“An Indian chief,” I said, and put a hand to my mouth and went, “Whoo-whoo-whoo.”
“Yeah, ha-ha,” she said. “Make all jokes you want, but I still don’t get you, I just don’t.”
“There’s this story I heard somewhere,” I said. “A forest catches on fire and all the animals are swimming across the river to the other side where they’ll be safe. Except this rattlesnake can’t swim, so he asks a raccoon to let him ride across on his back. The coon says, ‘Hell no, if I let you on my back you’ll bite me.’ The rattler says, ‘No I won’t. If I did that I’d drown.’ Well, that makes sense to the coon, so he lets the rattler get on his back and he starts swimming across the river. Halfway across, the rattler bites him. The coon says, ‘You damn fool, why’d you do that? Now we’ll both die.’ And the rattler says, ‘I don’t know. I guess it’s just my nature.’”
She rolled her eyes but I could see she was fighting a smile. “I’ll tell you one thing you have in common with your uncles,” she said. “You can sure sling the bullshit.”
I laughed along with her, and then asked what she was doing here. Why did she come along with Russell?
“I wonder sometimes,” she said. “I don’t know. I guess because he’s still the most exciting thing to me. It beats working as a salesgirl or being married to some office manager. I’m not real ready for that.”
“Spoken like a true flapper,” I said.
“The flapper is passé, Sonny,” she said. Her smile was rueful. “Don’t you read the magazines?”
“Snappy number like you won’t ever be passé.”
She pursed her lips like she was imparting a kiss. Then smiled and said, “What the hell—maybe it’s just my nature.”
“Like an old Greek philosopher once said—the unrisked life is not worth living.”
“I knew this Greek guy back in Baton Rouge,” she said. “Sold life insurance. Biggest liar I ever met.”
When I told her about my brief reunion with Brenda Marie she said, “I bet that was some memorable whoopee, huh?” and waggled her brows.
“There wasn’t near enough of it, truth to tell.”
“Well hell, Sonny, whose fault is that? Running off on the poor girl as quick as you did.”
“Good thing I did. If I’d stayed longer I might’ve missed you all. Would’ve played hell trying to find you in West Texas.”
She patted my hand. “That’s life, ain’t it, honey? Always one tough choice or another.”
We took in a movie matinee every afternoon. Sadie Thompson. Our Dancing Daughters. She grinned in the screenlight and elbowed me in the ribs when I whispered during Wings that she and Clara Bow could pass for sisters.
One morning we went swimming in the Gulf, then lay on towels on the beach and got sunburns while we told each other what shapes we saw in the clouds. I said she ought to be a zookeeper since she saw nothing but various sorts of animals, and she said I ought to be in jail since I saw nothing but various parts of women’s anatomies. I said it was her fault for wearing such a sexy swimsuit—one of those new backless things with an X-halter over her breasts—and said she could quit pretending not to notice all the guys giving her the once-over. She threw sand at me and said all men were sex-crazy. I said I didn’t know about all men, but I sure was, and gave a high wolf howl. She laughed and said to shush up before the dogcatcher came and took me away.
To celebrate our last night in Galveston we all got dressed to the nines and took supper at the Hollywood Dinner Club, the Maceos’ fanciest place. It was easy enough to find—all you had to do was head up the beach road toward the source of the big searchlight beacon circling the sky and there you were. They could see that beckoning light miles away on the mainland.
The club’s exterior was designed like an old Spanish hacienda, lots of tiles and arches, porticos with torches in the walls. Inside, the ceilings blazed with chandeliers and the furnishings were très élégant. We were ushered to one of the dining rooms and agreed among ourselves to order something none of us had eaten before, which left plenty to choose from on the menu. We finally settled on roast partridge stuffed with wild rice and mushrooms and a couple of bottles of French wine.
