Farnsworth Score

by Rex Burns

  “What’s that mean, man?” The Juice twisted a lime slice into his own fresh drink that blossomed at the top with green leaves, toothpicks, straws, and a crescent of orange.

  “Just a saying,” Wager said, smiling, “like good luck.”

  “Oh.” The eyes flicked again and Bruce sucked at the glass.

  After a few minutes, Farnsworth drained his beer. “I better cut—Ramona’s got supper going.”

  “Don’t rush off, man.” Bruce’s enthusiasm sounded forced.

  “Give me a call sometime, Gabe. The number’s in the book.”

  “Por supuesto.”

  Bruce watched Farnsworth go out through the double entry into the darkening street. He stared at his glass in silence for a while, then looked up. “Did he lay a deal on you?”

  Wager sipped his beer. “He said he might be able to cut my overhead.”

  “Shit.” The Juice twirled the glass in its puddle of melted frost. “You’re the best customer I got. And you’re between me and the street, too. If you go over to him, I got to go back on the street, and man that’s a bad scene.”

  “Business is business, Juice. Besides, you told me you got along real sweet up here—no competition.”

  “Well, yeah, we cover for each other every now and then. But to buy out a guy’s best customer! It’s like he lets me have a customer long enough to see if he’s legitimate; then he moves in and cuts me out. I’ll bet he’ll charge you more than he charges me, but less than I got to charge you to make my profit. That way he can raise his prices. It’s dingy shit, you know?”

  “I’m not in this for my health. He gave me a chance to raise my profit margin. I’ll see what he offers. Business is business, Juice, and I want to get off the street, too.”

  “He’s my supplier—I can’t get underneath the son of a bitch. I just think it’s shit! I finally get a good steady customer and start making a little money, and I get fucking underbid. And I can’t do a goddam thing about it, man. He’d cut me off and I wouldn’t have nothing at all.”

  “Maybe you can come up with stuff he doesn’t have.”

  “I get everything from him. He’s the only source around. We need us a free market system, man.”

  The Juice was learning that it wasn’t all fun and games. Wager did his best to hide the feeling of satisfaction, but something must have tinged his voice. “Well, we all got problems, brother.”

  Bruce looked up quickly. “I’ll remember you said that.”

  Wager smiled broadly. “You do that.”

  Outside, the dog had stopped barking and in the silence now surrounding Farnsworth’s cabin, Wager heard the slam of car doors and a murmur of laughter and voices. Ramona came in from the kitchen wiping her hands on a dishtowel and hung it to dry on the wire running behind the stove’s hot chimney. “Here, Gabe, let me take him.” She was short and her black hair had been plaited and coiled over each ear in a style that Wager had not seen for years. On her arm, just below her elbow, spread the dark red birthmark Chandler had told him about.

  Wager patted the small point of the sleepy boy’s shoulder and the bundle wriggled a bit heavier on his chest and sighed deeply. “He’s O.K.; no es problema.”

  “It’s past his bedtime,” she said with a mother’s authority that, Wager thought, seemed too early a burden for a girl so small and young. But that, too, was something he remembered now; all the little girls in the old neighborhood had had short childhoods. “Vete a la camita, Pepe.”

  Wager lifted the sagging warmth to her and watched the woman carry the child into the bedroom. Two small feet dangled loosely over her arm as she closed the door behind her, leaving Wager to find his moment of stillness and with it a sense of peace at hearing the tiny going-to-bed sounds of the child, the faint snap of the stove’s fire, the easy creak of the old house around him. Farnsworth had all this, and he still wanted more. Wager truly could not understand the man’s greed.

  He was still standing when Farnsworth led three men into the room, the large police dog sneaking guiltily behind and easing toward a warm corner of the room. “Gabe, these are the other partners in our deal: Charlie, Bones, and Manny. Gabe’s the dude they call Mr. Taco. He put up the last five.”

  “I heard about you all over.” Bones stuck out a long hand knotty with fleshless joints. “People all over say you really service the street culture.”

  Wager touched hands with them. Flint looked puzzled until Gabe smiled and said, “I been looking at that picture you sold me.”

  “Oh, right—I thought you looked familiar. Perhaps not as heavy a beard, but, yes, I remember now. You’ve gotten something out of that photograph?”

