A few weeks later, I called Marlo and a deep-throated,
female voice answered the phone. I
asked if I could speak with Marlo. The voice quavered something indistinct and
muffled. I repeated my question and
there was a suppressed cry and then silence.
I heard the receiver jiggling on the cradle before the line went dead.
I called back, but after a few rings I hung up.
I hadn’t heard from Candy since the night she beat me at chess and
I didn’t know her telephone number or where she lived.
I called Lyle to see if he knew anything about her.
The
first thing he said was, “Luisa went
to her sister’s with the kids.”
“How is Luisa?”
“She thinks I’ve been two-timing her with Candy.”
“With Candy?”
“Yeah, and she caused Candy to get beat up real bad.”
A tide of blood rose to my head. I
said, quietly, “What?”
“That’s right. Candy called
and Luisa hung up in her face. Fifteen
minutes later, she called again and I had to push Luisa away from the phone. Luisa's eight months pregnant man, and she fell
against the table but I couldn’t get the phone away from her and the bitch
hung up on Candy again. Then she started
screaming at me. Said I hit a pregnant
woman. Can you believe that?”
I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“She said I was a no good son of a bitch because I hit a pregnant woman. And she took the kids and went to her sister’s.”
“What happened to Candy?”
“Fuck.” He was silent and I heard the aspirator spraying
mist into his throat. “Candy called
about three hours later from a phone booth and said that her pimp beat her
up real bad. Told me where to pick
her up. Said he locked her in his apartment,
but he got drunk and she stole the keys and got out. I took her to the hospital. Two of her teeth are knocked out and her right
arm is broken. Her face is black and
blue and when I left the hospital her eyes were almost closed.”
I was stunned into silence.
He said, “It was Luisa’s fault.”
I heard myself ask, “Was Luisa
hurt?”
He started yelling. “I don’t
give a shit. That fucking cunt can
ride to hell on a broomstick. I don’t
care if she loses the goddamned baby.
I want her to lose it.” He added
in a pleading voice, “She won’t stop
having babies Brad. She wants to have
ten children.”
He paused and I still couldn’t say anything.
His voice cracked with self-pity, “She
says her mother had 10 children and she won’t feel right unless she has 10
children too.” After a long pause,
he said, “After she got pregnant with the third one,
I had a vasectomy man, and she hasn’t slept with me since. Can you blame me?”
“You never told me that.”
“Yeah. I had a vasectomy. So what.”
“I didn’t know. I mean that
she hasn’t slept with you. No.” I noticed that my voice was tired sounding.
“I don’t blame you.” I drew a deep breath. “Let’s put the bastard out of his misery.”
The words came out coldly, as if I was simply drawing a logical conclusion.
He said, as if he hadn’t heard me,
“It was Luisa’s fault.”
“Are you going to tell me who beat Candy up?”
“Don’t worry about it Brad. They’ve got a cop protecting her.”
“A cop protecting her?”
“She can have visitors.”
“I’m going to make him pay for that.”
“You can’t do nothing. It isn’t
your problem.”
“What about you? What are you
going to do?”
“George Duval’s a scumbag man. I
told you already. I don’t want to touch
him. He grew up in foster homes and his mother was
a whore. He don’t even have no relatives.
What did you expect?” He added, as
an afterthought. “And his mother’s
dead.”
“I would like to see her.”
“You don’t want to see her.” He
paused. “You want to see her sister in the bed next
to her.”
“Her sister?”
“She looks just like Candy. Before
Candy got beat up. But she won’t look
at nobody. She just stares at the wall.”
I yelled into the receiver, “I
don’t want to see another woman! I
want to see Candy.”
“Calm down man.” He paused and
his voice rose to a higher pitch. “I’ve
had enough people yelling at me for one day.
Now don’t you start in, you mother fucker.”
“Are you going down there to the hospital with me or not?”
“Yeah to see the girl next to her.”
His answer was so absurd, I didn’t know how to respond.
He continued, “I felt like fucking
her right there, but she wouldn’t even look at me. The cop outside the door
said she was in shock. Said she was
gang banged by five guys”
“Gang banged?”
“They picked her up. She was
hitch hiking.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Man, I would have picked her up too.”
I got up from the couch and screamed into the phone, “Fuck you man. Can’t you think of anything but sex? If you don’t stop lying I’m going to come over
there and beat the shit out of you.” I
threw the phone against the wall. I
heard his voice squawking in the receiver on the floor.
“I’m not lying ... Calm down
man. I’m telling you the truth.”
I picked up the receiver.
He asked, “Are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“Calm down Brad. She’s only
a whore.”
“What hospital are they at?”
“
“Where in
“In building H. Right behind
emergency. You know, by the
“I’m going to hurt somebody.”
“I told you, she’s just a whore.”
I was so enraged that I forgot to bring my Beretta. Driving down MacArthur
Freeway, I tried to convince myself that the girl in the hospital bed next
to Candy wasn’t Marlo after all, but I couldn’t.
Lyle lived only a few blocks from the
hospital but we drove anyway and parked in front, on the street. When he got into the car he said, “I got another job.”
“Another job?”
“I’m working in a box factory.”
“Why are you doing that?”
“It pays more money.”
