jobs.”
“Bullshit, Russell. You’re still leaking, man. Be a couple of weeks, at least, before you can even get around on that crutch worth a damn.”
“Coupla weeks, my ass,” he said. He looked miserable.
He shook a Chesterfield out of an open pack on the table and I struck a match and lit it for him. He drew deep on it and exhaled slowly. We didn’t say anything for a minute as he thought things over.
“One score might be enough,” I said. “Might need two. Filling station, grocery. Enough to see us through till you’re okay.”
He took another deep drag, exhaled a long stream of smoke and nodded. “Yeah, I guess. But you can’t hit anyplace around here. Got to be out of the county, at least, and the further the better. If you do more than one, spread them way out.”
“I know it,” I said.
“And no lone wolfing,” he said. “Even with nickel-and-dime jobs, you can run into a world of trouble. You’ll need a guy at the wheel and ready for backup. I’ll give Bubber a call, see if he can get you—”
“I already got somebody in mind,” I said.
“Who’s that?”
“Belle.”
He looked at me like he thought I was pulling his leg.
I told him all about how well she could drive, how naturally she’d taken to handling a handgun. He listened with a smile.
“Well, that girl’s full of surprises, ain’t she?” he said. “All the same—”
“And,” I said, “a woman partner would be perfect. She can put her hair up under her hat, see, and wear a jacket to hide her tits. Unless somebody gets right up close to her, everybody’ll think she’s a man. Once we drive off, she ditches the hat and jacket and we’re a married couple on a car trip and the cops are looking for two guys.”
“Real clever,” he said. “But just because she was good at shooting rocks didn’t mean she’d be good at shooting at a real person, if it came to that—especially if the real person had a gun too and was shooting at her.
“It’s a whole different thing, Sonny, and you damn well know it. And speeding around in the desert ain’t like making a getaway through streets full of cars and people and with the cops maybe right on your tail. I don’t have to tell you this stuff.”
“No you don’t,” I said. “I’ve talked it over with her and told her how it can be. She thinks she can handle whatever comes up.”
“Oh she thinks so? What if she can’t and you get taken down because of it? Goddammit, I need you to help me with Buck.” He leaned back and let out a long breath. “I’d ruther we asked Bubber to get you somebody experienced.”
“Then we’d have to give them a piece of the take,” I said, “and the take’ll be awful small as it is. I wouldn’t think Bubber’d care to have anything to do with such smalltime jobs anyway. Look, man, she can do it. It’s only the driving.”
“Well hell, it’s your job, kid,” he said. “You got my advice for what it’s worth, take it or leave it.” But I could tell how mad he was by the way he gave his attention to the bandage on his leg and then to lighting a fresh cigarette, to anything that kept him from having to look me in the eye.
“I guess I’ll give her a try,” I said.
Miller Faulk made no trouble in the county lockup, not whenever any guard was in earshot. His fellows in the tank were mostly drunks and petty thieves and it had not proved difficult to make his point to them that he wished to be let alone. He passed his days in his rude bunk, brooding on the perfidy of women, the absurdity of love, the cruel nature of existence. A week into his sentence he received a visit from Weldon, who brought him cigarettes and tidings that Eula had departed for places unknown. This news came as no surprise to Faulk and saddened him but little until Weldon added that she’d departed in his yellow Pierce-Arrow—whereupon Faulk had with the fervor of a true believer supplicated the Lord Almighty to afflict her with cancer of the cunt. That, he told Weldon, would pretty much cover her from head to toe. Still and all, he comported himself as a model prisoner, and after twenty-one days behind bars he was granted a good-time release into the supposed free world.
And only a few hours later John Bones hears Faulk’s name, the sixth one of the thirteen names on the list of that day’s jail releases. But he says nothing until the man on the telephone has read them all. Then says, Thank you, detective, and hangs up.
The Closed sign faces out through the glass but the door is unlocked. He steps from the outer dark into the weak yellow light of the station’s office and a small bell jingles over the door. He slides the bolt lock home. The door to the garage is to his left and stands open. He goes to it and sees them within, staring at him, each man with a quart bottle of beer in hand, standing next to a new DeSoto with its engine exposed under the open hood. The garage bay doors are shut.
Sorry, mister, the bigger one says, his eyes narrowing. We already closed. There’s a filling station a few blocks down still open at this hour.
No, man, the Weldon one says, that’s the fella I was telling you wants to buy the place. Howdy, Mr. Cheval.
He nods at Weldon, sees that Faulk is not so obtuse as the mechanic, that the man has jailbird eyes and knows a policeman on sight.
That right, Mr. Cheval? Faulk says. You looking to buy this gold mine from me? He sets down his beer bottle and picks up a heavy crescent wrench.
He steps into the garage and shuts the office door behind him, draws a short-barreled .44 revolver from under his coat, withdraws the pincer contraption from his coat pocket to reveal the two sets of handcuffs dangling from it.
It requires artistry to mete pain in sufficient degree to make its recipient desire nothing on earth so much as its cessation, yet not to such extent as to grant him even the briefest respite of swoon. In this regard John Bones is an artist. He has known a few true hardcases in his time and Miller Faulk proves one of the most admirable of his experience—outdone only by a grizzled Cajun of years ago who withstood John Bones’ interrogation for more than two heroic hours before his heart abruptly failed, thus distinguishing himself as the only one ever to deny him the information he desired. Faulk lasts roughly half that long, yet is only the second to endure beyond an hour before finally—when John Bones again loosens his gag to permit him to speak—whispering in a nasal rasp: Bubber Vicente. Bigsby…Hotel…Odessa. That’s where…I swear.
That’s where, you swear, John Bones echoes with a smile. You’re a poet, sir.
Crouching beside Faulk, he studies the man’s remaining eye and reads the verity therein, knows that unlike previous names and places Faulk has cried out in the course of their fragmented colloquy, these are the truth. Knows too that Faulk’s surrender is to the only hope left to him—a sooner rather than later demise. Supine on a concrete floor amid smears of grease and oil and blood, hands over his head and cuffed to the DeSoto bumper, legs at awkward attitude for their hammer-shattered knees effected to keep him from kicking, pants down to his thighs and his manly parts in ruin, a few toes rawly absent from the bared feet…what can he hope for except a quick end to it all?
And Weldon? Lying close by. Facedown, hands cuffed behind him. Intact but for his pincered