“What’s all this?” I said.
“From Bubber,” he said. “He didn’t waste any time after he got your telegram.”
The map and the letter had arrived yesterday morning, hand-delivered by a guy who’d shown up at the door and told Charlie he’d been instructed to give the material to no one but Russell or me. Russell heard her arguing with him and came out on his crutch. The guy gladly accepted his offer of a glass of beer before heading off. Russell didn’t say whether Charlie had joined them in the beer, but my guess was she hadn’t.
The letter was actually a long note, addressing no one in particular and unsigned. It was written in pencil in an awkward hand—by some inside man, Russell figured, maybe a Santa Rita inmate but more likely by a hack. It described the prison’s daily routine and recent work assignments, including Loomis Mitchum’s. Every day the prison sent out a half-dozen work crews to various kinds of jobs. Mitchum was assigned to a crew of eleven other cons overseen by three guards, including the driver, every guard armed with a pump shotgun. The big X showed the location of the Santa Rita camp, and the little one below it was where Mitchum’s crew had been working at clearing a new drilling site for an oil company. The squiggly line was a truck trail joining the site to the north-south Big Lake highway. Although Mitchum’s crew was scheduled to work at this site for another few weeks, the note said, labor assignments were subject to change at any time, so there was no certainty of how much longer Mitchum would actually be at that site. Wherever they were assigned, however, each crew always went out on the same truck, and each truck carried an identifying number on the doors. Mitchum’s crew was transported on truck 526.
“It’s practically the same setup as when I busted him out of Sugarland,” Russell said.
“Except like this guy says, no telling when they’ll put Buck on some other job. Maybe he’ll still be on this job when your leg’s all better, maybe he won’t. We’ll have to see how—”
“That’s why we’ll do it tomorrow,” Russell said. “They could take him off the road anytime. They could transfer him to some other joint, a tighter one. You never know. All I know is it ain’t likely to get no easier than Santa Rita. So we get him tomorrow.”
I saw that he was absolutely serious. “Russell,” I said, “we haven’t even had a look at the place. And we need a third man. And you can hardly walk, for Christ’s sake.”
“I ain’t got to walk. I can cover you and the girl from the car. Truth to tell, I think we can do it just us two if we have to, but if she’s as cool as you say, she’ll be good for third man.”
It took me a moment to understand he was talking about Belle.
“You should see your face, kid,” he said. “What? Were you bullshitting me about how good she is?”
I was seized by some misgiving I couldn’t name. “No, man, she did fine,” I said. “It’s only that, well, this is a whole different thing….”
“It ain’t that different. If she could handle herself on the road like you said, she can handle this.” He gave me a narrow look. “Ah shit, Sonny, don’t tell me you’ve gone goofy for the broad. Is that it? She your main lookout now, and the hell with your partners? Hell with old Uncle Buck?”
“Hell no, man,” I said. And thought, Hell no.
“I hope not, kid. Last thing we need’s a partner with his head up his ass over some chippy.”
The crack stung but I took it. If he saw it made me sore he’d think he’d hit a nerve, that he was right that I’d gone sappy—and he wasn’t right, goddammit. He wasn’t.
“It’s just that she might not want to be in on something like this,” I said. It sounded lame even to me.
“Well, I know one way to find out real fast,” he said. “We’ll ask her.”
What could I say? “Okay by me.”
“But listen, kid, yea or nay, with or without her, you and me go get him tomorrow. Right?”
“Hell yeah, man.”
He grinned. He knew as well as I did what she was going to say.
We’d do it like he and Jimmyboy had done it at Sugarland. Russell was sure he could cover at least two of the guards from the roadster’s rumble seat, but in any case he could cover at least one of them. I’d be the one to get out and disarm the hacks and disable the prison truck. If we needed a backup outside the car, Belle would do it.
We had just finished roughing out the plan when the girls came in. Charlie had obviously been crying. She went to the cabinet over the sink and got a fresh pack of cigarettes and busied herself opening it. Belle got a bottle of Coke from the Frigidaire and pried off the cap with the opener attached to the end of the counter and then went and sat on a stool by the stove. Charlie lit a smoke and took a few deep drags and stared at Russell, who stared right back.
“So?” she said. “You make up your mind?”
“There was nothing to make up about it,” he said.
“You’re going to do it, then?”
“What’s it look like?” he said.
“Goddammit, Russell, can’t you for once give me a straight answer? Are you going to do it?”
“What’s it look like?”
She ran her eyes over the papers and maps, her face a mix of anger and despair. I glanced at Belle but she was staring down at her soda pop.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Charlie said. “I can’t always be waiting around to see if you’ve been…to see if you come back in one piece.”
Russell sighed and looked bored. A man who’d heard all this too many times.
“You make me feel like one of those fools in the romance magazines,” she said. “But you don’t give a damn, do you? It doesn’t matter one bit that I love you, does it? Well, I’ll tell you something, Russell, you’re going to…ah, the hell with it.” She stubbed the cigarette in an ashtray and left it crumpled and smoldering.
“Only be a minute,” she said to Belle, and went to the bedroom.
“There’s a bus coming through in a half hour,” Belle said softly. “Stops at the hotel on Main, she already checked. I said I’d drive her over. It’ll take her to San Antone and she can catch a train to New Orleans from there.”
Russell reached into the valise and took out a handful of bills and swiftly counted out about a thousand. He handed Belle the money. “Give it to her when she’s getting on the bus. Don’t let her give it back. If you can sneak it in her bag, do it that way.”
Belle nodded and put the money in her pocket.
Russell poured me another drink and one for himself. We sat there, not saying anything, hearing her working the drawers in the bedroom, hearing her footsteps on the wooden floor as she went into the bathroom, hearing them come out again. A minute later she set her bag down at the kitchen door and came over to me and I got up and we hugged and she gave me a peck on the cheek.
“Take care of yourself, Sonny,” she said low in my ear. “Her too.”
She stepped over to Russell and bent down and kissed him on the mouth. “Bye, baby.”
“Bon voyage, girl,” he said, looking her in the eye.
She went out and Belle followed and we heard the front door open and close. Then the car doors. Then the roadster motor fire up. Then the car driving away.
A sweltering summer afternoon no different from most in West Texas but for the low reef of dark clouds on the eastern horizon. People on the streets joke about the vague possibility of rain, of an actual storm perhaps, which would be an even more uncommon turn of weather.