Givens nodded.
“That meant you had to get rid of Unslerod,” Leonard said. “And when you did, the woman just happened to be there.”
“Something like that,” Givens said, and I saw in his eyes then something that made me shiver a little. He may have been a frightened weasel, but I knew in that moment I had to keep my eye on him. Because nothing is more dangerous than a frightened weasel. They have no loyalties but themselves.
“That was cold,” Leonard said.
“He was a deadly man,” Givens said.
“But not so deadly you couldn’t sneak up on him and shoot him,” I said. “And then the woman.”
“It just worked out that way,” Givens said. “I used a credit card on the door and I surprised him. Well, he surprised me too. I shot him, and then I went in the bedroom and she was there and I didn’t have any choice. I shot her too.”
“No choice, huh?” I said.
“I didn’t think so,” Givens said.
“So what happened next?” I said. “Better yet, let’s go back in time to Nora.”
“I didn’t want to do that, but I set it up so Jackie could meet Nora. He got her interested in him, and then she moved in with him.”
“She wasn’t kidnapped?” Leonard said.
“No,” Givens said, sighing so loud it was like a windstorm blew into the car. “What I thought was it could look like a kidnapping. Cox said that would be good, and his boy Jackie was for it. And so was Nora.”
“Nora was in on it?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “She was. Big time. Way we arranged it was we’d hold her for ransom and Henry would come through. Like I said, we all thought he had money and was holding back, and that if he thought Nora was in danger he’d give it up.”
“Only problem was he didn’t really have any money,” I said.
“Correct,” Givens said. “No money. Or at least I don’t think so now. He loved Nora. I think he would have come through if he had any.”
“So you revised the plan, and the revised plan included bad things for Henry,” Leonard said.
“I didn’t so much revise it because I wanted to, but because I had to. Cox had one of his men do in Henry. A black guy named Speed. He’s big as Henry, but more dangerous.”
“Let me guess the rest,” I said. “You told them they had to do Henry because you knew about the insurance policy. You never planned to give Cox your money until you got the policy money. You’d just pretend to take Sharon off the hook. Me and Leonard would be there as witnesses, and you’d hand them the briefcase full of folders, and they would give you Nora, and you would bring her home like she was let go, and when the money came through, you’d give it to Cox because he liked the plan and didn’t mind temporary ownership of folders and a briefcase. When you paid them the insurance money, minus you and Nora taking a little off the top for your troubles, no one would be the wiser.”
“It wasn’t all that Henry owed,” Givens said. “But it was enough for them to be satisfied, and it would take Sharon out of the mix.”
“And you’d look real good in her eyes,” I said.
He nodded. “I suppose that’s true.”
“You and Nora are some pair,” I said. “Nora cheating her grieving stepmother for some dollars and for this Jackie Cox, and then you cheating Sharon. Not to mention committing murder.”
“That’s pretty much it,” Givens said.
“You know,” I said. “One revision on what I said earlier. I don’t think you brought us along so we could say what a hero you were. I think you brought us along because Sharon insisted. She said she wanted us along to make sure things went well. She wanted us to protect you and Nora. How am I doing?”
“All right, I guess,” Givens said.
“You know what, Givens?” Leonard said. “I didn’t check you out so good. I see you are trying slowly to ease your hand down to your sock, where I suspect just under your pants leg is a holstered handgun that you hope to pull and shoot me and Hap with.”
Leonard poked the gun he had gotten off the front seat against the side of the lawyer’s well-combed hair, just over his temple. “What you want to do is tug up your pants leg, pinch the gun out by the grip with thumb and forefinger, and hand it to me easy as if it might blow up.”
Givens did as he was told. Leonard took the gun. He tossed it over the seat into the passenger seat and hit Givens across the head with his own gun, right over the ear. It knocked Givens sideways. He reached up and held his head. When he moved his hand there was blood on his fingers.
“You sonofabitch,” Givens said.
