A World of Thieves

by James Carlos Blake

  I was surprised to feel my pulse thumping so hard in my throat, to find my mouth nearly spitless. We’ll play it any way we have to—that was Buck’s instruction. It seemed to be taking too long for the car to get here. I thought maybe it had turned back, maybe I’d been spotted as I made for the clearing and they had retreated in alarm.

  And then there the car was, a shiny Plymouth coupe, rolling slowly into the clearing. I cocked the .44.

  The Plymouth made a half-turn and stopped parallel to the Olds, next to the man on the fender. The passenger door opened and Lester Wills got out. We’d had a look at him earlier that evening at a speakeasy a block over from Mona’s place, and even in this light there was no mistaking the pompadour he took such pride in he would not cover it with a hat. The driver stayed put and kept the motor running.

  “What the hell you doing?” Wills said to the man. “You suppose to be in the car.”

  A detail we hadn’t known.

  Now Wills was looking up at the derrick and saying, “Yo, Walsh! You see them? Walsh? Hey, what the hell…?”

  The man on the fender said something too low for me to make out. Buck yelled, “Stand fast, mister!”—but Wills was already spinning around and diving back into the coupe, hollering, “Go!”

  Buck’s pistol started popping and showing bright yellow muzzle flashes as the car’s back wheels ripped through the sand and the Plymouth slewed toward the barrels I was hunkered behind. I jumped aside as the car made a tight turn and the open passenger door hit some of the barrels and sent them clangoring end over end.

  I scrambled to my feet and Russell cut loose with the shotgun and buckshot raked the Plymouth as it angled toward the clearing exit. I fired and fired and there were loud gunfire sparks from the car and from the yuccas where Buck was and bullets were thunking the car and whanging against oil drums and there was another orange boom from Russell’s shotgun and the car veered sharply and went bounding up the rocky incline for about a dozen yards with its klaxon blaring before the motor stalled. The car slid back down on the loose rock, its rear wheels locked, and jarred to a stop at the foot of the slope and the horn quit. Steam was hissing loudly from various holes in the radiator. I couldn’t see the men inside but could hear one of them moaning.

  There was a slide of stones behind me and I turned in time to see the man who’d been on the fender go scurrying into the brush at the top of the rise. I started after him but Russell called, “Forget it. He can’t warn nobody from over there.”

  Buck went up to the Plymouth in a crouch and warily raised his head at the driver’s window—and just did manage to fling himself aside as a gunshot lit up the interior and a bullet caromed off some part of the window frame.

  Russell yelled, “Down!” and threw the shotgun to his shoulder and fired and glass shattered and flew and he smoothly pumped and fired three more flaring loads of buckshot into the car before lowering the gun again.

  The ensuing silence was enormous. Acrid gunsmoke rose off the clearing in a blue haze and slowly drifted over the rise.

  Holding his .45 ready, Buck jerked open the coupe’s left door and the driver seemed to just drain out. I didn’t have to ask if he was dead. Buck picked up the man’s pistol. I wondered if one of my shots had hit him, had maybe been the fatal one—and then reminded myself how close he’d come to running over me with the car. My chest was so tight it was an effort to breathe. My hands felt charged with electricity. I was afraid Buck or Russell might see them trembling and think I was scared. The truth was, I’d never felt more alive.

  Buck and I went around to the other side of the car and pointed our pistols at the door and Buck nodded to let Russell know we were set and Russell pulled open the door. Wills was slumped on the seat. Russell poked him twice with the shotgun muzzle and then yanked on him by the coat collar and Wills tumbled from the car. We stood over him and tugged down our bandannas. His breathing was ragged and wet and his eyes were closed. He was shivering like he was cold. His shirtfront and one coatsleeve and the right side of his face were dark with blood, his pompadour was skewed. Buck knelt beside him and went through his pockets. I retrieved his gun from the car floor—a .380 automatic—and stuck it in my waistband. The money was in an envelope in his pants pocket. Buck chuckled and stood up and put the envelope in his coat.

