Rumble Tumble

Red brought out a piece of paper and handed it to me. I took it and opened it and looked at it. “You could just be picking up five hundred dollars,” I said. “This could be a Laundromat.”

“Could be,” Red said. “But it isn’t.”

“It isn’t even Oklahoma City. What the hell is Hootie Hoot?”

“I know how it sounds,” Red said. “But it’s a real town. It’s a little burg outside of Oklahoma City. We actually found it to be quite a refuge, and it provides easy access to the city, and frankly, most men who wanted to purchase sex didn’t want to pay for it in a place they thought there might be law. This burg, cops were paid off. They liked a little regular tail themselves, see. We get the five hundred dollars or what?”

I looked at Brett. Brett stood up and tossed me Wilber’s gun. I caught it and dropped it on the bed between my legs. Brett lifted her dress and took five hundred dollars out of the end of the thigh holster. We all checked out the thigh holster and what it was strapped to. In the light I could see little freckles on Brett’s thigh, like the blush on a strawberry.

Brett put the revolver in the holster. The five hundred was folded. She unfolded it. She stood next to the table lamp where Wilber sat and counted it out aloud, dropping each bill on the table.

“How does it look?” Red asked Wilber.

Wilber picked up the money and thumbed through it. “Like five hundred dollars.”

“Good,” Red said. “Good.”

Wilber sniffed the money. “And it smells like a woman’s thigh.”

“Even better,” Red said.

“You said Till was in trouble,” Brett said. “Besides being a whore in Big Jim’s stable, how’s she in trouble?”

“It’s my guess the other girls will tell that she helped us willingly, to help herself get out. Big Jim doesn’t like that sort of thing. He’ll have a special work plan for her.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“It means she won’t like it,” Red said. “As for what he’ll have in mind for her, I can’t say. Maybe he’ll put her on the street in Tulsa. Some other place not even that nice.”

“Then this address could be meaningless?” I said. “Probably is by now.”

“It’s the last address where she was,” Wilber said.

“Correct,” Red said. “That’s all we know.”

“That’s not worth five hundred dollars,” I said. “That’s worth a sack of dog shit.”

Red looked at Brett. “Ma’am.”

“Keep the money,” Brett said.

“All right,” I said. “This is where our association ends. I don’t want to ever see either one of you again. I do, I might not like it.”

“Suits me,” Red said. “I haven’t found either of you particularly sociable.”

“I ain’t scared I see you again,” Wilber said. “I think you ain’t near tough as you think you are.”

“You’re the one with the broken nose and the fucked-up teeth,” I said.

Red laughed.

“Yeah,” Wilber said, “but wasn’t you did it.”

“That’s true,” I said, and moved quickly and shot my foot out and hit Wilber in the mouth. His head went back and hit the wall and he came out of the chair charging. I sidestepped and brought my gun down behind his ear. He fell down and I kicked him again. A tooth slid under the bed and I could see a piece of another in my tennis shoe with a bloody spot around it.

It wasn’t really necessary, but I bent over and hit Wilber one more time behind the ear with the revolver. “That’s because we heard Till’s pimp beat her. And if you weren’t the one, my best apologies.”

Wilber moaned, rolled over on his back. “Bastard,” he said. “I might want to see you again sometime.”

“Your choice,” I said. “But I don’t recommend it.”

Red recovered his matches and was relighting his cigar, which had gone out. The only thing he had done during the action was raise his feet a little. He said, “Now you got the news on Tillie, might I suggest you forget it. Taking one of Jim’s whores is not a good idea. He frowns on all manner of business tampering, and we are living proof of that, and the fact that we’re living proof is rare. The whores, they do what they’re told, and they stay where they’re told, and they don’t want to do that … Well, they still do it.”

“I’d like to see you tangle with Big Jim,” Wilber said from his position on the floor. “I’d like you to tangle with me when I’m ready.”

I didn’t say anything to that.

Brett opened the door. I took hold of Wilber’s automatic and popped out the clip. I wiped the automatic with my shirt, threw it on the floor. I put the clip in my shirt pocket. I held my gun next to my leg and Brett and I walked out of there and closed the door and went along the walk quickly, down the stairs, out to her car.

I took Wilber’s ammunition clip out of my pocket, wiped it with my shirttail, and dropped it into the parking lot.

When Brett was behind the wheel and I was beside her, she looked at me, said, “Surreal.”

“Yeah,” I said. “What now?”

“A light lunch. Sex.”

“With me?”

“Unless you can suggest someone else.”

I shook my head. “Nope. Don’t think so. Nobody comes to mind, anyway. We could check the want ads, you like.”

“Nah, you’ll do.”

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