Rumble Tumble Read Free Page A

you meant some other woman,” the face said.
    “I didn’t say that,” Brett said. “What’s it matter?”
    “I don’t know it matters,” said the man, “but we didn’t think you’d bring no man.”
    “Well,” Brett said. “I don’t know why you shouldn’t have thought it.”
    “Hey,” I said, “do I look dangerous to you?”
    “Naw, you don’t look dangerous,” he said, and he walked away from the door and we followed inside.
    The first thing I noticed was a midget sitting on the bed. I think that’s normal, noticing a midget first. He had on a tailored blue Western suit and shiny blue cowboy boots and a gold cowboy shirt with silver snaps and a string tie with a silver cow head clasp holding it together. The suit looked as if it had once been expensive and nice, but now it was covered in filth and so was the shirt. The steer horns leaned a little too far left and somehow gave the midget an unbalanced look, as if he had been laid out without the use of a plumb line. I figured originally a hat had gone with the outfit, but now his blazing red hair was scattered over his head in such a way if you took a photo of it, it might look like a man with his head on fire, à la Brett’s ex-husband. He had a big thick cigar in his mouth, but it wasn’t lit, and his feet dangled off the side of the bed almost two feet from the ground. He had a face I couldn’t judge for age. He might have been thirty or forty or fifty. For all I knew, he was twenty-one and constipated or had just previously passed a kidney stone.
    Second thing I noticed was the big guy had drawn a little silver automatic out from behind his back. The rest of the room sort of lost interest for me after that.
    The big guy sat down in a chair with his automatic and held it against his thigh. Next to his chair was a table lamp, and on the table was a glass containing a clear liquid that I guessed from the smell in the room wasn’t water. And considering how rank our hosts smelled, this meant some goddamn serious drinking had been going on.
    “What’s the gun for?” I asked.
    “He’s the nervous type,” said the midget.
    “What about you?” I said. “You nervous?”
    “No, I’m not nervous,” said the midget. “Not as long as he’s got the gun. Y’all sit somewhere.”
    Brett took a chair and I sat on the edge of the bed so I could see both guys. I said to the big guy, “You shoot that off, you got the noise to worry about.”
    “I’m not that worried,” said the big guy.
    “Drink?” said the midget.
    Brett and I declined. Brett said, “One of you called me about my daughter.”
    “That was me,” said the midget.
    “Told me you had information and to bring money for it, and I have. Five hundred dollars.”
    “We should have said a thousand,” said the midget.
    “But you didn’t,” I said. “You said five hundred and here we are with it.”
    “It’s all I got,” Brett said.
    “And we don’t know what you got is worth five hundred dollars,” I said.
    The big guy said, “It might not be worth five cents, but we can take the five hundred dollars anyway.”
    I reached quickly behind my back, under my shirt, and pointed my gun at the big man. I said, “You might not.”
    The midget laughed. “You know, you could be right.”
    The big man wiggled the gun against his thigh like he wanted to lift it. I said, “Nope, nope, nope.”
    “Easy does it, Wilber,” said the midget. “This man’s got a look in his eye. Like someone who might have grown up on cowboy movies.”
    “Let’s just have you put the gun on the table there, away from your drink,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to confuse what you might be reaching for.”
    The midget made with his odd laugh again.
    Brett moved slowly and smoothly and her hand went under her skirt and came back out. She was holding the snub-nose. She pointed it at the midget.
    “Oh, ho,” said the midget.
    “Just in case you got a gun too, shorty,” Brett said.
    “I got one,”