by Jada M Davis
“So....”
“So we’ll find a way.”
“These boys are smart?”
“Sure, they’re smart.”
“And yet they’ve been pushing you when they know you tell Irvin what to do.”
“Well, they’ve got courage. They don’t like me and, to tell the truth, a lot of people don’t like me. You can’t make a lot of money, Ree, without making enemies. You know that.”
“Who are the two boys?”
“Ed and Cliff Barrick.”
“Why don’t you freeze them out?”
“Going to. At least, they’ll think I’m going to. Irvin’s going to demand payment on their notes. Then—we’ll see. Maybe they’ll listen to reason.”
“What’s this they wrote about me?”
“Nothing much. Usual line when they’re trying to start something. Disorganization of the police force—dissension. They say you and Wesley don’t click, and something about a brush you had with him after the Johnson Tool burglary.”
“That all?”
“That’s all. Nothing much. Don’t let it bother you.”
“O.K. Listen, Mr. Halliday, I know the setup you want around town. I’ve been feeling my way, but now I’m ready to get moving. I’ve taken the first steps, but it’ll take a little time to get things sewed up.”
Halliday cleared his throat, doodled with a pencil. His pale eyes flicked up and down, up and down, shiny hot. Willa Ree waited, wondering.
“Glad to hear it,” Halliday said finally. “Perhaps, though, I’d better explain my position.” He cleared his throat again, twiddling with a pencil, and stared hard at Ree.
“Your predecessor, Bronson, was a good man. A good man, but not a good businessman. Now, Ree, I’m a businessman. I’m honest, but I’m a businessman. You know what that means. Some people don’t, because they confuse ethics with honesty.”
Then he picked up a letter opener and began to clean his nails with the point.
“Ree, it is my belief that things like, well, like vice can’t be stamped out. People are people and they’re going to play. The world has had prostitution down through the ages, and will always have it.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Well, I always say that if you can’t whip a thing, join it! Make it work for you! Control it!”
“My idea exactly.”
“We’ll get along fine, Ree. However, you’ll have problems to solve.”
“The county boys?”
Halliday smiled. “You don’t let grass grow under your feet. Yes, you’re right. The county boys are controlling our little, shall we say, ah, our little problem. Now, by rights, they shouldn’t meddle inside city limits. That’s our territory.”
“Maybe you’d better tell me a little something about these boys, Mr. Halliday.”
“You know the sheriff, Claude Messner?”
“Met him.”
“He’s serving his second term. Claude used to be chief of police, and he was a good one. Yes, he was a good chief and a good businessman. Knew how to get things organized. Well, when he ran for sheriff and was elected, he took the organization with him. We put Bronson in as chief, but he was never able to break Messner’s hold on things. Bronson wasn’t a businessman, you see. And he was too strait-laced.”
Ree chuckled. “In other words, Messner got the city lined up and then ran for sheriff so he could expand.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Tell me more about him. What kind of man is he?”
“Hard,” Halliday said. “Messner is a hard man, smart and hard.” He paused, musing, his eyes looking at something far away. “One might say he’s dangerous. Yes. But what a man to have on your side! If you could control him, that is.”
“How do you mean, hard?”
“He’s a killer, Ree. He likes to kill. They say he’s killed seven men.”
“Well, that makes him hard, all right. So much for him. What about the county attorney?”
“Arthur Fry’s just a young fellow. A tool in Messner’s pay.”
“Who else do we play with?”
“Well, there’s Byrd, but we stick together, work as a team. And, of course, there’s the mayor, but he’s a Pooh Bah. Does anything I tell him.”
“But he’ll get a cut?”
“Well, let’s not call it a cut, Ree. This is business, you understand.”
“O.K., a dividend.”
Halliday smiled warmly. “That’s much better.”
Ree got up to go and shook hands with Halliday.
“We haven’t discussed the percentages,” Halliday said.
“That’s a good point.”
