exception.'
When I climbed out of the pickup in front of Tom Ben's dairy barn, I could hear the laughter cracking against the metal walls. The light, fading behind the rolling storm, had drawn the shine from the steel, leeching it to an ashen gray. Inside, in the corn crib, Tom Ben sat on a milking stool and Molly on her cot, her long hair combed out and her face made up. They huddled over a bottle of Jack Daniel's, laughing and slapping their knees. Tom Ben's glass was as dark as raw molasses, but Molly's was very light.
'Wow,' she said as I came in. 'My master returns.'
The old man stood up quickly, stumbling a bit, a guilty boy's grin lopsided on his unshaven face. 'Hell, Milo,' he said, 'I just thought I'd check on the girl.'
'Thanks,' I said. 'I appreciate it.'
'Well, I best be headin' out to the house,' the old man said as he picked up the half-empty bottle of bourbon.
'I'll give you a hand,' I said, but the old man turned on me.
'I got every place I ever started to go, boy,' he said quickly. 'One of them was back from the Yalu River. Ever hear of that fucking place, boy?'
'Yes, sir,' I said. 'I spent part of a spring staring in that direction once.' Then watched the old man wobble out the door and into the dim evening. I guess I could see my legs wobbling in my future. He was only twelve years older than me. Then I looked at Molly.
'Don't look at me,' she said. 'I didn't invite him in.'
'I'm sure you didn't,' I said. 'But one more of those drinks, honey, you would have had to help me carry him out.'
Molly held up her foot with the shackle on it, smiling like a child. 'We could work something out.'
'Don't tempt me.'
'So what did you find out, Mr. PI? When can I go home?'
'Where the hell do you call home?' I said.
She looked briefly puzzled. 'Vegas, I guess,' she said. 'I've got some business there.'
'I'm sure you do,' I said. 'You want some Mexican food?'
'What?'
'You want some Mexican food for dinner?' I said. 'I've got one more chore to do before dark, then I'll bring you some dinner.'
'And some cold beer?' she said. 'Can't eat Mexican food without cold beer.'
'Sure,' I said, then checked the locks on her shackle.
'You've changed my diaper and you still don't trust me?' She sounded almost hurt.
'Not much,' I said, then locked the door to the corn crib, and then the barn door.
As I leaned on Betty's gate in the rising north wind, it seemed like a hundred years instead of five since the first time I stood there. But it's always that way when things go bad between two people. The first time I had leaned on her gate, she held a pistol on me. But she let me inside that time. This time she just looked at me with dead eyes, holding back the three-legged lab, Sheba, who had the slobbery tennis ball in her mouth.
'What the hell do you want?' she said flatly.
'Thought I'd see how you're doing.'
'As you can see, I'm fine,' she said. 'You brought that fucking woman back down here, didn't you,' she said. 'I told you not to do that, I told you to let the law handle it. You didn't do that, did you? No? So what do you want?'
'I guess I came to see if I could heal the breach.'
'It's long past that time,' she snorted. 'You chose your life, Milo, now you can sleep in it,' she added, then turned away, pulling the whining dog behind her as she walked back to the house.
It would be pretty to say that the cold rain and the biting wind started as I climbed back into the Beast, but the norther held back its sharp teeth and hard rain until I got back to the barn.
The wind and rain rattled the barn and the small milk-house heater roared as Molly and I shared the food from Taco Cabana and a six-pack of cold Negra Modelo.
'You know what that old man told me?' she said.
'Hard to imagine.'
'He said that he had hated the cold ever since he had carried one of his dead buddies until his body froze solid as a cedar post,' she said. 'Why would he tell me something like that? And what was he talking about?'
'Tom Ben was a Marine company commander in the Korean War. He was proud of it. And maybe he was trying to impress you.'
'Oh,' she said as if she wasn't quite sure where Korea was. Hell, I wasn't quite sure either and I'd been there for almost three months before the broken collarbone got me out of combat and into a hospital, and some doctor suggested that I wasn't really eighteen. 'Why would he want to impress me?'
'Who knows,' I said. 'Tom Ben's a tough old bird, but maybe he was trying to get in your pants.'
Molly giggled for a second, then suddenly became serious. 'Can I tell you something?'
'Sure.'
'It's a lot different meeting him like this, instead of on the job.'
'Maybe it's you that's different,' I said.
Molly paused for a moment, tore off a piece of brisket, and held it in front of the heater. 'You're always trying to look inside my head,' she said. 'I'm not sure I like it.'
'That's my job,' I said, remembering what Betty had said at the gate.
'Do you like it?'
'Not always,' I admitted. 'How about you? You like your job?' Then I paused. 'I'm sorry. I've no right to say something like that.'
But she didn't answer. We finished our meal in silence, then a couple of beers and cigarettes. When she finally spoke, it was to ask if the shower in the corner of the barn had any hot water. I told her it did.
'Do you trust me enough to let me take a shower?'
'That's the wrong question to ask, lady,' I said as I unlocked the shackle from her ankle. 'There's soap and stuff on the shelf,' I added as she picked up a clean pair of sweats and a T-shirt, then walked over to the dark corner where the shower stood. I tried not to watch as she slipped out of the sweats and under the rushing water, her long silken body shining darkly in the shadows. In spite of everything, she was still the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and I could not stop looking at her, not while she showered, not while she came back to the crib to brush out the long, black ribbons of her hair, the soft weight of her breasts bobbing beneath the T-shirt. Finally, I busied myself unrolling two down sleeping bags, one on her cot, the other on my pad.
'It's going to be chilly tonight,' I said. 'This wet Texas cold seeps into your bones.'
'You know,' she said softly, paused with her face turned to me, the brush still in her thick hair. 'You know, of all the men I've conned in my life, you were the hardest.' Then she touched me on the forehead softly with the brush handle. 'Of all the men I conned, you believed me the most.'
'I guess I've always been a fool,' I said. 'How hard did you sting Paper Jack?'
'Thirty or forty grand,' she said, yawning. 'I don't remember the actual figure.'
'How?' Reminded that yet another Texan had lied to me.
'Probably promised to make a single copy video just for him,' she said. 'Sometimes I block the details of a job.'
'Why?'
'Why what?' she said. 'I did it for the money. You think I want to be a whore all my life?'
'No,' I said. 'Why Paper Jack?'
'He slugged some old guy at a poker table in Vegas,' she said calmly. 'They were going to kill him, but somebody talked them into just spanking his billfold.'
'I guess they thought he got what he deserved.'
'Given the guy he hit,' she said, 'he's damn lucky to be alive.' Then she paused. 'You're sleeping here again
