The Adventures of Slim & Howdy (12 page)

29

END OF THE NIGHT, AFTER SLIM FINISHED HIS SETS AND
Jodie had given last call and turned the lights up to chase the stragglers out, Howdy put the cash box on the bar and started stacking chairs upside down on the tabletops. Slim was in a booth in the back having a beer with the blonde cutie in the Arizona Cardinals T-shirt when the door opened and a man walked in.

He headed straight for the bar, as if he expected to be served this time of night with the bright lights on and Howdy stacking the chairs. The guy’s face was harder than getting the truth out of a senator, but he was dressed fine, not like some thug. He wore a tailored leather jacket, a tan wide-brim hat, and fancy ostrich boots. Boots to kill for. He had broad shoulders and not much room in the sleeves due to all the muscle. Except for his determined strut, he didn’t seem like any trouble, though he looked capable of it.

“Sorry friend,” Howdy said. “We’re closing up.”

“No problem.” The guy waved him off like Howdy was new in town or mistaken and kept heading for the bar where the cash box sat. That’s when Howdy saw the gun under the guy’s jacket. Nine millimeter from the looks of it. Howdy stayed cool, put another chair on a table, and tried to catch Slim’s eye to get a little help. He snapped his fingers and waved a hand in the air, but Slim was busy reading the girl’s palm at the moment, no doubt explaining how that little branch off her lifeline meant that her future involved the horizontal two-step with a tall musical stranger wearing sunglasses.

Since it wasn’t Howdy’s style to interfere with another man’s love life unless absolutely necessary, he figured he’d deal with this himself. He maneuvered around to a blind spot and started walking up behind the man, who was standing at the bar now, right by the cash box, real casual, like he was waiting for something he was entitled to.

Jodie was nowhere to be seen. She’d stepped to the back room for a minute. If she came out now, she’d be faced with this guy out of the blue. Howdy figured she had her gun with her, but the guy with the 9 mm would have the element of surprise.

Jodie walked through the door a second later. The moment the guy shifted his attention to her, Howdy took two quick steps, jerked the guy’s jacket open, and snatched his gun. When the guy turned around, more than a little surprised, Howdy had Jodie’s .22 and the 9 mm aimed where it counted. “I guess you didn’t hear me,” Howdy repeated. “We’re closed.”

At the precise moment Howdy made his heroic move, Slim and the girl reached the front door and were fixin’ to slip out. But the action caught Slim’s attention and he paused long enough to say, “Howdy, you got this one?”

“Yeah,” Howdy said. “I got it.”

“Good man,” Slim said as he pushed the door open and ushered the blonde Cardinals fan toward the parking lot.

The guy smiled at Howdy, real friendly, not threatened in the least. His hands went up to disarm the situation. “Like I said, friend, no problem.”

Jodie said, “Howdy, it’s okay.”

The guy’s expression didn’t change. Didn’t get smug all the sudden now that Jodie was vouching for him. Just waited for the air to clear.

“You sure?” Howdy said.

“Yeah, I’m sorry,” Jodie insisted. “I should’ve told you he was coming. This is Duke. He works for my uncle.”

“Okay,” Howdy said. “My mistake.” He spun the 9 mm around and held it out, grip first. “No hard feelings.”

“We’re good,” Duke said, taking his gun. “I’m sure Roy’ll be glad to know somebody’s got Jodie’s back.” He slipped the gun into its holster and turned to Jodie with a certain amount of expectation.

She reached under the bar, retrieved an envelope, and handed it to Duke. “Tell him I said hey.”

“Will do,” Duke said as he slipped the envelope inside his coat.

“And I’m sorry about all this,” she said. “This is Howdy’s first night in town.”

Duke turned to Howdy and held out his hand. “Welcome to Del Rio.” He nodded toward Jodie. “Take good care of her.”

“Thanks,” Howdy said, shaking Duke’s hand. “I will.”

Duke tipped his hat and left in the same businesslike manner as he had arrived.

30

HOWDY WAS ABOUT TO STACK THE LAST FEW CHAIRS ON THE
last table in the place when Jodie said, “Whoa, cowboy, leave those down.” She slid half a bottle of good tequila onto the bar. “That is, if you got time for a drink.”

Howdy glanced over at the bottle and said, “Twist my arm.”

