Sailor & Lula (27 page)

A stewardess came by with a cart and said something to Woody. He turned his head so that he could listen with the good ear and asked her what she'd said.

“May I bring you another orange juice?” she asked.

“Sure, sure, I'd like that,” Woody said, handing her his plastic cup. Then he had another thought. “Oh, miss? Could you please make this one a screwdriver?”

She nodded, refilled the cup with juice, and gave it back to Woody along with a miniature bottle of Wolfschmidt. He paid her, unscrewed the cap and poured the contents into the orange juice, mixing it around with the index finger of his right hand. Woody had not drunk an alcoholic beverage in nearly a decade and he wasn't certain why he'd decided to do so now; it just seemed like the right thing to do. Woody lifted the cup.

“For Buzzard,” he said.

Perdita didn't like what was happening. She was pleased to be going to Los Angeles, but she knew already that it was over between her and Romeo. She wouldn't say anything yet, just let the deal go down and pick her spot to split. Maybe take care of this Estrellita bitch before then.

“What's on your indecent little mind tonight, honey?” asked Romeo. “You been awful quiet lately.”

Romeo and Perdita were at the Round-up Drive-in in Yuma, waiting at the take-away counter for their order. They'd left Duane and Estrellita tied up together back in the motel room.

“Nothin' much, tell the truth. Just appreciatin' the beautiful evenin'.”

Cars and trucks zoomed by on the street in front of the drive-in. The air was sickly warm and sticky and stank of burnt oil. A grayish haze hung like a soiled sheet across the sky. The breeze kicked at a corner of it now and again, wrinkling the gray just long enough to permit a peek at the twinkling platinum dots decorating the furious fuchsia. A tall, lean, cowboy-looking guy in his late twenties walked up to the take-out window.

“How you people doin' tonight?” he said.

“Not bad,” said Romeo. “Yourself?”

The cowboy took off his black Stetson, reached into it and took out a half-empty pack of unfiltered Luckies. He offered it to Romeo and Perdita, both of whom declined, then shook one between his lips, flipped the pack back in and replaced the hat over his thick, tangled dark-brown hair.

“Can't complain,” he said, and pulled a book of matches from the left breast pocket of his maroon pearl-buttoned shirt and lit the cigarette. He bent down a little and looked in the window.

“Hey, Betsy!” he called. “How about a couple double-cheeseburgers and a side of chili and slaw.”

“Be a few minutes, Cal,” a woman shouted from within. “You want any fries with that?”

“Why not?” said Cal. “I'll take whatever you got to give, Betsy.”

The woman laughed and yelled back, “Oh, hush! You know that bar talk don't cut it with me.”

Cal smiled and straightened up. He stood off to the side of the window away from Romeo and Perdita and puffed on the Lucky Strike.

“So what's doin' in Yuma these days?” asked Romeo.

Cal looked at him and said, “That your Cherokee there, with the Texas plates?”

“That's right.”

“You all from Texas, then?”

“Right again.”

“Passin' through, I suppose.”

“You got it.”

“Headed for California, I bet. L.A.”

“You're on the money tonight, cowboy.”

Cal laughed, took a last drag, and tossed away the butt.

“Not a whole lot to keep people here, I don't guess,” he said. “It ain't the most excitin' city in the world.”

“Nothin' wrong with peace and quiet, that's what you want.”

“Ain't much of that here, either. Heat gets people mean, fries their brains and makes 'em dangerous. Tough on every livin' thing except salamanders.”

“Salamanders?” said Perdita.

“Yeah,” said Cal, “you know, them lizards can withstand fire.”

An eighteen-wheeler downshifted and belched as it passed by, spewing a brown cloud of diesel smoke over the drive-in. Perdita coughed and turned away.

“Here's your order, sir,” Betsy said to Romeo from the window, shoving it through. “Be $17.25.”

Betsy was a middle-aged Asian woman with badly bleached blond hair.

Romeo put a twenty down on the counter, picked up the bag, and said, “Change is yours.”

