sixteen

Gato got to Vegas at 3 a.m. But that didn’t matter of course because it was Vegas. He’d taken the pearl white Falcon, because that car was his good luck car, and man he needed some buena suerte. If Lupe was here, he’d find her. He knew he would. He didn’t have any connections in this town, outside of one person: Mama Lobo.

Everyone seemed to know Mama Lobo here in Vegas. Hell, she was known even as far away as Chicago. The stories on her would fill a book as thick as the Bible. How she came to be known as Mama Lobo alone would make any action film look like a Bugs Bunny cartoon. It was told that she came up from South America back in the fifties. Her husband was one that everybody avoided. Didn’t want his evil eye on them. If he did put that eye at you, you were dead within twenty-four hours.

No doubt.

No way out.

Nothing left for you but a grave out in the desert somewhere. But, if he liked you? Well, he’d bury you deep enough that the animals would have to work a little harder to get to you.

Her husband had come into town, and had set out immediately to deal. Not cards, but heroin. He’d done well, too. At first. Then he’d pissed off the wrong people: the mob. Encroached a little too far. That was his death warrant. The button men had come for him. Some witnesses later testified that they’d never seen a man take so much lead and not die. The mob lost some good men that day. At least seven known high-level guys. They knew what they were going up against and still they almost lost the day.

Then they went after Mama Lobo.

She fled, so they say, as far north as she could go. Into Canada. It was eight years later that she reappeared. Began to set herself up in the same territories her husband used to own. Like she was taunting the mob to come after her. And they did. But she wasn’t alone. She’d smelled out a lot of the street boys that roam the streets of Vegas, selling on their own. Very low-level stuff. Lower than low-level. She went to work and quickly converted the majority of them to her side. So as the mob came to move her out, her army of street boys moved in. They loved her. Idolized her. She was beautiful beyond beautiful. It was said she could be nurturing and deadly, all in the same breath. That day? When the mob came for her? The mob lost way more than seven button men. They lost streets. They lost respect. It was like Mama Lobo had come in on a magical carpet armed with the sword of vengeance and not only cut off their lives, but their nuts, too. After that bloodbath they left Mama Lobo alone. She’d taken her vengeance and that was enough. Now she just wanted to make a living. And she wanted to live well. So the mob let her stay. Quietly though. Acting like they didn’t even know she was there.

And she’d only been twenty-four.

Now she was a venerable seventy-six and still as dangerous as she’d ever been, and as beautiful.

–––––

Gato pulled up to the Four Queens, not even tired. He was too wound up to be tired. He had to find Lupe. Fuck her street name, he thought, Paloma. She was Lupe. He silently thanked Ali again for hooking him up with her mother.

He wasted no time. Checked in to the hotel, ate some late night horror food that some people call Shit on a Shingle, grabbed up his gun, shoved it into the back waistband of his pants and went out to the streets. Mama Lobo would not be where she usually was, not this time at night. He’d have to wait about six hours. She always rose at seven. Then she would go and have breakfast at a small diner just off the north strip, then go and light a candle for her husband at the church she’d gone to ever since she’d come back. The church where legend has it they had christened Teddy Mac, Ali, and Carpy.

He didn’t take the Falcon. Instead walked along the street, looking at the hookers that strolled up and down the streets. It only made him sad to think of his sister walking these same streets in the same way.

“You know Paloma?” he asked a hooker who was passing him but giving him the eye.

A shake of her pink dyed hair. “Don’t know that name,” she said, never breaking stride.

Gato knew it was a waste of time, but time was all he had until Mama Lobo showed up for breakfast. He’d give it another hour then go and crash for a couple hours before seeing her. There ended up being nothing. No leads, not that he really thought there were would be. Nobody was that lucky. Went and crashed, setting the alarm on his phone so he’d be up, showered, and coffee’d in time to meet Mama Lobo at her breakfast.

The few hours of sleep did him well. Woke and showered. Coffee’d, then went and got the Falcon. For this trek he would need the wheels. Drove through the early morning desert sun to the diner. It was called the Sand Dune Diner. Looked like something he would’ve imagined out of some 1950s movie about Vegas. This one had seen better days. Broken neon, the building worn at the edges. Yellowed stucco outsides. There were faded and yellowed signs in the windows, taped to the glass. Whatever meals they’d once advertised were now barely readable due to the extreme sun damage. They must’ve been from a long-ass time ago. No pendejo had paid a couple bucks for dos huevos y bacon since like 2000.

