Nocturne (25 page)

… twenty dollars each, which is practically giving the seats away. The promoters don’t expect to make a lot of money on the
gate. What’s twenty times two-fifty? Five K? So what’s that? Where they make the real money is selling food and alcohol. And,
of course, the betting. Thousands of dollars are wagered on each of the fights. During a typical three-hour night, there can
be anywhere from twenty to thirty matches, depending on the ferocity and duration of each contest. The average match will
run fifteen minutes, but some will end in five and others—the more popular ones with the crowd—can last as long as half an
hour or even forty minutes, the birds literally tearing themselves apart in frenzy.

There is a huge indoor parking garage across the street from the Alhambra, and it is here that the paying customers park their
cars, hidden from the eyes of prying police officers—though on this Friday night, informers have already been paid, and a
massive raid is in preparation even before the first of the cars arrives. Inside, there is joviality and conviviality, an
atmosphere reminiscent of the old days on the island, where cockfighting is still a gentleman’s sport. Luis can remember attending
his first fight when he was seven years old. His father was a breeder of fighting birds, and he recalls feeding them special
diets of raw meat and eggs supplemented with vitamins to fortify their stamina and strength. Now, here in this city, the owners
of fighting birds sometimes pay three, four hundred dollars a month to hide their roosters on clandestine farms in neighboring
states. These are expensive birds. Some of them are worth five, ten thousand dollars.

“It’s a gentleman’s sport,” he says again.

Drinking rum at the bar, eating
cuchifritos
, speaking their native tongue, the customers—mostly men, but here and there one will see a pretty, dark-haired, dark-eyed
woman dressed elegantly for the occasion—relax in an ambiance of total acceptance and fond recall. There could easily be tropical
breezes blowing through this converted theater, the swish of palm fronds outside, the rush of the sea against a white sand
beach. For a moment, there is respite for these transplanted people who more often than not are made to feel foreign in this
city.

The fights are furious and deadly.

This is a blood sport in every sense.

The roosters are crossbred with pheasants to fortify their most aggressive traits. Nurtured on steroids that increase muscle
tissue, dosed with angel dust to numb pain, they are equipped with fighting spurs and then are moved into the carpeted cockpit
to kill or be killed. In India, where the sport enjoys wide popularity, the birds fight “bare-heeled,” using only their own
claws to shred and destroy. In Puerto Rico, the trainers attach to the birds’ heels a long plastic apparatus that resembles
a darning needle. Here in this city, the chosen device is called a slasher. It is a piece of steel honed to razor-sharp precision.
These spurs are fastened to both claws. They are twin weapons of mutilation and destruction.

Luis himself can’t bear to watch the final moments of a fight, when the roosters, doped up with PCP, rip and tear at each
other with their metal talons, blood and feathers flying, the crowd screaming for a kill. More often than not,
both
birds are killed.

“It’s a sad thing,” Luis says. “No one likes to see animals hurt. This is a gentleman’s sport.”

The police who raided the theater at eleven twenty-seven
p.m
. last Friday apparently disagreed with his premise. Captain Arthur Forsythe, Jr., who led the team of E.S. officers who spearheaded
the operation, later told the press that the forced combat of these birds was nothing less than barbaric, a criminal act that
had to be abolished if this city were ever to call itself civilized. His men had taken out the two lookouts posted at the
entrance, handcuffing them and putting them down on the sidewalk before they could sound an alarm. They then went in wearing
bulletproof vests and carrying machine guns, followed by teams from the Four-Eight, the Task Force, and the ASPCA.

“There’s cameras and guard dogs,” Luis said. “I don’t know how they got in so quick and easy.”

Even so, by the time the raiders broke into the actual ring area upstairs, some of the false walls had already been moved
back and the event’s organizers were fleeing over rooftops and through tunnels, one leading out to Harris Avenue, another
running underground to a beauty parlor adjacent to the parking garage. The police caught only one of the promoters, a man
named Aníbal Fuentes, who was charged with two felony counts.

“This shouldn’t be allowed to happen,” Luis said, shaking his head. “Kings and emperors used to have cockfights, did you know
that? Even American
presidents
! Thomas Jefferson! George Washington! The father of the nation, am I right? He liked to watch cockfights. This is a sin,
what they’re doing. Persecuting people who enjoy an honest-to-God sport!”

In his report to the Police Commissioner, Captain Forsythe noted that on the street behind the theater his men had found twenty-five
bloodied roosters, all fitted with metal talons, twenty of them dead, the rest still alive and twitching in agony. In rooms
behind the false walls, officers from the Four-Eight found another forty birds in cages, pillowcases over their heads to keep
them calm in the dark before they were tossed into the ring.

“They came from all over,” Luis said. “Florida and Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Washington, D.C. Some trainers brought their
birds all the way from San Juan and Ponce! This was a big event, man! There were birds coming to the ring from all over! Like
toreadors arriving!”

“You didn’t happen to notice a black limo, did you?” Carella asked.

What the hell, he thought,
toreadors
arriving!

“Oh sure,” Luis said.

“What
kind
of limo?” Carella asked at once.

“A Caddy.”

“Where’d you see it?”

“Back of the theater. When I was walking over from the garage. The door we came in before. Where the trainers take the birds
in, you know? The stage door, I guess they call it. The one that’s busted now.”

“You saw a trainer taking a chicken out of a black Caddy limousine, is that right?”

“Not a chicken. A
rooster
. A fighting
cock
!”

“Trainer drove him up in a Caddy, is that right?”

“That’s right. Took him out of the backseat.”

