"The writing is top notch, the story won't let you stop reading, but who cares? Baby Shark is such a sexy cool character-I'm in love. It's such a drag that I've met Robert Fate in person, because if this book were autobiographical, I'd have a chance of meeting her some day. I'm sure she'd end up killing me, but it would be worth it. I hope he's just the front."
-Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller
EXCERPT: Baby Shark's High Plains Redemption
EXCERPT: Baby Shark's Beaumont Blues
EXCERPT: Baby Shark
October 1952, Henry Chin's Poolroom
As a rule, in the 1950s, a good girl didn't admit to being raped-and she'd never seek revenge for her father's murder.
But Kristin didn't play by the rules.
I wake in the middle of the night and say to myself, "It's just business, Kristin." In my heart I know that using words like business, work, and jobs is Sarge's way of talking about killing.
Albert says, "Stop a man," instead of kill him.
Henry has his euphemisms, too. "We fix," he says.
"They know what they're teaching you to do," I tell my image.
No one is saying it straight out-and the more I look in the mirror, the more I realize that I'm not saying it, either.
I've become an actress-a dangerous actress-full of deceit and lethal skills.
Excerpt from BABY SHARK
Sarge was the first of my teachers. He showed up twice a week to instruct me in fight strategy and body movement and what he called close work, the use of various concealed hand weapons.
In that cool, dispassionate way of his, he summed up what we were doing by saying, "Sooner or later you'll be on the front line. That's when you want your actions to be automatic so you can keep your head clear and not waste moves.
"You'll get rid of the amateurs and reckless dopes pretty quick. The ones who know what they're doing, they're the ones you're keeping your head clear for. See what I mean? It's just a job, Little Miss, and whoever does the best job gets to go home. Going home-that's the incentive."
Sarge was the only person I'd ever met who referred to killing people as a job.
A month or so after starting with Sarge, I told Henry that I wanted to learn how to shoot, too. It was about numbers. I knew what it was like to be outnumbered. Pistols would be my backup if things started going south.
"Baby Girl have pistol. Point. Shoot."
"No, Henry. I want to learn the right way to do it. Do you know someone?"
"Henry know man back from Korea. He like vulture."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Albert smell blood like vulture. Kill people easy for Albert."
That put a chill up my back.
"I want to meet him," I said.
Less than a week later, Albert showed up.
It was the first day in quite a while it hadn't rained; water stood in puddles, the sky was clear, the air was cool. Jim was still just a puppy, of course, but he was a German shepherd, so he told me someone was coming.
I dog-eared my book and got outside to watch a new Lincoln sedan leave the county road and drive the quarter mile to where I waited. Red mud had streaked the tires and fender skirts of the low-slung, shiny black car.
The young man driving was alone. As he parked, I saw that he was Mexican, or at least at the time I thought he was.
He rolled down his window and spoke to me. His accent told me Spanish was his first language. "That's a big dog you got there."
My puppy was sitting at my feet.
I said. "May I help you?"
"My name is Albert Sun Man Ramirez. Henry here?"
"He told me you were coming. He's not back from town yet."
"When I get out, will the dog attack me?"
"Not unless I tell him to."
Albert opened the door and turned in the seat so he was facing out. Reaching back, he brought crutches up from where he kept them behind his seat. Putting them down in front of him, he pushed them into the gravel.
His movements weren't fast just smooth and deliberate. He was up and moving toward me before I saw that he was missing half of his left leg.
He flicked the door shut behind him almost without my noticing since most of my attention was on his flying motion, his long, loosely cut dark brown leather coat, and the turquoise jewelry he wore everywhere.
Seeing the man's swinging movements and the flapping coat unnerved Jim who moved behind my legs.
Albert ground his one, hand-tooled, snakeskin boot into the gravel in front of me, and came to an erect stop with his crutches clamped under his arms, angled back out of his way. He looked me in the eye. We were the same height. I could smell whisky on his breath.
"You like my car? It's a V8. One hundred fifty-four horses under that hood, man. I could drive through the gates of hell with that car."
I glanced over, but brought my eyes back to him.
"Here. Take my keys."
I took his keys.
"I'll take those back."
I gave them back and wondered what that was about.
"So, what do you know about me?" he asked.
"Henry told me you're a Korean War veteran and that you're his friend."
"Okay, yeah, that's true, but what do you know about me now. Here. From meeting me just now?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"I'm missing a leg. Did you notice that?"
"Of course."
"I have cojones, did you notice that?"
I was a bug again, being examined.
"Okay, I get it. Your eyes are dark and don't tell me anything. You have a nice smile, but it's a tool you use. Your teeth are too white, too perfect. I think they're Government Issue."
"Anything else?"
"You've been drinking."
"I like you already, Little Sister. You see things and you can talk. Tell me this, which of my hands gave you my keys?"
I had to think, but he had no patience for that and answered his own question.
"My left, and you took them with your right. What does that tell you?"