“ 'Preciate it and come back now. Yours is comin' up, handsome,” she said to Cal.

“I ain't goin' nowhere.”

“No kiddin',” she said, and laughed.

“You folks take care now,” Cal said to Romeo and Perdita.

“Do our best,” said Romeo. “You, too.”

Driving back to the motel, Perdita said, “You get a good look at that gal back there?”

“You mean Betsy?”

“Woman had the worst hair, Jesus. Never saw no Oriental person with blond hair before.”

“Plenty more surprises where we're headed, Perdita. Just you wait. I got big plans for us.”

She turned and stared at Romeo. He was grinning, confident, full of himself.

“Don't make me no promises you can't keep,” Perdita said. “There ain't nothin' worse for a woman than a man punks out on her. That happens, no tellin' what she'll do.”

“I'll keep this in mind, sweet thing,” said Romeo, nodding and grinning, “I surely will.”

“E. T. Satisfy, is it? Hometown, Dallas.”

“Right the first time.”

The clerk looked up from the registration card across the desk and down at Ernest Tubb.

“How you mean to pay for this?”

“Cash,” said Ernest Tubb, handing the clerk a hundred dollar bill. The clerk took it, examined both sides, went into another room for a minute, then came back and gave Ernest Tubb his change plus a receipt and a room key.

“You got 237. Upstairs and around to the right. Ice and soda pop machines by the staircase. Need more you holler.”

“I'm obliged.”

In the room the first thing he did was phone home.

“Glory Ann? It's me, Ernest Tubb.”

“Just where in Judas's country are you?” she asked. “I been worried crazy!”

“Easy, woman. I'm at the Holiday on Madre Island. Got a lead in Larry Lee County that Estelle and Duane Orel mighta come down here. College kids on break partyin' both sides of the border. Heard about two were kidnapped a week ago. Might be them. I'm headed for Mextown soon's I hang up.”

“Kidnapped! Save Jesus! Rita Louise Samples is here with me now, and Marfa Acker's comin' back later. They been my cross and crutch since you disappeared on me.”

“I ain't disappeared. I told you, I'm huntin' for Estelle.”

“If I lose you, too, don't know what I'll do.”

“You ain't lost nothin', Glory, includin' weight. You stickin' to that lima bean diet Dr. Breaux put you on?”

“Ernest Tubb, be serious! Who can think about dietin' at a time like this?”

“I am serious, Glory Ann. You keep eatin' like a herd of javelinas cut loose in a Arby's and you'll flat explode! Rita Louise and Marfa be
scrapin' your guts off the kitchen walls and collectin' 'em in a box to bury. You keep clear of them coffeecakes, hear?”

Glory Ann began to cry.

“Oh, Ernest Tubb, you're just a mean tiny man.”

“Lima beans, Glory Ann, Lima beans,” he said, and hung up.

Ernest Tubb backed his Continental out of the parking space, drove to the motel lot exit and turned right. He was thinking about the last time he and Glory Ann had made love. She'd insisted on being on top and just about squashed him. He'd felt like he imagined those people in their cars felt when that freeway fell on them during the big quake in California.

It was several seconds before Ernest Tubb realized that he'd turned his Mark IV in the wrong direction on a one-way thoroughfare. By the time he saw the nose of the White Freightliner and heard the horn blast it was too late for him to do anything about it.

“Oh, Glory!” Ernest Tubb said, and then he was history.

“You understand what has to be done?”

“I do.”

“You have no problem about it?”

Reggie hesitated, then shook his head no.

“Good.”

Santos poured more Glenmorangie into his glass, swirled the brown liquid around and stared down into it.

“You and your cousin have been close friends, have you not?”

“We were raised together as boys, but then Romeo and his mother left Caribe. Since then we are in touch.”

Santos took off his yellow-framed sunglasses and set them on the table. He rubbed his eyes with his abbreviated left hand, then smoothed back his hair. He looked at Reginald San Pedro Sula, who wanted to turn away from the two small darting animals imprisoned in Marcello's face, but Reggie steeled himself and did not flinch. Santos's eyes were the color of Christmas trees on fire.

