“I couldn’t have Fannie try and work with the Chief again,” Buster said. “That man would’ve scalped the red hair right off her head if we hadn’t made the damn peace after what she did. Christ. I’m going to send her back to work out the details of running our shit on the Rez now that Tunica is dying this slow and painful death. Did you see the outlet mall out there? I only saw two cars in the big parking lot. Two cars. Bally’s is gone. Harrah’s is gone. We need those red-skinned Choctaw bastards.”

“Hood and Taggart couldn’t do it.”

“Those boys would’ve fucked up their own funerals.”

“Fannie’s doing a damn fine job,” Ray said. “We did good putting her in charge.”

“What goddamn choice did I have?” Buster White said. “Those boys shit the bed. And Fannie had to clean it up. It’s fine. It’s fine. At least for now.”

Ray lifted the cigarette to his lips and squinted in the smoke. It had to be damn-near sixty degrees in the back room of the Old Chicago Steakhouse, but Buster was sweating like a hog. Sure, Taggart was a liability. But how much damage could he really do unless he knew some real cruel and current shit about Buster and those Cartel folks in Houston? Something was making his old buddy shit his drawers. Something dirty and nasty.

“Not much we can do now,” Ray said, blowing the smoke from the side of his mouth.

“Would you fucking eat?” Buster said. “That’s a hell of a piece of meat. A nice char, good and bloody on the inside. Better than barely legal puss.”

Ray shook his head. As he’d gotten older and grayer, he had less tolerance for Buster’s crude talk. He hadn’t changed a bit since they were teenagers in the way he thought of money and women. The more, the better—in everything. Food, booze, pills. And Ray seriously doubted he’d ever see the businesses in Tunica close up. All of it would far outlast him. Buster sat there, a gelatinous hump, wheezing, the meat along the edge of the T-bone sliced away.

“How’s the cooze?”

“Come again?”

“Fannie,” Buster White said, giving a half laugh, a half burp. “Who the fuck’ve we been talking about?”

“Good.”

“She still mad at me?”

“Fannie doesn’t get mad,” Ray said. “Fannie’s all business.”

“Just like you taught her,” Buster said, grinning, putting down his knife and fork. “I’ll never forget when you brought that little piece of country trash into my bar in New Orleans. Real Coal Miner’s Daughter shit. I thought you’d lost your damn mind. She was nineteen? Eighteen?”

“Twenty-three.”