A World of Thieves

by James Carlos Blake

  He departs in an agitation and a rare inclination to profanity. Visiting Faulk in jail is out of the question. There is no choice but to wait until he is released. Twenty-five days to go. Twenty-five crawling days. Yet he well knows the unreliability of jail sentences and so, upon checking into a hotel near the Buffalo Bayou, he telephones an acquaintance on the Houston police force. The detective owes him a favor for his assistance some years ago in extraditing to Texas a fugitive apprehended in a Terrebonne Parish and wanted by three other states. The fugitive’s conviction in a Houston courtroom did much to elevate the detective’s career. Even so, the detective is not his friend—nor is any man—and does not seem pleased to hear from him until he understands the simplicity of the requital that will clear his debt, and he agrees to it. Every day thence the detective will telephone him at his hotel and—without ever asking to know why, or caring—will read to him a list of the names of all the men released that day from the Harris County Jail.

  He will spend a portion of every day watching the ships come and go along the channel with no curiosity of where they have been or where they are bound. He will sometimes sip from a flask, sometimes puff his pipe. He will lie abed for portions of the day and stare at the ceiling. He will not turn on the radio at his bedside, never open a newspaper, enter no moviehouse. He will speak only to order from menus. One morning he will drive to Galveston and sit on a seawall bench and stare out at the Gulf the day long. One late night when he is walking the Houston streets he will be accosted by a large Negro wielding a lead pipe and demanding money. He will seize the thief’s pipe hand in the pincers and leave him maimed and moaning on his knees. And that night sleep better than in many nights previous.

  Thus will he pass the days until Miller Faulk’s release.

  B ubber Vicente was as blackassed as we were by the loss of Scroggins’ money and the truckload of moonshine.

  “We wouldn’t’ve lost a nickel or a drop of hooch if we’d had better information,” Buck said, “but nobody told us the advance men were supposed to be in certain places when Wills showed up. That’s why the job went to hell.”

  “Well, don’t look at me,” Bubber said from behind his desk. “Ain’t my fault you didn’t now it. I didn’t know it either, goddammit. And neither did the inside man or he’d’ve told me.”

  “Well, an inside man worth his salt should’ve known it,” Buck said.

  “Yeah, well, I can’t argue with you there,” Bubber said. He scratched his beard and looked both angry and sad.

  “Whatever his cut’s supposed to be,” Buck said, “I’d reconsider it if I was you.”

  “I been doing that very thing while we been sitting here discussing things,” Bubber said. “His cut’s come way down, I’ll tell you. And I don’t believe he’ll complain about it a whole lot, neither, not once he understands how his information wasn’t all it should’ve been.” He lit a cigarette and exhaled a long stream of smoke. “But don’t you boys go shining me on about the risk you run. Robbery’s supposed to be risky. Otherwise everybody’d be doing it.”

  Buck looked away for a moment and then broke into a wide smile. Bubber laughed and shook his finger at him. He knew he had a point.

  “It’s why I got out of you all’s end of the business,” he said. We knew he’d been an armed robber before he started fencing and then finally became a setup man. “The riskiness got to me. You never know how a job’ll go, and it ain’t in my nature to take a lot of chances. Then again, that’s exactly what some men like about the robber life.” He smiled around at the three of us. “Or so I been told.”

  We all grinned back at him.

  Buck had given Bubber his portion of the takes from Wink and Wills—$4, 375. The remaining money cut three ways would give each of us a little over $2, 700. Buck had put all our money in his valise. On the ride back from Wink I’d asked him and Russell what was to keep somebody from holding out on Bubber, how he could know for sure how much his men really got from a job.

  “Well now, think about it, Sonny,” Russell said. “The inside man’s done told him what the job’ll bring and Bubber’s figured his cut of it. You can’t hand him any less than he’s expecting unless you and the inside man give him the same explanation for the difference. To get away with it, you’d have to know who the inside man is and be able to bring him into the cross. But even if you could do that, you’d be robbing Peter to pay Paul. Where’s the percentage?”