Jodie hopped up on the bar, butt first, all that turquoise and silver jewelry jangling. She spun on her seat pockets, swinging her legs around, then dropped her boots onto the plank floor, her hands aloft like a gymnast coming off the balance beam.

“Nice dismount,” Howdy said, admiring her . . . everything.

And don’t think she didn’t notice as she grabbed the bottle, a lime, and two shot glasses before joining Howdy at the table where he was holding a chair for her. “Thank you, sir.” She pulled a pocketknife from her jeans and sat down. “How you like the Lost and Found so far?” She popped a blade from the knife and started slicing wedges of lime.

Howdy sat down and said, “Great place.” He licked his hand and sprinkled some salt on the wet spot. “Ya done good.”

“Thanks. I’m glad you like it.” Jodie poured a couple of shots, salted her hand, and held her glass up. “Your health.”

“Back atcha,” Howdy said, clinking his glass to hers.

They licked the salt, shot the tequila, and bit the lime like a couple of pros. “Whew!” Jodie made a face as she set her glass on the table. “Mmm that’s good,” she said.

Howdy was licking tequila from his mustache when Slim came sauntering back in. He stopped just inside the door and held his arms out wide, saying, “Well, I’m livin’ proof you can take the girl out of the honky-tonk but you can’t make her take you home and get nekkid.”

Jodie laughed as Howdy started to sing, “You can’t . . . always get . . . what you want.”

Jodie pointed at the door and said, “Throw the deadbolt on that.” She aimed another finger at the bar. “Then grab a glass and join us.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” As Slim crossed the room in his long, loping strides, he said, “Girl swore she had to get up early and go to work tomorrow. You believe that?”

“It
is
Tuesday,” Jodie pointed out.

Slim acted like that didn’t count for much. He said, “Well what’s wrong with callin’ in sick? Or just being a couple hours late?” He picked up an extra lime, long as he was at the bar, then he crossed to the table. “It’s not like I was asking her to quit her job.”

“Hey.” Jodie leaned back in her chair with her hand on top of her hat and said, “What happened to all that reverence you had for the workin’ man?” She jerked her thumb in Slim’s direction before she realized he was already standing next to her and she was pointing south of his big belt buckle. “That don’t extend to workin’ women?”

Slim looked down toward his zipper and said, “Are you kiddin’? That definitely extends toward workin’ women. That’s why I wanted her to—” Slim paused, looked at Jodie who had him fixed with a look. “Oh, you meant the reverence, sorry.” He sat down, did the salt, and they clinked glasses. “To workin’ women,” Slim said.

Jodie winked at him. “Amen to that.”

Their empty glasses hit the table simultaneously.

Jodie said to Slim, “You sounded good tonight. I really like that one you did about bein’ on the Hurt Train.”

“Thanks,” Slim said with a smile. “Wrote that with a friend of mine.”

“It’s a good one,” Howdy said as he started slicing the second lime while Jodie poured another round.

“By the way,” Slim said. “Who was that fella you were disarming in here earlier? I noticed you let him go.”

“That was Duke,” Jodie said. “Works for my uncle Roy.”

“Oh.” Slim nodded as if that explained it all. He turned toward Howdy and said, “Lemme ask you, after you took his gun, did you keep it or throw it away?”

Howdy shrugged as he lapsed into an imitation of Barney Fife. He brushed a finger under his nose and said, “Well, a man comes in after hours with a 9 mm and fails to identify himself, I just naturally spring into action.” He gave Barney’s trademark sniff and held his hands out in a silly karate pose.

Still half-embarrassed about the incident, Jodie put a hand to her face and said, “Sorry, I should’ve told you he was coming.”

Howdy tipped his hat way back on his head. “Don’t worry about me.” He sniffed again and made a few silly karate moves with his hands. “My whole body’s a weapon.”

Slim said, “Hey, that’s a pretty good Gomer Pyle.”

“It’s Barney Fife.”

“Oh,” Slim said. “Well, if that’s Barney Fife, and if the guy earlier was Duke, then who the hell is this Uncle Roy?”

Jodie leaned back in her chair again and gestured around the room. “Uncle Roy is the man who made all this possible.”

Slim and Howdy nodded as though they both had an uncle Roy themselves which, of course, neither one of them did. But after a second, Howdy held up his glass and said, “Well, then, a toast to Uncle Roy.”

