Honky Tonk Samurai (Hap and Leonard) (7 page)

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hat night I invited Marvin and his wife over after Leonard and I returned the car to the Tyler rental and I got mine back. Marvin said he would come, but not Rachel. I expected that. She hates me and Leonard. We saved her daughter once, and she’s appreciative of that, but spending an evening with me would for her be like having her asshole worked over with a plumbing snake.

We ordered from a barbecue joint by phone. I drove over and picked it up about twenty minutes before Marvin showed up. I got Buffy a sandwich as well. Later, I’d take her to the drive-through at Dairy Queen and get her a vanilla cone, a double.

It was a good meal. The sandwiches. Ice tea. We also had some potato chips and a bit of pecan pie that had been frozen since last Thanksgiving. It tasted all right, though. Nobody died. All in all I was off my diet for one night, and I loved it. I felt good enough to give Leonard his cookies had he been there. Back at the office it had been a joke, but now I was thinking about his face and how he had looked. You had to know him well to know the difference, but there was despair there, as much as he knew how to show. Of course, John was the real problem, but a cookie wouldn’t have hurt him. Or I could take him to the drive-through and get him a vanilla ice cream cone, too. He’d like that. Maybe tomorrow. I could even roll the window down and let him hang his head out the way Buffy likes to do. Of course, if he knew I was thinking like that, comparing him to a dog, he’d have my ass on a stick.

When we were done eating I went out of the room and came back with the bag with the pen in it. I told Marvin how I had come by it, told him what I suspected, told him about our visit with Frank. What we had said, what she had said.

“Seems pretty elaborate for a call-girl setup,” Marvin said.

“What I thought,” Brett said. “Ridiculous, really.”

“Leonard agrees with me,” I said.

“There you have it,” Marvin said. “If Leonard thinks so, then we should consider no more. Where is that jackass?”

“Home with John.”

“They’re back together?”

“I think it’s on the fence. One of those with twists of barbed wire along the top. John is feeling gay again and some of his religion and his brother’s influence have faded and in the meantime his pecker has gotten hard, but Leonard doesn’t like it.”

“The pecker?”

“The situation,” I said. “Doesn’t like having to coax John along. Thinks he should just get over it.”

“That time me and my wife had the troubles, I paid for that for years. Sometimes I still pay for it. Not that I didn’t deserve it. Rachel took care of me through my accident, but we were split in a way, even then, because of me messing around. We were together, but we weren’t. I was there. She was there, but we weren’t there together.”

“As a woman,” Brett said, “I can see her position.”

“As a man I can see it,” I said.

“It was stupid on my part,” Marvin said. “One of many stupid things I did. I’m glad we’re back together, but there’s times when Rachel’s giving me the hairy eyeball, and I sort of get the wish we weren’t together, that I’d moved on. And then I think of being without Rachel and I get sick. I’m sure Leonard is going through all that kind of thinking. And I got to admit, he may be on to something. You got to think there’s a point where you either say high five or drown the son of a bitch.”

“So how are things at home?” I asked.

Marvin laughed.

“Don’t ask that,” Brett said, slapping me on the shoulder.

“It’s all right,” Marvin said. “I’m not sleeping on the living room couch anymore. Being back in bed with Rachel feels funny. Like I’m sleeping in a bear’s den and she’s the bear and she’s going to wake up and claw me to death and eat me and shit me out behind the house.”

“Must make for some restless nights,” Brett said.

“It does,” Marvin said. He picked up the bag with the pen in it, turned it around in the light as if he might actually see her prints with his naked eye. “So you want me to run the prints? You believe there’s something to it?”

“I do,” I said. “See if there’s anything on Frank, or Frankie.” I placed her card on the table. “Note there’s no last name on the card, either. Just Frank. The name of the business and a phone number. I left my name and cell number, but like Frank I didn’t leave a last name. I don’t think it matters, I said. I think she made me pretty quick, knew I wasn’t legitimately rich. And then Leonard clinched it all with the sex-toy patents and the petunias.”

“It’s hard to know how to act rich when you’ve never been,” Marvin said.

“Yep,” I said. “Anyway, she made me and Leonard and that was it: we were given our traveling papers, and we were out the door.”

“All right,” Marvin said. “I’ll look into it. Might be enough to reopen the cold case on Sandy.”

“Do you know anything about that case?” I asked.

Marvin shook his head. “Been gone too long. But I’ll look into it this week. My guess is she’s growing grass somewhere.”

“That’s what her grandmother thinks, but she still wants her back,” I said. “Even if it’s just her bones or a hank of hair.”

“I understand.”