  “What’s more,” Buck said, “you and Paul would have it on each other that you cheated Peter, and you’d both always be worried that the other might let it slip. No sir, any way you figure it, it’s bad business to cross a partner. You make a deal, kid, you’re best off sticking to it.”

  “In other words,” I said, “just because it’s a world of thieves out there…”

  “…don’t mean there ain’t no rules to it,” he said. “Smartass.”

  Now Bubber pushed back in his chair and looked around at us. “You boys still on for Midland tomorrow? I can get somebody else for it if you ain’t.” Midland was only about twenty miles up the road and was where he’d set up our next job.

  “Goddam right we are,” Buck said. “Why wouldn’t we be?”

  “Well, I mean, after a scrape like you all had last night, some guys might not be too eager to do another job right away.”

  “Up yours, Bubber,” Buck said. “We been in closer scrapes than last night. We’re doing Midland.”

  Bubber raised his palms defensively. “Okay, okay, good enough. Now how about we let our hair down some? Drinks are on me.”

  We went out of the office and into the smoky speakeasy and settled at Bubber’s private table in the back corner. We drank and talked and heard the latest jokes going around Odessa. There was a good band playing up on a small stage and all of us now and then got up to dance with some of the women in the place.

  Bubber’s partner, Earl Cue, hadn’t been around all evening, and when Buck asked after him, Bubber said he’d been in the hospital since yesterday and probably wouldn’t get out till tomorrow.

  “He caught him a case of the runs from a bad batch of stew he ate over at Stella’s Café,” Bubber said. “It wasn’t the runs that put him in the hospital, though—except I guess in a way it was. Earl lives in a boardinghouse, see, and has to share a bathroom with about seven other fellas. Bathroom’s occupied as often as not, and sometimes when somebody gets a call of nature he’s got to go out back and use the two-holer. It’s what happened to Earl yesterday morning. A big old tool-pusher named Harvey Neumann was out there on one of the holes, taking his ease with a cigar and the newspaper, and he said old Earl came charging in with his belt undone and his pants already unbuttoned and he just did manage to slap his ass over the other hole before cutting loose with his load. Even in the stink of that jake it smelled like he was shitting dead cats, according to Harvey. Earl didn’t set there but a few seconds, though, before he lets a hell of a holler and jumps to his feet with the shit still coming out of him and splattering all over everything, including Harvey’s pants and shoes. Well, that naturally riled Harvey something terrible and he jumped up too and socked Earl a good one in the jaw and laid him out cold. Said he did it without thinking, which ain’t hard to believe, considering the situation. Then he saw how Earl’s balls were all swole up like apples and he right away knew Earl had been bit by a spider. Ain’t the first time it’s happened to some poor fella who didn’t rattle a stick around the hole before setting down on it. Can’t really fault Earl for not taking the time for such precaution, I guess, but that’s what can happen when you don’t. A man can’t be too careful, even when he’s caught short. Anyway, that’s how he come to be in the hospital with swole-up balls and a broke jaw. I’ll be sure and tell him you asked after him. He’ll appreciate it.”

  “Lord Jesus,” Russell said. “I guess the only good thing you could say about an experience like that is you ain’t likely to have too many worse ones.”

  “I know it,” Bub
ber said. “Spiderbite in the balls—can you imagine what that feels like?”

  “I believe maybe I can,” Buck said.

  Bubber was eager to know what we thought of Mona. We said she was every bit as beautiful and smart and gracious as he’d said she was. He asked if we’d sampled the wares in her house and we said they were first-rate. He was beaming with pride. He said he’d thought he’d been in love before but he didn’t know what real love was until he met Mona. Jesus, he had it bad. It was all we could do to keep a straight face, listening to him go on and on about her.

  We laughed out loud, though, when he told of a time when they were going at it hot and heavy and she called out the name “Natty” in the middle of things. She didn’t even know she’d said it until afterward, when she noticed Bubber had sulled up a little and she asked what was wrong.

  “Who the fuck’s Natty?” he said.

