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  “You mean a sign like Moses and that bush?”

  “Well, not that big, but still. I just know it. You need to go back to that Taco Bell and wait for him. He’ll be there. Again. Remember that cop I told you I knew from a church here in Dallas? He followed Flaco for a few days; he eats supper at that same place every night between nine and ten. Orders the same thing. Did he sing that song?”

  “Yeah.”

  Plutarco paid for breakfast, left a nice tip on the table. The three of us walked out of the restaurant.

  I walked with the preacher as the men went their separate ways. We had gone maybe ten yards when Stan called out—

  “¡Oye, Hermano Plutarco! You know what they got just a block down the street? The Texas Theater. I think that’s where they caught that dude Oswald; the man who shot Kennedy, back in the ’60s. I don’t like that. Maybe that’s another sign? Something bad.”

  IV

  I decided to join Stan on his stakeout instead of attending the Pentecostal tent revival and listening to Hammer preach whatever it was he preached, so I was waiting outside the Taco Bell when Stan showed up around nine p.m. We went inside. Sure enough, there he was with his back to us, wearing a black vest and black felt cowboy hat; ordering his supper and singing his song. Again.

  Stan wanted to see if his old friend would recognize him so he walked up, tapped Flaco on the shoulder and said “Oye, Flaco, como estas, amigo? Usted me recuerda? Soy Estanislado Escobedo. Te acuerdas, de la musica?”

  Nothing. The man did not recognize Stan; almost looked through him.

  Flaco turned, picked up his drink and paper bag, and slipped out the door. Stan and I started following. We must have walked five miles, Flaco eating his supper and drinking the Coke.

  Stan was talking about the ’60s as we walked, remembering how they would play music all night long, all kinds of music: rancheras, polkas, cumbias, R&B , and soul.

  “Maaaan. Otis Redding was the best. Not that ‘Dock of the Bay’ shit for American Bandstand, but cool tunes like ‘These Arms of Mine’ and ‘I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.’ We had a tight sound—tenor sax, bari sax, two trumpets, a Hammond B3 with a Leslie speaker, guitar, bass, and drums. We were cool and man did the girls love it. Sunny and the Sunliners didn’t have nothing on us when we played ‘Talk to Me.’ Jose y Carlos, two brothers, were on trumpet, me on bari and Gilberto on tenor sax, Bob on guitar, Jesse on bass, El Martillo en los tambores, La Vidi on the organ, and Flaco singing.”

  V

  He was sitting at the table, a man in his seventies, wearing a white starched guayabera, looking more Hawaiian than Mexican with a white goatee and dark, squinting eyes; looking like he could have been a large old university professor—not large as in the University of Texas or Texas A&M , but retired-wrestler large—yet old and distinguished, like someone’s grandfather; maybe five feet ten inches, weighing in at three hundred pounds. The woman, light skinned, had green eyes and her hair, dyed red, was big, stacked up like the day she was getting married back forty years ago, in 1971.

  La Calle Doce restaurant featured Mexican seafood. Don Poncho and his wife Porfidia were regular customers. The food was good, had fancy names that raised the prices, but it was still Mexican style, or estilo Mejicano.

  Dinner was being served. The ceviche, a dish of fish and shrimp cooked in lime and prepared with tomato, onion, and cilantro, and the sopa de mariscos had been a delicious start. The next course being served was braised short ribs and pan-seared grouper. Don Poncho was drinking ice-cold Budweiser and his wife sipped Pellegrino.

  VI

  Stan watched as his old friend stopped, then entered a restaurant on 12th Street. He hesitated—

  “Maybe he’s getting another drink or maybe he has to take a leak?”

  Stan didn’t enter the restaurant. He called Hammer instead, on his cell phone. I didn’t stick around to hear what he told the preacher. I walked in.

  It happened without warning. The waiter looked up. I watched as a crimson line slashed across the big man’s face, starting at his right temple, angling downward, a dark red trail streaking toward the left side of his open mouth. Two points as big as dimes hit just above the heart; the line stitching down then up until it finally ended at his left shoulder. The woman sitting across from the big man was staring in shock as she studied her white shawl and realized that she had been spared. Her husband was oozing red from his right ear, across his face and chest, the table already soaked. Six .38-caliber bullets. There would not be an open casket.

