Trouble in Paradise

Twelve

Macklin was having lunch outside on the patio at Janos restaurant in Tucson with an Indian named Crow. The Indian’s real name was Wilson Cromartie, but he liked to be called Crow. He was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt, pressed blue jeans, polished boots, and a silver concho belt. Everything about Crow was angles and planes, as if he had been packed very tightly into himself. The muscles bulged against his taut skin like sharp corners. The veins were prominent. He wasn’t much bigger than Macklin, but everything about him spoke of force tightly compressed. They were drinking margaritas.

“And you want me to be the shooter?” Crow said.

“Not just a shooter,” Macklin said. “I need a force guy, somebody can do the job on the operation and keep discipline in the crew.”

“You can’t do that?”

“I can do that, but I gotta run the whole dance, you know? Besides I don’t scare people like you do.”

“That’s ’cause you look like some guy graduated Cornell,” Crow said.

His voice had traces of that indefinable Indian overtone, even though Macklin knew that Crow hadn’t seen a rain dance in his entire life.

“And I sound like it, and that works pretty good for me. But I still need a force guy.”

“And you come all the way to Tucson to hire me?” Crow said.

“To cut you in,” Macklin said. “I’m trying to cut you in on the score of a fucking lifetime and you’re asking questions like I was trying to steal your land.”

“White eyes speak with forked tongue,” Crow said.

“Don’t give me that Geronimo crap,” Macklin said. “It’s me, Jimmy Macklin. You wouldn’t know a tepee from a pee pee, for crissake.”

Crow’s expression didn’t change.

“Tepee bigger,” he said.

A waitress came and took their lunch order. There were small birds in some dry desert shrubbery around the patio. They made a lot of noise.

When the waitress left, Crow said, “Twenty percent.”

“I got too many expenses, Crow. I gotta get an electronics guy, explosives guy, guy with a boat. I can’t afford to give you twenty.”

“How much you taking?”

“Half,” Macklin said. “My show.”

“And I’m the number-two man?”

“Absolutely.”

“Twenty,” Crow said.

“That only leaves thirty percent for everybody else,” Macklin said. “I can’t get quality guys divvying thirty.”

“Lie to them,” Crow said.

Macklin grinned.

“How you know I promise you twenty, I’m not lying to you?”

“You know better,” Crow said.

Macklin cocked a forefinger at Crow and brought the thumb down.

“Twenty it is,” Macklin said.