Free Robert B. Parker's Blackjack by Robert Knott Page A

him . . .”
    “What were you doing with Bill, for Bill?” I said.
    He shook his head.
    “Truitt said we’d get a good wage, I . . . I was trying to stay out of trouble, I was, I swear to God.”
    “Good wage for what?”
    “I don’t know,” he said.
    “You don’t know?” I said.
    “They talked with each other and not to me.”
    “Why,” I said.
    Ricky leaned over in pain and coughed blood.
    “Why did you ride to Benson City?”
    “Money . . .”
    “What money?”
    “We left in a hurry, and Bill knew this lady he could get money from.”
    Virgil looked to me, then back to Ricky.
    “How’d you know Truitt?”
    He spit before he spoke.
    “He come to Yuma a spell for thieving. I goddamn protected him and now this shit . . . Truitt acted all tough in front of Bill, but got jumpy, Truitt got jumpy and shot a goddamn lawman.”
    Ricky turned his head to the side and spit again.
    “Oh . . . hell. Oh,” he said, wincing in pain. “The next thing you know we are on the run and . . . Truitt don’t think shit about me. Said he didn’t need me, said he was the gun hand. Fuck. Then I get sick as hell and now they goddamn leave me.”
    “Where we gonna find them?” Virgil said.
    He tilted his head a little to look at us. Then he looked to me with a pleading expression.
    “I’ll tell you,” he said. “If you can do me a favor.”
    “You ain’t in a very good position to be asking for favors, Ricky,” Virgil said.
    Ricky moaned and tears welled up as his eyes looked back and forth between Virgil and me.
    “Finish me . . .” he said. “I do not want to live no more.”
    Virgil glanced over to me, then looked back to Ricky.
    “I don’t got nothing now,” Ricky said. “And all I done was wrong and I’d hate like hell to live like this and I damn sure don’t want my life to be the last life I take . . . Please?”
    Virgil looked to me.
    I nodded.
    “Sure,” I said. “Talk.”
    “They’re headed for Socorro,” he said.
    Virgil looked to me.
    “Lying, Ricky?” I said.
    “I ain’t,” he said.
    “They gone to La Verne?” I said.
    “No,” he said. “Socorro.”
    Ricky lowered his chin again and was still.
    “Ricky?” I said.
    He did not move.
    “Ricky?”
    He looked up.
    “We know about La Verne,” I said.
    Ricky shook his head ever so slightly.
    “Socorro,” he said. “That is where you will find Truitt . . . bet your ass.”
    “What makes you so sure?” Virgil said.
    “Truitt has a bunch of shitheads he runs with from there,” he said. “His gang, he says.”
    Virgil looked at me and shook his head.
    “You telling the truth?” I said.
    “Mark my words,” Ricky said.

21.
    W hy should we believe you, Ricky?” I said.
    “Believe what you want.”
    Ricky leaned over and moaned.
    “We been moving fast,” he said, and then spit some more blood into the patch of blood on the floor in front of the chair. “You can catch the shit. The threat of you or any other law . . . was . . . fading from his sight, Bill’s, too.”
    “Didn’t fade from yours,” I said.
    He grimaced and shook his swollen head a little.
    “They ain’t as smart as me,” he said. “They ain’t spent half their born days locked up in no prison. And they weren’t left behind in the middle of the night, neither.”
    He leaned forward with his elbows to his knees and spit more blood on the floor, then looked back up at us.
    “All he fucking talked about,” he said. “Once he’s down Socorro way, that any law better look out.”
    Virgil looked at me, then back to him.
    “And Black?” Virgil said.
    “Fucking left with him,” he said.
    “Where in Socorro?” I said.
    He shook his head.
    “Shouldn’t be too hard to find . . . There’s a cantina in the square there, north side of the plaza, a lively place with pretty whores. Saturday night, the place is famous for good times and there is nothing that would make me happier than to see the two of you spoil his