Honky Tonk Samurai (Hap and Leonard) (6 page)

“We’ve known each other a long time,” I said. “We’re a tad competitive.”

“I suppose it’s friendly competition,” she said.

“Friendly as shit,” Leonard said.

She smiled that killer smile again, settled back in her chair, and let her gaze hang somewhere in between us.

“Tell me how you heard of us,” she said.

I had dodged that question earlier.

“I drive by here all the time,” I said.

She gave me a stony look. That wasn’t the right answer, but I was still trying to see how much of what I thought was going on was real and how much was my imagination.

I laughed. “Of course, as I pointed out, the merchandise I want isn’t on the lot. I think I’m making myself clear, am I not?”

“I’ve explained about the catalog,” she said. She was beginning to lose some of her giddy sweetness. She was definitely wanting an answer to her question. And the right answer.

“I’ve been told there are some things that come with the cars that aren’t in the catalog,” I said. “Or at least it can be that way.”

She didn’t bite. Just smiled. Not a very good one this time, just enough to show her teeth and wet her lipstick.

“I had a friend tell me about the place,” I said. “He knew a lady named Sandy, and Sandy put him into a good ride at a fair but certainly upscale price.”

The woman narrowed her eyes. “Oh,” she said. “When was this?”

“Maybe five years ago,” I said.

“Who was this man?” she asked.

“Fellow I met in passing,” I said. “At a party. A party Ms. Lilly Buckner arranged. I met him there. Sandy was her granddaughter, and this fellow, the one at the party, he knew her a little. Actually he said ‘a little but well,’ if you catch my drift. Said she worked here. He told me a bit about what you offer.”

“A little but well?” she said. “Kind of a contradictory statement, isn’t it?”

“Not the way he meant it,” I said.

“Of course,” she said, but she had grown as cold as the air-conditioning unit since I mentioned Sandy. “We did have a Sandy, but she quit. Stopped coming in, actually. And this wasn’t her work station. She was assigned to another office, another division of the business.”

“Another division?” Leonard said.

“Another city, but she was here for a while, then she was gone. The other division, in Fort Worth, she just quit showing up there. Can’t say I remember her that well. Well, right now inventory is small, Hap, but I’ll keep you in mind.”

“What about the catalog?” I asked.

“I think I misspoke,” she said. “I realize I might not have what you want at all. The other services. Road check. Free tire rotation. That may not be available right now.”

“It wasn’t my tires I was hoping to get rotated,” I said.

“I have no idea what you mean, but I made a mistake. We won’t have any cars for a while.”

“Not a good way to sell product,” I said. “Not having it available after you say you do.”

“We don’t need to sell many of what we sell to make good money. We’re expensive.”

“I can afford the expense,” I said.

“He can,” Leonard said. “He’s got patents on sex toys. Nice stuff—he ought to show you the line sometime. What’s in
his
catalog is for sale. There’s this one—a big purple rubber dick with metal studs on it—that will make you scream like there’s a man with a chain saw after you. And me, I got some serious-ass money. A white couple left me their estate. I was their gardener for about ten years. They didn’t know that secretly I hated them for their whiteness and called them ugly names behind their backs. Cracker, honky, and such. That old, wrinkly lady, and her having me stud her. Jesus. That was some tough work, I got to tell you. I’d rather have had a job wiping asses in hell. Dropped her drawers, lay down on the bed, that thing of hers looked like a taco rolled in hair rotting on a blanket. Paid all right, though. Still, you had to get past the smell and imagine it was a goddamn donkey to get a hard-on.”

I thought: Gardener? White couple? Stud to a wrinkly old lady? Get past the smell? What the fuck?

“Is that so?” Frank said to Leonard. Under her green-eyed gaze I felt like we had gone from two wealthy buyers to a couple of yokels in mud-splashed overalls with cow shit on our shoes and the intellectual level of a bag of busted bricks.

“He’s a joker,” I said. “He’s just not too funny.”

