Under the Skin

He didn’t shut up about Cora Jane till the waitress showed up with our breakfast plates. She fetched the coffeepot and refilled our cups and gave us all another pretty smile and said to just whistle if there was anything else we’d like.

LQ watched her sweetlooking ass walk away and whispered, “I got half a mind to tell her what I’d like…”

“You got half a mind, period,” Brando said, then got back to the subject of Cora Jane. There was no denying he’d had himself a time.

“That Cora Jane sounds like a ball of fire,” LQ said. He said Sheila was fun in bed but she liked her booze a little too much. After she’d been drinking a while he got the feeling she didn’t really know who she was fucking or really care.

“Hell man,” Brando said, “what difference does it make what’s going on in her head as long as you get to put it to her?”

“Makes a difference,” LQ said.

“You’re never satisfied, that’s your trouble. You expect too goddamn much.”

“What the hell you know about it?” LQ said. “You’d hump a rock-pile if you thought a snake was in it.”

“Snake this.”

We got back on the road but took our time. We didn’t want to get to Dallas till just about dark. Brando drove while LQ and I sat in the back and went over the maps and the directions to Healy’s office and to his home. The routes had been clearly marked on the map in green ink. Because his house was a couple of miles south of downtown and not too far off the highway, we decided we’d check it first, even though it wasn’t likely he’d be there at such an early hour. His office was in a downtown building a few blocks west of the city park and close to the railtracks. If we didn’t find him there, either, we’d start checking his favorite hangouts.

We stopped at a roadside lunch wagon and bought hamburgers with all the trimmings and bottles of ice-cold Coke and ate the lunch at a picnic table in the shade of a tree. When we got going again, LQ was at the wheel while I went over the maps with Brando.

“What if he aint anywhere we look?” Brando said. “Could be we’ll check someplace and he aint there and then we head for another place and he’s headed for the place we just checked.”

“We’re not leaving Dallas till we put him down,” I said. “If we don’t find him tonight we’ll hunt for him again in the morning. If we spot him in daylight we’ll tail him till it’s dark, then pick our best chance to do it. No daylight hit if we can help it. Too chancy.”

“We could end up hunting him for days,” Brando said. “What if we find him and he’s got ten guys with him?”

“Damn poor odds, all right,” LQ said. “To be fair we’d have to let him send for more guys.”

His big grin filled the rearview and I gave him one back.

“Ha ha,” Brando said. “I’m serious, man. What if we find Healy but the Parker guy’s not with him? Or what if we find Parker first? As soon as we do one of them, the other’s bound to hear about it and get set for us—or make himself too scarce to find.”

“Parker’s his main muscle,” I said. “Wherever Healy’s at, Parker’s probably with him.”

“One of these days I’d like to have a plan that aint got no prob’ly to it,” LQ said.

“Be nice if Healy was home when we got there,” Brando said. “And if there wasn’t nobody with him but Parker.”

“Yeah, that’d be nice, all right,” LQ said. “And it’d be nice if they got killed in a car wreck today. Or if they both came down with a case of the blues so bad they shot theirselves and left a little note saying they just couldn’t stand it no more and we heard about it on the radio as soon as we got to Dallas. That’d be nice.”

We passed the city-limit sign at dusk. LQ pulled off onto a side road and stopped the car and Brando got out and poured some Coke in the dust to make enough mud to smear on the license plates. He wiped his hands on a rag and got back in the car and we moved on. By the time we were making our slow way through the streets of Healy’s neighborhood and reading the street signs by lamppost light, the sky was dark and the moon fat and orange and just above the trees.

“It’s the next right,” LQ said from the backseat.

“I know it,” Brando said.

“Don’t slow down when we drive by,” I said.

“I know it.”

We made the turn onto Carpenter Street and I counted three houses down on the right. There was a dark- colored Chrysler parked in the driveway of the third house and a pair of men were just then coming out the front door and down the porch steps. One of them was a blond guy holding his hat and adjusting the crown crease with the edge of his hand. The streetlight showed Healy’s face clearly—he looked just like his picture. The other guy was so big there was no question who he was. He must’ve said something funny because Healy laughed as he put on his hat. Parker gave us a glance as we passed by, but you could tell he was checking nothing but the car speed.

“Sweet Jesus,” LQ said softly. “You believe this luck?”

I turned to look at them through the rear window and saw them getting in the Chrysler, Parker behind the wheel. I told Brando to take a slow right at the next corner, and as we made the turn I saw the Chrysler back out into the street and then head off in the other direction from us. And just-like-that, I had a plan.

“Take a right and floor it, man,” I said. “Get us in front of them before they hit the highway.”

Brando screeched the Dodge around the corner and gunned it down the street running parallel to Carpenter as I told them what I had in mind. LQ and I grabbed up the shotguns and jacked shells in the chambers. There was hardly any traffic on these residential blocks and we zoomed through three stop signs in a row and almost hit a scooting cat. We barreled up to a T-intersection and Brando had to brake sharp for it and take the turn pretty wide and we just did miss colliding with an oncoming car that went veering off the road.

“Yaaaa-hoooo!” LQ hollered.

We went barreling up the block and there was the Chrysler, coming from our right on Carpenter. Brando wheeled a hard left just in front of their car and Parker had to stomp his brakes to keep from ramming us. We came to a halt at the stop sign at the corner, the highway just another block ahead, and the Chrysler rolled up behind us with its klaxon blaring.

Parker stuck his big head out the window and shouted, “You stupid shit! I oughta yank you out of that car and rip your ass in half!”

There was one car coming our way from the direction of the highway and no traffic at all behind the Chrysler.

“Now,” I said. LQ stepped out on one side of the car and I got out on the other and we swung up the shotguns. Behind the glare of the Chrysler’s headlights Healy was just a dark shape on the other side of the windshield for an instant before the glass exploded in the blast of my Remington. LQ’s shotgun boomed at the same time and we pumped fast and fired three more loads apiece and then scooted back into the Dodge. Brando sped us across the intersection and past the car stopped on the other side. Nobody in it could’ve seen our faces under our hat brims even if they’d tried to, especially not against our headlights’ blaze. Hell, all they would remember was the flashing blasts.

Then we were on the highway and headed back south.

“Wooooo!” LQ yelled. “Yall see that big bastard’s face when I pointed the pump at him? The surprise of his goddamn life. Half his head went all over the backseat. Yow! ”

“Piece of cake,” Brando said. “Just like I figured.”

An hour south of Dallas we stopped at a roadhouse and gorged on barbecue ribs and corn on the cob and shared two pitchers of beer. We were loud and happy and laughing like hell. Everything tasted great, every wisecrack was hilarious. Just being alive was a kind of aching pleasure from way deep inside.

“Listen,” LQ said. “There’s a place called Miss Jenny’s just this side of Waco. Aint all that much out of our way. I hear it’s worth every penny. Hell boys, we deserve us a reward.”

All I really wanted was to get back to Galveston, but Brando said “Damn right!” and I wasn’t about to argue