TORO! TORO! TORO!, page 11




In a distant part of the city, Lucky Sam Wo, not invited by Toro Productions to take part in their parade, staged his own private cavalcade, attracting a few curious bystanders and a mob of noisy children trooping along behind. With his legs folded in the lotus position, Lucky Sam rode on the back of his mechanical bull like a mail-order Brahma. A blue silk drape hung down over the robot’s flanks, MOTOTORO embroidered in foot-high gold letters on either side. A hidden tape recorder blared bullfight music. Lucky Sam held his invention to a brisk trot, scattering leaflets every half-block or so on his way to the arena.
El Camión was going on a trip. The vet stopped by to see him early in the morning for a round of inoculations. A team of carpenters took his measurements and could be heard hammering in the courtyard of the Francisco Cortina Riding Academy. A specially designed safety harness was fitted and sewn by the saddlemaker, a padded collar and yoke such as no fighting bull ever wore before.
Insulated from indignity by a wall of electrodes, el Camión took true bovine pleasure in these and other two-legged attentions. His big wet eyes shone with doglike affection. After a lifetime of acting tough, el Camión wanted to make friends.
Mercy’s morning was spent setting up appointments. First thing after breakfast, she telephoned Paco from the extension in the downstairs hall and told him she was leaving. He mumbled, “Bon voyage,” his voice congested with sleep, and that was that. In the next hour, drawing on skills not apparent during the three months she spent at a Liverpool secretarial school before making it big, Mercy called the vet, carpenters to build the crate, a travel agency, the saddlemaker, several shipping firms, two hairdressers and her connection. She arranged a schedule and issued instructions, dovetailing appointments with the logbook precision of an admiral, a call girl or an orthodontist.
Cradling the phone for the final time, Mercy sent the maid upstairs to pack her things and turned to the Ministry of Agriculture forms she had picked up yesterday afternoon at the British consulate: Livestock Importation Permit Application. She placed those pages to be signed by the veterinarian in a separate folder, uncapping her felt-tipped pen to contemplate the complexities of the remaining form.
Name, age and occupation were easy to fill in; ditto address, place of birth and passport number. More difficult were queries concerning the animal’s weight, age, bloodlines; and she left those spaces blank. “Ask vet,” she penned in the margin. She puzzled longest over the part which began: Purpose of Importation. Mercy chewed her thumbnail, pained by thought, and when the answer came it was from out of nowhere, like finding the word in an acrostic, and she printed the letters all in capitals as requested: Purpose of Importation… BREEDING. Mercy was not without a sense of humor.
Paco Machismo slept late. It was past midday when he crawled from the circular bed and rang for his manservant. Andrés appeared promptly with an iced pitcher of fresh Valencia orange juice. Paco never ate on the day of a fight. An empty gut kept him alert and was a wise precaution in a profession where surgery was always imminent.
The marble bathroom was as ornate as a Roman mausoleum; the tub, a full-length sarcophagus carved from a single block of stone. While Paco bathed and shaved, his man Andrés opened the velour drapes and laid out a blue suit of lights on the bed. Paco owned two dozen of these jeweled costumes. They hung sparkling in the walk-in closet like the wardrobe of a Grand Ole Opry star.
From a vast mahogany haberdasher’s bureau beside the shoe rack, Andrés brought a lace-front shirt, a pair of silk hose, a pin-on coleta, a slender black necktie and six embroidered handkerchiefs which Paco would roll up into a ball and stuff into the crotch of his tight-fitting pants. When it came to a public display of cojones, Paco Machismo refused to take the back seat for any bull.
In a small hotel room in another part of town, la Fabalita dressed herself without the help of servants. The traje de luces was a hand-me-down from el Chicote; she had worn it the week before and the fit was perfect, but Don Pepe had taken it to a tailor and had it recut in a more feminine fashion. The vest and jacket were tailored to emphasize her upthrust breasts; knee britches clung tight as sequined skin.
La Fabalita stared unhappily into the wardrobe mirror. Staring back was a member of the chorus line in a sleazy nightclub bullfight revue. “What a wretched beginning for a career as an artist,” the girl thought. “A tick-tock bull and a showgirl outfit; they want Marilyn Monroe, not a matador de toros.”
