Rumble Tumble (9 page)

“Where’d she go?”

Cement Head said, “She ain’t anywhere close. If you want loving tonight, Tillie’s out.”

Blue Suit turned his head and looked at Cement Head. There didn’t seem to be any expression on his face, but there was certainly an expression on Cement Head’s face. Fear.

Blue Suit turned back to me and gave me a smile. His face didn’t go along with the jock build. It was very suave and assured. Here was a man who didn’t have to pay for pussy and knew you did.

“There’s plenty of girls here can do it for you,” Blue Suit said.

A log shifted in the fireplace, crackled. I jumped a little.

“Nervous, aren’t you?” said Blue Suit.

“My first time in a whorehouse,” I said.

He smiled, “Well, we sure wouldn’t have figured that.”

Cement Head laughed on cue, but didn’t overdo it.

Blue Suit said, “That little redhead you were talking to can do more tricks with your dick than a monkey on a jungle gym. My advice is you latch on to her. Though it looks like she’ll be occupied for a while.”

I looked to see her going upstairs with a man on her arm. He was feeling her ass and she was smiling like there wasn’t anything better in the world to her than a strange man’s hand up her crack.

“She’s good,” Blue Suit said. “I promise you that. And they don’t come any cleaner.”

“She’s got that new car smell, then,” I said.

He smiled at me. “That’s right. She may not be new, but she smells new.”

I gave a good leer and went back into the crowd. I wasn’t sure what to do next, but the next moment, a lot of decisions were made for me.

Through the half-open door came someone I knew.

He was wearing an expensive-cut gray Western suit, little gray boots with red jalapeños stitched onto them, and he had on a white ten gallon hat big enough to cook chili in.

It was Red, the midget. Beside him was Wilber, wearing a neck brace. First thing they saw as they entered was me.

13

A lot of things went through my head right then, but none of them told me why the midget and Wilber were here. From what they’d said their lives were on the line and this would be the last place they should be.

But there they were, standing just inside the door, looking at me as if they had just sighted the Virgin Mary in see-through panties and high heels.

I think it took the midget a moment to put it together, but I could tell Wilber knew who I was right away. His mouth fell open and his eyes widened. I believe he and I were mirror images at that moment.

Wilber reached down and got hold of the shoulder of the midget’s suit, trying to alert him, but there was no need. Red had figured it out. Wilber bent down and Red said something in his ear, then smiled at me. Red walked behind one of the couches and over toward the fireplace.

I stood there a moment, trying to decide what to do. One thing was certain. The pickle was out of the jar.

I started walking slowly toward the door, hoping Wilber would let me pass, and knowing he wouldn’t. I tried to go wide to his right, but he said, “I don’t think so.”

I didn’t hesitate. I kicked out hard and caught Wilber in the thigh with the toe of my shoe. It was a good shot, right where the muscles group, and he let out a grunt and bent over. I shifted slightly away from him and snapped my foot up in a back hook and caught him with my heel in the face as he was bent. I made a run for it then, but one of the big guys in the hand-tailored suits appeared. He was so large that when he stood in front of the door it disappeared.

I faked by raising my hand, and he looked up, and I kicked him in the balls, trying to make a field goal somewhere in Central Texas.

It was a good ball shot, but either this guy had nuts of steel or had used so many steroids his ’nads had gone to seed, because all he did was make with a grunt and come at me.

I couldn’t deal with his size and strength, so I tried to sidestep, but I bumped up against somebody, one of the girls, a customer, whatever, and he hit me with a glancing right that jolted me so hard the coins in my pants pocket changed denomination.

I tried to hit him back, but found it hard to do from the floor. And besides, the ceiling was falling on me.

Or so it seemed. It was No Balls coming down on me, and he had hold of my coat and was lifting me. He drew back his fist. At that moment I was so stunned, I sort of welcomed any blow he might give me, but there was still enough reflex in me, still enough of the fighter, that I responded by poking my fingers into his eyes.

