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.
“It’s bad enough you came in there like that,” Red said, “but you stirred Big Jim up personally, and he doesn’t cotton to thugs off the street tampering with his operation or running away with his personnel.”
“I think maybe Big Jim might be led to think you were in on our arrival,” Leonard said. “I think he could be led to think that real easy.”
“Now, wait a minute,” Red said. “Why would I do that?”
“Could be that’s what he’s wondering,” Leonard said. “Maybe he’s thinking you linked up with us, and were getting back into his good graces to run some kind of scam.”
“What kind of scam?” Red said. “What could I possibly gain?”