Slim shrugged, “Why not?”

Hoisting their shot glasses they all said, “Uncle Roy!” in unison, then drank their shots and bit their lime wedges.

Since the beginning, Howdy had assumed there was money in the envelope that Jodie had handed to Duke and, further, he assumed it was a cash payment of the under-the-table variety. But for what, he wondered. Protection? Was this Duke guy muscle for the local mob? Was Uncle Roy the head of organized crime in Val Verde County? Somebody had to be. Still, Howdy wasn’t going to say anything about the transaction since it wasn’t any of his business. But at the same time, he was too curious—some would say nosey—not to say something, so he said, “Not that it’s any of my business, but is this like a real uncle, or a nudge-nudge, wink-wink kind of uncle?” Figured he could get in the back door asking this way.

Jodie gave him a funny look, only part of which could be blamed on the tequila. She said, “What?”

“I mean is ‘uncle’ a euphemism for something?” Howdy knew she’d been broke after Frank died, so he couldn’t help but wonder how she’d come into possession of a fine honky-tonk like the Lost and Found. He was just wondering if this Uncle Roy was a loan shark or maybe just a sugar daddy of some sort.

“Nooo,” Jodie said, slapping Howdy’s arm. “He’s my dad’s brother. He’s also my godfather, thank you very much.” Then she slapped him again, just for good measure.

31

A SECOND LATER, JODIE WAS EXPLAINING HOW SHE’D BEEN
forced to sell the Beer Thirty after Frank died. “By the time I paid off all the hospital bills I was so broke I couldn’t pay attention, you know? When Uncle Roy found out, being my
godfather,
” she said, slapping Howdy again, “he offered to help, said he wanted to buy the Lost and Found but needed a partner he could trust to manage it. Asked if I was interested.” Jodie shrugged at her inevitable decision. “I had experience, and I sure wasn’t going to find any better work in Lawton, so I moved.” She gestured at the bar. “Duke drops by every night to pick up Uncle Roy’s portion of the cash proceeds.” She smiled and gave a slightly naughty wink. “He doesn’t like to involve the IRS where he can avoid it.”

Slim nodded, said, “Figures they’ve got better things to do.”

“Exactly, like chasing after Willie Nelson.”

“That’s damn considerate of old Uncle Roy.” Howdy held up his glass, about to make a toast to Willie’s fabled tax problems, but he stopped and said, “You think Uncle Roy’d like a nephew? ’Cause I’m available.”

“Already has one,” Jodie said, thumping a fist on the tabletop. “My brother Grady.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Howdy said. “I forgot all about him.” Howdy seemed to search his memory banks for whatever information he had on Grady. After a second, he said, “He’s got some sort of respectable job, doesn’t he?”

“Oh, hell no,” Jodie said. “He’s a lawyer, here in Del Rio.”

Slim knew about Grady but he’d never laid eyes on the man. He said, “You know, as many times as I’ve played here, I don’t think I ever met your brother.”

“No, he doesn’t get over this way very often,” Jodie said, shaking her head. “So you probably didn’t meet.” There was something in her tone that gave the impression they weren’t the closest of siblings. But at the same time, it didn’t sound like there was any real animosity between them, as indicated by the fact that she didn’t refer to him as her “sorry-assed excuse for a brother” or words along those lines. If anything, there seemed to be a shade of regret in her voice when she said, “We don’t actually see each other that much. He’s always traveling for work, you know, pretty busy.” Like she was making excuses for him.

“Still,” Slim said, trying to put a sweet spin on things, “it’s good having family around, even if some of ’em are lawyers.”

Jodie answered with a shrug and a bittersweet smile.

They made an awkward toast to kin before Howdy motioned at Jodie and said, “You know, speaking of family and other personal details”—he used his shot glass to direct her attention across the table—“I been riding with Slim here for damn near a week and I can’t get him to tell me a thing about himself.”

“Really?” Jodie touched the oval turquoise pendant of her necklace, as if she were half-listening and half-thinking of something else. “Nothing?”

Howdy shook his head. “Nope. Every time I try, he makes a Dr. Phil joke and clams up like it’s all classified information.” He leaned toward Jodie, biting his lower lip in a way that was both confiding and accusing, and said, “But tonight he gets up onstage and shares tender moments of his childhood with a room full of complete strangers.” Howdy picked up a lime wedge as he shook his head. “I mean, how do you think that makes me feel?”

