I hadn’t told LQ and Brando about the bonus and they were happy as longshot winners. I slipped the envelope into my coat pocket. All I wanted now was to get going.
But then Rose said to me, “So? Who’s the guy in the hospital? Friend of yours, you say?”
I’d intended to have a good story to explain Rocha if I had to, a story that wouldn’t promote too many questions or involve mention of Daniela. But on the way over from the hospital I’d had other things on my mind. All I could think to say now was, “He’s the cousin of a friend. They’re damn grateful for what you did.” I hoped that would get me off the hook for having to know anything more about the guy. The last thing I wanted was to get into a discussion about any of it.
“Come again?” Rose said. “I pulled strings to help a guy who’s not even your friend? Hey, Kid, I aint in the habit of doing big-time favors for just anybody.”
“I know. Like I said, my friend’s grateful. Me too.”
“I get it,” Sam said. “This friend of yours…it’s a girl, right?”
If I said no, I’d have to invent some guy on the spot, and I wasn’t up to it. “How’d you guess?” I said, smiling big. But now I was going to have to give them some of it.
“When a guy does something for no good reason, there’s usually a girl,” Sam said.
“It’s kind of a rough story,” I said.
LQ and Brando had started for the door but paused and gave me a curious look at Rose’s mention of some guy in the hospital. On hearing about the girl, they exchanged a look and sat down on the small sofa. Sam lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair. Rose tapped his fingers on the desktop.
Except for saying they were cousins and that I’d met them at a neighborhood party and taken a shine to them—especially her, I said, waggling my eyebrows to show what a casual thing it had been—I told it pretty much as Rocha had told it to me. Why not? But I didn’t clutter it up with a lot of detail. I said it turned out she’d been kidnapped in Mexico by some rich guy and finally got away from him and came to Galveston with Rocha. They were staying with friends of theirs named Avila. Last night a couple of goons who must’ve been the rich guy’s muscle busted into the house and grabbed her. They killed the Avilas—dead witnesses tell no tales—and tried to kill Rocha too but only left him in bad need of a doctor. If I hadn’t shown up when I did, he probably wouldn’t have made it. Or if Rose hadn’t got him in the hospital without the police getting involved.
LQ and Brando were watching me closely.
“I gave the cops a call,” I said. “They’re probably at the scene right now, but they won’t get much. It’s a neighborhood where nobody ever sees anything, even if they do. Anyway, I figure those two are over the border by now.”
“With the girl,” Rose said.
“I guess,” I said.
“Some story, Kid,” Sam said. “You weren’t kidding about rough. You knew the people who got it?”
“Yeah. Nice folk.”
“Jeez, tough break for them.”
“Goes to show you can’t be too careful who you take in under your roof,” LQ said. “Come on, Ramon, I could use a drink.” They got up and went out.
I started to get up too, but Rose said, “Hold on a sec, Kid,” and waved me back down in my chair.
“I better go press the flesh,” Sam said. “Make sure everybody’s drinking up and staying happy.” Then he was gone too.
Rose studied me over the flame of his lighter as he fired up a smoke. “This girl…she’s kind of special, huh?”
“I wouldn’t say that. We went out a coupla times.”
“How long you say you know her?”
“Not long. Didn’t really get to know her very well.”
“How long’s not long?”
“Well…a couple of days.” I grinned to show him how funny I thought it was.
He wasn’t buying it. “They say it don’t take long, sometimes—to get to know somebody pretty good, I mean.”
“Yeah, so I’ve heard.”
I stood up.
“So what you got in mind now?” he said.
“Do a little drinking with LQ and Brando, celebrate the bonus. Thanks a lot, by the way.”
“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Kid. Only reason you aint already on the way to the border is you needed cash.”
I had made up my mind to go after her the minute Rocha told me what happened—but I’d wanted to avoid any talk about it. There wasn’t anything to talk about.
“I gotta get going,” I said.
“Let me tell you something about women, Jimmy.”
“I have to go,” I said. I felt like I had a snake twisting around inside me.
“A woman’s never the reason. It’s always something else. Always. The important thing is to know what it really is.”
“All I know is, he’s not gonna decide how it goes.”
He stared at me without expression for a second—and then showed that smile that was nothing but teeth.
“Well hell, Kid…now you’re making sense.”
LQ and Brando fell in beside me as I made my way through the Studio crowd and headed for the elevator. LQ had his hands in his pockets and was twirling a toothpick between his teeth. Mr. Nonchalance. Some guy not watching where he was going bumped hard into Brando and said “Hey Jack—” and started to turn. And then he caught Ray’s look and shut up and moved on.
We rode down in a packed elevator. When we got out on the street I said I’d see them later and started around to the parking lot to get my valise out of the Terraplane. The train station was close enough to walk to.
They came along behind me, LQ whistling “Happy Days Are Here Again.” I asked where they thought they were going.
“Name it,” LQ said.
“I got something to tend to that’s nothing to do with business. See you guys later.”
“Sure enough will, because we’re coming,” LQ said. “Won’t take but a minute to get our bags.”
“I just told you it’s not a business thing. It doesn’t concern you guys.”
“Bullshit,” Brando said.
“Goddamn it, it’s personal, I’m telling you—”
“We’re partners,” Brando said.
“Business or personal,” LQ said around his toothpick. “In sunshine or in rain.”
As soon as we got on the move the snake inside me settled down, but it felt coiled and ready. We left Galveston well before dawn, then grabbed the first westbound connection out of Houston. The day broke red behind us as we pulled out of the station. I’d called Rose from the Galveston depot and said LQ and Brando were going with me. He said he’d figured they would be and that their visas would be ready too when we got to the border.
The train made stops at several small stations along the way and finally pulled into San Antonio a little before noon. It stopped there long enough for us to get out and have a café lunch rather than eat in the dining car. It was the first time I’d been to San Antone since the night two years before when Rose and I had gone speeding out of it in the Cadillac, leaving dead men in the street.
We hadn’t talked much on the train, every man pretty much keeping to his own thoughts, but once the waitress served us our steak sandwiches and slaw, Brando said, “So how long we got to wait before hearing about this girl?”
I said she was Mexican and her name was Daniela, she was damn pretty and spoke good English. I told about meeting her at the Avilas’ after the fight with Rocha but said I’d first seen her on New Year’s Eve when she went by in front of us in a beat-to-hell Model T.
“Hellfire, I remember that!” LQ said. “She was a finelooking chiquita. You young rascal—you track her down or what?”