TWENTY-SEVEN

I was packed and ready for the road early the next morning. I kissed Annie good-bye at the breakfast table, and Little and I shook hands on his front porch.

“Well, when do you want to do it?” he asked.

“It’s got to be late November. There are some other considerations that make that the prime time.”

“That’s good enough. Being able to wear an overcoat is always an advantage on a deal like this. And I’ll set up a meeting with Tobe Perkins and call you in a few days.”

“Little, is Perkins really solid?” I asked. “I mean will he stool?”

“I’d bet my life that he won’t. He never has, and he’s sure had the opportunity. I’ve known him for forty years.”

“How old is he?” I asked.

“Tobe’s in his late fifties, but he’s in real good shape. You see, he’s been clean as a whistle for better than ten years. Except for a little moonshining, that is. And hell, that ain’t even hardly a crime. I know he’d like to make one more good heist to get his hands on a little something to put aside for his old age.”

“Okay. Here’s what you do. Tell him about me and my background—”

“Except the things I ain’t supposed to know,” he said with a grin.

“Right,” I said, grinning right back at him. “Convince him that I’ll do what I say I’ll do, and tell him that if this deal blows up in our faces I’ll see to it that he has the best lawyers money can buy, and that I might even be able to pull some strings with the government.”

He appeared puzzled. “Okay, but there really ain’t no need for all that.…”

“Yes, there is,” I said with a fiendish smile. “I’ve had another idea.”

He reached up and pushed his fedora to one side to scratch his head above his left ear. “I sure wish you’d quit having them ideas, boy. I just want to sit on my front porch from here on out and watch the sun go down.”

“Bull,” I said with a laugh. “You’re having fun and you know it. And if that two thousand doesn’t hold Willie until time to move, you just let me know. Or go ahead and give him another thousand and I’ll pay you back later.”

“Okay. I hate that all this business with Willie has happened. He’s gone downhill here lately. Did you notice how grimy he was when we first came down to see the hotel? He didn’t used to go around that way. He’s never been the sharpest dresser on earth, but at least he stayed clean.” He shook his head and sighed. “Willie’s the only thing about this whole deal that frets me, and if he keeps on aggravating me I may just pull his plug and find somebody else.”

“It’s your call, Little,” I said. “Do what you think is best.”

As I drove off I looked back in the mirror and saw the old man standing on the porch, a worried frown on his face.

*   *   *

I got tangled up in a long, southward-bound military convoy about a hundred miles out of Tulsa, and it took me better than eight hours to get to Dallas. Listening to Tommy Dorsey on the car’s radio as I drove made me realize that Della and I had been existing rather than living. We didn’t even own a radio for our home. As soon as I hit town I drove to an appliance store I knew on East Main and bought the biggest table model Philco radio/phonograph combination I could fit into the backseat of the Lincoln. By that time I was exhausted, and a good part of it was a delayed reaction to the previous evening at the cockfight. I decided to spend the night in Dallas and drive the rest of the way home in the morning. I registered at the Adolphus and had a steak dinner in the dining room. Afterward I bought a bottle of White Horse at a liquor store a couple of doors down from the hotel, and then called room service for soda and ice. I had a couple of drinks and then phoned Della and told her to expect me home sometime the next day.

The next morning I rose early and ate breakfast in the coffee shop. As soon as the stores opened I went to Neiman Marcus and bought Della a three-quarter-length cinnamon mink like one I’d seen her admiring in a Memphis furrier’s shop earlier in the year. A few minutes later I was on the road once again.

When I pulled into the drive about one o’clock that afternoon, I was surprised to see Della’s car in the garage. I managed to get the Philco hauled into the living room by myself. She was in our bedroom, sitting Indian fashion in the middle of the bed wearing a loose pair of white shorts and a yellow blouse. In her lap she held the shoe box in which she kept snapshots of her daughter. Her eyes were full of tears when she looked up at me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t expect you home this early.”

“Sorry for what?” I asked.

She didn’t answer. Instead she held up a small framed oval picture taken just a few weeks before the accident. The little girl was as blond as her mother, with big eyes and a pug nose. Her name had been Suzanne and she’d been killed by a drunk driver not long after her fourth birthday. Della pointed silently to the picture like a child showing off a crayon drawing to her father.

“I know you probably think I shouldn’t do this,” she said, and started to put the pictures back in the box. “But these snapshots and my memories are all that’s left of her, and if my memories fade she’ll be all gone.”

I leaned over and took her hands. “I think nothing of the sort. You do this as often as you need to.” I bent down to give her a kiss on the forehead and smoothed her hair for a moment. I knew that at least part of her anguish was that her baby had been a cesarean birth and there could be no more children for her.

Slipping quietly from the room, I closed the door behind me. I managed to get the radio hooked up without electrocuting myself, then tuned it to soft music from a station in Fort Worth. A few minutes later I had a pot of coffee brewing in the kitchen. I had just finished my second cup and lain down out on the sofa when Della came into the room.

“Want me to get you some coffee?” I asked.

She shook her head and came over to the sofa. It was long and heavy and almost deep enough for two people to lie side by side. Stretching out, she draped herself half on the cushions and half on me with her head on my chest. “You’re not getting much of a homecoming,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, and stop saying you’re sorry,” I told her gently.

“I like the radio,” she said. “It sounds wonderful.”

I snuggled her up against me and petted her hair. She buried her head in my chest and began to cry softly. “I may not be such a bargain,” she said through muted sobs.

“Hush,” I said, and squeezed her tight. I let her cry herself out and we both dozed off and slept for almost an hour.

Later that night, after she’d gone to bed, I was puttering around the kitchen making myself some bacon and eggs when the phone rang. I heard Simon Van Horn’s voice as soon as I lifted the receiver. “I just want you to know that I didn’t have anything to do with what happened in the parking lot up there at Tulsa,” he said.

“Why, nothing happened to me in the parking lot,” I replied casually. “Mr. Little and I just drove home, but I did hear that a couple of Mr. Robillard’s friends got roughed up out there.”

There was a long pause before the voice spoke again. “I see. Well, I hope you understand that I have enough problems of my own without buying in to somebody else’s.”

“That’s a fine attitude, Mr. Van Horn. I try to live that way myself.”

There was a second pause before I heard the gentle click as the connection was broken. I ate my supper and read the paper for a while. Before I went to bed I sneaked Della’s mink coat into the hall closet with the intention of giving it to her in a happier moment. But she found it before I had the chance.