'Houston,' I said. 'Then on to Lake Charles.'
'What?' she asked, waking briefly.
'Molly McBride went to a great deal of trouble to convince you that she was from San Francisco,' I pointed out, 'and to convince me she was from New Orleans. But I remember the Houston address on her phony lawyer card, and she let something slip about Lake Charles. I'd bet a dollar to a doughnut that I can pick up her trail one place or the other.'
'I don't want a fucking doughnut,' Betty said, wiping at her eyes. 'I want ham and eggs and redeye gravy on my grits.'
'I'll buy you a boxcarful if you'll just smile again.'
She did. For a second before she plunged into sleep like a woman leaping off a bridge.
Driving toward Houston on I-10 after a breakfast stop to eat and dump my garbage bag, as Betty napped curled in the back seat, I called Hangas to ask him to keep an eye on Eldora Grace in the hope that he might be around when she got the bad news. He told me that she hadn't been home the last two times he stopped at her house. I suggested she might be staying at Sissy's place. Hangas said he would try there.
As I drove, I found myself in another world of shallow rolling hills broken by thick, dark broadleaf forests, which after a few hours gave way to industrial chaos, nothing like the open spaces of the Hill Country. I'd never been in East Texas but I suspected that it was going to be different from anything I knew anything about, more like the South than the West.
Houston seemed to be the world's largest construction site combined with the world's worst traffic jam, all of it plopped down with neither rhyme nor reason among as many shacks as tall shining buildings, all buried in an uncommon grave under a humid, shallow sea. Even the Caddy's air conditioner couldn't keep the hot, heavy, stinking moisture out of the car.
When I pulled off the freeway, I parked in a residential area, then opened the Houston street map. Betty climbed over the seat, rubbing her eyes.
'What's up?'
'I told you. The McBride woman swiped her phony calling card out of my shirt pocket when she snagged a cigarette.'
'Or when you had it off,' Betty said. I tried to keep my face grim. 'You did take your shirt off, didn't you?' she asked, grinning as she poked me in the ribs.
'But I remember the address,' I continued. 'Navigation Boulevard. Sometimes people make mistakes when they make fake business cards.' Then I paused. 'I took my shirt off but not my socks,' I said, grinning, too.
'That's disgusting,' Betty said. 'Like one of those old black-and-white porno films.' I glanced at her. 'I'm not as stuffy as some people seem to think.'
I shook my head, chuckling, then wound south toward the ship channel and Navigation Boulevard. The address turned out to be a rundown joint with black-painted windows called the Longhorn Tavern, the sort of place where, when I parked the Caddy in front, I imagined I could hear the hacking coughs of day-drinkers, the snicker of switchblades swinging open, the metallic click as the hammers of cheap revolvers were drawn back.
'It'd be easier if you stayed in the car,' I said, 'and without argument.' Betty glanced at the place, then nodded solemnly. I took a picture of Molly McBride from the glove box, then climbed slowly out of the car, and trudged up the sagging steps of the tavern. I wondered if my pace looked as ancient as it felt.
Inside, every bar stool was filled, every bleary eye aimed at the morning game shows murmuring on the two televisions at either end of the bar. The clientele seemed to be an interracial cross-gender mob of the unemployed mixed with the unemployable: construction workers, semi-retired whores, shore-bound sailors, longshoremen, and street-level drug dealers. Even in scuffed boots and faded jeans, I felt overdressed because I wore a clean shirt. I found a small space at the front of the bar next to a fairly clean fellow about my own age with one arm of his khaki shirt pinned to his shoulder. It seemed the safest place.
When the bartender, an enormous black woman with scarred, ham-sized fists and the wary eyes of a street fighter, lumbered down to my end of the bar, I ordered a bottle of Lone Star, trying to fit in.
'No bottles,' she rumbled. 'Nothin' but cans,' she added as she cracked one for me.
