A World of Thieves

he was back with Eula again and wanted to stay that way if he could. Bubber said if he changed his mind to get in touch with him at the Bigsby Hotel in Odessa.”

“Miller tell him you and Russell were in Galveston?” I said.

“Nope. We’d told him not to tell anybody where we were except you—if you should ever come around—and he took us at our word. He figured he’d tell us about Bubber the next time he saw us, but turned out that wasn’t till a couple of weeks ago. So we send Bubber a wire asking how’s business and a few days later he wires back it’s booming, he’s got more jobs than he’s got guys to do them, so come on out if we want some of them.”

“It’ll be just like in Narlens,” Russell said. “Bubber’ll point them out and we’ll do them.”

“His leads always been worth every dollar of his cut,” Buck said.

“In other words,” I said, “West Texas here we come.”

“In other words,” Buck said, “I can’t hardly wait.”

“Me neither,” Russell said. His grin as big as Buck’s and mine.

“Me neither,” Charlie said. Her smile small.

The plan was to rent a place to live in as soon as we got out west, a place where Charlie could stay while we were out on a job, a place we could retreat to and where we could pass for straight citizens, a place well removed from Bubber Vicente’s base of operations and whatever heat might all of a sudden come down on it. After studying a map of the region, we settled on Fort Stockton. If you drew a circle no more than a hundred miles across to include most of the boomtowns out there, Fort Stockton lay near the south rim of it and Odessa close to the north, some eighty-five miles away.

To beef up the stake we’d need to make the trip and get set up, Buck and Russell decided to sell the Pierce- Arrow—which was anyhow too showy for our line of work. You want a plain Jane of a car that blends right in with most others. They sold the Arrow to Miller Faulk, who’d always admired it and topped all other bids with an offer of five hundred dollars and a fairly new green Model A sedan which he’d had specially fitted with a radio. Miller said we were doing the right thing to swap the sometimes temperamental Pierce-Arrow for a hardy Model A that could handle that tough West Texas country.

Over the next few days, Buck and Russell settled their accounts and took care of a few other matters— including a special order of business cards with all three of our names listed on them as sales representatives of Matson Oil and Toolworks of Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Meanwhile, Charlie took me shopping for new clothes and showed me the town. We ate lunch in cafes on the Strand or down the street from the docks. We’d always been able to talk frankly with each other back in New Orleans, and we found we still could. We were sipping lemonades in a restaurant across the street from the seawall one afternoon when she told me she’d once asked Russell what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.

“Know what his answer was? He said, ‘Hell girl, I’m doing it.’” She shook her head and swayed the dangling gold star she wore on one earlobe. The other was pinned with a pearl stud.

“Well,” I said, “that’s Russell.”

“Yeah it is,” she said, “and Buck too. But what I can’t figure, Sonny, is why you’re here. When I heard you got sent to prison I cried. It seemed such a waste. I thought if you ever got out of there any kind of way, the last thing you’d do is go back to robbing. But here you are again. I don’t get it. You’re so young and so smart and all. You could be anything you want—a doctor, a lawyer, a—”

“An Indian chief,” I said, and put a hand to my mouth and went, “Whoo-whoo-whoo.”

“Yeah, ha-ha,” she said. “Make all jokes you want, but I still don’t get you, I just don’t.”

“There’s this story I heard somewhere,” I said. “A forest catches on fire and all the animals are swimming across the river to the other side where they’ll be safe. Except this rattlesnake can’t swim, so he asks a raccoon to let him ride across on his back. The coon says, ‘Hell no, if I let you on my back you’ll bite me.’ The rattler says, ‘No I won’t. If I did that I’d drown.’ Well, that makes sense to the coon, so he lets the rattler get on his back and he starts swimming across the river. Halfway across, the rattler bites him. The coon says, ‘You damn fool, why’d you do that? Now we’ll both die.’ And the rattler says, ‘I don’t know. I guess it’s just my nature.’”

She rolled her eyes but I could see she was fighting a smile. “I’ll tell you one thing you have in common with your uncles,” she said. “You can sure sling the bullshit.”

I laughed along with her, and then asked what she was doing here. Why did she come along with Russell?

“I wonder sometimes,” she said. “I don’t know. I guess because he’s still the most exciting thing to me. It beats working as a salesgirl or being married to some office manager. I’m not real ready for that.”

“Spoken like a true flapper,” I said.

“The flapper is passe, Sonny,” she said. Her smile was rueful. “Don’t you read the magazines?”

“Snappy number like you won’t ever be passe.”

She pursed her lips like she was imparting a kiss. Then smiled and said, “What the hell—maybe it’s just my nature.”

“Like an old Greek philosopher once said—the unrisked life is not worth living.”

“I knew this Greek guy back in Baton Rouge,” she said. “Sold life insurance. Biggest liar I ever met.”

When I told her about my brief reunion with Brenda Marie she said, “I bet that was some memorable whoopee, huh?” and waggled her brows.

“There wasn’t near enough of it, truth to tell.”

“Well hell, Sonny, whose fault is that? Running off on the poor girl as quick as you did.”

“Good thing I did. If I’d stayed longer I might’ve missed you all. Would’ve played hell trying to find you in West Texas.”

She patted my hand. “That’s life, ain’t it, honey? Always one tough choice or another.”

We took in a movie matinee every afternoon. Sadie Thompson. Our Dancing Daughters. She grinned in the screenlight and elbowed me in the ribs when I whispered during Wings that she and Clara Bow could pass for sisters.

One morning we went swimming in the Gulf, then lay on towels on the beach and got sunburns while we told each other what shapes we saw in the clouds. I said she ought to be a zookeeper since she saw nothing but various sorts of animals, and she said I ought to be in jail since I saw nothing but various parts of women’s anatomies. I said it was her fault for wearing such a sexy swimsuit—one of those new backless things with an X-halter over her breasts—and said she could quit pretending not to notice all the guys giving her the once-over. She threw sand at me and said all men were sex-crazy. I said I didn’t know about all men, but I sure was, and gave a high wolf howl. She laughed and said to shush up before the dogcatcher came and took me away.

To celebrate our last night in Galveston we all got dressed to the nines and took supper at the Hollywood Dinner Club, the Maceos’ fanciest place. It was easy enough to find—all you had to do was head up the beach road toward the source of the big searchlight beacon circling the sky and there you were. They could see that beckoning light miles away on the mainland.

The club’s exterior was designed like an old Spanish hacienda, lots of tiles and arches, porticos with torches in the walls. Inside, the ceilings blazed with chandeliers and the furnishings were tres elegant. We were ushered to one of the dining rooms and agreed among ourselves to order something none of us had eaten before, which left plenty to choose from on the menu. We finally settled on roast partridge stuffed with wild rice and mushrooms and a couple of bottles of French wine.

It was a superb meal, but Buck said that for less than the tip we’d be leaving we could’ve stuffed ourselves on the best fried chicken in Texas at a joint he knew of in niggertown—and got drunk for three days on bonded bourbon. Charlie told him not to be such a sourpuss. She didn’t understand how anybody could not have a good time in such a swell place.

“Hey, goddammit,” Buck said, “I know how to have a good time. I’m having one—see?” His grin was so exaggerated Russell said he looked like a lunatic with an electric wire up his ass. Buck rolled his eyes to add to the effect and we all cracked up.

After supper we went into the rooms in back. They were everything I’d heard. There were tables for every kind of game—poker, blackjack, craps, name it. The room was discreetly overseen by the club’s handymen, as Buck