“What do they do, this family you’re talkin’ about?”
“Sing, dance, tell jokes, you name it,” the clerk said. “Good clean fun. They come through here at least three or four times a year. Just seeing Mr. Bentley is worth the price of admission.”
“Who’s he?”
“He’s the monkey,” the clerk said.
Chimney studied the picture of the five grinning stooges and the primate dressed in a little sailor suit. Unless that monkey was putting out, he wasn’t interested, but it sounded like something Cob might get a kick out of. Hell, he’d probably go nuts over such a thing. He thought about the pet squirrel they’d kept for a week or so that summer they picked cotton in Alabama, and how Cob had bawled like a baby when he woke up one morning to discover Pearl frying it up in a pan. Wouldn’t even eat breakfast he was so upset, which was the first time that had ever happened. “Mind if I keep this?” he asked.
“Go ahead.”
Chimney stuck the paper in his pocket and went on up the stairs. After taking a glance about the room, he hid the two Smith & Wessons under the mattress and walked down to a store called Burton’s that sold men’s clothing and accessories. He bought a pair of soft black-and-gray-striped trousers and a lavender shirt and a derby and a new pair of shoes, along with a pair of long johns and some soap and a bottle of rosewater. On the way back to the hotel, he stopped at a barbershop called O’Malley’s and got a shave and a haircut for a quarter. An old man, bald as a turtle, sat in a chair by the window, half asleep. “Any idy where I might find me a whore?” Chimney asked as the barber lathered his face.
“Jesus Christ, son, just look around,” the barber said as he began scraping some peach fuzz off the boy’s skinny neck. “The world’s crawling with ’em. I ought to know. I married one, didn’t I, Jim?”
The old man by the window jerked up with a startled expression on his face. “Who? What? You mean Nancy? Aw, she’s not so bad.”
The barber laughed bitterly. “That’s my father-in-law,” he whispered low in Chimney’s ear, the sour smell of his breath nearly making the boy’s eyes water. “He don’t know shit.”
“What’d ye say?” the old man asked.
“Nothing,” the barber said. “Not a goddamn thing. Just talkin’ to my customer here.”
“I’m serious,” Chimney said. “Where can I find one?”
The man wiped the remaining lather off the boy’s face with a towel and turned to pick up a pair of scissors. “There’s two taxis that park down here on the corner every evening after six o’clock. Either one of them can show ye.”
Now he was getting somewhere, Chimney thought. Then the barber turned him in the chair, and he saw an automobile drive past the window. “They a place around here sells cars?” he asked.
“Jesus, what’d ye do? Rob a bank?”
“What’s that ’sposed to mean?” Chimney said, laying his hand on the butt of the little Remington stuck in his pants.
“Well, first you asking about buyin’ whores, and now automobiles. Sounds like he’s got money to spend, don’t it, Jim?”
“I don’t know,” the old man muttered. It was obvious that the crack about his daughter had hurt his feelings.
“Oh, don’t be mad, Jim,” the barber said. “I was just kiddin’ about Nancy. You know that.”
“Well.”
“Besides, it shouldn’t be nothing to you anyway. Hell, I’m the one stuck with her now.”
“Clarence, you shouldn’t talk like that. Nancy’s all right.”
“Best place to go look at cars is Triplett’s,” the barber said, turning back to Chimney. “Just make a left when you leave and another left at the first street. You’ll see his lot a couple blocks down. I’d go with ye and buy one myself, but that all right bitch I’m married to keeps me in the poorhouse. Ain’t that right, Jim?”