Venetian blinds were drawn over Halliday’s eyes. “You take a third, Ree.”
Halliday would eat out of his hand—later. For now, a third it was. “That’s satisfactory,” he said.
“After all, there’ll be the sheriff and Fry and Byrd and the mayor out of the other two-thirds.”
“And you, Mr. Halliday.”
“Naturally. That’s all right with you now? If not, let’s talk it out now.”
“A third will be O.K.,” Ree said. “I’ll be doing the work and taking the chances.”
“That’s true, but you’ll be getting the lion’s share.”
“It’s O.K.,” Ree said again. “Forget it.”
“Very well, Ree. We’ll get along fine, I think.”
Chapter Eighteen
Ree had a letter from Wesley a week later. It was mailed from Houston and said: “I’ll be back soon, chum.”
That was all. One pregnant sentence.
It was still hot. There were no clouds in the sky, and the sun was a pale blazing blob. Ree left the Hall and walked through town, watching the wind whip the dust into the air. Old newspapers flapped against the curbing, danced across the sidewalk, flattened against store windows, wrapped around light poles. Few people were out, and those who walked were forced to lean against the wind. Men held their hats, and women pressed arms flat against their sides, hands reaching downward over hips in quick, furtive movements, as they tried to prevent skirts from flying upward.
That damned Wesley! Well, there’d be questions, but he did most of the questioning.
Sand stung his face, worked under his collar, gritted into his eyes. He held his mouth closed tightly and breathed through his nose, leaning into the wind and walking rapidly. His tie fluttered over his shoulder and he was forced to pull his hat down again, ducking his head so the wind wouldn’t send it swirling.
Some damned country, he thought. Sand and oil and money. And women. He wondered about Laura, wondered if he should call her.
No, he decided. Let her cool off a while longer.
He found Sam Byrd at the Byrd Motor Company. It was a brick building on Eighth Street, a block off Main, with curved plate-glass windows and double doors opening on a showroom. Business offices were lined against a wall, narrow cubicles.
A long-nosed bookkeeper looked up, and Ree asked for Byrd.
Sam Byrd was drunk and comfortable. His muscled arms stuck out of sport-shirt sleeves. His tiny mustache still looked out of place beneath his fat, blue-veined nose. Black eyes stared unwinkingly under bushy brows. He still needed a haircut.
“Come in, Ree.” His voice was flat, uninterested, impatient.
“How are you, Mr. Byrd?”
“Busy.”
Willa Ree ran the tip of his tongue around the inside of his cheek.
“You’ve talked to Halliday, Ree, and he runs things. It isn’t necessary for us to discuss anything.”
“Like that, huh?”
Byrd shuffled papers on his desk and said, “Like that.”
Ree felt his muscles draw tight, felt hot blood pounding, but he forced himself to close the office door gently.
Back at the Hall, he rushed through paper work, scanned reports, and helped the sergeant draw up new patrol schedules.
“It’ll take a while to get those lists you want,
” the sergeant said.
“That’s O.K.”
He strapped on the gun belt and twisted it around so the .38 rested on his hip, far back, holstered muzzle resting in the hip pocket. When his coat was buttoned, the gun didn’t show.
“See you later, sergeant.”
“Adios.”
There were elm trees on the courthouse lawn, and the grass was green and close-cropped. Flowers and shrubbery lined the walks.
The courthouse was a massive stone structure, steepled, with a clock on each of the four sides. Halls and stairs took up most of the space inside, with small offices flanking the halls.
Sheriff Claude Messner looked like a hard man. His face was without expression. He sat with cowboy-booted feet on a desk top and stared. His rancher’s hat was pushed to the back of his head, revealing thin black hair. Ree, studying the man’s dark eyes and thin, pale lips, decided he could be thirty or fifty.
“Hello, Messner.”
“Hello.” Messner stood up and extended his hand. Ree was impressed by the man’s well-cut gray gabardine suit.