He barked, dropped me. I rolled against someone, tried to get up. But the someone was Wilber. He hooked his arm over the back of my head, under my neck, had me in a guillotine choke. I stomped his foot and grabbed one of his legs behind the knee and broke his balance while I swatted his balls with my free hand hard enough for them to replace his Adam’s apple.

He let me go and I squatted and struggled for the revolver in my ankle holster. About that time the door swung wide and there was an explosion and plaster rained down from the ceiling like snow.

I glanced up, and there was Leonard holding the double-barrel, one barrel displaying smoke and sending out a gunpowder stench that temporarily masked the incense in the room.

No Balls had recovered again, and he wasn’t afraid of a shotgun. Or was too stupid to know what it was. He charged Leonard. Leonard sidestepped, swung the double-barrel and hit the big bastard so hard that guy’s distant relatives must have jumped in their chairs.

The big man struck the door behind Leonard, slamming it closed, knocking out the bottom panel with his head. He tried to pull his head back through and Leonard banged him with the barrel again, this time across the ribs, then pointed the shotgun at the other muscle guys who had stupidly made a knot over on the left side of the room. All except the guy in the blue suit and Cement Head, that is. Cement Head was standing in front of Blue Suit, ready to take whatever might come, and Blue Suit was calmly looking over his guard’s shoulder.

Red, wearing his stupid ten gallon hat, was standing next to him, close to his hip, watching the events.

I shouldn’t have, but I looked at Wilber on his hands and knees, trying to get up, and was overcome with rage. I swung my foot in an arc and brought it down on the back of his neck brace with a snapping motion. Wilber screamed, hit the floor and lay there holding his neck. “That hurt! That hurt! Oh, God, that hurt!”—like maybe it was supposed to feel good.

“Well, Hap,” Leonard said. “Looks like you’ve shit in the porridge again.”

“I’ll say.”

I pulled my ankle gun and backed toward Leonard. The big guy with his head through the door was trying to pull it out again. Leonard let him this time, then rapped the barrel over his head harder than ever. The big guy decided to lie down and rest for a moment, but I could see he was twitching already, working to get up.

Leonard opened the door and we backed through it. I heard the sound just a little too late. It was the man I had encountered on the porch. He was rushing our backs like a missile.

Leonard wheeled, cracked the bastard’s head with the barrel of the shotgun, then kicked out and knocked him down. The man came up with a gun in his hand, and Leonard, casual as an angler casting a fly rod, jerked the shotgun down from where it lay over his shoulder, and fired. The man’s left foot went away and he fell to the floor and thrashed like a chicken. Blood went everywhere. Leonard leaned over and casually picked up the man’s pistol and dropped it in his coat pocket. He said, “From now on it’s all left shoes for you, Bubba.”

Leonard broke open the shotgun, put the discarded cartridges in his pocket, and reloaded. He might have been doing nothing more than looking at a splinter in his hand, he was so blasé.

The door in front of us was wide open now, and gradually the bodyguards were sliding into the room. They had guns. No more tackle and punch shit. They were going to kill us.

Red pushed in between their legs, for all the world acting like a kid who was about to see something neat in a peep show. Leonard snapped the shotgun shut. We all jumped, then froze.

There was a sound behind us. I glanced carefully over my left shoulder and saw Brett enter the room. She was carrying a pistol by her side. The old lady who had invited me to have a good time came after her, as if to claw her. Brett turned and swung the pistol against the old woman’s head like she was burying an ax in a log. The old woman went down on her knees and dropped her dentures on the floor and held her blood-spurting forehead, said, “You stinkin’ cunt.” Or so I believe. It was hard to tell without her teeth.

Whatever it was, Brett didn’t like it. She bent down and struck her again, this time behind the ear, not hard, but solid enough. The old woman hit the floor, rolled and cussed and bled all over the carpet.

