A World of Thieves

by James Carlos Blake

Before we’d gone two blocks she was hugging my neck and kissing me, running her hand inside my shirt. It was all I could do to steer.

  “Jesus, girl—you’re gonna make us wreck!”

  “Did you see how scared he was, baby? Did you see? I had him crying. I could’ve made that bullying bastard do anything, he was so scared of me.”

  “A gun in the mouth can do that, all right.”

  Then we were past the city limit sign and she placed my right hand up under her dress and panties so I could feel how wet she was. She fondled me through my trousers. I was suddenly aware of being so hard it hurt. She unbuttoned me and hunched down and took me in her mouth. She’d never done that before. In bed one time I’d made it obvious I wanted that, but she’d pulled away and said no, that her Corsicana boyfriend had practically forced her to do it once, and once was enough. So I’d let the matter drop. Now here she was, doing it to me in the car as we barreled along the dark highway. I had to pull over to the shoulder to avoid a collision. I sat there gripping the wheel while she kept at me below the sweep of passing headlights. When I shot off—rocking back and forth and banging my fist on the wheel—some of my fellow motorists must’ve thought I was having a fit.

  We checked into a motor camp outside of Big Lake and frolicked into the wee hours. We did it every which way—sideways, dog style, standing, sitting, name it. Having seen the lunatic delight I’d taken from her special treat in the car, she was avid to pleasure me that way. And even though she’d previously been as shy of receiving my mouth on her as of putting hers to me, this time she didn’t resist as I kissed my way down her belly. When I used my tongue on her she dug her fingers into the back of my head and arched herself against my mouth and climaxed with such a shriek I hoped the neighboring cabin was unoccupied or somebody might call the cops to report a murder taking place.

  For a minute afterward, she lay open-mouthed, breathing deeply, an arm over her eyes. Then let out a long sigh and said, “My God. I’d heard things, but I never imagined it could be soooooo fine.” She lowered her arm and looked at me. “Who taught you to do that, the devil?”

  Actually, Brenda Marie Matson had given me the best instruction I ever received on oral sexual technique, but I didn’t think Belle would want to hear about her, so I simply grinned and waggled my eyebrows. I told her that at Gulliver we used to refer to the clitoris as the “little man in the boat,” and we’d spend hours discussing the best ways to get him up on tiptoes. She laughed so hard she got the hiccups.

  I’d brought along the remaining bourbon and we sat up in bed and had a drink and a cigarette, but both of us were so tired we didn’t even finish the smokes before snuffing them out and spooning up, her ass snug against me.

  I was almost asleep when her voice came to me from what seemed very far away…. “What’s it feel like to shoot somebody?”

  I wanted to say, “Not sure I ever did,” but only managed a low mumble.

  I thought I heard her say, “Must be something,” but I wasn’t certain. And then I was asleep.

  W e got back in the middle of the afternoon. Russell met us at the front door, leaning on his crutch, returning Belle’s hug with his free arm.

  “Perfect timing with them reinforcements,” he said, nodding at the sackful of booze and beer I was carrying. I’d made a stop at the Callaghan Street house as soon as we rolled into town. “I’m about down to my last swallow,” he said. His breath smelled of drink and his eyes were red.

  “You run out of pills?” I said as we headed for the kitchen.

  “That’s all right,” he said. “Don’t need them.”

  “Not if you’re using Dr. Barleycorn’s prescription, I guess.”

  “You mind your health, kid, I’ll mind mine,” he said. “Tell me how-all you did.”

  I’d expected to see Charlie in the kitchen but she wasn’t there. Belle stepped across the hall to peek into their bedroom, then started for the sideporch door.

  “She’s down the park,” Russell said, grimacing slightly as he gingerly accommodated himself in a chair at the table, positioning his leg out in front of him. There was a nearly empty bottle and a tumbler on the table, together with some kind of map and what looked like a letter. “She’s been spending lots of time down there.” He waved his hand in indication that the matter was something he didn’t fully understand or care to discuss. Things between them didn’t look to have improved much while we’d been away.

  He looked from Belle to me and then at her again. “I’m sure she’ll be glad to know you’re back.”