It was a superb meal, but Buck said that for less than the tip we’d be leaving we could’ve stuffed ourselves on the best fried chicken in Texas at a joint he knew of in niggertown—and got drunk for three days on bonded bourbon. Charlie told him not to be such a sourpuss. She didn’t understand how anybody could not have a good time in such a swell place.
“Hey, goddammit,” Buck said, “I know how to have a good time. I’m having one—see?” His grin was so exaggerated Russell said he looked like a lunatic with an electric wire up his ass. Buck rolled his eyes to add to the effect and we all cracked up.
After supper we went into the rooms in back. They were everything I’d heard. There were tables for every kind of game—poker, blackjack, craps, name it. The room was discreetly overseen by the club’s handymen, as Buck said they were called. Beefy well-dressed guys with watchful eyes and with bulges under their coats. After an hour of blackjack I was nine dollars to the good, but Buck dropped eighty at stud and Russell was forty dollars poorer after his turns with the dice.
As we made our way through the crowd to get to the speakeasy ballroom Russell whispered, “Goddam, I wish I had my own bones with me. I know I could work this place.”
Buck cut his eyes at him. “I’d say we ain’t getting out of this town any too soon. You’d lose more than a couple of fingers here, buddy-boy.”
Buck and I had a drink at the bar while Russell and Charlie took a turn on the dance floor in the company of about two hundred other couples whirling to the band’s rendition of “Stardust.” The smoky air was laced with perfume. Knockout women everywhere you looked, all of them in the company of highrollers.
“Man, you ever see so much goodlooking stuff under one roof?” Buck said. “What I wouldn’t give for a crack at any one of them. But hell, they too rich for my blood.”
“Why not try the direct approach?” I said. “Sometimes it does the trick.”
“I knew this old boy decided one night to try the direct approach,” he said. “Picks out this goodlooking thing at the bar and goes up to her and says, ‘Hey, honeybunch, I sure wouldn’t mind a little pussy.’ Gal gives him a look and says, ‘Me neither, Mac—mine’s as big as your boot.’”
After a while Russell bellied up to the bar and Charlie tugged me out on the floor as the band started up with “You Do Something to Me.” She was wearing a little black satin number and I felt the play of her belly and thighs against me as we swirled around in the midst of the other dancers. And like the times we’d danced so close together when I was a kid, the same thing happened in my pants.
She smiled wide and said, “Why Sonny, you still know how to pay a girl the sweetest compliment.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Can’t help it.” My ears burned.
“Well of course you can’t, sugar. After being so long in that awful place. You really did need more time with that Brenda girl.” She laughed and pinched my cheek. “And you still blush more handsome than any man I know.”
We danced like that for a while and my embarrassing condition persisted. “Poor baby,” she whispered in my ear, her belly tight against me as we danced to “Amapola.”
She glanced at the bar and I looked too and saw Buck and Russell hunched over the counter in close conversation. She took the lead and sidestepped us through the dense crowd of dancers to the far side of the floor and into the darkness behind a partition of potted palms.
“Hey girl,” I said, “what the hell are—”
“Hush,” she said.
She backed me up against the wall and then slipped her hand off my shoulder and down between us and her fingers closed around me through my pants. I couldn’t believe it, but I wasn’t about to protest. I was already so worked up that it took her only a few quick squeezes to set me off. I dug my fingers into her hip and groaned
into her hair.
She put her hand back on my shoulder and patted it gently. “There now. All better, baby?”
All I could think to say was “Whooo.”
She chuckled softly and pecked me on the cheek. “I’ll take that for a yes.” Then said: “Good thing we’re both wearing black. Stains won’t show.”
We danced out from behind the palms and into the crowd again and slowly swayed our way across the floor to the rhythms of “In a Little Spanish Town.” Buck and Russell were still talking.
She pushed her belly tight against me. “I must say, Mr. LaSalle, you certainly feel more relaxed.”
I grinned back at her. “No small thanks to you, Miss Hayes, I must say.”
“And I must say, Mr. LaSalle, what’s a friend for if not to lend a helping hand?”
Our cackles drew amused looks from the couples nearest to us.
