“He took us for a ride,” Timmy said.
“Yeah, well, the ride ain’t over,” Bad Tiger said.
“He took all the money and run out on us, and he’s good and gone. I’d call that ride over.”
“He shouldn’t do a thing like that to Bad Tiger,” Bad Tiger said of himself. “He ought not to have thought he could get away with a thing like that.”
“He did get away with it.”
“Keep talking like that,” Bad Tiger said, “and you’ll be laid out under one of these trees like Buddy.”
“I didn’t mean nothing by it. I’m just saying.”
“And I’m just saying I’m going to catch up with him, and when I do, I wouldn’t want to be Strangler Nugowski. And here’s another thing. That fifty thousand we got. That’s the biggest haul I ever took. That bank must have had every payroll there was in it. Splitting that four ways, that was good money. With Buddy hit like he was, I figured it’d be three ways at some point. But then Strangler run off with the money.”
“Which made it a one-way split,” Timmy said.
“Yeah, but we get it back, it’s a two-way split, and that’s good. He won’t be splitting nothing, but you and me, we’ll take it right down the middle.”
“Unless he’s spent it.”
“He hasn’t spent fifty thousand dollars. A few bucks here and there, but he hasn’t spent it yet. You know what he’s going to do, don’t you?”
“I got an idea.”
“Yeah,” Bad Tiger said, “and if you’re smart, you got the same idea I got.”
“The kid.”
“Yeah, the kid. He thinks he can take that money and use it to get his kid’s foot fixed.”
“I remember—twisted up or something.”
“Clubfooted. They can fix that sometimes, and he wants it fixed. So to get it fixed, he’s got to go back and find her.”
“East Texas,” Timmy said.
“Tyler. I been there. I know where it is. He’ll probably show up there. He goes where he knows. I know that much about him. Eventually, he’ll be there.”
“Way we’re going, we ain’t never going to get there.”
“Take a straight shot, we might not get there either. Cops are all over the place. I figure we’ll run into some at some point, and we do, we got those kids for hostages.”
“What happens when we get to East Texas?” Timmy asked.
“We find Strangler and we get the money.”
“I mean with the kids.”
“Oh,” Bad Tiger said. “I don’t know. We could let them go, or you could shoot them. But you know, I’m thinking about keeping the girl.”
“You’ve gone silly.”
“She’s a looker.”
“There’s lots of lookers,” Timmy said.
“They don’t look like that. I just want to clean her up and get some war paint on her, have her hair fixed, some nice clothes, keep her around for a while.”
“I know what you want. I don’t have to puzzle over what you want. I know.”
“Yeah, well, you’re right,” Bad Tiger said.
“She ain’t nothing but a kid.”
“You sure are standing up for her. A while ago you were a man wanted to shoot her,” Bad Tiger said.
“Not exactly standing up for her, but I know if you take a shine to her, I don’t get to shoot her. And I owe her one.”
Bad Tiger laughed. “She sure laid one into you, didn’t she?”
“It’s not so funny from this end.”
“Yeah, but from my end it’s a riot,” Bad Tiger said. “You know what I think?”
“What?”
“I think you’d like to see her cleaned up too, spend a little time with her before you shoot her. How’s that thinking?”
“It’s a thought that might have crossed my mind, but I don’t have to like her to want that. And for me, she don’t even have to be cleaned up. So, yeah. It crossed my mind.”
“Well, uncross the thought,” Bad Tiger said. “She stays with anyone any time at all, it’s me.”
16
Of course I had been thinking about getting away, but now, it was all I could think about. The idea that Bad Tiger and Timmy might do something to Jane was more than I could stand, and just a day or two ago, I wasn’t even sure I liked her.
She was a liar and a thief and a bit of a con, and she had dragged me into this business with her and her little brother, and I wasn’t even sure where I was going or why. There was just something about her that made you want to follow her. Some kind of thing that made you feel she knew where she was going, and you ought to want to go too.
I didn’t feel so good about it now. It had been bad enough at home with my folks dead and buried in the barn, but now I was on the run, and we was with real gangsters. Heck, they had stole the car that we had stole from a dead man, so we couldn’t exactly place ourselves on a much higher level than they were. Course, we hadn’t shot anybody, and they had. But to tell you true, I wasn’t feeling so good about myself right then.
Bottom line was, they had guns and bad attitudes, and they both wanted Jane for one thing or another, and none of it good. On top of that, one of their partners, a guy called Strangler, seemed to have betrayed them to take the money to get some kind of doctoring for his kid, and they were going after him, and if the law showed up, we were hostages. And there wasn’t any guarantee that the cops would be all that worried about our safety. We might get shot at from both sides.
I thought on things awhile, decided there was nothing to be done at the moment. And Jane had been right about them driving back up into the Dust Bowl. They were zigzagging, but doing it in such a way it would eventually take them southeast, into Texas.
I closed my eyes and surprised myself by going to sleep, only waking up when Timmy put a foot in my side.
“Up and at it,” he said. “We’re moving out.”
“I’m hungry,” Tony said.
“Get up,” Timmy said.
“What about breakfast?” Jane said.
“What about it?” Timmy said. “Was you expecting it in bed?”
“That would be nice,” she said.
Timmy kicked her. I grabbed his leg and lifted it and he fell back on his butt. I was up and on him then, but when I straddled him and drew back my fist, he pulled out the automatic and put it against the tip of my nose.
“Why don’t you go on and do that,” he said. “See how it works out for you.”
Next thing I felt was being pulled off him. It was Bad Tiger. He jerked me to my feet and slapped me hard enough it knocked me down and made my ears ring.
“I ain’t up for it,” Bad Tiger said. “Not even a little bit. Everybody get in the car. Now! Timmy, you’re driving.”
17
I sat up front with Timmy at the wheel. We hadn’t gone far before he turned on the radio, but all he got was a sound like someone rubbing a jagged rock over sandpaper. He turned it off and hummed a little, whistled a few bars, then went silent.
