A World of Thieves

by James Carlos Blake

  I turned and saw Buck at the gate, looking back at Russell down on all fours on the walkway. The woman was at the door with a smoking single-barrel shotgun, breaking it open to reload again. She darted behind the wall as Buck brought up the .45 and fired three fast rounds, two smacking the wall, the third caroming off the doorjamb and smashing something of glass in the living room.

  Russell up now, using the Remington like a cane and striding awkwardly. Buck hustling to him, putting an arm around him from the side, starting back toward the gate. The woman leaned around the door and fired in the same instant I did. My bullet by pure chance hit some part of the shotgun and it seemed to wrest itself from her hands. She yipped and ducked out of sight.

  But Buck and Russell were down. As I ran to them Buck rose to one knee, still holding the moneybag and his pistol. Russell was cursing low, struggling to get up on hands and knees. I stuck my gun in my pants and bent down to take hold of him and lugged him upright and felt the warm dampness of his back.

  “Jeeesus!” he said.

  “Go on!” Buck said.

  I half-dragged Russell out the gate and to the Ford, glancing back to see Buck up on his feet and backing toward the gate. At the idling car I opened a rear door and pushed Russell onto the seat but he slipped to the floorboard, swearing, his legs still outside the car.

  Gunfire sounded behind us—Buck’s .45, other pistols.

  I shoved Russell’s legs up onto the seat and shut the door. Then looked back for Buck but didn’t see him.

  And then did. Sprawled on the walkway and not moving at all.

  Dead. The word in my mind like a whisper.

  A bullet whined off the car roof not a foot from my head and another punched into the front door at my hip. I crouched and ran around to the other side of the car and scrambled in behind the wheel—gunshots cracking, men shouting and swearing, slugs clanging through the hood panel and ringing off the engine, thunking the sides of the car, popping through the window glass.

  I yanked the gearshift into low and gunned the Ford out into the street and went wheeling around the first corner at a wide lean, skidding a little and nearly hitting a car parked at the curb. I took rights and lefts at random, glad as hell for the emptiness of the streets at this hour but not sure now which way the highway was. Then we were at the edge of town and I got my bearings and knew the main road was to my right and I cut over in that direction. But then the motor started missing and began to lug. I pumped and pumped the accelerator to no avail. Maybe a bullet hit the gas line or the fuel pump, something. Before we’d gone another block the engine quit altogether and I coasted into a grocery store parking lot.

  Except for the moon, the only illumination on the street was from a small naked bulb burning over the entrance to the grocery. I sat in the silenced car with my hands locked on the steering wheel. Russell groaned in the back. I couldn’t form a clear thought. Then I saw a sales lot just across the street, with a dozen or so cars on it.

  A truck was coming down the street and I waited for it to go by and saw its headlights wash over some bum curled up on a bench at the corner. Then the truck was past and I told Russell I’d be right back, but I wasn’t sure he even heard me. I jogged over to the lot and slipped into a little Model A roadster with its top up and ducked my head under the dashboard. It didn’t take but a minute to snip and strip the ignition wires with my clasp knife and twist them together. I hit the starter and the motor cranked right up.

  I drove across the street and pulled up beside the sedan, looked all around to make sure the coast was clear, then got out and opened Russell’s door and told him we had to change cars. I helped him out of the Ford, saying sorry, man, sorry, as he flinched and moaned and cursed me for the pain I was causing him. He wanted to know where his shotgun was and I said probably back in the yard where he dropped it and he cursed me for that too.

  “Love that shotgun,” he said.

  I got him into the roadster, his coat sopping now, my hands slick with his blood. I shut his door and went around and got behind the wheel. He was slumped in the seat, grunting with almost every breath. I got us rolling.

  “Buck?” he said.

  I shook a cigarette out of my pack and leaned forward to light it, steering with my forearms, then held it out to him but he turned away from it.

  “Where’s he?” he said.

  “He went down,” I said.

  “Went down got caught or…went down got killed?”