Doña Carlota Madrigal climbed the stairs to her third-floor pension, a gift box of long-stemmed roses cradled in her arms. The family had just finished clearing away the luncheon dishes when she entered. Several boarders sat drinking coffee at the long crumb-covered table. The eldest daughter, busy sweeping the floor, nodded gravely as she passed.
Inside her room, the señora turned the key in the lock and carried her flowers over to the bed. There was a gift envelope attached to the ribbon on the lid of the box and Doña Carlota scrawled a quick inscription: “For la Fabalita, from her greatest admirer.”
The roses, redder than blood, lay in the long white box, folded in a cone of green tissue paper. The room filled with their delirious sweetness. Doña Carlota picked a single blossom and breathed its fragrance. A thoughtful florist had trimmed the roses of thorns. “You’ve lost your sting, beauty,” the señora crooned, returning the flower to the box. “Much too frail and lovely to go unprotected. My friend’s bite is sharper than yours ever was. Be patient and I will bring him.”
Señora Madrigal took the woven wicker traveling case from inside the armoire and brought it to the bedside table. She opened the lid and reached inside with the snare-stick, slipping the noose over the head of the coiled and dormant viper. The snake came writhing out of its slumber.
“Awake, my darling,” Doña Carlota said. “Your bridal bouquet is waiting.” As she turned with the snare-stick held in both hands, the heel of her slipper caught in the weave of the throw rug. Instantly off-balance, the señora lurched forward, tripping over her own feet, and fell face down across the bed.
It felt like molten metal searing her flesh. Señora Madrigal sat up without an outcry and saw the squirming snake, still securely noosed, beside her on the bed. Without hesitation, she unbuttoned her bodice and pulled down her shirtwaist and chemise. Beneath her left breast she saw the fangs’ twin incision, the surrounding skin already pink and swelling.
Her decision was made without debate. There were no alternatives. A doctor was out of the question, even if medical attention could save her now, which she doubted. She had perhaps two hours of life remaining; time enough to reach the bullring. The corrida began in an hour; if she conserved her strength she would make it.
Rising slowly to her feet, she picked up the hog-nosed Gaboon viper and dropped it wriggling among the roses. She closed the lid and tied a bow in the satin ribbon, humming a mournful Castilian melody as she felt the poison spread like a circle of devouring ants across her rib cage.
The sun raged in a cloudless sky. At the Plaza de Toros the heat was only a few degrees below the temperature of human blood. The great bowl-shaped building brimmed with the blast-furnace afternoon. Even the section called sombra was still an hour away from shadow, and the better-paying customers sweltered along with those in the cheap seats as the trumpets called and the banda taurina began to play.
The empresario Don Pepe was in a jubilant mood. He stood sweating behind the barrera, watching the paseo with his friend Lucky Sam Wo, whose own mood was every bit as alegre. “What a crowd,” Don Pepe enthused. “Not a vacant seat.”
“You should see the mob outside,” Lucky Sam said. “Police everywhere; ten squadrons at least. The heist men and second-story operators must be having a fiesta in town.”
The procession of the toreros began. Paco Machismo and la Fabalita marched side by side, ahead of the banderilleros and picadors. The girl’s head was high, her fighting-cock strut every bit the equal of Paco Machismo’s arrogant swagger. She wore her long black hair tied in a single braid down her back. The crowd applauded and called out, “Hola, Paco,” and “Bravo, Fabalita.”
“Listen to them, they love her,” Don Pepe said. “She’s going to be a sensation.”
“It would seem so,” the Chinese inventor replied.
“How’s the machine? Everything working?”
“Mototoro is ready. I checked him out myself when we got to the arena. He’s running on automatic now. The handlers behind the toril gate could not believe it wasn’t a live animal. My creation waits in darkness, Pepe, but when the gate is opened and sunlight hits the photoelectric cells in his glass eyes, he will come alive; more alive than any farm-bred bull ever dreamed of being.”
