A World of Thieves

“What Bogalusa job?”

I didn’t know about that? By the time he’d read about it in the newspaper the bank robbery was two days old and Buck and Russell were one day gone. What happened was, a customer tried to be a hero and jumped on one of the two robbers. While the other robber beat the hero on the head with a pistol to get him loose of his partner, the guard retrieved the gun they’d made him drop and opened fire, shooting three times and wounding a woman in the leg but missing both robbers before one of them shot him in the stomach. The bandits ran out and hijacked a car and made a getaway—but without a dime of the bank’s money. The guard died a few hours later.

“They came and told you about it?”

“No man, I saw it in the paper.”

“How’d the paper know it was them?”

“It didn’t. The cops didn’t either. What happened is, the one the hero grabbed lost his hat and sunglasses in the scuffle and a couple of people got a good look at him before he put them back on. The paper had a police sketch in it and wanted to know if anybody recognized him. Well, it wasn’t no photograph, but it was a good enough likeness I knew I was looking at Russell.”

“And they hijacked a car?”

“What the paper said. Sounds like somebody’s driver lit a shuck ahead of schedule, you ask me.”

“Yeah, it does. Anybody who’d do that is likely to rat out his partners if he gets in a spot. And there’s the guys who recognized the newspaper sketch. I can see why they left town.”

“Hey, Sonny, never in the world would I breathe a word to anybody.”

“I know,” I said. “But you couldn’t’ve been the only one to recognize the sketch. What I don’t get is why tell me to come see you if they didn’t tell you where they were going.”

“Well hell, man, to pick up what they left for you. I thought that’s what you come for.”

He clumped off into his little back room, its door screeching on its hinges, and returned a minute later with an envelope of the same sort they’d left with Brenda Marie. It was smudged with grease but still sealed.

The note inside said: “Star fill sta next RR depot Houston. See Miller.”

It made me proud that they’d thought it was even possible I might break out. And because they knew I’d come looking for them if I did, they’d left this trail for me, despite their own good reasons not to, being on the run themselves. That was them.

Jimmyboy wanted to buy me a drink at a speak down the block but I begged off, saying I had a ladyfriend waiting. I promised to take him up on the offer in a day or two.

I repacked my bag and took fifty dollars from the cash Brenda Marie kept in her desk. Then wrote a note: I had a lead on Buck and Russell and was sorry to go like this but I had to catch the next train. I owed her more than the money and I’d be back as soon as I could and blah blah blah.

I folded the note and propped it against the radio in the living room. Then went out and turned the lock and slipped the key under the door. Then went to the station and bought a ticket and read magazines and drank coffee until my train boarded and then chugged off into the darkness.

The sign for Star’s filling station stood atop a high pole and was visible from the front steps of the depot. The late-morning sun was warm and I walked down the street with the Gladstone in hand and my suit jacket slung over my shoulder. The building was fronted by a row of gasoline pumps, its windows dust-coated, its sideboards paint- peeling and warped. A mechanic was bent over the open hood of a Model T at the far end of the lot. Across the street was a small grocery where a man in an apron stood in the door and watched me.

A little bell tinkled over the door when I went in. A husky sandy-haired guy with a toothpick in his mouth sat behind the counter reading an adventure magazine. He looked at me over his reading glasses and then out at the pumps to see if I had a car waiting for gas. He had a drinker’s face—puffy bloodshot eyes, his nose and cheeks webbed with red veins.

“If you selling something, boy, save your breath.”

“You Mr. Miller?”

“Mr. Faulk.”

“There a fella named Miller around here?”

“Sometimes.”

“Where can I find him?” I said.

He rolled the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “What you want with him?”

“I got business with him.”

“What business is that?”

“Private business. Look mister, just tell me where I can find him.”

“You ain’t told me your name.”

“That’s none of your concern,” I said. “My business is with Miller.”

The man sighed and removed his spectacles and massaged the bridge of his nose with two fingers. I told myself to keep cool, there was nothing to be gained by getting blackassed. “All right,” I said. “The name’s Bill Loomis. Satisfied?”

He seemed to give the name some thought for a moment, then spat away the toothpick. “Sorry,” he said. “Can’t help you.” He put his glasses back on and picked up the magazine.

“Hey man, you wanted my name, you got it.”

His expression was utterly blank. I cursed under my breath and started for the door, figuring to ask the mechanic about Miller, ask the grocer across the street. Then I thought, What the hell—you never know. I stopped and turned and said, “LaSalle, goddammit. I’m Sonny LaSalle.”

He put the magazine down again and looked like he might be thinking of smiling. “That so?” he said. He glanced out the window again. “Well now tell me, Mr. LaSalle: You ever hear of a fella named Ansel Mitchum?”

I felt like my horse had come in at thirty to one. “I guess I have.”

“Didn’t old Ansel have him a nickname? I disremember what it was.”

“I believe it might be Buck.”

He grinned back at me and put out his hand. “Miller Faulk,” he said as we shook. “Lived in Narlens most my life and known your uncles since way back when. Sorry for all the caution, Sonny, but it’s lots of fellas always looking for lots of other fellas, and a man can’t be too careful about who he helps find who, if you know what I mean.”

It was an hour’s ride to Galveston on an electric railcar over a causeway flanked by gleaming baywater as flat as a tabletop. A humid but pretty afternoon smelling heavily of the sea.

I got my bearings according to the rough pencil map Faulk had drawn for me and made my way along the island’s shady residential sidewalks until I came to Avenue H. On a corner two blocks over I found the house number I was looking for. A picket fence ran around the small yard and thick white oleander shrubs lined the porch. The whole place well shaded by a magnolia tree full of jabbering mockingbirds. A bright yellow Pierce-Arrow was parked in the driveway leading to the garage in back.

I stood at the gate, peering past the oleanders and into the dark shadows of the porch. Someone was sitting there, a woman, busy with something in her lap.

“Pardon me, ma’am,” I called out. “I’m looking for some kin of mine and I wonder if you can—”

The woman gave a small shriek and a pan clanked on the floor and a scattering of snap beans spilled off the porch. She came scooting down the steps and I saw it was Charlie.

I dropped the Gladstone as she yanked open the gate and flung herself on me. I spun her around and couldn’t help laughing as she cried and kissed me all over my face and said, “Sonny, Sonny, Sonny.”

“Well, I’ll be a monkey’s hairy uncle. Hey brother, come see what the tide’s washed up.”

Russell stood grinning at the top of the porch steps in his undershirt and galluses, hands in his pockets.

Now Buck came out in turned-up shirtsleeves, a newspaper in his hand. “Jesus Christ on a drunken plowhorse. That young scoundrel with his hands on your woman—is that who I think it is?”

“Looks like he’s been sunbathing down in Miami, don’t it?” Russell said. Beaming would not be too strong a word for the way they were looking at me. I could feel myself beaming right back.

“Can you all believe it?” Charlie said. She laughed and clutched me tighter.

“I always hoped you’d find a way out, kid,” Buck said, “but I never really…” He made a vague gesture.

“I figured if I wanted to see you no-counts again I’d best take measures,” I said.