Free Heat of Night by Harry Whittington Page B

many?”
    “Well, what you mean? I hire as many as we need.”
    “All the time you need new girls, huh? Is this true? I don’t mean you need just girls, Meester Hollister. I mean between you and me and Rosa. We all grown up, huh? We all know our way around, right? We all three about the same age, huh?”
    Mal shrugged. He was not about to argue with Juan over a matter of ten or eleven years. He agreed that generally they were the same age.
    “Yeah.” Big Rosa spoke suddenly. She pushed her hair from her face. She leaned forward staring into Mal’s face. “You — don’t care much for girls old as you, huh?”
    Mal flushed. Big Juan glanced over his shoulder and made a downward gesture toward Rosa. Mal saw Juan felt he was being subtle in his approach while there was nothing subtle about Rosa’s frontal attack on his morals.
    Juan got together a new smile, compounded of the agony in his eyes and the sag of his weary mouth muscles.
    He said, “I ask you a question, Mr. Hollister? How many girls you hire as you secretary? Huh? How many girls like Dolores? How many — say — in one year, huh?”
    “I don’t know, Juan. You know how it is with girls. They get married. They quit for one reason or another.”
    Juan gave him a smile that was full more of rage than of camaraderie. “Or maybe you fire them, too, huh? I mean — if they not friendly with the boss — hell, why keep them, huh? A man like you — and me — we like the girls around us to be real friendly, huh?”
    Mal couldn’t help laughing. “You, mean unless they date me — I fire ‘em?”
    Juan’s mouth pulled down in a raging leer. He tried to sound friendly and in complete empathy. “Oh, you kid. Some fun, huh? Plenty new girls. Huh?”
    He looked as if tears would break his mask of laughter.
    “No.” Mal spoke in a determined way but he may as well have been speaking against the winds roaring in from the Gulf.
    Neither Juan nor Rosa believed him. Rosa made a clicking sound with her tongue against the roof of her mouth.
    Juan tried another tack. “You kicked around a lot over on Twenty-second Street in Tampa when you was a young guy, right?” Juan’s haggard eyes still tried to smile. “Cuban girls. Over in Ybor City. Some hot chickens. Huh?”
    “I don’t know. I had to work pretty hard. I didn’t have a lot of time for fun.”
    Both Rosa and Juan digested this thought for a moment. It altered the complexion of things slightly, but not for the better.
    “This a-way it is with some men. They think when they get older — older like us three — they have missed something,” Rosa said She got up and walked to where Juan stood before Mal’s chair. Both bent from the waist, staring down at him. “They work hard when young. Pile up some money. Get to looking around for pretty young girls they missed, huh?”
    “I don’t know,” Mal said.
    “You,” Rosa said. “What’s a man like you want with a young kid like Dolores, huh?”
    “I — like Dolores.”
    “Shu. You like her. She likes you. She likes her papa, too. Her mama. We get our age — we all got to look after kids like Dolores. Huh? You think this?” Rosa’s eyes were troubled but they defied him to utter the wrong answer and he knew there was no right answer.
    Mal breathed deeply, not knowing what to say. He supposed they did not know how insulting they were, or if they vaguely suspected, they didn’t care. They loved Dolores. They wanted to protect her and were like two embattled mockingbirds pecking at the hawk that molested their nest. He told himself he was beginning to feel like a hawk. They were right, he had no right here. The simplicity of their rage was convincing. Anything so simple and honest must be right. Then he remembered his dreams about Dolores, many of them waking dreams.
    Rosa rocked her head back and forth. “A man like you. You must have had plenty women in you time, huh?” She did not wait for him to answer. “Why you waste your time with a