  Turned out to be an old boyfriend, a leg-breaker she’d lived with for a time in Tucson. She swore she hadn’t thought of him in years and assured Bubber she’d gotten over him long ago. Maybe so, Bubber told her, but hearing her call out another man’s name at a moment like that had a way of taking the edge off his pleasure.

  “Well,” she’d said, “would you rather I was doing it with him and saying your name, or doing it with you and saying his?”

  “Now I ask you, boys,” he said, “how’s a man supposed to answer a question like that?”

  “Don’t allow for nothing but hard choice,” Russell said.

  “They never do,” Buck said.

  “What you think, Sonny?” Bubber said.

  “I’d tell her I’d rather she did it with me and called out my name,” I said—and smiled real big.

  Bubber stared at me without expression for a moment, then turned to Buck and Russell and all three of them busted out laughing.

  “He’s real young, ain’t he?” Bubber said.

  It was close to eleven o’clock as we made our way through Midland’s residential streets, the trees along the sidewalks casting long shadows in the light of a yellow-horned moon low in the western sky. A rich aroma came off the paper sacks of Mexican food on the front seat between me and Buck, but the last thing on our minds at the moment was eating. Buck took a pillowcase from under the seat and put it in his coat pocket.

  We came into a well-kept neighborhood of spacious lawns and white paling fences. Most of the homes already dark and asleep, but a big two-story house in the middle of the block was showing faint yellow light behind drawn curtains, a shadowy porch with a pair of wooden armchairs. There were three cars in the driveway and three more out in front, all of them brandnew. I parked the Model A at the head of the row of cars by the fence and cut off the lights but left the motor running. We stayed put for a minute, but nobody came to the door or moved a window curtain to have a look outside. Russell racked a shell into the chamber of the Remington pump.

  “All right, boys,” Buck said. “In and out, slick as a dick.”

  He and Russell got out of the car and I handed Buck the sacks of food one at a time and then got out too. They went through the front gate and left it open wide while I used my clasp knife to puncture a tire on each of the three cars by the fence, catching the smell of stale air with each hissing deflation. I went to the driveway and did the same thing to the cars there, then I put the knife away and hustled up to the porch. Buck and Russell already had their bandannas on and I pulled mine up too.

  The house belonged to a man named Allford, a onetime wildcatter who’d struck it big up around the Red River before coming out to drill in West Texas. With him tonight were the president of the biggest construction company in the county, a rancher from up around Lubbock, two other local oilmen, and a bootlegger from Hobbs. According to Bubber, these six well-heeled buddies came together at Allford’s house once a month to play high-stakes poker. The game ran from six in the evening till six in the morning and the rules required that every man buy $2, 500 worth of chips and stay in the game till the end of it or he went bust, whichever came first. In any case, we knew there’d be at least fifteen grand at the table.

  Thanks to Bubber’s inside man we also knew that it was their poker-night custom to make a late-night telephone call to Concha’s Café in town and order some food and have it delivered to the house. Tonight they had called for one sack of chicken tacos, one of enchiladas, one of sugar-and-cinnamon doughnuts. As we stood on the porch, ready to make our move, the deliveryman from Concha’s was lying bound and gagged in the back seat of his car in an alley five bocks away.

  “Set?” Buck said. Russell and I nodded and pressed ourselves back against the wall so we couldn’t be seen from the little window in the front door. I had the .380 in hand. Buck sucked a deep breath and then gave the door a hard rapping. He wore a baseball cap, the better to look like a deliveryman, and held the three sacks in front of him, one on top of the other, to hide the masked lower part of his face. He rapped again, and the curtain must’ve pulled away from the little window—a small cast of light illuminated the food sacks and Buck’s hands holding them, his cap. A man’s gruff voice said, “Concha’s?”

  “Yeah,” Buck said.

  The lock turned and the door swung inward and a brighter wash of light fell over Buck as he passed the sacks in to somebody—and then pulled the .45 and raised it and said, “Not a word, Mac—just back up real easy.” He went into the house and Russell and I followed.