“And don’t you forget it,” Leonard said.
I had some tissues in the car and I gave some to Givens and had him wipe the blood off his head and hand.
“What we’re going to do,” I said, “is we’re going to go through with this plan. Almost. We’re going to have you waltz in there with the briefcase. We’re going to have you be a really nice guy and not let on we know dick about what you’re doing, ’cause if you do, we will kill you deader than a tree stump.
“When we get the girl, both of you get a drive to the police station. We’ll call Marvin and have him grease the path for us with the cops. We’ll turn you and her over to them, let you figure out how to explain extortion, illegal gambling profits, murder, and fraud, or whatever the fuck crimes we got here. Thing is, we play this right, we get you two and they get the briefcase, thinking they’re going to get insurance money later, and you get to leave without a hole in your head. How’s that plan?”
“Cox won’t forget,” Givens said.
“We’ll see how that turns out,” I said. “We got long memories ourselves.”
Givens didn’t say anything. I figured he didn’t like the plan.
The meeting place was on the first floor of a two-floor parking garage in Tyler. Just before we got there we pulled over, and Leonard made Givens get up front in the passenger seat, and he sat directly behind him. He had both of Givens’ guns and one of his own he had brought, and I had mine from the glove box tucked in a holster at the small of my back, with my shirt pulled down over it.
When we drove inside the garage we went to spot 15, as Givens said for us to do. A big black car—of course it was black—was waiting. We pulled up behind it and a man got out. He was an exceptionally large black man that moved like a cat; frankly, he moved the way Leonard and I do. I’m just telling it like it is. One bad man can spot another, even if that bad man is me and I’m feeling a lot less bad these days. I figured he was the aforementioned Speed. He was dressed in an expensive black shirt, coat, pants, shoes, and a very glossy black dress jacket that couldn’t have been off the rack, not and fit those shoulders. His head was shaved and it looked to have been waxed. It was shiny enough you could have used it as a mirror to comb your hair.
“You go on and get out,” Leonard said to Givens. “I’d be real cool, I was you.”
Leonard got out, and Givens got out.
Speed looked at me behind the wheel. He was expressionless, which was expression enough. Guy like that, not showing much in his features, you had to watch him. Wasn’t the kind of fella that would give you many signals before he shot or punched you or drove a car over your ass.
I had my window rolled down. I said, “Hey, how’s it hanging?”
Speed ignored me. He looked at Leonard and Givens. They had come around to the front of the car.
“Givens,” the big man said.
“Speed,” Givens said.
“Hey,” Leonard said. “How about this weather?”
“Which bozo is this?” Speed asked.
“Leonard,” Givens said. “Guy behind the wheel is Hap.”
“How’s it hanging?” I said again.
Still no evaluation of the general hanging condition of his meat was offered by Speed.
“Here’s the thing,” Speed said. “You got no guns, right?”
“Not exactly,” Leonard said. “I actually got some guns.”
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Speed turned his attention to Givens. “You were told no guns.”
“They go their own way,” Givens said.
“That’s right,” Leonard said. “Way I see it, since we’re all pals we won’t be shooting anybody, right? You came with a gun, because I see it under your well-cut coat.”
“You don’t leave the guns,” Speed said, “we don’t go.”
“How about we get where we’re going, we all put our guns in a pile,” I said. “Till then we keep them. You see, the lawyer here told us your rules, but we’re here to make sure he don’t get shot and we don’t either. To make sure it works out that way, we got to have rules of our own. One of which is we hang onto our guns until it looks like it’s okay to let go of them.”
I knew that since this was a scam, there was no real threat in saying we wouldn’t give them the briefcase. Cox wanted the meeting to happen, to set it up so Givens could give him the insurance money eventually.
It was a big joke, but a joke only works if you play it right. Thing was, they didn’t know we were in on the joke. We had a few laughs of our own planned.
Speed let what I said move around in his thoughts for awhile. His expression didn’t change.
