Under the Skin

sassy tilt. Brando winked at her and said, “All the way up, honey.” She got us moving and said, “Yall policemen?”

“Don’t we look it?” LQ said.

“Yessir,” she said. “I guess so.”

LQ said he was Sergeant O’Brien and Brando and I were Detectives Ramos and Gallo. She wanted to know if we were going to arrest somebody. LQ said probably not, just ask some people some questions. She looked from one of us to the others. LQ was fairhaired and cleanshaven and spoke with an East Texas drawl, but Brando and I were darkskinned and had big mustaches, and I thought the girl might be wondering when the Houston PD had started hiring guys that looked like us.

At the top floor LQ set down his briefcase and he and I got out. Brando stayed with the elevator and kept the door open. I heard the girl say, “I wanna see,” but Brando told her to keep back from the door.

We’d figured on the watchdog in the hallway. He got up from his chair and dropped his magazine on it, tugged his lapels into place and planted himself with hands on hips. He held his coat flaps back so we could see the shoulder holster he was wearing.

“Stop right there,” he said.

We kept walking toward him. “Houston police,” LQ said. “Here to see William Ragsdale.”

The guy cut his eyes from one of us to the other. He was goodsized but so was I, and although LQ was on the lanky side, he had the height on us. The guy’s hands dropped off his hips.

“Let’s see some badges,” he said. You could almost hear the gears turning in his skull, thinking what might happen if he pulled a gun and we were really cops. That was the trouble with dimwits—in the time they needed to think it over, they were had.

“Sure thing,” LQ said, pulling the .380 out from under his coat and cocking it as he put the muzzle in the guy’s face. “Have a good look.”

I drew my revolver from under my arm and held it down against my leg. It was an old single-action .44 with high-power loads that could knock down a horse.

The guard looked heartbroken at being taken so easily. He held his hands away from his sides as LQ reached in his coat and stripped him of a bulldog.

“How many?” LQ said, jutting his chin at the door.

“Just him and Kersey, a pair of chippies.”

“Kersey a gunner?” LQ said.

“Naw, shit. Owns a truck company, some strip clubs.”

LQ told him what to say and warned him that if he said anything else he’d be the first to get it.

I stepped off to one side of the door and LQ stood on the other. LQ nodded and the guard gave the door two sharp raps, waited a second and then gave it one more.

A voice inside said, “What?”

“Got a package here for Mr. Ragsdale. The desk just sent it up. Didn’t say who from.”

We heard the dead bolt working and then the door opened a few inches on its chain. “Where’s it—”

LQ yanked the guard aside and I stepped up to the door and gave it a hell of a kick, snapping the chain and knocking the guy on the other side backpedaling and down on his ass. I went in with the revolver raised. LQ shoved the guard staggering past me and hustled in behind me and closed the door.

Ragsdale was gawking at us from the sofa where he sat in his underwear and with a girl on his lap. I knew him from a photograph Rose showed me. Husky, paunchy, thick head of oily hair, fleshy drinker’s nose. The girl scooted off him in a half-crouch, holding her shoulders in a shrug and her hands turned back at the wrist in a gesture that said she had nothing to do with this. You could see she wasn’t wearing anything under her white slip.

“What the hell?” Ragsdale said. He started to reach for his pants but I pointed the Colt at his face and shook my head. He raised his hands chest-high and sat back. I picked up the pants to make sure they didn’t have a gun in them and tossed them aside.

LQ ordered the other two guys to stand with their noses and palms against the wall and they were quick to do it. A girl in just bra and panties appeared at the bedroom door, looking scared but keeping her mouth shut. Another cool pony. I took a look in the bedroom to be sure there was no adjoining door, then waved both broads in there and shut them inside.

There was an open valise on the table against the wall and I sidestepped over to it and saw that it held a .380 semiautomatic and a few lean packets of greenbacks held together with rubber bands. One pack of hundreds, a couple of fifties, the rest all twenties and tens. Three, four grand at most was my guess.

“Listen, can I say something?” Ragsdale said. He was bouncing back fast from his surprise—and he’d figured who was running the show and was talking to me. Rose said they called him Willie Rags.

“Just let me say something, okay?” he said. I stood there and stared at him.

“Look, I know who sent you boys. Just tell me what them wops want. You aint wop, are you? Look Mex to me—no offense, hell, I like Mexes. Anyway, what they want? Money? Want to know whose slots I’m pushing? Well, all right, all right, we can discuss all that. We can straighten everything out, guys like us, right?”

He’d probably fast-talked his way out of plenty of jams before. Rose had spoken to him on the telephone once. “Talks like a guy on the radio,” he said.

“Listen, I know you guys aren’t gonna shoot me,” he said. “Not here. Hotel fulla people. Shit, it’s Houston but it aint Dodge City. They probably told you get the money I made off those slots, right? Plus a little interest on top? Probably said knock me around some, teach me a lesson. Okay, all right, won’t be the first ass-kicking I ever took. But look, the money on the table’s all I got on me. You want more than that you gotta wait till morning. I’m meeting a guy in the morning with lots more cash. But you don’t want me all beat up when I meet him, right? Might make him suspicious, know what I mean? Would you hand over a bunch of money to a guy all beat to shit? What you oughta do, you oughta hold off on the ass-whipping till after I get the dough from this guy. That’s good business sense, and you boys are businessmen, I can tell. So let’s talk a little business while we wait for the man with the money, what do you say?”

I stared at him with an expression like I might be thinking it over.

“Listen,” he said, “tell me what kinda deal you got with the Maceos. Maybe I can cut you something better, you know what I mean? I mean, no harm in talking, is there?” He pronounced their name MAY-cee-o, the same way the Maceos themselves said it, like Texans, which is what they considered themselves to be.

I looked at LQ. He pursed his lips and shrugged like What the hell.

Ragsdale caught LQ’s expression and took encouragement from it. He patted the sofa and said to me, “Come on, pal, sit down. No harm done. Let’s talk business.”

I lowered the gun, and he chuckled and patted the sofa again. I uncocked the .44 and slipped it into my waistband under my coat as I started to step past him to the other side of the sofa. Then brought the ice pick out of my inside coat pocket and drove it into his heart.

If you can get them off guard like that you can do it quick and neat and fairly quiet. They give a little grunt and that’s it. I yanked the pick out and he started to fall forward but I caught him and positioned him so he’d stay seated. A red spot the size of a quarter was all the blood there was. His head was slumped to one side and his eyes were open. He looked like he’d just been asked a stumper of a question. I closed his eyes and wiped the pick on his undershirt and put it back in my coat.

The other two still had their faces to the wall and looked like they were trying not to even breathe.

“Tell those Dallas assholes we know it’s their machines Willie Rags was pushing,” I said. “Tell them Rosario Maceo says don’t cross the line again.”

I picked up the valise and we hustled out of the room and over to the elevator. Brando patted the girl on the ass and said, “Let’s go, honey.”

She blushed and worked the levers and down we went. She looked a little disappointed we hadn’t brought anyone out in handcuffs.

It was normally an hour’s drive between Houston and Galveston, but we went back by way of Kemah and League City, a pair of burgs just inside the Galveston County line. We had a list of all the places where Ragsdale had put in his Dallas machines and we stopped at each one to