La Fabalita fumed in the center of the arena. Scattered applause greeted her entrance but she did little to acknowledge it. Her pants were too tight and the discomfort only added to her displeasure. What should have been a triumph, the return to the bullring of Esmeralda Fabada, espontánea, under contract as la Fabalita, matador de toros, had been soured by the insulting behavior of Paco Machismo. She wasn’t fooled by his exaggerated courtliness; the elaborate hand-kissing was as sharp a rebuke as a slap in the face. He thought her a foolish woman and she vowed that before the afternoon was out she would give el número uno a lesson in the art of bullfighting he would never forget.
The enthusiastic entry of Mototoro into the arena occasioned an astonished murmuring among a crowd expecting something more along the lines of a steam tractor to come clanking out of the toril gate. Fabalita’s animosity dissolved the instant she unfurled the canvas cape and began her first media veronica. The machine was no ordinary bull. It was a bull such as a matador might face only two or three times each season: brave, straight-charging, reacting promptly to the swirl of the cape. Mototoro was the answer to a torero’s prayers.
Fabalita worked closer and closer to the horns. Her movements had the precision and fire of poetry; sonnets and sestinas flowed from her cape; her slippered feet traced couplets and quatrains in the sand; iambic hoofbeats answered her passionate chanting: “Toro… toro… toro…”
The ritual continued unaltered by the fact that Mototoro was a machine and not a bull. The picadors used blunt-tipped lances so as not to damage delicate internal mechanisms, but Mototoro was programmed to charge the silhouette of a horse without hesitation, and a number of small switches inserted in the robot’s morillo simulated severed neck muscles when hit by the pica. Artificial blood flowed freely. Fabalita placed three pairs of specially designed magnetic banderillas. The crowd cheered and clapped, won over by the illusion.
The final tercio was an intricate choreography of death. La Fabalita’s skill with the muleta touched on the lyrical, a perfect counterpoint to Mototoro’s somber majesty. The kill was made with a single thrust, recibiendo, the sword going straight to the off button deep within Mototoro’s electrical nervous system. The machine dropped to its knees and rolled slowly onto its back, gushing simulated gore.
Ten thousand hats sailed into the air in celebration. The judges awarded Fabalita both ears and the tail, but when Lucky Sam Wo saw the monosabios advancing on his invention with knives drawn, he bounded from behind the barrera and presented the triumphant matador with a duplicate set of severed bull parts bought at a butcher shop that morning in case of just such an eventuality.
Paco Machismo joined in the tumultuous applause, clapping enthusiastically as la Fabalita paraded past on her triumphal tour of the arena. “She has a lot of style, that one,” he said to his manager, standing beside him behind the barrera. “I was wrong to misjudge her.”
“A brilliant performance is always hard to follow, Paco,” Alfredo Gazpacho said. “You must give more than your courage with the rinoceronte. Nothing but fine art will satisfy this crowd now.”
“If he charges as straight as that machine, I will teach him to speak Latin before bestowing the gift of death.”
“Not too close at first, Paco. Feel him out with the cape and see how he moves.”
“Tell me, Alfredo, have you seen the Americans?”
“In the office, an hour ago. I spoke with the one called Abe. I asked him for the remainder of your money.”
“Yes?”
“He was counting the receipts and said if I came back later he would have it ready for me.”
“I don’t like that. We agreed to payment on the day of the fight.”
“Don’t worry, Paco, the day of the fight is not over yet.”
“All right, but where are the cameras? I thought this was to be a movie. How can they make a movie without cameras?”
“How should I know these things? Perhaps they have hidden the cameras. Perhaps it is cinéma vérité.”
Paco Machismo took a long swig from the water jug, rinsed his mouth once, and spat into the dust between his feet. “I don’t like this, Alfredo, something is wrong.”
“What is wrong is for your mind not to be on your work. Business is my concern, killing the rhinoceros is yours. Now stop worrying about money and concentrate on what you must do, for it is time to enter the arena.”
A sword-handler interrupted the self-congratulatory gloating of Don Pepe and Lucky Sam Wo to say that a lady in the first row desired to speak with the empresario. Don Pepe turned for a look. It was Arturo Madrigal’s mother, Doña Carlota. She sat, somber as a bat in her black dress, holding a large umbrella above her head for shade.