  “Sure. It’s been talking to me. It’s somebody standing all alone and night’s coming on. It—ah—has a clear statement and good technique.” He hoped that sounded like what Suzy said.

  “Say, you really are onto it; that’s quite a professional assessment.”

  “Well, you know, you just got to use your eyes.”

  Baca—Manny the Man—remained half a step behind the other two and studied Wager through the thick lenses of his horn-rimmed glasses. “I never heard of no Mr. Taco. Not around Nineteenth and Market in Denver, I ain’t.”

  That was a stretch of bars with Mexican names and the peppery-sour odor Wager remembered from a trip to Juarez. “I got my own territory.” Like two cats, he and Baca pretended indifference while studying the things that Anglo non-cats couldn’t see. With Baca, Wager would have to be very careful.

  Farnsworth brought out bottles and glasses: Wild Turkey, Pinch, Bacardi dark, and some mixes. “Sit down, folks; pleasure before business—we got some tequila, too, if you want some. Jo-Jo won’t be in for another hour and a half.”

  “You heard from him?”

  “He called from just east of Denver when he stopped for gas. That was … when, Gabe?”

  “Half-hour ago.”

  “He didn’t have no trouble?” Manny poured rum and squeezed a lime into the glass.

  “Nope.” Farnsworth mixed a drink for Ramona, who came out of the bedroom closing the door lightly behind her.

  “I still think it was risky,” said Flint. “But we didn’t really have any options, did we?”

  Farnsworth shook his head. “It was his connection all the way.”

  “How much do you think he should get?” asked Bones.

  Farnsworth’s eyebrows bobbed. “Thirty percent?”

  “He won’t like that.” Flint laughed. “I suspect Jo-Jo’s thinking of a hundred percent markup.”

  “Fuck that,” said Baca. “We gave him the capital, didn’t we? And the truck. All he done was drive.”

  “Nevertheless, it was his contact,” reminded Flint.

  Farnsworth wagged his hands. “Let’s not sweat it too much. If it’s as good as Jo-Jo says, I’m willing to go up to forty percent markup for him. Any higher, Jo-Jo can peddle it himself.”

  Baca laughed for the first time. “That little shit couldn’t handle that much grass. He’d get busted inside of twenty-four hours if he tried to move that much stuff.”

  “Manny’s right.” Ramona’s quiet voice made the others pause, and Wager looked at her with a sharper interest. “We got the outlets; eight hundred pounds of grass is too much for Jo-Jo to handle by himself. And it’s our money that put down the deal for him. I say we don’t go over thirty on this first load, and then raise it with the next load.”

  “He’s gonna squeal like a stuck hog.”

  “Let the little shit squeal. Who’s gonna listen?” Baca turned to Gabe. “You ain’t said nothing yet.”

  It was more challenge than question; Wager took his time answering. “We set him up in business, we gave him the bread for no interest, we handle the marketing. We owe him for his connection and for driving. Thirty sounds real fair to me.” He held Baca’s eyes. “It won’t take much to squeeze him if he don’t like it.”

  “We’ll see.” Baca wasn’t going to give an inch; Wager would have to prov
e whatever he promised.

  A little over an hour later, the dozing German shepherd in the corner raised his head with a low growl. Farnsworth held up his hand to silence the talk in the room. “I think that’s him. C’mon, Rex.” He opened the front door for the dog and followed it out. Wager savored the quick breath of cold air from the glassed-in front porch. In a few moments they heard the whining clatter of a Volkswagen rock up the rutted and stony road from the highway. It squeaked into the front yard and the engine died.

  “Here he is, gang, Jo-Jo the dog-faced boy!”

  He followed Farnsworth in, flesh pale and eyes baggy from the two-day drive. Even his Afro seemed to wilt on the ends. “Hey, people! Jesus, do I need a drink! And, man, do I have good stuff.”

  “Is it real Colombian?” asked Bones.

  “That weed has such good fumes, it doubled my gas mileage; half the time the van’s wheels weren’t even on the ground!”

  Farnsworth handed him a strong drink and they waited until he drained it and had another started. “Man, that’s good. I didn’t want to touch anything, you know, while I was driving. Do you believe a cop would shit if he stuck his head in that van to write a ticket?”

