Santo Jesus died for our sins.
“Well,” Art said to the statue, “whatever you’re doing, it’s working, and whatever I’m doing, it’s not, so…”
Art made a manda. Knelt, lit a candle, and left a twenty-dollar bill. What the hell.
“Help me bring you down, Santo Jesus,” he whispered in Spanish, “and there’s more where that came from. I’ll give money to the poor.”
Walking back to the hotel from the shrine, Art met Adan Barrera.
Art had walked past this gym a dozen times. He had been tempted to check it out and never had, but on this particular evening a fairly large crowd was inside, so he walked in and stood at the edge.
Adan was barely twenty then. Short, almost diminutive, with a thin build. Long black hair combed straight back, designer jeans, Nike running shoes, and a purple polo shirt. Expensive clothes for this barrio. Smart clothes, smart kid-Art could see that right away. Adan Barrera just had a look like he always knew what was going on.
Art put him at about 5'5?, maybe 5'6?, but the kid standing beside him had to go 6'3” easy. And built. Big chest, sloping shoulders, lanky. You wouldn’t make them for brothers except for their faces. Same face on two different bodies-deep brown eyes, light coffee-colored skin, more Spanish-looking than Indian.
They were standing on the edge of the ring looking down at an unconscious boxer. Another fighter stood in the ring. A kid, really, certainly not out of his teens, but with a body that looked like it had been chiseled out of living stone. And he had those eyes-Art had seen them before in the ring-that had the look of a natural killer. Except now he seemed confused and a little guilty.
Art got it right away. The fighter had just knocked out a sparring partner and now had no one to work out with. The two brothers were his managers. It was a common enough scene in any Mexican barrio. For poor kids from the barrio, there were two routes up and out-drugs or boxing. The kid was an up-and-comer, hence the crowd, and the two middle-class Mutt-and-Jeff brothers were his managers.