  He heard the shots while standing outside, waiting across the street from the restaurant. He’d seen the flashes and shadows peeking out from between the slats of the venetian blinds. Stan was already crying as he watched him leave La Calle Doce. A few people ran out screaming. Flaco didn’t run, he just walked. I was right behind him. Stan crossed the street, joined me, and we started walking, Flaco about fifty yards in front of us. We headed east on 12th Street to the end of the block, turned left onto South Bishop Avenue, walked the block and crossed Center Street, walked another short block and turned right on West Jefferson Boulevard. Flaco had stopped. He was standing in front of the Texas Theater at 231 West Jefferson Boulevard when a unit of the Dallas Police Southwest Patrol Division pulled up and two cops got out, .45s drawn, ordering him to hit the pavement.

  Flaco was singing, “. . . and making love on Satur—” as he turned to face the policemen, revolver in his right hand, six spent shell casings in the cylinder.

  THE PRIVATE ROOM

  BY MERRITT TIERCE

  Uptown

  Tonight they’ve put me on thirty men in the Private Room. The men are all white, fat, and over fifty. Sometimes parties like this will show up en masse on a hotel bus or in a drove of limos, if they’re in town for a convention and everything is organized. But these guys trickle in, and by the time the last few arrive some of them have already been drinking for two hours. DeMarcus, my partner on the party, got everything started—introduced us, went over the set menu, helped them pick out their wine.

  I wonder if it’s a good thing that DeMarcus will be the face and I’ll be backwaiting. You get to know the look of new money and the look of old; you can call on sight, with near-perfect accuracy, whether a person is a martini, a red wine, a Stella, a Just water no ice extra lemon and a straw did I say no ice?; you know that certain European accents doom your take. You have an entire catalog of these things in your head but still there will come that table, they’re wearing jeans and when you ask them what they want to drink they say two Diet Cokes and iced tea and you think you know what you’re in for—an appetizer as an entrée, split three ways, ten percent on a tab that’s missing a couple digits. They’re making out at the table, he looks twice her age, you can’t figure out why the other one is with them. Low class, you think, guess it’s not my night. Then you walk up with the second basket of bread they asked for and they say to bring out a bottle of Dom Rosé. After that they drink the 2000 Harlan Estate and order the big lobster tail. You start moving like you’ve got somewhere to be and when the bartender tries to play around with you instead of handing over the decanter, you snap at him because if they come through you stand to make five hundred dollars off a three-top.

  Same thing with these types in the Private Room, the unpredictability. Sometimes they want a girl with their steak—a rival establishment across town employs only women—and sometimes they don’t think a girl can do the job, or they seem embarrassed for you.

  I won’t be talking much from here on out, and with the look of them I’m glad of that even if it might have worked out better for us with me up front. I fill their wine glasses and pick up the cocktail napkins they’ve brought with them from the bar. Are you ready for another, sir? I say. One of them has already downed three Jack’n’waters and the hors d’oeuvres haven’t even arrived. His nose is red and his eyes are pushed deep into a big waxy face. I ring up another for him and when I head into the well to pick it up DeMarcus is there, loading
some other cocktails onto a tray. I point at the Jack and ask him if he’ll take it with him so I can prep some mise en place. Who’s it goin’ to? he asks. You know, I say, Lushie. Ah, he says, big fella? They’re all big, I say. Well, they’re all Lushies too, he says.

  Back in the room Lushie is standing, whiskey in hand, inviting everyone else to sit. He starts talking about their colleague who passed recently, due to an aortal aneurism. You can tell the others think this is a downer. They just got going on their buzz and they have to tell it to hold on a minute because it’s making them want to laugh when they should be serious, so they start playing with their forks and staring at the tablecloth and especially they start drinking harder. You look across the table and the arms and glasses are going up and down quietly but nonstop like derricks. Lushie is using long medical terms with the somber educated air of a preacher bringing the word. The word is—what? I think. Heartsick? Moderation? Death? Quit it all right now?

