“Goddamn them,” Leonard said. “He’s just a baby.”
I gave the revolver to Leonard and picked up the boy. “I’m calling an ambulance.”
I started across the street to MeMaw’s. I heard an asshole yell from the crack house, “Hey, whatcha got there?”
The sound of that guy’s voice was like sandpaper on my brain. Later, I would think back and know that voice had been the snapping point, the catalyst for what was to follow. I heard that voice and was reminded of what was going on next door, and thought: here Leonard and I were trying to stop some whacko from torturing and killing kids, and in quite a different way, next door to us, operating against the law, but not restrained or bothered by it, a whole houseful of ball sweats were doing a similar thing, and we weren’t stopping them, weren’t making any effort to. Kids were being tortured to death by addiction, and the drug dealers were taking in big money and making friends with the bail bondsmen, and were practically being treated like businessmen.
I went up on the porch and kicked the bottom of the door, yelled, “MeMaw. Hiram. Emergency. It’s me, Hap.”
A few minutes later the door opened. It was Hiram. He stood looking at us through the screen. He was dressed in his bathrobe and the expression on his face was odd. You’d have thought I was bringing him a take-out order.
“Wha . . . ?” he said.
“Wake up, man. Got an emergency here.”
I could feel the boy shivering in my arms. I glanced down at him. Saliva was running out of the corner of his mouth and his body was trying to bend into a fetal position.
“Yeah . . . yeah,” Hiram said, and opened the screen.
I slid inside, said, “I need to call an ambulance. We found him by the house. Drug overdose, I think.”
“I’ll take him,” Hiram said. “No need to wake Mama. She’s sick.”
I handed the boy to Hiram, and he held him and looked at him, then took him around the table and into the back room. I used the phone to call the ambulance. I’d no sooner done that when I heard a shotgun blast.
I ran outside, keeping low. I saw Leonard standing in the yard of the crack dealers. He had a shotgun. He fired another shot into the side of the house. He yelled: “Out, ever’body out!”
“Leonard,” I yelled, and I started running across the street. I wasn’t fast enough. He’d reached the porch over there, and there was one guy still standing on it, standing between Leonard and the front door. Not because he was brave, because he was petrified.
Leonard reached out and shoved him aside. The guy went over the edge of the porch and rolled on the grass and got up and started running.
Leonard tried to open the front door, but someone had locked it. I got up on the front porch about the time Leonard screamed, “Stand back, motherfuckers,” and shot a hole through the door big enough to poke your head through.
I grabbed Leonard by the shoulder, “Hold up, man.”
Leonard looked back at me, and I saw in his eyes what I had felt moments ago. Anger. Frustration.
“You can’t kill them, Leonard.”
“I can kill the house.”
I took my hand off his shoulder and stood back, and he kicked the door where the blast had torn a hole, and the hole got wider, and he kicked again, and an entire panel of the door collapsed, and swift as a summer cloud blowing across the face of the sun, Leonard hit the door and it went to pieces and he was inside.
And I was in after him.
The house was poorly lit, and when we came through the door, Mohawk and the one I called Parade Float came out of the dark. They leaped and grabbed Leonard, one on either side, Mohawk trapping the shotgun against Leonard’s body.
Mohawk yelled, “Now, baby.”
Over Leonard’s shoulder I saw a stringy white woman with greasy hair, dressed in nothing but a pair of shorts, stick a little automatic in Leonard’s face and pull the trigger.
* * *
Nothing happened. The gun had jammed. A rush of adrenaline shot through me like a gusher of crude oil blasting to the surface.
I stepped in and hit Mohawk in the side of the head with a right and he loosened up on Leonard just as Leonard kicked the woman in front of him in the stomach and sent her tumbling down the hallway.
I reached out and clawed my fingers across Mohawk’s face, raking him in the eyes, and then I turned sideways and kicked him in the side of the knee. The kick was off, and the knee didn’t break, but he yelped and let go of Leonard and fell backward through an open doorway.
Leonard was using the shotgun stock to do some dental work on Parade Float when I went by him and grabbed the woman. She was obviously fucked up on something and feeling no pain, and she’d gotten up on her knees and grabbed the gun again. She pointed it at my groin, and I reached down and scooped it aside with my palm and jumped in close and grabbed her head with both my hands and gave her a knee in the face, hard as I could. I figured I’d be hearing from the Southern Club for Manhood after that, but I didn’t give a shit, you try and hurt me, I’m going hurt you back. She went backward with her nose flat and blood flying and the gun went off and plaster puffed out of the wall. I kneed her again, and the automatic went sailing away from her, down the hall, and now there were guys coming out of nowhere, all over, a half-dozen of them, and one of them came up behind me and grabbed me in a full nelson. I dropped to a wide stance and punched forward with both hands, and that loosened the guy’s grip. I wheeled and hit him in the side of the head with my elbow, and followed on around with my body and scooped my arm around behind his head and pulled him down and kneed him in the groin and kicked the inside of one of his knees and then the other, and the second one broke with a sound like a drumstick snapping.
