Beside him, Jake looked thin and dry, the leathery look of a cowman, faded frontier shirt, faded jeans and cracked boots. Lee watched the two men head inside the mess hall, eyeing the four bulging money bags they carried, bags marked with a bank logo that Lee couldn’t read, and each sealed at the top with a green drawstring and a metal clasp. Watching Delgado with speculation, he headed on in, to collect his pay.
The pickers, the minute they saw Delgado’s car, had piled out of the trucks laughing and talking and crowding fast into the mess hall for their wages. They were lined up inside, shoving and jostling, eager to pocket the week’s take, twenty to twenty-five dollars apiece, depending on how fast a fellow worked, more money than they’d ever see in Mexico. And the bags held, as well, the wages for Lee himself and for Jake and the other five foremen.
He knew from Jake that Delgado made the rounds to all four ranches every Friday, heading out from Hemet, knew that Blythe was his last stop, that he’d stay with Jake overnight, head back home in the morning. The same drill, week after week. Leave Hemet at dawn carrying all four payrolls, carrying enough cash to set a fellow up real nice.
Maybe not as much as Lee would like to have on him before heading for Mexico, but a nice start. And how could Delgado miss a week’s wages? The thought quickened Lee’s pulse, wondering where Delgado kept the money until he headed out. In the local Hemet bank, maybe picked it up the night before? Or in a home safe?
If the safe was one of those big walk-in jobs, that would be a poser. He wished he’d paid closer attention to the half-dozen master safe crackers he’d known over the years in one prison or another. Though he had learned some, all right.
But if there was a safe, what other kind of security did Delgado have? Dogs? Guards? Some kind of electronic device?
No, it would be better to hit him just as he started out in the morning from Hemet, wait until he was on the road alone, then force him over. He’d need firearms; and he needed to know what weapons Delgado carried, and where, what weapons he had stashed in that big Cadillac, and what weapons he carried on him.
But, picturing himself forcing Delgado’s car off the road, a tremor of fear touched Lee. Was he up to this? Up to handling Delgado alone, as he had always handled his victims in the past, except for those years he ran with Jake? After parting from Jake, he’d blown a couple of jobs, and when he took a good look at what he was now, an honest look at how he’d aged, at how weak he’d grown compared to the man he had been, he didn’t much like what he saw.
But then a dark sense of power kicked in, a sudden surge of certainty. He could do this. What was the matter with him? A dark vitality stirred his blood, strength burned in him, and a hard envy of Ramon Delgado, jealousy for all Delgado had that Lee had never had. A heady resentment boiled in him making him scoff at the idea he was too old to take down Delgado, that he was biting off more than he could handle.
He’d bring this off, he thought, smiling, he could take what he wanted and maybe—maybe he could set Jake up for the fall.
He thought about that, about laying the groundwork for Jake’s arrest, setting up the clues, maybe lift one of Jake’s guns from the house, with Jake’s fingerprints on it, maybe something else of Jake’s left “forgotten” under the seat of the Cadillac. He’d stash the money where no one would find it, return to the ranch innocent as a babe. And when the cops came nosing around he’d be there to sympathize with Lucita, to comfort her, to be enraged at Jake’s betrayal of all they’d had together.
If Lee could hear the cat’s whisper that Lucita would never believe such a story, that thought didn’t last long. The dark presence told him more forcefully that he could do this, he could lay out a foolproof scenario that left Jake guilty beyond doubt, a plan that even Lucita would have to believe.
It would take time to work it out, to put every detail in place. But, thinking about the plan as he moved through the mess hall to the pay table, his certainty, his self-satisfaction, was a dark itch within him.
Taking his turn at the table, where Jake and Delgado were dealing out the week’s cash, he collected his three days’ wages, pocketed the meager change and left the mess hall. He could see the cooks working back in the kitchen, could see that supper wouldn’t be set out on the long serving counter until the payroll had all been dealt with. Winding out between the lines ofcrowding men, he returned to his cabin smiling, liking his plan. He sat on the steps feeling bold and right, watching through the screens the crowd at the long table until a sudden sneeze behind him made him swing up off the steps turning, his fists clenched.
13
But it was only the cat sitting on the rail big as life, lashing its tail, its ears back, glaring at Lee, a gleam in its eye that didn’t bode for good. The big tom’s yellow gaze burned into Lee as if seeing every detail of the plan Lee had embraced. When Lee looked deep, he imagined he saw in Misto’s eyes every image of the robbery that he had envisioned, and none of that knowledge was the cat’s business.
“Make no mistake,” Misto said, “if you follow the passions that were fed to you tonight, you’re lost for eternity, your soul will crumble to dust, there will be nothing left of you to move on and to know the joy of what yet awaits.” The cat sneezed again. “He tells you lies you’re toosmart to believe. You’re too smart, Lee, to suck up to the wraith’s passions, when you know they will destroy you.”
“Go to hell,” Lee said. The cat was too nosy, too opinionated, too bossy. Turning his back, he sat down again on the step.
“You know, of course,” Misto said softly, “that young picker’s been watching you, that young Latino man standing in the shadows between the sheds, that young Tony Valdez, watching you with great interest, asyou watched Jake and Delgado.”
Lee lifted his eyes to scan the yard, watched Tony move away deeper between the cabins and disappear among the sheds.
“Valdez has a quick mind,” the cat said, “he wonders what you found so interesting. The boy is full of questions.”
Lee thought reluctantly that in the future maybe he ought to listen to the cat, after all, ought to swallow back his defiance and pay attention. And as Valdez disappeared into the night, Lee decided he’d better pay more attention, too, to who was observing him. Had better play it closer to the chest before Valdez had that whole crew of young hotheads nosing into his business.
“Maybe,” the cat said, “you should take a better look at where those dark plans are coming from, before they take you down, Lee Fontana.” The cat’s challenge pulled Lee in one direction, while his thieving desire drew him in the other. Seated on the cabin steps, he watched Jake and Ramon Delgado leave the mess hall, striding away toward the ranch house. On the porch, they paused. Delgado moved on inside but Jake turned back, heading across the dry yard toward Lee’s cabin. Jake paused at the bottom step, his boots coated with pale sand, the band of his tan Stetson dark with sweat. “Come on, Lee, join us for dinner. Just a quick bite before Ramon and I start on the books, he’d like to meet you.”
“Why? I can’t be the first parolee he’s hired.”
Jake looked surprised.“You’re my friend, he said he’d like to meet you.”
“Sorry,” Lee said, rising. “Just tired. I’ll stop by in a few minutes, let me scrape off some of the dust.”
Jake looked him over, nodded, and turned away.
Lee didn’t want to meet Delgado. Besides a prickly conscience, he’d had a long, hard day, his legs ached, sand and dust made his eyes sting, couldn’t Jake see he was beat? Jake took a couple of steps up, reaching to stroke the yellow cat. “Don’t know where this one came from. Dozen cats around the place, new one shows up now and then, keep rats out of the seed and food stores. Most of them are half wild. This one’s friendly enough, he makes right up to a person.”