Texas by the Tail

by Jim Thompson

  “What?” Mitch snorted. “Now, what kind of sense does that make?”

  “You heard me. Yesterday we needed a quarter of a million dollars to pull out of this racket and settle down. A hundred grand plus what we have on hand. So today it falls right into our lap, and you give it the brush. No reason. You don’t ask me what I think. You just—”

  “I didn’t think I had to ask you. You’ve always said that I was the boss.”

  “Well…” She slowed down a little. “Well, you always have been, Mitch. But…”

  “But now I’m not?” He felt her weakening and pressed the point. “It has to be one way or the other, Red.”

  She looked at him hesitantly, then put down her glass and came swiftly to him. Standing on tiptoe, she brushed her lips against his, then stepped back, frowning slightly at the calculated coolness of his kiss.

  “It shouldn’t have to be that way, Mitch. Not if you really love me.”

  “Are you saying that I don’t?”

  “It’s not what I’m saying that matters. Mitch. It’s what you’re not saying. Just because I don’t demand explanations doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t offer them.”

  Her reasonableness was infuriating. Mitch said for God’s sake, how many times did he have to tell her? “I don’t think Zearsdale was leveling. I don’t know what he’s trying to pull or why, but I’m certainly not going to take practically our last dollar and hand it over to him!”

  “But he told you to consult your banker,” Red pointed out. “He surely wouldn’t have done that if he was pulling a fast one.”

  “How do you know he wouldn’t? What do you know about business?”

  He pushed past her and went to the bar. Dumping whiskey into a glass, he brooded savagely that this was really too damned much. He was so near broke that his backbone was snapping at his belly button, and he was being crowded for dough from all sides. And now Red was throwing her weight around. Demanding an explanation for the inexplicable. Adding to the agony of losing the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity which Zearsdale had offered.

  He turned back around from the bar, again found himself facing Red. “Well?” he said. “Any more nutty questions?”

  “Don’t you get sarcastic with me, Mitch!”

  “Well, don’t act like a damned fool, then! I—Ouch!” he said, for Red had suddenly slapped him. “Why the hell did you do that?”

  “I’ll do it again if you call me a damned fool! My mother took that guff all her life but I’m not going to!”

  “What? What the hell has your mother got to do with it?”

  “And you just stop cursing me, too!”

  “But goddammit, I—”

  Red slapped him again. Mitch grabbed her, hauled her kicking and squirming to the lounge, and turned her over his knee. Jerking up her housecoat, he gave her bare bottom a resounding whack!

  “Now, let’s knock it off,” he said, jerking her upright again. “We forget Zearsdale, get me? It’s all over, kaput!”

  “Oh, no it isn’t,” Red said. “Don’t you kid yourself it is, Mr. Mitch Corley!”

  Her red hair was tumbled around her face. She tossed it back, her breasts swelling and trembling as she fought to control herself.

  “I’ll tell you when it’ll be over, Mitch. When you answer just one question for me. Do we or don’t we have more than a hundred thousand dollars put away?”

  “Wh-aat?” he laughed shakily. “What kind of a crazy question is that?”

  “Answer me, Mitch!”

  “But it doesn’t make sense! You’ve been with me all these years. How could I have blown more than a hundred grand on myself?”

  The question threw her for a moment. “Well,” she said, “I didn’t say that you had spent it on yourself. But—”

  “Well, I should hope not! I’ve always given you better than I’ve taken for myself. Everything I’ve done has been for you. Why, my God, honey—”

  “Wait!” She cut him off with a gesture. “Just tell me the truth, Mitch. That’s all I ask—just the truth. Do we have the money?”

  “Yes!” he snapped. “Yes, yes, yes!” He snatched the key to the safe-deposit box from his pocket. “It’s right here in town! Do you want me to take you down and show it to you?”

  Red looked down at the key. She brought her eyes up to look into his. “Yes,” she said.

  “But—You do?”

  Red nodded evenly. “I don’t think you’re telling the truth, Mitch. So, yes, I do want you to take me to the bank and show me the money.”