We had another cup of coffee, and then after an hour or so, Marvin said he had to go. Brett popped some popcorn while I drove Buffy to the drive-through for that ice cream cone. When we got back the dog consented to lying on the couch between us, but she was nervous every time we reached out to pet her. That, of course, made me mad at her previous owner all over again.

Other than that, it was a nice night. The popcorn was a little greasy, and it gave me a feeling of having a knotted rope in my stomach. But hey—compared to stuff that was going to happen, it wasn’t so bad.

I
t seemed like forever before I fell asleep, and it seemed a shorter time before I awoke to Brett saying, “We got to go to the office.”

“Didn’t we just lay down?” I said.

“Nope.”

“I feel like I just laid down.”

“Was it night when you laid down?”

“Yes.”

“It’s day now, so you didn’t just lay down.”

“It’s early,” I said. “You own the place. I’m just part-time hired help. I been thinking about calling in a sick day.”

“You’re full-time. And when I go, you go. And you don’t get sick days. Come on, lazybones.”

“But why would I go to the office? I’m not a receptionist.”

“Because I want you there. Either that or you and Leonard can get on the job and find out something about Sandy.”

“We’ll do that,” I said and tried to cover back up.

“And you’ll still get up,” she said.

“What if I offered savage sex?”

“Would it have to be with you?”

“Yes,” I said. “I think it would.”

“Then get up.”

While Brett made coffee, I put the leash on Buffy and took her out, and damn near jumped a foot. Leonard was sitting on our porch swing. He was pushing gently with his foot, back and forth. His skin, normally black as night, looked ashen. He had lines around his eyes and mouth and appeared to have shrunk into himself.

“What the hell, man?” I said.

“John went home last night. I didn’t want to stay in the apartment.”

“So you sat out here and sniffed under our door?”

“Yeah. Did you have barbecue?”

“We did,” I said. “What happened, man? Did John leave angry?”

“I think so. I told him to go fuck himself, because I wasn’t going to.”

“I’m going to vote he was angry.”

“Sounds right. He kicked one of my shoes on the way out and slammed the door.”

“More evidence,” I said. “What happened to get you in the ‘go fuck yourself’ department?”

“One whine too many. And then just before we got down to the business, he got on his knees by the bed and prayed to God to forgive him. That set a tone I didn’t like. If he had been praying for strength, I could have got behind that, so to speak. But forgiveness? Hell, we hadn’t even done anything yet. That wilted my pecker something furious, let me tell you.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Since sometime last night. I dozed a little. I woke up, and a raccoon was in the yard. He looked at me like this was his swing.”

“It is. He comes here at night. Likes to make it move by swaying from side to side. You’re here tomorrow night, he might not be as accommodating. And he has friends. Come in. Have some coffee.”

We went inside, me leading Buffy and Leonard. Brett glanced at Leonard.

“Look what turned up,” I said. “And I still need to walk the dog.”

Me and Buffy went back outside. The heat moved across the morning like an invisible truck, heavy and crushing, and with a hotter engine than the day before. It was the kind of heat that made me feel short and fat and close to the ground. It made me thirsty and made my stomach heavy as lead. I wished for rain, but knew if it came, even if it cooled things, when it passed it would be hot again and, worse yet, humid. Nothing helped but the arrival of winter.

Buffy sniffed where the raccoon had been, then did her business near the edge of the road under one of our trees on a patch of grass. I walked her down the sidewalk for about twenty minutes, then put her in the house, got the shovel from the garage, and cleaned up the dog crap, bagged it and trashed it. Time I got through doing that I felt even shorter and heavier and was sweated up and almost sick from the heat.

Inside we all had coffee, and I had a lot of cool water to boot, hydrating myself and thinking maybe I might move to Maine. I said that once to Leonard, and he said, “If it isn’t the heat, it’s the Yankees, and I prefer the heat.”

You’d have thought he fought for the Confederacy.

Leonard and Buffy rode with us to the office. I suggested we get Buffy an ice cream, but Brett was against it. “She’s been indulged enough. And besides, it’s not good for her, and she shouldn’t have something like that so early.”

“Its not like drinking,” I said. “It’s okay to have a cone before ten. And she’s not driving.”

“It’s important to set a good example,” Brett said.

At the office we gave Leonard some cookies, primarily because he had a shitty night. I gave Buffy one when Brett was in the bathroom. I said to Leonard, “Don’t tell.”

“Only if the key to the drawer is mine when I want it,” he said.

“You are an evil bastard,” I said.

That’s when the phone rang.

It was Marvin. He had some news on the fingerprints.

He drove over and we made more coffee, decaf this time, and got comfortable. Buffy climbed on the couch. She was starting to be bolder. I liked that.

