o o o
The Club Satan was a slate-roofed adobe hut sporting an ingenious neon sign: a little red devil poking the air with a trident-headed hard-on. It had its very own brownshirt doorman, a little Mex who scrutinized incoming patrons while fondling the trigger housing of a tripod BAR. His epaulet flaps were stuffed with yankee singles; I added one to the collection as I walked in, bracing myself.
From the sewer to the shitstorm.
The bar was a urinal trough. Marines and sailors masturbated into it while they gash dived the nudie girls squatting on top. Blow jobs were being dispensed underneath tables facing the front of the room and a large bandstand. A guy in a Satan costume was dicking a fat woman on a mattress. A burro with red velvet devil horns pinned to his ears stood by, eating hay out of a bowl on the floor. To the right of the stage, a tuxedo-clad gringo was crooning into a microphone: “I’ve got a rich girl, her name’s Roseanne, she uses a tortilla for a diaphragm! Hey! Hey! I’ve got a girl, her name is Sue, she’s a one-way ticket to the big fungoo! Hey! Hey! I’ve got a girl her name’s Corrine, she knows how to make my banana cream! Hey! Hey! . . .”
The “music” was drowned out by chants from the tables– “Donkey! Donkey!” I stood there getting sideswiped by revelers, then garlicky breath smothered me. “Joo want the bar, handsome? Breakfast of champions, one dollar. Joo want me? Roun’ the world, two dollar.”
I got up the guts to look at her. She was old, fat, her lips crusted with chancre sores. I pulled bills from my pocket and shoved them at her, not caring what denomination they were. The whore genuflected before her nightclub Jesus; I shouted, “Ernie. I have to see him now. The guy at Club Boxeo sent me over.”
Mamacita exclaimed, “Vamanos!” and ran interference for me, pushing through a line of jarheads waiting for dinner seats at the bar. She led me to a curtained passageway beside the stage and down it to the kitchen. A spicy aroma perked my tastebuds–until I saw the rear end of a dog carcass hanging out of a stewpot. The woman spoke in Spanish to the chef–a strange-looking guy who came off as a Mex-Chink halfbreed. He nodded along, then walked over.
I had the snapshot of Lee out. “I heard this man gave you some trouble a while back.”
The guy gave the photo a cursory eyeball. “Who wants to know?”
I flashed my badge, giving the breed a glimpse of hardware. He said, “He your friend?”
“My best friend.”
The breed tucked his hands under his apron; I knew one of them was holding a knife. “Your friend drink fourteen shots of my best Mescal, house record. That I like. He make lots of toasts to dead women. That I don’t mind. But he try to fuck with my donkey show, and that I don’t take.”
“What happened?”
“Four of my guys he take, fifth he don’t. Rurales take him home to sleep it off.”
“Thats it?”
The breed pulled out a stiletto, popped the button and scratched his neck with the dull side of the blade. “Finito.”
I walked out the backdoor into an alley, scared for Lee. Two men in shiny suits were lounging by a streetlight; when they saw me they picked up the tempo of their foot shuffling and studied the ground like dirt was suddenly fascinating. I took off running; gravel scraping behind me said the two were in hot pursuit.
The alley ended at a connecting road to the red light block, with another, barely navigable dirt fork angling off in the direction of the beach. I took it at a full sprint, my shoulders brushing chicken wire fencing, penned-up dogs trying to get at me from the opposite sides. Their barks destroyed the rest of the street noise; I had no idea if the two were still on my tail. I saw the ocean-front boulevard looming in front of me, got my bearings, figured the hotel to be a block to the right and slowed to a walk.