The Big Book of Hap and Leonard

  “Just be a witness,” I said. “Don’t get involved. Leonard and I will take care of them.”

  “I know that,” Marvin said. “I never thought otherwise. But I can do my part.”

  “Not for us you won’t,” I said.

  “I didn’t say anything about it being for you and Leonard. It’s Brett I’m talking about.”

  “And I appreciate it, but just watch what goes down so you can say you saw them there. If you see us, kind of forget that you did.”

  “If they call me on the witness stand later and ask if I saw you two?”

  “Lie under oath.”

  “Certainly. I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page.”

  We met Marvin at a drive-through eatery about noon, had some coffee. I don’t remember if I drank mine or not. We were sitting in Marvin’s car. Leonard’s car was parked beside it. Donny was sitting with us.

  “Donny, you stay with Marvin,” I said.

  “You don’t have to worry about me running,” Donny said. “I want my brother back. I want you to get Brett back. She was right. I do get to choose.”

  “Yeah, well,” Leonard said, “talk is cheap.”

  “By the way,” I said, “in case you choose wrong, I’m not worrying about you running. Marvin will shoot you.”

  “I will,” Marvin said. “A whole lot.”

  “Maybe somebody ought to shoot me,” Donny said. It was a little dramatic, but right then I think he meant it.

  Leonard raised his hand. “Who’s for it?”

  “Right now you just stay out of trouble, Donny,” I said. “This kind of stuff is our business.”

  “Yeah, like we don’t fuck up regularly,” Leonard said.

  “Not this time,” I said.

  “But they said for you not to come,” Donny said. “That if you did they’d kill her.”

  “They’ll kill her anyway,” Marvin said. “So, it’s then or not at all.”

  Leonard and I got in his car. We had put false license plates on it that morning, and we had a roll of false pinstripe to use. It was a stick-on thing you could remove easily, then wipe the sides of the car with some rubbing alcohol and it was like it had never been there. It was a little thing, but it was something that might throw an observer off.

  Just to keep the disguise theme going, Leonard and I were going to wear hats.

  Marvin was to drive to a spot across from the bank. A hotel parking lot. It would be quite a coincidence, him being at the hotel parking lot at the same time as the robbery, considering he’d turned in information about them earlier. Information that didn’t pan out. But, he planned to tell them the hotel had a hell of a catfish buffet, and that he liked to take it in now and again, just happened to be there when the whole thing went down. Donny being there might take a bit more explaining, but in the end, truthfully, I didn’t think it would matter. Not with what I had in mind.

  We stopped in a lot behind a closed supermarket and got out and quickly put the pinstripes on the car. We put our hats on and drove to a place across the street from the bank. It used to be a mercantile store, but like most things downtown, it had gone the way of the dodo bird. From where we were, we could see the bank and we could see the hotel across the way. Marvin and Donny were parked in the lot.

  The little mercantile lot was now a free parking lot, and it was full of cars. Mostly people who worked for the bank. We didn’t try to find a parking spot, we just drove to the rear of where all the cars were and pulled up there. As we sat, a police patrol car came by on the street between us and the bank. He didn’t look our way. Which was good. I had the .22 bolt-action rifle in my lap; it held one shot at a time. In the backseat was a shotgun. We had pistols in the glove box. No land mines or golf clubs.

  I opened the door quietly and got out of the car and looked over the roof, and over the roofs of the other cars in the lot. From there I had a clear shot.

  I got back in the car.

  I looked at my watch. One fifteen.

  I took a deep breath. Leonard said, “It’ll be all right.”

  “It’ll be all right when it’s all right,” I said.

  “We’ll get them.”

  “He could have lied about the time,” I said. “He could have done that.”

  “Yep,” Leonard said, “but I think he feels safe. The coward’s way is to be brave when he holds the cards. Not when he doesn’t.”

  “I just hope I’m not the one to hurt her.”

  “Hell, Hap, when was the last time you missed a shot?”

  I tried not to remember when that was, tried not to imagine I could miss.