  Mitch shook his head. “I don’t think you know what you’re saying, Red. We have to trust each other. If we don’t, we can’t operate together.”

  “I know that. I was wondering if you did.”

  Mitch shrugged. He said all right, if that was the way she wanted it.

  “That’s the way I want it,” Red said.

  “Very well.” He consulted his watch. “We can have lunch somewhere along the way. Or would you rather have a bite here?”

  “We’ll eat later,” Red said. “After I’ve seen that dough. And before you can con me out of seeing it.”

  12

  There was a certain banker in Houston. There is a certain banker in almost every large city. His position will be one of importance, an assistant-cashier, or better. Technically, he does nothing illegal—although discovery can cost him his job—yet he reaps heavily from the operators.

  Perhaps they invented him—the con men, the blue-sky operators, the hustlers and high-flying gamblers. Perhaps they merely discovered him. The question is akin to the chicken-or-the-egg riddle. At any rate, in the coming together of him and his clients, almost never the bank’s clients, there is a profitable conjunction of their necessity and his opportunity.

  His charges are extremely high, not only because of the risk to his job but because his clients have to have him, in certain kinds of hustles, whereas he does not have to have them. So they can pay what he asks or go to hell. But assuming that they are willing to pay…

  Want to move a sight draft in an hour? The banker can do it for you.

  Want to impress a chump? The banker will treat you like a long-lost brother.

  Want to show a bundle of flash? The banker will benevolently count it out for you. (But don’t try to walk away with it.)

  In Fort Worth, not so many years ago, a rag mob played a rancher against the wall for seventy-five big ones. It was a bald swindle, and the lads wound up where all bad hustlers go. But not the banker, the key man in the frammis. There was no provable crime to pin on him.

  …Mitch got the car out, and was waiting for Red when she came down. As they drove into the city, he sensed her occasional sidewise looks. The doubt that his calmness was producing in her. But he said nothing, and she remained stubbornly silent.

  He put the car on the bank’s parking lot. Helping her out politely, he escorted her into the bank. And here at last she began to weaken. Red didn’t know anything about banks. Her only contact with them had been indirect and unpleasant—their more or less constant harassment of her father’s family.

  “Mitch…” She shivered slightly in the vaulted vastness. “Let it go, honey.”

  Mitch said it was too late to let it go—and it was. Taking her by the arm, he steered her firmly toward the railed-off enclosure occupied by upper-echelon executives, and stopped at the desk of an assistant vice-president.

  The man’s name was Agate, a middling middle-aged man with colorless lips, rimless glasses and a thinly haired scalp that was as pink as a baby’s bottom.

  “Why, yes,” he said, accepting the key to the safe-deposit box. “I’ll be glad to handle this for you. If you’ll just sit down, please…”

  They sat down, and he departed. Mitch took out a package of cigarettes, proffered one to Red. She refused with a nervous little jerk of her head, and he lit one for himself.

  Agate returned. He placed an oblong box on the desk, then withdrew a few feet so that they could have a kind of p
rivacy. Mitch picked up the box, and turned it upside down.

  The flash tumbled out on the desk, a cascade of large-denomination bills. Leaning back, he told Red to start counting.

  “Aah, no, Mitch…” She gave her head another little jerk. “Let’s just get out of here.”

  “Count it!” he insisted.

  She gave him a pleading look, an angrily pleading look. She picked up a packet of bills, and laid it down again. Blindly, she picked up another pack, gave it a clumsy push toward the first. Then, with an almost desperate motion, she stood up.

  “Mitch…” A begging whisper. “Please, honey.”

  “Yes?” he said. “You mean you’re satisfied?”

  “Yes! Yes, I am, darn you!”

  “Well…”

  “Please! Please come on.”

  Mitch said he would have to wait for the money to be put away, and the key returned to him. Red said that she would meet him at the car. And she left hastily, not looking back.

  He followed her after a few minutes. She obviously felt miserable, ashamed of herself, but he could take no comfort in his triumph. It had cost too much. He loved her too much.