Brett walked up between us. I said, “Let’s back out.”

I thought all the guns in the room would go off then, but they didn’t.

Leonard shouted, “I pull this trigger, half the room disappears.”

That got everyone’s attention. Maybe that’s what they’d been thinking all along and that’s why no one had done anything. There’s nothing like a shotgun with barrels big as subway tunnels to make you take time to consider.

“All guns go away now, or I pull the trigger,” Leonard said. “Do it!”

A couple of beats as everyone looked at the guy rolling around on the floor, screaming, clutching his ankle, his foot spitting blood. The guns went back inside suit coats.

“You,” Brett said to the midget. I turned my attention to the front of the room.

Red pointed at himself.

“Yeah, you,” Brett said. “Shit pile in a hat. Get over here, you little cocksucker.”

Red looked around for help. No one was offering any.

Leonard said, “Do as the lady says, or you’re gonna be even shorter.”

Red wandered toward us, like an amnesiac man who had just walked free of a plane crash somewhere in the Yucatan. In the doorway I saw Wilber appear, one hand on the neck brace. He looked at me with fire in his eyes.

“How’s the neck?” I said.

The fire in his eyes turned to lava.

I gave Red a quick pat-down, found a revolver under his coat. I put it in my coat pocket. I put one hand on Red’s shoulder, and we started backing. Brett deliberately stepped on the old woman’s hand as we went. The woman bellowed and her teeth, which she had recovered and replaced, flew out again. Brett kicked them across the room, and we kept backing. We backed like that all the way out to the car. The entire gang, bodyguards, whores, and johns, and the old woman who was constantly gumming cuss words, came out on the porch and stood under the porch light looking at us.

Leonard opened the trunk, told Red to get inside.

“You’ve got to be kiddin’,” Red said.

“I look like I’m in a humorous mood?”

“I can’t stand tight places.”

“You think the grave ain’t tight?”

Brett grabbed the brim of Red’s hat and jerked it down over his eyes. She whapped him a good one on the top of the head with the pistol. “Do what he says, dick-lick!”

Red hesitated almost as long as it takes to skin the wrapper off a stick of gum, then, the hat still over his eyes, he got hold of the car, climbed inside the trunk, and Leonard closed it.

Leonard gave me the shotgun, went around, got behind the wheel and started the engine. Brett slipped into the back seat. I slid in on the front passenger side, closed the door, and stuck the shotgun out the window.

We roared out of there so fast Leonard fishtailed and banged Brett’s car into the side of a pickup truck. But that didn’t stop us. With the moon at our backs, we went up and over the hill and away, rattling the midget and the guns in the trunk.

14

“I don’t like it,” I said.

“Doesn’t matter what you like,” Brett said.

“Leonard?”

“It’s rough, Hap, but far as I’m concerned, it’s the way to go. Little shit nearly got us all killed. We got to profit from him.”

We had found a road out in the boonies and Leonard had pulled off, hoping to lose any pursuers we might have gained. If anyone had followed, we hadn’t seen sight of them yet. Maybe they were thinking about the shotgun. Then again, Leonard had been driving almost seventy miles an hour on roads that were designed for thirty, so there was a good chance he lost them before they could find their car keys. His driving had been almost as scary as our time in the whorehouse.

We were standing outside the car, beside the road in the bright moonlight, about to open the car trunk. Brett wanted to pistol-whip the dwarf into talking, and Leonard was for it too. He and Brett were just trying to decide on the best pistol for the job. Brett favored a long-barrel, and Leonard thought a short one was better because you could use it up close, requiring no more effort than the snap of a wrist. I didn’t know we had a long-barrel, but somehow Leonard had come up with one of those too, a cold piece from his closet.

I didn’t like the idea, short barrel or long. I was trying to talk them out of it. It’s one thing to hit a guy in self-defense, another to deliberately pistol-whip him.

