Under the Skin (30 page)
the slots from Healy and told him he was going to put them in Houston, Beaumont, Port Arthur, all over the oil patch. But then he got
ambitious. Thought he’d impress Healy by getting some of them into
Galveston County.”
“So Healy’s big mistake was dealing with Ragsdale,” I said.
“No, that was only his
first
mistake,” Rose said. “His second mistake was thinking the slots still belonged to him. Then he hit my
guys...
that
was his big fucken mistake.”
“I guess I’m off to Dallas,” I said.
“I want it done yesterday,” Rose said. He took two envelopes out
of his top drawer and tossed them to me. One contained expense
money, the other a city map of Dallas with exact directions to Healy’s
office and to his home, and map markings showing the locations of
several of his favorite restaurants and bars.
“Parker too,” Rose said.
“We talked to the Fort Worth and Dallas outfits an hour ago,”
Sam said. “We’ll be settling our thing with Healy but we’ll be doing
them a hell of a favor too—Healy out of their hair and their hands
clean, nothing to hide from the cops. But they want Parker out too,
and to show their appreciation they ponied up a big advance on a contract to buy all their machines from us from now on.”
“The least they can do,” I said.
“You and your partners will get a bonus on this one,” Sam said
with a grin. “The least
we
can do.”
I stared at Rose. He almost smiled—then looked at his watch.
I got going.
T
he phone rang and rang before somebody finally picked up. A
woman. “Jesus...
what
?” she said.
“Sheila?” I said.
There was a moment’s hesitation, and then, in barely above a whis
per: “Who’s this?” One of those who never knew when one beau
might call while she was with another.
“Let me talk to LQ,” I said.
“
Huh?
Say, who
is
this?” I could tell by her voice she was half in
the bag. “You know what time it is? Do I know you?”
“Just put him on the phone, will you, sugar? It’s
real
important.”
The softer tone and the “sugar” did the trick. “Well... he’s sleeping pretty hard right now.”
“He’s passed out, you mean?”
“I don’t know if I’d say
that
. Just he’s sleeping pretty hard and it’d
take a while to wake him, I think. Say, now, don’t I
know
you...?”
“How about Brando?”
“Who?”
“Ray.”
“Oh... Just a minute, I’ll go look.”
The phone clunked down and then I heard her voice at a distance
but couldn’t make out what she was saying. After a minute somebody
picked up the phone and coughed and said, “Yeah?” Brando.
“It’s me. Tell me how to get there. We got work.”
He gave me directions to Sheila’s house and then said, “Where we
headed?”
I gave him a rundown on what happened to our men in Dickinson
and what the job was. “I’m on the way to the ferry right now,” I said.
“See you in about three hours. Be sure the Dodge is gassed.”
“It’s gassed already. Listen, me and LQ aint got but pistols. If we
gonna need—”
“I already saw Richardson and got two Remington pumps with
buckshot loads,” I said. Richardson was a graybeard who ran a hardware store in town but his real business was guns. He could get you
any kind you wanted in almost any quantity. He even made afterhours deals at his home—his attic was an arsenal. He did a lucrative
trade with Maceo men.
“Be ready, both of you.”
T
he Dodge was parked at the curb in front of the house. I
pulled up behind it and snapped off the radio in the middle of
“Limehouse Blues.” It was close to four o’clock. The moon had set
behind the pines but there were only a few thin clouds and the stars
were thick and bright. There was an old Ford coupe in the driveway.
The living room window showed light behind the curtain. I gunned
the engine a couple of times and somebody pulled the curtain aside
just enough to peek out and then let it fall back. Then the house
went dark and the front door opened and LQ and Brando came out
with their bags. The women stepped out with them and there was a
lot of hugging and kissing and patting of asses while I locked up the
Terraplane.
I put my valise in the trunk of the Dodge and got in the backseat.
LQ and Brando came over and put their Gladstones in the truck too.
There was a smaller bag with the pickup money and LQ jammed it
under the front seat.
“You drive,” he told Brando, and settled himself by the shotgun
window. Brando went around and got behind the wheel and cranked
up the motor.
“Too bad that Terraplane seats only two inside,” Brando said. “I’d
like to drive that honey to Dallas.”
“We took that honey to Dallas I’d be driving and you’d be the one
riding in the rumble seat,” LQ said.
“Drive
this,
” Brando said, jacking his fist. He got us rolling.
The radio started blaring “Stardust” and he turned the volume
down.
“Goddamn day would have to have a lot more than twenty-four
hours in it for you to’ve picked a lousier time to roust us,” LQ said
partly drunk.
“Twenty-seven o’clock,” Brando said, and chuckled. “Thirty-three
o’clock.”
“It didn’t take you three hours to pack a bag,” I said. “While
you’ve been sleeping it off some more I’ve been driving, so don’t cry
on my shoulder.”
I took off my coat and balled it into a pillow and stretched out on
the seat with my back toward them and closed my eyes.
“He don’t sound real eager to hear about our good time, does he?”
Brando said.
T
he weather stayed pleasant with only a hint of chill. The day
broke cloudless and the air smelled sweet and dry. They hadn’t
had a good look at my face till the morning light, and they naturally
made a bunch of jokes about it—LQ saying it looked like I’d picked
a fight with the wrong little girl—before I told them about the sparring match with Otis.
“Hellfire,” LQ said, “I never did understand why you done all that
boxing anyhow. Playfighting by a bunch of rules. That don’t help a
man a damn bit when he gets in a for-real fight. How you done
him
is proof of that.”
“What I don’t get,” Brando said, “is why you waited till you got
knocked on your ass so many times before you busted him up. First
time he floored
me
would’ve been the last.”
We stopped at a roadside café and took a booth in the back corner
and all of us ordered coffee and cornbread, eggs and pork chops and
grits. The waitress was a trim pretty thing in a tight skirt and we all
gave her the once-over and she smiled at our attention.
Brando said, “Oh man, I can’t keep it to myself no more—you
gotta
••
hear this,” and started telling me all about his fun with Cora Jane, the
friend that Sheila had gotten for him. Cora Jane had done this to him,
he said, she had done that, she had done everything. She had even
shown him a couple of tricks he hadn’t heard of.
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 rockpile if you thought a snake was in it.”
“Snake
this
.”
W
e 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.”
W
e 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.
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
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