  Finally he drains his glass and sits all in one motion and the chatter folds back in around us and I can tell some of them feel like they barely made it out. Now they’re talking merger, due diligence, cash flow, liquidity, execute, and the deadly amortization. I have my language too, so though I think about asking Lushie if he wants me to mainline it for him I put it the nice way and say with a prompting lilt in my voice, Would you like me to keep those coming for you, sir? and I start making them double talls to slow him down, something Cal taught me. He wants to drink, let him drink, and make him pay for it too—he feels that second or third double hit his ass and he don’t slow down, more power to him. But you don’t got to be running around for him like his goddamn lil’ bitch.

  We take the order, DeMarcus on one side of the table and me on the other. We have an unspoken rivalry about who can get from position one to position fifteen the fastest. The pros get the order-taking down to a call-and-response that reads each guest’s mind and draws out his selections for three courses with all pertinent temperatures and modifications in forty-five seconds or less, without letting him feel the slightest bit rushed. You expand your intake words, like Certainly and Absolutely and That won’t be a problem, sir, you let them hang rich and pillowy in a smile and the guest thinks only of how accommodating and efficient you are, he doesn’t hear the ticking of the giant railroad clock in your head that is Chef, waiting on the line for this order because a big party will affect the cook times for everything in the house. I’m a position behind DeMarcus since one of my guys takes forever to acknowledge me, even though I’m standing there next to him saying, Sir? Sir? Have you had a chance to decide? At some point you have to give up and wait for the friends he’s talking to to advocate for you, give him a sign with their eyes that he’s being rude. I hear DeMarcus talking to his seat 8 about what side dishes he wants on the table with the entrées. This guy calls him “Mark”—DeMarcus is sensitive about his name, at least in the restaurant, and I don’t blame him. He’ll truncate it like that if he feels he needs to, though I think his name sounds regal and hip in the parking lot late at night when his brother swings by to get him and they ask me to climb in for a puff. On my side, on Lushie’s right, there was one black guy. Guess he’s their EEOC compliance. He’s the only one of the lot who doesn’t order a steak—he asks for the salmon, well done, and wants to make sure some greens will be on the table. Then I bend over by Lushie’s ear to get his order, and he does that thing fat people do where they sit facing forward but they tilt their head back and up toward you like a flower looking for the sun. He says he’ll have the rib eye. Maybe he’s thinking the same thing I am about that because when I ask him what he’ll have for dessert he pauses piously and says, I don’t believe I’ll have dessert tonight. I’ll pass. You’ll pass, okay, I say seriously while making notes like a doctor.

  I leave the room to ring up my half of the table and while I’m at the POS my friend Asami comes up behind me. I’ve got some fucking Martians tonight, she says. I know, I say, they’re everywhere, and I debrief her about the Private Room. She’s telling me these stupid Botoxies at her table are doing the Sandra Oh thing to her again. It always goes down the same way. The ladies see her and she’s taking their cocktail order and one of them says to another, Oh, you know who she reminds me of? and then turns to Asami and says, You know who you look just like? and Asami usually gives them this big gorgeous grin and says, I bet I know exactly what you’re thinking, or, No! I have no idea, who’s that? but she’s telling me that tonight instead she kind of lost it and said to them, I don’t look anything like Sandra Oh, she’s Korean! But I don’t look anything like her anyway!

  * * *

  Back in the room I’m clearing the hors d’oeuvres and getting everybody cleaned up and ready for the salad course when the Boss stands and starts telling jokes. The Boss is the one DeMarcus spoke to at the beginning about the wine—he’ll be paying the tab and apparently the reason for this fete is some deal he signed with Lushie. I lent them my pen earlier when they set the contract down in front of him and he started patting his pockets. So two doctors are banging this nurse, he says. She gets pregnant but she doesn’t tell them till she’s seven months gone, so they send her to Florida to have the baby. They’re gonna figure out how to raise it and do right, and of course she’ll come back to work at a much higher salary than before because they both have wives and kids. So she delivers and one doc calls the other and says he has bad news. What’s that? says the other doc. Well, she had twins, says the first doc, and mine died!