  Wills suddenly arched up like he’d been stabbed in the spine, his eyes wide. His mouth moved as if he were trying to say something, but if he was he never got it out. He fell slack and gave a rasping sigh. And even in the moonlight you could tell that his open eyes weren’t seeing a damn thing anymore.

  “Dumb bastard,” Buck said. “If he’d done like I told him he could’ve got drunk tonight, he could’ve got laid. He could’ve been around tomorrow to complain about being robbed.”

  “He called the play, all right,” Russell said. “But I have to say, we’ve done smoother jobs.”

  “Yeah well,” Buck said. “We got the money, ain’t we?” He checked his watch. “Let’s get set for Scroggins. He’ll be looking for the lights in about twenty minutes. Get the car, Sonny.”

  I got in the Olds and cranked it up and started to bring it around to the mouth of the clearing. As Wills had done, Scroggins would wait somewhere down on the trail until he got an all-clear headlight signal before coming the rest of the way.

  Buck and Russell were already at the clearing entrance and scanning the moonlit country to the south. Then Buck grabbed Russell’s arm and pointed. He whirled around and beckoned me wildly, yelling, “Come on!”

  I goosed the Olds up to them and Russell yanked the door open and jumped in beside me and Buck hopped up on the running board and hollered, “Go! Go!”

  I hit the gas and the tires spun on the loose trailrock and found purchase and the Olds leapt forward.

  “They’re wise to us!” Russell yelled. “Kick this thing, kid!” And now I saw the cloud of dust far down the trail. And the truck that was making it. Heading away from us and back toward the junction road.

  As we closed on the spot where we’d hidden the Ford, Buck hollered through the window, “Keep after him, I’m right behind you!” He jumped off and went rolling into the brush.

  I stomped on the accelerator and the Olds bounced and yawed along the snaking trail, flinging up stones and raising dust, leaning one way and then the other.

  “Bastards must’ve got here early,” Russell said. “Must’ve heard the shooting, that damn klaxon, something, everything. Shit!”

  The truck was more than half a mile ahead of us and moving in and out of sight as it went over and around rises and outcrops. In the rearview mirror the lights of the Model A showed far behind us.

  “Which way will he go when he hits the junction road?” I said.

  “Not to Blackpatch,” Russell said. “Too small. Only one way in and out. He’ll head for the highway.”

  “Then to Rankin?”

  “Yeah. Mix in with all them other trucks. Lots of roads out of town. It’s what I’d do. He beats us there, we’ll lose him sure.”

  I didn’t intend to let that happen. With my foot to the floor we went over a rise at a speed that took all four wheels off the ground. The Olds lit hard and bounced on its springs and went slewing off the trail in an explosion of dust and brush and rocks hammering the floorboards. I thought I heard a scream behind me. I kept the pedal to the floor and managed to wrench the car back onto the trail, wrestling with the wheel as we swerved all over the place, and then we were straightened out and barreling on.

  “Helllllp! Christ Jeeesus! Let me out! Let me ouuuuuuut!”

  The muted hollers came from directly back of me. I glanced in the rearview but saw only Buck’s headlights, even farther behind than they’d been before. Russell half-turned in his seat and shouted, “Shut the hell up, you pitiful pussy!”

  The guy they’d stuck in the trunk. Walsh, Wills had called him. He had to be taking a pounding back there.

  The trail rose and dipped and curved, the Olds slid, lost t
raction, tore through brush and banged against rocks with the undercarriage, regained the trail, powered ahead. If we didn’t blow a tire or rupture the oil pan or break an axle, I figured we could catch them. We slid through a tight turn that tilted the car so far over I was sure we were going to roll but we didn’t.

  “God dammmn, boy!” Russell said. He was clutching to the dashboard and grinning crazily. “I’d say we’re going to run down the sumbitch, we don’t crash and die first.”

  We went around another rise and the junction road came in view. Scroggins’ truck was making a right turn onto it, heading west toward the Rankin road.

