Paco looked a question at her.
“Can’t sleep. Going to take a walk.”
Paco nodded.
She went out through the kitchen. She was a walking kind of gal this night. I closed my eyes and slept. It was Trudy coming back that woke me. She wasn’t all that loud, but I wasn’t that deep in sleep either. She came in red-faced from the cold again, pulling off her brown cotton gloves. She came over to the edge of the couch, looked at Paco, then stared at me for a long, hard time. I studied her in return. The bottoms of her pants and the toes of her boots were crusted with clay and there were a few pieces of gravel stuck in the clay at the front ridge of her boot like ugly gems on hard red velvet. The great Hap Holmes deduced she had been out walking along the edge of the creek, where Leonard had tried to build up his land to keep it from washing away.
She tired of trying to stare me down—which was good, I was about to look away—and walked behind the couch and into the bedroom and closed the door.
“She’s still got the hots for you bad,” Paco said.
“Save it,” I said.
The clock showed a little after five.
I didn’t go back to sleep again. By six, Howard and Trudy were both up. Trudy had already showered and was wearing one of my shirts with a clean pair of jeans. Everyone else had on what they had worn the night before. Howard got guard duty. The rest went into the kitchen and scrounged through Leonard’s stuff for breakfast. Leonard awoke in time to see them using up his coffee, his bread and butter, and most importantly, his vanilla cookies. Losing the cookies really bugged him. He had a passion for them, kept them hidden even from me. Paco found them by accident and put them on the table so they could be had with coffee, and though we were offered some, I could tell it was no fun for Leonard to get his own cookies from assholes.
I had picked up tidbits of information here and there, listening to them talk when we were at the Sixties Nest, and now here at Leonard’s, and I had a good idea of their general, if not specific, plans. With the exception of Paco, who was tight-lipped and unreadable, they weren’t secretive about the general stuff. They had brought us here because the guns they intended to buy were to be bought someplace outside of LaBorde, and neither LaBorde or that place were excessively far from Leonard’s house. Last, but not least, Trudy said Paco had contacts in LaBorde that would help them go underground. They weren’t ex-movement people, they were drug runners. But the method for getting lost from the mainstream was the same no matter what your purpose. After all, Paco had done it for years. They only had to follow his lead.
I hoped they would do what they were going to do and get it over with, then let us go. I didn’t want to spend another night sleeping in a chair. The rose fields seemed like a better career today than yesterday. I wanted out of the picture. I wanted to toss away its frame and knock down the wall it hung on.
But when we were out of this mess, I was uncertain what I’d do. If I went to the police, I had to tell them about the money I’d helped find. I could lie my way around it for a while, but if they caught one of the others, the truth would come out, and I might end up viewing the world from behind bars again. Maybe Huntsville prison this time, but a prison just the same. The difference in their exercise yards would not be of enough interest to make the time appealing. And even if I didn’t mention Leonard, one of the foiled revolutionaries might. Leonard wouldn’t like prison any better than I had or would again. Yet, if I said nothing, innocent people might die during one of the group’s holdups, and no matter how I might rationalize it, that would be on my head.
It was not an exciting morning. Paco used Leonard’s phone a couple of times to mutter a conversation at someone, and with the exception of Howard, who was sitting on the couch with his gun, guarding us, we were essentially ignored.
Finally Trudy came over and sat on the couch, reached under her (my) shirt and took the gun out of the waistband of her pants and said to Howard, “I’ll watch awhile.”
Howard got up and went to the table, laid his gun beside the bag of cookies, opened the bag and went to work. I could almost feel Leonard flinch while Howard ate. Leonard sure loved his cookies.
I smiled at Trudy. It was not a nice smile. “You’re all jackasses,” I said.
She smiled at me. It was not a nice smile. “Whatever you think, Hap. You and I aren’t connected in any way anymore. It’s just not there. What you say doesn’t matter to me. You don’t do what we say, try to get away before we’re ready to let you go, try to screw things up, we’ll shoot you. Wound you if we can. Kill you if we have to. Don’t think our past will keep me from pulling the trigger myself. Understand?”
