Rumble Tumble Read Free Page B

the dwarf said, “but it’s in my suitcase.”
    “I told you that was a dumb place to put it,” said the big man, placing his automatic on the table.
    “Turns out you’re right,” said the midget. Then to me: “I thought you said a gun would make noise.”
    “It will,” I said, “but like your buddy here, I’m not that worried about it. Now, you either got something to say, or you don’t.”
    “We got plenty,” said the midget. “First, I’d like to say you got good legs, lady.”
    “Thanks,” Brett said. “My day’s made.”
    “I’d also like to know what these bugs are all about. Is this a consistent thing here in East Texas?”
    “Every year about this time,” I said. “They’re not usually this thick. Don’t usually mate this long. Lots of them are supposed to signify a forthcoming bad winter or lots of rain. Might be both. Least that’s the folklore.”
    “In Oklahoma we’re having quite a run on mosquitoes,” the midget said. “Big things. Very fat. They carry disease, you know?”
    “We’ve got mosquito problems here too,” I said. “And roaches. And June bugs. And all manner of squiggly-shit bugs who have names I don’t know, but that’s all the entomology lesson you get today. Tell us what you got to tell, or we walk. With the five hundred dollars.”
    “Walk, you don’t learn about daughterpoo,” said the midget.
    “Yeah,” I said, “but we walk after I pistol-whip the both of you, and what the two of you learn is it hurts.”
    “You look like a man would hit a midget,” said the midget.
    “You betcha,” I said, and tried to sound convincing, the way Leonard would sound, because he was definitely a man would hit a midget, or anyone who fucked with him.
    The midget touched his jacket, said, “I want to reach inside here, get a match and light my smoke. That okay?”
    “No,” Brett said. “I don’t like it.”
    “I talk better I got a smoke,” the midget said.
    “I bet you can talk good either way,” I said. Then to the big guy: “I’m liking where that gun is less and less. Brett, you mind taking it?”
    Brett leaned over and grabbed the automatic off the table and dropped it onto her lap. She held the .38 on the big guy now. The big guy looked at the gun in her lap, then at her face, then at her gun. He grimaced, and considering how he already looked, it wasn’t pretty.
    I turned so I could lay my gun across my knee. That way it was easy to move and point at the midget should he find something inside his coat I didn’t like, but it was a little less personal this way.
    “I really would like to smoke,” he said.
    Brett nodded. The midget reached inside his coat and brought out a little folder of matches. He peeled one off and lit his cigar. The room turned foul quickly. He said, “This daughter you got, lady. She’s in some manure up to her eyeballs.”
    “And you drove all the way down here to tell us,” I said. “You’re some good goddamn citizens, aren’t you?”
    “We drove down here ’cause we thought it might get us some money,” the midget said. “And we need money. We’re on our way to Mexico. Me and Wilber, we worked for Jim Clemente up until a day or so ago. But we had an unfortunate turn of events. We got our hand caught in the till, so to speak.”
    “Who’s Jim Clemente?” I said.
    “He’s the main man in Tulsa, that’s what he is. You want a whore, you buy one, somehow money goes back to him. Some little chippie in boogie town does a coon and gets ten bucks, Clemente, he gets six of it. You want someone killed, he’s the one has it done. He has folks who do it.”
    “Like you two?” I said.
    “Yeah, like us.”
    “What do you do?” Brett said to the midget. “Punch them in the butt?”
    “It’s not nice to make fun of a physical liability,” said the midget.
    “Look at it this way,” Brett said, “you can drink out of the toilet without straining your back.”
    “That’s no way to talk to a professional,”