  As they neared the apartment house, he told her that he was going to let her go up by herself; and she looked at him frightened. But he smiled reassuringly.

  “We both need to get pulled together a little. So let’s do it, and then we’ll forget it ever happened.”

  Red bit her lip, blinking back the tears. She told him not to be so d-damned nice. “It’s your own fault, d-doggone you! Y-You—you sh-shouldn’t have—”

  “I shouldn’t have asked you to take me on trust,” Mitch agreed smoothly. “I’ll never do it again, baby.”

  “Wha-at?” She turned on him, blazing. “Don’t you dare say that!”

  “But you—”

  “Hush! You just hush!”

  She almost ran into the apartment house, legs flashing in their seamless hose.

  Mitch drove back to town.

  In a secluded booth of a swank restaurant, he met and lunched with Agate, explaining the potential deal with Zearsdale and asking for help in swinging it. Agate considered it, munching a bite of cherry torte. When he had swallowed it and taken a sip of coffee, he shook his head.

  “No can do, Mitch. The deal would have to go through the bank, which would mean references, et cetera, or heavy collateral.”

  “But the stock’s collateral in itself.”

  “Oh, come on, now. You don’t have the stock until the money’s been transferred.”

  “But you can keep it all in escrow. When you pay the money, you take the stock. Where’s the risk in that?”

  Agate conceded that there wasn’t any. But it was still no soap. “It’s one of those things you can do if you already have money, Mitch. If you were the substantial citizen, that is, that Zearsdale thinks you are. As it is, well, they’d try to check it out with him, which would start him to checking on you. And you’d probably wind up with something you wouldn’t like.”

  Mitch grinned wryly. “A hell of a note, isn’t it, Lee? If I want to throw a curve, you’re my boy. But I bring you something strictly legit, and you’re not at home.”

  “Mmm-mmm.” Agate had filled his mouth again. “Good lunch, Mitch.”

  “Lee…I could move the whole thing in one day. Get the money from you in the morning, cash in the stock, and have it back to you by closing time.”

  “Whuh!” The banker sprayed crumbs from his mouth, eyes bulging with horror. “Don’t say things like that, Mitch!”

  “I’d cut the juice right through the center, Lee. Seventy-five G’s for each of us.”

  “Don’t! Not another word!” Agate shuddered visibly. “My God, man! How could you even ask me to take a hundred thousand dollars of the bank’s money, and turn it over to a—uh—”

  Mitch knew it was no use, yet something beyond the knowledge pushed him on. “You know me, Lee. You know I wouldn’t pull a fast one on you…”

  “No, Mitch. No, no, no!”

  “Why, hell, you could go along with me for that matter. What could be more logical? Seventy-five grand just for taking a little walk with me!”

  “No, sir! I don’t walk anywhere with the bank’s money!”

  “Well, use your own, then. You could raise it, couldn’t you? Well? It’s the chance of a lifetime, Lee! Seventy-five thousand dollars for doing absolutely nothing!”

  “Nothing?” Agate laughed a little angrily. “Putting up a hundred thousand is nothing?”

  “Not for a man like you. Not in view of your profit.”

  “Well…”

  Mitch saw that he was weakening. Glory to God, he was weakening. And taking very careful aim, he threw in the hook.

  “Well, forget it, Lee. There’s a couple of other prospects I can probably get it from.”

  “No, now wait!” Agate said. “I—I think I can do it. It’s eighty-five thousand net, right? Actually eighty-five instead of a hundred.”

  “Eighty-five? What do you—” Mitch broke off. “Oh, yes. I promised you fifteen for this morning, didn’t I?”

  Agate said that fifteen was right. “You know, I only swing about once a year now. If something doesn’t look extra good, I don’t touch it.”

  “This wasn’t a caper, Lee. The fifteen is a flat loss to me.”

  “If you say so,” Agate shrugged. “Either way, you had me stretched too far for comfort. If anyone else had phoned me to snatch up a hundred and twenty-five thousand on less than a hour’s notice, I’d have told ’em to go jump.”