“All too well.”
“What are you going to do with us, and when?” Leonard said.
“Paco’s got to make another call, then we’ll know when and where to meet our contacts, know better what we’re going to do.”
“Why not have them come out here and we can have a party?” Leonard said. “They can finish off my cookies.”
“Better yet,” I said, “leave us here. Cut the phone lines or something, let the air out of Leonard’s tires. Go your way and leave us be.”
“If I knew everything would go smooth, I would. But I want you two with us until the moment we’ve got the guns and we’re ready to go underground. We have some kind of delay and you two are free, you warn someone, then we could get caught before we’re ready to make things work. And if our game plan doesn’t go right, something about this buy sours, we can have here for a home base for a few days till we put something else together. I want us prepared for any emergency. When it all works out you’ll be with us, and if it doesn’t happen here, we’ll let you out some place where you won’t be able to get to a phone too quickly. Not someplace so isolated you’ll freeze to death or be too miserable.”
“We sure wouldn’t want to inconvenience you none,” Leonard said.
“Then Paco’s going to take us to meet our underground connections. New transportation has been arranged. We’ll ditch the van, and—”
“And the rest is history,” I said.
“We’ll try to make a difference,” Trudy said.
“Take the money and give it to the goddamn whales,” I said. “This is stupid. You with a gun? Think about it.”
“I have. I’ve been for gun control all my life, and now here I am with one. Soon to have more. But I’ve given to the whales and I’ve given time and what money I could get to most everything. This time I’m giving myself, and I’ll make a difference.”
“Hap told me about the bird you drowned,” Leonard said. “I think that makes you ready for anything, a stone killer.”
“Oh, shut up, Leonard,” Trudy said.
“Serious now,” Leonard said. “You could call yourself the Ice Birds. You know, like the Weathermen or the Mechanics, only you can be the Ice Birds on account of you’re bad enough and mean enough to drown a sparrow. Shit, I want in. I’ll drive and you shoot.”
“It’s all comedy to you two,” she said. “Exist from day to day, watch out for yourself and each other, and that’s it. You’re not contributing to anything beyond your moment. If it doesn’t affect you immediately, then it’s of no consequence.”
“Sounds right,” Leonard said.
Trudy leaned back into the couch and held the gun in her lap. She said, “You’re hopeless.”
“That may be,” Leonard said. “But what I’d like to do is call a friend who’s been feeding my dogs, tell him I’m home and not to come over. I don’t want you Ice Birds—”
“Don’t call us that.”
“—getting touchy and shooting an old man for one of the bureaucratic, capitalistic pigs that run our society. And I’d like to go out and feed them. Anyone else tries, Switch will take their face off. You can bring your arsenal along so I don’t run off.”
“Call him,” Howard said. He had been listening on the sidelines, and now he was waving Leonard out of his chair with his automatic. “Any tricks, though,
and you could get yourself or Hap hurt.”
Leonard made the call. It was quick and simple and friendly. No codes were passed. He went out and fed the dogs and Paco and his gun went with him. The morning crawled by like a gutted turtle. About noon Paco made a call. When he quit mumbling into the phone he said to the others, “They got a place and a time for us to meet. Sounds okay. Think we can get this over with pretty quick. Get the money, and let’s do it.”
21
We went in the mini-van. Chub drove. Paco sat in the front seat beside him. Trudy and Howard sat in the middle seat and turned around and pointed towel-covered guns at me and Leonard in the backseat. Outside the weather had turned wet with icy rain and the wipers whipped at it like a madman trying to tread water.
“Can we stop for burgers on the way?” Leonard said.
No answer.
We caught the loop and took it around LaBorde, out past the city limits to a stretch made up of long metal storage buildings, and finally the old Apache Drive-In Theater.
It was no longer in operation and would possibly someday become the site of a number of rectangular aluminum buildings the size of aircraft hangers. Before TV hit it a left, and some years later video cassettes finished it with a hard right cross, it was the place to go, but now it was condemned junk.
