The Book With No Name (42 page)

Sanchez was delighted with his choice of costume. He looked pretty damn cool, or at least
he
thought so. He had chosen to dress up as his all-time hero (after Rodeo Rex) – Batman. He had also insisted that Mukka should dress up as Robin so that they could be a dynamic-duo double act behind the bar. He knew Mukka wasn’t overly thrilled at having to do this, not least because of the costume. (The fact that he was a head taller and a good deal broader than Sanchez didn’t help matters, either.
Boy Wonder my ass,
he thought.) Where Sanchez had a Batman outfit like the one Michael Keaton had worn in the Tim Burton movie, his cook had been stuck with the Robin outfit from the camp sixties TV show. The ribbing he was getting from customers was pretty relentless. Everyone had a comment to make, generally an unfunny one, but a comment none the less. It wasn’t even midday yet, either, so there would be plenty more derisive remarks coming his way.

With the Tapioca less than half full but due to get busy in the very near future, Sanchez and Mukka found a whole new cause for concern when the first two of their unwelcome guests arrived. They came in the shape of Carlito and Miguel. The two goons, both dressed as cowboys, strutted up to the bar as though they owned the place.

‘Who are you guys supposed to be?’ Sanchez asked.

‘We’re the Lone Rangers,’ Miguel replied, for once taking the lead from Carlito.

‘The Lone Rangers?’ a baffled Mukka mocked from behind Sanchez. ‘That’s meant to be a joke, right?’

‘No. Why?’ Miguel looked slightly confused.

‘Well,’ said Mukka. ‘Clearly the whole point of the Lone Ranger is that there was only one of him. Hence “the
Lone
Ranger”.’

Miguel still looked baffled. Carlito, on the other hand, simply looked rather uninterested.

‘Look, asshole,’ said Miguel. ‘In the TV show he had Tonto with him, so he wasn’t exactly “
Lone
” then, either, was he?’

‘Tonto wasn’t a
Ranger,
though, was he? He was an
Indian,
’ Mukka pointed out. There was a moment’s silence.

‘Oh yeah,’ said Miguel, finally grasping the point Mukka was making. ‘I suppose not. Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.’

Winning the point had made the cook reckless. ‘Of course I’m fucking right,’ he crowed.

Miguel wasn’t used to being spoken to like this. Especially not by nobodies like Mukka. For a few painfully long seconds he seemed to be mulling over how to react. He stood motionless. Only his eyes moved. It was as if he could hear a voice in his head telling him to do something, and was looking around for the owner of that voice.

Sanchez’s stomach turned. He feared Miguel was about to react badly to Mukka’s comments. Normally banter like this would have livened things up in the bar, but right now he was seriously hoping Carlito and Miguel didn’t get too pissed and start killing anyone who joked about their costumes. It all depended on whether or not Jefe showed up and gave them the Eye of the Moon. If he didn’t, they were liable to go on a killing spree, and who better to wipe out first than Batman and Robin?

Fortunately, Miguel let the comments slide and ordered some drinks. ‘Two beers please, Batman,’ he called out as he leaned over the bar, checking out Sanchez’s and Mukka’s costumes. ‘Hey, Robin,’ he added, fondly. ‘Nice pants.’

There was a fair amount of sniggering from the other tenants of the bar at the mention of Robin’s pants. Not so much because it was a funny remark, but because Miguel was about the tenth consecutive customer to have commented on
them in the last half-hour.

‘So, Batman. You seen our friend Jefe yet?’ Miguel asked as Sanchez began pouring the beers.

‘Nope. He ain’t showed his face in here this morning.’

‘Fucksakes. It’s ten to twelve now. Where is that prick? ‘

Carlito decided to take over the questioning, gesturing to Miguel to quieten down simply by tapping him on the arm.

‘So riddle me this, Batman,’ he said to Sanchez. ‘If Jefe doesn’t show up here in ten minutes, what do you think is going to happen?’

‘I don’t know … What?’ Sanchez was growing nervous at the intimidating tone of the questioning.

‘All hell is going to break loose, that’s what. El Santino will be here, and he’ll want to blame someone. I believe he offered you a large sum of money to find the stone, and you haven’t found it.’

‘Well … no. But I never promised anything. I was just askin’ around as a favour. There wasn’t no agreement that I would find it for definite. Besides, my man Elvis who was lookin’ for it went and got himself killed.’

‘Sure.’ Carlito winked at Sanchez in an intimidating manner. Then he and Miguel picked up their beers and made their way over to a table in the middle of the barroom. They both took up chairs on the same side of the table so that they were facing the entrance.

Then they sat and waited to see who would arrive first, Jefe or El Santino. By any reckoning, they wouldn’t have too long to wait.

Dante was absolutely shitting himself. The crazy with the Freddy Krueger mask and the stripey red-and-black jersey had forced him at gunpoint to drive his newly acquired yellow Cadillac to the Tapioca Bar. Now, although he was scared for himself, he was also concerned about Kacy. She was back at the motel and he had no way of contacting her. Not least of all because he had a gun pointed at him, but also because this Freddy Krueger nut had taken his cellphone.

When at last they arrived at the Tapioca, Dante was heavily disappointed to find that there was plenty of space to park the car in the street outside the bar. Not many people were driving on this particular day, which was hardly surprising. Most were celebrating the end of the Lunar Festival and looking forward to a drink. Or twelve. As soon as Dante killed the engine Freddy barked an order at him. ‘Get outta the car, Terminator boy. We’re goin’ in for a drink.’

