CHAPTER TWENTY

Marilyn led me from bars to crowded bodegas, the whole city in rehearsal for the big blowout of the next night’s New Year’s Eve party. We passed a street vendor selling incense, T-shirts, and pictures of movie stars. I asked the man if he had a picture of Marilyn Monroe.

“¡Sí! Marilyn Monroe! Big star!” He pulled a black-and-white photo out of the stack. It was a full face shot, Marilyn’s lips painted and pouty, her eyes smoky and staring into the camera.

“How much?” I asked the vendor. “¿Cúanto?”

“Thirty dollars,” he said. “Big star.”

I reached into my pocket and Marilyn said, “No! Give him ten.”

“Ten?” the vendor yipped. “This is signed! See? Her name.” The signature was scrawled across the bottom. It looked as if the person who had signed it had had to stop every third letter to check the spelling.

“Okay,” said Marilyn, grabbing my arm. “Let’s go. This man is a liar and a thief.”

“Wait,” said the vendor. “Twenty.”

“Twelve dollars,” Marilyn said.

“Fifteen, and I throw in a baseball signed by Joe DiMaggio for your young man.” He held out the picture and a dirty scuffed baseball. Joltin’ Joe’s signature was amazingly similar to Marilyn’s.

“Is very romantic,” the vendor said, a wistful look in his eye. “They once were big lovers like you and your young man.” He turned to me, an easier mark, and pleaded, “I make more friends than money in this business. You, señor, are my friend. You live here. Not like the sailors and tourists who come and go. And it is almost the new year, señor.”

“Okay,” I said. “Fifteen dollars.”

“You are a big crook,” Marilyn said to the salesman. “You are lucky my man is so rich he won’t notice how shamelessly you rob us.”

The man took my money and gave us the picture and the baseball. “You must come back and see me, señor, on a day you are free of this harsh woman. I would give you something out of sympathy.”

Marilyn told him to go choke on the plata.

“Come on, Marilyn.” I wedged the baseball into my back pocket where it made a bulge like a big-league tumor on my ass. Marilyn slid the picture of the blond movie star into her blouse.

“Thank you, my rich Yanqui lover,” she said, putting her arms around my neck.

“That’s Yanqui Clipper to you, ma’am.”

Marilyn led me through the crowds, holding my hand so I wouldn’t get swept away. Bands played in every corner bar. Men guzzled rum from bottles and women lifted their feathery skirts and danced in circles, showing off their legs. It was everything I had been warned about in Sunday school and I thought it was great. I danced with strangers and drank from bottles without wiping the neck.

Later, as we walked along a quiet street far from the raucous bars, Marilyn kissed me so hard it hurt. “You would make a great Panamanian,” she said.

“Hey, gringo!” Marilyn and I broke apart. We faced six Panamanian men, drunk and sweaty and looking for trouble.

“Hey, Yanqui! Go home and leave our women!” One of the boys grabbed Marilyn’s arm and jerked her away from me. The others formed a tight circle and started pushing, bouncing me around the circle.

“Go jerk your pinga, Yanqui. Whatsa matter, you can’t get no chucha at home?”

One of the boys hit me in the head. Another punched my ribs. Another gave me a Saturday-morning kung fu kick that knocked me against the wall.

“Come on, queco!” One man moved in closer. He taunted me, urging me to fight. “¡Venga!” He had a knife in his hand and made wide swings at me. On one pass I grabbed his arm, twisted it, then shoved him into another man. Another came in from my right. He had a box cutter and he slashed at me, the blade coming closer with each swing.

In a blink, the man behind the box cutter crumpled to the pavement. I saw the arc of a tire iron sweep over the heads of the rubbernecking crowd. I knew from the sound that someone would not be dancing in the new year. The crowd scattered. The tire iron swung again and caught one of the men in the ribs. The man whooshed and went down on his knees keening like a rabbit. The other men backed away, their eyes surprised and frightened.

It was Phil, swinging for the fences. One man, braver than the others or just plain stupid, jabbed at Phil with a knife and Phil spun to the side, a matador before the bull, and brought the tire iron down hard on the boy’s extended forearm. The knife clattered to the street. The man screamed like a girl and staggered back, holding his shattered arm against his chest.

Marilyn helped me up while Phil held back the crowd. The curious were gone, and in their place were serious men gathering for a new attack. They circled us like wolves in the firelight. The man with the cracked ribs fumbled in his pocket. I saw the white grip of a nickel pistol. Marilyn saw it, too. She calmly stepped into the street and kicked the man in the crotch. He folded in on himself and fell to his knees.

