“You want to lay that out for me?”
“Look, when you wipe away all the byplay, like the limp that the cute broad had, and…”
“Did I say she was cute?”
“You didn’t have to. You wipe away that, and the business with the kneeled tights…”
“Neo-Luddites, Uncle Fred.”
“Will you cut that shit out and listen for a minute?”
“Yes.”
He glared at me for a bit, daring me to interrupt him again. When I didn’t, he lit another cigarette and continued. “You sift through all the byplay, I’m saying, and if the scam still looks too complicated, then there’s something else going on.”
I waited. He made a gesture with his hand that said,
Your turn
.
“Like murder?” I said.
“Just like that. The killing wasn’t part of the grift. Con men aren’t hit men. If they were, they’d give up conning and go to armed robbery or extortion or murder for hire. Something with a lot more loot and a faster payoff.”
“Excuse me for being a little slow,” I said, “but I don’t see where there’s any payoff in this scheme, fast or slow. If I have to give eighteen grand to the court, that doesn’t help anybody else.”
“You won’t have to. You got a bent cop in on the scam…”
“Evans.”
“Yeah, Evans. You watch. When the time comes for the Cox kid’s trial, something will show up in the police records, makes the whole thing go away, null and void. The arrest was just to get your attention, get you to look at the violin.”
“Why me?”
“Because bondsmen have more money than restaurant managers.”
“Fair enough. But I still don’t see where the payoff comes in.”
“That’s because we haven’t seen the hook yet, only the bait.”
“But I don’t have to buy the violin from any phony musician. I already have it.”
“Do you?”
“Well, Pete does.”
“Does he?”
“Sure, he does.”
“If you say so.”
“What are you saying, Unc? That Pete’s in on the con?”
“He wouldn’t have to be. You trust him, that’s good enough for me. I’m just saying I’d look, that’s all. Maybe there’s a little pigeon drop going on here, too.”
The “pigeon drop” is another classic short con, in which the victim literally winds up holding the bag. The bag is supposed to be full of money, but it turns out to be stuffed with worthless paper. I sighed.
“Couldn’t just one thing be what it looks like?” I said.
“In this sorry old world, probably not much.”
“What about the killing? You figure Evans for it?”
“Could be, but I don’t think so. If he did it, it was a mistake, and he’s trying to pin it on you. But if he’s clean, then he might really think you did it. Either way, you’ve got some running time.”
“How’s that?”
“I figure Evans is in on the con, no matter what. He’ll let you be a wanted man for a while, just to keep you off balance, but he isn’t going to let you go down until the game plays itself out and some money changes hands. If Plan A didn’t work, he’ll go to Plan B or Z, but he won’t give up on it. There’s too much invested at this point, and the gang has its little hearts set on the payoff.”
“Which I’m not going to give them.”
“Are you sure? People who do this for a living are awfully good at it, you know. You might not see the hook until it’s too late. At this point, you probably haven’t even seen all the players.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“Well, you can’t turn State’s evidence, because you don’t have any evidence.”
“This is true.”
“So the only thing to do is see another card. Then turn the hook back on the grifters, if you can. If you can’t, at least you might find out who killed the girl, get clear of it yourself.”
“Play the hand I’m dealt? Where have I heard that before?”
“Play the hand out, damn straight. But keep a gun under the table, you hear? This thing is going to get ugly before it’s done.”
“You think so?”
“I know so. Murder by automobile is not the professional’s method of choice. It’s a caper with a lot more rage than thought. Believe me, there’s still plenty of it left floating around for you.”
“Okay, so I need a gun.”
“An untraceable gun.”
“Absolutely. Who do I shoot with it?”
“Well, that’s the art of it, you know? If it’s not clear by the time the last card’s turned, you could be in deep shit.”
“You’re just full of good advice today, aren’t you?”
“You remember the story I used to tell about the horse trader in Constantinople?”
A guard was going around the tables, telling people their time was up.
“You mean the one with the little kid who saw…” I began. Uncle Fred motioned to me to cut it off.
“Yeah, that one,” he said. “You keep that one in mind, and you’ll be fine.”
“I don’t see how it applies here.”
“Then you’ll just have to find a way to make it apply, won’t you?”
The guard was about to come up and poke one or both of us, so we preempted him by standing up and shaking hands again.
“Twenty miles south of here,” said Uncle Fred, “there’s a little dump of a town, has a diner on Main Street. The house specialty is pecan pie. You ought to stop and try it.”
