Just as the crowd was giving it up for the brokenhearted singer and his song, J.C.’s friend Billy got into it with this spunky—if somewhat undersized—cowboy who had something dumb to say that he would soon have to regret. One thing led to another, and before anybody knew it, Billy threw a punch and, bam, that cowboy’s lights went out.
In an attempt to keep things from going bad to worse, as they tend to in circumstances like this, Slim hopped off the stage to help Howdy escort the boys roughly from the club. Left them out in the parking lot arguing about whether they ought to (a) go back in there and kick some ass, (b) go to that place down the road where Ricky and the Redstreaks were playing, or (c) head over to Cotton-Eyed Joe’s for ladies’ night. They finally settled on the latter but didn’t get a mile down the road before they got pulled over by a Val Verde County constable who seemed intent on asking a series of embarrassing questions, the answers to which were both obvious and incriminating.
Wednesday night was different. It was the first time there was reason for anybody to think there might be trouble on the horizon. Problem was, no one noticed the two men sitting in the truck in the far corner of the Lost and Found’s parking lot.
They were Mutt and Jeff on many levels. The older, smaller guy had to be considered the Boss Man, the brains of the outfit. That made the much larger guy the Big Goon. He did what the Boss Man said, but he didn’t like having to do so.
The two of them had been out there watching a while, seeing who came and went, generally figuring things out.
At one point the two men saw this guy walk some big-hipped beauty out to her car for some sweet talk followed by what they figured was a little begging and a couple of hollow promises that didn’t seem to be getting him very far.
After the girl deftly blocked a series of the guy’s moves, Boss Man said, “Gotta hand it to that boy, he doesn’t give up easy.”
The Big Goon was unimpressed by the guy’s gentle methods. He said, “Shit, it was me? I’d just thow the bitch in the backseat and bust a nut.”
Boss Man gave the Big Goon a disapproving glance. “Yes, I s’pect you would.”
The Big Goon sniggered while he thought things through. “Hell yeah,” he said. “I’d stick my head up under that girl’s T-shirt and see what’s what. Just put my nose in between ’em and go—” He shook his bulbous head back and forth like a dog with a wet snake in its mouth making slobbery sounds with his rubbery lips. He laughed and said, “Hell yeah, I like me some big ones.”
Even though the Boss Man was having similar, which is not to say identical, thoughts, he came off with an air of superiority when he said, “Shut up.”
The Big Goon didn’t like being told to shut up, especially by someone so much smaller than him, but he was stuck. He’d made his bed, as the Boss Man tended to point out on a regular basis, and now he had to sleep in it. Maybe he’d beat the crap out of him after their deal was over. That’d shut him up.
It was moments like this when doubt crept in and gave the Boss Man second thoughts about his whole idea. No, he thought, correcting himself, the idea itself was a good one. Solid gold. Easy money.
What gave him the second thoughts was his choice of partner or, as a district attorney might say in an indictment, his accomplice. There was no doubt he needed someone to do the actual deed. And while he knew the big, scary son of a bitch could pull off the physical aspects of the crime, there was always the distinct possibility he would screw up something else, something unforeseeable in its idiocy, something so pig-ignorant that no amount of planning could prevent it.
“What if she tries to get rough?” the Big Goon said.
“Do what you have to,” the Boss Man said. “Short of killing her.” As soon as he said this, he was hit with another wave of doubt. But, he reminded himself, he’d made his bed and now he had to sleep in it. If he tried to back out now, the big knucklehead would probably try to do it on his own, get caught, and roll over on him in a deal with the prosecutor. Jesus, he needed a drink. But first he wanted to go over things one more time in the hope that it would make a difference. He slapped the dashboard and said, “Let’s get outta here, check her house one more time.”
The Big Goon shook his head. “How many damn times’re we gonna go through this shit?”
“As many times as I say.”
“Hell, this ain’t exactly brain surgery. All I gotta do is—”
“It’s a got-damn federal crime,” the Boss Man said between clenched teeth. “And you’re not a two-time loser because you were so scrupulous in planning your previous escapades. Now start the got-damn truck and let’s go check her house one more time.”
