“Yaaaa-hoooo!” LQ hollered.
We went barreling up the block and there was the Chrysler, coming from our right on Carpenter. Brando wheeled a hard left just in front of their car and Parker had to stomp his brakes to keep from ramming us. We came to a halt at the stop sign at the corner, the highway just another block ahead, and the Chrysler rolled up behind us with its klaxon blaring.
Parker stuck his big head out the window and shouted, “You stupid shit! I oughta yank you out of that car and rip your ass in half!”
There was one car coming our way from the direction of the highway and no traffic at all behind the Chrysler.
“Now,” I said. LQ stepped out on one side of the car and I got out on the other and we swung up the shotguns. Behind the glare of the Chrysler’s headlights Healy was just a dark shape on the other side of the windshield for an instant before the glass exploded in the blast of my Remington. LQ’s shotgun boomed at the same time and we pumped fast and fired three more loads apiece and then scooted back into the Dodge. Brando sped us across the intersection and past the car stopped on the other side. Nobody in it could’ve seen our faces under our hat brims even if they’d tried to, especially not against our headlights’ blaze. Hell, all they would remember was the flashing blasts.
Then we were on the highway and headed back south.
“Wooooo!” LQ yelled. “Yall see that big bastard’s face when I pointed the pump at him? The surprise of his goddamn life. Half his head went all over the backseat. Yow!”
“Piece of cake,” Brando said. “Just like I figured.”
An hour south of Dallas we stopped at a roadhouse and gorged on barbecue ribs and corn on the cob and shared two pitchers of beer. We were loud and happy and laughing like hell. Everything tasted great, every wisecrack was hilarious. Just being alive was a kind of aching pleasure from way deep inside.
“Listen,” LQ said. “There’s a place called Miss Jenny’s just this side of Waco. Aint all that much out of our way. I hear it’s worth every penny. Hell boys, we deserve us a reward.”
All I really wanted was to get back to Galveston, but Brando said “Damn right!” and I wasn’t about to argue against their fun, so I said, “Why the hell not?”
We took the junction road to the Waco highway and got to Miss Jenny’s an hour later. Because it was Sunday night, business was slower than usual and we didn’t have to wait long before we got taken care of. I picked out a brownskinned girl that looked part Mexican but it turned out she was another one born and raised in the U.S. who couldn’t speak but a few words of Spanish. She was enthusiastic but I had a little trouble finishing up until I closed my eyes and imagined Daniela—and then I came like a shot. But while I was getting dressed I felt even glummer than usual after getting my ashes hauled.
I was the first one back to the parlor. Brando came out a minute later, eager to tell me what a great time he’d had with a six-foot blonde named Queenie. LQ had bought himself two girls and so he took a while longer. He finally emerged from the hallway about a quarter hour later, grinning big and swaggering like a rodeo rider.
“Could be I was wrong about you’re never satisfied,” Brando said. “You looking plenty satisfied this minute.”
“And I’d like to say, Chico, that it’s a real pleasure to hear you say something that’s correct for a change.”
We hit the road again but hadn’t gone thirty miles before all of us were yawning, the adrenaline charge was worn off now and our lack of proper sleep the night before was getting to us. So we pulled into a motor court in a burg called Marlin and got rooms for the rest of the night.
We slept late and then had a big breakfast at a café down the road before we got rolling south once more. We swung east at Houston and got to Sheila’s house at four-thirty in the afternoon. I got out of the Dodge and tossed my valise into the Terraplane. LQ and Brando had started hinting around about maybe spending a little more time in Orange before heading back to Galveston, but I told them to forget it. They were still holding Friday’s collection money and Artie Goldman would be mighty red-assed if it wasn’t handed in today. I gave them the rest of the expense money to turn in too.
Where the hell was I going, LQ wanted to know.
“Got a date.”
“Who with?” Brando said.
“You guys don’t know her. Tell you about her next time.”
“Well, ex-cuse us for asking,” LQ said. He nudged Brando with an elbow and said, “Must be he don’t want you to know he’s took up with your momma.”
“Only because the two-dollar line to see your momma is so damn long.”
I followed them through Port Arthur and Sabine to the coast highway, then down the Bolivar Peninsula to the ferry. While we were crossing the bay we had a smoke at the bow rail and watched a school of porpoises rolling ahead of the ferryboat in the last of the orange sunset. Then we were at the dock and the gate went down and we drove off the boat. LQ and Brando headed for the Club and I turned off toward La Colonia.
I had intended to go to the Casa Verde and get cleaned up before calling on her, but when I saw how dark the Avila place was I pulled over. Their old Ford wasn’t in its usual spot alongside the house, so maybe they’d all gone out to eat or something, but even so they would’ve left the porch light on. The rest of the neighborhood looked and sounded the same as always—porch lights glowing, lights in the windows, faint music from radios, the sporadic laughter of kids.
I went up on the porch and knocked and knocked but got no answer. I tried the door and it was locked. I went around to the back of the house and there the Ford was, where Avila never parked it. The blinds were down in every window but there wasn’t a show of light behind any of them. I was about to break a pane in the kitchen door, then thought to try that knob too and the door swung open.
I switched on the kitchen light, then crossed into the dining room and turned on that light. The dining table was turned out of place and a corner of it had hit the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. A couple of dining chairs were on their sides and ants were swarming around the sugar bowl on the floor. The living room was such a jumble of skewed and upset furniture and scattered bedclothes that it took me a moment to see Rocha lying on the sofa—hugging a pillow against his stomach and staring at me, his head bandage gone and his face caked with dried blood.
I took a fast look for her—in the bathroom and in the Avilas’ bedroom. The couple was lying facedown on the sagging mattress in a furrow of dark jelled blood. The smell was getting high.
I went back out to Rocha and righted a table lamp and turned it on. Under its light his eyes were bright with pain. The bandage off his head was lying at the foot of the hallway. In addition to the head wounds I’d given him he now had knife cuts on his scalp and face. The worst wound was in his stomach.
“Cómo te parece?” he said in a rasp.
I said it didn’t look too bad but he needed a doctor and I’d get him to one. But first I wanted to know where the girl was.