girls and a red-haired wife - all of whom had died of bubonic plague, of all things, twenty years before in northwestern Mexico.
Everybody got real misty about that and drank to their passing, and each man present agreed privately to stop calling him "Nutless."
They got a lot more depressed when a towheaded kid named, no shit, Bambi, who had wandered into the party some hours earlier from who knows where, started to cry about Hernandez's lost family. This pissed Crow off. He was already in a bad mood on account of the sheriff's badge and gun. Actually he liked wearing the badge pretty much. It was shiny and made him feel official and all and reminded him of which pocket his cigarettes were in. But the gun was one of these forty-four magnum artillery types two inches longer than his waist and every time he sat down the barrel would dig him in the balls causing him to yelp and leap to his feet to rub 'em and that only reminded him that the whores still weren't there and on and on and on.
So this crying Bambi was too much on top of everything else. He cleared everybody off of the suite's main sofa with one swipe of the back of his hand and unzipped the cover off the largest cushion. Then he stepped over and picked up the sobbing Bambi by both ears and tried to zip him up inside.
Anthony simply wouldn't have this. "Show a little goddamn consideration, Jack!" he snorted and unfolded the kid from the cushion. Bambi rewarded Anthony by throwing his arms around the other's neck, gurgling, "Thank ya, brother," and vomiting onto his chest.
Anthony didn't even get mad. He just took 'em both into what was left of the bathroom, cleaned them off, held Bambi's head while be got sick in the tub. Then he carried him, still sobbing, in his arms back to the middle of the room and sat down and began to lecture everybody present about kindness, ending with two exquisitely pertinent statements:
"Showing a certain measure of respect and tenderness to your fellow human souls is the way a real man exhibits class" and "By the way, are the fucking bimbos gonna show up or not?"
The combination of statements sent Cat - long since returned and almost as long dead drunk - into a cackling frenzy. He held onto his sides and rolled back and forth kicking his feet.
The rest of the party stared at him in abject bewilderment. All, that is, except the sheriff. Ortega had been both stung and humiliated by the bimbo remark. Being sheriff, procurement was clearly his responsibility and them not showing up by now, almost 4:30, infuriated him.
But the telephone - that really enraged him. He'd been trying to call for two hours to see what the hold-up was but for the life of him he couldn't get the sonuvabitch to work. He couldn't even get a goddamned dial tone.
This in turn made David Deyo awfully guilty. Deyo, a member of the pike crew, had been responsible for tearing the phone out of the wall the first time hours earlier. A veteran of three years' duty on the destroyer Hepburn, and therefore a man of breeding and culture, he had spent hours reconnecting the wires using his very best navy knot. But for some reason the phone still wouldn't work.
A half-dozen of them got down on all fours to examine the situation. All agreed the knot was a thing of beauty and that the phone should by God phone. The real problem, of course, was that each of them had drunk enough to kill a steer. But this did not occur to anyone. Except maybe Cat, whose suddenly renewed cackling was a continuing mystery.
Somebody suggested using the phone in the next room. This was Cat's turn to be helpful. "I'll get it," he screeched. He rose, reeling with laughter, and ricocheted into the adjoining bedroom, ripped out that phone and brought it in to be retied.
This one didn't work either.
It was the phone company, everybody agreed. The phone company was fucked. And everybody had a drink to that.
It was starting to get really late. Only the hard core remained. Team Crow, three cops, including the sheriff, Father Hernandez, and Bambi. Somebody suggested going and getting the women, a Quest. That was cheered until somebody else pointed out that they were almost out of liquor.
One of the deputies reminded everybody of the time. The liquor store