smile. “Look, it’s fine."

She turned and stared through the windshield.

"You’re my only boy, Tres."

She has tremendous strength, my mother. Despite all her eccentricities, she can harden to steel in sixty seconds flat in a crisis. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her cry, or look as shaken as she had a few moments before. Now she smiled at me, reassuringly. When I bent and kissed her on the cheek, I could feel the slight tremble in her skin.

“Call me tomorrow," she said.

After she drove away I went inside and locked the door. Robert Johnson sniffed my legs for the strange odors of Red and Tattoo while I sat in the dark and called Lillian’s number.