“Just enough so he talks,” Brett said. “Then maybe a little for entertainment.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“We came all the way up here because he said my daughter was in trouble. Then we see him here. What he told us, it could mean anything, Hap. We could wine and dine him and give him a cigar, but I figure a pistol-whipping is a lot quicker and it would certainly make me feel better.”

“That’s the part worries me,” I said.

“We didn’t come here to be nice,” Brett said. “You’re the one told me it might not be pretty, and now you’re trying to make it pretty.”

“I’m trying to be human. Revenge isn’t the way.”

“People say that just ain’t never had call for any revenge,” Brett said. “Besides, I just want to loosen his tongue some.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Till it falls out of his mouth.”

Leonard rapped on the trunk with the shotgun, which I had returned to him. “Hey, turd. I’m gonna open this trunk, and if you’ve got one of those guns in there, I want you to know, all the ammunition is in the suitcases in the back seat, so don’t waste your time. Besides, I fire in there with this shotgun, we’ll be puttin’ what’s left of you in your hat and still have room for your clothes and a pound of shit. Hear me?”

“Yeah,” said a mumbled voice. “But I don’t want to be pistol-whipped.”

“Been listenin’ have you?” Leonard said.

“Yeah,” Red said. “This guy, Hap, you call him. He’s right. You ought not take your anger out on me.”

“Who says I’m angry?” Leonard said. “I just like to watch a midget take a beatin’.”

“You and everyone else,” Red said.

“I’m gonna open the trunk now,” Leonard said, “and when I do you better roll out of there pretty. You don’t, I’m gonna cut down on you.”

Leonard twisted the key in the trunk and hopped back. The trunk lid flew up and Red’s hands appeared over the edge. “Don’t shoot,” he said, and came out of there with his cowboy hat crunched down on his head, his eyes barely showing beneath the brim.

“Come over here,” Leonard said.

Red sighed, sauntered over to him.

“You want it with the hat on, or off?” Leonard said.

“What a choice,” Red said.

“The hat would cushion it some, but it’ll get all bloody.”

“This is a Stetson,” Red said, “they’re expensive.” He took it off and straightened it out and lay it on the ground, sighed, stood in front of Leonard. “Maybe we could talk before you start hittin’?”

“I ain’t hittin’ shit,” Leonard said. “Least not yet. She’s doin’ the work.”

Red studied Brett. She was walking toward him with the long-barrel revolver held by her side. Walking like a woman with a mission.

Red looked at me. “You don’t want her to do this. Stop her.”

“I don’t like it,” I said, “but you talk, you won’t have to have it.”

“Talk about what?” Red said, and suddenly Brett was there. The pistol went out and caught him alongside the head and dropped him. When he went to his knees, Brett whipped the pistol back, got some skull with it, whipped it again, like she was trying to cut a Zorro Z.

Red fell face forward and groaned and tried to rise up on his hands, but he wobbled and went down again. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “I didn’t think it would hurt that bad.”

“Hell,” Brett said, “I haven’t even got my swing yet.”

“Hold it, for Christ’s sakes,” I said.

I went over and got hold of Red and tried to pick him up. He said, “I think I like it better on the ground. I’m gonna take a beatin’, least I won’t have to keep gettin’ up.”

I let him go. Brett said, “You told me my daughter was here.”

Red shook his head, and I saw a moonlit glob of blood fall out of his bright hair onto the ground. “I said she had been here and might still be. I didn’t say she was definitely still here. I never said that. You, Hap, you were there. I didn’t say that, did I?”

“Reckon you didn’t,” I said.

“What I want to know is where she is now,” Brett said, “and if you’re smart, you’ll tell me while you’ve still got teeth to talk around.”

“Maybe I ought to sit up,” Red said.

I got hold of him and helped him to his feet. I walked him over to the car and opened the front passenger door. He sat down, his feet hanging outside the car.