“Thought I’d drop over and chat a bit.”
“Glad you did, Ree. Been hearing a lot about you. I should have been over to visit you, but you know how it is. Something always turns up.”
Two men entered the room. Deputies. One was old, paunchy, slow-moving, and dirty. The other was young, blondly handsome, athletic, and green as grass. Both wore holstered guns with fancy handles.
“Can we talk in private, Sheriff?” Ree asked.
“Sure,” Messner said. He led the way to a cubicle of an office, furnished with one metal desk, two folding chairs, and one hunting calendar on the wall.
Willa Ree sat down. Messner straddled a chair, elbows resting on the chair back.
“What’s on your mind, Ree?”
“A horse trade.”
“Maybe I don’t deal in horses.”
“Maybe we won’t trade, then. But it seemed like a good idea.”
Both spoke slowly, feeling the strain, and their eyes roved the walls of the office as they fought to appear cool, casual.
“If you’ve got a deal....”
“Sheriff, I’ve got a deal. To speak plainly, a deal that you’d do well to go for.”
“If that’s a threat....”
“No threat, Sheriff. Don’t jump so fast.”
“I know what you’re driving at, Ree. You don’t have anything to trade with.”
“I will have.”
“And that’s a threat.”
“You’re too jumpy, Sheriff. If you’ll listen without getting your dander up, I think we’ll both profit.”
“You’re cutting in,” the sheriff said. His face remained expressionless, his voice calm.
“Do you want to listen?”
Messner fumbled at a shirt pocket, his trembling fingers betraying his anger. He pulled a tobacco sack and papers from the pocket, and rolled a cigarette.
“You’re working for Ben Halliday, of course,” he said. “I don’t work for anybody. Why should I listen?”
“Suit yourself. But work with me and you’ll make more money. Work by yourself and I’ll cut the ground out from under you.”
A flush, dull and ugly, began at the top of Messner’s shirt collar and crept upward. He took one last, deep puff at his cigarette and threw it on the floor.
“Sheriff,” Ree said, “I’ll run every tramp in town across the county line. And that’s not all I can do.”
Messner stood, one hand trembling near the big .45 on his hip.
“Just relax and take it easy,” Ree said. “Don’t get tough with me. I’m telling you just in case you’re curious—I can make you eat that gun.” For long seconds he thought the sheriff was going to jump him.
“Just don’t talk to me like that,” Messner said, at last. His voice trembled and his face went chalky white.
“O.K. Only, don’t act like I’m a pip squeak like Bronson. I don’t push anybody around—unless I have to. And I don’t like to be pushed around. You had the town sewed up, but now it’s a partnership.”
“So you run the girls out of town, Ree. So I’d bring them back.”
“You’d never make money that way, Sheriff. Besides, if it comes to that, I’ll take a few statements from the girls. The town wouldn’t like to hear the tramps have been paying you.”
“And where would that get you?”
“It wouldn’t hurt me. Might even leave the field open.”
“All right,” Messner said, “let’s hear your proposition.”
“What’re you nicking the girls?”
“Ten per cent.”
“And half of that goes to the county attorney?”
“Fry only gets three per cent.”
“Then here’s my deal. Turn the girls over to me. Keep your hands off. I’ll take twenty-five per cent from them, and you’ll still get ten. That’ll leave you seven per cent after you pay Fry—the same thing you’re getting now. I’ll have to give—somebody—half of mine, so we’ll be about even in the long run.”
“How do I stand to gain by that setup?”
“I’ll bring in more girls. With all the small hotels and tourist courts, this town can take care of a lot of girls. So you’ll make more money.”
“Sounds O.K. If you do what you say.”
“I will. Now, suppose we get this gambling thing under control, too.”
“Now, just a minute!”
