“I don’t like fast food,” Booger said.
“Then order a fucking salad,” Jim Bob said, “or just hang over a soda. I don’t give a shit. Anyway, things go bad, you got Leonard, and all he has to do is have a text prepared and punch it. We’ll be there in two or three minutes. I think the two of you can probably handle two or three minutes.”
“I doubt it will turn ugly, not in public,” I said. “I like bearding him in one of his neutral dens, so to speak, see if it causes him to get the hit crew stirred and moving in our direction. That will be our chance to clean out that nest, provided it comes to that.”
“It better,” Booger said. “It was a long drive from Oklahoma.”
“We only go code red if we need to,” I said.
Booger grunted.
“And somewhere in all this,” Leonard said, “I hope to figure out what the hell happened to Sandy.”
43
We arrived at the restaurant at straight-up noon in my car, but with Leonard driving. Actually, we parked down from the restaurant a ways, but we had eyes on it.
Leonard said, “I hate waiting around.”
“Me, too.”
“I’d rather have to fight and mate with a wild tiger in a ditch than just sit around waiting.”
“No tigers in a ditch for me, but I do hate waiting.”
“If you didn’t have to fight the tiger, but just mate with it, how would that be?”
“Female tiger?”
“In your case, yes.”
“Count me in.”
“You know, Hap, I think we ought to smother Booger in his sleep. He doesn’t seem trustworthy to me.”
“I haven’t seen that he sleeps much.”
“Every time I get up to go pee, I see him sitting up in a chair with the light on. Reading books you brought. He always smiles at me. He has a creepy fucking smile.”
“We may in fact be getting old. We’re sleeping, he’s watching.”
“You got a point there,” Leonard said. “I sleep light, but I sleep. He seems like a fucking machine.”
“What he is is a sociopath. Cason said as much, and I guess he’s as close as Booger’s got to a friend. I think he seems odd because he doesn’t quite understand human discourse. I think when he gets our goat, he believes he’s being pleasant or friendly. He doesn’t really know what that’s supposed to look like.”
“Jim Bob, like us, he’s been around, and when he was talking to Booger the other day, talking tough, you know what I thought I saw?”
“A moment of hesitation.” I said.
“Like maybe the tiger saw the elephant.”
“Thought I saw it, too. Thought I saw the same thing in your eyes a couple times.”
“That was a trick of the light, buddy boy, nothing more,” Leonard said.
“All right, then. But I assure you, he makes me a little weak in the knees.”
“Hey, that may be your man.”
A black SUV pulled up in a parking spot near the front of the restaurant. A big man with black hair who looked like he lived in a gym got out on the driver’s side, stepped to the back driver’s-side door, and let a man out with stylishly cut gray hair. He was slim and wore blue dress pants and a lighter blue polo shirt. I didn’t notice if his shoes were expensive or not, but they were black.
He went inside.
I said, “Okay, heads up, brother. I’m going in.”
I got out and strolled along the sidewalk to the Japanese restaurant and went inside. The place had a few scattered customers. The waitress, an attractive Asian lady, asked me how many.
“I’m joining a friend,” I said and nodded toward the booth where Doug Creese, the Barbecue King, sat.
“You’re the first.”
“How’s that?”
“You’re the first to ever sit with him.”
I walked over and sat down in the booth across from Doug. He looked older close up. There were lots of lines in his face, and his mouth drooped at both corners. He studied me for a few seconds.
“Do I know you?”
“No, but I thought you might like to.”
“You’re not selling insurance, are you?”
“Depends on how you look at it.”
“How should I look at it?”
“Like I’m here to save us both a lot of problems.”
“Yeah?”
“My name is Hap Collins.”
“I know of you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I hear you’re a cracker that runs around with some queer nigger named Leonard and you think you’re a tough guy and he thinks he’s tougher.”
“That’s us. And by the way, he just might be tougher.”
“I haven’t got any business with either of you.”
“Then how come you know who we are?”
“I hear about you because I’ve known some people who know of you. The name stuck with me. Hap. Unusual. Hap and Leonard. I remember that.”
I nodded.
“Word is you own a car lot downtown, the fancy one.”
“That’s the word, huh?”
“Yep. And word is you don’t just sell cars. You sell pussy, too, maybe dick, and you like film, especially ones where someone with money is caught naked with his pecker hanging out and a prostitute dangling on the other end.”
“You heard that, huh?”
“I hear, too, when people cross you, there’s these guys known as the Canceler, except there are several—eight, I believe—and they get a ticket to kill, and then they get paid really well for it. That’s what I hear.”
“You’re hearing from all the wrong people.”
“Am I, now? Funny. No matter what we hear, it always comes back to you.”
The waitress came over.
Doug gave his order. I told her I’d have the same. I said, “I’ll even pick up the bill.”
She went away.
“You’re ruining my lunch,” he said.
“What I’m doing is telling you that I’m not going to stop what I’m doing, and the people I have with me are not going to stop, either, and we are going to put holes in anyone who wants to cut off our balls or any variation thereof that leads to any of us being dead in any manner, shape, or fashion or, for that matter, just made unnecessarily tired.”