“Damn, Hap,” Leonard said. “Why don’t you give him a pillow and a soft drink?”

Brett said, “Maybe I should hit him some more, just for grins.”

“That’s enough,” I said.

“It’s only enough when I say it’s enough,” Brett said.

“Goddammit!” I said. “That’s enough!”

Brett gave me a look I didn’t like.

Leonard said, “He don’t talk, you can hit him some more, Brett. I promise.”

I looked at Leonard. “I don’t want it to come to us finding out who’s the toughest, brother,” I said.

“Me neither,” Leonard said.

“Then I advise you not make loose promises.”

Leonard grinned at me. I turned back to Red.

“Red,” I said, “I want you to tell your story, and boil it down to the essence. Tell it straight. We got questions, you answer them, quick like. You’ve caused us trouble. I’m past irritable myself. I’m damn near sick with this mess. You fuck around, we might all have pistols and a need to swing them. Hear what I’m saying?”

Red nodded, used his hand to wipe away a trail of blood that was flowing from a pretty deep cut across his forehead, a cut made from the sight on the revolver.

He said, “I knew y’all were folks would beat a midget.”

“I might kick a puppy, it bit me,” Leonard said.

Red made a grunting noise. “I believe you would, mister.”

“My whippin’ hand’s gettin’ itchy,” Brett said. “Talk, or your brains’ll see moonlight.”

“Ah, a line for the movies,” Red said. “Save it for when you write your life story, lady. They pick it up for film, they might even let you play the part.”

Red bent forward and let blood drip off his head and onto the ground. When he sat up, he was pressing his fingers against the wound. He said, “I told you how me and Wilber had our problems with Big Jim, and how we left out of here on our way to Mexico.

“Well, me and Wilber started to have a change of heart about the time we got near the border. It was shortly after Wilber strong-armed a diner owner and cook, a Mexican. I, on the other hand, took money from the cash register and stayed away from that sort of thing, which I not only prefer not to participate in, I prefer not to witness. I only engage in violence when it’s absolutely necessary and the money’s right.”

“Would you get on with it, you windbag?” Leonard said.

Red nodded. “So, Wilber, having just told the man how much he liked his steak ranchero, reached out and got hold of him, dragged him over the counter, and commenced to kick him. I should say, however, that the steak ranchero really was good, and that sort of bothered me. Eating a man’s cooking, bragging on it, then beating him like he stole something. I’ve eaten in some of the best Mexican restaurants in the United States and nothing quite prepared me for the fineness of his steak ranchero. It was the sauce as much as anything else that made it special, though I believe the meat was of an excellent quality.”

“Fuck the steak ranchero,” Brett said.

“All right, all right,” Red said, holding up his hand. “I’m a man who likes to tell a story complete. You never know when little details might matter. You might drive through that part of Texas at some point and want a good steak ranchero. I think the man will probably recover. It was a good beating, but I’ve seen people take worse and be able to function in time. So, he’ll probably be back to cooking eventually. It behooves a person to pay attention to almost anything. You never know when something can be of use to you. I can give you the name of the place if you want it.”

Brett said, “You know, you really are an idiot.”

“Personally,” Red said, “I believe that’s a prejudicial statement directed toward my size.”

“Your head’s same size as anyone else’s,” Brett said. “It’s the brain in it that’s questionable. I’m going to ask you one more time. Where is Tillie?”

“I’m coming to that,” Red said. “We took a car from the diner man, and as we neared Mexico it struck me quite soundly that I really didn’t care for south of the border that much. Everything’s different down there, and frankly, my whorehouse Spanish is nowhere as good as it once was. You don’t use it, you lose it. And Wilber, well, if you want someone kicked around and hammered, he’s your man, but public relations, that’s out. And public relations in Spanish, well, that’s certainly out. The only Spanish he speaks is on the menu at Taco Bell, and he has to read that off the card. I had to order the steak ranchero at the diner for him. He thought it was a ranch hero. Some kind of steak sandwich.”

