“That happened with McMurray?”
“Maybe I’m talking about you. You ever think of that? I didn’t think so. Let’s talk about Mr. Dipwad later, though, if that’s okay with you.”
“Sure,” I said. “Fine.” I shrugged.
“Okay,” he said.
Softness and warmth in the night. There are benefits to sleeping with someone on a regular basis. I’d almost forgotten what it was like until Julie came along.
We whispered in the darkness. A cool breeze blew in through our second-story window and I could see megalithic radio towers blinking rhythmically in the clear, moonlit night sky.
“Why didn’t you tell us we were being followed?” I asked.
The two of us were in Dock’s bedroom. Hank slept on a rollaway bed in the upstairs family room. It was a pretty big house. There was some kind of a story here about Dock. I’d have to learn what it was. He was an intriguing character. I’d probably be like him in another thirty years or so: living alone in a large house, sleeping downstairs and entertaining folks on the lam.
“I wasn’t sure it was them,” Julie whispered. “They were a long way back there.”
She sounded sincere. I believed her.
“Why a couple of jockey’s sons? I don’t get it. Carpin’s people are
“No,” she said. “I don’t think that’s it.” I could tell from her voice that she knew damned well that wasn’t it. But I wasn’t upset… yet. I did, however, want to know exactly what she was hiding, and why. I waited.
A particularly heavy mass of air lifted the gauzy curtains and we both watched as they fluttered slowly back down.
“You know I didn’t tell you everything, Bill.”
“I know,” I said. “You’ve been… afraid.”
“I hate that word, but yeah. Some things I maybe should have told you and haven’t. And there are definitely some things I’ve done that I shouldn’t.”
“Like?”
“Let’s go to sleep,” she whispered, turning toward me and putting her chin on my shoulder. “Make me warm, Bill Travis.”
“Fine,” I said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It felt good to be back in Austin. Or as good as it can feel with a mild concussion and a bunged-up foot.
The weather was hot and the traffic was heavy. About usual for mid-afternoon.
There were four of us and a dog in Dock’s Suburban, tooling down Interstate 35 toward downtown.
“Exit here and take the next left,” Julie called forward to Dock.
Only a week before our chance meeting in traffic, Julie had caught Freddie and Jake tailing her down Riverside Drive in Austin, just south of Town Lake. And of course, being Julie, she proceeded to pull a fast one.
She’d parked along Congress Avenue not a block away from the Capitol where there is an ever-present State Trooper at the front gate and only a stone's throw from the Governor's mansion, then walked into an upper-crust dress shop. A quick change of clothes and a purchase later, she ducked out the back entrance into the alley and walked a block around and hailed a cab. She paid the cabbie to sit with her for nearly an hour as she watched Jake and Freddie while they watched the front door of the dress shop. Then when the store manager came out to feed her parking meter for her, the two North Texas yahoos must have realized that something was up. They started the pickup and darted away into traffic. But not fast enough. Julie and the over-tipped cabbie trailed the two back to East Austin, just across the Interstate from downtown, to a ramshackle duplex in a lower-class neighborhood.
She simply noted where they could be found, and drove away.
After that she altered her patterns and spent whole days at a time away from her new home in northwest Austin. She didn’t tell Hank and me where she’d gone during those times and neither one of us pushed it. Julie was that kind of girl. You could only prime the pump so far, fill your bucket about halfway, and satisfy yourself that you’d be making another trip.
I was sure there was plenty more that she felt she couldn’t-or just wouldn’t-tell us. We’d find out sooner or later. But hopefully before it was
Hank was up front with Dock. Under his feet there was a burlap feed sack with some guns in it.
In the backseat beside me, Julie laced her fingers with mine.
Following Julie’s “turn here-turn there” directions, we found ourselves off Chicon Street; not the best side of Austin. We were maybe ten blocks from Lawrence White’s barbecue stand.
The houses passed by. Chain-link fences sagged in places. There were not just a few overgrown lots going to seed. Dock had to slow down once so that a tamale peddler on a three-wheeled bicycle could cross the road-I’ve often wondered how those guys could make a living by selling tamales out of a small refrigerator box perched on the front of their bikes. Maybe they didn’t. Who knew?
Occasionally I caught sight of a portable basketball hoop set up in the street and looking like a howitzer.
We had our windows down and the wind felt comforting. I was sweating, though, and it was a cold sweat. Also, it felt like I had a ball of hot lead rolling around in my gut.
“It’s there, on the left,” Julie said. “Third duplex. Right side.”
Dock drove us past slow and easy and we craned our necks. There was no light-blue pickup in the driveway. The place looked like a dump. Also it looked nothing like I would have figured for the base-ops for a couple of sons of North Texas quarter-horse jockeys, but go figure.
Dock circled the block and we parked across the street from Butch and Sundance’s duplex.
Hank distributed firearms from the front seat. The thirty-eight for me and a little Walther for Julie.
“What about me?” Dock asked.
“What about you?” Hank replied.
“Where’s my gun?”
I thought Hank was going to laugh. He didn’t.
“You’re staying right here,” he said. “Now don’t raise a ruckus. Looks like nobody’s home, so I don’t think there’ll be any shooting anyhow. But if there is, for some reason, I’d advise you to duck.”
“Is that all I am? Your chauffeur?” Dock asked.
We ignored him and climbed out. Julie and I exchanged smiles.
It had been an hour-long ride and my legs felt like they needed a good stretch. I winced at my first step across the road, but the going got easier as I walked.
“You stay here, Dingo,” Hank said. The dog barked once as Hank slammed the door.
The thirty-eight felt cold in my sweaty hand.
“What're ya'll doin' over there?”
The three of us nearly leapt out of our skins.
We were hunched opposite each other, me and Julie to the left and Hank to the right of one of the duplex windows, trying to see inside and determine whether anybody was home. The voice took us by surprise.
“Good God! Glad I had on the safety,” Hank said.
It was a girl, a little kid about eight or nine, standing there at the back corner of the duplex where a section of rotted wood fencing had fallen down and an outdoor heat exchanger was converting over to rust and ruin. She had on a dirty pink paisley dress and an arm around an old cabbage-patch doll that was missing a limb. She was thin, terribly so, but there was strength in her stance and wonder and curiosity in her eyes. This was her space and we were the invaders and she looked to be not the least bit intimidated.
“You live here, darlin'?” I couldn’t help but ask.