  Belle got the hint. “I’ll just go and see how she’s doing,” she said. She fluttered her fingers at me and went out the back door.

  He poured the last of his bottle into the tumbler. I got another glass down from the cabinet and opened one of the new bottles and built up his drink and poured myself one. We touched glasses and took a sip.

  “So?” he said.

  I opened my valise and reached in and took out two big handfuls of currency and dropped them on the table. Russell smiled and picked up a few bills and spread them in his hand like oversized playing cards.

  “That new money won’t never feel as real as these,” he said. The federal government was replacing all paper money with bills only about half the present size, and lots of people felt about it the way he did—the smaller money didn’t look or feel as real. “Don’t tell me you hit a bank,” he said.

  He put the money back in the valise and I gave him a quick rundown on the jobs, focusing on the lucrative San Angelo caper.

  “She made him suck the piece?” he said.

  “Guy thought his days were done. I think he pissed his pants.”

  “And it was her idea to take them down?”

  “Forty-five-hundred-dollar idea,” I said.

  “Ain’t no end to her surprises,” he said. “Here’s to her.” We clinked glasses.

  “It’s more than enough here to pay off Bubber for the lawyer and Gustafson too,” I said. “I’d say we’re sitting pretty.”

  “Pretty much,” Russell said. “Only we owe Bubber for something else too.” He gestured at the map and note in front of him.

  I pulled my chair around beside his. It was an oil map of Reagan County, showing various oil field sites, each with a lot of numbers and hieroglyphics around it, and the truck trails that connected them to the main roads. The only town shown was Big Lake, where the east-west and north-south highways intersected. A few other county roads were on the map too. Under a penciled arrow pointing west from Big Lake was written “Rankin, 30 mi.” A large penciled X indicated as being five miles east of the western county line and twenty miles north of the highway to Rankin was labeled “S.R.R.C.” There was a smaller X below and southeast of the larger one and “6 mi” scribbled alongside the arrow between them. A squiggly pencil line ran west from the small X to the north-south highway, and the distance between them was noted as half a mile.

  “What’s all this?” I said.

  “From Bubber,” he said. “He didn’t waste any time after he got your telegram.”

  The map and the letter had arrived yesterday morning, hand-delivered by a guy who’d shown up at the door and told Charlie he’d been instructed to give the material to no one but Russell or me. Russell heard her arguing with him and came out on his crutch. The guy gladly accepted his offer of a glass of beer before heading off. Russell didn’t say whether Charlie had joined them in the beer, but my guess was she hadn’t.

  The letter was actually a long note, addressing no one in particular and unsigned. It was written in pencil in an awkward hand—by some inside man, Russell figured, maybe a Santa Rita inmate but more likely by a hack. It described the prison’s daily routine and recent work assignments, including Loomis Mitchum’s. Every day the prison sent out a half-dozen work crews to various kinds of jobs. Mitchum was assigned to a crew of eleven other cons overseen by three guards, including the driver, every guard armed with a pump shotgun. The big X showed the location of t
he Santa Rita camp, and the little one below it was where Mitchum’s crew had been working at clearing a new drilling site for an oil company. The squiggly line was a truck trail joining the site to the north-south Big Lake highway. Although Mitchum’s crew was scheduled to work at this site for another few weeks, the note said, labor assignments were subject to change at any time, so there was no certainty of how much longer Mitchum would actually be at that site. Wherever they were assigned, however, each crew always went out on the same truck, and each truck carried an identifying number on the doors. Mitchum’s crew was transported on truck 526.

  “It’s practically the same setup as when I busted him out of Sugarland,” Russell said.

  “Except like this guy says, no telling when they’ll put Buck on some other job. Maybe he’ll still be on this job when your leg’s all better, maybe he won’t. We’ll have to see how—”

  “That’s why we’ll do it tomorrow,” Russell said. “They could take him off the road anytime. They could transfer him to some other joint, a tighter one. You never know. All I know is it ain’t likely to get no easier than Santa Rita. So we get him tomorrow.”

  I saw that he was absolutely serious. “Russell,” I said, “we haven’t even had a look at the place. And we need a third man. And you can hardly walk, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I ain’t got to walk. I can cover you and the girl from the car. Truth to tell, I think we can do it just us two if we have to, but if she’s as cool as you say, she’ll be good for third man.”

