A World of Thieves

The courier, Sewell, had a sweetheart in Wink, the wife of a White Star tool pusher who worked the afternoon shift. Whenever he delivered a payroll to Wink, Sewell always arrived in town about an hour or two before the money was due at the field office, giving himself enough time to pop into the pusher’s house on E Street for a roll in the hay with the wayward wife. They felt pretty safe about it because they knew hubby would be out at the field, waiting for his pay.

We spied a couple of Dodges on E Street but neither of them blue or showing an Okie license. We circled the block twice before somebody pulled away from the curb ahead of us and opened a parking space, and I wheeled into it. We were a half-block from the yellow house and had a clear view of the place.

By three o’clock the courier still hadn’t shown. We started to worry that maybe he’d had car trouble, that he and the woman had called it quits, that the company had sent somebody else to deliver the money this time.

And then a blue Dodge came from behind us, and even in the rearview I could tell the Okie tag. The car passed us by and stopped in front of the yellow house and a man carrying a briefcase and fitting the description we’d been given of Sewell got out and said something to the driver. Then headed for the front door of the house, where the screen door had already opened to reveal a woman standing there in a long pink robe.

“She sure don’t mind taking chances, does she?” I said. “A neighbor might see her.”

“Maybe the bitch wants it that way,” Buck said. “Maybe she wants hubby to hear a few rumors and eat his guts out wondering if they’re true.”

“Could be,” Russell said. “But even a sap has his limits. She and loverboy might could find theirselves looking up into his pistol one of these days.”

“I’d wager she’s planning to take a powder before he gets to that point,” Buck said.

“Toot, Toot, Tootsie, goodbye,” Russell sang.

The Dodge was still idling in the street. We figured the driver was waiting for a parking place to open up, so we gave him one. Buck and Russell got out of the car and waved so long to me and I pulled out. As I drove off, I watched the Dodge in the rearview mirror as it backed up to take the spot I’d vacated.

I went around the block, and when I got back to where the Dodge was, Buck and Russell were in the back seat of it. They smiled at me as I pulled up alongside. The two guys in the front seat were staring straight ahead and looking unhappy. Russell was grinning big. He raised a pump-action shotgun high enough for me to see it and then lowered it out of sight again.

Buck got out of the Dodge and leaned into the Ford’s passenger-side window. “I guess it would’ve been too easy if these assholes had it,” he said. “The Sewell guy took it in the house with him. It’s in the briefcase. I’ll just run on over and get it.” A car behind me squalled its klaxon and Buck glared and waved for him to go around us.

“Keep driving around till I get back,” Buck told me. “Russell’s got these guys.” Then he walked off toward the house.

Even though the traffic was so heavy I was moving hardly faster than a walking pace, I circled the block twice before Buck reappeared at the Dodge again. He was standing by the driver’s door and holding the courier’s briefcase. He was all smiles when I pulled up. “All right,” he said into the Dodge.

The guy sitting on the passenger side, the guard named Hatten, got out and came around the Dodge and got in beside me. He looked abject. Buck sat in the back, directly behind him. Russell sat behind the driver of the Dodge, the Lane guy.

“We’re off, kid,” Buck said. “Head for the Pecos highway.”

We made our slow way through the street traffic, the Dodge trailing close. I looked at Buck in the mirror and said, “So?”

“Seventy-five hundred on the nose,” Buck said. “I counted it.”

“I mean, how’d it go?” I wanted details, a picture of the job.

“Oh, well,” Buck said, “I slipped the hook off the door with my pocketknife and snuck on down to the bedroom and there they were, going at it like a couple of happy rabbits. I eased over to the chair where he’d put his clothes and gun and stood there watching them until the gal spots me over his shoulder and it’s like she was struck paralyzed. Sweet piece of calico. The fella keeps on hunching for a bit and then it must’ve dawned on him he’s doing all the work, so he rears up and sees she’s looking past him and he turns around and sees me holding the .45 on him and his eyes got this big. I told him to go ahead and finish, don’t mind me, but he didn’t have it in him to keep it up, I guess.”

“You were in there a while,” I said.

“Took a while to truss them up,” he said. “On the bed and belly to belly. Hands behind them.”

“Still bare-assed?” I asked.

“Goddam right. You reckon they’ll manage another hump before hubby gets home? I’d like to be a fly on that wall when he does, wouldn’t you?”

The Hatten guy shook his head. “It’s shitty, man. Her husband’s an ox. He’s liable to kill him. Her too. Bust them up bad at the least.”

Buck laughed. “You reckon?”

“Shit,” Hatten said.

I cold see how much Buck was enjoying himself. Hatten’s face was shiny with sweat. He had to be wondering if we were going to kill him.

About a quarter-mile north of the Pecos highway, Buck had me turn off onto a rough ranch road that curved around a scrubby rise. As soon as we were out of sight of the passing traffic he said to stop the car. The Dodge pulled up behind us and we all got out, the dust settling over us. Russell was holding the shotgun he’d taken from them, a Remington twelve-gauge. He had their revolvers—.44s—stuck in his pants.

Buck told Hatten and Lane to sit on the ground. They had the aspects of condemned men. I hadn’t thought he would shoot them but now I wasn’t so sure.

He told them the word was already going around Wink that they had been in on the payroll theft. “I told Sewell you guys were the inside men for the job,” Buck said, “and it looked to me like he believed it. Hell’s bells, far as I know, one of you or both you was the inside man. Don’t matter true or false. Them boys at White Star are going to be awful mad their pay got stole and you’ll play hell trying to get them to believe you wasn’t in it with us. If I was you I wouldn’t even try to explain it, no sir, not at the risk of getting lynched on a derrick. I was you, I’d get in my car and get out of West Texas as fast as I could and I wouldn’t never come back, me.”

He gestured for me to get behind the wheel of the Ford again. He got in the front with me, and Russell sat in the back.

“Keys are in the car, boys,” Buck called out. “Good luck!” They were still on the ground, looking like they couldn’t believe their reprieve.

I wheeled around and gunned the engine and waved at them as we went by and they vanished behind us in the raise of dust.

Back on the highway and barreling south, I hollered “Whoo-eeee!” for no reason except I thought I’d bust if I didn’t. I looked over at Buck, my grin feeling almost too big for my mouth, then laughed at Russell in the mirror.

“Cheer up, kid,” Buck said, looking at me with a wry smile.

“This damn Sonny,” Russell said, joining in my laughter and clapping me on the shoulder from behind. “I never did know of such a good luck charm, I swear.”

When we pulled up in front of the house, the sun was starting