I didn’t for a minute take that to be a casual suggestion.
“Pecan, you say?”
“That’s the stuff. You got to ask about it. Rosie, the waitress will know.” He gave me another wink and a final squeeze of my hand.
“You take care of yourself.” I stopped myself short of calling him “Unc” in front of the guard.
“Count on it.” He thought for a moment. “Count on it, Mister Sam Hill. And you watch your back.”
Pecan Pie at the Last Chance Café
The rush of being on the run and the pleasure of seeing my uncle were long gone by the time I headed the Pontiac back through the blighted lowland, and the road back seemed longer than it was on the way out. But I was in no hurry. I needed a solid block of sleep and then a solid plan before I went anywhere. First, though, I needed to check out the locally famous pecan pie.
The town didn’t look much different from the one where I had stopped for breakfast: tiny, tired, and nearly deserted. Norman Rockwell might have painted it once, but even he wouldn’t look at it now. Thomas Hart Benton, never. The sign at the city limits said NEW SALEM, pop. 312, and I suspected the number included cats and dogs. Even counting pets, it was probably an exaggeration. But there was, as promised, a diner on Main Street, between a grain elevator and a boarded-up creamery. The sign over the door simply said CAFE. I guessed they didn’t have to worry about being confused with the competition.
Down by the grain elevator stood a couple of dirty pickups and one ton-and-a-half stakebed parked nose-in to the curb. By the café, there was only a rusted and battered old Trans Am that looked as if it had been painted with a brush, bright blue with crooked white racing stripes. The rear lid was popped up, and a hay bale took up all of the trunk space, and then some. I thought it looked hilarious. The rest of the street was deserted. I parked ten yards away from the Trans Am and went into the café.
The door’s old-fashioned jingle-bell ringer woke up the two or three resident flies and sent them spiraling up to do battle with a lazy ceiling fan. There were high-backed booths along one wall and tables in the rest of the place, with a counter up at the end. In one of the booths, a couple of well-fed rural types in Big Smith overalls and DeKalb baseball caps were hunched over heavy china plates, mopping up gravy with small loaves of bread. When I walked in, they gave me a look that openly asked if I came from another planet. I gave them one back that said I certainly hoped so. They didn’t look away and I didn’t waste my time trying to stare them down.
The rest of the place was empty, so I went to the back and sat on a stool, hoping a Munchkin named Rosie might be lurking behind the counter. She wasn’t, so I grabbed a menu from behind a paper napkin holder. The regular house special was something called the Whole Cow Steakburger, while the special of the day was a hot turkey sandwich with mashed potatoes and sage dressing and savory cranberry sauce. Both of them came with gravy. Apple, cherry, and blueberry pie were also listed, but no pecan. If I were really feeling daring, I could try something called Aunt Mary’s Chocolate Bombe. A misspelling, no doubt.
After I had read both sides of the plastic-coated menu and put it back down, a double-action door with a porthole in it swung toward me. A coffee pot emerged from the secret room behind, followed by a shapely arm and a thirty-something blonde. She was maybe five foot six, not really heavy, but with a solid look, like a somewhat softer version of one of those Amazons from the cover of a body building magazine. She had watery blue eyes, flat cheek planes and the strong jaw and mobile mouth of a Norwegian or Finn.
Fifteen years earlier or so, she must have driven the local 4-H boys wild. Now she still bulged and receded in all the right places, but she was on the threshold of losing it. In another ten years, she could go to either purely voluptuous or just plain fat, depending. Her expression told me she didn’t really care. But like my uncle Fred, she had a glint in her eyes that implied too much energy for a place like this.
“Coffee?” she said, flipping a mug from under the counter.
“Sure.”
“Hey, Laurie,” came a noise from the booth, “you got other people want coffee, too, you know. Real customers, not some half-assed tourists.” The voice was gravelly and lazy, like that of a long-term drunk, and there was no humor in it.
“Any that ever tip?” she said, without looking over.
“We decide to tip you, babe, you’ll walk funny for a week.” The other hayseed had a younger voice, but no friendlier. He guffawed at his own crude joke. The waitress ignored them and calmly filled my cup.
“If you want to hit one of them upside the head with the coffee pot,” I said, “I’ll swear it was self-defense.”
She gave me a funny, crooked smile. “You won’t have to swear to anything. The law around here is like everything else: mostly homemade. But if I need any help burying the bodies, I’ll let you know.”
“My doctor says I should avoid heavy lifting.”