  Wager laughed with the rest.

  “Wow—it feels good to just sit down without that wheel. Jesus, was there some cross wind coming across Kansas. Around them grain elevators, I could hardly keep the son of a bitch on the road.” His voice died out and everyone waited. “Well? You want to see the stuff?”

  They followed him into the cold night filled with every star in the sky; to the southeast, the faint glow of Nederland’s few streetlights silhouetted a low ridge of shaggy mountains. The moist, pungent odor of marijuana drifted out of the van as Jo-Jo unfastened the inside panels of the vehicle’s shell. The German shepherd sneezed and moved away.

  “Tell me that don’t smell like the real thing,” said Jo-Jo, laughing.

  “I’m cold,” said Ramona. “I’ll wait inside. Bring me a little from each bag.”

  Wager’s eyes questioned Farnsworth.

  “She’s our taster,” he said.

  “A taster?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know how she does it, but if there’s shit mixed with the grass, she’ll spot it. She says it either tastes right or wrong, and if it tastes wrong, man, it’s wrong.” He opened each of the large plastic bags that had been molded between the various struts and beams of the van’s body and took a pinch of the loose weed. “Be back in a minute.”

  “I never seen it packed loose before,” said Bones. “It usually comes in bricks.”

  “I broke up the bricks. It rides better this way. Hell, I couldn’t get no bricks into spaces like that.”

  Wager helped carry the slippery plastic bags into a lean-to built against the east wall of the cabin. Then they trooped back into the living room. Ramona had a dozen tiny cigarettes rolled and was sniffing at the smoke of one of them. Gabe and the others waited. She lit each one and let the fumes of the match clear before tasting, holding the smoke in her mouth but not inhaling, sniffing lightly at the column rising from the burning tip of the tiny joint. It reminded Wager of Sonnenberg and his cigars. “It’s good. It’s all good.” With her fingers, she snuffed out the fire of the last cigarette and dumped its contents with the rest of the half-smoked grass. “If it ain’t Colombian, I can’t tell the difference.”

  “Say! What’d I tell you? Is that a contact or is that a contact? You should have seen that son of a bitch come flying onto that dirt road. That’s all it was, man, just a straight dirt road between a couple of cotton fields, and that son of a bitch just set her down right on it, telephone poles and all. Ten minutes later, he was on his way south again for another load. We can get all this we want any time we want. I got a number to call—all we do is place an order, man.”

  “We figure you’ve got thirty percent coming.”

  Jo-Jo stared a long moment at Farnsworth. Then his sharp face darkened with blood. “Bullshit! Bullshit, I got thirty percent! It was my contact, goddam it, and my ass with it on the road. Fifty percent, and that’s only fair!”

  Farnsworth shrugged. “Figure it out: we put up the capital and we loaned you the vehicle.”

  “Perhaps it should have been spelled out more clearly,” said Flint. “But I never imagined you thought of anything more than twenty or thirty percent. We need a realistic return for the kind of investment we made.”

  Bones added, “We put up a lot of high-risk money.”

  “I’ll sell it myself and give you back your fucking high-risk money!”

  “If you do”—Wager smiled—“I want my interest.”

  “What interest? Who said anything about interest?”

  “I just did, amigito.”

  “Me, too,” said Baca.

  “You guys never said nothing about interest. You guys said it was a good deal and you wanted in on it!”

  Flint fingered his red beard. “Gabe certainly has a point; it was a high-risk venture and should yield either high profit or high interest.”

  “Fuck you guys! You’re trying to rip me off. All right, name your goddam interest. I’ll pay you fuckers off and run my own operation from here on.”

  “Where are you gonna sell it?” asked Baca. “Where’s your outlets?”

  “Yeah,” said Wager. “You don’t want to use mine, because I don’t want you to use mine. Maybe somebody else’ll be more generous.”

  No one spoke.

  “I guess not,” said Wager. “What are you gonna do with all that grass? Smoke it?”

  “You fuckers.”

  “Thirty percent this time,” said Farnsworth. “The next time we’ll go higher—we’ll know it’s not such a big risk.”

