“I talk better I got a smoke,” the midget said.
“I bet you can talk good either way,” I said. Then to the big guy: “I’m liking where that gun is less and less. Brett, you mind taking it?”
Brett leaned over and grabbed the automatic off the table and dropped it onto her lap. She held the .38 on the big guy now. The big guy looked at the gun in her lap, then at her face, then at her gun. He grimaced, and considering how he already looked, it wasn’t pretty.
I turned so I could lay my gun across my knee. That way it was easy to move and point at the midget should he find something inside his coat I didn’t like, but it was a little less personal this way.
“I really would like to smoke,” he said.
Brett nodded. The midget reached inside his coat and brought out a little folder of matches. He peeled one off and lit his cigar. The room turned foul quickly. He said, “This daughter you got, lady. She’s in some manure up to her eyeballs.”
“And you drove all the way down here to tell us,” I said. “You’re some good goddamn citizens, aren’t you?”
“We drove down here ’cause we thought it might get us some money,” the midget said. “And we need money. We’re on our way to Mexico. Me and Wilber, we worked for Jim Clemente up until a day or so ago. But we had an unfortunate turn of events. We got our hand caught in the till, so to speak.”
“Who’s Jim Clemente?” I said.
“He’s the main man in Tulsa, that’s what he is. You want a whore, you buy one, somehow money goes back to him. Some little chippie in boogie town does a coon and gets ten bucks, Clemente, he gets six of it. You want someone killed, he’s the one has it done. He has folks who do it.”
“Like you two?” I said.
“Yeah, like us.”
“What do you do?” Brett said to the midget. “Punch them in the butt?”
“It’s not nice to make fun of a physical liability,” said the midget.
“Look at it this way,” Brett said, “you can drink out of the toilet without straining your back.”
“That’s no way to talk to a professional,” said the midget.
“Professional, my ass,” I said. “You didn’t search either of us when we came in. You’re about as organized as the Iraqi army.”
“We been through some hard times,” said the midget. “We’re a bit scattered. And we aren’t in that line of business anymore. By the way. They call me Red.”
“I don’t give a flyin’ shit your name’s God,” Brett said. “You tell me about my daughter now, or I’m gonna shoot holes in your little kneecaps.”
“My goodness,” Red said. “What a foul-mouthed lady. I never could stand a woman cursed and talked tough.”
“I’m not askin’ you to stand it,” Brett said. “I’m askin’ you to stand bullet holes in your kneecaps. After that, maybe I’ll shoot off the head of your little dick.”
“Well,” Red said, puffing his cigar. “I could ill afford that. Let me try and put it in a nutshell.”
“You couldn’t put it in a number ten washtub,” Wilber said.
Red ignored him, said, “Wilber and I worked for Jim Clemente. We did odd jobs for him. We checked on things for him. One of the things we checked on was hookers. Your daughter, ma’am, is a hooker, and with the kind of mouth you have, I can see how she might have drifted from the straight and narrow. In my case, my old mama sold me to a carnival. I rode big dogs on a little red saddle. I had some acts with chimpanzees as well. Little rascals are always fornicating or defecating on something, and it doesn’t bother them to throw dung either, I’ll promise you that. Humiliating. It gave me a bad outlook on life. That and always looking at people’s crotches.”
Brett said, “I don’t care you had to wear diapers, fuck a duck, and eat monkey shit.”
“I just bet you don’t, lady,” Red said. He took hold of his cigar, turned it around in his mouth, pulled it out, blew smoke, put it back and looked at the toes of his boots. He said, “What I’m doing is trying to find a place to begin.”
“Just about anywhere is starting to look good,” I said.
“Then, I suppose I should start with the strangulation of Maude Fields. Does that seem appropriate to you, Wilber?”
“That’ll work,” Wilber said.
4
The air-conditioning unit cut off and back on. A blast of cold air filled the room. Red said, “This Maude was a madam out of Oklahoma City. She worked for Jim Clemente. Not that she wanted to, but if Jim decided you were working for him, then you were working for him. Like I said, some whore put out for money somewhere, Big Jim, he knew about it and you owed him. Someone snorted some coke or sold a rock, he got a share. He was fair in his own way. Maude got the largest cut of the meat she was selling, but Jim, he got a share, and it got so Maude was obstreperous. Holding out. She’d been warned. More than once. Jim can be a very warm and understanding guy, but he doesn’t like to warn someone more than twice.
“He sent me and Wilber over to Oklahoma City to have a talk with her. She was most inconsiderate. Not unlike the lady there with the revolver. Very rude. Very … how shall I put it. Very … Go Ahead. Well, our orders were simple. Either she came through, or we eliminated her and set something up new for Jim. She didn’t come through. In fact, she tried to shoot the both of us with a derringer. That didn’t work out. She missed. Wilber disarmed her and held her down and I strangled her with a stretch of piano wire strung between two wooden knobs. It sounds exotic. Almost secret-agent-like. But it’s really a messy instrument. They say a gun is messy, but I must tell you on authority this isn’t true. I suppose a bullet makes a kind of mess, but it’s from afar if you want, and if you get a good shot in, and you don’t shoot your target in your living room, you just walk off.
“Not so strangling a colored woman who I would judge tapped out at about three-fifty and could tie a good-sized hog in a knot with her bare hands. Wilber had to sit on her, and I had to hold her head in my lap and use the piano wire on her throat. Very messy. Gets all over you.”
“Yeah, and she shit herself,” Wilber said.
“Yes,” said Red, “there was that. Defecation. Most unpleasant. I was reminded of the chimpanzees I used to work with.”
“Had on a muumuu,” Wilber said. “It ran down her legs. Got on my hands, all over my pants and shoes. Had to throw them away. The pants, not the shoes. Shoes cleaned up all right.”
“It took us a good part of a half hour to finish her,” Red said, “and I bet that piano wire cut all the way to the bone, and still she struggled. I’ve never seen anything like it. The woman was a regular Rasputin.”
“And she just shit all over everything,” Wilber said.
“You said that,” I said.
“Seemed the more I tightened that wire, the more she fought,” Red said. “Wilber there, big as he is, couldn’t hold her down. When it was over, we were both exhausted. It was quite a rumble tumble.”
Red looked at Brett to see what effect he was having. Brett’s face held no more emotion than the revolver in her hand. I could see a flash of disappointment roll over Red’s face, but he covered it with a puff of his cigar. A cloud of dark tobacco smoke rolled up and gathered about his red head like smoke above a forest fire. Red leaned over and thumped his ashes in an ashtray on the nightstand next to the bed.
“You telling this so we’ll know how tough you are, or just because you like to hear yourself tell it?” I said.
“Both,” Red said. “And Maude has to do with Tillie, and that has to do with Jim, and finally with us, then you. I’m wanting you to know too, that though Wilber and I have had our disagreements with Jim, I think Jim is one heck of a good fella.”
“Ain’t no one nicer to niggers,” Wilber said. “He’s got lots of niggers work for him, and Indians, and that’s more than can be said for folks down this way.”