Latino Books Into Movies? Gato Guerrero Prowls Again

Congratulations to R. Ch. Garcia on his recent 2023 Latino Books Into Movies Award.  Rudy's book, Death Song of the Dragón Chicxulub, won the Gold Medal in the Sci-Fi or Fantasy Category.  Rudy was one of the original founders of La Bloga, and he's still doing his literary thing.

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Here's an excerpt from my 1994 novel, The Ballad of Gato Guerrero.  This piece gives an overview of the relationship between the lawyer Luis Montez and his close friend Felix "Gato" Guerrero. Place: 1960s and 1990s Denver.  Watch for a new edition of The Ballad of Gato Guerrero later this year.

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Gato and I had grown up together in the parks, basketball courts and rec halls of the Northside. Cruising downtown, we made the scene on Sixteenth Street, where every Denver kid with any kind of wheels managed to end up on Friday night. Nothing too intense, just a little imaginary headbutting like bantam roosters in the backyard of my grandmother’s house. Eventually, we returned to our part of town, up and down Federal, through the Scotchman, more posturing and tire squeals. We dragged Thirty-eighth Avenue in our fathers’ cars until we gave in to the cops stopping us every night and found new neighborhoods, new girls to chase, new rivals to stare down or outdance at all-night house parties. 

 Occasionally, we prowled a park with the trite name of Inspiration Point, where we could interrupt lovers, drink beer and mumble about our futures while we looked over Lakeside Amusement Park and the mountains. We chilled out at the Point because we believed we were safe there—a peaceful hill windswept and quiet except for grunts and groans from city traffic below. The contours of the urban sprawl were outlined by moving ribbons of light from the interstate. And it was always Felix and I celebrating—talking drivel, taking a breather from the grind of Denver’s Northside while we mapped out a plan for progress that was measured in good times, pretty girls and chances to grow up quicker than we needed. 

We jammed through four quick years at North High. I went off to college and the Chicano Revolution. Felix took a more popular route, at least for most of the guys I knew, and ended up doing time in a place known as the Nam. A dozen years added up before I saw him again. 

Our lives had continued, through birth, death, divorce and taxes, but we finished the circle. We somehow ended up where we’d started when we’d hugged good-bye on the high school steps the first day of our respective long, strange trips. 

Drinking and partying with Felix every two or three weeks could not be a regular part of my routine for a couple of years, because I had decided I had to grow up. That meant working hard at my career and playing less with the guys. But when we needed time away from everything else, we still found each other. We could talk about the old days, scheme and dream about the future, laugh at politicians and grumble about the crap we seemed to step in every day. We were buds, partners, homeboys and we hung on to that. 

The Denver Bar and Grill had been our place before it was legal for us to drink. I didn’t know a time when it wasn’t an essential part of our neighborhood. Duck-tailed, loud-talking, finger-popping boys looking for big-haired, loud-talking, finger-popping girls learned how to drink in the Denver. We kept it for ourselves long after we’d passed the finger-popping stage. 

Geno Lazzeri had a fetish for honky-tonk tunes that tugged at redneck heartstrings and, since he was the sole owner now that Geno Senior had made his way to the big saloon in the sky, he exercised his right to set the ambience in any fashion he wanted. A song about a Houston heartbreaker or the last time some down-and-out cowboy had a good drink, good job and good woman floated in the background, or else it wasn’t the Denver. I tried to keep it in perspective. Mexican music was just as hokey, and it often had the same beat. The best local bands, including Cariño Nuevo, sprinkled in George Strait and Patsy Cline with the standard oldies and rancheras. The older I get, the more I recognize that there are fewer and fewer constants. One essential I can count on is that the band at any Chicano wedding dance will play “Kansas City” and “Honky-Tonk” before the lights are turned on and the gifts carried to the cars of members of the wedding party for safekeeping until the gift-opening party the next day. 

Felix took his time showing up at the Denver. In his absence, I had been forced to carry on a conversation with Carla, Geno’s oldest daughter. The plump, eternal teenager pumped out beer, pretzels and giggles for her father’s customers in front of an ancient smeared and cracked mirror. Naugahyde diamond stitch covered the ceiling and bar, held in place with brass buttons as big around as half-dollars. Small round tables with vinyl black-and-white checkerboard tablecloths sat empty, occupied only during the occasional lunch rush. 

I had finished my first beer, gotten halfway through my second and listened to Carla’s fourth lawyer joke by the time Felix showed up. 

His thick, wavy hair, as black as the day he was born, sloped backward in the same pachuco, carnival-barker style he’d picked up when he was thirteen and loose as a goose. Always bigger than I, he had about three inches and forty pounds of an advantage, the weight packed tightly around big bones. He didn’t have a Chicano build, a Chicano look or even a Chicano face, whatever those are, but there was no mistaking his heritage. A gray-blue cross tattoo twitched to the beat of his pulse on the web of his left hand, rubbed down and faded after thirty years. The way his eyes lidded over when he talked assured the clique who’d grown up with him that he was stone raza, and I had seen him outflank adversaries with enough smarts never to doubt that he would be solid in any tough situation. But that night, he looked bad—and not just from an unfulfilled need to recuperate from the Capri fight. Thick lines around his eyes bunched up his skin into a permanent squint. He seemed paler than I remembered, and heavier, slower. And the sadness in the famous green eyes could mean only one thing—a woman had crept into his heart and eaten a good portion of what was left of the romantic soul of my Chicano brother.

Later.

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Manuel Ramos writes crime fiction. Read his latest story, Northside Nocturne, in the award-winning anthology Denver Noir, edited by Cynthia Swanson, published by Akashic Books.