“The money?” I said. And was pleasantly surprised when she led me into the bedroom—being careful to keep from stepping in any of the blood spreading from the guy’s head—and pulled a valise out of the closet. She put it on the bed and opened it to show the cash.
“I knew it had to be somebody’s,” she said. “I knew he didn’t win it in no card game.” Her accent was swamp rat to the bone.
I riffled through the money. It looked to be almost all there.
“I don’t know how much all he spent of it,” she said. “I got about four dollars in my shirt yonder. You want I should get it?”
“Never mind,” I said.
“You gonna hurt me?” She looked all set for a bad answer.
“You help him steal it?”
“No sir, I never did any such.”
“Then I’ve got no reason to hurt you.”
“Truth to tell, I didn’t never expect to see him again. Then he shows up in Port Allen a coupla weeks ago and says he’s hit the jackpot and to come on if I was coming. Momma said he was no-count and I was a harebrained fool to go with him and she was right both times.”
“You the one to rat on him?”
She shook her head. “Probably his brother Carl. He was all the time beating on Carl and finally run him off from his own house—can you imagine? I wouldn’t blame Carl a bit if he told on him.”
She glanced toward the kitchen and her mouth tightened. “I told him he hit me again I’d stick him with a butcher knife. I meant it too. Momma always said they got to sleep sometime.”
I knew her story without having to hear it. I knew a dozen just like it: sweet girl takes up with some mean bastard who mistreats her till she goes sour and sometimes gets pretty mean herself. Some of them might deserve a slap now and then—some of them needed it—but none of them deserved to be made mean. This one was headed that way but might still take a lucky turn.
“What’s your name, girl?”
“Sally. It’s Sally May Ritter.”
“Can you drive that car out there, Sally?”
“Yessir. I kinda can.”
I took about three hundred from the valise and gave it to her. I told her to go to the second nearest depot, not the nearest one. “Park a few blocks away and then walk to the station. Get yourself a ticket to anywhere else.”
She stared at the money and then at me.
“And try to be more careful about the company you keep,” I said.
She said she aimed to be. Then said, “Where you from, anyway?”
“Someplace else. Now get a move on.”
She was packing a bag fast as I went out the door.
When we didn’t know where a robber had lammed, Rose would put out the word on him. If the bastard ever showed his face in Texas again, we’d hear about it.
Next thing the guy knew, there I’d be.
There were times, of course, when everything was running smoothly, when nothing was out of order and Brando and LQ and I didn’t have much to do but exercise in the gym or play cards or go to the police range and take a little target practice. Times when the only duty to come our way was to drive Rose to Houston or Corpus Christi to tend to some matter in person like he sometimes had to do.
But such times were pretty rare and never lasted more than a few days—praise Jesus, as LQ was prone to say in moments of gratitude.
After lunch I wandered along the Strand for a while, then went into a movie house showing A Night at the Opera. The Marx Brothers could always get a laugh out of me.
When I got back to the Club, Mrs. Bianco said to go on into the office. Rose was on the phone and Big Sam was in an easy chair, puffing a cigar and sipping a glass of wine. Sam gestured for me to sit in the chair beside his. I took a Chesterfield from the case on the desk. Rose did too and I leaned over and lit it for him. I sat down and Sam punched me lightly on the arm and said, “Jimmy the Kid.”
“Right,” Rose said into the phone. “Louisiana Street. They’re expecting you this afternoon. Just fill in the forms and get the signatures. I told them if they signed today the machines would be there tomorrow afternoon.”
He listened for a moment. “Yeah…Yeah…Right. Railyard warehouse got plenty in stock. Soon as they sign, let the warehouse know and they’ll get the shipment out to Houston…Okay. Yeah.”
He hung up and scribbled something on a sheet of paper, then leaned back and looked at me and Sam and gave a tired sigh that struck me as a touch theatrical.
“I swear to Christ, there’s times I wish I was still a barber,” he said. “A barber can whistle while he works, know what I mean? Can sing while he does his job. Shoot the shit with the customers. Talk about sports, pussy, stuff in the papers. This…” He gestured vaguely at the big desk in front of him. “Nothing but fucken deals all day. Phone calls. Arrangements. Nothing but business.”
Sam looked at me and winked. It wasn’t the first time we’d heard this complaint from Rose—but it was sentimental bullshit. He wouldn’t last two days back in a barber shop before he’d be scheming at how to outfox the big-time crooks at their own games, both the legal and the illegal ones, just like he and Sam had been doing all these years.
He saw how Big Sam and I were smiling. “Go to hell, both you.”
He poured me a glass of wine and refilled his own. Then held his glass across the desk and said, “Salute,” and Sam and I clinked ours against it.
He wanted to know if I’d picked up on anything today that might connect to the Dallas guys. I said I hadn’t.
“I keep telling you,” Sam said to him, “you’re worrying for nothing. I was on the phone with our ears in Dallas ten minutes ago. None of them have heard anything.”
“Everybody knows we got ears all over,” Rose said. “If they’re planning a move they’re keeping a tight lid on it.”
“They got no reason to make a move on us,” Sam said. “Ragsdale lost their machines to us, we didn’t steal them. They made a bet on Willie Rags and they lost.”
“Could be they’re sore losers,” Rose said. “Could be they don’t give a rat’s ass it’s Ragsdale’s fault.”
“What can they do, come get the machines back?” Sam said. “As soon as they tried it we’d hear about it and be there before they got the first slot loaded on the truck. They can’t do anything except forget the slots or buy them back. You got them over a barrel, Rosie.”
Rose arched his brow at me in question.
“I’m with Sam,” I said.
He nodded but didn’t look convinced. “Well…keep a close tab with the ears,” he said to Sam.
“And you,” he said to me, “just keep close.”
Lucio Ramirez is about to close his bakery for the day when the little bell jingles over the door and two men enter. One of them flips the sign hanging inside the glass door to the side that says CERRADO and then turns the doorlock.
Angel Lozano and Gustavo Mendez are large men in finely tailored suits and snapbrim fedoras. They could pass for brothers, their chief distinction in their mustaches—Angel’s thick and droopy, Gustavo’s thin and straight—and in Angel’s left eye, which is held in a permanent half-squint by a pinched white scar at its outer corner.
Apodaca is a small pueblo and these men in smart city clothes are obvious outsiders. Even as Ramirez asks how he may serve them, his apprehension is stark on his face.
Angel asks if he is related to Maria Ramirez, who until recently was in the employ of La Hacienda de Las Cadenas.