Lieberman's Folly Read Online Free PDF

scanning the street, keeping watch for an attack, a danger. He was the proof that Emiliano was inside the restaurant. He may have been an early warning system but he was also the red flag to any enemy warriors that said, “If you’re looking for El Perro, you’ve come to the right place.”
    Emiliano wanted to be protected but he made himself vulnerable. He wanted people to like him, to love him, to admire him, but he hurt those who came too close and laughed at their pain.
    â€œFernandez,” Hanrahan said with a grin to the kid. “Get any twelve-year-old girls pregnant this month?”
    Fernandez didn’t smile back but he looked at Lieberman, his brown eyes starting at the top of the policeman’s head and going down to his toes and back again. He nodded and the cops moved past him through the door of the Chapultapec and into the blind darkness and loud music.
    Julio Iglesias was singing a song Lieberman didn’t recognize.
    Lieberman could see nothing but vague shapes as his eyes adjusted to the yellow-brown table lamps and the dim light given off by a Dos Equis neon sign on the wall. The smell of frying food from the kitchen touched memories.
    â€œLook who’s here,” came the voice of El Perro. “The Priest and the Rabbi. Ain’t your territory no more, man. Come to exorcise the devil?”
    â€œEmiliano,” Lieberman said.
    â€œShhhhhh,” he whispered. “ No fraga me. La cancion. The song.”
    Slowly Lieberman’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and he began to see bodies and faces in the room. Nine Tentaculos, including Emiliano, were seated at the tiny restaurant’s tables listening to Julio Iglesias. On each table was a plate of sliced meat and a mound of Mexican bread.
    Emiliano smiled at Lieberman and Hanrahan and nodded to the juke box near the window. Hanrahan smiled back and stared at El Perro. It didn’t do to stare too long at El Perro, whose face was a map of wild scars leading to dead ends. A scar from who knows what battle ran from his right eye down across his nose to just below the left side of his mouth. It was rough, red, and had probably taken an afternoon of stitches. The nose had been broken so many times that there was little bone, no cartilage. When lost in thought, which was seldom and most frightening, El Perro played with the flesh of his nose, flattening it with his thumb, pushing it to one side absent-mindedly. His teeth were white but uneven except for his sharp eye teeth, which looked as if they belonged on a vampire. Emiliano’s black hair was brushed straight back.
    Lieberman thought but didn’t say that El Perro hadn’t a shot in hell of being a movie star.
    The song ended and Emiliano sighed deeply, pulled out a brush, and worked his hair back.
    â€œThat man can sing, viejo ,” he said. “I met him once you know.”
    â€œAfter that, what’s left for a man to look forward to?” Lieberman said.
    â€œYeah,” Emiliano said dreamily, brushing his hair. “I should have had my picture taken with him, right, Piedras?”
    A voice, deep and gravelly, answered, “Should have had your picture took.”
    â€œYeah,” agreed Emiliano looking at Lieberman. “Well, how I look? Like Pat Riley, the fuckin’ Lakers’ basketball coach on TV?”
    â€œThere’s a resemblance,” Lieberman said. El Perro didn’t look anything like Pat Riley, but Lieberman wasn’t here to commit suicide.
    â€œFucking A,” Emiliano said seriously. “Everyone says I look like him. Imagine, me looking like a Mick. What are you standing for? Sit down. Fuck, man.”
    The restaurant seemed even smaller than Lieberman had remembered it. It had been a small flower shop before Alfonso and Angelica Naranita took it over and turned it into a restaurant. Angelica was a good cook but the Naranitas had no ambition. Their children were grown. This was good enough