I took a punch in the side of the head and one in the kidney and I yelled and turned and hit a guy with a forearm and saw another guy fly by me on the end of Leonard’s foot, and then I saw the stock of Leonard’s shotgun catch another one in the side of the head, and after that I saw less of Leonard because I was busy.
I threw some punches and kicks, but mostly punches and knees and elbows, because the working conditions were tight. Guys started running past me and Leonard, darting for the door. Back of the house I heard a woman scream, and some guys yell, and the back door slammed, and I knew a fistful of folks who’d been on the buy were out of there and making tracks.
I checked the woman. She was still out.
I looked behind me. Parade Float was on his ass, unconscious, leaning against the wall, dribbling blood-soaked teeth down his chest. He was still wearing his shower cap. Those things were really worth the money.
Another guy, the one whose knee I’d broke, was on the floor screaming so loud I thought my brain would turn to mush. Leonard walked over and kicked the guy in the face, hard, and I grabbed him to keep him from doing it again.
Leonard turned away from me and went into the room where Mohawk had gone, and I ran over there and entered just behind him. And there was Mohawk, on the bed, on his knees, holding a revolver, pointing it at Leonard. The gun vibrated like a guitar string. Mohawk said, “Don’t! Don’t now. I’ll shoot your goddamn dick off. Get away from me, you crazy nigger.”
And Leonard, truly crazy, crazed as if he had a hot soldering iron rammed up his ass, walked right up to him. Mohawk didn’t fire because he was too scared to fire, afraid the bullets would bounce off Leonard’s chest.
Leonard tossed the shotgun on the bed, reached out and grabbed the barrel of Mohawk’s gun and twisted it away from him and grabbed him by the throat with the other hand. He tossed the gun aside and whipped Mohawk around and put his forearm under Mohawk’s chin and applied a judo choke. One of those that doesn’t cut the wind, just cuts the blood off to the brain, and because of that, I knew Leonard had gotten himself together.
Mohawk thrashed a little, then got still.
I put a hand on Leonard’s shoulder. “Let him go, man.”
Leonard let him go, and Mohawk fell off the bed and onto the floor. He w
as out. With that choke, it only takes a few seconds.
Leonard got Mohawk by the feet and dragged him out of the bedroom, and I watched from the hallway as Leonard pulled him onto the front porch, and down the steps, Mohawk’s head thumping the steps like bongos. Leonard laid Mohawk out in the yard and came back in the house. He reached down and got Parade Float by the shirtfront and boosted him to his feet and put the big bastard over his shoulder and turned to me.
“Drag ’em out,” he said.
I went over and picked the woman up. She was very light. A temporary feeling of guilt went over me, hitting her like that, but then I thought of the gun pointing at my balls and her firing it, and I wanted to hit her again. I took her out in the yard and laid her between Mohawk and Parade Float. I went back inside and got hold of the guy with the broken knee and pulled him onto the porch and shoved him off. He screamed all the way and really screamed when he hit the ground.
In the distance, we could hear the ambulance sirens.
“Inside,” Leonard said.
We went inside and into the bedroom where Mohawk had been. Leonard pulled the mattress off the bed and started dragging it through the doorway. He piled it in the hallway, and I followed after him as if I were a strand of toilet paper stuck to his shoe.
We went into the kitchen, and Leonard rumbled around and found a box of kitchen matches. He tried to open the box but was so wired he dropped them on the floor. I picked up the box and opened it and got a match out and struck it on the side of the box and handed it to him.
He grinned at me. The devil was behind that grin. He took the match and carefully lit a curtain over the kitchen window. The curtain began to blaze. I got a match out, went over to a sack of overflowing garbage, struck the match on the counter and looked at the flame. I saw the overdosed child in it, saw the dead bodies beneath the house, the bones in the trunk, the shadowy shape of Illium.
I dropped the match on top of a grease-splattered Hamburger Helper box. A moment later the sack was flaming. I kicked the fiery sack under the kitchen table and the flames licked up and caught the plastic table cloth. The table itself was littered with garbage. It caught fire pretty quick.
We moved down the hallway, and Leonard took out his pocketknife and cut the mattress open. I lit the stuffing inside, and the mattress blazed mightily.
We did the same sort of thing in the bedroom with the curtains and the sheets. Leonard rescued his shotgun, and we went over to the bathroom and found some bottles of alcohol in the medicine cabinet. We sloshed that around the place and lit it. Flames raced up the walls.
By the time we walked out the front door our matches were used up and the house was seriously on fire. There were ambulance attendants in the yard, looking at Mohawk and the others. There was an ambulance at the curb.