  “It was an emergency, Lee.”

  “I know. So,” Agate smiled with a trace of nervousness. “With the eighty-five I get together, and the fifteen you give me now…”

  “Mmm, yes,” Mitch nodded, “that will make it, won’t it? How soon can you get your end together?”

  “That isn’t the question, Mitch. Not right at the moment, it isn’t.”

  “Oh?”

  “No.” Agate’s eyes gleamed coldly behind the rimless glasses. “And if you were about to ask me if I’m worried about getting the fifteen thousand, I’ll say no again. I don’t have to worry. I know too much about you.”

  The change that had come over him was amazing. A change so pronounced that the cozy quiet of the restaurant seemed suddenly ominous. He drummed on the table, waiting, watching, his lips tightening into a thin, colorless line. He watched and waited, no longer the amiable, almost priggish acquaintance, but now revealed as the calculating whore he essentially was.

  Mitch smiled at him winsomely. “Give me a few days, will you, Lee? I’m a little short this trip.”

  “That wasn’t the agreement, Mitch.”

  “I honestly can’t help it, Lee. My God, you know I’m good for it!”

  “A man like you,” said Agate, “is good only as long as he keeps his promises.”

  Mitch would have said the same thing himself, generally speaking. But he hadn’t thought that Agate would play it so tough. “All right, Lee,” he said, “I should have told you it would be a few days. Only a couple, actually. But you don’t mind, do you, as long as you know you’re going to get it?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  The banker wadded his napkin, laid it on the table and stood up. Mitch also arose, picking up the check, but Agate plucked it from his fingers.

  “Sometime when you’re not so hard up, Mitch. Say two days from now.”

  “Aah, Lee…” Mitch winced. “I wish you wouldn’t take it like this.”

  “Fifteen thousand. You’d better have it, Mitch.”

  He turned and walked away, fitting a Homburg over his pinkish scalp. Mitch looked after him, glumly, knowing that he would have to have the fifteen on the line. Knowing that he had lost his one chance to pick up the Zearsdale option.

  13

  Many Texas fortunes are old to the point of antiquity, their origins dating back to the conquistadores and huge Spanish land-grants. The founders were cattle-raisers�
�beef cattle; so also were their descendants, even to the present day. The discovery of oil was looked upon as a by no means lucky accident. It was “stinky stuff,” something that spoiled water for the cattle and “messed up” the grazing. Since it was there, it had to be accepted, along with the millions it represented. But their attitude toward it was one of polite disdain. It was “upstart,” you know. An infringement upon the civilization of a highly select group, whose forefathers had been living in elegance for centuries.

  One has never been properly snubbed until he has come up against these “quality” Texans. Or perhaps snubbed is the wrong word, since one cannot very well be snubbed by a person who does not recognize his existence. Nor can one hardly take offense when that same person may be honestly puzzled at the mention of the Cabots and Lodges.

  Who are they, anyway? Easterners?

  Oh.

  That is one kind of big-money Texan, the “old” money rooted inexorably in cattle. And generally speaking, he tries to live up to the superiority with which he has cloaked himself. His conduct is impeccable. He is a loyal friend, a generous enemy. He shuns ostentation. He is gallant with ladies, a gentleman with men. As good a man in private as he is in public.

  All of which is by way of saying that Winfield Lord, Jr., was not that kind of Texan. Nor did he belong to the oil-money group. In fact, the Lords fitted into none of the established categories, although they were a qualified amalgamation of several.

  They were an old family. (The first had been white-trash scum from English prisons.)

  They were pioneers. (They had been sneak-thieving camp followers when the Five Civilized Tribes were herded up the Trail of Tears.)

  Their wealth had originated in cattle. (Acquired through murder.)

  Arriving in what is now Oklahoma, the Lords were successively banished or chased from each of the Tribes’ five autonomous Nations. Until, in about 1845, they arrived in the land of the Osages. The Osages were not a Nation, since they were not considered civilized. The government of the United States saw to it that they stayed within their own boundaries, but otherwise they were pretty much free to do as they pleased.