  A beefy half-bald guy in shirtsleeves and carrying a .38 in a shoulder holster was holding the sacks of food and gawking at us like we were a magic trick. He was the bootlegger’s bodyguard and his face had the baggy look of somebody who’d been dozing. He was probably wondering how he was going to explain this to his boss.

  Buck snatched the guy’s gun from the holster and stuck it in his own pants. He pointed at the sofa and the man sat down on it. The bottoms of the food sacks were dark with grease and he held them off his lap to keep from staining his white trousers. Russell had the shotgun leveled at the guy from the hip. I stood back by the door where I could cover the whole room.

  The house was laid out exactly as we’d been told. The parlor was spacious and expensively furnished, the adjoining dining room as well. A door at the rear of the dining room opened to the kitchen, and a staircase at the near end of the hall led up to the family bedrooms and the maid’s room. A telephone was mounted on the wall at the foot of the stairs and Buck yanked out the cord. As he started toward the kitchen a woman’s voice called out, “Was that the food, Warren?” and she came out into the dining room, drying her hands on a dish towel. She saw us and stopped short.

  Buck raised his pistol at her and put a finger to his masked mouth. The woman stood silent. He beckoned her into the parlor and she came. She looked scared but not so much as I’d expected. She was tall and middle-aged and had the weathered face of somebody who’d spent much of her life out of doors, a country woman’s face. Hands rough and big-knuckled.

  At the far end of the hallway and to the left, next to the back door, was an arched passageway to the kitchen. There were three doors on the right side of the hall—the first to a den, the next to a bathroom, the last to a billiards room. That last one was the one we wanted.

  “Take the sacks,” Buck said softly to the woman, and the Warren guy handed them up to her, making a face when a drop of grease spotted his pants leg. Russell took the woman by the elbow and steered her into the hallway to where she couldn’t see the sofa—or the swat Buck gave the guy across the nose with the barrel of the .45. She heard it, though, and the groan he let out, and she tried to look around Russell to see what it was, but he gently pushed her back and shook his head.

  It was a wonder the Warren guy stayed conscious. He had his hands over his nose but the blood ran out between his fingers and down into his sleeves and dripped on his white shirt and pants. His eyes were streaming and he was gasping against the pain and moaning low. You bust somebody’s nose like that, it hurts so bad he goes nearly mute—a
nd lets go of any notion he might’ve had to try to jump you.

  Buck gave me a wink, then whispered into the woman’s ear and steered her down the hall ahead of him. He and Russell stood to either side of the farthest door and Buck nodded at her and she carefully balanced the sacks on one arm and opened the door with her free hand. Somebody in the room said, “Hey now—about time that chili-belly chow got here!”

  Buck shoved her into the room and he and Russell ran in and Buck shouted, “Hands on the table—on the table—now, now, now!”

  Somebody started swearing and there was a smack and a yelp and the same voice said, “Ah goddam, ah shit!” the way you do when you hit your thumb with a hammer.

  I knew Russell was holding them under the shotgun and I heard Buck tell them to empty their pockets, to pull them inside out. He told somebody to clear the table, put it all in the bag, faster, goddammit, faster.

  I stood by the front door, pointing the .380 down the hall, ready to shoot whoever I had to. The Warren guy was trying to stem the blood from his broken nose, but each time he put his head back he’d start choking and have to sit up again and add to the mess on his clothes. The woman came out of the room and stopped short when she saw me. I gestured with the pistol for her to get the hell out of there and she hurried through the rear passageway into the kitchen.

  They weren’t in there two minutes before coming out again, Buck first, gun in one hand, the pillowcase with the money in the other, two revolvers in the front of his waistband. Then Russell backed out of the room, saying, “First man out gets splattered.” He shut the door and came sidling down the hall, watching behind him.

  “Go,” Buck said. I slung open the front door and went out fast, taking the porch steps two at a time, running up the walkway and hearing Buck coming behind me and laughing low.

  I went through the gate and started for the Ford—and then there was a loud blast and somebody cried out.