“Yeah, that was pretty much it,” Leonard said, and bit into a cookie.
Next morning we went down to the cop shop. They sent us in to see the chief. He was in his office. There was a cop I had never seen before in there with him. They had a bunch of photos spread out on the desk, and the cop was laughing.
I glanced at the photos. They were of the guy with his head through the Sheetrock.
The cop was trying to get hold of himself, trying to quit laughing.
The chief said, “You can’t act professional, you can just leave.”
The cop went past us and out of the room. He was giggling as he went, trying to hold it in, making a sound like a kid spitting water.
“Have a seat,” said the chief.
There were two chairs on our side, and we took them. The chief said, “We can’t have this, fellows. It’s keeping all my officers from doing their jobs. They keep coming in here to look at the crime scene photos.”
He held up one of the photos.
It was of the guy’s face thrust through the Sheetrock.
“This one,” he said, “is especially precious.”
I made the spitting water sound the cop had made.
“And then,” he said, “there’s this one.”
This was an extreme close-up of the fellow’s face, casting a baleful eye out at us.
The chief even laughed this time. He put the photo down on the desk.
“Everyone in the department had copies made. Officer Jane Bowden took them, in the name of efficiency and coverage of a crime scene.”
“Do you have any wallet size?” I asked.
“No, but we’re having some made up. Listen here, Leonard. You’re lucky. Witnesses said they started it and you had to defend yourself. Bar owner is pressing charges against them. Thing is, them starting it, that’s probably right, but sometimes, it don’t hurt to walk away.”
“It was the chair upside my head kept me from walking,” Leonard said. “It knocked me down for a minute, and then when I got up, I was perturbed.”
“Point taken,” said the chief. “Not only were there witnesses, but one of the three you whipped is a witness himself. In your favor. He’s going to have to pay a fine and some repairs at the club, but he’s admitting they started it.”
“Which one would that be,” Leonard said, “Mr. Sheetrock?”
“No.”
“I’m betting it isn’t Toothless,” I said.
“That would be a good bet.”
“So, that leaves the one I knocked over the bar with a chair,” Leonard said.
“Bingo.”
When we went out, we saw the guy who had been knocked behind the bar. He was sitting in the waiting room. He hadn’t been there when we came in.
Leonard touched two fingers to the edge of his eyebrow in salute as we passed.
The guy was about thirty, blond, and in good shape. He might be nice looking when he healed up. His left eye was closed and swollen and black, his lips were red and meaty like rubber fishing worms. As he followed us out into the parking lot, he had a limp.
We were about to get in my car when he came toward us.
Leonard turned, said, “You and me not finished?”
The man held up his hands. “We are. Mr. Pine—that’s right isn’t it? Pine?”
Leonard nodded.
“I want to apologize,” the man said.
“Accepted,” Leonard said. “Good-bye.”
“Wait. Please.”
I had been at the driver’s side, about to get in, but now I went around on Leonard’s side and we both leaned against the car.
“My name is Kelly Smith. I want to hire you.” He was looking at Leonard when he said it.
“Hire me?” Leonard said. “What for? You like to take beatings?”
“Nothing like that. I have this problem. That’s why I was at the bar.”
“Drinking problem?” I said.
“No,” he said, looking at me. “And who are you?”
“A friend,” I said.
He nodded, spoke to Leonard. “Could we talk private?”
“You got something to say, say it,” Leonard said. “Me and Hap can hear it together and no one will cry. We’re not criers.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “There was that movie. You know the one.”
“Oh, The Last Airbender,” Leonard said. “Yeah. That sucked. That could make anyone cry. And what was up with that 3-D? It should have been in Smell-O-Vision.”
Kelly stood there while we went through our act. When we finished he said, “What I need is someone to do something tough that’s a little against the law.”
“How little?” Leonard asked.
“Well,” he said, “maybe a lot more than a little.”
We went to a coffee place and got a table near the back wall. There was music playing, and there were a few people at tables, and a nice-looking woman in very short shorts came in. Never been a fan of the heat, but for some things, you had to love summer.
Leonard said, “Hap, pay attention.”
“Right with you,” I said.
“I’ll tell Brett,” he said.
“I’m back, just watching the scenery, not trying to move it around.”
Kelly had been looking at her too. Now he looked at us. He said, “I wasn’t really with those guys last night.”
“Sure looked a lot like you,” Leonard said.
“I know,” Kelly said. “I meant they aren’t friends.”
“You fought like they were your buddies,” Leonard said.
“We didn’t fight well,” he said. “You kind of walked through us.”
“I staggered a little,” Leonard said. “That chair hurt.”
“You went down and you came up like a jack-in-the-box,” Kelly said. “When you did that, I thought you were fucking Dracula.”
“Actually, I would have been Blacula. Ever see that old movie?”
Kelly shook his head.
“Never mind,” Leonard said. “Look, it’s nice, you buying us coffee and a Danish—”
“I’m having an apple fritter,” I said.
“Okay,” Leonard said. “Danish and fritters, but if you’ve got something to say besides I’m sorry and let me buy you coffee, then let’s move on. Me and Hap are busy men. We got places to go, things to do, and people to see.”