Phil grabbed me by the collar and pulled me into a stairwell. He sailed the tire iron, end over end, into the center of the mob.

The three of us sprinted up the steps. At the top Phil picked up a trash can and threw it down the stairwell, slowing the men surging up from the street.

We were at the top of a hallway that ran straight back to an open corridor. The corridor looked out over a small inner courtyard lit by a single forty-watt bulb. From the edge of the shadows, chained beneath the giant leaves of a banana tree, a dog snapped and snarled and jerked his chain taut as piano wire.

“Up here,” said Marilyn. She stood on the wooden railing, swung out on a drainpipe and shinnied her way up. At the top she pulled herself over the eave and into darkness.

“Go,” Phil said. “Go!”

The crowd flooded out of the hallway. “¡Aquí!” they shouted. I climbed the drainpipe. Marilyn grabbed my arms and pulled me onto the roof.

I turned to help Phil. I saw his hands appear, then his face. “Damn,” he said, with wonder, “I think someone’s biting my leg.”

Marilyn picked up an empty wine bottle and looked over the roof’s edge, past Phil. She aimed, dropped the bottle, and brightened when she hit her target with a satisfying bonk. Phil’s legs came up over the side. Another man was behind him. Marilyn kicked him in the ear and he dropped out of sight.

I helped Phil to his feet and the three of us ran. We jumped over the narrow gaps between two buildings and sprinted to the edge. We had reached the end of the block. There was no place left to go.

The man falling two floors down to the snarling dog threw a discouraging pall over the crowd and most of them decided there were things they would rather do than spend the night in the hospital with the gunshot drunks. Only four men pursued us. Four determined men who looked surprisingly sober.

In front of us was gravity and its hard landing on an unforgiving sidewalk. Behind us were four very human men. This was where we would make a stand. Without saying a word, Phil and Marilyn understood. Together we turned to face our attackers.

The four men closed in.

Phil looked at me and smiled. “You ready for some fun?” He pushed up his sleeves. Marilyn produced a blade, from where I did not want to guess. I took a stance that I hoped looked discouraging but the four men advanced, their arms wide, moving in for the big body-slamming finale.

I rubbed my hands against my jeans. My hand found the baseball in my back pocket and I pulled it out. As the men drew closer, I rubbed the ball against my thigh like a pitcher facing an oh-and-three. DiMaggio’s signature smeared. I reared back in the windup dance American boys have watched a million times on the tube.

The men hesitated, surprised at this ballet of sport in the middle of a mugging. I followed through, my right arm whipped forward, and I prayed it would hit somewhere near the strike zone.

With the crack of a corked bat, my man bunted the ball with his forehead. His eyes rolled up and he fell out for the inning. The other men stopped. Phil smiled and said, “You just gotta love this shit.” He took a step forward and the men stepped back. The fastball seemed to have dampened their morale. They came to a swift and silent conclusion. The puta had a knife, the big man looked like he was having way too much fun, and the boy, this gringo boy, had just given their compadre a concussion with an all-American dustoff. They turned and ran back the way they came. Marilyn called them names and threw stones at their backs.

“Man, that was in-fucking-credible! Crack! I didn’t know you played ball.”

“I didn’t,” I said. “I never played baseball in my life.” I looked at my hands and they were shaking.

While Marilyn rifled the man’s pockets, Phil and I found a fire escape. The three of us climbed down into the dark and half an hour later we were sitting in Marilyn’s room, drinking cold beer.

“Don’t ever take up nursing,” I said, wincing as Marilyn cleaned my wounds with rum.

“Be still, you big baby.”

“Man, I’ve never seen anything like that. David and Goliath, man. You dropped him faster than sweatpants in July.”

“You think he’ll be okay?”

“Fuck him,” said Marilyn. She reached down into her blouse and came up with the picture of Marilyn Monroe and a small fistful of damp and dirty bills. “All he had was twelve dollars.”

“Nothing else?” asked Phil.

“Nothing.”

“Not even some identification?” Phil said. “I thought I saw a card.”

“Oh, you mean this?” Marilyn held out a laminated ID.

Phil took it and turned it over in his hand. “This is interesting, Harp.”

“What?”

“He’s one of the trainees at La Boca. I recognize him from the Claymore class.” Phil sat back in the chair and slowly, unconsciously, rubbed his head. “Marilyn?”

“Yes?” Marilyn listened intently, her concentration so focused it could set kindling on fire.

“Do you have someone you can stay with?”

“Yes, I can stay with a friend.”

“Then go there, and don’t come back here until we know more about this guy and why he was so ready to kill my boy.”

Marilyn nodded, then got up and began to pack her things into a shopping bag.