Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(43)

Ralph dragged two green metal stools up to the fruit crates and nodded to the bartender.

"Tito," he said. "Dos Budweisers."

For a minute I was convinced Tito was a work of taxidermy. Nothing moved—his thick frown, his eyes, his huge frog-shaped body. Tattooed arms hung limp at his sides. Under the yellow silk shirt his chest didn’t move. I was tempted to borrow Ralph’s coke spoon and hold it under Tito’s nose just to see if he was really breathing. Finally, very slowly, Tito’s eyes drifted over to me and fixed there. Somewhere in his chest he made a sound like a motor boat engine getting stuck in mud.

"De donde sacaste el gringo?" he said.

Ralph drank his beer, then looked at me like he’d never seen me before.

"Who," he said, “this guy? Wants to break into the pawn business, man. Teaching him everything I know."

Tito didn’t exactly react, but he let his eyes slide off me like bird shit off a windshield. Behind us, one of the drinkers finished a joke about a gringo lawyer and a donkey. His friends laughed.

"So," Ralph said. "I heard about that white woman last Sunday."

Tito had solidified again. He gave no response at all, just stared at Ralph blankly;

"Your friend is making me nervous, Ralphas," I said in English. "Could you tell him to calm down?"

A tattooed cobra on Tito’s forearm twitched almost imperceptibly.

"No se, man," Tito told Ralph. "I just open the beers."

Ralph took his glasses off and cleaned them on his shirt. When he did, he let Tito see the .357 clearly. Then he smiled.

"Man," he said, "how long we known each other? What was that loan I did you, anyway? Three grand?"

Tito stayed blank, but the cobra twitched again. I looked back at the other customers. Three of the tougher ones at the end of the nearest table were paying more attention to us now. They sat slightly apart from the others, not quite as weathered-looking, not laughing at the jokes. The only grease on these three was carefully applied to their hair. Their work shirts were open over striped tank tops, stretched tight over their pects.

When I glanced at Ralph, he was already looking at me. His slight nod told me he knew about the competition. Meanwhile Tito wasn’t talking. He produced two more beers. He turned up the knob on Lydia Mendoza. Then he played taxidermy.

"Well," said Ralph, "that’s a real pisser, Tito. A1ady with some class walks into this shithole and you don’t even want to remember it, man. That’s bad."

"Huh," said Tito. He looked about as intimidated as a stoned mule.

Then a dirty gray rag appeared in his hand. He started making lazy circles across the top of the counter. Maybe he thought he was cleaning it. Ralph looked over at me and started talking loud enough to be heard at the tables.

"So this friend of mine was here last night, like I said. And he tells me a couple of the regulars here were talking about this lady that came in Sunday. It was a big joke over a couple of beers, he says. But you know, vato, these hotos can’t keep anything in their heads longer than a few minutes unless it’s somebody else’s pendejo. I guess we’re shit out of luck."

"Ralphas," I said. I was wondering if he’d laced his joint with something more potent. His will to live, and for me to live, seemed pretty damn weak at the I moment. He just held up his fingers to placate me and kept talking.

"Yeah," he said. "Tito, man, you ought to think about cattle for this place. Eat and drink less than these cavrons but more intelligent, and you could at least make barbacoa when you got tired of them."

It got very quiet. Then one of the tough guys started to get up. He was chewing on something, maybe a stick. When he smiled his front two teeth flashed silver. His two compadres kept their seats, but they turned around to stare at us. Tito’s other patrons had frozen like mice under a cat’s paw.

Ralph stayed calm, a little too calm for my tastes. He gave the guy with the silver teeth a smile like they were long—lost friends.

"So, Tito," Ralph said, not looking at the bartender. "How you feeling, man? You want to tell me anything? Like is this the guy she was with?"

Tito still didn’t look like he wanted to chat with us. He shrugged very slightly.

"Eh, chingado," Silver-teeth said. "Maybe we should do you up some barbacoa, huh? Maybe you got enough fat to fry."

Ralph spread his hands in a friendly gesture. “A man can only try, my friend. Or maybe if you got a story for me, we can hear that. Then we can all have another beer. "

"You want a beer?" Silver-teeth leaned over and broke his bottle on the cinder—block wall. Then he held up the jagged neck and smiled.

"Shit, man," said Ralph. He was already holding his revolver, eight inches of black steel that reflected the colored Christmas lights beautifully. "You want to play with me you got to get better toys."

Then he fired twice, which from a .357 is only slightly less impressive than a cannon barrage. Beer bottles exploded on the table, sending glass fragments and brown foam into the faces of Silver-teeth’s pals. There was one yelp of pain, then silence. Silver-teeth almost fell back over the edge of the wall. The rest of the bar patrons stayed very very still.

"That’s how you break glass," Ralph told them.

"Now, who wants to tell me something?"