A Time of Predators

So they clustered around the bootlegged phone extension while Champ dialed. The woman picked up on the third ring. Not even Rick could find any fault with Champ’s performance; in fact, at the end of the two minutes he was sweating. Some of the things Champ said would happen, not only to the boy but to the woman herself, if anybody talked to the police about that night by the golf course, made him, in fact, feel sort of sick. When he glanced over, Julio looked the same way.

But Heavy, once the phone was back in its hook, seemed to feel only a slightly lascivious excitement and sense of power. “What’d she say, Champ, huh? What’d she say when—”

“She started to cry there at the last,” said Champ happily.

Chapter 10

Curt came from the tin-lined shower in the locker room, his skin flushed red from the needle spray of water, and began toweling off vigorously. He felt better than he had for a long time, at least physically. The scales told him he had broken two hundred pounds for the first time in several years, and the mirror told him that the workouts were beginning to make a difference in his appearance, also. It was just a little after noon of a Thursday — June 12th — and the warm summer air brought the minor rumble and squeal of Los Feliz traffic in through the locker room windows. Summer. There was the real trouble. Commencement was on Sunday; what in God’s name would he do with his time from now on? There was not even the hope of arrests of the members of the gang to carry him along any more.

Dressed, he started across the gym floor. Preston was just locking up the Dutch doors of the office. His face lighted up when he saw Curt. Sometime in the seven weeks Curt had been coming to the gym, they had graduated to first names.

“Hey, old buddy, you got time for a sandwich and a beer?”

Curt hesitated. He had been worried about filling up his days; this was one way. “Sure, why not, Floyd? We can even use my car.”

Preston directed him to the Pigskin Club, a small bar and restaurant which faced an access road off Bayshore Freeway. Only one car was parked in front.

“Al doesn’t serve lunches,” Preston explained. “But he’ll make us a couple of salami sandwiches.”

The heavy front door was leather-padded and brass-studded on the inside; Curt paused, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the interior dimness. Directly in front was a small dining room with a dozen white-clothed square tables set for the supper trade; to the right was an archway leading into the taproom. The bar had red vinyl fronting and red-topped stools with chromium legs.

“Curt, I’d like you to meet Al Ferrano. Al, Curt Halstead.”

Ferrano was a short dapper man with bright eyes in a swarthy face. At first glance he was forty; a closer look suggested a very well-kept fifty. He wore a white apron over his shirt and slacks.

“You must work out at the gym,” he said as they shook hands.

“I just started a few weeks ago.”

Ferrano shook his head; he had a quick ready smile. “This bar keeps me too dimmed busy. I only get up there twice a week, so all I do is arm and shoulder work.”

He had flipped the caps from three bottles of icy beer while he talked; he set them, beaded and glistening, on the bar, and busied himself with French rolls and mayonnaise. He had singularly heavy forearms.

“I gotta work out for arm-wrestling, would you believe it? My main trade in here is working guys, and after a few beers the construction boys always wanna arm-wrestle.” He gestured expansively with the broad-bladed French chef’s knife. “Well, what the hell could I do? You don’t wrestle ’em, you’re a shit-heel and they don’t come back. You do, you lose all the time, you’re giving the house away. So I started working out at Floyd’s gym.”

Three men came in, nodded to Ferrano, and settled at the back end of the bar. Ferrano set the sandwiches in front of Curt and Preston.

“Now, thanks to Floyd, guys come in just to try and beat me. Win or lose, they’re good for a few drinks, so it’s done wonders for business. Excuse me, huh, fellows?”

As he was serving the three men, a blond girl arrived, and then another pair of men. Someone fed the juke box. Curt munched salami sandwich, drank beer. For the first time since Paula’s death he felt an inner spring of tension begin gradually to unwind. Preston asked what he taught at the university, and Curt realized that they really knew nothing at all of each other’s backgrounds. Which struck him as somehow intriguing, since the gym had become a major focal point in his life during the past weeks.

“Anthropology, Floyd. Mainly upper-level courses these days, which is rather a pity. One becomes gradually isolated from the undergraduates, the ones on whom you can most easily see your fingermarks.”