“A good day,” Ryan said again.

There was seven hundred and seventy dollars even. They had been lucky. Even with the uneasy feeling before, it had come off all right. Even the amount seemed like a sign of luck. Seven hundred and seventy.

He counted off two hundred dollars. “For Frank,” Ryan said to Billy Ruiz. But he hesitated, held it. He counted off a hundred and handed him that much. He counted two hundred again. “This is for you.”

“Hey”-Pizarro was holding the bills open on the steering wheel-“what kind of cut is this?”

“Your cut,” Ryan said.

“How much you get?”

“Seven hundred.”

“And I get a hunnert, that’s all?”

“That’s scale for waiting in the truck.”

“Man, I told you. I owe Camacho four hunnert fifty dollars.”

“That’s right,” Ryan said. “You told me.”

Billy Ruiz was staring at him. Ryan felt it and looked at the bony, yellowish face with its stained-looking, wide-open eyes.

“I didn’t sit in no car,” Billy Ruiz said.

“Are you complaining, Billy?”

“I went in with you.”

“Would you have gone in without me?”

Ruiz said nothing. He stared out through the windshield now, watching the road and the car ahead of them. Ryan’s eyes dropped to the money, folding it, but he could still see Billy Ruiz. The dumb bastard; the dumb cucumber picker. Ruiz wouldn’t have gone near the house alone. He wouldn’t have walked past it. Dumb skinny blank-eyed little weasel that tells you all the places he’s been and how much he can drink and all the broads he’s had, with his pants too long and sagging in the seat, too dumb to know how dumb he looks, how skinny ugly baggy-assed dumb.

He peeled two twenties and a ten from the roll of bills and nudged Ruiz’s arm. Ruiz looked at him with the blank look. He looked down at the money and he grinned. He was happy. Fifty bucks. God.