“This gal ain’t no stepdaughter?”
“Nope.”
The old man shook his head. “I hate them pimpin’ sonsabitches. I ain’t got nothing against pussy, and I reckon some gal wants to sell it, that’s her business, but this place ain’t so cut-and-dried. I think a gal wants to leave, they don’t just let her leave. I think she wants to go, they ought to let her go. It ain’t the pussy sellin’ bothers me, it’s the lack of free will.”
“I take it this place has been here a while?”
“Many, many years. Used to be run by a madam named Lilly Filigree, and I think most of the girls there chose to be there then, and from what I know, she treated ’em good. When I was a young man I went up to there myself, rode a little tail up the canyon oncet or twicet. But now, last ten years or so, it’s just business. All business, and it ain’t the girls’ business.”
“Anyone ever tried to close the place down?”
“Oh yeah, back when there were enough people in this town to fill a church, a bunch of self-righteous old biddies tried to shut it down. Mostly ’cause their men were up there getting their ashes hauled now and then.”
“They didn’t have any luck?”
“Sheriff, he kind of slapped the madam’s wrist now and then. Ran some of the girls in around election time. But it didn’t mean nothin’. But it’s not that way now. Not just a bunch of ladies makin’ a buck for a fuck. Folks run that show, they ain’t sweet. Used to be a colored lady up there ran it. She came after Filigree. She was as mean as a goddamn crocodile. Seen her a few times in town. Always wore this big old sack dress.”
“A muumuu,” I said.
“You say so. She went away and there was a cowboy midget and a big bastard runnin’ it. Midget liked to come to town so people would look at him. Strutted around like a banty rooster. Right proud of himself, he was.”
I thought about Red and his expensive Western-cut suits. I thought about the lady in the muumuu, resting in a box at the bottom of some lake in Arkansas. Maybe still in the muumuu, shit-stained as it was.
Taxi Man spat into the soft drink bottle, said, “Figured that midget and ole bigin’ was runnin’ things. Then they were gone too and there’s a fellow up there now scares me just to see him come into town and sit in the barbershop. He don’t even pretend he does anything other than sell pussy. But hell, there ain’t nobody ’round here cares. This ain’t where he gets his action. It’s them conventioneers and such pay his bills.”
“I see.”
“No you don’t. You go up there and fuck around, and that monster gets hold of you, they gonna find you in some rock quarry with a .44 slug behind the ear.”
“Cheery scenario,” I said.
“Not really.”
“Any chance you’re going to tell me where this place is?”
“All right,” he said. He produced a stubby pencil from his pocket, wet it with his tongue, used it to draw a map on the fly page under the title of one of the paperback books. I thanked him, took the book, put it in my back pocket.
“Had any balls, I’d go with you,” he said.
“It’s not your problem.”
“Things like this ought to be everyone’s problem.”
“I guess.”
“Maybe if I was younger.”
“Sure.”
I started out the door and he called out, “Hey, boy, you watch your ass.”
“Thanks,” I said.
12
At the motel I told Brett and Leonard what I had learned.
Brett said, “I don’t get it. Everyone knows it’s up there. This taxi man, he says he knows the girls are sort of prisoners—”
“Sort of,” I interrupted. “Tillie got into this by choice. This is the sort of business you don’t know who you’re going to end up with. Not just in bed, but in business. One day you’re selling your product and paying a percentage. Next day you’re owned and selling your product and you get a percentage, and sometimes maybe the customer gives you a black eye. A disease.”
“But the cops?” Brett said.
“There’s one local cop,” I said. “He probably makes more money a year than all the whores do, and he don’t make it on law enforcement.”
“So they get away with it,” Brett said.
“Yeah,” I said. “And the place has a reputation almost like a landmark. Kind of a hangover from the past. Lot of people think, well, they’re just sellin’ meat, what’s the problem?”
“So,” Leonard said, “the next step is?”
“Way I see it,” I said, “is I could go up there now, pose as a customer and try and take Tillie out. But I think it’s better we wait until tonight. That way, I pull it off, we can hustle her out of town with some dark to help us.”
Leonard nodded. “That sounds all right. You go in there, though, you go in with a gun. I didn’t haul all these weapons down here for nothing.”
“Actually,” I said, “I hope you did.”
“You know what I mean,” Leonard said. “I’m going to be nearby, and not with any handgun neither.”
I looked at Brett. She sat quietly, churning her own thoughts about.
Shortly before dark Leonard and I walked down to the Coke machine next to the motel office. I put coins in the machine and got myself a Diet Coke, Leonard a Dr Pepper, and Brett an orange drink. I gave Leonard the Dr Pepper, slipped Brett’s can into my coat pocket, pulled the tab on the Diet Coke and drank some of it.
“How do you think Brett’s doing?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Leonard said. “She’s hard to read.”
I looked out at the highway. Leaves were being blown downhill by a sharp cool wind. The gold and red and brown leaves whirled and whipped above the highway in the fading sunlight like dying birds, floated down and stuck to the cement. Cars came by and tossed them up again. It began to sprinkle gently.
“You watch her,” I said.
“I will.”
We went back to the room, drank our drinks, and I read some of the Western Taxi Man had given me. Leonard paced, went to the bathroom numerous times. Brett lay still on the bed. Once when I looked at her and smiled, she looked at me as if I were nothing more than the nasty wallpaper behind me. It made me nervous.
It went like that for another hour, then the daylight faded. I closed up my book. Leonard handed me the little .38 and I put it in an ankle holster and strapped it on and pulled my pants leg over it. Leonard stuck a revolver under his shirt and gave Brett one. She looked at the pistol with an expression that was hard to figure. Maybe she was thinking about Tillie. Maybe she was thinking what I was thinking. I was scared.
Brett slipped the gun into the holster Leonard provided, strapped it on under her coat. Leonard rolled all the big guns back into the blankets, except for the double-barrel. He held it up and looked at me. “Honky spreader.”
We gathered up our goods. Leonard carried the shotgun down close to his side. It was raining when we went out. We put the gun-stuffed blanket in the trunk, tossed the luggage in the back. Leonard put the shotgun with the luggage. We stopped up front of the office, and I went in and checked us out of the motel.
In the car I got out my flashlight and opened up the paperback Taxi Man had written on. I studied the map and told Leonard how to go. The rain pecked at our windshield and the wet leaves slapped against it and tangled in the windshield wipers, wadded, and were tossed away.
We drove on into Hootie Hoot. Up Main Street and past the taxi stand. I tried to look and see if I could see Taxi Man at his post behind the card table, but it was dark and the street was poorly lit and it was raining hard now.
On up the street we went, out of Hootie Hoot. The rain began to die. I studied the crude map inside the paperback, and we followed it to a blacktop road that turned right. We took it, went along on that for five miles, then turned left on another blacktop. This one was narrow and wound down amongst scrubby Oklahoma trees wound tight with darkness and nesting crows.