Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves(32)

Down the road, with a whoop of laughter she hurtled his pickup, yanking the fence gate along with it.

Only as the ranch house came into view, did she sober up. “How do I stop?” she yelled.

His own laughter fought with fury. He leaned past her flailing arm and flipped the switch. The pickup jolted to a bucking halt.

Breathing rapidly, she slowly and most reluctantly turned her eyes, widened in apprehension, up at him.

Fury won. With that, his arm shot out to haul her tail-over-teakettle, face down across his nearest knee. Whack after resounding whack he delivered on that small rear.

“Yeoowwl,” she wailed. Beneath his well-placed smacks, she squirmed like a hog-tied calf.

He could not remember feeling such a release of curdled frustration, such pure satisfaction, almost a sensual pleasure, in days, maybe months, even. Hell, maybe years.

But enough was enough. “Gather your things,” he said, shoving her upright, “it’s back to Austin we’re going.”

§ § §

Gideon was sorting through a pile of constituents’ slush mail that Johnson had relegated to him. His job was to respond to them. Some were absolutely nutty.



Honorable Lyndon B. Johnson ~

RESIST THE NAZI TAKEOVER!!!! STRING UP THE COLLABORATORS.

Sincerely,

Huckleberry Finn



But, then, when Gideon glanced up and saw that crooked Gypsy grin, he knew he was just as nutty.

Irina’s purloined purse in her hand, there stood Romy, wearing someone else’s scuffed, two-toned saddle-oxfords. Behind her towered the darkly angry Duke McClellan. On his shoulder, he toted the cardboard crate from the Jewish Relief Program.

Gideon could feel his scar twitching. He had a good idea what was on the rancher’s mind. To renege on the National Youth Association program and rid himself of a street chiseler with no impulse control.

This did not bode well. If Romy raised a stink with the press, and that she very well could, given her crafty gift of Gypsy ensorcellment, it might mean the disclosure of Johnson’s clandestine Operation Texas – and would mean all Jewish refugees who were living, and working, illegally in the United States, himself included, would be deported.

Nevertheless, he stood and gave the pair his attorney’s urbane smile. “Romy – McClellan – wonderful to see you both. How do I come to be so graced by your visit today?” As if he had no interpersonal savvy.

“I want to see Johnson.”

“But, of course.” Johnson, however, was in Washington on Capitol Hill. “What is the purpose of your call, may I ask?”

“I am fed up with this under-the-table scheme of his – hiding Jewish refugees –at the taxpayers’ and my expense.”

“Your expense?” he temporized.

McClellan looked at the ceiling, took a deep breath, and said, “Where do you want me to start, Goldman? How about today? She commandeered my pickup and took out my fence gate.”

Hell, that was reason enough. “But your agreement was with the rabbi, was it not?” he pointed out in a most reasonable tone. “To take on Romy as your cook?”

In a powder keg warning voice, the rancher volleyed back, “I don’t care who is responsible, but I don’t want to be responsible for this refugee.”

Hmmm. How to buy time to diffuse this issue? “Romy, what do you want?”

That gap-toothed, thoroughly irritating grin. “I want to see ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’.”

To keep from bursting into laughing, he scrubbed his scar. “Uhhh, that might not be a bad idea, since Representative Johnson is not in at the moment.” Not in for several days, actually. “It’s lunch time. Why don’t we take in a moving picture? By that time, in a couple of hours or so, maybe Johnson will be available.”

“I don’t have a couple of hours to waste,” McClellan growled. “I’ve the last of the season’s hay still to be baled and – ”

“But it’s not wasted if ye ask the librarian – Charlotte, isna that her name – to accompany us,” Romy said with a smug smile. “After all, tis courtin’ ye want to be, aye?”

The girl, too, was wisely buying time. What a finagler. And this librarian? Charlotte?

That next two hours, spent in the Paramount Theatre, only blocks away from the Capitol and the library, with himself seated next to Romy, and Duke next to Charlotte, had to be the most entertainment Gideon had experienced since . . . well, since the euphoria of pulling off the Loo card heist at the Kempinski, and that had also been at the girl’s instigation.

The animated Grimm’s musical fairy tale had the audience watching the screen in awe-struck fascination – while he watched with fascination his companions’ faces.

Charlotte’s eyeglasses deflected whatever expression might have been glimpsed in her eyes, but her lips were curved with pure pleasure. She was leaning into the brunt of McClellan’s shoulder, which may have accounted for much of her obvious pleasure.

Stetson in his lap, long legs splayed, McClellan was oblivious to the females on either side of him as he took in the fairy tale flickering on the screen. And his chain-sawed features had eased up from their cabled ‘don’t mess with me’ warning of earlier.

However, it was Romy’s expression that most entertained Gideon. Her mobile features were in constant play, rivaling those of Snow White’s, the wicked Queen’s, and the seven dwarfs’ combined.