“Oh, I’m not kidding. The old man knew how to keep an erection. Viagra. That’s the drug for the aged; that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I think for everyone over sixty they ought to pass it out for free. Put it in their fucking oatmeal and mashed peas. By the way, do you have a hat to go with that outfit? I think it needs one.”

Frank stared at Leonard. I think she wasn’t certain what she had just heard. When she was certain, she said, “I do have a hat. It matches the skirt.” Then to me: “You have a card? Maybe I can let you know when we have new inventory. I can make my mistake up to you if something comes in.”

“That sounds good,” I said. “But I’m out of cards. I’ll just write down a phone number you can call.”

“Very well,” she said.

I wrote my number down on a pad with a pen she handed me. I didn’t put my last name, just Hap. Leonard didn’t bother writing his number or name, just told her to call and make it two, but to make his more expensive and better. The competition thing. But by then Frank was like someone waiting for a train to pass.

I finished the writing, did it carefully, remembering where she had touched the pen. I didn’t touch that spot. I looked at the pen when I finished. It was one of a handful in a small, decorative jar on her desk.

“Are these to spare?” I said, holding up my signing pen.

“Handouts,” she said.

“Good,” I said. “You’ll call right away if something comes up?”

“Of course,” she said.

Maybe saying there was a party at Ms. Buckner’s was my mistake. Maybe she knew the old bat, realized she wasn’t exactly a party animal. Then or five years ago. And, of course, Leonard had fucked up any chance I had of rescuing the deal.

We stood up.

Frank said to Leonard, “You must have been some gardener to inherit their money.”

“Well, I was plowing a couple of fields in the house, not to mention the garden. I was good, though. I could make an old man scream and an old woman shit herself. I could grow a rose that would kiss your ass every morning and sing you to sleep at night. And petunias—oh, hell, they were so goddamn fine we had a paying tour come by once a year every winter.”

“Petunias grow in the winter?” Frank said. She wanted us gone, but she just couldn’t help herself. Maybe she was wondering if there was really something to it. A gardener gigolo.

“Mine grew in the winter, and that’s why there was a tour,” Leonard said. “Nuns. Boy Scouts. Mostly civic people. They were happy as hell to be there and see those petunias. Hybrids. Very special.”

“I’m sure they were,” Frank said.

We left. I made sure my grip stayed exactly the same on the pen. When we were back in the car, Leonard said, “Talk about going from hot to cold.”

“Oh, really? I have patents on sex toys? A white couple left you money for being a gardener? And you secretly hated them and were plowing their fields, making them scream and shit themselves, and to fuck the old woman you had to imagine a donkey? Roses that could kiss your ass and petunia tours in the winter for nuns and Boy Scouts? What the hell, Leonard?”

“We were already burned,” Leonard said, starting up the car, easing it off the lot. “I thought I might as well mess with her. I didn’t like her.”

“I guess you have a point, brother. It was over before we came in the door. I mean, she nibbled at the bait a little but didn’t like the taste.”

“Yep. She’s not going to call,” Leonard said. “Our pony stumbled into the ditch when you mentioned Sandy. And I think mentioning Ms. Buckner broke its leg.”

“And you shot the pony in the head with that gigolo-gardener crap,” I said.

“Someone had to put our bullshit pony out of its misery,” he said. “It was kind of funny, though, wasn’t it?”

“No.”

“Hap?”

“It wasn’t.”

“Hap, come on, man.”

“It was amusing to some degree. The old woman shitting herself was a nice touch.”

“Told you. And I don’t believe she had a hat to go with that outfit. I would have a hat with something like that. I like a good hat. She had a hat, she’d have had it on.”

“You see her keep looking out at our car?” I said.

“I think she was memorizing the license number.”

“If she’s got the contacts, and I bet she does, she’ll find someone who can trace it to a car rental.”

“Yep. We’re fucked on the secret-agent front,” he said. “We were better at sexing chickens back at the chicken plant.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I couldn’t tell a chicken wee-wee from a dee-dee. I could make a good aluminum chair, though.”