“Yeah, I bet.” Her look said she knew all about me, them, and just about everybody else, and had had just about enough of all of us. I’ve seen that look in some of my clients. It’s not exactly the thousand-yard stare, but it’s at least five hundred of it. It’s not a good sign. “Be right back,” she said.
She took her time strolling over to the booth, where she plopped down two green paper checks and splashed coffee into two mugs. The younger cornball got a sly grin on his face and started to reach around to grab her ass, but she moved quickly out of range, put a hand on one hip, and gave him a look that would kill jimson weed to the root. That’s a weed they have in the crops around there. I learned about it from a radio commercial, on the way out. A lifelong student, that’s me. The guy dropped the grin and stared into his coffee, muttering, and the waitress came back over to me.
“What takes your fancy?” she said, pulling a pencil from behind one ear.
“You want to be careful who you give that line to.”
“I am. You want anything on the menu, or not?”
“I was hoping to talk to Rosie.”
“I’m not rosy enough for you?” She gave me about a half-second flash of a phony stage smile, all teeth and dimples, and instantly reverted to her expression of studied indifference. I laughed in spite of myself.
“You’re probably enough of anything for any man, but I was told Rosie could get me some pecan pie.”
“Who told you that?”
“A guy named Numbers Jackson.”
She raised both eyebrows. “He’s in Redrock.”
“That’s him.”
“Yeah, huh?” She tapped her pencil rhythmically on the order pad and looked at me as if for the first time, sizing me up, deciding something. She suddenly looked tougher than before, and it looked good on her, like a piece of animation that had been missing. “What’s your name?” she said.
“Herman.” I can’t imagine why I didn’t tell her “Sam Hill,” but I didn’t.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Afraid not.” More afraid than she could imagine.
“We all have our problems, I guess.” She shook her head. “I’m Laura. Rosie left years ago.”
“Maybe she got tired of riveter jokes.”
“That and a lot of other things. Wait until the others leave, okay? We’ll talk. Meanwhile, pick something off the menu, look like you belong here.”
“That could be tough.”
It was her turn to laugh. “Picking something, or looking like you belong?”
“Either one.”
She gave me the crooked smile again, this time with bit of warmth in it. It looked better than the stare. “I know that tune better than you do,” she said.
“It shows.”
“It ought to. Tell you what: have a fried egg sandwich. It’s the cheapest thing on the menu, and even the dumb kid we’ve got out in the kitchen can’t mess it up.”
“I had eggs this morning. How about a plain burger?”
“Your funeral. Onions?”
“Absolutely.”
“A man after my own heart.” Why did I know she would say that? “That comes with French fries or hash browns.”
“How about a salad?”
“How about sprouts and hollandaise sauce? Where do you think you are, civilization? The fries aren’t too bad.”
“Okay, fries, then. If they’re no good, you can eat them.”
Again the smile. “I can be had, Herman, but I’m not that cheap.” I never thought for a minute that she was.
She went up to the pass window, impaled an order slip on a spike, and slapped a little bell. Then she went back through the kitchen door. While she was gone, Homer and Jethro came up to the counter to pay their bill. They glared at the dark porthole for a while, then at me. They were good at glaring. Finally, they left some money on the counter and turned to go. I concentrated on slurping some coffee, which wasn’t as good as G. B. Feinstein’s, but wasn’t bad, either. The older one, with the cheap-booze voice and beer belly, looked like he wanted to start something but couldn’t remember how. The younger one did it for him.
“We don’t get a whole lot of strangers around here.”
“Sounds right to me,” I said, without looking up.
“Sounds right to us, too. Better, we don’t get any.”
“Somehow, I don’t think you have to worry about that.”
“I gotta spell it out for you? You ain’t wanted here. I’m telling you to get out whilst you can still do it under your own power.”
“I see.” And I looked and did see, all the while thinking,
I absolutely do not need this shit
. The guy fronting me had a lot of muscle under the fat, but he didn’t look either quick or smart. His buddy looked as if his chief contribution to any fight would be sitting on people, plus nasty little chores like gouging eyes and spitting on them. Neither one of them was worth messing up my plans over.
“Well, since you’re so nice about it,” I said, “I’ll tell you something, too. You have no idea what you’re fucking with here.” Of course, neither did I, but this was not the time for that kind of timid thoughts. I slipped half off the stool, planted my feet in an easy intro to a half-stride fighter’s stance, and pushed my right hand deep into my pocket. “I’m going to have a hamburger and then I’m going to go. If you want to make that a problem, that’s up to you. But I’m never coming back here, and that means I don’t care what kind of mess I leave behind for the cops or the ambulance. Think about it for a minute.” And I gave them what I hoped was a cold smile.