“How’s the new job?” I said.

“Fits me like a G-string,” he said. “Nice and snug.”

“You had to go there,” I said. “Now I’ve got that in my head all day.”

“If you can’t stop thinking about it, call me later,” Marvin said.

Brett came out of the bathroom then. When she saw Marvin, she said, “I was only in there to powder my nose.”

“Of course,” he said.

“I thought I heard the toilet flush,” Leonard said.

“Hey,” she said. “Who gave you cookies?”

“I may have heard the flush below, in the bicycle shop,” he said.

“That fingerprint you gave me,” Marvin said. “You’ll like this. It belongs to a man.”

“Interesting, to put it mildly,” I said. “Frank didn’t look like a man, in spite of the name. Maybe you ought to run them again.”

“Frank, or Frankie, is really one Frank Chesterville from the old days, but she had the tree cut and the stump split.”

“A surprise, but not a crime,” I said.

“It depends on how big the dick was,” Leonard said. “Some things, from my viewpoint, are a criminal waste.”

“You’re going there again,” Brett said. “Lady present, goddamn it.”

“The measurements were not in the report,” Marvin said. “She does have a record, though. I guess that’s right. She? Hormones and operations now put her in the female department. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Why you looking at me?” Leonard said. “I’m queer, not an expert on every kind of sexual orientation in the world. I look at it simple. You got your good folks and your bad folks. They can be nudists, gays, trans doodads and no doodads, albinos, midgets and giants, black, white, brown, all the colors in between. I keep it simple. I think Frank might be a bad folk.”

“I think you meant little people,” I said.

“What?”

“You said ‘midgets.’ I think they like to be called little people.”

“Fuck you,” Leonard said. “And fuck the little people, too, right down to the ground. And piss on their little hats.”

“Little hats?” Brett said.

“Oh, he is fussy today,” I said.

“I just thought you might know what was what,” Marvin said, shrugging his shoulders, looking at Leonard.

“So what’s the past crime Frank committed?” Brett said. “You didn’t wind up with her fingerprints in the system for nothing.”

“You’ll love this,” Marvin said. “When she was a he, she was a pimp in Fort Worth. High-class, but a pimp nonetheless. Ran a tip-top joint, had people who took care of bad company, throwing them out, giving them an attitude adjustment now and then. No leg breaking, stuff like that, just kind of rearranging them for a moment. Keeping it all clean and calm and profitable. But Frank got nailed for pimping, did a little time and paid a fine, got out, had the sex change, and maybe changed her life. She may have gone on to better things and is a fine example of humankind and only works at the car place to finance her research into the elimination of cancer. Or maybe not.”

Marvin paused.

“You want someone to ask, ‘What do you mean “maybe not”?’ don’t you?” Leonard said.

“Thank you,” Marvin said. “Frank did have a minor problem later with a man who said she was trying to blackmail him. That got swept under the rug, though. I think the guy got over being mad and started worrying about what his wife would think about some film that may or may not have been taken of him doing the sweaty-sheet wallow. He decided not to press the issue.”

I thought on that a moment. “I don’t know for sure she’s still pimping, but it sounded like it to me. She was talking in a way where I could keep asking until I got the answer I needed. But I spooked her. I wasn’t a guy with money, and she smelled a rat.”

“Well, this isn’t my problem just yet,” Marvin said. “No crime is known. I’m just giving you a little information on the sly. If it comes to something, let me know. Frankly, I don’t really give a shit if she’s selling ass, as long as no one is underage or forced and they’re keeping clean and not spreading disease. But you know, the law is the law, so if I should know it for a fact, I got to act. Blackmail is involved, that’s a different matter. That one bothers me, and I damn sure need to know about it should you find out.”

“Our business is finding Sandy,” I said. “That’s it. Wherever it leads.”

“From what you’ve told me,” Marvin said, “if Sandy went to work for them peddling tail, it’s possible she moved on. Maybe she just didn’t want anything to do with Grandma, and Grandma thinks she’s dead, but she’s moved on to be a hairdresser in Fort Lauderdale.”

“That’s possible,” Brett said. “But I bet Grandma, who is, at least by her own admission, tech-savvy, has searched for her. It’s harder to hide these days than it used to be.”

“But not impossible,” Marvin said. “People do it every day.”

“We’ll find her,” Brett said.

“I love my girl because she’s an optimist,” I said.

“One week on the job and she’s Sam Spade,” Marvin said.

“Sammy Spade now,” she said. Then looked at me, said, “You and me, baby, we need to talk.”

“Honey, even if you were a horse in a past life, I’m satisfied,” I said.

“I’m not sure what to think about that,” Brett said. Then she whinnied.