“In a cage, or what?”

“No cage. Just a pillowcase over his head. Just his legs showing.”

“You wouldn’t
know
this trainer, would you?”

“Not personally.”

“Then how?”

“I looked up his name.”

“I’m sorry, you did what?”

“On the card.”

“The card.”

“Yeah, the owners’ names are on the card. I recognized him when he was carrying the bird in the ring. Remembered him driving
up in the Caddy. Figured he was a big shot, you know? I mean, a fuckin movie star bird in a limo, am I right? So I looked
up his name on the card.”

“And what
was
his name?” Carella asked, and held his breath.

“Jose Santiago,” Luis said.

P
riscilla and the boys could not find the club.

Their taxi drove up and down Harris Avenue forever, passing the darkened marquee of the Alhambra theater more times than they
cared to count. On their last swing past it, two men in heavy overcoats, both of them bareheaded, one of them a redhead, were
climbing into an automobile. Priscilla thought they looked familiar, but as she craned her neck for a better look through
the fogged rear window, the car doors slammed shut behind them. A third man, smaller, slighter, and wearing a short green
barn coat that looked as if it had come from L. L. Bean or Lands’ End, stood on the sidewalk, watching the car as it pulled
away.

“Back up,” Priscilla told the cabdriver.

“I’m not gonna spend all night here looking for this club,” the cabbie said.

“Just back up, would you please?” she said. “Before
he
disappears, too.”

The cabbie threw the car into reverse and started backing slowly toward where Luis Villada, his hands in his coat pockets,
was walking away from the Alhambra. At this hour of the morning, in this neighborhood, Luis would have run like hell if this
was anything but a taxi. Even so, he was wary until he saw the blond woman sitting on the backseat, lowering the window on
the curbside.

“Excuse me,” she called.

He stood where he was on the curb, not moving any closer to the taxi because now he saw that the blonde was with two
men
, both of them wearing hats. He didn’t trust men who wore hats.

“Yeah?” he said.

“Are you familiar with a club called The Juice Bar?”

“Yeah?” he said.

“Do you know where it is?”

“Yeah?”

“Could you help us find it, please?”

“There’s no sign,” he said.

“We can’t even find the address,” she said.

“Half the addresses up here, the numbers are gone.”

“It’s supposed to be 1712 Harris.”

“Yeah, that’s up the block,” he said, taking his right hand from his pocket and pointing. “Between the dry cleaners and the
carnicería
. They probably don’t have numbers, either.”

“Thank you very much.”

“It’s a blue door,” Luis said. “You have to ring.”

“Thank you.”

“De nada,”
he said, and put his hand back in his pocket, and began walking home.

He was mugged on the next corner.

His hatless assailant stole his watch, his wallet, and the envelope containing the three hundred dollars the detectives had
paid him for his time and his information.

In this city, you could legally serve alcoholic beverages till four in the morning, but the underground clubs operated till
a bit before sunrise, when all the vampires had to be back in their coffins. The Juice Bar offered booze, beer, wine and the
occasional fruit drink right up to the legal closing limit, and then—to the accompaniment of a three-piece jazz band—began
serving anything that turned you on. At six, the club offered breakfast while a lone piano player filled the air with dawnlike
medleys.

It was close to three o’clock when Priscilla rang the bell button set in the jamb to the right of the blue door.

“The fuck
is
this?” Georgie wanted to know. “Joe sent us?”

They waited.

A flap in the door opened.

Fuckin speakeasy here, Georgie thought.

Priscilla held up her card.

“I’m here to listen to the band,” she said.

“Okay,” the man behind the flap said at once, and opened the door. Fact of it was he hadn’t even glanced at her card. Until
four
a.m
. the club would be operating legally and he’d have admitted even a trio of Barbary pirates carrying swords and wearing black
eye patches.

The club was constructed like a crescent moon, with the bandstand at the apogee of its arc, farthest from the entrance door.
The entrance and the cloakroom were side by side on the curving flank of the arc’s left horn. The bar was on the right horn,
a dozen stools ranked in front of it. Priscilla and the boys left their coats with a hatcheck girl who flashed a welcoming
smile as she handed Georgie the three claim checks. She was wearing a black mini and a white scoop-necked blouse, and Georgie
looked her up and down as if auditioning her for a part in a movie. The equivalent of a
maître d’
—that is to say, he was wearing a jacket—offered to seat them at a table, but Priscilla said she preferred sitting at the
bar, closer to the band. In any club, it was always the bartender who noticed who came in when and did what where. It was
always the bartender who had information.

The band was playing “Midnight Sun.”

The tune almost brought tears to Priscilla’s eyes, possibly because she realized she could never hope to play it as well as
the piano player here in this Riverhead dive, possibly because her grandmother’s pathetic note had expressed a hope abandoned
long ago. Priscilla knew she would never become a concert pianist. The thought that Svetlana had still considered this a viable
ambition was heartbreaking, more so when one considered the meager sum of money she’d left for the achievement of such an
impossible goal. Or had there been more in the envelope? Which, after all, was why she was here looking for the tall blond
man who’d delivered it. But even so, even if there’d been a
million
dollars in that shabby yellow packet, Priscilla knew she didn’t have, would never have the stuff. How could she even begin
to
approach
a beast like the
presto agitato
movement of the Moonlight Sonata when she hadn’t yet truly mastered the chart to “Midnight Sun”? She dabbed at her eyes and
ordered a Grand Marnier on the rocks. The boys ordered Scotch again.

The bartender looked like an actor.

Every would-be actor in this city was either a bartender or a waiter.