“Listen, Messner,” Ree said, holding his hand up, palm outward. “I know you’re nicking them. Ten to one they’re paying a fee to operate, and you’re getting a small part of the take. You’re missing out on the floating games. They won’t pay off because you’re county and they know you’re not going to make raids inside the city limits. That leaves you with the honky-tonk games at the edge of town—chicken feed!”
“Maybe, but—”
“We can make them pay a percentage. You handle the business outside the city limits and I’ll handle the town. We’ll split fifty-fifty.”
Messner took off his hat and scrubbed his hand through his hair. He pitched the hat on the desk and hooked his thumbs under his belt, standing stiff and spraddle-legged.
“Got any more ideas?”
Willa Ree stepped on his cigarette. “A few, but it’ll take a while to develop them.”
“You can’t touch liquor licenses,” Messner said. “That’s handled higher up and there’re too many fingers in that pie. The city boys have got building permits and garbage and paving out of your reach, so that doesn’t leave much.”
“We’ll get along. There’s bound to be some dope and a hot-car ring.”
“And bookies.”
Ree rubbed his nose. “O.K., bookies. Have you been nicking them?”
“Couldn’t handle it. They’re paying higher up—state, maybe.”
“I’ll handle it. Fifty-fifty?”
“Right. But Halliday’ll raise hell if he finds out we’re collecting without splitting.”
Willa Ree let his hand fall on the door knob. “Do you think anybody’s working dope here?”
Messner was studying the calendar on the wall. “O.K., Ree. Fifty-fifty on that, too. Only, we’ve got to be careful.”
“We’ll be careful.”
“And Ree?”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful. You talk hard. That kind of talk might work with me once—if it’s to my advantage to listen. But not twice. I’ll do business with you on a strict business basis, but be careful. I’m allergic to hard talk.”
“We don’t have to like each other.”
“So long.”
“Yeah.”
Ree’s back prickled as he left the office.
Mean, Messner was. A mean bastard. Ree had the feeling that Messner would have been on him like a dog on a bone if he’d backed down an inch.
As he stepped into the glaring sunlight he saw the old Negro woman. She was thin, stooped, with deep-lined wrinkles covering her face, f
or all the world the spitting image of an aged simian. Krinkly gray hair frizzled her head, and she was crying.
“No, suh, please, suh,” she was mumbling. “They can’t hang my boy! They ain’t goan to hang my boy, no! He’s a good boy. Yas, foah God he’s a good boy! Yes!”
The deputy, the young one with the blonde good looks, was leaning against the door.
“That’s right, mammy. I told you we’d hang him next time he got in trouble.”
The old woman’s body shook and trembled as she sobbed. “No, suh, please! They ain’t goan hang my baby! He’s my baby boy, yas, and he’s good!”
Ree put his hand on the deputy’s shoulder. “Tell the woman you’re not going to bother her boy, Blondie. Tell her you were playing a joke.”
“You go to hell!”
“I’ll count three, Blondie. And keep your hand away from your gun if you don’t want to eat it. What the heck you star toters think you are—movie cowboys?”
The big boy’s hand clawed above the .45. “I’m telling you, Blondie,” Ree warned, “I’m carrying a gun.” His hand dipped under his coat at the hip and flashed up with the gun. He waved it under the deputy’s nose and slid it back into the holster.
He began to count. “One.”
The deputy curled his lips, face flushed, and gritted his teeth.
“Two.”
The old Negro woman sobbed softly.
“Three.”
The big deputy swung first, a wild hay-maker, and he grunted as Ree’s left came across. Blood streamed from his nose.
The rest was easy. Ree chopped him down and walked away, noting that a crowd had gathered.
Why’d I do that? he asked himself. The word’ll get around.
An old mammy, for crying out loud!
It was a long day. A dozen times he caught himself reaching for the telephone, ready to call Laura.
At five o’clock he ate and went home. He showered, shaved, and dressed, but it was only six o’clock when he finished. Now, with surprising suddenness, he was sleepy. There was a gritty feel to his eyes and a weighty, tired feeling in his bones. He’d go now.