I had my jogging clothes and shoes at the office, and Leonard had his in the truck, so we changed and took a run along the street, on out to the edge of town and across to the park. It was a pretty place. Filled with pecan trees and a creek. We ran along the path that was by the creek. The late afternoon was still hot, but the shadows from the trees gave us shade. Our shadows piston-pumped along beside us.
There were women in shorts with dogs and Frisbees. Three college jocks were running along ahead of us. We passed them, and one of them said something about how he’d hate to see us die of exhaustion, old guys like we were, or some such thing. Leonard made a kind of circle while he was running, went straight to the guy, and only quit running long enough to punch him in the face, almost right between the eyes. It was a quick punch, a kind of half jab, and coming from Leonard that was still a lick, but it was a lick with a governor on it. Nothing full-bore. But it’s all it took for the jock to hit the ground like a lawn dart.
The other jocks stopped running. They checked their man on the ground. He was way down in the deep siesta.
Leonard said, “All right, mice. You can squeak to the police or act like men. He can take it and live with it, and you can let him take it and live with it, or I punch you in the head, too. Which is it?”
No squeaking occurred. Leonard had appealed to their basic manhood. Don’t be a squealer. Always a good weapon to attack the male ego; that’s where great weakness lies. They were helping their dazed friend up as we jogged away. I think the guy they were picking up was trying to remember if his mom was picking him up from school, or if he had gym class and had remembered to bring his jockstrap.
“Kind of rowdy, aren’t you?” I said as we continued to run.
“I just watched Road House.”
“It’s got you pumped?”
“I didn’t tear his throat out like Patrick did to the bad guy in the movie.”
“Yeah, after that guy Gazzara just looked like some goof stumbling around. See him rip the throat out of a truly bad guy, and then he fights an old man, a geriatric, and that’s supposed to be tense?”
“Wasn’t he about our age?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s what those boys back there thought we were. A couple of geriatrics.”
“We’re not that old, buddy,” I said.
“To them we are. To them, anyone over thirty is ready for the boneyard. Irritates me. How about you?”
“Not today.”
“But some days?”
“Some days. But I wouldn’t have punched him in the face for that.”
“No—I get to do the fun stuff. You have that thing about turning the other cheek.”
“What did punching that asshole prove?”
“That I could knock him down,” Leonard said.
I took a deep breath and blew it out my nose, picked up my pace. “Could John actually have something to do with your ill temper?”
“He could. He has made me an unpleasant man.”
“More unpleasant than usual, you mean.”
“True,” Leonard said.
We ran for about an hour, then lightly jogged and walked back to the office. When we got there we were sweaty and we stank, but we were breathing fine. Our extra and revised workouts were starting to do us good. It was our plan to do some boxing later, some kickboxing, some shen chuan, then light weights. It’s what we called the Master Fucking Plan.
Brett was wearing black workout shorts and a oversize orange T-shirt. She was on a roll-out rubber mat on the floor. She was doing some kind of stretchy thing. Yoga. Zumba. A version of the Elongated Man. I don’t know. I kind of liked watching her do it, though. That girl was flexible. I knew that already, but it was nice to be reminded.
That went on for a while, and I enjoyed the view while Leonard fucked up his workout with some vanilla wafers and a Dr Pepper, which, according to our previous discussion, I had to let him have. I didn’t even wait for him to ask for the key. I just unlocked the drawer.
Brett saw us. She narrowed her eyes, but I gave them to him anyway. I knew when it got right down to it, Brett was more of a softie than I was when it came to Leonard. She would never actually deny him a cookie. She was the one that always caved first.
I gave Buffy one of the cookies, too.
“Damn it,” Brett said.
“She likes cookies,” I said.
I reached down and gave Brett one of the cookies in the same way, as she was still on the floor stretching. She laughed and took it in her mouth like the dog. I decided to have one, and she fed it to me.
Leonard, wanting more, held up his hands like paws, but I put the bag of cookies in the drawer and locked it.
“Aw, come on,” Leonard said.
“Nope,” I said. “If you sit up only when you get a cookie, that’s not good. You have to do it because it’s the right thing to do now and then.”
I insisted we call Jalapeno Tree for food. I made a phone order. We took turns in the bathroom changing back into our day-to-day clothes, washing our faces and hands. Leonard drove to Kroger to get some large diet sodas for us and some Dr Peppers for himself while we drove to the restaurant and picked up the food.
After that we drove to the Dairy Queen drive-through and bought a vanilla ice cream for Buffy, two scoops. By the time we arrived home, I had forgotten all about the girl Brett told me about. The one who said her name was Chance.
14
Leonard wasn’t much for talk that night. After dinner he hung around for a short while, but I could tell he wanted to go home. He couldn’t be comfortable away from home, because he wanted to be there if John showed up, but if he did show up, he wasn’t comfortable with him there. That’s love for you. When it’s good, it’s magic. When it isn’t, it just pees all in your soup.
Leonard had pretty much decided John wasn’t worth it, and then John came back and gave Leonard hope again, and then he was gone again. Leonard felt miserable. I didn’t like John for that, but then again, you hurt Leonard and I’m not always reasonable.