“It's not that there is anything personal in this,” Santos said, “but Romeo has done some terrible things, things so terrible that not even the Mexican authorities can allow him to operate there any longer. I have sent some people in to take care of the situation in Zopilote. From now on we will handle the business. It was necessary to remove your cousin from the area in order to effect the change. In the meantime, he does us the favor of transporting other goods for us, for which he is fairly compensated. After the delivery is secured, you will pay him the remainder of what we have agreed, and then you will kill him.”

Santos lifted his glass with the fingers and opposing digit of his right hand and drank most of the Scotch in it.

“After Romeo is dead, of course,” he said, “the money is no good to him, so you will take it as payment for doing me this favor.”

“That is most generous of you,” said Reggie.

Santos closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Not generous, Reggie—just. There is a difference.”

He reopened his eyes and put his sunglasses back on. Reggie relaxed, taking off his powder-blue porkpie hat and wiping the sweat from his bald head with a lime-green handkerchief.

“Deception is merely a tool of resourcefulness,” said Santos. “Have you ever heard of Captain Philippe Legorjus?”

“I don't believe so, sir.”

“Well, he is the commander of France's elite anti-terrorist forces. Not long ago he was sent by his government to New Caledonia, which is in the South Pacific, to quell an uprising by the Kanak rebels on the island of Ouvea. New Caledonia is part of the French Overseas Territories, and so it was necessary to protect the French citizens who live there. It is also the place from which the French conduct their nuclear tests.

“In any case, Captain Legorjus was kidnapped by the rebels, along with twenty-two others. The leader of the Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front, I believe it was called, was something of a religious fanatic, and had been trained for guerilla warfare in Libya by Khadafy. This man vowed to maintain a state of permanent insecurity in the French South Pacific Territory if the separatists' demands for independence were not met. A familiar story. I remember a newspaper photograph of him, wearing a hood and holding a rifle, the pockets of his field jacket stuffed with cartridges. He threatened to kill a white person a day so long as the French government occupied Noumea, the capital of New Caledonia.

“While the Kanak leader carried on making speeches to the press, Legorjus organized the hostages and not only led them to freedom but took control of the separatist stronghold, disarmed the rebel soldiers, and captured their leader, enabling several hundred French naval infantrymen to swarm in and restore order. Upon his return to Paris, Legorjus was accorded a parade down the Champs d'Elysées and declared a national hero.”

Santos paused and looked at Reggie, who smiled and said, “He must be a brave man, this captain.”

Santos nodded. “Brave and cunning, Reggie. I make a point of studying these kinds of extraordinary men. There is much to be learned from their behavior. My firm belief is that life must be lived according to a man's own terms, or else it is probably not worth living.”

“I am sure you are right, Mr. Santos.”

Marcello licked the stub on his left hand where his thumb had been.

“I know you will do a good job for me,” he said, walking over to the window and looking out at the sky.

“Ah,
si sta facendo scuro
,” Santos said. “It's getting dark. You know, Reggie, I am almost seventy years old, and despite all I know, there is still nothing I can do about that.”

Woody looked out at the swimming pool. There were three kids and a dog in it, a golden retriever. Apparently the motel people didn't mind that the dog was swimming. He'd been in there for at least fifteen minutes and nobody had said anything about it. California was a different world, anyway, Woody thought. Maybe the animal rights group had successfully lobbied for legislation allowing dogs to use motel pools.

The Wild Palms Motel, where Woody Dumas was staying, was in the middle of Hollywood, one block south of Sunset. It was not the kind of place Woody thought he could ever get used to, let alone like. The weather was good enough, he supposed, but the people in L.A. had a way of talking that put him off. It was as if they were convinced everything they said either had a deeper meaning or meant something other than what Woody thought they were saying. Maybe it was the spectre of the film industry that made everyone want to feel as if they belonged in it, like a club, and were therefore integral to the machinery of the place. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but whatever it was, Woody didn't get it.