  “Listen, brother,” Leonard said, “I can do the shooting for you. I’m not like you. You know, in Vietnam I killed a lot of men. The only ones I feel bad about are the ones I tried to kill, shot at, and missed. I remember them better than the dead ones ’cause all I can think about is they may have gone on to kill one of us. I’m not like you. I don’t carry the burdens of popping off a bad guy. I can get closer somehow, and I can do it.”

  “No you can’t. You’re an all right shot, but when it comes to this business I’m the one to do it. And it needs to be done from as much distance as the shot will allow.”

  “You got me there.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I do.”

  I never learned to love guns. Didn’t sit around and talk about how big a hole they can put in something and from how far. I didn’t need bigger, better, and more. I don’t enjoy the smell of gun oil, don’t even like cleaning them. I don’t know all the brand names and all the calibers and such.

  But I can shoot a long rifle better than damn near anybody outside of a trained sniper, and I’m okay with a handgun if it’s not too extreme a shot. I just have a knack to aim at something and hit it. Put a long gun in my hands and I can normally put a shot up a gnat’s ass, and that’s without the gnat bending over and pointing to the target.

  Right then, however, all I could think about was that I might miss. I had certainly missed before, but I didn’t want this to be one of those times.

  Leonard knew what I was thinking. He often does.

  “You won’t miss, Hap.”

  We didn’t say another word. Just sat there and watched and listened to each other breathe. I paused once and looked in the mirror on the back of the sun visor. I should note I looked pretty cool in my hat, a brown fedora. Leonard didn’t look so sharp in his. He loved hats, but like I keep telling him, he isn’t a hat person. Every hat he wears looks like something left on a scarecrow.

  One thirty came and they didn’t. Had Smoke Stack given me a line of shit? I felt like I was going to burst out crying.

  Five minutes later we saw a car with two of the guys that had been with Smoke Stack in the house that night. The skinny, potbellied guys.

  The car was a replacement for the one they had originally stored in the shed Marvin told us about. A brown, speedy model. They parked it in a spot and sat for a moment. I got out of the car with the .22 and laid it over the roof. I was a good distance away, and I had a limited shot over the roofs of parked cars. My stomach fluttered.

  Way I figured, those guys in the brown late model would hit the bank, rush out and into the getaway car as it arrived. Smoke Stack, Brett and Kelly, and Stumpy would be in that car. Brett would be at the wheel. When the robbery was done, the others would jump in the getaway car and go. Brett would have to drive them out of there. I hoped like hell she didn’t try to get cute, wreck the car. She did, they’d kill her or the wreck might. With Brett, you never knew. She was a fighter.

  Way they planned it, if things went wrong with the pickup, they had a spare car in the lot. But the best thing was to have a getaway driver waiting so the robbers wouldn’t have to start up and back out. It wasn’t elaborate. It was simple. Simple was what worked.

  The two shitheads got out of the car, ready to go in the bank. They had on gloves and jackets under which I was sure there were guns.

  I had the .22 beaded on the back of the
head of one of them. A .22 isn’t a heavy firing weapon, but it doesn’t recoil much and in matters like this, it isn’t firepower, it’s aim. The .22 had another advantage. It wasn’t particularly loud.

  I took a deep breath, two more, then slowly let out all my air, steadied the rifle. My face was beaded with sweat and a drop ran into my eye. I wiped it away quickly with my arm. The sweat had spoiled my aim.

  They paused, and the one I hadn’t sighted talked on his cell phone. That would be the call for the getaway car, which would be nearby. And that would be the pause I needed to set my shot again.

  They started walking toward the bank entrance. I sighted down the barrel, took three deep breaths again, let out all my air, and gently tugged the trigger. The sound of the shot was like someone snapping a whip. The guy I was aiming at folded his legs under him and sat down quickly like he was about to start meditation. I knew there would be a small hole in the back of his head, but the front would have one the size of a half-dollar. There would be a punch out of bone, an explosion of blood and brains on the concrete. As I watched, slowly, he leaned forward, his forehead hitting the cement.