“You should do that. It’s got nothing to do with me.”
“I’m also saying the only thing we really want is to find a lady named Sandy Buckner, and if we can do that, we can save a lot of trouble, because if we know what happened to her, where she is, or where what’s left of her is, we’ll take our toys and go home.”
“How nice.”
“We think so. We wouldn’t want to mess up your lunch routine by you being dead.”
“You threatening me?”
“I’m telling you how it might work out if you start the ball rolling. But on the other hand, you don’t want to cooperate, I got one guy with us who will kill anyone for anything and skull-fuck them. Hell, he scares me.”
The waitress brought us both unsweet ice teas. I reached over and got an artificial sweetener from the rack on the table, tore it open, and dumped it in my tea. I stirred it with the straw.
“Collins, I’m tired. Real tired. I just want to spend the rest of my life being comfortable. I don’t want any shit. None.”
“We’re in the same ballpark.”
“No, you have on the wrong uniform and have showed up for the wrong game.”
“Have I?”
“Listen. Ten years ago I’d have been all over this. I’d have wanted war. I’d have had so many men and resources at my service you’d be dead by the time you left here to get in your car. Your car would be dead. I’d have it shot in the engine block. I’d have your house burned down and your plumbing dug up and have your shit shot, turd by turd.”
“So what’s wrong now?”
“I’m retired.”
“That’s lame.”
“I didn’t choose retirement. I was f
orced into it. The car lot—I don’t really own it. Haven’t for years.”
“I’m not sure I believe that.”
“Believe what the fuck you want. It’s still in my name, but own it? Only on paper. It and damn near everything I ran at one time is no longer mine. I had a good business; some of it was legit. I made good barbecue. You know, I don’t actually own that anymore, either. I get some payments, a percentage, but I sold that off. I sold it off so I could retire, and I got paid good to let the car lot stay in my name, but I don’t make money off of it anymore. I’d like my name off, but part of the deal was it had to stay attached, at least as the owner. That keeps the real owner at a distance. I’m a fucking lame duck in an orthopedic shoe. I can still quack, but I got nothing left to quack about.”
The waitress came over with our lunch. It was sushi and California rolls. It looked good. I asked for a fork due to the fact that I might put my eye out with chopsticks. She went away and came back with a fork. I thought she looked a little disappointed when she gave it to me.
I reached for the soy sauce.
“Put some wasabi down first, spread it around, mix the soy in that, gently, and then dip the food in it. It gives it real taste.”
“I’ve had it before,” I said.
“Yeah, but you don’t know how to eat it. It’s a one-bite thing, you know that? Though it should be done with chopsticks, because a fork gives it a funny aftertaste. Stir it around in the stuff, and then eat it.”
“I appreciate that,” I said, “but I kind of had another conversation I was interested in. One about you not owning anything anymore.”
He ate a piece of sushi. He put his chopsticks down and sipped his tea. He said, “I got drummed out, and if you got a beef, it isn’t with me. I can tell you some things, though, things that might even help you, and I don’t mind doing that. I got my own ax to grind. That said, I ask you to keep me out of it.”
This was an interesting turn of events.
“All right,” I said. “Tell me some things that might help. I’ll decide if they do.”
“I’m a king without country, Hap. I still got a big house and nice cars and some money, good money, but I have about as much power as a toddler. I’m almost in prison, you want to know the truth.”
“I been to prison once. I didn’t care for it. Comparatively, what you got isn’t nearly so bad.”
“That’s because you don’t have what I have. And in fact, guy out there in the car, he’s my bodyguard in name, but not really. He watches me. He sees you in here, well, he could make trouble for you.”
“I got so much trouble now that adding to it doesn’t matter much. Besides, there’s someone out there watching after me who might as well be named Trouble.”
“You are in deeper than you even imagine, and you still haven’t got a clue what’s going on. I think you think you have a clue, but you don’t.”
“Are you going to enlighten me?”
“I’m trying. Just listen. Don’t talk, don’t answer unless I ask you something. Just listen. Let’s start with Sandy Buckner. Few years back she went to work for me. I had the car company, and I was peddling tail on the side, and she comes in wanting to work for me. Talks to Frank first.”
“That right?”
“Yeah. You know Frank’s a split stump?”
“Heard that.”
“Frank tells me about Sandy, cause then I was boss. Called the shots, hired the help. Frank tells me there’s this girl I might like to hire, a real looker, and I set up an interview. Sandy’s well turned out. I don’t trust her at first. Did a bit of research, like I always did. She had a journalism degree, and I’m thinking she might be playing Brenda Starr, Girl Reporter. So I take the position that I’m interested, but she’s got to give me a sample of the goods. I’m thinking this might be the breaking point, that she won’t let the beaver loose if she’s just there to do an exposé. I mean, sure, she could not care, but it was one way to test. Not definitive, but something. She did me more ways than I thought could be done, and hell, I was running a high-class whorehouse. Still, I was cautious. Time passes, a year or so, and she does her job well, and I think she’s all right. Next thing I know there’s some guys come to talk to me, my own guys. They say, ‘Hey, we’re going to put you in more of a consulting position.’ My own fucking business. I hit the roof, of course. Consulting? Who the fuck are you? Well, know who they were?”