The great old Apache Indian head figure that had stood atop the marquee was gone, probably stolen, but the marquee itself was there, high up on its metal poles. There were breaks in it and the red letters mounted there were few and left a cryptic message: ED N HE ST.
We drove past the marquee, past the pay booth, to what used to be the entrance. There was a plywood barrier now. Kids had spray-painted pictures and graffiti on it. The pictures were the usual hairy vagina and dick and balls and most of the sexual suggestions were misspelled. At least when we were kids and did that sort of thing we spelled Fuck with a c in it.
“Honk the horn,” Paco said.
“What?” Chub said.
“They said honk the fucking horn.”
Chub hit down on it and held it.
“Just once, dammit,” Paco said.
The plywood wall shook and slid back. When it was halfway across a woman appeared from behind, got at the other end and shoved it some more.
As we drove past her, I saw that she was in her late twenties, tall—over six feet—and dark-haired. Attractive. Wearing a jogging suit with a blue jean coat over it. The coat couldn’t keep you from noticing she was a bodybuilder. She looked a trim one seventy and her muscles hopped like rabbits when she moved.
I looked back and saw that she had hold of the plywood and was backing up, pulling it into place.
I glanced at Leonard, and he raised his eyebrows.
I took a deep breath. I could feel my hands fluttering on my knees. Howard’s Adam’s apple was working slightly and Trudy was watching me intently, her breath audible.
“Park here,” Paco said, and pointed at the concession stand. We parked and got out. Howard and Trudy took the towels off their guns. More professional that way. The cold rain beat on our heads and drenched us to the bone. I found myself looking at where the old drive-in screen had been. I wished it were ten years ago, and I was here for a movie.
Paco went into the concession by himself, came out a moment later. “Come on.”
We went in. It was dry inside but very cold. There was all manner of rubbish on the floor: beer cans, condoms, old popcorn bags, candy wrappers and a pile of turds that might have been human or animal.
We went past what had been the concession counter and into a room that had a faded sign above it that read OFFICE. Inside there was an old cheap desk made out of what they called pressed wood, but was little more than hardened cardboard. On the desk was a battered black porkpie hat and a frayed black umbrella. Behind the desk was a man sitting on an upright soda drink crate, his feet and legs were visible through the opening beneath the desk. He was long and lean, dressed in black slacks with hightop black tennis shoes. His red and black plaid shirt poked out over a vanilla windbreaker. In spite of this light attire, he didn’t look cold. Quite the contrary. He had black hair cut short and greased and combed back. He wore a pair of thick-lensed glasses with square black frames. The nose bar and the left wing of the glasses were wrapped with thick white tape. The eyes behind the glasses seemed huge. They were black as his hair and only slightly less oily-looking. He smile and showed us he was missing some teeth in the right side of his mouth. His face was slightly flushed and pimpled with sweat. He looked as if he were running a fever that was trying to break.
We were all stuffed in the little room and now the muscular woman came in, shook her wet hair like a dog. She had one hand in the pocket of her coat. She leaned in the corner, pulled a leg up and bent it so that the sole of her foot was pushed against the wall. Her face held no more expression than a wax dummy.
“Hey, the revolutionaries,” said the man behind the desk. “Qué pasa. How the fuck are you?”
“We’re all right,” Howard said.
“Glad to hear it,” the man said.
“We’d like to deal quickly,” Howard said.
“Sure,” the man said. “But let me introduce myself.… Ah, fucked up. Ladies first.” He nodded at the Amazon. “That shapely piece of meat is Angel. Me, I’m Soldier. I want you to remember that, know who you’re dealing with. Case things don’t go down the way you like, you can come to me and say, ‘Soldier, things aren’t to my satisfaction.’ And I can say, ‘Fuck you.’ ”
I glanced at Leonard. He looked as uncomfortable as I felt. Howard and Trudy still had their guns but they weren’t pointing them at us anymore; they held them against their legs.