  “Killed.” The word brought up a surge of bile behind it and for a moment I thought I’d throw up. I swallowed and cleared my throat hard. My eyes burned. I said it again to prove I could. “They killed him is what I mean.”

  I turned onto the Odessa highway and gave the roadster the gas. The road had been badly washboarded by heavy truck traffic and the shock absorbers took a beating as we jarred along. Russell moaned low.

  “For sure?” he said.

  “Sure looked it.”

  “Looked it?”

  “That’s right, man. Shit.”

  I could feel him staring at me. I swerved around a sizable pothole only to run right over another with such impact it was a wonder the tire didn’t blow. Russell sucked a deep breath against the pain, then let it out in a long sigh.

  By sunrise he was stitched and bandaged and full of drugs against pain and infection, asleep in the isolated house of a tall silver-haired surgeon named Gustafson. Many of the doctor’s patients were associates of Bubber Vicente, gunshot men in need of surgical repair who could not risk going to a hospital and piquing official curiosity about their wounds. Such emergencies usually came to Gustafson in the wee hours, as we had tonight.

  According to Bubber, Gustafson had once had a prosperous practice in Dallas. But he’d gotten a socially prominent young woman in the family way, and because neither of them wanted to get married, he felt obliged to help her get shed of the problem. He attended to her in his office, but complications came up and he had to rush her to a hospital in order to save her life. “And like they say after a lynching,” Bubber said, “the jig was up.” Only the family’s wish to keep the scandal out of the newspapers saved him from prison, but he still lost his license. Ever since then he’d had to practice underground. In addition to the office he maintained in his Odessa house, he had one in Blackpatch—in Mona Holiday’s dance club—where he kept a well-trained nurse on daily duty and himself went three days a week. “He hates Blackpatch as much as everybody else,” Bubber said, “but it’s the last place in the world where anybody’s ever gonna ask to see his license, and he makes a steady dollar down there.” In addition to treating injured oil workers, he tended to the medical welfare of Mona’s girls, helping them stay free of venereal disease and pregnancy, and relieving them of either problem when preventive measures failed.

  He had extracted six buckshot pellets from the area around Russell’s left shoulder blade and another six from the hamstring muscle of the same leg that got shot up in the war. Red-eyed and haggard by the time he was finished, Gustafson told me Russell would have to stay off the leg for a month and then need crutches for another couple of months before he could start getting by with a cane—which, he was sorry to say, he would probably need for the rest of his life. He said we could let Russell sleep for a little while longer but then we’d have to get him out of there. He couldn’t risk having fugitives in his house for very long. He gave me a bottle of pills to give Russell for the pain and then went back to bed.

  While the doc had been attending to Russell, Bubber made a telephone call to an associate in Midland and asked him to get whatever information he could about the card game robbery. The associate called back sometime after sunrise, while I was drinking my umpteenth cup of coffee. He reported that a man named Loomis Mitchum, no record of previous arrests, was in the county jail under charges of armed robbery and assault in regard to a card game holdup. He’d first been taken to the hospital with a head wound—which proved to be nothing more than a bullet graze on the sk
ull. He’d also had a couple of shotgun pellets in his shoulder. Neither wound serious enough to keep the cops from taking him to jail as soon as he’d been patched up. He’d probably go in front of a judge inside the next two weeks. The robbery was pretty much open-and-shut, but the money had been recovered at the scene. And an able lawyer could likely wiggle him out of the assault rap, especially since the only two persons Mitchum had injured were both known crooks and neither one was eager to press the matter in court. Warren Taos, who’d had his nose broken, was an ex-convict who’d done time for manslaughter, and Leo “Bad Dog” Richardson, who’d suffered a broken arm, was a bootlegger several times arrested but never yet convicted. All in all, the chances were good that Loomis Mitchum would get no more than eighteen months at the state road prison at Santa Rita—in Reagan County, about seventy miles from Fort Stockton—and draw parole in six.

  “I’ll get him a lawyer who makes sure that’s how it goes,” Bubber told me.