  It took me a moment to understand he was talking about Belle.

  “You should see your face, kid,” he said. “What? Were you bullshitting me about how good she is?”

  I was seized by some misgiving I couldn’t name. “No, man, she did fine,” I said. “It’s only that, well, this is a whole different thing….”

  “It ain’t that different. If she could handle herself on the road like you said, she can handle this.” He gave me a narrow look. “Ah shit, Sonny, don’t tell me you’ve gone goofy for the broad. Is that it? She your main lookout now, and the hell with your partners? Hell with old Uncle Buck?”

  “Hell no, man,” I said. And thought, Hell no.

  “I hope not, kid. Last thing we need’s a partner with his head up his ass over some chippy.”

  The crack stung but I took it. If he saw it made me sore he’d think he’d hit a nerve, that he was right that I’d gone sappy—and he wasn’t right, goddammit. He wasn’t.

  “It’s just that she might not want to be in on something like this,” I said. It sounded lame even to me.

  “Well, I know one way to find out real fast,” he said. “We’ll ask her.”

  What could I say? “Okay by me.”

  “But listen, kid, yea or nay, with or without her, you and me go get him tomorrow. Right?”

  “Hell yeah, man.”

  He grinned. He knew as well as I did what she was going to say.

  We’d do it like he and Jimmyboy had done it at Sugarland. Russell was sure he could cover at least two of the guards from the roadster’s rumble seat, but in any case he could cover at least one of them. I’d be the one to get out and disarm the hacks and disable the prison truck. If we needed a backup outside the car, Belle would do it.

  We had just finished roughing out the plan when the girls came in. Charlie had obviously been crying. She went to the cabinet over the sink and got a fresh pack of cigarettes and busied herself opening it. Belle got a bottle of Coke from the Frigidaire and pried off the cap with the opener attached to the end of the counter and then went and sat on a stool by the stove. Charlie lit a smoke and took a few deep drags and stared at Russell, who stared right back.

  “So?” she said. “You make up your mind?”

  “There was nothing to make up about it,” he said.

  “You’re going to do it, then?”

  “What’s it look like?” he said.

  “Goddammit, Russell, can’t you for once give me a straight answer? Are you going to do it?”

  “What’s it look like?”

  She ran her eyes over the papers and maps, her face a mix of anger and despair. I glanced at Belle but she was staring down at her soda pop.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” Charlie said. “I can’t always be waiting around to see if you’ve been…to see if you come back in one piece.”

  Russell sighed and looked bored. A man who’d heard all this too many times.

  “You make me feel like one of those fools in the romance magazines,” she said. “But you don’t give a damn, do you? It doesn’t matter one bit that I love you, does it? Well, I’ll tell you something, Russell, you’re going to…ah, the hell with it.” She stubbed the cigarette in an ashtray and left it crumpled and smoldering.

  “Only be a minute,” she said to Belle, and went to the bedroom.

  “There’s a bus coming through in a half hour,” Belle said softly. “Stops at the hotel on Main, she already checked. I said I’d drive her over. It’ll take her to San Antone and she can catch a train to New Orleans from there.”

  Russell reached into the valise and took out a handful of bills and swiftly counted out about a thousand. He handed Belle the money. “Give it to her when she’s getting on the bus. Don’t let her give it back. If you can sneak it in her bag, do it that way.”

  Belle nodded and put the money in her pocket.

  Russell poured me another drink and one for himself. We sat there, not saying anything, hearing her working the drawers in the bedroom, hearing her footsteps on the wooden floor as she went into the bathroom, hearing them come out again. A minute later she set her bag down at the kitchen door and came over to me and I got up and we hugged and she gave me a peck on the cheek.

  “Take care of yourself, Sonny,” she said low in my ear. “Her too.”

  She stepped over to Russell and bent down and kissed him on the mouth. “Bye, baby.”

  “Bon voyage, girl,” he said, looking her in the eye.

  She went out and Belle followed and we heard the front door open and close. Then the car doors. Then the roadster motor fire up. Then the car driving away.

