“I thought Maxton didn’t bother you any.”
“Yeah, well, that was talk, this is the real world, like.”
Moe peeled off into Sutter Street. Dain kept going down Montgomery to Market, his face thoughtful.
He sat on the edge of the bed in his loft, a yellow Walkman Sport beside his thigh, listening again to Moe’s tape. Shenzie listened also, head cocked to one side as if waiting at a mouse hole. The voice talked of the bonds with remarkable clarity.
“Nothing wrong with them, is there?” asked Farnsworth in a jocular voice. “Not forged? Counterfeit? Stolen?”
“Good God no!” Zimmer’s voice was high-pitched and full of fear. A voice that looked over its shoulder as it talked.
“Then take them to our Chicago office and—”
“I’m out of town.”
Farnsworth’s voice said, “Out of town where?”
“N... I can’t tell you that.”
Dain hit the stop button.
“Hear it, Shenzie? Hear the ‘N’ he didn’t quite swallow?”
Dain punched EJECT to pop out the cassette. Shenzie reached out a sudden delicate paw and struck the Walkman three times, very quick light blows, then whirled and ran to the far corner of the bed where he crouched, glaring balefully. Dain ignored the histrionics.
“Just what I told you, cat. Hiding in her life, not his.” He tapped the cassette thoughtfully against his open palm. “But just who put the other bug on Farnsworth’s apartment phone?”
Shenzie said meow, then relaxed his baleful stance to wash himself with a delicate pink tongue. Dain picked up the phone. “You’re gonna visit Randy for a few days, cat. He volunteered.”
In the Vieux Carré, Vangie and Zimmer walked away from the far sad dying sounds of Bourbon Street. It was four in the morning. Around them were darkened windows, rumbling garbage trucks, early delivery vans; ahead, a darkened movie theater marquee with light spilling out across the sidewalk beyond it.
“Jimmy, I thought we’d agreed you’d stay off the street until I could get together another traveling stake for us.”
“I’m taking care of the traveling stake,” boasted Jimmy.
Since the bond theft, their original sexual relationship had developed an almost mother/son dimension. Vangie grabbed his arm and hurried him toward the light laid across the sidewalk beyond the darkened theater.
“I don’t want to hear this — but I’ve got to hear it.”
They passed under the sagging marquee. Half its unlit bulbs were broken. It advertised a triple bilclass="underline" Caught fromBehind, Stiff Lunch, Nympho Queens in Bondage. Beyond was the DELTA HOTEL — DAY — Week — Month — Maid Service, with rooms on the upper floors above the theater.
In the rear of the lobby a sallow-faced clerk dozed behind the check-in desk. A huge slow floor fan was trying to stir around the heat and perhaps shove some of it out the open door. Two shirt-sleeved white men and three black men seeking some illusory coolness not to be found in their rooms sat there despite the hour, wide-kneed and slack. Vangie half dragged Zimmer back toward the elevator. Their eyes followed her across the lobby as most men’s eyes would always follow Vangie.
Zimmer was babbling. “See, Vangie, what I did was—”
“In the room, honey.”
“But you have to understand that—”
“In the room.”
It was a room where love and hope would bleed to death, blessedly dark except for street light leaking around the drawn window curtain. Vangie locked the door, Zimmer switched on the single low-watt overhead. Vangie got a flat brown pint of bourbon from the dresser, at the sink poured some of it into the glass from the toothbrush holder, added tap water. She leaned against the sink to face Jimmy with glass in hand.
“Okay, Jimmy,” she said wearily, “hit me.”
“I called Bobby Farnsworth tonight.”
Despair entered her eyes, but somewhere she found a smile to paste on her mouth. “What’d you call him?”
“You know what I mean, Vangie — on the telephone.”
“Okay, what’d you tell him?”
“I didn’t tell him anything. He told me things. What’s the matter with you anyway?” His voice had a febrile hostility; since he’d found in Vangie the strength he could never possess himself, he had to rebel against it. “I got the bonds for us.”
“Yes, Jimmy.” She took a big gulp of her drink, made a face. “You got the bonds for us.”
“Now I’m going to get us the money for the bonds.”
“Or get us killed.”
“Why do you always have to belittle everything I do?” His face was petulant, his voice whiny. “I told Bobby I was out of town with some bearer bonds, and he told me how to convert them. I didn’t even leave him a phone number or anyplace where—”
“We agreed we didn’t touch the bonds for six months, didn’t we, Jimmy?” Vangie set her glass in the sink. “Here it is less than three weeks, you’re calling a broker already.”
“It’s easy for you. I’m stuck in this cockroach palace staring at the walls, while you...” His voice had been rising, suddenly he was shrieking, his face red, veins standing out along the sides of his neck. “While you get your rocks off shaking your titties for a bunch of fucking rednecks!”
Vangie seized her breasts and squeezed them cruelly. “You think having guys do this to you is fun?” she cried.
Then as fast as it had come, her anger was gone. She shivered and poured the rest of her drink down the sink.
“I know it’s hard for you to be cooped up here, honey, but as soon as I’ve gotten us together a traveling stake, we’ll move on, I’ll get a waitressing job—”
“And make extra money on your back in the private room?”
She sighed and went to look out the window, standing with one knee on the edge of the bed, her other foot on the floor. It was an unconscious pose of great grace, a dancer’s pose. Her voice was harsh and strained.
“Why don’t I just split with the bonds and leave you here for Maxton to find? Who the hell needs you?”
“Vangie, don’t talk that way!” He came up behind her, slid his hands under her arms. “Vangie, please, I... I love you. I want...” His hands cupped her breasts as he kissed the nape of her neck. “I need to make love to you, need to know that...”
She shook him off without turning, irritation in her face.
“Jimmy, Jimmy, there’s somebody coming after us and all you want to do is fuck. Can’t you feel him out there?” “All I feel is your rejection of me.”
He used his chastised-child voice. Vangie wasn’t hearing.
“Once I saw a deer some dogs had been running, Jimmy. They lost its scent, he came down to the bayou to drink.” She paused to lay her forehead against the cool window pane. “Usually deer, they just stay on the bank, sort of nuzzle aside the lily pads and duckweed and dead vegetation to drink. But those hounds, they’d run this one pretty hard, he wanted fresh water. So he waded out toward the channel...”
“Vangie, I’m sorry, honey. Please don’t... shut me out.”
“Only the little regular splashes a deer makes walking are different from those a muskrat makes swimming or a raccoon makes wading, and a gator can tell the difference, every time. Up the channel came ol’ gator, underwater. When the deer waded out to the edge of the channel and put his head down to drink... Snap!”
She slapped both hands, fingers splayed, against the glass.
“Ol’ gator had him by the nose.” Her palms left long wet smears on the glass. “He drug that deer into the water and gave a jerkl” — her hands jerked into fists pressed convulsively against her cheeks — “and the deer’s neck was broke.” She gestured down at the empty dawn street. “Out there somewhere is our gator...”