Dante did as he was told and walked gingerly up to the entrance, followed by Jefe, who didn’t even need to press a gun into his prisoner’s back. The young thief was way too scared to try to make a break for it, and Jefe knew it.

He wasn’t too scared, though, to pick up immediately on the tense atmosphere in the Tapioca. There were quite a few people in the bar, but no one seemed to be speaking. They just stared at the pair of them as they walked in. To Dante, it seemed as if everyone was waiting for someone important to arrive. With one of them in a Terminator outfit and the other dressed as Freddy Krueger, no one recognized them to start with. That soon changed, however, after they had made their
way up to the bar and Jefe made himself known.

‘Hey, Batman,’ he yelled at Sanchez. ‘Get me a beer. I got good news for you.’

‘Is that you, Jefe?’ Sanchez asked, peering closely at the eyes looking out from the Freddy Krueger mask.

‘Yeah, it’s me all right. I just found this guy drivin’ around in a yellow Cadillac on Elm Street.’

‘
Is that right?
’ The bartender’s tone was decidedly chilly.

Dante wasn’t sure of the significance of all of this, but he could tell it wasn’t good. It looked even worse when he saw two masked cowboys get up from a table near by. They looked like they had overheard what Jefe had said and were taking a keen interest. As they approached the bar Dante noticed that they were both armed, and that they were pointing their guns in the direction of him and his captor in nightmarish outfit.

‘So, Freddy Krueger, have you got something for us? Or are we gonna have to get nasty?’ one of the rangers asked Jefe.

The bounty hunter turned away from the bar to confront the two masked men approaching him. He looked calm and assured now, for even though his face wasn’t visible, his body language spoke volumes. This man had nothing to be afraid of.

‘Oh, I got the Eye. This Terminator punk was driving round town with it in his inside pocket. Thought we could all club together, and ask him exactly what the fuck he’s been doin’ with it. Reckon he killed Sanchez’s brother, too, an’ tried to kill my girl Jessica.’

‘You don’t say?’

It dawned on Dante that everyone in the bar seemed to have turned his or her attention upon him. And it wasn’t anything to do with being impressed by his outfit, either.

‘So who are you, Mr Terminator, and what the fuck did you want with our precious stone huh?’ the first ranger asked.

‘Nothing,’ Dante answered as confidently as he could. ‘A customer at the hotel I work in just gave it to me. His name
was Jefe, I think. Yeah, Jefe.’

He was not sure exactly how much trouble he was in at this point, but it was definitely more than he had ever been in before. So it was definitely time for a little bit of half-truth telling. With any luck he might just get away with it, too.

Then again, maybe not. ‘
That’s bullshit!
’ yelled Jefe. ‘
I’m
Jefe and I sure as fuck didn’t give it to you! You better sit down and start talking, ‘fore I get angry.’

Dante suddenly found himself being frogmarched over to the large wooden table that the two Lone Rangers had occupied. Jefe forced him to sit down in one of the chairs with his back to the entrance. Sanchez made his way out from behind the bar, knocking a glass on to the floor with his long black Batman cape. He took a seat next to Dante. The two Lone Rangers and Jefe took up places around the other side of the table.

Sanchez placed one black-gloved hand firmly on Dante’s shoulder and began the interrogation. Being questioned in an intimidating fashion by Batman was a new and fairly unwelcome experience for Dante.

‘Why did you kill my brother and his wife? And what do you want with Jessica?’

‘What? I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. And I don’t know anyone called Jessica.’

The senior of the Lone Rangers, which was Carlito, was next in line with a question. He had just lit a cigarette and placed the shiny silver lighter back in the breast pocket of his shirt. He puffed on the cigarette and left it hanging from the corner of his mouth as he spoke.

‘What were you doing with the stone? How did you get it? And more to the point,’ he said, looking around, ‘where the fuck is it?’

‘I’ve got it now,’ Jefe intervened.

‘Well, give it here.’

‘No. I’m keeping it ’til El Santino gets here. I’ll give it to him myself. That was the deal and I’m sticking to it.’

‘Suit yourself. You can give it to him now. Here he
comes,’ said Carlito, looking over Dante’s shoulder towards the entrance. ‘Bartender, you can get scarce now. This don’t concern you.’

Dante looked at what was happening in complete bewilderment. The guy in the Batman outfit got up from the table and headed back behind the bar. But who was this fellow El Santino who had supposedly arrived? Actually, it didn’t take a genius to work out who he was, which was just as well because Dante was no genius. Standing at the bar with a face covered in black-and-white make-up was El Santino. He had come dressed as Gene Simmons from the rock band Kiss. This wasn’t a great step out of normality for El Santino. In fact, it was not far off how he normally looked. He just had slightly more make-up on than usual. The long dark hair was all his own, and so were the muscles. And boy-oh-boy, did he have muscles. This was as big a man as Dante had ever seen, and he’d seen a few in recent times.

‘Hey, Batman. Get me a beer and a bottle of your best whisky,’ El Santino snarled at Sanchez. He turned from the counter and faced the table where all the action was taking place.

‘Now, which one of you sorry punks has got my Eye?’ he roared.