  The other man with him wheeled and pulled a gun and darted back toward his car. I shot and hit him in the side before he made it. He went down. I could hear him scream from there. He threw the pistol aside and got up on his knees and held both hands up in surrender; he was a professional quitter.

  I could tell he hadn’t seen me yet, had no idea where the shot had come from. He was rapidly turning his head from left to right, front to back, holding his hands up.

  He yelled out to no one in particular, “I haven’t got a gun. I give up. I quit.”

  All I could think about was Brett.

  I timed the turn of his head and shot him between the eyes. He fell back. I tossed the .22 in the backseat and climbed back in the car. About that time, people came out of the bank. They gathered around the bodies.

  We sat where we were. People were looking in all directions. I took deep breaths and let them out.

  “Easy,” Leonard said. “Two down.”

  Then we saw a black SUV pull into the lot.

  Brett was at the wheel. Smoke Stack was beside her. One of the other shits was in the back, the one Smoke Stack called Stumpy. I didn’t see Kelly.

  I got out of the car again with the .22, keeping it held down low. But when Smoke Stack saw the situation at the bank, the crowd, his boys down in the lot, he had Brett drive on. Nothing speedy. She just eased out of the lot. So far, no one even knew the SUV was supposed to be part of what was going on.

  I was sure neither Smoke Stack nor Stumpy had seen me. I got in the car, and we eased out of the lot with our hats pulled down low and followed the SUV.

  It went slow as it turned down the street toward the square, and then it hit South Street and turned. Holding a ways back, but not too far.

  My cell rang. I answered.

  It was Marvin. “You on them?” he asked.

  “On them,” I said.

  They went along for a few lights, driving casual, then they turned on Highway 7. We pulled down a little dirt road and got out and pulled off the pinstriping and threw it and our hats into the bushes. It was most likely wasted energy, but it was the only clever thing we had had time to plan, and frankly, it wasn’t that damn clever.

  We got back in the car and went after them, finally caught up and stayed behind them at a goodly distance. Another car passed and got between us. But that was all right. It was a kind of camouflage. We all three drove out Highway 7.

  We went on for quite some time, and then the car between us turned off, and we fell back a little. There was road work ahead, and they fanned the SUV through, but stopped us. We sat there and waited. It was a cool day, but I was sweating. They were getting ahead of us.

  “Should we run it?” I said.

  “Stay cool,” Leonard said.

  That was like asking a polar bear to stay cool in Albuquerque in mid-July.

  Finally they waved us through. Leonard put his foot to the floor. We didn’t see them. We had lost them.

  I called Marvin.

  “Man, we lost them. We’re gonna need you out here to help look. We got to do back roads. Shit, I don’t know what we got to do.”

  “Take it easy,” Marvin said.

  “Easier said than done. Goddamn road work. It got us hung up.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Out Highway 7.”

  “Highway 7. We’re coming . . . wait. Donny. He wants to talk to you.”

  “Fuck him.”

  “It’s about where they might be.”

  “Then put him on.”

  “Hap,” Donny said, “I want to help.”

  “Then you better not be wasting my time with a chat.”

  “Smoke Stack, if he’s out Highway 7, he’s going to the Take Off. That’s what he calls a pasture out there. I think his family might have owned it. It’s about twenty acres, used to be a hayfield, has some aluminum buildings. He keeps an ultralight there. That’s why he calls it the Take Off. He uses the pasture as a kind of airport. He could be going there. I was there with him once. Went out to help him get a car from one of the sheds. One we had stored for the getaway, before you found out about it. He could have stored the car back there.”

  “For a trade-off?”

  “Maybe. But that’s a place he could be. Maybe they’re just hiding out there. I don’t know. But it makes sense.”

  He gave me the directions. It was down a county road. We had passed it. Leonard wheeled the car and we drove back.

  The place wasn’t hard to find, not once we knew which road to take. Donny explained all that over the phone. There was a line of trees, and then a pasture. From the directions, we concluded we were at the right place.