The Big Goon keyed the ignition and mumbled, “You ain’t exactly one to be talking about scruples.”
The Boss Man gritted his teeth. He didn’t want to explain the difference between the two words, so he said, “Just . . . drive.”
34
THE OTHER NOTEWORTHY EVENT THAT WEEK HAPPENED around ten Thursday night when a guy, somewhere in his early forties, Slim guessed, walked in wearing a classic western suit consisting of a chestnut jacket with brown suede front yokes and drop-arrow detailing, a tan felt hat, and a gleaming silver bolo with the initials GH in raised gold letters. It was the first time Slim could recall seeing anybody wearing a suit in the Lost and Found, but that’s not what made it noteworthy.
The guy gave Slim a slight nod and tried to walk right past him without paying the cover charge. Slim thought that was pretty cheeky since he figured it was plenty obvious that he was sitting there for the sole purpose of taking money from people, not to mention the large sign printed in perfectly good English that said it cost five bucks to get in the club. Slim held his arm out like a warning gate at a railroad crossing, said, “Just a second, Slick.” He used a thumb to point at the sign but the guy didn’t bother to look at it. He just stood there looking past Slim, toward the bar.
“Five bucks to get in,” Slim said, aiming his dark glasses at the suit.
“Hmmm? What?” Now he looked at Slim and said, “No.” He waved to Jodie and said, “I’m Jodie’s brother.”
Slim turned and saw Jodie waving at the guy like he was the sort of family that you didn’t want to kill, at least not yet. Slim pointed at him and said, “You’re the lawyer.”
“Guilty,” he replied. “Grady Hobbs.” They shook hands. He pulled a business card from his pocket and gave it to Slim. “Pleasure’s mine. Give me a call if you find yourself in legal trouble.”
Slim gave a noncommittal nod. “Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” he said, letting Grady pass. Still, he stuck the card in his pocket thinking that you just never know.
Jodie came out from behind the bar to greet her brother. She looked pleasantly surprised, but surprised nonetheless. She gave him a warm hug before stepping back to get a look at him. “You look great,” she said, as if he usually didn’t. “What brings you in here all dressed up?”
Grady put on a face like his feelings were hurt by the implications of everything coming out of her mouth. He said, “A man needs a reason to visit his sister’s place of business?”
Jodie was tempted to make a snarky comment about how he hadn’t been to the club more than two or three times since she took over the place and how he never even seemed to have time to meet her for lunch and how he always had an excuse for not accepting her invitations to Sunday dinner, but she held her tongue, gestured at the bar, and said, “Well, it’s good to see you. Can I get you something?”
“How ’bout a Shiner Bock,” he said, mounting a bar stool and reaching for his wallet.
She slid a cold one in front of him. “On the house.”
“Thanks, sis.” He tipped it in her direction, took a pull on it, then looked around the club and gestured with the neck of the bottle. “Business looks good,” he said.
“Stayin’ above water,” Jodie said. “How about you?” She gestured at his suit. “You look like you’re prospering.”
“
Can’t complain,” he shrugged. “Busy enough to keep the wolves from the door.” He pointed at her as if he hadn’t planned on mentioning it, but it had just dawned on him to say, “Fact, I’m heading up to Abilene tomorrow, take a bunch of depositions in this big class-action suit I filed against a pharmaceutical manufacturer.”
From the corner of her eye, Jodie noticed a crowd gathering at the bar. “Hold that thought,” she said. “I gotta go serve some drinks.” She held up her finger to put Grady on pause. “Be right back.”
Grady didn’t miss a beat. He just turned to his right and engaged the stranger sitting next to him as though he would naturally be interested in hearing about his grand adventures in jurisprudence. “You mighta heard about this case on the news,” Grady said, as if CNN had been all over this thing from the start. “Yeah, the damn president of the company knew from the get-go that the stuff caused kidney damage. You believe that shit?” Grady talked about how he’d probably be up in Abilene half of next week deposing witnesses and how he figured the settlement would end up in the range of fifty or sixty million dollars, not that he’d get all of it, of course, there were other attorneys involved, but his percentage was enough to make him waggle his hand. And yada yada yada.
