Rumble Tumble

“After I began to feel alert from the butt kicking, and Big Jim welcomed us back into the fold, he told us we were all heading for the whorehouse. He wanted Wilber and me there. My thoughts were that in time he was going to turn the operation back to us. Though, as Wilber has pointed out, sometimes I can be far too optimistic. We drove from Oklahoma City out to the whorehouse this morning with Big Jim. He even allowed that Wilber and I might partake of the products there, so, until your arrival, I was feeling very good. As if things were back on track. Wilber and I had just come back from Winston, a little town between Hootie Hoot and Oklahoma City, having gone there for dinner without any sort of escort or threats. We had a couple of steaks and came back, ready to relax, drink a bit, and perhaps, if the customers slowed, to partake of the female delights. Then your ugly faces showed up.”

“Big Jim?” I said. “He was the guy in the blue suit?”

“Yes,” Red said. “He was merely visiting. The guy standing next to him is actually the manager now, and I believe I should make note here and now that he’s not all that bright. Honest, because he’s stupid, but bright he isn’t. If his brain was a battery it wouldn’t give enough energy to fire up a penlight. Beside him Wilber is a mental gargantuan.”

Red took another moment to bend over and let blood drip off his head, onto the toes of his boots. Looking at him there in the moonlight, so small, the blood flowing like that, falling onto those little boots, I felt sick and sorry and sad. My father and mother hadn’t raised me to beat up midgets with pistols, nor to stand by and allow it to happen. I felt much smaller than Red, even if he was a cold-blooded killer and a windy sack of scum.

“It’s bad enough you came in there like that,” Red said, “but you stirred Big Jim up personally, and he doesn’t cotton to thugs off the street tampering with his operation or running away with his personnel.”

“I think maybe Big Jim might be led to think you were in on our arrival,” Leonard said. “I think he could be led to think that real easy.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Red said. “Why would I do that?”

“Could be that’s what he’s wondering,” Leonard said. “Maybe he’s thinking you linked up with us, and were getting back into his good graces to run some kind of scam.”

“What kind of scam?” Red said. “What could I possibly gain?”

Brett cocked the hammer back on the pistol and put the gun to Red’s head. “This is it, short stuff. The moment of truth. Where’s Tillie?”

Red rolled his eyes toward the gun barrel, said, “Seems, that as punishment for helping me, Tillie had to service most of Big Jim’s bodyguards. Except for Franklin because he seems to have trouble getting it up. He claims it’s a psychological ailment, but we all know he takes too many steroids.”

“We don’t care about Franklin and his dick problems,” Leonard said. “For heaven’s sake. I’m going to have a nervous breakdown here. Will you just tell us where Tillie is?”

“Good-bye, shit sack,” Brett said, and pushed the revolver hard against Red’s temple.

“Tillie was passed around, then sent to The Farm,” Red said.

“What’s The Farm?” I asked.

“Ever heard of the Bandito Supremes?” Red asked.

“I take it that isn’t one of the orders from Taco Bell,” I said.

“Certainly not,” Red said.

“Banditos are a Texas biker gang,” Leonard said. “They’re known to be in the drug business. The whore business. What have you.”

“No,” Red said. “Not the Banditos. The Bandito Supremes. They’re bikers too, or some of them are, or were. But they’re not even associated with the Banditos. They consider those guys sissies. They’ve fucked tougher guys than the Banditos behind the Catholic church. Could you take the gun from my head, lady? It makes me nervous.”

“It should,” Brett said, and eased the hammer down and pulled the gun back.

Red let out a deep breath. “The Bandito Supremes are modern Commancheros. Survivalist Nazis. Mostly they travel about, but they have headquarters in South and Southwest Texas, and Mexico. They have a farm, or what they call a farm, not far across the Mexican border. They do some work for Big Jim now and then. At certain types of work they can’t be beat.”

“I have a feeling that the work they do at this farm isn’t about growing vegetables,” I said.

“You are most correct,” Red said.

15

After we got Red’s story we sat around and thought about it awhile. As is usual with Leonard and me, we couldn’t think of anything clever. We either needed to do it or not do it.

Brett had just one thing on her mind, of course, and that was go for it, with or without us. That meant we could leave her to her fate, or we could go along. So there was really only one actual alternative. Head for Mexico and The Farm.

Brett gave Red an ultimatum. Either take us there or end up a maggot hotel. Red, being the practical sort, decided to be our guide once we got into Texas.