Mohawk

me.”
    Before she left, Anne fished the wrench out from under the car with a broom handle, and he began to curse the car again with his customary good humor. He was drunk, and when Diana came home from the hospital she’d have to pour him into bed, where he could dream of youth and beauty.

43
    The game broke up when Dallas and Benny D. were good and cleaned. “Jesus, I can’t stand that fuckin’ John,” Benny D. said when they were out in the fresh air on Main Street. It was still pretty early, only a little after one A.M. Both men were loaded, but not over the top. “Let’s go someplace.”
    “Nah.”
    “Come on,” Benny D. insisted.
    “Nah,” Dallas said, and the two men ambled up Main Street together toward Harry’s. The grill was closed, like every other place downtown. The afternoon had been hot, but the night air was cool.
    “I can’t stand that fucker,” Benny D. said. “I don’t see how you can work—”
    “I don’t see him any more than you do. We settle up once a week. That’s it.”
    “I don’t see how you can work for him, that’s all.”
    “He’ll have a bad day tomorrow,” Dallas said. Whenever he got in trouble, Dallas left a space or two in the book and filled them in later. The only way he had much luck with horses was to wait until after the race was over and then make the entry, usually in Benny D.’s name, or somebody who’d cover for him if pushcame to shove. But even this system wasn’t foolproof. A couple weeks before, Dallas had no sooner entered the unofficial winner on the books than an inquiry was posted and they ended up taking the bastard down. Anyhow, he didn’t do it very often. He’d saved John’s ass plenty in the last few months, and besides, John was loaded like a Greek.
    “I hope he has a rotten fuckin’ day,” Benny D. said. “What say you come back and work for me?”
    “Because you can’t keep your nose out of things. Like I’ve told you a thousand times.”
    “It’s my place, you knothead. I’m not supposed to come around my own place?”
    “No. You just screw things up.”
    “My mechanics answer to me,” Benny D. said testily.
    “And that’s how come I’m not your mechanic.”
    “You’d rather work for a prick like John—”
    “John’s all right.”
    “—than a buddy like me.”
    “I’m going home.”
    “Come have a drink,” Benny D. said.
    “I’m tapped.”
    “Me too. So what?”
    “All right, one drink. Let’s hit The Velvet Pussycat.”
    Benny D. frowned. “That fuckin’ place. I don’t know anybody there.”
    “We better get some money then,” Dallas said. They turned down the alley behind Harry’s. The Saunderses’ bedroom was on the second floor toward the back, and Harry’s sleepy face appeared at the curtained window a few seconds after Dallas began to bounce pebbles off the glass. “Harry,” Dallas shouted softly.
    “What?” Harry spit down at them.
    “Let me take fifty ’til tomorrow.”
    “Go to hell.” His face disappeared and the curtain fell back in place.
    “He’s pissed,” Benny D. said. “He went back to bed.”
    “Nah,” Dallas said, leaning against the dumpster. “He’s gone to get the fifty.”
    “Bullshit. He went back to bed.”
    “I’ll bet you the fifty.”
    Benny D. frowned and looked up at the black window. The alley was quiet. “You’re on. He’s dead asleep.”
    The window creaked open and, when the men looked up, bills were fluttering down out of the darkness—five tens, three of which they caught in the air. Benny D. climbed into the dumpster for a stray. He handed Dallas three tens. “I’ll give you the other twenty tomorrow. You buy the drinks. I hate that Velvet Pussycat anyhow.”
    Just then Wild Bill turned into the alley, walking toward them, and watching his own feet fall in front of him as if the surprise of seeing them perform so effortlessly was enough to absorb all his attention. At forty, he was a year younger than Dallas, though he looked like a man in his mid-fifties. He was bald, except for a ring of longish hair that began only a few inches above his ears, covering them and hanging over his shirt collar as well. His cheeks were sunken, as were his eyes. Wild Bill loped right by without looking up and inserted the key Harry had chained to his belt into the lock. The door opened and Dallas and Benny D. were alone again in the alley.
    “I wonder what the hell he’s doing out this time of night,” Dallas said.
    “If I was a farmer,