Jodie listened to her brother with a mixture of amusement and recognition as she put up three drafts, two bourbons, and a margarita. Grady had always been a big talker. Had the same fondness for promise and disregard for delivery as a six-term senator. At fifteen, when he could finally jump high enough to touch the basketball rim, Grady swore he could dunk. And people believed him. He should’ve run for office. Jodie wasn’t sure if all the big talk stemmed from insecurity or if Grady just liked to bullshit people because he was good at it.
The guy sitting next to Grady asked if he could somehow get in on the class-action suit, but then he added that he was just joking. Grady handed the guy a card and said, “Listen, you ever need a good lawyer, give me a call.”
Jodie was drawing a pitcher of beer just as Howdy was finishing his second set with a song about a guy who gave up his job on a gas pipeline to go chasing a girl across the country in a westerly direction, which was a theme in more than one of Howdy’s compositions. Over the applause that followed, Howdy said, “Thanks, y’all, that’s one of mine called, ‘Baby, When Your Heart Breaks Down.’” He propped his guitar in the stand, said he was going to take a short break, and headed over to the bar where Jodie introduced him to Grady.
“Hey, we were talking about you just the other night,” Howdy said with enthusiasm.
“Uh-oh,” Grady said. “Probably complaining about what a bad little brother I am.”
Howdy waved that off. “No, she was saying she wished she got to see you more often. Said you’re pretty busy with your work so it was hard for the two of you to hook up.”
“Yeah, well that’s all true enough,” Grady said with a smile. “But here I am.”
“Sure enough.” Howdy slapped the bar. “Let me buy you a drink and get you to tell me some stories on your sister.”
“Nothing I’d rather do,” Grady said. “But I’ve got to get out of town at o-dark-thirty tomorrow morning. Gotta be in Abilene by ten, so if you don’t mind, I’m gonna take a rain check on the drink.” He slid off the stool and handed one of his cards to Howdy, said, “But listen, you call me if you ever need a good lawyer.”
Jodie saw Grady preparing to make his exit. She said, “You can’t leave, you just got here.” She came out from behind the bar, knowing that he was leaving no matter what she said.
“I tell you what,” Grady said, giving her a peck on the cheek. “I’ll see you as soon as I get back from Abilene. We’ll go out to dinner. My treat. I promise.”
35
“THE EAGLE FLIES ON FRIDAY,” JODIE SAID, QUOTING T-BONE Walker. She glanced at her watch. “Happy hour starts at four.”
And by five-thirty everybody feels like money to burn and nothing to lose.
Better hang on to your hat.
Weekends at the Lost and Found. Time to let it rip and roar. Didn’t matter if you’d spent the last five days working an oil rig or cooped up in a home or an office cubicle, all work and no play sucked. And when you do step out, it don’t matter if you’re high-rollin’ or honky-tonkin’, long as you’re out.
There were low-cut dresses, knee-high boots, and tight jeans to be wiggled into and back out of later. If all went well, somebody might even be there to help. Lots of friendly people at the Lost and Found. There were drinks to be drunk. Rugs to be cut. Stick a whole roll of quarters in the boogie box, son, turn up the heat. Put a buzz in the joint.
“Let’s get this thing rockin’!” were the first words Howdy heard come out of the mouth of the guy who walked in wearing a Can’t We All Just Get a Bong? T-shirt. His buddy, trailing right behind, figured he was going to impress the chicks with his Git-R-Done hat and his ability to do the majority of Larry the Cable Guy’s stand-up routine. Hey, it had worked before.
Howdy was on the door, checking IDs. Cover charge didn’t kick in until later. Bong Boy and Git-R-Done were both old enough so Howdy just smiled and let ’em in, told ’em to have some fun. Thinking about his own younger, dumber days.