  I hadn’t realized the tightness of the grip I’d been keeping on myself until we got the news Buck was alive. Bubber must’ve read the relief on my face. He smiled and punched me on the arm and said, “Hell kid, we ought to know they can’t never hurt that uncle of yours by shooting him in his hard head.”

  I tried to smile but could feel the bad job I did of it.

  “I didn’t want to say nothing about it before,” Bubber said, “but it’s too bad he was the one holding the loot.”

  Yes it was. And then I remembered the Wink money. It had been in Buck’s valise. And the valise had been under the front seat of the Model A.

  Bubber winced when I told him.

  Forty minutes later I was back in Midland, driving Bubber’s Chrysler up and down the streets, searching for the grocery store where I’d left the Ford, the town even more unfamiliar in all this daylight and heavy traffic. Fool, I kept thinking, fool. And then there the store was—and the Model A, right where I’d left it, only now there were other cars in the lot too. I’d been afraid it would be gone by now, towed away by the cops, that somebody would’ve called them to report a car with a bunch of bullet holes in it. Then again, the holes weren’t readily noticeable except up close, and people generally weren’t very observant, anyway. I turned into the lot and drew up next to the Model A, remembering now that I’d left the back passenger door wide open, telling myself somebody probably closed it as a favor, but feeling a hollowness in my gut.

  The valise wasn’t there. Not under the seat stained dark with Russell’s blood, not in the trunk, not anywhere in the car. I went in the grocery and studied the bored-looking woman at the register, the freckled kid stocking the shelves, the chubby manager being harried by some woman about the poor quality of his produce. None of them had found the money—you could tell by looking at them. I went back out and stood on the glaring sidewalk and regarded the passing traffic.

  Maybe somebody had seen us switch cars and then looked through the Model A the minute we were gone. Maybe that bum on the bench across the street hadn’t been asleep, or maybe some other tramp had come along. Maybe a cop had happened on the car and found the dough and was now making plans on how to spend it.

  I got back in the Chrysler and drove across the street and around the block and parked at a corner that gave me a good view of the Ford in the lot. I was hoping whoever had taken the valise had made off in a haste, before he’d searched the rest of the car, before he knew what the valise held. Once he knew, he might start wondering if there was more money still in the Model A and maybe come back for another look. It was a stupidly desperate hope and I knew it, but I sat there till noon before conceding that the money was gone for good.

  When I got back to Gustafson’s, Russell was dressed and waiting for me on the doctor’s backporch couch, lying on his side to keep his weight off the wounds. The doc was still sleeping and Bubber had gone back to the hotel to get some rest too. Earl Cue had brought Russell a fresh change of clothes and helped him to get dressed and then kept him company while they waited for me to return. Russell was smiling, so I knew Bubber had given him the news about Buck.

  “He looked dead, huh?” he said to me. He was dopey yet from the drugs. His smile was lopsided and his speech was heavy and slow. “Better get some specs, kid.”

  “I’ve never been happier to be wrong,” I said. My voice nearly cracked on the words but both of them had the good grace not to smile about it. I started to tell Russell about the Wink money but he said Earl had already informed him.

  “I feel like such a goddam fool,” I said. “About Buck. About the money. Christ.”

  “You thought he’s dead,” Russell said thickly. “The only reason you left, I know. And don’t worry about the money. Can always get money.”

  “At’s rye, hell widdit,” Earl Cue said, nodding sagely. “Kin awheeze ged munny.”

  Sipping juice through a straw, Earl looked even more skeletal than the last time I’d seen him. He’d been released from the hospital the day before but was still in tender shape from his outhouse misadventure. His left cheek was swollen and purple and he couldn’t speak very clearly for the wires clamping his jaws. He had to wear baggy pants and walk bowlegged in order to accommodate his balls, which he said weren’t as swollen anymore but were still sore as hell.

  “Bubber’s getting Buck a lawyer,” Russell said. “Pay him back after our next job.” He squinted against a stab of pain.

  “Bess geddum home,” Earl said to me. “Leddum ress.”

  “You sound like a damn rummy,” Russell said.