“Not really,” I said. “Our day is pretty open.”
Leonard gave me a sour face.
“I’ll pay you to help me out,” Kelly said.
“We talking about moving a piano?” Leonard said.
“No,” he said. “We’re talking about maybe you having to rough someone up.”
“First off,” Leonard said. “Why? And how much?”
“It’s my brother, Donny. He’s in deep doo-doo,” Kelly said.
“What kind of doo-doo?” I asked.
“He got in with these fellas that rob armored cars,” Kelly said.
We all sat there for a moment and let that statement hang between us like a carcass.
“This is starting to sound like doo-doo that’s too deep,” I said.
“It’s deep all right,” Kelly said. “He’s only twenty-one. Good kid, really.”
“Except for wanting to rob an armored car,” I said. “I would consider that a possible blemish on his character.”
Kelly nodded.
I said, “He’s twenty-one, you’re like, what, thirty? You guys are some years apart, aren’t you?”
“Thirty-one, and yeah, he was like a surprise,” Kelly said. “Dad wasn’t all that good about hanging around anyway, but that little surprise, Donny, it was more than he could handle. He took the car out for an oil change, and just kept going.”
“So what’s this got to do with me?” Leonard asked.
“You know that robbery took place in LaBorde last year, the armored car guards at the bank?”
“Yeah, I remember,” Leonard said. “They got the guards when they were transporting the mon
ey out of the bank to the truck. Just walked up with masks on and had guns and locked the guards in the back of the truck. It was maybe, what, two hundred thousand dollars they got?”
“About four hundred thousand,” Kelly said. “They must have had someone waiting that drove up, picked them up, and took them away. No one knows. All they know is they were there with Halloween masks on one minute, then they had the money, and then they were gone. That was it. Took the guards’ guns and put the guards in the back of the armored car and put plastic cuffs on them. Fastened one cuff to their left ankle, one to their right wrist. Then had them put an arm behind their back and fixed it there and pulled the plastic down to the other ankle, linked it from behind. That way they couldn’t move well, damn sure couldn’t run.”
“That’s cute,” I said.
“Was your brother one of them?” Leonard asked.
“No, but I think he’s about to be.”
“And, pray tell, why do you think that?” I asked.
“Because in his room he’s got some articles about the heist,” he said.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Leonard said. “Hap has books about Satan, but he ain’t a Satanist. At least, as far as we know.”
“Those damn books and that rap music,” I said. “They can change a man.”
Kelly ignored me. Sometimes it’s all you can do. He said, “Yeah, but Donny, he has these friends come around, and they lock themselves in the back room for hours. I know they’re smoking dope. I can smell it. But what I really worry about is I think these friends are the robbers and they want to pull my brother in.”
“That’s a big guess,” I said. “Any reason to have it?”
“These guys, they’re a real tough bunch,” Kelly said. “And as you can know, I’m not so tough.”
“You take a good fall, though,” Leonard said.
“You still don’t have any serious reason we should believe your brother is about to be part of a robbery.”
“I heard them talking. I was sort of sneaking around, and I heard them say they needed a driver. The guy talking was the one Donny calls Smoke Stack. That’s the name they all call him. I guess ’cause he smokes all the time. I don’t allow it in the house, but he smokes anyway. I asked him not to once, and he just lit up and smiled at me, went in the back room with Donny. Hell, even Donny is tougher than me. He grew up different. He grew up tough. I can almost guarantee you these guys are going to rob another armored car, and they’re going to pull Donny into it.”
“Still a little lame,” I said. “But, if you think you got something, go to the police. We know the chief over there. I’m not sure he likes us, but he did get some humor out of the photos of your buddy with his head through the Sheetrock. So right this minute, he sees Leonard as a comedian.”
“I go to the police, they’re going to run Donny in, and he’s a good kid, really. He was living at home, and our mom died. A heart attack. She was overweight, didn’t take care of herself. Went to hell after our dad ran off with another woman and went up North somewhere. She died, I moved back home. But I wasn’t able to do it right away. I had a job in Austin, and I had to find another one up this area. I work at the university, doing janitor work.”
“What did you do before?” I asked.
“I was a computer specialist, and I made half a mil a year. Now, I got just enough to buy gas for the car and bread for the table. I kind of thought Donny wasn’t doing so good and needed me here. Last time I saw him, before Mom died, I could tell he was making some bad decisions. But the bottom line is these friends of his, I don’t like them, and I’m sure they’re the guys.”
“That’s your instinct?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Well,” Leonard said, “instinct is all right, but it can be you telling yourself something and thinking you’re enlightened. Gut instinct tells people to believe lots of things, and most of them are wrong. And, Kelly, this isn’t our problem. It’s a police problem.”
He shook his head. “No. The police pick up Donny, his life is ruined.”
“He robs an armored car, a bank, he might get a bullet through his head,” Leonard said. “That ruins things too.”
“Yeah, that can cut a career short,” I said.