“Buenas tardes, Señora Madrigal,” Don Pepe said, coming over and reaching up on tiptoes to kiss her pale, cold hand. “This is an unexpected pleasure.”
“How long has it been since you heard such applause, Pepe?” The señora’s voice was thin and weak.
“Not since Arturo. It is welcome music.”
“This is your lucky day, Pepe, and for the girl too. Look how proudly Fabalita walks. They’re throwing flowers. How excited she must be.”
“Are you feeling ill, Señora Madrigal? You seem fatigued.”
“You’re very observant, Pepe,” Doña Carlota said. “I’m not in the best of health, it is true. But I have taken my medicine and expect to be free of all pain and suffering very soon.”
“My every wish for your speedy recovery,” Don Pepe said.
“Gracias, Pepe, but your thoughts should be with la Fabalita on her day of triumph. Here she comes now; such a pretty smile. Hurry and congratulate her, Pepe, and please, give her these as a token of my admiration.” Señora Madrigal reached beneath her seat and handed Don Pepe the long white box of roses. “Every young lady should have flowers to celebrate special occasions.”
Don Pepe made a short bow and hurried to the barrera. A cluster of picadors and sword-handlers shook la Fabalita’s hand and clapped her affectionately on the back. Lucky Sam wrapped the girl’s bleeding trophies in his pocket handkerchief.
“You were magnífica, Fabalita,” the empresario said, drawing the matador into an avuncular embrace. “I am honored to be your friend and associate.”
“The machine was very brave,” la Fabalita said. “I take back everything bad I said about it.”
“Listen to that crowd. They love you. Today Fabalita has won two hundred thousand fans, and among them the mother of the inspired Arturo Madrigal. She asked me to give you this in appreciation.”
“What is it?” Fabalita eyed the long box as she wiped the blood from her hands on a damp towel hanging behind the berrera.
“Flowers. Would you like to hold them?”
“I have no time for flowers now.” La Fabalita smiled and waved to the cheering crowd. She spoke to Don Pepe from behind her frozen smile like a ventriloquist. “Have someone take them back to my hotel room, and make certain they have enough water.”
“You are my queen,” Don Pepe chirped foolishly, “the Empress Fabalita. Your wish is my command.”
Fabalita continued to smile and wave. “Never mind the bullshit, Pepe,” she said, not moving her lips, “just get those damn flowers out of here without making a speech about it.”
The money was counted and stacked. Abe Wasserman wrapped each bundle with a rubber band and stuffed it into the bottom of a fat leather valise. He was starting on the last pile when Marty Farb strolled into the office, chewing a stick of gum.
“How’d it go?” Abe asked.
“Nothing to it. I left all the papers in the Chinaman’s desk and destroyed his contract with us. Plus, I stuffed his wastebasket with a bunch of incriminating correspondence.”
“Anybody see you going in?”
“Nah, the building was empty; most everybody in town must be here at the bullring. How’s the take?” Marty thumbed a wad of money like a dealer checking a pack of cards for marks.
“Close to seventy million pesetas.”
Marty whistled. “Better’n we figured,” he said.
“A lot better when you consider expenses were under a million and a half.” Abe finished bundling the banknotes and snapped the suitcase shut.
“Are you leaving something in the office to finger the Chinaman?” Marty asked.
“The place is lousy with plants: dummy checks, a phony bankbook; plus, his address is printed on all the stationery. By the time the cops find that forged paper in his desk, the good professor will take the rap as the brains behind the whole operation.”
“And the money?”
“They’ll be checking for a yacht called the Spoonbill, supposedly sailing from Monaco to the Balearics.”
“Perfect,” Marty said, reaching for the heavy leather suitcase. “Harry’s waiting at the airport. We better hustle or we’ll miss our flight to Rome.”
Off to one side, with his heavy cape held in both hands, Paco Machismo watched the rhino’s frenzied charge across the ring. A peon provoked the attack, shaking a cape like a beach blanket and ducking back to safety behind the barrera. A shout louder than a thunderstorm greeted the fearsome beast.