  “Ook ooze talken.”

  I helped Russell out to the roadster. Earl tried to help, but he had enough pain of his own to contend with, grunting and grimacing as much as Russell as we made our slow limping way to the car. The passenger side of the seat was darkly stained with dried blood. I got Russell settled into the seat and Earl shook our hands and said, “Gome, gessum ress, eel up.”

  He slept for most of the drive to Fort Stockton, now and then groaning, shifting on the seat to try to ease his pain. As we went through McCamey the boomtown clamor woke him.

  He stared around at the heavy traffic, the air hazed and acrid with gas and oil fumes. Then scrutinized the interior of the roadster. “Oughta got one with a damn radio,” he said. And went back to sleep.

  A few miles farther along he woke again and looked at me like he’d just been told something very important and had to share it immediately.

  “Busted him out one time, I’ll do it again,” he said. “We’ll do it, Sonny.”

  And closed his eyes once more.

  IV

  T he girls must’ve been in the kitchen and not heard us until my car door banged shut. They came running out with wide smiles that collapsed into fearful looks when they saw me helping Russell out of the roadster.

  “Oh my God,” Charlie said. Russell had one arm over my shoulders and she put his other over hers. “Where’s Buck?”

  “Hell, he’s all right,” Russell said. “He’s a guest of the state at the moment but not for long, believe you me.”

  Belle put a hand on my arm. “You okay?”

  I winked at her and she showed a quick weak smile.

  As we made our way toward the porch, Charlie said, “How bad is it, baby?” Her eyes were brimming.

  “If you gonna cry,” Russell said, gritting his teeth with every step, “you can go somewhere else to do it.”

  “And you can go to hell,” she said. But it was all the admonition she needed to soldier up.

  We had to take the porch steps slowly. Belle ran ahead of us into the house, moving chairs out of our way, opening their bedroom door, pulling down the bedcovers. I braced him up while Charlie took off his shirt. She bit her lip when she saw the bandage around his chest and the red stains at his back where the wounds had been seeping. She undid his belt and started tugging down his pants and he flinched and sucked a breath and said, “Easy, goddammit.” She gently lowered the trousers past the bandage on his thigh. I eased him to a
sitting position on the edge of the bed and she removed his shoes and socks and then took off his pants.

  Belle fetched a glass of water and I gave Russell a pill to wash down with it. We helped him to squirm further up onto the bed and accommodate himself on his side. He was asleep almost immediately but pouring sweat from heat and pain. We went out of the room and left the door open a crack so we could easily hear him if he should wake and call out.

  In the kitchen I drank a full glass of iced tea without taking it from my mouth until it was drained, then asked Belle for a refill. Charlie wanted to use the car to go buy an electric fan to keep Russell cool during the day. I went out to the roadster with her and showed her how to connect the ignition wires.

  “Nice new car and no key for it,” she said. “That’s a good one.” She gave me a look I couldn’t read and drove off.

  Belle and I sat in the kitchen for a while, smoking cigarettes and sipping iced tea, not saying much. She offered to fix me something to eat but I was too tired. I’d been two days without sleep, and now that we were back at the house I felt exhausted. I snubbed the cigarette and finished off the tea, got up and went to the bedroom, stripping off my shirt. She came in behind me and watched me finish undressing and get into bed. She sat down beside me and brushed the hair out of my eyes and I was asleep before she took her hand away.

  I woke in the dark, spooned up against her from behind, my face in her hair. The open window was moonless and the curtains hung lank, the air cool despite the lack of breeze. I fingered her nipples and she came awake and made a small sound of pleasure. She rubbed her bottom against me and felt my readiness and I squirmed down for a better angle and easily slipped into her slickness. She was breathing through her teeth.

  When we were done, she turned her face to kiss me, to whisper, “I’m so glad it wasn’t you.”

  For most of the following week Russell was asleep as often as not. Charlie fed him a pain pill every couple of hours. “It keeps him from hurting too much and it helps him sleep,” she said. “He needs all the sleep he can get.”