"You're left-handed and I'm right-handed?"
"So, you know which hand goes for my pistol," he said.
"Why would I think you have a pistol?"
"In Texas everybody's got a pistol."
"Even so, why would you go for it?"
"Why not? Who's to say what's going to happen? People kill people in pool halls for not very big reasons. Don't you think?"
I was surprised at how indifferently he spoke of the deaths of my father and Henry's son. I could feel a pressure begin at my temples.
"Watch this," he said, and smooth as a jazz riff filled both his hands with guns.
He gave me a breath or two to grasp my situation. My heart was beating so hard I was certain that he could tell.
"Are you scared?"
"Yes."
"Because a man with pistols is a dangerous man?"
"Yes."
"Get over being scared, Little Sister. You're going to be the one with pistols from now on."
Albert Sun Man Ramirez was slender, almost delicate, with flawless light brown skin any woman would sell her soul for-gleaming ducktail haircut, narrow shoulders, very fast hands. Maybe twenty-two. High forehead, straight narrow nose, girl-pretty mouth.
Who would have thought by looking at him that he was an efficient and remorseless killer? The Marine Corps gave him medals.
"Marines like Albert. War okay for him, except lose leg," Henry said.
Albert was angered by what happened to Henry and me, and the fierce loyalty that he felt toward his friends and the friends of his family was enough to bring him out to the homestead weekly for over six months.
He was the second of my teachers. He also taught Henry. He taught us everything there was to know about pistols.
"With pistols you have to see it before it starts," Albert told me in that excitable way he had of saying and doing everything.
"Like chess, Little Sister. He does that, you do this. Look everywhere at everything. When you're facing several men with weapons, always shoot first. Especially shoot first if they think you won't. Shoot the ones who look fast, then the others, and count your shots. Drop empty pistols, grab loaded ones, and when you start, don't stop until you've killed everything that moves. Don't stop for anything. And always, always know where you're going when it's over, and go there. Be on your way out the door while the hot cartridges are still bouncing around."
"I'm not going to go around killing people," I explained to Albert.
"That's what you say, Little Sister. That's what you say."
* * *
Excerpt from Baby Shark's BEAUMONT BLUES
I EASED DOWN the dark hallway with a cocked .32 in my hand. It was a small caliber, I knew. But up close and put in the right spot, it would do the job. Light came from around the corner that I approached. No sound—dead quiet. I noticed small spots of blood on the hall floor. I glanced back and saw the trail. Bobby Jack had cut his feet in the window glass—and hadn't seemed to notice.
On the far side of the hallway something was on the wall that didn't look right. It was a moment before I understood it. It was interesting how blood splattered on a wall could look so brutal. Easy. Easy. I peeked around the corner and discovered Chuck on the hallway floor. He was face down in an expanding pool of blood, his legs splayed out, his feet pointing strangely. The back of his bloodied jacket was torn and riddled from the exiting slugs. His beautiful Stetson was crushed and stained beneath his head. He had an arm under him and one reaching forward. And at the end of his stretching arm, his finger pointed at his car keys on a silver ring. Ching-ching.
Beyond his body there was an open door. A lighted bedroom. I could hear the low hum of an electric fan. I listened hard for any other sounds. Nothing. I looked behind me and got ready to go around the corner…
"Gotcha!" a male voice said from back there somewhere.
I froze. The voice was not close, but not far away.
I heard whimpering. A girl.
That was a relief. I had begun to worry that she might be dead. I wiped the sweat out of my eyes, stayed where I was, and listened some more. A slap. The girl cried out. The guy's voice again.
"What makes you so stupid? Try'n hide from me in my own fuckin' house."
I stood there, around the corner, with my pistol at ready and listened to him force the crying girl up the hall from back in the house somewhere. From where I was, my view of the bedroom was narrowly framed by the open door. I could see a box springs and mattress on the floor through that doorway. Not much else.
When I heard Bobby Jack push the girl into the bedroom, I chanced a quick look and saw them. They were both naked. He shoved her onto the mattress and moved out of sight. She curled up and began sobbing.
It was Sherry Beasley: long brunette hair, seventeen years old, five feet tall.
Bobby Jack yelled at her from wherever he was in the room.
"Shut up your fuckin' bawlin' and getcher skinny ass over here. Get over here and do some of this, you lazy slut."
"No more, Bobby Jack." She sputtered through her sobbing.
"Yeah, more. This'll wake you up. Call yourself a good fuck. You don't know jack shit about how to fuck. Get over here."
"I'm gonna be sick."
Sherry saw Bobby Jack coming before I knew he'd moved. She scooted off the bed and out of my sight. Bobby Jack crossed my doorframe view as he went after her. I heard him catch her and saw him drag her by her hair back past the open door.
