Right as Rain

'You talk to Coleman?' said Lizardo, still holding the phone.

'Not since the last time. I'll call him from Baltimore tonight.'

'Will he take the cocaine on the next run?'

'He said that he buys his cocaine from a supplier in Los Angeles and he doesn't want to change. But I told him, if he wants our manteca, he will have to take the cocaine. I told him that we can no longer sell one without the other. We are selling the manteca to the Boones for a very good price. Even with the bounce the Boones put on it, Coleman knows he cannot buy the heroin any cheaper.'

'What if he refuses?'

'We'll have the Boones sell the manteca to someone else.'

Lizardo reached across the seat, dropped the glove box door, and removed his Davis.32. It was a small gun, good at close range, and it fit neatly in the pocket of his pleated black slacks. He dropped it there and for a moment considered the situation. Nestor never asked for his business advice, but sometimes Lizardo came up with good ideas. He thought he had one now.

'Listen,' said Lizardo. 'We'll go back to selling Coleman direct. It'll be cheaper for him, right? Maybe that will convince him to take the coke as well.'

'You forget why we got the Boones involved to begin with?'

'We didn't. Our cousin Roberto did, when he and the little one were together in the joint.'

'We asked Roberto to find a mule for us, remember?'

'Oh, yeah.'

Nestor exhaled a long breath. He had to remember to be patient with his brother, whose brain worked very slowly.

'Lizardo. Do you want to go into that lousy city, deal with the niggers directly?'

'No.'

'Then we need the Boones. For now, anyway. So leave little Ray alone, understand? You are always trying to get him excited.'

'Fuck,' said Lizardo. It sounded like 'fawk.'

Edna Loomis had the Ford pickup bouncing on the gravel road, doing a real good number on the shocks but not really thinking on it, as she was in a big hurry to get on back to the house. Travis Tritt sang loudly in the cab. She had turned up the volume on the dash radio to keep herself pumped.

The night before, she had made an impression of Ray's key in some special putty she'd picked up at the hardware store, on the advice of a girlfriend of hers who loved to smoke crystal, too. This girlfriend, a big-hair girl named Johanna, got her convinced that Ray would never miss a little here and there if she was to take it, and besides, all the good stuff Edna was giving away to Ray for free, it was owed her to get some of that stash on a regular basis. Edna was Ray's woman, after all, almost a wife, and why should a wife have to ask every time she wanted to get high? After a couple of Courage and Cokes, Edna began to see Johanna's point.

So, the night before, after Ray had gone to sleep, Edna'd slipped the key off that ring of his with the chain attached to it. He woke up in the morning, the key was right where it had been when he'd hung his jeans over the bedroom chair, and Ray was none the wiser. She had taken the putty to this dude Johanna knew, and he'd fixed her up. She had a shiny new key in her pocket now.

Edna pulled the F-150 into the yard between the Taurus and Ray's Shovelhead. Ray's legs were hanging out the open door of the Taurus, his steel toolbox on the ground at his feet. He was always fooling with that car, that or the Harley. He got to his feet and stood, brushing himself off, as Edna came down out of the truck's cab.

'Thought I told you to go out to a movie or somethin',' said Ray. 'You know me and Daddy got business here today.'

'Forgot my tape box,' said Edna. 'Can't be drivin' around all day without my music'

'Well, hurry up and get it, then get gone.'

'Where's Earl?'

'In the house, why you ask that?'

'No reason, just wonderin' where he was. Look, don't worry about me, you just finish up whatever it is you're doin'.'

Ray got back into the car and laid himself down between the bench seat and the gas and brake pedals, wondering why women talked so much about nothin'. He was putting the trapdoor by the steering column back together, having taken it apart and oiled the movable parts. The door had been dropping slow lately, and he couldn't have that. A little WD-40 to finish the job, then put everything back in place. After that, he and his father would be ready to meet the Rodriguez brothers, out by that mall.

Edna walked through the barn to the back of it real quick, running on adrenalin. She put her new key to the lock of the steel door and smiled as the key caught and turned. She went inside the drug room without even looking over her shoulder. Johanna had been right: If you had the guts, it was easy.

She didn't throw the slide bolt on the door because that would be worse, trying to explain to Ray why she was in here behind a locked door. The other way, he just walked in on her, she wouldn't look so guilty, and anyhow, she could always use that old excuse, female curiosity.

All right now, Edna, don't you go lingerin'.

She saw the stove where Ray cooked the meth straight away. Above it was shelf, and on the shelf were old prescription pill bottles, amber plastic with white plastic tops, and she opened one and found spansules, Ray's personal stash. This was not what she was looking for. She opened another and found it to be filled with rocks of ice. She dumped half the rocks out into her hand and dropped them in a film canister she carried in her pocket. What, was Ray going to count every piece of ice he had? Like Johanna liked to say, I don't think so.

Before she left the room she had a quick look around at Ray's tools and weights. Boys' toys. She'd never complain about his liftin' weights, though. Ray was on the short side, but he did make her damp down there when he took off his shirt at night. She liked that bulldog look.

Somewhere in here was the entrance to their little tunnel, too. She'd had a good laugh with Johanna over that one, after the two of them had had way too many drinks one time at this tavern, place that had the jukebox played Whitesnake and Warrant and those other groups Johanna liked, down near Poolesville. Ray liked to try and scare her, tell her about the snakes that lived down in the tunnel, but she didn't pay him much mind. She wasn't afraid of no snakes; snakes weren't nothin' but overgrown worms. And why would she want to go down in that dirty tunnel for, anyway?

She walked out of the room as confidently as she'd gone in. No one was in the saloon area of the bar that Ray and Earl had built and decorated themselves. No one had seen a thing.

She locked the door behind her, shaking hair off her shoulders. She'd done it, and she was proud of what she'd done.

Earl Boone sat on the edge of his bed, killing off a can of Busch beer. He crushed the can in his hand, dropped it in a wastebasket, where it clanged against other empties, and went to his bedroom window. He flipped open the lid on a box of Marlboros, shook out a smoke, and drew it from the box with his lips. He lit it with a Zippo that had a raised map of Vietnam on one side and the Marine Corps insignia on the other. Below the map were the words 'Paid to Kill.' Every time he looked at the lighter, he recalled with some bit of fondness that he was full of piss and vinegar when he was a kid.

Edna was coming out the barn like she was on fire, walking real fast and shaking that hair and ass of hers, heading for the truck. Girl was always going fast, 'cept in the morning, when she looked like somethin' that the cat wouldn't think of dragging indoors. Now she and Ray were talking or arguing over something, he couldn't never tell which. Earl didn't understand why Ray didn't just backhand the girl when she got to sass-talking like she was prone to do. Around other men, Ray had a temper he couldn't control, but put him near anything with a fur piece between its legs and he was tamer than a broke-dick dog.