I closed the hand inside my pocket, as if I had grasped something, and slowly began to bring it back out. Hayseed Junior stuck his finger at me as if he were going to poke it in my chest, but the older guy pulled his arm away. Too bad, in a way. That finger was practically begging to be broken.
“Leave it alone, Ditto,” he said. “Come away.”
“Aah…”
“It ain’t the time. And I ain’t backin’ you up against some big city street fighter.”
“We don’t know that he is.”
“And we don’t know he ain’t, neither. Come on, now.”
“Oh, fuck it all, anahow.” The belligerent one snatched his arm indignantly away and let himself be herded to the door, making a show of refusing to be hurried.
At the door, he turned and said, “She ain’t going with you, no ways. She ain’t never going with nobody but me.”
So that’s what it was all about. “That’s right,” I said. “She isn’t.” I began to think about how many hours of roaring tractors, bellowing cows, fertilizer commercials, and whining, hard-lard music it took to induce permanent brain damage. However many it was, he’d had a lot more than that.
He glowered at me for a while longer, then got bored with it and stomped out with his pal. I took my hand back out of my pocket, glad that I hadn’t been forced to show that it had nothing in it but a pack of smokes, a Zippo lighter, and a lot of lint.
***
The waitress came back in a few minutes with my food and some utensils. “I made a call,” she said.
“I’m happy for you.”
“You carry a lot of weight with this Numbers guy.”
“We go back a long ways.” I salted the burger, put some anemic-looking pickle slices on it, and closed the bun.
How did they manage to make the bun greasy?
“You must. The word is, don’t charge you.”
“For the burger?”
“For the pie.”
“Oh, that.” How could I have forgotten?
“Yeah, that. You like it heavy or light?”
I began to seriously wonder what we were talking about here. “What have you got?” I said.
“I’ve got a .380 semi-auto, a .357 revolver, and a couple flavors of nine millimeter. Anything else, we have to go someplace to get. It’s a ways from here.”
Oh, that, indeed. “Give me the three-eighty,” I said. “Something that’s easy to conceal. If I’m far enough away to need the heavy artillery, I’ll run instead of shoot, every time.”
“I like that in a man.”
“Cowardice?”
“Sense. There’s not much of that around these days.”
“Seems to me Plato noticed that, too.”
“You read a lot of Plato, do you?”
“No, but I thought it sounded more impressive than saying I picked it up from Rocky and Bullwinkle.”
“Uh, huh.” She did not sound impressed, and when I thought about it, that was just fine with me.
“You want a holster?” she said.
“With a belt clip, if you’ve got one.”
“I’ve got.” She went in the back again and returned with something that really did look like a pie box, heavy white cardboard with tricky fastener tabs.
“You’ve got a box of shells in there, too,” she said, “but only one extra magazine. Also a velcro strap, in case you want to carry it on your ankle. Have fun.”
I spared her my standard lecture on guns and fun. She pushed the box across the counter to me, then scribbled on one of her green slips and put that on top. She had charged me $12.85 for pie. With the burger and coffee and taxes, the whole tab came to $20.32. And people think it’s cheap to live in small towns. I put a twenty and a five on the counter. She rang it all up on a genuine non-electronic cash register, along with the slips from the two hayseeds. She started to hand me change, but I waved it away, so she shrugged and dropped it into the pocket on her faded pink uniform. Then she poured herself a cup of coffee, came around the counter, and sat down next to me. She helped herself to one of my fries. I concentrated on chewing my burger.
“Take me with you.”
I’d been half expecting that, but not this soon and definitely not this straightforward. It served me right, for flirting with her. “No,” I said.
“Just like that? Just ‘no’?”
“Just like that.”
“I’ll make it worth your while.”
Was she really talking about what it sounded like? If she was from my uncle’s world, it was a distinct possibility. His people made and dissolved relationships on just that whimsical a moment, and some of them turned out to be tight and durable. Uncle Fred himself lived for over twenty years with a woman he claimed to have won in a card game. She had never seemed cheap to me, but she never disputed the assertion, either. Whether or not they held each other against the night, I’ll never know. In any case, I could hardly judge them. I personally went the route of conventional marriage, and that turned out to be the biggest catastrophe of my then-young life.