  “Yessir, yessir!” Russell whooped. “We got them. That ten grand is good as ours!”

  Steam started blowing back from under the Olds’ hood panels but the motor was still going strong and I kept my foot down hard. The junction road was almost empty of other traffic at this hour, but an oil truck was coming from off to our right, heading for Blackpatch, and I could see that we’d reach the road before he passed by.

  “We gonna cut it close with that sumbitch,” Russell said, watching the coming truck. “Don’t the fool see our dust?”

  I made the turn onto the road with the tires shrieking. Walsh wailed in the trunk as the Olds carried all the way across the road and the left wheels went off onto the shoulder and flung up dust and the rear end fought for traction and here came the truck with its blinding headlights bearing straight at us and then the Olds’ wheels grabbed again and I cut to the right an instant before the truck went by in a whooshing blur, its horn wailing. All I could see in the rearview was a mass of dust.

  I floored the accelerator once more and the Olds sped up. The steam streaking from under the hood was thicker now but on this smoother surface we were fast gaining ground. Russell was shoving shells into the shotgun.

  We closed to within fifty yards of Scroggins’ truck. Thirty. Fifteen. A pair of headlights showed way behind us. I hoped they were Buck’s. Now the Olds’ engine was knocking. We’d probably torn a hole in the oil pan and were about to throw a rod.

  Russell pumped a shell into the chamber and got in position at the window. “Closer!” he yelled.

  I brought the Olds to within ten yards of the truck. There was no traffic in sight ahead of us, so I pulled out to the middle of the road to give Russell a better angle. He leaned out the window and took aim on the left rear wheel. The truck’s driver must’ve seen what we were up to—he cut sharply to the left as Russell fired and missed the tire and the buckshot caromed up against the truck’s underside and ricocheted every which way and some of it slung back and busted our headlamp and rang off the fender and Russell yelped.

  He swore and shook his left arm, then pumped the slide and the empty shell case flew off into the dark and he set himself again. The engine was knocking louder now and I could smell it beginning to burn. Any minute now it would lose power and seize up and that would be it, we’d lose them. The driver was rocking the truck from one side of the road to the other to try to throw off our aim, but Russell took his time and gauged the truck’s movements just right and the next boom of the shotgun blew the tire apart.

  The truck sagged and started fishtailing and the ruined tire flew off the rim and came back and hit the Olds’ windshield, shattering the right side and spraying us with shards and spiderwebbing the glass in front of me. I flinched and hit the brakes instinctively and too hard and the car started to skid sideways but I steered into the slide and managed to stay on the road.

  The truck veered away, pitching and bouncing over the rough ground, and then swung into a tight turn and its left wheels left the ground and kept on rising and the truck capsized in a great crashing cloud of dust and skidded to a halt upside down.

  And BOOM!—it exploded into an enormous, quivering sphere of orange fire.

  I pulled over on the shoulder, the engine clattering like skeletons wrestling in a tin tub, black smoke streaming from the tailpipe. I switched off the ignition and we got out of the car but there was nothing we could do except watch the truck burn. The fire looked like molten gold, it was so thick and richly fueled. It lit up the countryside for a good hundred yards all around. We were thirty yards away but a light wind pressed the heat hard on our faces. Rivulets of flaming whiskey snaked from the truck in all directions over the stony ground. There were no screams, no cry at all except for Walsh’s muffled cries for help from the Oldsmobile trunk. Russell picked up a large rock and flung it against the back of the car and the trunk fell quiet.

  Buck arrived and parked the Model A behind the Olds. He left the motor running and got out and came to stand beside us and stare at the fireball wreckage. He looked grieved. So did Russell. Probably so did I. It was ten thousand in cash money plus a valuable load of hooch going up in flames.

  Another truck was approaching from the west, slowing down as it drew closer. The driver leaned out the window and we turned back toward the fire to hide our faces from him. “Hey!” he called out. “What the hell happened?” But none of us turned around or answered him, and if he’d been thinking about stopping he changed his mind. His gearbox clashed and the engine wound up and he rolled on by.