Leonard went home, and while Brett showered for bed, I opened up the envelope Ms. Buckner had given us that day in the office. I had sort of forgotten we had it, which says something for my budding detective skills. I thought about the photos she had shown me at her house, and then I looked at the photos of Sandy in the envelope. I could see how much she favored her grandmother. They were both small and pretty, or at least Ms. Buckner had been pretty many moons ago. I moved the photos around and looked at the police reports that Ms. Buckner had gotten hold of. I wasn’t sure how she came by them, but it might have been money that had helped that happen. Some of the last of her real money, back in the days when she had it and thought she’d have it forever.
There were some newspaper clippings about Sandy’s disappearance there as well, but none of it meant a thing to me. I moved the photos around again, hoping something would jump out at me. There was a graduation photo. A couple shots that might have been taken in the mall with Sandy in front of one of the stores, one that was surely taken out front of Ms. Buckner’s house before it went sad and dark, dusty and old, a tired, paint-chipped Negro jockey looking grim and lonesome by the flower bed. There was even one photo of Sandy with Ms. Buckner. Lilly Buckner still looked older than death in that picture, but she had a smile on her face.
My cell phone hummed. It was Cason.
“You up for some information?”
“Yep. Been waiting. Is it worth anything?”
“I think so.”
“Let’s have it,” I said.
“Okay if I give it in person?”
“Should I put coffee on?”
“Probably won’t take that long, but if you have decaf, that would be nice. I don’t want to be up all night wrestling with caffeine.”
“Milk and sugar?”
“I prefer Sweet’N Low.”
“Would you like cookies and for me to wax your ass? Maybe a little hand job?”
“That woul
d be nice, but you have to wear a blond wig and use baby oil.”
“Well, you’re shit out of luck on that.”
“The hand job or the wig?” he said.
I rang off, warned Brett he was coming. She was in her pajamas by then. They were blue and loose and fell down on the tops of her feet. She went up to bed, and Buffy padded upstairs behind her. The dog was looking bigger, bolder, happier.
Like I said, there was something about Cason that Brett doesn’t like. I knew I should pay attention to that, but right then, I needed him and his information.
I called Leonard and asked if he’d come over.
“Didn’t I just leave?”
“You’ve had time to watch Road House again.”
“Not quite,” he said.
“John show up?”
“Fuck him.”
“Sure. Fuck him. Cason’s got some news for us.”
“I’m coming over,” he said.
It took Cason about twenty minutes. I had the coffeemaker churning in the kitchen. I was outside on the porch in the sweet dark, sitting on the swing listening to the crickets make their racket in the recently mowed grass of the front yard. I used to mow it. Now I hire it done. I guess for someone like me you could call that prosperous. Money got shy, I’d be pushing the mower again.
As I waited for Cason to cross the yard from the curb where he was parked, I could smell that unique smell that pines have when they’ve been heated all day by Texas summer, then slightly cooled by night, a kind of biting turpentine taste in the air and then in the nostrils and on the tongue. That smell was being carried a long way. I had an oak in the front yard and some sweet gums out to the side. No pines.
“Brett’s gone to bed,” I said as he came out from under the streetlights and up on the porch. “I’ll bring our coffee out here so our talking won’t disturb her.”
This was a bit of a lie. She wouldn’t hear us downstairs as long as we talked in an even voice, but I liked it out there. I liked that pine smell. It reminded me of when I was a kid growing up in the East Texas woods. Smells like that, along with honeysuckle, took me back to when I was young, sitting under a tree reading a book. The world seemed shiny and bright then. I wasn’t thinking about trying to keep my life together, about living with failure. I was too young to consider anything but success. The world was my oyster. Since then I felt the shell had closed around me for the most part.
“Suits me,” Cason said. “It’s a pretty nice night.”
Inside I got us two cups prepared, fixed his how he asked, went back out on the porch. He was sitting on the top step, and he turned in my direction. I gave him his coffee and sat on the swing, put my cup on the little metal table in front of me. Brett had bought it at a yard sale.
“This news I have, it’s interesting,” Cason said. “I don’t know what to make of it, exactly, but there’s some things in it that float, some others that might float to the surface if we stir them a bit.”
“Then we’ll stir,” I said.
About that time Leonard pulled up in his truck. Unlike Cason, he pulled in the driveway next to our cars. He got out and strolled onto the porch and sat down on the swing with me. The pine smell was going away, and so was the wind that carried it.
“I like coffee,” he said.
“Do you?” I said.
“I do. I’m smarter with coffee.”
“Not that I’ve noticed.”
“Well, I feel smarter.”
I was too tired to jack with him as usual, so I cut it short, went inside, and fixed him a cup the way I knew he liked it, though I decided not to tell him it was decaf. I doubted he’d know the difference, nor would he be any smarter with caffeine. I brought out a bag of vanilla cookies with the coffee. I put the cookies on my side of the swing. There was enough glow from the streetlights for Leonard to see what I had.
“Manna from heaven, encased in a bag,” Leonard said. “To me you are like a god.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh, no,” Leonard said, smiling toward the cookies. “Thank you.”