“Last night, I went to that bar looking for help. I didn’t tell the details to those guys, but I said I was looking for someone could do a little roughhouse work. Those guys were recommended to me by a fellow I know. And then there was that whole thing about one of them calling you a name, and it all getting started . . . I think they started it just to show me how tough they were. Next thing I knew, I was in it with them, you know, part of the pack, and then I’m down, and one guy’s got his head through the Sheetrock, and you’re chasing the other guy outside. And you’re older than them.”
“Watch it,” Leonard said.
“All I’m saying is, after I saw that, I decided maybe you were the guy instead of them.”
“I don’t know,” Leonard said.
“Donny, he really looks up to this Smoke Stack. He wants to impress him. The guy’s got muscles on muscles and he’s just mean. Just mean.”
“The gut instinct again?” Leonard said.
“Yeah.”
“Well,” Leonard said, “in cases like that, the gut is often right. We still know a shark when we see one. That’s why we crawled out of the water and became men in the first place. Only thing is, some of the sharks crawled out after us.”
“That would be the lawyers,” I said.
“I told Smoke Stack and his buddies not to come back, but it doesn’t matter,” Kelly said. “They come around anyway, and if they don’t, Donny goes to meet them. Him being twenty-one, I can’t legally tell him squat.”
“You wouldn’t know where he goes to meet them, would you?” I asked.
“No,” Kelly said. “And I’m embarrassed to tell you, I’m afraid to follow. I’m afraid they’ll catch me. I think Smoke Stack and those guys would do anything.”
“What about the other guys, his pals?”
“Three of them. They’re followers. It’s Smoke Stack runs the program, that’s easy to see. I don’t know their names, anything about them. Hell, I don’t really know anything about Smoke Stack.”
“Say we looked into it, found Donny was just smoking dope, or maybe he was selling drugs. What then?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you can discourage him. It’s such a mess. I wanted to be a big brother to him, but he doesn’t care what I think. This Smoke Stack, I think he’s like a tough father figure. And he looks like he could wad up a wrench. Again, I think he’s like a father for Donny.”
“Fathers just need to be tough in will,” I said. “It don’t hurt if they can bend a tire tool over their knee, but it’s not part of the job description.”
“Yeah,” Kelly said, “but Donny doesn’t know that. Look, really, he’s a good kid. He’s just got to get straight. He gets into this, his life is ruined. I got some money. It’s from my savings, saved up before I moved here. I’ll give you ten thousand apiece.”
I looked at Leonard. He sighed.
I said, “Look, for right now, hang onto your money. Let us think about it, maybe look things over, and then, if we think we can help, we’ll talk. If not, we’ll still talk. But you might not like the conversation.”
“Sure,” Kelly said. “Sure, that’s all right. That’s good.”
That afternoon, we went over to the gym to work out. Our gym sucks. It’s small and it’s hot and it has a small mat room. The mat is thin as paper and smells like sweaty feet. The owner isn’t someone who is much into gym work himself. He’s a guy with a physique akin to a rubber apple. He sits on a stool by the door so he can get some wind from outside, meaning there’s no air conditioning. The door’s always open, except dead of winter. Flies are always fluttering about.
He sits there to check memberships. The only advantage his gym has is his memberships are cheap, and he’s not that far from the house. The only convers
ation I remember having with him was him saying, “That’ll be thirty dollars a month, apiece.”
But, it’s all right. We bring our own gloves when we spar. When we spar we use fists a lot, but in real situations I like to use an open hand along with fists. You can use open hands with the gloves we have, but we’re friends, and that kind of business can sometimes be worse than fists. Nothing says, “Oh, shit,” like sticking a finger in your buddy’s eye.
We moved around a little, flicking punches, throwing kicks. We were gym fighting, not really fighting. The two should never be confused. The first is like a swim in a heated pool, the other is like being dropped into a stormy, shark-infested ocean.
So, we were moving around, getting a workout, popping each other a little, and I said, “You believe him?”
“I don’t know,” Leonard said, pausing a little, putting his hands on his hips, taking a deep breath. “Maybe. A story like that, it’s so stupid it’s bound to have some reality about it. I mean, a guy has a problem with his younger brother hanging with thugs that might be bank robbers, so he goes into a bar to get someone to beat the robbers up.”
“You think that’s all he wanted?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he wants us to do something more permanent with these guys.”
“That, I don’t want to do.”
“We may not need to. Here’s the thing, Hap. I think the guy is serious about being worried about his brother, but maybe we can look into it and solve it better than him. We don’t, he’s going to hire someone like that guy I left in the parking lot. Then things will turn messy, and before it’s over Kelly and his brother both might go to prison.”
“Usually, you’re talking me out of stupid shit like this.”
“Does it ever work?”
“Not so much. This guy got to you a little, didn’t he?”
“A little.”
We moved around some more. Leonard hit me a good snap on the forehead. I hooked low, then switched to an overhand right and caught him on the cheek.
He said, “Ouch, I’ve had enough for the day. That was right on my wound.”
“That was your cheek,” I said.
“I don’t mean the taped part of my head, I mean the bruise. I am so wonderfully black you just can’t see it.”