“Listen, honey,” she said, “I really think you need to get yourself a girl.”
“I really think you may be right,” I said.
It was nearly one in the morning when we finally called it a night. The place was even more crowded than before and people were still coming in.
“It don’t really get jumping for another hour yet,” Russell said. “The highrollers won’t get their hats and coats till practically sunup.”
The parking lot was jammed and cars were lined on both shoulders of the beach road. The Model A was at the far end of the lot, in the shadows of a thick growth of oleander. Charlie led the way, showing off some slick dance moves as she went. We were almost to the Ford when the car parked next to it pulled out and a white Lincoln wheeled into the vacated spot.
Three good-sized guys in fancy suits got out, laughing like one of them had just told a good joke. One of them said something to Charlie that I didn’t catch, and she said, “Oh my, does your momma know you talk like that?” Then the one closest to her grabbed a handful of her ass.
She whirled and took a swipe at him with her purse. “Hands off, Buster!”
I was in front of Buck and Russell and moved in fast. One of them said, “Watch it!” and Buster started to reach in his coat but I caught him with a solid right that put him down. One of the others punched me high on the head but it didn’t have any weight behind it and I countered with a hook in the ear, knocking him against the Ford, then drove one into his solar plexus and that was it for him. He slid down the side of the car, trying to suck a breath.
As I stripped the two guys of their pieces—.38 four-inchers, both of them—I heard Russell say, “Do it, tough guy!” and Charlie shrill, “Russell, don’t!”
He was holding a cocked pistol in the third one’s face. The guy looked like he was posing as Napoleon, a hand inside his coat. Buck stepped up and jerked the guy’s arm away and relieved him of an army .45 automatic. “Thanks, pal,” he said. “I been wanting one of these.”
“You assholes got any idea who you’re fucken with?” the guy said.
“Oooooo,” Buck said in mock fright. “Scary man here.”
“We work for Sam and Rose, you stupid shits.”
Buck kneed him perfectly in the balls. The guy groaned and sank to his haunches with his hands at his crotch, then fell on his ass, cussing low.
“If I was Sam and Rose,” Buck said, “I’d hire me some better help.”
We hustled into the Ford and I wheeled us out of the lot and wove through the traffic in front of the club and then we were out of it and breezing along the beach road. The Gulf was shimmering brightly under a silver moon.
“Hot damn!” Buck yelled out the window—and Russell and I laughed like he’d said something funny. He held up the .45 for us to see. “Slug from one of these’ll knock a man down if it hits him in the little finger, you know that?”
“These are smart little Smith & Wessons too,” Russell said, handling the .38s I’d taken off the Maceo men.
In the rearview I saw Charlie looking from one to the other of us. “What am I doing with you guys?” she said.
“Why honeybunch, don’t you know?” Russell said. He snuggled up to her and kissed her neck and ran a hand over her breasts.
“Yeah, I guess,” she said, and slapped at his roving hands. “But like you boys are always saying…even when you know, you never know.”
That got another big laugh from all of us.
“What I know is, we ain’t getting out of this town any too soon,” Buck said.
Then he started singing “Bye Bye Blackbird” and we all joined in.
W e set out a little before noon under a dark sky full of thunder rolling up from the Gulf. The rain started to fall while we were still on the bridge to the mainland. By the time we got to the outskirts of Houston it was coming down so hard I couldn’t see five feet in front of the car and had to pull off the road. Wiping the fog off the glass gave us no better view of the outside world at all. We opened a lee window a little to let out the cigarette smoke and had to turn the radio volume all the way up to hear the music over the rain pounding the roof.
The speaker crackled with every flash of lightning as we sang along. “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” “Lover Come Back to Me.” “It Had to Be You.” “Who’s Sorry Now.” When Charlie started vamping to “Makin’Whoopee,” we urged her on with wolf whistles and shouts of “Hubba hubba, red-hot momma!” Russell pretended to be a radio announcer, saying, “Welcome ladies and gents, to the LaSalle Model A Boom-Boom Room, featuring Fifi La Hayes. Yowza, yowza!”
