“He got paid,” Herman said.
“That I can understand,” Red said. “That makes Bill a professional. That’s what’s important. Professionalism.”
“What kind of world is it where you got to do business with a crook?” Brett said.
“Kind where if you want to get something done illegal, you got to ask a crook,” Leonard said. “Think about it, we’re riding around with a crook and an ex-crook.”
“I guess that makes us crooks,” Brett said.
“I suppose it does,” Leonard said.
“Seems to me,” Red said, “I’ve served my purpose. If my brother is set on helping you, then he must, but I suggest you let me go.”
“I don’t think we want to deal with Big Jim right now,” Leonard said. “We got a lot on our plate.”
“Big Jim may not be all that interested in helping me,” Red said. “In fact, I fear he thinks I was in on all this, and I would not be surprised if Wilber were not fostering that belief.”
“How’s that?” I said.
“Wilber has his good qualities, but loyalty isn’t one of them. He likes money, and if he feels he can discredit me, put himself in the catbird seat, then he will. My guess he’s making me responsible for all that business in Oklahoma City as well. Painting himself as a victim. That’s my take.”
“So if we cut you loose, where would you go?” I asked.
“I’m uncertain, but I would rather face that problem as it came to me than be with people who pistol-whip me, tie me up and humiliate me. I’m surprised I haven’t been asked to perform some circus tricks. Some flips and handstands. Perhaps a cartwheel.”
“Shit, that’s not a bad idea,” Leonard said.
Red gave Leonard a firm look, then slowly dropped his eyes. My guess was he feared Leonard might be serious, and that he would be forced to perform. Red picked up a can of Coke, swigged from it, then eased into sullen silence.
That night was not a good one. Herman was supposedly helping us. We didn’t want to alienate him by tying him to a chair, and we felt it might be bad form to tie Red to one. Leonard and I, by unspoken plan, stayed awake with the shotgun. Herman and Red watched TV most of the night, dozing on the floor from time to time.
Brett slept all night on the bed and snored loudly. Who says it’s a man’s world?
23
Next morning Bill called and we made arrangements for him to come over before dark and lead us to our airplane ride. When he came we followed his pickup through town and out.
The town where we had slept, Echo, wasn’t much. There were lots of tractors parked about and all kinds of yellow equipment that might have been designed for most anything. Farming. Tank warfare or prairie dog removal. In fact, Echo seemed little more than a town of old cars, old people, and huge yellow machines.
We drove out where there were no houses, no mobile homes, and no beauty, only long miles of dirt and brushy growth and soaring buzzards.
Miles later, we dipped down into an area between great hills and rocks and the falling shadows of the late afternoon. Beyond the hills, stretched out on a flat expanse of land that went for so many acres the eye could not follow, was a long tin shotgun building in front of which grew an oak that looked as if it might suddenly shed its sad sunburned leaves, keel over, and die. There was a relatively new blue pickup parked by the tree.
A man was sitting in a lawn chair under the oak, and when we pulled up close to the shed we saw he was drinking from a can of beer. There was a Styrofoam chest beside his chair. He looked to be a Kickapoo, or certainly to have a lot of Indian blood. He had on blue jeans, boots, and a leather jacket, which seemed inappropriate for the heat. His hair was oily and combed up high and flies had found it; they circled it, looking for a solid place to land.
Bill got out of his truck toting a pack of gear and four canteens strapped to the outside of it. We got out of the car, holding our guns. The man in the lawn chair didn’t seemed surprised by any of it. He sipped his beer. Bill nodded at him, and the man nodded back.
When we were gathered around the chair, the man crushed the empty can, tossed it on the ground, pulled back the lid on the Styrofoam chest, clawed another beer out of the icy water, closed up the chest and said, “You got the money?”
“We got the money,” I said.
He popped the tab on the can, drank from it, held out his free hand, palm up. I took two hundred and fifty out of my wallet and put it in his palm. He folded his fingers over it and the money disappeared inside his jacket faster than a teenager can stuff a fuck-zine into a sock drawer.
“We leave when it gets dark,” he said.
“Since that might be an hour or so,” Brett said, “why don’t you quit suckin’ them suds. I don’t want a drunk flyin’ me nowhere.”
“You can stay here, lady,” he said.
“Not hardly,” Brett said. “I’m the one financin’ this little shindig.”
“I keep the money, and I drink the beer,” the man said.
Leonard kicked the ice chest over, used his leg to sweep the chair out from under the man, who hit the ground, came up rolling, reaching inside his jacket. By then I was on him. I hit him with a backhand. It wasn’t a hard strike across the jaw, but it wasn’t gentle either. He went down on one knee and said, “Shit. I think you loosed a
