Bucky threw a shoe, which Jake had to duck. “Jesus H. Christ. Get the fuck outa here, go get your ashes hauled. Try not to get stabbed and don’t get a dose. And don’t stay out all fuckin night. We got roadwork at six and sparrin partners at ten.”

“I got roadwork. You don’t have roadwork. You couldn’t run your sorry ass from here to the damned door. Don’t swallow that whole jug a whiskey neither. I aint got the jack for your funeral.”

Bucky Betz had his weakness, which was liquor. Jake could take his drink or leave it. Women, though, he had to have women. That pretty little thing working in the diner, say. Sweet as peach cobbler. Nice figure to her too. Something wrong with her arm, crippled up, she was always hiding it behind her hip. But those big dark eyes, the black hair, those high cheekbones, the narrow waist. He was part Cherokee, he could spot Indian a mile off. She got him all cranked up, like there was something wild in her and he was the man to let it loose. Now he had the fever in him and he had to have it somewhere. In his pocket, he had the address, scrawled in pencil by a colored sparring partner in Denver. A place in jigtown where a man could get nickel beer and fifty-cent women. East Ninth Street. Couldn’t be hard to find in a town this size.

He slipped out the door before Bucky could draw him into another argument, got directions at a gas station, found the place easy. Red light in the window, curtains drawn, jukebox music from inside. It was one of a row of such establishments along the south side of the street. There was a neon sign in the window: red’s place b-b-q. The doorman peeked through a slit. Jake said he got the address from Reck Towne in Denver, the door swung open. Red’s Place was a long, narrow room with a bar along one side, sweet-scented pork barbecue opposite, tables toward the back, a dance floor in the middle. There was a good crowd already, sixty or seventy people, about as many as the room would hold. Men in loose suits and women in tight dresses.