And still the rain came hammering down. After a while Buck and Russell started nipping from their flasks and pouring short ones for Charlie. They let me have a sip but said they didn’t want me getting drunk and driving us into a bayou or head-on into another car. I said it didn’t look like I’d be driving us anywhere for about forty days and forty nights.
We were there for more than two hours before the storm eased enough to afford a sufficient view of the road to try driving on it. The engine cranked up easily enough—“Love them electric starters,” Russell said—but when I tried to get going the tires spun in place and dug themselves in and we got stuck.
“What Ford should’ve put in these cars is an electric pusher,” Buck said. There was nothing to do but let Charlie take the steering wheel while the three of us got out and shoved.
The storm had abated but the rain still fell steadily and we were soaked inside a minute. We cursed at passing cars for the added splashings they gave us as we leaned into the back of the car and struggled for footing and leverage. Charlie revved the engine and the car rocked forward and back in the ruts and the wheels spun and spun and splattered us with mud. We were all shouting at her at once—give it the gas, don’t gun it so much, cut the wheel hard, aim the wheels straight. She had turned off the radio but still couldn’t hear us very well for the rain on the roof and with the windows up. Her hollers came back muffled—“What? What?”
It was a situation to rub tempers a little raw. “Roll down the fucken window, goddammit!” Russell yelled.
She put the window down and stuck her head partway out, shielding herself from the rain with a folded newspaper, and shouted that she did not appreciate him cussing at her like that and would we make up our stupid goddam minds what we wanted her to do.
Just then a large truck went by and raised an enormous splash which could not get any of us any wetter except for Charlie, who was swamped through the open window and hurriedly rolled it up—like she thought she might undo the drenching if only she rolled fast enough. The spectacle had us staggering with laughter.
She glared furiously at us over her shoulder and then the transmission shrieked and the motor raced and the wheels whirled in reverse and found purchase and the car lurched up out of the ruts and came barreling rearward. Russell went sprawling and Buck and I barely managed to scramble out of the way as she roared by. She braked hard and the car slewed to a halt.
“Shitfire,” Buck said, gawking at the car and wiping water from his eyes. “Why the hell didn’t you think to back
out of that rut?”
“Why the hell didn’t you think to suggest it?” I said.
Russell slowly got to his feet, cursing steadily and coated with mud. Charlie was laughing behind the windshield like she was watching a Chaplin movie, her hair plastered to her head.
“You damn crazy cooze!” Russell shouted.
Her grin vanished. She gunned the motor and ground the transmission into low gear. Russell hustled over to join me and Buck in the high weeds off the shoulder.
But she didn’t make another try at us. She eased the car forward until she was abreast of us, then reached over and lowered the passenger window a few inches. “Hey there, boys,” she called out, smiling with affected sweetness. “Think it’ll rain?”
“Crazy cooze,” Russell muttered.
“What’s that, baby?” Charlie said. Her eyes narrowed and she gunned the engine.
“He said we could sure use some booze,” Buck said.
“That’s what I thought,” she said. “Well, you ain’t gonna get it standing out there in the rain, are you?”
She slid over to the passenger side and gave me a smile and wink as I got behind the wheel and Buck and Russell got in the back. Buck cursed low about the mud we were smearing on the seats and floorboards.
I drove slowly through the continuing downpour while they passed around a flask without saying anything. Then Charlie chuckled and said, “You should’ve seen you all’s faces.”
“Real damn funny,” Russell said. “You might’ve killed us.”
“You’re so cute when you’re scared shitless, baby. Anybody ever tell you?”
That got me and Buck in on her laughter.
Russell stared in disbelief at Buck and me and shook his head. “She about runs over our asses and you all laugh.” Then said to her: “And you ought not to say ‘shit.’ It ain’t ladylike.”
A World of Thieves Page 12