“You just can’t lose that steak ranchero, can you?” Leonard said, and leaned on the car as if exhausted.

“So,” Red said, “we’re down South Texas way, and we start to consider our options, and this whole thing with Mexico, well, it’s not pulling my string and Wilber isn’t fond of it either. I decide we should call Big Jim in Tulsa. I tell him that I’m sorry, and that I did skim some money, but I also remind him that I made him a lot more money than the previous operator had been making him. I made promises that if he took us back we’d do right by him. So, he lets us come back. Not as managers of the whorehouse, but as drones. Working our way up again. He’s quite forgiving, actually. I admit I thought he might shoot us both, but a life on the run, living off crackers, having to manage some kind of peanut operation in Mexico where it’s hot as hell on a griddle, and where they speak Spanish faster than a calculator clicks … well, it was less than alluring.

“Case like that, sometimes you have to toss your hat over the windmill, so that’s exactly what we did. Big Jim let Wilber and me come back. We robbed a doughnut shop in South Texas of three thousand dollars and two dozen glazed, ate the doughnuts and used the money to catch a plane, flew on into Oklahoma City where Big Jim had a party meet us, and not with paper hats and party favors either.”

Red thought for a moment, as if sorting out details. “We were given a bit of an adjustment. A punishment, I suppose you might call it. I had to take a pretty good ass kicking. Literally. Numerous boots to the posterior, and I’ll attest to the fact that the gentleman administering the kicks was quite good at it. My butt is still sore. But, I took my medicine and got it over with.

“Wilber, on the other hand, resisted a bit, so they hit him with an axe handle across the neck, necessitating the brace. But, after that, Jim took us back into his graces. It was that simple. He forgave us. I must say I miss our former position of authority and wealth, but frankly, I’d rather start all over again with Big Jim than be down in Mexico trying to run a string of Mexican whores or a dice game out of the back of a greasy filling station. And one thing about Jim, he may be a pimp and a crook, but he has a sense of honor sorely lacking in some of our public servants.”

“Great,” Brett said. “Now we know what you’ve been doing these past days, like we give a shit, but you still haven’t said about Tillie.”

“Tillie,” Red said. “Yes. I was coming to that. She’s gone.”

“That’s it?” Brett said. “Ten minutes of your crap to tell us she’s gone? Gone where?”

“After I began to feel alert from the butt kicking, and Big Jim welcomed us back into the fold, he told us we were all heading for the whorehouse. He wanted Wilber and me there. My thoughts were that in time he was going to turn the operation back to us. Though, as Wilber has pointed out, sometimes I can be far too optimistic. We drove from Oklahoma City out to the whorehouse this morning with Big Jim. He even allowed that Wilber and I might partake of the products there, so, until your arrival, I was feeling very good. As if things were back on track. Wilber and I had just come back from Winston, a little town between Hootie Hoot and Oklahoma City, having gone there for dinner without any sort of escort or threats. We had a couple of steaks and came back, ready to relax, drink a bit, and perhaps, if the customers slowed, to partake of the female delights. Then your ugly faces showed up.”

“Big Jim?” I said. “He was the guy in the blue suit?”

“Yes,” Red said. “He was merely visiting. The guy standing next to him is actually the manager now, and I believe I should make note here and now that he’s not all that bright. Honest, because he’s stupid, but bright he isn’t. If his brain was a battery it wouldn’t give enough energy to fire up a penlight. Beside him Wilber is a mental gargantuan.”

Red took another moment to bend over and let blood drip off his head, onto the toes of his boots. Looking at him there in the moonlight, so small, the blood flowing like that, falling onto those little boots, I felt sick and sorry and sad. My father and mother hadn’t raised me to beat up midgets with pistols, nor to stand by and allow it to happen. I felt much smaller than Red, even if he was a cold-blooded killer and a windy sack of scum.