Nancy said, "Do you mind my asking about her?"
"No, it's all right." Majestyk paused. "I don't know, I guess people change. Or else it turns out they're somebody else all the time and you didn't realize it. Do you think it's hard to know people?"
"Not always," Nancy said. "Was she blond, with blue eyes?"
"Most of the time blond. You put your hair up in rollers? You have very pretty hair."
"Once in a while I have. Why?"
"I picture my wife, I see her with rollers. She was always fooling with her hair, or washing it."
"You have any kids?"
"Little girl, seven."
"And you miss her."
"I guess I do. I haven't seen either of them in two years. They moved to Los Angeles."
A silence began to lengthen and Nancy said, "Are you thinking about them?"
"No, not really."
"What are you thinking about?"
"I'm thinking I'd like to know you better."
"Well, I'll fill out a personnel form," Nancy said. "Read it over, see if I pass."
"Always a little bit on the muscle." He was staring at her as he said, "You're very pretty."
"No, not very. But I suppose not bad-looking either. Not somebody you'd kick out of bed, huh, if that's what you've got in mind."
"Why don't you try and relax a little," Majestyk said, "and be yourself. Find out what it's like."
"You want to go to bed with me. Why don't you say it?"
"I'd like to hold you."
"See how close we can get?"
"Sometimes, hard as you try, you can't get close enough," he said. "You know that?" She didn't answer, but he knew by her expression, the soft smile, she was aware of the feeling. Wanting to lie very close to someone, holding each other, not saying anything, because they wouldn't have to use words to say it.
He said, "Let's go home, all right? Go to my house."
There was no need to make him wait. Or, as he said, to be on the muscle. She was aware that they knew each other, each other's feelings. She knew she could relax with him and be herself. Still she hesitated, she supposed out of habit, before saying to him, "All right, your house." She smiled then as he smiled. "But first I'll go to the Ladies'-if it isn't locked."
"If it is," he said, "I'll kick it open."
He watched her cross the room-and the men looking up at her as she passed their tables-to the little hall that led back to the kitchen and the rest rooms.
He saw a man come away from the jukebox and turn into the hallway and knew, even before the man with the hat and the sunglasses looked over his shoulder and grinned at him, it was Bobby Kopas. Majestyk started to slide out of the booth, rising. Then stopped, and sat down again as he felt the pressure of the hand on his shoulder.
"How you doing, buddy?"
Majestyk looked up, then past Renda toward the bar. "There're two cops sitting over there."
Renda took his time. He slid into the seat where Nancy had been and looked at Majestyk before saying, "If there weren't, you'd already be dead."
Majestyk's eyes went to the hallway again. Kopas was still there, watching.
"Leave the girl alone, all right? She doesn't have anything to do with this."
"I don't give a shit about the girl," Renda said. "As long as she stays in the can, out of the way. I got something to tell you. You probably already know it, but I want to make sure you do. I'm going to kill you."
"When?" Majestyk said.
"I don't know. It could be tomorrow. It could be next week." Renda spoke in a normal tone, quietly, without the sound of a threat in his voice. "You could hide in the basement of the police station, but I'm going to get you and you know it."
Majestyk raised the beer bottle and took a drink. Putting it down again his hand remained on the bottle and he seemed to study it thoughtfully before looking at Renda again.
"Can I ask you why?"
"I told you why. We make a deal or you're dead. The fact I got off has got nothing to do with it. You jammed me. You tried to, and nobody does that."
"I don't guess I can talk you out of it then, huh?"
"Jesus Christ-"
"Or there's anything I can do about it?"
"You can run," Renda said. "I'll find you. You can live at the police station. But you got to come out some time. There's no statute of limitations on this one. Whether I kill you tonight or a year from tonight, you're still going to be dead."
Majestyk nodded and was thoughtful again, fooling with the beer bottle. He said, "Well, I guess I got nothing to lose, have I?"
He raised the bottle in his left hand, but it was the right fist that did the job, hooked into Renda's face, in the moment he was distracted by the bottle, and slammed him back against the partition. There was no purpose in hitting him again or hitting him with the bottle. There was little satisfaction in it; but he was letting the guy know he wasn't a goat tied to a post. If Renda wanted him he was going to have to work for it.
The people at the next tables saw the blood and look of pure astonishment on Renda's face. They saw the expression begin to change as he touched his face, a dead expression that told nothing, but stared at Vincent Majestyk as he got up from the table.
They heard Majestyk lean over, his hands on the table, and say to the man he had hit, "Why don't you call the cops?" They watched him walk away as the man sat there.
Bobby Kopas didn't like it at all, what was happening now. Majestyk coming toward him. Renda, in the booth, who could stand up any second and start blasting the guy. The two cops at the bar, trying to see past the people at the tables who were standing now.
But nothing happened. Kopas stepped back as Majestyk came into the hallway and went past him-didn't even look at him-to the Ladies' Room. He didn't do anything. Renda didn't. Nobody did. Majestyk pushed open the door to the Ladies' Room and said to the girl who was standing there, "Let's go home."
It could have been a good night. Then there was no chance of it being even a pretty good night. They got back to the place to find no one there. Not even Mendoza and his family. Majestyk saw the flares and the flashing lights across the field, on the highway. The lights were there for some time before he went over and found out a deputy had been killed. Hit and run it looked like.
Harold Ritchie blew up when he saw Majestyk. He said, "Goddamn it, you're the one started this!"
Majestyk said to him, "Listen, an hour ago I had fourteen people at my place counting my foreman and his family. Now everybody's gone, chased off while you're sitting in a bar drinking beer."
"And a man was killed and we don't know who done it because I had to watch you!" Ritchie yelled at him.
There was no point standing on the highway arguing with a sheriff's deputy in the pink-red flickering light of the flares that had been set around the area.
Majestyk went home. He told Nancy what had happened, then told her to sleep in the bedroom, he'd sleep on the couch in the living room. When she objected he said, "I'm not going to argue with you. You're sleeping in there."
She didn't say any more and he didn't either. It wasn't until the next morning they found out what had been done inside the packing shed.
10
When Nancy came into the shed, Majestyk was opening the cartons that were stitched with bullet holes and stained where juice from the melons had seeped out. She looked at the open cartons scattered about the floor, at the chunks of melon, yellow fragments, on the conveyor line.
"If he can't have you, he'll take your melons," the girl said. "How does it look?"
"Some are all right."
He walked past her, out to the loading dock, and stared at his empty fields and the pale morning sky. Some were all right. Spend a half day to sort them, maybe have one load to deliver to the broker. Most of the crop was still on the vines. If he could get it in he would at least break even and be able to try it again next year. If he could get the crop in. If he could get a crew. And if Renda would forget the whole thing and leave him alone.