  We parked by a small bridge. I spoke into the cell. “We’re here.”

  “Good luck,” Donny said.

  “Luck has got nothing to do with it,” I said, and turned off the phone.

  I took the .22 out and Leonard took the shotgun. We walked over the bridge and along the side of the road behind the trees for about a hundred feet. We stopped near the road and jumped over a ditch and looked through a gap in a patch of pines.

  From there we could see a grown-up pasture and about a hundred yards out, a long low aluminum shed. It had two large double doors on it. One set of doors was wide open. I could see the ultralight Donny had mentioned. I had been up in one once, a two-seater. I was the passenger. It was like riding in a winged lawn mower.

  The SUV was parked near the shed.

  If Smoke Stack and Stumpy were going out of there in the ultralight, then there wouldn’t be any room for Brett and Kelly. They’d either leave them, or pop them. I suspected the latter. But they hadn’t done it yet because I could see Brett and Kelly by the shed. It looked as if they might be wearing handcuffs; their hands were tucked behind their backs and they were leaning against the building. The only way into the pasture, which was fenced with barbed wire, was over a cattle guard.

  Smoke Stack and Stumpy were tugging the ultralight out of the shed.

  “Looks like they aren’t going to bother with a car,” Leonard said.

  “Go start the car,” I said.

  “You can shoot from here.”

  “I can. But I’m going through the trees and through the fence, and I’m going to walk straight toward them. I need to be closer and surer. You drive over that cattle guard like your ass is on fire, distract them. I’ll take my shot then. It’ll be Smoke Stack first. Then I reload and it’s the other one.”

  “That’s slow reloading with all that’s going on, you and that single-shot squirrel rifle,” Leonard said.

  “I’m quick and it’s a little late to upgrade.”

  Leonard walked back to the car and I started through the trees and through the wire. I heard the car engine start. It wasn’t loud enough to startle anyone, far back as he was. And then I heard the car coming, like the proverbial bat out
of hell.

  I hurried across the pasture. Smoke Stack hadn’t seen me yet. He was preoccupied with another part of his plan. He hadn’t wanted to share the two-seater at all. And I knew why. All that money had to have a place to sit.

  He had an automatic pistol drawn, and he turned and shot his partner right through the head. I saw him heave something in a bag into the ultralight, then he started over toward Brett and Kelly, the automatic hanging from his hand. He was partially hidden by the ultralight. I could only get glimpses of him through the wings and the motor and the seating. He hadn’t seen me yet. He was preoccupied.

  I stopped and dropped to one knee and took my shot.

  I saw his hair lift a little, my shot was so close.

  But I missed. I NEVER FUCKING MISSED. And I had missed.

  My heart sank.

  Smoke Stack wheeled. And when he did, Brett jumped up, and, with her hands against her back, she leaped at him, hit him with a body slam, and knocked him spinning backwards, his gun flying from his hand. I dropped the .22 and started running toward him. Leonard was flying through the cattle guard then, bearing down on Smoke Stack.

  Smoke Stack got up and out from under Brett, who struggled to her feet and tried to jump at him again. But Smoke Stack dodged her like a quarterback on the run and leapt into the ultralight. I heard the motor start up and a moment later the machine was bouncing over the field. I was running on a collision course with Leonard. He slammed on the brakes and I slid over the hood and jumped in on the other side.

  “Go,” I said.

  The ultralight was gaining some speed. Its bounces were becoming higher. In a moment it would hop and then leap to the sky.

  But the motor on that thing wasn’t a match for a car. We were closing. As we passed Brett, who had struggled to her feet, she looked at me.

  I waved.

  The car bounced along until it was almost even with the ultralight. I hung myself out of the open window, eased out until I was sitting on the edge of it with my legs dangling, my arms inside, keeping me lodged. And then I eased on arm out.

  “Closer,” I said.

  Leonard did that. I cocked one foot up until it was on the window support, and I shoved off just as the ultralight was making its big jump.