HE WENT HOME WITH THE GUN HIDDEN UNDER HIS SHIRT. HIS hands were shaking. His mind was mixed up. In fact he knew he wasn’t even angry at the policeman from Canada. If one wants to know if Catholicism does any good, it did the world of good for Ángel. He could not kill anyone. Yet now he was supposed to.
His apartment stank of dry, dead air and his aunt’s hairspray. His aunt Lucretia was playing casino with two friends, and she was losing and unhappy. There was a poster of Jimi Hendrix on the far wall and a picture of Carlos Santana. There were dirty dishes in the sink, and the night before they had had to kill a scorpion sitting up on the counter.
Lucretia collected money from those boys who sold lotto tickets—it was, as John figured out on the first day he was there—a scam. The tickets were used, and of no value, but the tourists did not know this. Lucretia ran this for Hulk Hernández—but this is not what she ran—that is, the selling of lotto tickets was a way to get to know certain children, and she had transported female children for prostitution into the States. And this is what Principia suspected. That is why Principia’s husband travelled with them across the boarder—and now he had disappeared. Principia did not want to blame her sister, but could not overcome the feeling that something had happened to her husband. Nor did she know that all these elaborate schemes, frauds, cons and thieveries were the domain of those the DeRolfos relied upon.
This was information Constable Fey had but as yet couldn’t use.
So John Delano was in a very strange, dark world—as dark as a coal pitch. He was very bright, but it would take him months to fathom it all—why charges were laid and why they were not. It was all because of a strange coalition of loyalty, which he did not understand as yet.
Ángel brought in money from working digging ditches for the new sewer pipes, and then he would go to night school. His boxing took up most days of the week. He was now training for the Golden Gloves, which were going to happen on Cinco de Mayo.
His mother, Principia, worked for Mr. DeRolfo housecleaning three times a week. So Principia would say nothing about that family. Nada. Lucretia often asked her sister to put in a good word for her—saying that she could be faithful to them too.
Ángel disliked his aunt very much. He disliked the way she bullied her family—gave orders, and teased him. He remembered how she had teased Florin, to distraction, making the little boy cry, and then would walk away, her hips swaying in her tight jeans, a smile on her face. She had done that so often that once he had thrown a jab into the wall beside her head, trying to warn her to be kinder. But it did not work.
He came home one night last weekend and she was passed out on a kitchen chair, naked from the waist down. In fact that was the only time he felt truly sorry for her, for he had heard Hulk Hernández had beaten her.
He covered her gently and went to bed.
She was often drunk.
The only thing good that had happened to Lucretia lately was the fact that Mary Cyr was in jail—every day there was more salacious gossip about her, and every day Lucretia went to the jail to try to get a glimpse of her, and to speak to people about what should be done with her.
“Ella debe ser sacada y batida.”
She should be taken out and whipped.
She said this shaking her head profoundly.
“Asesina,” she would say, and bless herself. She would bless herself and light a cigarette and flick the match into the air. Sometimes out of spite—or some kind of prevocational tendency deep inside her, she went and teased the old donkey that Victor had taken care of. Because the donkey was almost blind, she would poke at it with a stick, and when it tried to run away on its small feet, she would look as if disgusted with it.
Her friends thought Lucretia was out of her mind thinking Mary Cyr would somehow make her famous—but Lucretia did think that.
“Mary Cyr me hará famosa,” is what she said.
Whenever she finished with the donkey her face would be pleased and sweating.
“Asesina,” she would say to Mary. “Prisión del Rayo—” and she would step right up to the bars of the cell. But then she would see Mary Cyr’s face, and she would say:
“Mary Cyr es Hermosa,” and smile.
“Todo el mundo tiene una tía loca,” Gabriella would tell her brother when he got upset with how disgustingly she spoke.
Everyone has a crazy aunt.
“Sí, sí.”