There were a few cars outside the place, and he knew by them that she was there. Lots of old, cherry low-riders, mixed with some new Jaguars and Mercedes. How she managed to keep people in line, he had no idea. Maybe he’d find out once he met here. If she was anything like her daughter, he’d understand immediately.

He entered the old diner and stood in the doorway. A chipped linoleum counter ran from the right side to the left, turning at the back wall. A row of booths stretched along that back wall. That would be the north wall and would save the diners in those booths from the hot desert sun. He spied a man moving about in the kitchen, but the place didn’t smell of cooking food. He had to wonder just what was going on. Wondered if the man was another bodyguard for Mama Lobo.

There were only four other people in the place, plus that cook. Gato glanced back at all the cars. Where were the drivers?

At one of the booths sat a beautiful old woman he knew had to be Mama Lobo. The shape of her face was exactly like Ali’s. She also had the air of someone who knew authority and how to deal it out. She sat there, reading a newspaper as the other two men in the booth watched him. Both men dressed like vatos. White t-shirts, baggy jeans, and Army-issued black boots. They sat in such a way that both the front and back doors were covered. There was another man, long and lean and dressed in a suit, tie loosened. This one sat at the counter just ahead of the booth. A gatekeeper. Gato knew that for sure because as he came closer the man slid off the stool and stood blocking his way in a move so smooth you’d think it had been performed by a snake.

“No tiene negocio aquí, hombre. Go.”

Gato glanced at the booth where Mama Lobo sat. “I need to see Mama Lobo.”

“So do a lot of people, vato. You go now.”

“Ali gives me passage, man. Mama Lobo knows my name. Gato. Tell her that Gato is here to speak with her.”

At that the old woman looked up from her paper. Looked him over. Smiled. “Let him come, Peter.”

The suit stood aside and Gato moved to the booth, one of the men getting out to sit on the stool opposite the booth. He kept his eyes directly on Gato.

“Mama Lobo,” Gato said with a glance at her bodyguards, “your daughter got word to you, Si?”

Mama Lobo gazed at him with eyes the color of opals. Her brown face was lined, deeply lined, and she wore her snow-white hair down around her shoulders. For clothes, she wore a simple dress of black cotton. Her only adornment was a thin, gold chain from which hung a slim, simple cross. But she exuded authority. Authority mixed with beauty that was a recipe for control. Gato knew immediately that he would follow her anywhere, just like he knew he’d die to protect his madre. “Si,” she replied, with a voice that was old, but had an underlying timbre, a resonance that made him sit up straighter. As if he were back in grade school. “Yes, I got her message. You are looking for your sister? Paloma she’s called?”

He nodded. “I have to find her. Our mother is sick.”

“What is wrong with her?”

Gato looked out the window. Sighed. “Su mente se va. Está perdiendo su capacidad para cuidar de sí misma.” Her mind is going. She’s losing her ability to care for herself. “I need Lupe back. I can’t take care of her. And to leave her to others? I don’t like that.”

Mama Lobo looked at him with deep sympathy. “I wish my boys had felt the same. You are a good son, to come so far to find your sister.”

“It’s my madre,” de said. What else was there to say? It was his mother. What should he do? Not honor her wishes?

She nodded. Smiled at him again. Man … what a smile. Then she sighed, her eyes going sad. “I know of a woman, a prostitute, who calls herself La Paloma. She arrived only a couple months ago or so. Works the Copa. Or did.”

“Did?”

“I have heard that she hasn’t been seen there for some days. I did some checking when my niña told me to look out for you, and why you were coming here.”

Gato looked back out the window. The desert continued on into infinity, just like his search seemed to now. But before he was about to seriously give up hope, Mama Lobo told him, “Gato, I will send out some people to help you in your search. See if we can track down where your sister went. I’m sure she’s still here, in this city.”

“But if that’s so,” he replied, “why has no one seen her?” He then thought that maybe Lupe was still running because she didn’t know that Teddy was dead and that the episode with the VCR tapes was over. Who would’ve been able to tell her? Yeah, that had to be it.

Mama Lobo shrugged. “She’s a prostitute, Gato. They do all manner of strange things, all manner of the day. I have no idea, but I’m sure we can find out.” Here she smiled that smile at him again. “If it’s to help your madre? You can count on me and anyone who works with and for me.”

With a smile, he took her hand and kissed it. Then took a napkin and put his cell number down on it. “I will keep looking,” he said to her. “Thank you so much for your consideration, Mama Lobo.”

For an answer, she only smiled again and looked him dead in the eye as she said, “It could be me, one day, Gato. And I can’t be sure my youngest or my niña would be doing this, trying to find me should I disappear. Estoy rindiendo homenaje a la gracia de Dios.”