  And then on top of the odors of burning gasoline and oil and alcohol came a sickening smell unlike any I’d ever known, one I couldn’t begin to describe for the lack of anything to compare it with.

  “Jesus,” Buck said. “Been a while since I had a whiff of that.”

  “Since France,” Russell said. “Since them flamethrowers.” He’d rolled up his left sleeve and was examining two small bloody spots on his arm where he’d been hit by ricocheting buckshot.

  More headlights came in view a long way down the road.

  “Well hell, we best get a move on,” Buck said, and we headed back to the Ford.

  “What about him?” Russell said, nodding at the Olds.

  Buck shrugged. “He don’t know who we are or even what we look like. If you owned that load of hooch, wouldn’t you wonder why he’s the only one still alive? Maybe wonder if he was some kind of inside man? Let him try and talk his way out of it.”

  “What if he is the inside man?” I said.

  “Tough luck for him,” Buck said. “You drive.”

  I went around to the other side of the Model A and slid in behind the wheel. Buck sat in the shotgun seat and Russell got in back. I wheeled the car onto the road and got rolling.

  “I got to tell you, kid,” Buck said, “that was some piece of driving. It was all I could do to keep you in sight.”

  I smiled my pleasure at the compliment.

  He looked back at Russell. “What say, little brother? This boy shake you up some with that hairy ride?”

  “Naw,” Russell said. “Not so bad a change of pants and a few drinks won’t fix me right up.”

  W ell, sir, I’ve been the grease monkey here for six months, and I can tell you for a fact he’d had his suspicions for a while. Couldn’t hardly blame him—you ever seen Eula? Real piece of calico, I’m telling you, and she damn well knows it. Likes to strut it, know what I mean? My daddy always said the worst trouble a man could have was to be married to a goodlooking woman. It’s about the only trouble I ain’t had in this life—just don’t tell my wife I said so.

  Like I say, it wasn’t nothing that took him by real big surprise, but still. Happened just last week. He says to me, Weldon, watch the place for me, and off he goes to home in the middle of the morning. S nuck into the house and sure enough there she was—riding the baloney pony with this old boy turned out to be a shipworker. Miller had him a ball bat and from what I hear he really laid it to the bastard. They say it’ll be a while before he gets out of traction and he’ll probably need a wheelchair when he does. Hard price to pay, but that’s the chance you take when you go thieving from another man’s quim, ain’t it? He can thank his lucky stars he ain’t dead. Miller coulda shot him and been within his legal rights except he ain’t a naturally mean sort. As for her, hell, he only punched her up some, kn
ocked out a tooth. Mighta done worse except she took off running while he was still whaling on the shipworker and he had to chase her down the block. He’d only just started in on her when this neighbor runs over and tries to get him to stop. So Miller starts in on him. When the cops got there he had the fella down in the middle of the street and letting him have it with both fists and Eula screaming bloody murder. They said she wasn’t wearing nothing but this little T-shirt—what I wouldn’t’ve give to seen that! But like I say, they were lucky Miller only kicked their asses ruther than give them a load of buckshot. The neighbor’s the only reason he’s in jail. The judge figured he had good reason for what he did to Eula and the shipworker but said beating up on the neighbor was uncalled for. Gave him thirty days in the cooler and promised him sixty more if he didn’t behave while he was in there. I took him some smokes yesterday and he said, Well, buddy, four down and twenty-six to go. I’d say he’s keeping his spirits up real good.

  The lean gray mustached man holds his coat draped over one arm and thanks him for his time and information and again apologizes for not having realized Miller was not Mr. Faulk’s last name, having been told only that a man named Miller owned this station and might be willing to sell it.

  Well, Mr. Cheval, I expect he’ll be real glad to know your company’s interested in owning this place. I got a feeling he’s about had his fill of Houston anyhow. Said he was thinking about heading back to Loosiana.