  “You dirty bastard!” Jo-Jo stepped forward, his thin body bent tightly by his anger. One hand started inside his shirt.

  Wager said very quietly, “No,” and reached behind his back.

  In the silence they heard the faint whine and scratch of the German shepherd at the outer door.

  Jo-Jo’s pupils were tiny dots of rage as he glared at Wager. “I’ll get you.”

  “You better do it when I’m not looking. You ain’t got the balls to do it when I am.”

  “No heavy stuff.” Ramona spoke for the first time. “We’ll go thirty percent and throw in the van. Next time, it’s fifty-fifty if you invest, too. Sign over the title to him, ’Cardo.”

  Farnsworth took the slip of paper from his wallet and filled in the blank lines on the back. He held it out to Lewis. “Take it, Jo-Jo, and let’s have a drink. Hell, we should have got all this straight before.”

  Jo-Jo had difficulty taking his eyes off Wager; he snatched the ownership and walked stiffly to the door. “All right, fuckers. But I got ripped and I ain’t forgetting.” The eyes came back to Wager. “I ain’t forgetting you!” He slammed the door behind him. They heard the tinny clank of the van’s inside panels tossed onto the vehicle’s floor and then the angry rush of the engine as Jo-Jo ground through the gears turning around in the front yard. The engine faded away in the darkness.

  Farnsworth said gently, “That van cost us two thousand dollars, honey.”

  “If it’s in his name, it can’t be tied to us if he’s busted on the next trip,” she said.

  Flint’s red beard gapped in a short “Haw! ’Mona, you are sharp!”

  “Wowee,” breathed Bones. “For a minute there, I thought it was going to be the O.K. Corral around here. I didn’t know old Jo-Jo carried iron.”

  “He don’t. It’s a hunting knife. I knew the son of a bitch was crazy, but I never thought he’d try and use it.” Baca glanced at Wager. “Do you tote a piece?”

  Wager did not miss the new note of respect in Baca’s voice; machismo was the willingness to fight, or, in Baca’s case, to plant bombs in parked cars. “Everybody down home carries one.” Wager drew the stubby Bauer .25 from its holster where it rested on his kidney; the small square handle felt toylike in his palm. He preferred his larger gun
, the Star .44, but that was too professional for what he was supposed to be.

  “You ever use that thing?”

  “Not unless somebody makes me,” he said honestly.

  “Wowee,” said Bones again. “Let’s all have a drink—to good ol’ Jo-Jo!”

  After the marijuana was divided and the others had gone, Farnsworth led Gabe back into the warmth of the living room. Ramona had gone to bed; Farnsworth tossed another log onto the low fire in the Franklin stove. The German shepherd blinked bloodshot eyes at the sound and flopped back sleepily in the corner behind the stove.

  “I don’t like to see that heavy stuff, Gabe.”

  “Sometimes there’s no choice. Sometimes it’s part of the job.”

  Farnsworth filled his pipe and passed the bottle to Wager, who splashed a couple of fingers of Wild Turkey into a glass. “Well, maybe Ramona and me have been lucky so far. We haven’t had any of the heavy crap around here yet. I suppose if it comes, we’ll move on.”

  And leave their mess to be cleaned up by someone else. “You must have enough money to quit. The kid’s gonna start noticing things soon.”

  Farnsworth fiddled with the pipe, bobbing the yellow fire of the match up and down with his breath. “Yeah, we got some money stashed. But we could always use more. Ramona’s got it figured that in two years, the way things are going, we’ll have enough to quit and be comfortable for a long time.”

  “She makes the decisions?”

  “Well, she’s smart. Like giving Jo-Jo the van—I never would of thought of unloading that thing on him. Hell, if you really want to know, she’s the one who’s figured out this whole setup.” He wagged his head, the loose springs of hair bobbing. “Hell, if it wasn’t for her, I’d still be nickel-and-diming on the street. And little Pedro—he’s going to be just as sharp. You know he’s just turned five and already he’s starting to read? That little son of a gun picked it up from ‘Sesame Street.’”

  “That’s something,” said Wager.

  “He’s a good kid. A little more money and we’ll be able to give him a real good start.”

  Paid for by people whose start was stolen by an army of users dumping shit into their blood. “That’s fine,” said Wager.