Potshot

Chapter 38

IT WAS TIME to confer with our employers, and, since we were hoping to keep our profile low, we invited them to our place.

It was a still, hot morning. In the scrub above our house some kind of desert bird was making a raspy sound appropriate to the desert.

Lou Buckman was the first to arrive. She pulled up in front of our house in a stripped-down yellow jeep with no top and no doors. She got out of the jeep wearing a big hat and riding clothes. A single blond braid showed below the hat, and her makeup worked beautifully with her face. Her eyes were very big and the color of morning glories. We were arrayed in a friendly manner, on the front porch, and if she found us daunting, she didn't show it.

"Good morning," she said.

"Good morning."

I introduced her to the other men.

Bernard J. Fortunato said, "I got coffee. You want some?"

"Yes, thank you," Lou said. "That would be lovely."

Bernard hustled off as if he were going for the Holy Grail. Lou stood on the porch and looked at us.

"There aren't very many of you," she said.

"But what there is is cherce," Hawk said.

"Cherce?"

"Choice," I said. "It's a line Spencer Tracy used about Katherine Hepburn."

"Oh."

Lou still looked at us.

"You do look dangerous," she said.

"Senorita," Chollo said, "that is because, as we say in my country, we are dangerous."

"What is your country?" Lou said.

Chollo grinned at her.

"Los Angeles," he said.

Lou leaned her admirable little butt on the railing of the porch. Bernard came back and gave her coffee. She thanked him and held the mug in both hands and sipped. Behind her a Ford Expedition pulled into the yard and a Dodge Van, and a big Chrysler Sedan. Our employers got out, warily, as if it might be an ambush, and gathered uneasily in front of the porch. J. George was there on the left looking prosperous and affable.

In fact, all four of them looked prosperous, and they bore with them the aroma of self-satisfaction that prosperity brings. The mayor stood next to J. George, then Barnes the lawyer and Brown the banker. I stood beside Lou Buckman on the top step of the porch facing them. My posse was ranged along the back wall of the porch, seated, most of them teetering their chairs back so that the front legs cleared the floor.

I looked down at the group. I felt a little like Mussolini. Maybe I should have folded my arms.

"Me you know," I said. "From my right, Hawk, Vinnie Morris, Chollo, Bobby Horse, Tedy Sapp and Bernard J. Fortunato."

The quartet looked as if they thought that The Preacher and his crew might be preferable. Luther Barnes spoke first.

"Could we have full names, please?" he said.

"Certainly," I said. "Hawk, your full name, please?"

"Hawk."

"Thank you. Chollo?"

"Chollo."

"Thank you."

Barnes was not amused.

"I just think we have a right to know who we're paying all this money to," he said.

"You're paying it to me," I said.

Roscoe, wearing a panama hat, probably felt the need to say something official sounding.

"I feel there should be some legal foundation for this venture," he said.

I stared at him.

"This group has no legal foundation. It's a group of professional thugs, hired by you."

The group was quiet.

Then Henry Brown said, "I'm a businessman, and, a goddamned good one. In all the years of business I never hired a man I didn't know his background."

"Good for you," I said.

"Damn it," he said, "that's no answer."

Sitting on the porch, Chollo took out a handgun and casually shot a small branch off a tree to my right. He did it again, and then again, chopping the branch back further with each shot.

"I am a simple peasant, senor," Chollo said in his stage Mexican accent. "That is all I have for background."

The gunshots lingered, resonating in the hard dry heat. Our employers looked at the tree limb. When they looked back at Chollo the gun was out of sight. Chollo smiled pleasantly. No one had anything to say for a time until the successful businessman spoke again, somewhat more softly.

"They won't know we're involved, will they?"

"They probably will," I said. "They seem to know a lot."

"But might they retaliate?"

"We'll protect you," I said.

"Seven of you?"

"Not all of us at once," I said. "We try to be fair."

Luther said, "I don't think you realize how serious this is."

I snapped.

"Goddamn it, you hired a bunch of thugs to come out and protect you, and we get here, and good heavens, we seem to be thugs, and now you're all in a goddamned twidget about it. You can let us find out who killed Lou Buckman's husband, and clean out the Dell, or you can live with what you've got. We'll just find out who killed her husband. And go home."

"I can't pay all of you," Lou Buckman said.

Hawk grinned at her.

"No charge," he said, and looked at the other men. Vinnie nodded first. Then Chollo nodded, and Bobby Horse, and Sapp, and, after a pause, while I could almost see him thinking it over, Bernard J. Fortunato.

"So," I said, "there it is. You want us to clean up the Dell say so. You don't, beat it."

"If you stay and help her they'll think we are involved anyway," Luther said. "They know everything that goes on in this town. They probably know we're here."

"Not my problem," I said.

"Unless we pay you."

"Like you told me you would," I said.

The attorney turned to his associates. I thought that the level of self-satisfaction in the group had declined a bit.

"He's got us over a barrel," the lawyer said. "We'll have to pay him."

The mayor said, "Another way to put that, I suppose, is that we are living up to our end of the deal."

"Whatever," Luther said brusquely. "I'm good for my share."

"The bank is prepared to pay you, as well," Brown said.

No one spoke. I looked back at my crew. They showed nothing.

Then Tedy Sapp said, "There goes the Dell."