Looking around, I agreed with the bartender. I wouldn't put anything resembling a weapon into the hands of this crowd, either. Not that the bartender would need one. 'Thanks,' I said, shoving a ten at her. 'Keep the change,' I said, then pulled the picture out of my jacket pocket. 'You haven't seen this woman around here, have you?'
'Annie,' the one-armed guy on the stool murmured as he spun to face me.
'You ain't a fuckin' cop, are you?' the bartender asked, tugging on her ear with the thick fingers of her right hand.
'I'm a private in -' was all I got out of my mouth before the large woman threw the straight right at me. I tried to shove my stool backward to slip the punch, but the one-armed guy stuck his boot against my stool, and the large fist slammed against my forehead, hard enough to knock me off the stool. I hit the floor, rolled, then stumbled backward all the way across the room. The bartender shouted, 'We don't allow out-of-town pigs in here, do we boys?' Then half her customers swarmed me. My last clear thought was that I was going to die, with perfect irony, at the hands and feet of a crowd of winos.
Then it was all bar-fight confusion and chaos. Tables and chairs, teeth and hair, blood and primal grunts. It seemed I remembered the one-armed guy kicking viciously at my crotch. And that I'd never been quite so happy to hear the sounds of sirens and hoping they were coming for me.
I came back to the world sitting on a rickety chair at one of the dirty tables. Two young cops – one black, one Chicano – wearing surgical gloves swabbed delicately at my bleeding face, Betty and the bartender hovering in the background. The rest of the bar had cleared as if by magic.
'How are you doing, buddy?' the black cop asked.
'I've been worse,' I said after I had checked my teeth and nose, then the rest of my face. A fairly deep gash in my left eyebrow. Another long shallow one under my chin. A dozen fingernail gouges. 'Nothing a couple of butterfly bandages can't handle,' I told the cops. 'Sore ribs. Both pupils the same size, I hope.' Betty nodded. 'And it feels like they missed my nose and nuts.' My right fist echoed with the memory of at least a single solid blow.
'You got any ID, buddy?' the Chicano kid asked, seemingly uninterested in my injuries.
I dug out my real driver's and PI license. Luckily, I'd left the badge case and the fake ID in the trunk of the Caddy. This was no time to have a badge. The photo of Molly McBride had disappeared.
'So what happened in here?' the black kid asked.
'Ah, hell,' I said quietly, 'we're on our way to New Orleans, and I'd heard that an old skip I've been chasing for a couple of years had been seen in here. Guy named Bill Ripley. Thought I'd stop in and ask. Guess I asked the wrong guy. My fault entirely.'
'You see any of your attackers?'
'It all happened too quick,' I said. 'The bartender tried to stop them, but there were too many, too fast.'
'Recognize anybody, Annie?' the black officer asked the bartender.
'Place was plum-full of strangers this morning, Officer.'
'Guess the fleet's in,' the Chicano officer snorted. Then he handed me a stack of sterile pads and a roll of gauze tape. 'It would be a good idea to get out of this part of town, sir. Why don't you let your wife drive? They have a lot of good doctors on your way. Over in Beaumont, maybe.'
'Sounds good to me,' I said, then I stood up, forcing myself not to wobble. 'Thanks,' I said to the bartender, who gave me a hairy eyeball and a sneer. 'Let's go, honey,' I said to Betty, as blandly as a tourist, then put my hand on her shoulder and let her lead me to the safety of the Beast.
'What the hell happened in there?' Betty asked as she eased out from the curb.
'I got knocked down by a fat woman,' I answered, 'and damn near kicked to death by an alcoholic mob.'
'But why?'
'They don't like strangers, I guess,' I said. 'You call the cops?'
'They were roaring by when this guy tumbled out the front door.'
'Great. At least I got in one shot,' I said, checking my face in the visor mirror. 'Let's get the fuck out of this town,' I said. I gobbled a couple of codeines, then used Betty's Swiss Army knife scissors to trim some butterfly