"You get sick, I'll beat the livin' shit outta you," he told her from the other side of the room. Sherry was growing hysterical. I could hear her crying and choking. Bobby Jack started snorting. I stepped around the corner and moved as fast as I could. I wanted to take a new position closer to the bedroom. I took care to keep my bare feet out of Chuck's blood as I passed him. I was almost to Bobby Jack's door when Sherry got slapped again. She fell to the carpeted floor in front of the open door.
I put my hand holding the revolver behind my leg and kept moving toward her.
Sherry's eyes widened when she saw me. Her face went from wrinkled and panicked to stunned and disbelieving. Her nose and lips were dusted with a pale-colored powder. She had dark circles under her eyes. Her face was bruised and splotchy, not at all like it was in the pretty pictures that I had of her. She pushed her dirty, matted hair out of her face and opened her mouth to speak. I brought a finger to my lips, showed her the palm of my hand, and moved out of her sight. I positioned myself beside the bedroom door, hoping that she would do the right thing. I couldn't count on it. I just hoped.
I crouched down on my heels so that if he came to the door I would be below his natural line of sight. That instant might make the difference.
I heard Sherry get to her feet and speak to him using a calmer voice.
"I'll do you good, Bobby Jack. I will."
"Yeah?"
"I got scared for a minute. All those guns."
"What about the guns?"
"Nothing. Nothing about the guns. I just got scared, that's all."
There was a long awful silence before I heard struggling. Sherry sobbed and groaned and it was quiet again. I wiped the sweat out of my eyes and slowly—carefully, carefully, staying low—I peaked around the edge of the door.
Bobby Jack had his back to me. He stood beside the bed with a hand holding Sherry by her hair. She was on her knees, her face to his crotch. His other hand held a nickel-plated Luger. That was not good. I stood up and moved into the doorway just as he growled with disgust and pushed her away.
"You don't know what you're doin'." He let go of her hair and jacked one into the chamber. Sherry screamed and back-pedaled away. He fell to his knees onto the mattress, grabbed her by her ankle, dragged her back, kicking and screaming, and pointed his pistol at her face. I was going full speed by then, crossing the carpeted bedroom in giant strides.
Before anything else happened, I rabbit punched Bobby Jack with the butt of my snub nose. Solid. Right at the base of his skull.
He grunted, fired a wild shot into the bed, and collapsed on Sherry.
The loud gunshot so near her face ratcheted Sherry into even more of a girl-gone-crazy mode. She screamed louder and began clawing and kicking her way from beneath his limp body. And then—Bobby Jack groaned, raised himself up, and gave his head a shake.
That really set Sherry off.
She yelped like she'd been jabbed with a cattle prod and pushed away so hard she launched herself off the low bed. She scrambled across the room on her hands and knees like some wild creature.
I gave my boy another hard smack on his brain stem. This time blood sprayed from the gash I opened and he fell face down on the soiled mattress, seriously unconscious.
"And stay there," I told him.
Sherry jumped up and dashed back to the bed.
"Hey, hey," I had time to say before she grabbed his shiny pistol and pulled the trigger. I wrenched the weapon away from her before she could fire at him twice.
She grew hysterical again. "Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!" she shrieked.
"You're beginning to piss me off," I said because that wild shot of hers had hit the electric fan and stopped dead the single decent breeze I'd felt since I'd come into that house. I stuffed the Luger in my belt, wiped the sweat out of my eyes, and looked around the dirty, disheveled room. "Where're your clothes?"
Sherry Beasley, soon to be one of the richest women in Texas, stopped as if she'd had a switch thrown. She just stood there, all ninety pounds of her, naked as a jaybird, her feet planted wide apart in a defiant stance, a thin stream of blood coming from her nose, her dilated eyes bloodshot and wary. She wasn't herself. God only knows what cruel indignities she'd had to suffer the past few days. She shook her head like she was denying a nightmare.
"It's all wrong," she said.
"You're right about that. Where're your things, Sherry?"
I thought I saw something hopeful in amongst the debris and clutter on top of the low dresser and went over to it. I picked up what had to be her pocketbook.
"This is yours, right?"
She snatched the Dior saddlebag from me, opened it, and dumped the contents out on the floor—the expected things, keys, money, lipstick. Taking her posh bag over to a side table, she dragged a pile of grayish powder into it.
"Forget that stuff. Let's get your clothes on so we can get out of here."
Her bruised face was flushed with anger and confusion. "Who the fuck are you to boss me around?"
"I just saved your ass, that's who. Get dressed. Let's move it."
She pointed at a soft leather travel bag on the floor by the dresser, near where the phone jack had been torn from the wall. "Get that," she said.
"Your clothes in there?" I stepped over to grab the bag and saw movement in the dresser mirror.
It was Sherry with a glittery Mexican figurine in her hands, coming at me to use it like a club.
I turned, brushed aside her attempt to brain me, and cold-cocked her with a right cross. With a little help from me, she toppled back onto the mattress next to Bobby Jack.
Glancing down at the shattered chalk and glitter—all that was left of Jesus of Nazareth—I wiped the sweat from my eyes and said, "Hallelujah."
* * *