“Do you know what I’m saying here?” Soldier said.
Howard looked at Trudy, and I saw his left cheek jump. Trudy’s lips made a thin white line. Chub moved over near the wall Angel was occupying. He was between her and the desk. Paco moved to the right of Soldier. He had his hands in his coat pockets and was looking at the dirty, paper-littered floor.
“Nobody knows what I’m saying?” Soldier said.
“No,” Trudy said. “We want to deal for the guns. That’s all we want. You give us the guns, and we give you the money. We got to see the guns first.”
“You do.” Soldier looked at Paco. “Hear that, they got to see the guns first?”
“I hear,” Paco said.
“You got guns,” Soldier said. “All you got guns, ’cept for this one,”—he pointed a finger at me—“and the nigger. Right?” He looked at Paco. “They’re the dumb assholes helped find the money, aren’t they? That right? I got ’em picked? I know I got the nigger picked. He’s the only nigger in the bunch. Black man, you called him. Black my ass. I know a nigger when I see one.”
“Yeah,” Paco said. “That’s them.”
“My folks brought me here when I was fifteen. Moved down from Jersey to get here where you spear-chuckers know your place. And you’re worse here. Everything’s gotten so goddamn … What’s the word, Angel?”
“Homogeneous,” Angel said.
“That’s it, goddamned homogeneous. You got your best Ku Kluxers up North now. Southerners, they’ve come to think a nigger’s all right. Turns my stomach.”
“Hating a person because of their skin won’t solve anything,” Chub said.
“Shut up, Chub,” Paco said.
Soldier looked at Chub in surprise. It was as if he had just seen a miracle. “Who the fuck asked you to talk?”
“Not everyone feels like you do,” Chub said.
“Not now, Chub,” Paco said.
“You shut up too,” Soldier said, pointing a finger at Paco. He shifted it to Chub, said, “Angel, move.”
Angel stepped toward me. I saw a snubnose .38 come out of her coat pocket. I glanced back at Soldier. He stood, picked his hat up, took hold of the .45 automatic under it, pointed it at Chub and fired. The back of Chub’s head went by me in a gray and red flash, hit the wall where Angel had stood
. Chub bent his knees slowly, went down until he was supported on them, fell back with his face to the ceiling. The rest of what was in his head ran out like sewage.
The sound of the gunshot throbbed against the room, and Soldier, the .45 still pointed where Chub had stood, said, “Anyone makes to use their gun, I’ll kill ’em. If not me, Angel. Not Angel, Paco.”
We looked at Paco.
“That’s the way it is,” Paco said.
22
“Yeah,” Soldier said. “That’s the way it is. Now play real smart, don’t give me any nigger lectures, and let Angel collect your guns. Pretty please?”
Angel merely took hold of the barrels of the guns, one at a time, tugged gently. Trudy and Howard were so stunned they let go without realizing it. Angel tossed the guns on the desk, went over and opened Chub’s coat and pulled his out of his waistband. I couldn’t help but look at those open, bugged eyes of his, that small hole in his forehead, the puddle on the floor where the back of his head touched. No more analysis for him. No more worries about being the inadequate fat boy. I hoped at some point I had said something nice to him, more for my sake than his.
Angel tossed Chub’s gun on the table with the others.
Soldier nodded at the guns. “These are for shit. You dips wouldn’t have known guns had I had them. I leave here, I leave that shit right here on the desk.… You see, there never were any guns, or any goddamn underground. There was just Paco and he’s been talking to me, and he knows me and knows I got a line on some deals, and he wants to make big bucks. Get out of the chickenfeed, you know. The big score, and all that shit. Besides, who but me is going to hire the ugly sonofabitch for something big, huh? No offense, Paco. Fire’ll do that to you. Make you like scrunched …
What’s that wrapper paper, Angel? They put it around Twinkies, that kind of thing.”
“Cellophane,” Angel said.
“That’s it, that’s the stuff your face looks like, Paco.”