From the mechanical, rehearsed sound
of his answer and the false jauntiness, I knew that he had been fired from
his job as a bouncer at Frenchy's. We drove the short distance to the hospital
in silence. The setting sun painted
the clouds rust red against a pale blue sky.
He agreed to wait in the car while I tried to get in to see them. The front desk was empty, and I wandered around
the grounds until I found building H. I
walked through an open door and wandered the halls until I saw an empty folding
chair in front of a door, with a paperback lying face down on it.
I went up to the door and peered through the window. A man, wearing a white tee shirt, was crouched
near the bed, talking to Candy, whose face was horribly swollen and discolored.
His arms were covered with tattoos.
The blue uniformed cop was standing at the foot of the bed with his
back to the door. Marlo was in the next bed, lying
on her back, with her head propped up on a pillow, eyes closed.
Tears came to my eyes. I turned, and tiptoed quickly down the hall
towards the stairs.
I ran down the stairs and all the way to the car.
I opened the door and leaned in, “Do
you have your .357 with you.”
“No. Why?”
“He’s up there with her. Now
is our chance.”
“Are you crazy? You think I’m
going to spend the rest of my life on
I growled through clenched teeth, “You
don’t understand anything, you simple shit.
If he pulls a gun, I want to be covered.”
He stared up at me for a long time, with wide, uncomprehending eyes. “Count me out Brad. I’m not shooting anyone.”
“And if he pulls a gun?”
He was silent for a moment. “I
didn’t bring my pistol.”
“Go back to your apartment and get it.”
His eyes blazed in the darkness.
I said, “He’s got to come out
of that entrance. Are you going to
cover me or not?”
“What if he’s got some guys waiting for him?”
“We can get him before he gets to his car.”
He said, “So what are you planning
to do?”
“I’m going to tell him to stay away from her.”
“He isn’t carrying no weapons.”
“He might be.”
“Look Brad. Duval knew the cop
would be guarding the front door. And
he knew that Candy might start screaming at him to get out and tell the cop
she was going to press charges. He
wouldn’t be carrying no weapons because, for one thing, he’s on parole.” He paused and said, almost as an afterthought,
to himself, “I’m surprised he went
up there at all.”
We got out of the car.
I said, “Lock your door man,
this neighborhood isn’t safe.” He had
forgotten how to lock my Volkswagen door from the inside and I had to show
him how. We walked back to the main
entrance, sat on a wooden bench outside and waited.
After about fifteen minutes, Duval came through the doors of the main
entrance. He was wearing an open leather jacket over a
white tee shirt.
I stood up, about twenty feet from him, and said,
“Hey man, are you a friend of Candy’s?”
He stopped in his tracks. I
walked towards him, carefully. When
the light from the electric lamp hit my face, he turned and ran towards the
thicket of underbrush that was between the sidewalk and us. I took out after him, with Lyle at my heels.
He slipped on the grass, and I stood over him in the darkness.
“Did you do that to her?” I
asked, standing over him, panting like an animal.
I watched his hands. They didn’t
move.
“I didn’t do it man. Her pimp
did it.”
“So who in the fuck are you?”
He was silent and his breath came heavy and fast.
I heard the sound of Lyle’s feet moving on the other side of him, about
twenty feet away, in the darkness. Lyle
said, “I’ve got you covered man. Don’t move or go for a weapon.” The only sound was Duval’s breathing. Then Lyle said, in a dry voice, “That’s her pimp.”
From the ground, he raised his hands over his head.
Panic was in his eyes. “I don’t
have no weapons man.”
I said, “I ought to beat the
living shit out of you.”
He stared up at me like a trapped animal, and suddenly he was up and
running towards the road. I sprang
forward and tackled him. We were on
a hill and we rolled and suddenly he was on top of me.
I grabbed his throat and flipped him over my shoulder, in one movement,
plunging my knee into his solar plexus. In
the darkness, I heard the air escape from his lungs and the thud of his back
on the grass. I raised my right fist
and plunged it into his face. His arms
flailed in front of me like the wings of a giant bird. I came down with my left hand and then with
my right, until his hands jerked helplessly at his sides. He lay motionless and I hit him twice with my
left fist, and then pummeled his face with my right fist until Lyle pulled
me off.
“Get off him man. I want a piece
of him.” He shoved me hard, to one
side, and I rolled down the hill towards the fence, coming to rest against
a bush. Lyle began kicking him in the
ribs and then moved back a few feet and jumped high in the air, with his feet
tucked under him, and landed on his chest with both feet. I heard a sickening cracking sound that sounded
like ribs breaking.
I sprang to my feet and ran up the hill towards him, positioning myself
between him and the man on the ground. “Let’s
get out of here. That’s enough.”
“I feel like killing the bastard!”
“Keep your voice down. We’ve
got to get out of here before the cops come.”
We ran down the hill, straight for the sidewalk but the fence was too
high and it was covered with barbed wire at the top.
We doubled back up the steep hill to the long, asphalt driveway.
In the car, I asked, “Are you
sure he was her pimp? What if he was
telling the truth.”
“I’ve seen him, man. That was
George Duval. Why do you think I jumped
on him like that?”
We drove to my apartment in