“I don’t know, Aunt Polly,” Kip hesitantly replied. “I was kind of thinking about going downtown tonight to visit an old friend.
“Well, that just works out great, sugar! The bingo is right downtown. I can pick you up and drop you off to meet your little friend when we finish. Don’t worry. We don’t stay late. We refined ladies prefer to play our cards and leave early. If you stay too late,” Polly whispered, leaning into Kip’s ear, “the crowd gets liquored up and rowdy. You can’t hardly hear your numbers being called. We’ll be gone by eight. I promise. And then you can meet your little friend.”
“Aunt Polly. Really, I don’t know…”
“Really, I insist,” interjected Polly. “I’d feel so much safer with my big, strong, handsome nephew escorting me. These days downtown Austin is plumb full of drunken fraternity boys on Friday nights. They roam the streets making a clamor as they stumble their way to the bars and dens of ungodliness on Sixth Street.”
“But, Aunt Polly, you see…”
“An unescorted woman on a Friday night in downtown Austin!” Polly again interrupted. “Well, she’s just asking to be taken advantage of by perverts.”
“Well, okay, if you really feel that way,” Kip reluctantly agreed. “But only if we don’t stay too late.”
“Perfect, perfect, perfect!” Polly squealed. “This will be so much fun Kip. You’re going to love my bingo girlfriends! Not too late. I promise. Jesus as my witness.”
“Groceries are put away,” said Bennett as he entered the parlor. “Polly, here’s your lemonade. You feeling better?”
“Positively!” Polly gushed. “Kip has kindly agreed to be my bingo escort this evening.”
“Well, ain’t that something,” Bennett chuckled as he handed Polly the glass.
“Dad, you wouldn’t you have any interest in joining us…would you?” Kip asked hopefully.
“That some kind of trick question?” Bennett growled as he plopped into the chair on the other side of the room and pulled out his pipe. “I’d rather be stripped butt naked and tied to a fire ant hill.”
CHAPTER THREE
Bingo!
The late afternoon sea breeze fluttered the thin red drapes in the open windows of an isolated beach house set along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Inside the house, a telephone was ringing. A heavyset drug cartel lieutenant sitting in the open living room of the beachside home reached to answer it.
“Hello,” the man said into the phone.
“Is everything in place?” the voice on the other end of the line asked.
“Everything is ready,” the heavyset man replied as he watched the waves roll gently onto the shore outside the house. “Preparations in Houston and Guatemala are complete. I just confirmed it. All we need is for your man to make the delivery on time.”
“He’ll make it,” the voice on the phone replied.
“We’ve never moved a shipment this way before, and never one this big.”
“He’ll make it, but I want your men to be extra careful,” the voice said.
“Security at the ports shouldn’t be a problem.”
“I’m not talking about the port authorities,” the voice said. “I’m talking about the other cartels. Outside of Juarez, another shipment was taken in the desert. Some people seem to think we’re responsible.”
“That’s ridiculous,” the heavyset man replied. “We don’t even have any men there.”
“Not that we knew of, but I’m afraid we did.”
“Do you know who?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Right now, nothing,” the voice said. “Just make sure that the shipment gets here. Once we have it, if the other cartels want to go to war, then we’ll go to war. And once we have the shipment, I’ll take care of our friend who is causing all these problems for us in the desert. Call me when you have everything loaded for delivery. I’ll be at the ranch.”
“Sí, Padre,” the heavyset man said as he hung up the phone.
Late the next afternoon, Aunt Polly picked Kip up in front of the big white house in her Mary Kay pink Cadillac. She was wearing the same floral dress as the day before, Max’s muddy paw prints almost cleaned away. Without her big white hat, the enormous mane of curly red hair bloomed in every direction like a crazy clown wig.
“Hop on in, sugar,” Polly said as she rolled down the driver’s-side window. “We don’t want them starting without us.”
Kip plopped into the white leather passenger seat of the hideously colored car while Polly peeled out from the curb in a cloud of dust before he even had a chance to close the door behind him. Polly drove them toward downtown, traveling well in excess of the speed limit and rarely paying notice to pedestrians, other motorists, or traffic signs. Kip reached for his seatbelt as Polly checked her makeup in the vanity mirror. Failing to notice the traffic light turning red in time, Polly laid on the horn while the crossing traffic screeched to a halt as she swerved left and right past several cars that were already halfway through the intersection.
“I declare!” exclaimed Polly as she retrieved her lipstick from her purse. “Some people in this town just don’t know how to drive.”
Polly barreled down the road, weaving back and forth between the lanes as she applied another garish coat of red lipstick to her already shellacked lips. Placing the lipstick back in her purse, she inspected herself again in the mirror, puckering her lips and sucking in her cheeks like a fish.
“Perfect,” she approved with a smile. “Can’t go to bingo looking like some kind of dirty-legged streetwalker.”
After a few more blocks of driving, Kip’s right foot was cramping up from continually pressing down on the imaginary brake pedal he envisioned on his side of the floorboard. Reaching again into her purse, Aunt Polly pulled out a bingo marker.
“Here, sweetie,” Polly said as she handed the marker to Kip. “I want you to use my lucky pink bingo dauber. It gets a bingo almost every night; well, it’s been on a bit of a cold streak lately, but almost every night. Although, just between you and me, I think it ain’t the dauber. I think that Penny ain’t being straight with me. She’s the stuck-up old coot selling the card stacks at the door. I think she’s purposely holding out on me because my pralines beat hers in this year’s Travis County bake-off. I just know she’s manipulating my numbers.”
“Well, Aunt Polly, I’m sure if you kept track of the numbers called and gave your old cards to Avery, he could use his setup to perform some kind of regression analysis and determine whether you’re being cheated or not.”
“Avery!” Polly screamed. “I wouldn’t ask his opinion about anything,” she continued as she rolled her eyes. “That boy is touched and no doubt probably touching himself as we speak.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Kip replied, chuckling. “He is definitely a bit of a character.”
“Now, then,” Polly said as she flew through another traffic light, just turning red. “Before we get to the bingo, you have to know your proper etiquette. First, absolutely no ‘Jumping the Gun,’ that’s calling a bingo before the caller says the number. Some people call a bingo when the number is posted on the big board but hasn’t been officially announced by the caller yet. Always wait for the caller,” she added as she wagged a finger in Kip’s face. “Makes me furious when people don’t!”
“I’ll try to remember.”
“Second, no ‘Calling a Falsie.’ That’s calling a bingo when you don’t really have one. Miss Pearl gets particularly agitated with Falsies. This one time, she tore up her cards after this man called a bingo, only to find out that drunken cowboy had mismarked his numbers. If the floorwalkers, they’re the ones that check the cards and confirm your bingo, hadn’t stepped in to restrain her, she would have knocked that S-H-I-T kicker’s head plumb all the way to Round Rock. Oh, and speaking of Miss Pearl, if we get there first, mind you don’t sit in her lucky seat. I’ll be sure to point it out. This one time, some rookie, not one of the regulars, took her seat by accident and it dang near got ugly.”