that side of the room and hung above him in a blue-black cloud. He was wearing a gray as ash silk robe. It was half open. The hair on his chest and forearms was gray and his mustache was too black. Rooster figured him for sixty, even if he looked a tough fifty.
He had on the stupid wig he wore when he was in the apartment. A big black thing that didn’t go with his Irish red skin. When McBride went out he wore a black bowler hat without the wig, and the hat fit tight, worn that way to battle the wind and hide his head, which Rooster assumed was bald or near it.
“Rooster,” McBride said, and stood.
The robe fell wide open and Rooster saw more of McBride than he wanted to see. McBride went over to the table, sat down in one of the chairs. As he sat, his wig shifted, and Rooster tried not to look. It was hard to figure where to look. High you had the hair, low you had, well, you had all of McBride.
“Sit, Rooster. Have a cup of coffee?”
Rooster sat. “Suppose,” he said.
“Good,” McBride said. “Hey, bitch, get us some coffee.”
“I ain’t no maid,” said the blonde.
“Fresh. And don’t make me ask again.”
The blonde went away. McBride smiled at Rooster from under his mustache.
“Sometimes you have to slap them a bit, high and low, but they come around, that’s for sure. What do you think of that ass?”
Rooster felt himself turning red. All he could say was, “It’s nice.”
McBride laughed.
“Nice. That’s some first-rate pokadope. Whatcha got? It’s early for me, and I was busy, as you can see. I don’t think you came over here to drink a cup of coffee.”
“No, sir.”
“Oil Festival go well?”
“I suppose.”
“Good. And your business here is?”
“The constable over at Camp Rapture.”
“How could a constable concern me-wait a minute. Ain’t it Pete’s bitch? Yeah. Heard about that. She’s the one when that old fart of a sheriff got killed, came over and pulled that nigger out while you stood around with your thumb up your ass. Hit Macavee with her gun, didn’t she?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How is old Macavee?”
“He left town.”
McBride grinned. “Gal sounds like some kind of punkin. Hear she’s good-looking too. That right?”
“I suppose.”
“You suppose. Is she, or isn’t she? She look as good as the tail I got here?”
“She wears more clothes.”
McBride guffawed.
“Reckon she does.”
“She come by the office the other day with one of her deputy constables,” Rooster said. “They call him Hillbilly. Anyway, she showed me something. It was land maps. Maps of a colored fella’s land. Zendo. Only it was the maps before they was sliced up. You know what I mean.”
McBride leaned forward, put his elbows on the table, which caused his massive hairy forearms to flex.
“How did she come by them?”
“They got to be the ones Pete and that whore Jimmie Jo had. I don’t know how she got them.”
“The maps Pete stole? The ones you told me about.”
Rooster nodded.
“You told Henry?”
“You told me anything like this came up, I should come to you first.”
“You did right, Sheriff. And I’ll tell Henry, not you. You look nervous, Rooster. I hate a nervous man. Makes me think they’re trying to sneak around and put a finger up my ass.”
“Sorry, Mr. McBride,” Rooster said, and looked up as the blonde came back into the room. She had let down her hair and put on some clothes and had a fresh pot of coffee and a ceramic cup. She poured some into McBride’s silver cup, then set the ceramic cup in front of Rooster and poured his coffee.
“You want to feel her a little, go ahead. She’s on my tab, ain’t you, honey?”
“I’m okay,” Rooster said.
McBride laughed. “You’re anything but okay. Go on out of here, kid, you’re making Rooster sweat.”
Rooster tried not to watch her go.
“You’d like to have that swing on your front porch, wouldn’t you, Rooster?” When Rooster didn’t answer, McBride said, “Did you get the maps back?”
“They didn’t offer to give them back.”
McBride shifted, uncrossed his legs, put both feet under the table.
“You didn’t ask for them?”
“I wasn’t sure what to say.”
“Cause it was a good-looking woman had them? Am I right?”
Rooster drank from his cup, almost sloshing the coffee. He said, “Something like that.”
“So, what did they do?”
“I told them to go to the courthouse.”
“You told them to go to the courthouse? Now, that’s dumb, Rooster. That means you gave them a chance to put things together.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The maps don’t mean nothing without you put them one to the other. Not smart, Rooster. They go to the courthouse, look at records, they’re gonna see what’s been changed. That was Pete and his whore’s game, pulling the records as a threat, gonna tell some big law unless they were dealt in, and not in a little way, like you, but in a big way. Big as me. Big as Henry. Nope. That old dog ain’t gonna hunt. That’s why I was called in, to fix things. And I did. All you had to do was say, ‘Those maps are city property. Don’t know how they come into your possession, but I’ll need to put them in their proper place, and I want to thank you for bringing them by.’ Wouldn’t that have been simple, Rooster?”
“It would have. Knew it soon as they left.”
“Then it was too late, wasn’t it, Rooster?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Things been going good here. Earned my money here and there, but I haven’t had to do much. I got people to do it for me, and I like that. I’ve moved up in the world. I think it and it gets done, but not by me. I don’t like to do what I don’t have to do, bother with a thing I don’t have to. And now you make me bother. The woman… What’s her name?”
“Sunset.”
“Now that’s a snapper of a name. That a nickname?”
“She’s got red hair. I don’t know her real name.”
“Ain’t nothing nicer than to peel one down and see that red hair fanned out between her legs. Shakes her hips, it’s like a red flag waving at a bull. But that’s not our concern here, is it? Now, we got a bump in the road and you’ve run us over it. Know what happens when you hit a bump, Rooster?”
Rooster shook his head.
“A bump can knock shit out of the back of your wagon. Knock shit all over the goddamn place. Hear me, now?”
Rooster nodded.