“And I was a good bouncer.”

“Until you got fired for kicking that guy’s ass and peeing on his head.”

“Yeah,” Leonard said. “They thought that was excessive. Bunch of weenies. You know what we did do well? Rose-field work.”

“We did. But it was hot in the summer and cold in the winter.”

“Seasons work like that, Hap. It’s not uncommon. Sometimes it rains, too.”

“We’re not actually too good at anything, are we?”

“Sadly, I was just thinking that,” he said.

Leonard drove us to the office. I never let go of that pen. We pulled up in the lot. The sign for our office had changed, of course. It said
BRETT SAWYER INVESTIGATIONS
. That was done right away, and Marvin did it. He had to make sure no one thought he was working both sides of the street.

Just for luck, I checked for the bicycle lady and the shorts she likes to wear. She has a very successful store downstairs. You wouldn’t think you could sell and repair that many bicycles, but then again, you got to see her in those shorts so much of the time. They make men and some women want to buy a bicycle or a hippopotamus, and catching sight of her in those sweet little things is as fine and satisfying as a tour of petunias in the dead of winter.

Neither she nor her shorts were on display. There were no petunias, either. Not that I’d recognize one if I saw it.

W
hen we came into the office the air-conditioning hit us in a pleasing way. It wasn’t as savage as the air in the car-lot office, but it was showing summer some anger. The couch was pulled out, and Brett and Buffy were asleep on it. Brett woke up when we closed the door but only moved a bit and didn’t open her eyes.

Buffy raised her head in a tentative manner, like she was expecting a beating. When she looked like that I wanted to drive over to that fellow’s house and pull him out of it and kick him around the way Leonard and Marvin had. I wanted to see him on a daily basis and do just what he had done to a helpless, loving dog. I wanted to see him flinch every time he saw me. I guess that made me the same as him. Naw. He’s a grown-ass man. A dog expects to be loved. And deserves to. Any man that would kick a dog like that ought to have a knot jerked in his dick, the kind that could only be untied with a butcher knife.

“Been a tough day, huh?” Leonard said to Brett.

Brett cocked one eye open and left it open. The other eye finally followed.

“I didn’t have a pillow, and the mattress is a tad lumpy,” she said, “but I’m tough. I can handle it.” Brett rolled over and put her feet on the floor, smacked her lips, and yawned. She had on jeans and a loose T-shirt. Her red hair had been pinned back, but part of it had come loose and hung across one shoulder. “Girl has to keep up her strength. Besides, I wanted Buffy to learn how to snuggle.”

“How’d that work out?” I asked.

“It’s a little like hugging a mahogany end table. Her legs stick straight out and go stiff. But she was sort of getting into it when you two interrupted us. How’d your morning go?”

“Not sure,” I said.

“It does seem as if there’s more than the car business going on there, though,” Leonard said. “Fact is, I don’t think the car business is going on in as big a way as monkey business.”

“I’m not a fan of monkeys,” Brett said. “Apes I like. Monkeys not so much. I think it’s the screeching.”

“Both monkeys and apes throw shit,” I said. “I think we had some thrown at us today.”

“Why are you holding that pen like that?” she asked.

I went to the desk drawer, where I knew there was a box of plastic bags we had bought for a variety of reasons, evidence being one. I unlocked the drawer with my key, which Leonard did not have a copy of, and put the pen in a plastic bag and left it in the drawer. I said, “I’m going to take advantage of our friendship with Marvin and see if I can get him to run the prints of a certain well-turned-out lady ape who I think may be selling more than cars and is the one who flung a lot of shit on us.”

“Oh,” Brett said. “How well turned out?”

“Nothing you have to worry about,” Leonard said.

“No offense,” Brett said, “but you aren’t exactly the best judge of female flesh.”

“You got a point there,” he said.

“She was all right, but not my type,” I said.

“I’ll accept that,” she said.

“On the other hand, maybe she thought me and Leonard were boyfriends,” I said.

