in a dark little room full of big-mouth mommas cradling tiny howling tantrums in their arms?
Whuhhh—Nestor sees the table in the back of the room rising up four or five inches on one side… ping a ping a ping ping, knives and forks and spoons, sliding off onto the floor… The Sergeant sees it, too… springs toward it… Nestor springs toward it from the other side… Bursting out from underneath it—it’s that big sonofabitch rising up like a monster… “Police! FREEZE, YOU PIECE A SHIT!” bellows the Sergeant… The hulk hesitates an instant to size up the threat… he’s seeing red… makes a move toward the Sergeant… to squeeze him like a bug… the Sergeant unsnaps the flap over his holster with his forefinger—No, Sarge!—too late! The giant’s on top of him, going for his throat… the gun—useless—the Sergeant’s clawing with both hands trying to pry loose the huge fingers around his neck. Nestor hurls himself WHOMP onto the giant’s back. The man is huge, he’s powerful, he outweighs Nestor by close to a hundred pounds… Nestor wraps his legs around the giant’s abdomen and locks his ankles together… He must feel like a little amok monkey to the giant, who lifts his arms to reach behind his shoulders and swat this nuisance away… frees the Sergeant from being throttled just long enough to begin drawing the gun from the holster… “No, Sarge!” says Nestor—thrusts both his arms under the brute’s armpits and clasps his hands together at the base of his skull… Oh, Nestor remembers very well!… in high school wrestling this was known as a “full nelson”… illegal because if you pressed down on the base of the skull, you might break your opponent’s neck… Oh, does he remember!… the leg lock was known as a “figure four”… the nelson and the figure four—ride him!—ride that sonofabitch until he can’t move anymore!… force the bastard’s head and neck down until he wants to beg for mercy—but can’t get words out because of his constricted throat… “Unnnnggggh… unnnnggggghh”… trying desperately to pry Nestor’s hands off the back of his head… getting nowhere… Nestor and his Rodriguez’s Gym rope-climbing arms. The giant can’t stand the pain… Unnnnggggghhhheeeee!… Unnnnnngggggghhhhhheeeeeee!… Nestor feels himself going over backward… the giant’s propelling himself backward to bodyslam his little tormentor… crush him by making him hit the floor under all that weight… they’re both keeling over… Nestor uses his leg lock to torque the giant’s body… they crash to the floor… not the big one on top of the little one but side by side. The giant rolls over, trying to flatten Nestor with his great weight crackle but every time he rolls over crackle Nestor still has a leg lock on him. The giant rolls and rolls crackle crackle, he crackles every time he rolls facedown on his abdomen… rolls over onto his belly crackle with the little monkey on top, the little monkey stays locked upon his back and ’bout like to break his neck—“Sarge, no!” Sergeant Hernandez is free and on his feet, gun drawn, trying to get a clean shot at the giant… too much rolling and writhing. ::::::Which one is he gonna end up hitting?:::::: “No, Sarge, don’t! I’ve got him!”… The full nelson has the giant’s head keeled over toward his chest… His moans are escalating into screams uuunnngohohohohOGHOHHHH!… one last strangled scream and all at once he’s just a great sack of fat—he’s struggling… the giant is gasping… trying to suck air… starts thrashing his legs… tries to launch his great thighs, as if that’s going to break the grip of Nestor’s figure four leg lock. Big mistake… used up every last pocket of air in his lungs… rasping sounds, rasping sounds… pathetic heaves and whimpers… struggling for oxygen… Nestor’s able to force the great bull’s skull down as far as his own arms will go… The giant’s eyes are glassy, his mouth is wide open… he sounds like a huge dying creature… Good! “Let’s roll, motherfucker!” he shouts into the brute’s ear and presses down even harder on his neck… the bull attempts to roll once more to get some kind of relief… Nestor lets him roll crackle until his already bloody face is mashed once more into the floor… and he gives up all hope—slummmp—all muscular contraction is gone from his body. He goes slack… he’s finished… he can’t do anything but lie on the floor with his lungs forcing dying sounds up from his gullet in