  Grinning, he lets the laughter die down and then he goes, Okay, how ’bout this one. So one doctor says to the other, Are you fucking the nurse? The other doctor says, No, why? And the first doctor says, Good! You fire her!

  Now he rides the laughter, shouting, How do you know your wife is dead? Sex is the same but the dishes start to pile up!

  I catch DeMarcus’s eye across the table and I can see the laugh he’s stifling pulling at the corners of his mouth. He gives me a look like, What are you gonna do? It’s funny, and I shake my head like he’s a traitor. I wonder: if he and EEOC weren’t here, would the Boss be telling nigger jokes too? The Boss continues with the jokes and the room is getting stuffy. I tell DeMarcus I’m going out to get Danny, the GM, to check the thermostat. It’s hot as fucking hell in here, I say. The HAR-HAR-HARing is so loud I don’t even have to whisper.

  When I come back I’m moving around the table, setting out steak knives and crumbing, and when I get to the Boss he puts his hand on my elbow and says affably, We’re not offending you with any of this, are we? Ha! I say to the Boss, you think I haven’t heard this before? I give him a matronly smile with this but he’s already patting my elbow and turning away.

  The air conditioner must have gone out again. It’s a chronic problem in this room, and I notice that jackets are off and collars unbuttoned. EEOC is the only one who doesn’t seem to notice the heat, or else he’s deliberately resistant to shedding any layers around these guys. The building is really old, it was built in the ’40s, and though the owner is a millionaire he’s notoriously cheap. It might cost $15,000 to replace the AC but he won’t do it. He made his money in the ’70s by investing in the development of the first heart stent. He keeps demand up, feeding all these people meat slathered in butter.

  I corner Danny in the bar. Danny, you got to do something about the AC, I plead, I really don’t need to see these guys take off any more clothing. Danny says All right all right sista I’m on it and I know that means I don’t give a fuck if they get heatstroke and die in there. At least I’ve made the gesture of looking out for them, at least if one of them bitches to him on the way out about how hot it was, it won’t be news to Danny and I’m covered. He’ll be ready to say I know brother I know, we had our man working on it all night, I can’t fucking believe it went out while you got all your guys here, you of all people, I know it was a big night for you, how was everything else? But when I get back in the room I think maybe the heat has sobered them up some because in the d
in I hear the Boss say, But I can’t tell this one in mixed company. They’ve killed our last four cases of the 2002 vintage and we’ve had to move on to the ’03, so when he says this I’m facing into the corner of the room, opening another bottle. I roll my eyes, looking down at the landscape on the Joseph Phelps label, but I don’t leave and I hear him mutter something about he’ll tell it later so I go ahead and pour around the table and take a coffee order. I say Would you care for cognac or espresso with dessert? I never say cappuccino or latte even though we can do it.

  I learned that from Nic Martinez, in this room. I was assigned to be his bitch and he resented having to split the take with me because it was a preset and he could have done it on his own. I didn’t fuck up anything on the first three courses but at the end he heard me say coffee cappuccino and he pinched the back of my elbow hard. In the corner of the room he said, Do you want him to like you? nodding at our busser. I didn’t know what to say so I said What do you mean? It’s not a trick question, he said. You put him in the back foaming milk for twenty minutes he’s gonna hate you, and I am too. And don’t say coffee, it’s free on a preset. I thought he was off me forever because of that, but later the same week I walked past the Private and he asked me if I partied. I didn’t know what he meant then either but I said yes and that was the beginning of something. He was resetting the table with his partner just like he’d done with me. I went home with him that night and he made me some microwaved apple cinnamon oatmeal and told me he loved my big juicy ass. In his bed when he said, Are you gonna get it? I lied and said yes and when he asked me if I got it I lied again. This is the room where Joe Ambrogetti bent me over in the dark, over there where the wine bucket is now. This is the room where Estéban kissed me one night—walked up to me with all kinds of purpose and kissed me. I kissed him back for no reason.