“If she did,” Leonard said, “and I find out, I will personally set fire to that place, then shoot you.”

I got comfortable in one of our nifty new chairs, said to Brett, “I think it’s a place that gets a lot of people walking through the lot, but very few people ask about buying. I think they sell some cars but reckon they are mostly taking recommended clients, and it has to do with something besides automobiles. I got the vibe they were selling prostitution, but for all I know they got a big cookie-baking deal on the side, and that’s what they’re selling. I tried to make Frank—that was her name—believe I was a potential prostitute user or cookie buyer. Being with Leonard messed that up. He’s like bringing a wolf to a butcher shop. He just can’t help himself. He was all up in the pork chops.”

“Oh, now you’re blaming me,” he said.

“I tried to sell us both, but I wasn’t having any luck. Leonard was a bump on a log. He had nothing worthwhile to offer except claiming to have gotten an inheritance from rich white folks for his gardening expertise and bedroom prowess. Said he gave tours of his petunias. In the winter. He said I had patents for sex toys.”

“I wish you did,” Brett said.

“He’s just pissed his charm didn’t do it,” Leonard said. “That he didn’t have any.”

“A little of that, yeah,” I said.

Brett said, “No one should really let you guys out without a leash. And really, Leonard? Petunias?”

“I thought it made me sound sweet,” he said.

“That’ll be the day,” I said. “And his story was a lot worse than that, but I’ll spare you the details.”

I got up and plucked us bottled waters from the little fridge. We all sat down and sipped water while me and Leonard told Brett more about what we may have found out. It all seemed less likely by that point. Frank hadn’t really said anything incriminating, not actually. I began to think I had imagined a connection between cars and prostitution and Sandy’s disappearance. I might as well have thrown in a Bigfoot sighting.

“It sounds way too precious,” Brett said. “A car lot that sells poontang to rich people. Why bother? Why not just set up a simple escort service?”

“The cars are the lure, and the word gets around through satisfied customers. Expensive cars and expensive women. It could be a gold mine for them.”

Brett shook her head. “I don’t know. It may be monkey business, but it may be a totally different monkey than the one you’re suggesting.”

“Could be,” I said. “But high-end clientele do things in different ways. No dimly lit massage parlors with stained towels or street-corner hookers with more germs than the Centers for Disease Control. That’s too raw for them. This is elevated business for people who are willing to spend serious money. It may be hard to believe, but not only can they attract people from other places for the service, there are lots of people right here in town with money. Some of it is even legal. Lilly Buckner said Sandy came into some good money working for the car company, and then all of a sudden she wasn’t in good money at all, or didn’t seem to be, since she lifted her grandmother’s goods. The good money could have been for the services that came with the car—sex, drugs, a party. I don’t know. Maybe something happened, and she found out something else about the business she didn’t like. Could be she was actually researching what was going on there to do an exposé—going undercover, trying to use that journalism degree.”

“But she got caught?” Brett said.

“And she needed money to run,” Leonard said.

“What I’m thinking,” I said.

“I’m still skeptical,” Brett said. “I mean, a car you can use every day, but this call-girl thing, paying that much money for a car and a one-time hump. No ass is worth that much.”

“Except for yours, of course,” I said.

“Oh, you are in for so much loving, Hap Collins,” she said.

“What I’m saying is it could be like an exclusive membership. Now that you’re in the club, the ass is there when you want it. You still pay, but not as much as the first time, because you were buying a car with it.”

“Yeah, all right,” Brett said. “I hear you. Still skeptical.”

“I just want a cookie,” Leonard said. “I know they’re in that drawer and you have the key.”

“What do you think about all this, Leonard?” Brett asked.

“I want the key to that drawer,” he said.

“About the car lot and the prostitution business,” she said.

“Oh. I think it’s what Hap says, and I’d still like a cookie.”

“Maybe tomorrow.” I said.

“Don’t be mean, Hap,” Brett said.

“He needs to learn delayed gratification,” I said.