“You follow me out,” he said.
He got back in his car and we backed out from behind him. He pulled from his parking place and drove off. We followed. I saw that he was on his cell already.
When Bad Guys start directing you outside of town it’s always a crapshoot. But that’s where we were going, outside of town. We passed what used to be Owen Town. It was really nothing more than an asphalt path and a couple of storage buildings. It had never been a town since I was alive, but it used to be a place where aluminum chairs were made. I worked there when I was young.
We went along until we came to the cutoff for Starrville, a little burg so small most of the inhabitants could have lived in one house, and maybe a shed out back. We didn’t go all the way there. Instead, we stopped in the Starrville Cemetery. There was another black car like the one Speed was driving already parked there. The windows were dark. A man got out from behind the wheel. He was a big white guy with a crew cut. He was almost as big as Speed. His jacket, an ugly plaid thing, fit him the way a designer dress fits a hippopotamus.
Speed got out of his car. We got out of ours. After a moment, the back door of the other car opened and a man slid out, leaving the door open. It was Cox. I had never met him, but had seen a couple photos of him on the Internet, usually something to do with law-breaking. He always claimed to be innocent, and always got out of whatever problem he was in. He was a tall, lean man with gray, well-cut hair, and a look about him that said he liked things his way. He was dressed in a nice gray suit to go with the hair. My dad always told me not to trust anyone who ran around in the middle of the day with a suit on. If they wore one because they were on their way to preach, he told me to watch them even closer.
“So,” said Cox, “we’re here to deal.”
“If you got something to deal with,” I said.
“They got guns,” Speed said.
Cox glanced at Speed. “What did I tell you?”
“No guns,” Speed said, but he didn’t look worried about the situation. My guess is it was mostly show. My bet is when I saw Speed was on his cell phone, he was calling ahead to tell Cox we had guns.
“We just want to play even,” I said. “Your man here has a gun. And I’m going to guess the guy in the plaid coat has one too. Wouldn’t surprise me you had one. All I’m saying is we all keep our guns and stay friends. Having us put ours up and you keeping yours, that wouldn’t be playing fair. And me, I’m all about fair play.”
“You said we would put them all in a pile,” Speed said.
“I lied,” I said.
“All right,” Cox said. “We’ll play your way.” He looked at Givens. “Got the money?”
Givens held up the briefcase they both knew was empty.
“Good,” Cox said.
“You got the girl?” Leonard said.
“I do,” Cox said.
He looked back at the car. A young man who looked a lot like Cox, but with black hair, got out. He poked his hand back inside the car, when he pulled on it, a girl came out with it. She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. She wasn’t wearing a bra. This wasn’t a negative. She had unreal red hair and a pretty face, but there was something about it that made you want to throw a pie at it.
Givens said, “These men, they know what the real deal is.”
I looked at Leonard. He looked at me. The cat had just jumped from the bag.
Givens walked over to Cox’s car carrying the briefcase. He stood by Cox.
“They know,” he said. “They know and they’re trying to work me to get the girl back. They know she’s in on it.”
“Yeah,” Cox said, “and how do they know that? You tell them?”
“They figured it,” Givens said.
“That’s right,” Leonard said, “we’re pretty smart for old country boys. We can even tie a square knot in the dark.”
I let my hand drift to the edge of my shirt. Speed eased his coat back. I think the guy in plaid was still trying to figure out what everyone had said. Cox didn’t look any different at all. Oh, maybe a bit irritated, but nothing more. The girl looked at the young man, who I figured was Jackie, then looked at Cox. She seemed to be waiting for someone to tell her something.
“All right, so they know,” Cox said.
“They plan on taking me and her to the police,” Givens said.
“They do, do they?” Cox said.
“That’s exactly the plan,” Leonard said.
No one said anything for a while. A plane flew over. I wished they were parachuting in reinforcements.