“How many guesses do I get?”
“The new owners. They didn’t buy shit, but they had someone who invested a little money in the right place to get the right guys interested, some real hardware slingers from Houston. They got businesses all over the United States and overseas.”
“You got steamrolled.”
“That’s right. Sandy had some money of her own, quite a bit of it, I think, and she goes to these guys, says she’s investing. Besides money, she offers something better, says she’s got all the inside dope on the business. And she did. She had done her fucking homework. She tells them she can go wider, spread it overseas.
“Turns out, too, she’s been doing this blackmail thing, and she tells these Houston guys, these bent-nose motherfuckers, they can do what she’s doing on a wider scale, cause they got some real dough to expand. They dive in, and all of a sudden I’m sitting home with the cold fucking north wind whistling up my asshole. They pushed me out and told me to eat shit and call it caviar.”
“Sandy did that?”
“Goddamn right. She is one smart hot-ass bitch, and she screwed me not only on the couch in my office that time, she screwed me over and took my business. Went to work for these Houston turds. Bottom line, I was out, she was in. That’s when this Canceler crap got started.”
He paused, ate a piece of sushi, put his chopsticks down, and drank some tea.
“Woman you’re looking for, she’s the fucking mastermind. She doesn’t call herself Sandy anymore. She’s wheeling and dealing. These guys, these hit men you got the fancy name for, I think they’re all kin. Brothers, cousins. Maybe there’s some friends thrown in. And Sandy expands the business with them. Used to be one guy, or maybe it was two. I’m not sure, but pretty soon it’s a family business for a family of fucking psychos. I’ve done my share of things, Collins. Or had it done. Some bad shit. I knew it was bad shit when I did it, but I didn’t lose sleep over it. It was business.”
“Well, then, that makes it just fine,” I said.
“Don’t even know I disagree with you. Being away from it, I got to say, what the fuck was that all about? I started out selling my dad’s barbecue and peddling used cars, next thing I know I’m in the sewer without any hip boots.”
“I doubt that was an accident of nature.”
“I’m not asking for pity. I come from a family that was so poor the soles of their shoes were the bottoms of their feet. I come from ignorant shits, and my old man was the one taught me how to be crooked. But I was better at it than he was. I got some education and I got some plans and I got rich. I liked being rich. I’m still well off, but I haven’t any power, and these bodyguards, they don’t give a flying wet sausage in a whorehouse about me. Long as I keep it simple and don’t go much of anywhere without them, don’t try to take the business back over, they’re all jake with me. I had that business back, you know what I’d do? I’d get rid of all those high-end cars and go back to selling Chevrolets. On a bad day I’d sell a Ford. I’d quit running poontang, and there wouldn’t be any blackmail. I know it’s rare and hard to believe, but I’ve grown a conscience.”
“I think what you’ve grown is desperate.”
“Have it your way.”
“So Sandy, she runs your business now?”
“What I said, and someone runs her business. The Houston people. But here’s a bit of a rat turd in her soup. What she don’t know is I got some records that I kept, old-school, on paper, and I got that and I could maybe cause her a real pain in the ass I was to give it up to the law. It’s stuff happened under my watch, but
now she’d get asked about it, long as someone knew to ask her. She could have me whacked at any time, though. I expect it every day. One day I go to eat sushi, and instead I’m in a lake somewhere and the fish are eating me. It could happen. Truth is, you sitting here could cause me serious problems. Bodyguards have got more lax in the last few years. They’re not right on me like they used to be, but I don’t want them to think I’m spilling out of school.”
“But you are.”
“Suppose I am. Thank God they don’t like sushi, which is why I eat here. They’re the greasy hamburger types. They think class is what they attended in school. If they went.”
“Are you offering this information to me? Sounds like it.”
“I’m looking to get out of this trap, but I’m not giving anything to anyone with those hit fucks out there.”
“The Cancelers?”
“Who else? Yeah. Them. Listen to me. What I’m thinking is you want what I want.”
“Not exactly,” I said.
“Yeah, but you want it close enough it works for both of us. What you want is to take their bad asses down. The real ones. The ones that really own the business. Sandy, too, and the ones they hire for the big kill jobs. Start with the teeth, the Cancelers, and you get rid of a whole lot of their bite.”
“They’ll just buy implants, new killers.”
“Not if you go after the teeth, then get them while they’re nothing but gums.
“Let me tell you something, Hap. I heard through the grapevine about the biker screws you messed with. I heard that from someone who’s part of that club, one of the few spies I got left out there. He’s damn near worthless to me, really, but now and again I get some news because he wants some money. He said three guys came down on the whole fucking club and shot the shit out of them and ran over some of them with a car. He said two of those guys were you and this Leonard Pine.”
“That sounds about right,” I said.
“Who’s the third guy?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“They said Frank was there and you came and got her from them.”