Slim was back in Jodie’s office with his guitar and a legal pad, working on a song. It was an idea that had been percolating since the day he and Howdy pulled into Del Rio and stopped for gas at the Truck ’n’ Go Quicky Stop. Slim had noticed this guy climbing down from the cab of his Kenworth, looked like he’d been on the road forever. Kidneys sore from too much coffee, back knotted like a rope. Then he pulled a picture from his shirt pocket and looked at it. He smiled and it was like dark clouds lifting off his face.
Slim didn’t have to see who was in the picture to know there was a song in it. He figured the guy had deadheaded down from Tulsa or maybe Little Rock. His baby wanted him back home and he’d been in the fast lane since the last toll gate, haulin’ nothing but high hopes and thin air. “Eighteen wheels singing home sweet home” was one of the lyrics he was working with. “For too many days, he’d been on the road, missing her more with every load, goin’ broke one white line at a time.” Yeah, it was coming together, but he still needed a title.
Out in the main room, Jodie and the rest of the staff were slinging hooch and wings and whatnot left and right. It was a thirsty crowd heading for a good night.
Later, at the front door, Howdy popped up straight and brushed his mustache when these four hotties came in, must’ve been around nine o’clock. Looked like they’d been locked up in an office all week pushing papers and somebody was going to have to pay for it on the dance floor tonight. A pack of she-cat tigers coming out of the cage, as it were.
Howdy allowed as how he was going to use his doorman’s discretion to let the ladies in without a cover charge. “But I’m gonna have to see your driver’s licenses,” he said, tilting his hat at an authoritative angle. “Make sure you’re not too young to be up in a place like this.”
Well, you can’t hardly find a woman who doesn’t like to hear that she might look too young for anything, so Howdy immediately had one leg up with these ladies. And by the time he’d memorized all their names and told them the first round was on him, well, both legs.
Around ten, the girl of Arizona Cardinals T-shirt fame showed up straining the pearl snaps on a snazzy western shirt. In addition to that she was wearing a pair of old jeans and a willing smile. She paid the cover and drifted past Howdy, listening to her tall, mysterious troubadour who was up on the stage now playing a tender one at that very moment. As if he knew she was there.
“I like your shirt,” Howdy said as she headed for the bar.
To Slim’s credit he remembered her face and name pretty quickly, even without the distorted Cardinals logo staring at him. Just something about her. Next break, she said she’d hang around if that was all right. Slim insisted. Put her on his tab. Played her some songs. Shared her table between sets. Felt a firm squeeze on his thigh. Bingo. Give that man
a cigar. Or maybe he was just happy to see her.
While all that was unfolding, Howdy bought a couple more rounds for the table of she-tigers, even stopped by their table once with a complimentary plate of nachos. Couldn’t stay long though, he said. Had to get back to the door. But maybe later. Go to Mexico, one of those crazy all-night joints, something like that. Hell yeah. They were game.
End of the night, turning up the lights, Jodie slapped the bar the way she always did and said to the stragglers, “You ain’t gotta go home but you gotta get outta here.”
Slim was about to leave with Brianna, which turned out to be her name. Moved here from Phoenix two months ago. Renting a place up on Devil’s Lake to which Slim had just been invited. He needed to borrow the truck to follow her out there, but Howdy had the keys and he was nowhere to be seen.
Jodie said she saw him heading for the parking lot, not two minutes ago.
Slim found him out there in the midst of the she-tigers and he called out, “Howdy, you gonna need the truck?”
Howdy tossed him the keys. “Nope.” He put his arms around two of the tigers and said, “I got a ride . . . or two.”
Brianna just had to ask, “Where’re y’all going?”
Howdy shook his head like the whole thing was a shame and a sin but he had to tell the truth about it. “I wanted to go to Mexico,” he said. “But the girls here have badgered me until I agreed to go back to their apartment to play a little strip poker.” He reached to his pocket and showed Dempsey Kimble’s deck of cards. “You two wanna come?”
Slim smiled and shook his head. “I think we’ll pass.”
As they headed off in different directions but with similar goals, neither Slim nor Howdy noticed the two men sitting in the truck in the far corner of the parking lot, watching.
The Adventures of Slim & Howdy Page 13