“I think there’s more of us than there are of you two,” Cox said.
“What a mathematician,” Leonard said.
“Me and Leonard get to shooting though, your numbers may decrease,” I said.
“Speed here,” Cox said, “he’s fast on the draw, and he hits what he aims at.”
“I’m not that fast on the draw,” Leonard said, “and I’m not that good of a shot, but I still might hit something. But him, Hap, he can shoot. That motherfucker is a natural. He don’t really know from guns, but he knows shooting. It’s like a god-damn inborn knack.”
“This is true,” I said. “I’m like a fucking prodigy.”
I didn’t add that my expertise was really with long guns, though I did all right with a handgun. And Leonard was right. I didn’t know that much about the workings of guns, really. Not the way gun nuts do, the guys talking about them the way you ought to talk about a woman, but I could hit stuff. As for fast on the draw, I had no idea. I never thought of slapping leather with anyone. I usually had my gun out and ready.
“We got quite the conundrum then, don’t we?” Cox said, and grinned a little.
“Pretty conundrummy,” Leonard said.
Speed was a little to my left rear, but I could see him well enough. Across the way was Crew Cut, and not far from him were Cox and the girl, Jackie, and Givens. Leonard was off to my right.
“You know what?” Leonard said. “I’m going to step a little wide, in case my man here decides to shoot. He’s got dead aim, but I don’t want to be in the line of fire. He might let a lot of bullets go.”
“You really good?” Speed asked me.
“There’s all manner of opinions floating around,” I said.
“He will blow your head off, Speed,” Leonard said, without looking back at me, keeping his eyes on the others. “It will happen so fast you’ll never know you have a hole in you.”
I thought: Don’t build it up so much, Leonard. This Speed guy, he looks like someone who would like to try me out, and I’d rather not. But I didn’t let on I was worried. I smiled a lot. I was one confident and happy-looking sonofabitch.
“I’m thinking I might like to try you, fast man,” Speed said.
Shit. I knew i
t.
“We don’t have to, you know,” I said.
“You sound a little scared,” Speed said.
“It’s just I don’t like having to clean my gun,” I said. “All that smoke in the barrel. The cost of a bullet.”
“You know what I think,” Speed said, pushing his coat back so the butt of his holstered gun could be seen. “I don’t think you’re that—”
I drew and wheeled and shot him, right in the center of the chest. I wheeled again, toward Crew Cut. He was struggling his gun out of the holster beneath his coat. I shot him in the arm. The gun he’d grabbed went flipping away and he fell back against the car, grabbed his arm, said, “Shit.”
Leonard had his gun out now. It was about time.
“Damn, Hap,” Leonard said. “That was some good shooting.”
“Wasn’t bad,” I said. “Disarm the dick cheese.”
Leonard pointed his gun at them. He said, “You, Nora, you get their guns from them, bring them over here and toss them on the ground behind the car. You get feisty, I’ll put a hole in you. I got a rule, anyone tries to hurt me gets hurt, male, female, wild animal. And if they got hide-out guns, those better come out slow and easy too, not be hanging around for later. Something like that would make me irritable, and like the Hulk, you wouldn’t like me when I’m mad.”
Nora did as she was told. It was quite a pile of guns she dumped behind the car. When she was finished, Leonard said to her, “You come over here and get in our car. Sit in the backseat, put your hands in your lap, and look prim.”
Nora got in the backseat of the car the way a child in trouble will do.
I went over to Speed. I had been watching him carefully ever since he hit the ground, except for when I shot the Crew Cut fellow. He was bleeding badly and his eyes were blinking very fast. He wasn’t even trying to reach for his gun. I knelt down beside him.
“Damn, my man,” Speed said, coughing a little. “I never even cleared leather.”
“That’s because I’m faster than you,” I said.
Speed made a barking laugh that tossed blood onto his lips. “You’re the real deal,” he said.
“Frankly,” I said, “I didn’t know that until just now.”