Brett opened the drawer with her key and gave Leonard a cookie. He ate it slowly and happily. But he watched carefully as she relocked the drawer and put the key away.

“Dang it,” I said. “You broke down, baby.”

“Okay, laying the Sandy Buckner problem aside,” Brett said, “there has been some good news. The lady who had you snooping on her husband came by and paid her last check and said she was happy with the results, though curiously she’s divorcing her husband anyway.”

“What?” I said.

“Said she didn’t like him keeping secrets from her. But you know what I think? I think the marriage just played out, and she was looking for a way to end it.”

“You figured all that because she gave you a check?” Leonard asked.

“No, actually she told me that,” Brett said. “Said she was happy for twenty years, or thought she was, and then one morning she got up thinking he was cheating, and he wasn’t, but she hoped he was. Said he’s devastated and she feels a little bad about it, but she’s moving on anyway.”

“People are strange,” I said.

“I called Marvin to offer him his part of the payment,” Brett said, “but he doesn’t want it. He says all of it is ours to have. He’s keeping himself clear of the old business so there won’t be any misunderstandings.”

“Does this mean dinner out for me and you and John and Leonard?” I asked.

“Buffy would be alone,” she said. “I don’t think she’s ready for that.”

“Good point,” I said.

“We could order something and have it here or at the house,” Brett said.

Leonard shook his head. “John and I are going to pass. We’re working on things. I think I need to sort of hang close. He’s like your new dog right now. Vulnerable and confused. And me, I’m not too good at dealing with vulnerable. I kind of see it as a weakness. John comes and he goes. He’s on about things. He’s off about things. All that shit just makes my ass tired. I’m sick of talking about it, but I want a decision.”

“He’s vulnerable, like Buffy,” I said, “but he acts like a cat.”

“Tell me about it,” Leonard said. “Just get over it or get on with something else and let me know where you stand. I hate all this back-and-forth bullshit about our feelings and such. My feelings are I care about him and I want to go to bed with him and I want to watch television with him, and now and again I want him to just leave me the fuck alone.”

“That’s part of the problem,” Brett said. “You wanting him to just leave you the fuck alone now and again. Maybe you ought to at least pretend to be understanding.”

“I suppose,” Leonard said, shifting his butt onto the edge of the desk, crossing his well-muscled arms. “But you know what? Just pull your pants up and get on with it. I get so tired of all the whining. Do what it takes or shut up.”

“Oh, that has got to be good pillow talk,” I said.

“Pretty understanding and romantic,” Brett said.

“Yeah, John don’t care for it much,” Leonard said.

“Sometimes a little white lie never hurts anybody,” Brett said. “Tell him you feel his pain and understand his feelings, and that it’s something the two of you will get through together. It might even come true.”

“But it isn’t like that,” Leonard said. “I can’t listen to that ‘I’m a homo sinner’ shit and not want to start tearing up the place.”

“I bet that homo thing really goes down tight with the gay community,” I said.

“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I don’t much like any community. I don’t want to be part of anyone’s goddamn club other than my own. I don’t have problems with who I am. I don’t want to tell a little white lie about how I understand where he’s coming from, because I don’t.”

“Sometimes you have to lie a little,” I said.

“So you lie to Brett?” Leonard said.

Brett was looking right at me.

“I didn’t say that,” I said.

“You just told me it was a good idea,” Leonard said.

“Actually, she did.”

“You just said the same thing,” Leonard said.

“I was just saying who said what.”

“And I’m just saying you were one of those who said what,” Leonard said.

Brett was watching this like a Ping-Pong match.

Another five minutes and I had extricated myself from the mess with a few white lies, and Leonard and I left to return the BMW.

Leonard chuckled as we rode along. “Got you, didn’t I, brother?”

“That stuff about lying was because of the cookies, wasn’t it?”

“Most definitely was. John’s not the only one on the fade right now. I am feeling quite vulnerable myself. For cookies.”

“At least you’re simple,” I said.