The only lights flickered behind window shades.įrom the border you couldn't see either city. North of the line, even the headlamps of cars stayed unlit or dimmed by thin coats of paint on their lenses. Over both cities lay thick, drizzling clouds. Mofeto," he commanded, and whipped his arm toward the door. The patron, a Latino, in his cream-colored pin-striped suit, stepped across the sidewalk and aimed a finger at the runt. He tried to push off with his legs, but they slipped in the mud and the biggest mestizo stomped and held his ankle down, while the runt bent closer until the gun barrel touched the base of Clifford’s skull.Ī deep voice shouted from the door of the Club de Paris.
“I better kill you now.”Ĭlifford dropped and covered his head with his arms. We don’t want trouble.” Lazily, he folded and pocketed his switchblade, reached beneath his baggy coat, then his hand shot out, gripping a long-barreled. From the side of his mouth, like a parrot, he squawked. The runt straightened his coat and gazed both ways again. The runt of the litter, with a sharp face, pinched mouth, starved eyes, he wore a felt hat and a baggy dark suit His hand with the switchblade swung beside him.Īs the runt stepped closer. Finally the one they called Mofeto, who had sliced the gash in Clifford’s cheek, sauntered out of the club.
The biggest one kicked him with a pointed boot in the neck. They flipped him over, threw him face down into the mud. The big mestizo thugs dragged him through the doorway of the Club de Paris into the fog, across the dirt sidewalk and down three high steps to the muddy street. I chose Tom Hickey because he resembles my father, who didn't last long enough for me to know him very well, at least until Hickey and I went searching.Īs Clifford Rose came to, the first thing he recognized was the stink, like a drainpipe running out of hell. And I still wondered what had become of Wendy.Ī few years ago, I decided to visit that place and time, searching for her. I’d often wished to have known the place back then, roamed the streets alongside displaced European Jews and German conspirators as well as the beggars, homeless Indians, and multitude of hustlers you’ll find there even now if you look in the right neighborhoods. Older friends and relatives have told me dozens of stories about that era, when San Diego, only 20 miles north, was possibly the largest military installation in the world. I was bom near Tijuana soon after World War II. I’m fascinated by the kinds of people drawn to the frontiers, and by the city itself, and its history - observing Tijuana is like watching Mexico and the U.S through a magnifying glass. I got intrigued by the idea of searching for someone lost in Tijuana, which was and is a marvelously and sometimes comically sinister place. By God, they gave me a pile of money, hundred times as much as the singles' rag offered. But a year or two later, after ‘The Blue Fox” appeared in Colorado Review, I sent it to the National Endowment for the Arts as part of a fellowship application. I’d gotten too damned fond of the girl to make her perform for a gang of swinging singles. The publisher probably would’ve turned it down. The way she looked when she recognized him, as though he'd lassoed her heart in barbed wire and yanked it tight, made Terry drag me out of there and later promise not to whisper to anyone our story of Wendy’s secret life.Ībout ten years later I wrote a story about her, called it ‘The Blue Fox.” and decided not to give it to the singles’ magazine. She'd turned him down graciously, claiming that every weekend she visited a boyfriend who attended college up the coast. Only a few weeks before, Terry had asked her out. A sweetheart, homecoming princess, B student and reputed virgin.
She was a cheerleader at his high school. Maybe one of those desperados hated ballplayers - we still wore our jerseys - and had murdered him. I squeezed my beer so hard the cheap glass cracked.
0 kommentar(er)