  A sweltering summer afternoon no different from most in West Texas but for the low reef of dark clouds on the eastern horizon. People on the streets joke about the vague possibility of rain, of an actual storm perhaps, which would be an even more uncommon turn of weather.

  The Bigsby desk clerk directs him to Earl’s Café. He goes to the café in shirtsleeves, the pincers hidden under his draped jacket. A waitress guides him to Earl Cue in the rear-room speakeasy. Earl still wearing the jaw wires but much improved in his enunciation for all his practice. When he insists on knowing the lean gray man’s business with Bubber, the man says it’s a business proposition which he is not at liberty to discuss with anyone else.

  Well sir, Earl tells him, I happen to be Mr. Vicente’s business partner, so any business deal you have for him is gonna have me in it too.

  Very well then, the gray man says, why don’t we go see Mr. Vicente and the three of us discuss it?

  No can do, Earl says. Mr. Vicente is out of town right now and no telling when he’ll be back. Could be another week, maybe two, no telling.

  I see, the gray man says. And where might Mr. Vicente be, then?

  He might be someplace that’s none of your business, grandpa, Earl Cue says, nettled by this old goat’s obvious supposition that Bubber’s the main man of the partners.

  The gray man smiles and says, Yes, of course. Tell you what, Mr. Cue, why don’t I explain my proposition to you? After all, if it doesn’t interest you, what chance do I have of winning over Mr. Vicente?

  Well now, Earl Cue thinks, that is way more like it. He makes a show of checking his watch. I guess I got the time to hear it.

  Actually, the gray man says, it’ll be better if you see it. He tells Earl of two hundred cases of prime Scotch whisky he has stored in an old warehouse outside of town. He has to move the stuff immediately, he s
ays, and whispers a price that is half the going rate. Would Mr. Cue care to see the goods for himself, maybe taste a sample to assure himself of their authenticity?

  Well hell, Mr. Cue says, why not?

  It takes much longer to drive out to the isolated warehouse than it does to gain the information he desires. No witnesses but jackrabbits in the brush and horned lizards in the rocks, a pair of buzzards wheeling in the white sky—and no auditors but them to the screams that shortly ensue.

  Fifteen minutes after entering the dilapidated building, John Bones emerges from its dim confines, brushing dust and smears of cobweb from his hat and coat sleeves. Earl Cue will not come out again for another five weeks, when his remains are removed by authorities after being discovered by a pair of roving boys in search of a day’s adventure.

  “I t’s them,” Russell said, squinting into the high-power binoculars against the glare of the sun. “Truck number 526.” He moved the glasses in a slow pan and then held on something. “Yowsa—there’s old Buckaroo. Looking over here, all sneaky like. Ten to one he knows it’s us.” His voice was tight, the way it got when he was up for it. I remembered when he’d bought the binoculars for Charlie at some roadside café in the middle of nowhere. It seemed a long time ago.

  We were on the crest of a sand hill, the roadster idling on the narrow trail of crushed rock. I was behind the wheel, Belle next to me, Russell in the rumble seat. The surrounding country was shaped of rolling sand mounds and rocky outcrops, cactus and scrub brush. We had the top down and Belle’s bare shoulders in her sundress were pink with sunburn. Russell and I were in rolled shirtsleeves. We all wore sunglasses and hats. The sky was clear except behind us, where a darkly purple bank of thunderheads had risen high in the east and was slowly heading our way. We’d yet to see rain in West Texas.

  The site was about 250 yards away. To the naked eye the truck was a dark shape on the far side of the site, the men of the work party only speck figures. Then Russell passed the glasses up to me, and I spotted two of the guards by their uniforms. One was on this side of the site, the other way over on the other, standing at the truck with one foot up on the running board like he was talking to somebody in the cab, probably the third guard. Both of the guards in view carried shotguns. The convicts wore prison whites and were scattered around the area, which had already been cleared of brush. They were busting up the rocky outcrops with sledgehammers and picks and clearing away the broken stone, laboring in a dusty yellow haze, lifting and toting the larger chunks, scooping the smaller ones into wheelbarrows, dumping all of it outside the perimeter of the site. But even with the field glasses, at this distance it was hard for me to tell one convict from another. It didn’t surprise me that Russell could—his hawkeye was why they’d made him a sniper in the war.