“You poor thing.” Jodie offered mock sympathy to go with Howdy’s mock distress. “I just think Slim’s a private person and you need to respect that.” She rubbed her hand on Slim’s forearm. He nodded appreciatively. “But I tell you,” she said. “I know for a fact that if you get him liquored up enough he’ll talk like a beauty parlor full of women.”

“Is that right?”

“Oh yeah. All night long.”

Howdy looked at the lime wedge pinched between his thumb and index finger. He rotated it like a roast on a vertical spit before he touched one end down on the table like he was playing flick football. He aimed it at Slim.

Slim just naturally made a goalpost with his fingers and thumbs.

“Three seconds left,” Howdy said in a play-by-play voice. “It’s a forty-yard field-goal attempt for the win.” Howdy flicked the lime wedge with his middle finger, then thrust his hands in the air. “Iiiiit’s gooood!”

Jodie, feeling fuzzier by the moment, shot to her feet in a one-woman wave. “Wooooo!”

Slim watched the lime wedge sail past and land on the floor behind him. “Nice kick, Dr. Phil.” He retrieved the fruit, wiped off the sawdust, teed it up, and said, “All right, you wanna know something? Whaddya wanna know?”

Jodie poured another round and drank hers without waiting for the boys.

Howdy made a goalpost. “Well, like why didn’t you tell me you grew up here?”

“You didn’t ask.” Slim flicked the lime. The kick was good. He held his fist out and Howdy bumped it with his own, as if to say, “Good one.”

The five shots of tequila had Jodie suddenly feeling like one of the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. She did another one-woman wave. “Woooooo!” Then she poured another round, like a hole in the head.

“I’m asking now,” Howdy said, reaching for the lime on the floor behind him, just out of his range. “Whoa!” He nearly fell over trying to reach it.

“New ball!” Jodie said. “New ball!” and tossed a fresh lime wedge at Howdy, who was laughing at how drunk she seemed to be getting.

“Asking now’s too late, isn’t it?” Slim said. “I mean, you already know, right? There’s no reason to tell you again, unless you just like hearing the story.”

“You’re missing the point,” Howdy said, teeing up his lime for the kick. “I’m talking about the nature of conversation here. Two people traveling together, heading for a small town, and it turns out one of them has a history with the place? Just seems like it would be natural for a person to bring that up in conversation.”

While Slim held the goalpost for Howdy’s kick, he looked at Jodie and said, “You’ve known him longer than me. He always talk this much?”

She gave a pained expression and nodded, keeping one eye on Howdy as he prepared to flick his lime. She was thinking about attempting a block.

Howdy lined up his fruit and flicked it. “The kick’s away,” he said. “It looks good. It’s drifting a little. It’s . . .”

Slim shook his head and said, “Wide right.” He gave an official signal.

Howdy’s head jerked back. “What?!” He rubbed his eyes and said, “Are you blind?”

Slim shook his head. “Wide right.” He gave the signal again.

Jodie did another one-woman wave. “Woooooo!”

“Are you outta your rabbit-assed mind? That was right down the middle.”

“I call ’em like I see ’em,” Slim said.

“Yeah? Well you see ’em like Ronnie Milsap.”

Jodie grabbed her glass and held it up, spilling tequila on the table as she said, “Ronnie Milsap!”

Slim and Howdy looked at her and cracked up as Jodie wobbled in her chair. They clinked her glass, and downed the shot before Slim made the official signal again and said, “It’s still wide right.”

Howdy poked Jodie in the arm, said, “You know those cameras you installed? Can we use ’em for instant replay?”

They carried on like this for another hour or so, Jodie occasionally doing the wave before she finally came to a rest and said, “You know, as much fun as it is sitting here watching y’all flick fruit at each other, I think it’s time we called it a night.”

“And maybe a cab too,” Howdy said.

“But first . . .” Jodie poured one last round for everybody. She looked at them and said, “It sure is nice to have you two here.” She picked up her glass for a final toast. “To a fun couple of weeks.”

Slim and Howdy said it together, “To a fun couple of weeks.”

Little did they know the fun was only going to last for one.