I turned to Cason. “You think you fooled Frank?”
Cason hesitated a moment. “At first. We got into a little more business than you did. I think she thought I really was a guy looking for a good car and a good escort and a trip overseas.”
“Overseas?” Leonard said.
“Yep,” Cason said. “That’s connected to it. You can stay in the US, but they like this whole overseas thing. I think it makes what they have in mind easier to pull off.”
“All right,” I said. “How about you tell us what they have in mind?”
“Still a bit of guesswork,” he said.
“That’s all right,” Leonard said. “So far we haven’t got much but guesswork.”
“I warn you, though, I didn’t find out anything about Sandy,” Cason said.
“Like you said. Let’s stir it and see what floats.”
“Cookies first,” Leonard said.
I picked up the cookie bag, pulled it open, and shook it at him. Leonard took a handful. I poked the bag at Cason. He held up his hand like a traffic cop. “Don’t care for vanilla cookies.”
Leonard turned and looked at him but said nothing. I knew Cason had gone down a notch in Leonard’s estimation. I was hoping the conversation wouldn’t turn to Dr Peppers. If Cason didn’t like those, no telling where things might lead, especially since Leonard had watched Road House earlier and had already punched a smart-mouth college jock in the face.
“I went in for a little visit,” Cason said, “like I wanted a car. Some of this is going to be familiar, but I’ll try to hit the spots you know lightly and move on. I don’t think you played it quite right when you were there, you and Leonard. They smelled shit in the air, and with me they were sniffing pretty hard. I started out with I had been recommended, saying I heard they sold very nice cars and there were a number of services that went with it. I even gave them a name. Before I went, I looked through the newspaper files stored in the computer until I found some reference to a car bought there, a black Rolls-Royce. Guy bought the Rolls was named Terrence Milden, had oil money out of Beaumont. He bought a car there, and in this article—some fluff piece about the guy’s car collection—his newest purchase was referred to in passing and where he got it. This guy was not so old, but he was retired. He came from Beaumont to here to live. I looked up more about him, asked around, did the reporter snoop, found out he was proud of that money and wanted people to know he had it.
“There were rumors about sketchy deals and such. Liked the ladies, drugs, and so on. Again, rumors, but he struck me as someone might have made a special deal at the car lot. So I talked to Frank like I knew this guy, like he recommended me. You see, he died of some disease or another—cancer, I think. Heart attack, maybe; not sure. I just know he’s dead, so it’s not like he can be questioned. It was a shot in the dark, but I hit the target. Frank got out the book of cars, all of them way overpriced, and sitting in each or leaning against each of those cars was a woman. Each of them looks so hot it’s like the car will burst into flames. She starts talking around it, you know. So I say, ‘Too bad the girls don’t come with the cars,’ and I looked at her and winked.
“She said they might. They could. Making it kind of a joke at first. We eased forward from there, and pretty soon I’m told how there are some nice women who work for their company that love to show buyers how the cars work. I asked what if the buyer was a woman. And Frank, she says there are some nice men who work for the company, too. Said they, too, like to show how things work, make sure everyone understands the product, inside and out. Like maybe I need help finding the clutch. It’s like you guys thought. They sell a car, they sell you a girl. If you want to go that far. If they think that’s your urge. Otherwise you can just pay too much for a fancy used automobile. They think you got serious money, and you take the car and the girl, you can get that foreign trip as well. I think it’s a setup for filming.”
“I
was in the ballpark,” I said.
Cason nodded, sipped his coffee.
“I don’t think they’re happy with selling just motors and snatcheroo. They want you to keep paying for it for a long time. They’re not looking for repeat customers. They’re looking for customers they can repeatedly blackmail.”
“But what if someone doesn’t care?” Leonard said.
“They still get money for the car and the girl, the trip overseas. They can let the blackmail go, they have to. Or they can wreck someone’s life for the hell of it.”
“What if someone turns them in?”
“Still has to be proved,” Cason said. “Or maybe they know exactly how to set someone up they think is trouble, even if that person isn’t really doing anything wrong. I don’t know all the working parts yet.”
“You’re overseas, in some foreign country,” Leonard said. “Makes you more vulnerable, more at their mercy.”
“I got hints from Frank you could go places in the States, too. I think it’s wide open. But the main thing is the blackmail. They asked me about my job. How I liked it. I played it up, about how important it was to me.”
“To set yourself up for blackmail,” I said.
“Exactly. Showed them I had something I liked and didn’t want to lose it.”
“That fits Frank’s past MO,” I said. “At least according to Marvin. Once a scammer, pretty much always a scammer.”
Cason nodded. “But this scam is delicious, if that’s the deal. I mean, I’m filling a lot in here based on a sideways conversation—all the things Frank said as well as the things she didn’t say. Once they nail you good the first time, get you on camera, all they need is the blackmail. Though now that I think about it, they figure you’re someone doesn’t care if you get filmed, then they can keep selling you the girl if you want her. They think you repeat enough, there may be adequate money in that. Those gals in those photos, they don’t get backstreet money. We’re talking about high-dollar escorts.”