“So it was the union men all the time,” she said.
Dunc nodded. “They collected the first week’s dues and the fifty-buck initiation fee from each batch of Mexicans Hector and Rephaim brought up across the border at a hundred bucks each. They were making a mint.”
“I still don’t think Rephaim was involved.”
They rolled over onto their backs. “Okay, every two weeks Hector would deliver another crew. Immigration would show up every two weeks, steady as clockwork. They’d get a rake-off and great efficiency reports.”
“What about Donovan?” she persisted. “Was he involved?”
“Maybe he knew in a general way, but I don’t think so — he got too big a kick out of me hiding them away in the cornfield.”
He wanted to spend every minute with Penny until she went back east, but she needed her temp job for next term’s tuition. Dunc wanted to give her what he’d saved from his summer’s labors, just to have the time with her, but she wouldn’t take it.
After he picked her up from work, they’d go to a movie, or to eat dinner, or both; before he took her home they’d find a place to park and make love. No motels: Penny staying out all night would stretch her Aunt Goodie’s romantic nature too far.
One night when Penny had to work late, Dunc went to the Purple Cockatoo. But Pepe’s picture had been replaced by that of an impossibly blond woman calling herself Skylark Nightingale.
“When did Pepe leave?” Dunc asked the square-headed Germanic bartender. He had meaty hands and thick wrists but a surprisingly delicate touch mixing drinks.
The blue eyes looked blank. “Who?”
“Oh — uh... Pepper Paglia. The piano player.”
“Never heard of him.”
“He was playing here just last weekend,” said Dunc, fuming.
“I was off.” He turned away toward another customer.
Dunc nursed his beer. Would Pepe show up at the picnic on Monday? Or had he moved on again, abruptly, as he’d left Vegas? He always expressed himself better with music than with words; maybe he didn’t want to talk about that bloody night. Trying to hold him was like trying to hold quicksilver in your hand.
They were standing with a score of others in a line stretched out across the field, a wall of people on either side. Dunc wore Frisko jeans and a sport shirt; Penny, shorts and a sleeveless blouse. She had her hair pulled back behind her ears.
“May the best man win,” said Dunc with a manly grin.
Penny gave her marvelous laugh. “Or woman.”
A whistle blew. They began hopping frantically down the field in their potato sacks. Dunc tripped over his own feet and sprawled in the dirt. Penny won. Goodie and Carl were with Dunc; Carl sadly laid a dollar on his wife’s hot little hand, said to Dunc with a sneer, “Some great athlete!”
“I didn’t play football in a potato sack.”
Penny was aghast. “You bet against your own niece?”
A brass band was playing John Philip Sousa, the blare of horns carrying even over the cries and laughter of children. Cooking meat wafted its smell over from the picnic tables. At Griffith Park the great American Legion Labor Day picnic was in full swing. Pepe hadn’t showed.
“The turkey shoot starts in a few minutes,” said Carl. “I will single-handedly bring dignity back to the males.”
“Every year he enters the turkey shoot, every year we have to buy our Thanksgiving turkey,” Aunt Goodie said sadly. To Penny she added, “Let’s go reserve a picnic table.”
Penny said solemnly to Dunc, “Shoot one for the Gipper.”
Not that it was a literal turkey shoot. The contestants shot at suits of playing cards printed on paper. The one who got the best poker hand with five shots won a frozen turkey.
A large red-faced man was telling a joke about a sailor up from San Diego to pick up girls in L.A. A bartender had told him to go way out Sepulveda, find a shopping center, and carry the groceries of a pretty woman wearing a wedding ring to her car.
“ ‘Married broads are horny, she’ll take you home to bed.’ ”
“ ‘What if were in bed and her husband comes home?’ asks the sailor. The bartender says, ‘You run into the shower, and she tells her husband you’re her cousin in the navy up from San Diego. Then you get dressed and leave.’ ”
The big man was at least forty, at least an inch over six feet, with a round rubicund face and silvery receding hair swept straight back from his forehead. His nose was small, almost pug; his surface impression of beaming good nature was somewhat belied by small, quick blue eyes, watchful in repose.
“So they’re going at it when the husband drives up. The sailor runs into the shower and the wife tells her husband her cousin is up from San Diego. The husband takes one look at him and says, ‘You son of a bitch, I said way out Sepulveda!’ ”
They shot with .22 rifles with open sights; almost everyone was older than Dunc and nearly all of them had been in the service during the war. Uncle Carl was indeed a deplorable shot: only one of his five bullets even hit a card. The big jokester tried for a full house and got two pair, the best shooting yet.
“I can taste that bird now,” he grinned.
Dunc tried for a full house, too, and got it. Aces over eights. The big man came over to congratulate him.
“The dead man’s hand,” he said. “That’s fancy shooting.”
“Thanks,” said Dunc. Carl handed them both icy cold bottles of beer. The ladies appeared. Dunc said to Goodie, “You don’t have to buy your Thanksgiving turkey, after all.”
“How about a rematch?” The big guy was deceptively soft-looking; under his flowered sport shirt were thick arms and a wide chest.
“You’re on!” exclaimed Dunc. Penny hadn’t been there to see him win, but she was smiling confidently, serenely now. He really wanted to beat this guy in front of her.
His opponent tried for a full house again, this time got it. He turned to Dunc. “Beat that one, kid.”
Dunc put four consecutive bullets into the ace card.
“And Christmas, too,” he said to Goodie.
Penny hugged him, laughing in delight. “My hero.”
The big man drew him aside, stuck out his hand. “Eddie Drinker Cope. Everybody calls me Drinker.”
“Pierce Duncan. Everybody calls me Dunc.”
“Where in hell’d you learn to shoot like that?”
“Going out plinking gophers and blackbirds with a .22 back in Minnesota. Bluejays, sparrows, squirrels, chipmunks, feral cats — just about anything that moved and wasn’t a songbird.”
“None of the above for me,” said Drinker Cope. “I learned mine in the Marines.” He paused, frowning. “Duncan. Pierce Duncan. Yeah!” He snapped his fingers. “The alien-smuggling case — goofy religious cult, hod carriers’ union, some racketed-up immigration guys. You did some great detective work there.”
“Are you a cop?” asked Dunc.
“Used to be. Believe me, you got the knack, you could develop into a top-notch investigator.” He gave Dunc a card.
“Ever up my way...” said Drinker Cope.
On Tuesday morning Dunc packed and carried everything out to the Grey Ghost. Uncle Ben shook his hand and Aunt Pearl cried again. Even Grandma Trabert gave him a careful hug.
“You have a good life, Dunc. I’ll pray for you.”
“I’ll pray for you, too, Grandma.”
Before he got in the car and drove off, he promised them that he’d keep in touch, knowing that he wouldn’t. He was already starting to feel like a balloon slipping its tether.