“Not those assholes,” Leonard said, pointing across the street. “There’s a boy over there.”
One of the attendants looked at us, let his eyes rest on the shotgun cradled in Leonard’s arms. “Easy, fellow. We’re on it.”
I looked at MeMaw’s house. I was sure she was up now, sick or not. Lights were on all over. There was an ambulance out front. Attendants were sliding a stretcher into the back of it. Hiram was on the front porch. He looked over at me and Leonard. The red-and-blue lights from the ambulance strobed across him, blended with the yellow-white porch light. He didn’t lift his hand toward us.
I turned back to the crack house. I could see flames behind the windows, like the light inside a jack-o’-lantern. One of the windows exploded suddenly, and a thick coil of black smoke rolled out into the night. It carried a stench with it. Burning plastic perhaps. Or just all the badness in that house on fire.
“Those old wood-frame houses certainly do catch quick,” Leonard said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Lumber’s mellow when it gets that old.”
Me and Leonard walked back to Uncle Chester’s house. Leonard had tossed my .38 onto the porch, and he showed me where it was, and I got it.
We went inside and waited for the inevitable.
30.
Holding cells are very small and short on comfort. And this one smelled like a dog kennel. Me and Leonard were sitting on the floor with about ten other guys, and the floor was cold and hard and not a single throw pillow was in sight. A drunk kept trying to put his head in my lap and wanted to call me Cheryl.
There was one toilet in the place, but you sat down on it to take a dump, everyone was going to be looking at you. I can take about anything, but I like private toilet space. In my book, defecation is not a spectator sport. It wasn’t that I needed to go, but I was worried about the situation if the necessity arose. Of course, the bars and the back wall of the cell were painted a very comfortable blue, and that’s supposed to be a relaxing color if you’re trying to make with a bowel movement. If memory serves me, however, green is better. Perhaps I could suggest that to the jailer. Get an audience with the mayor.
Another bad thing about a holding cell is you don’t exactly meet a great crowd of people. A lot of them are criminals.
The people we’d had our row with weren’t around. I figured Parade Float was visiting an oral surgeon, and the rest were at the hospital. But we had some real cuties nonetheless. One of them, a greasy white guy with the physique of an industrial meat freezer and a swastika tattooed on his forehead in red ink, got his dick out and pissed between the bars on a jailer’s leg. A cop came over and yelled at him, and the guy pissed on the cop. The cop hit the bars with his nightstick and cussed, and the big guy laughed and turned around and shook the dew off his dick.
“Fucking assholes,” the big guy said, then he quit grinning and looked all of us in the holding cell over. “You’re assholes too,” he said.
None of us assholes argued with him. Me and Leonard, we were tired and sore assholes. The big guy, without putting his dick up, wandered over to the far edge of the cell and intimidated a sad-looking little Mexican guy by giving him the hairy eyeball. Also, a guy staring at you with his dick out will make a person nervous.
Hanson came up to the bars and stood looking inside. He was dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans and what looked like house slippers. His stomach bulged inside the T-shirt, but it looked hard, like a washpot. The wet end of a chewed cigar stuck out of the T-shirt pocket. I gave him a little wave. He smiled insincerely and spread his arms wide. “My boys! How are you?”
“We’re a little tired, Lieutenant,” Leonard said.
“Arson and assault, trespassing,” Hanson said. “These things wear on you. Jailer. Open up.”
The jailer opened up. Hanson stood in the open doorway and said, “My boys, come to me.”
We got up and started out. The big guy with his dick out came over and tried to follow after us. “Not you,” Hanson said, and after we passed Hanson pushed the guy back inside.
“Piss on you,” the big guy said and thrust his hips forward like he was going to piss on Hanson. Hanson reached very quickly and grabbed the guy’s crank and yanked it as if he were popping a whip. The guy made a noise like a sudden hole in a helium balloon and went down to his knees.
Hanson said, “Put that thing away, or I’ll have it mounted on a board.”
Hanson came out of the cell, the jailer closed the door, and Hanson gave us a soft shove down the corridor.
* * *
We came to a door and Hanson reached between us and opened it. “Gentlemen,” he said.
We went inside. It was an office full of smoke. Charlie was sitting behind the only desk in the room with his feet propped on it. He had thin soles on his shoes. He had a copy of a trash rag and was reading it. He had his suit coat slung over the back of the chair, and he was wearing a green pajama shirt stuck in his slacks, and he had his porkpie hat tilted back on his head.
Mohawk was sitting in a fold-out metal chair on the left side of the room. Just sitting there smoking a cigarette. There was an ashtray on the floor in front of him and it was filled with cigarettes. There were
stomped out cigarettes all around the ashtray.
Charlie wasn’t paying Mohawk the least bit of attention. He didn’t look at us when we entered the room. He was deep into his rag.
On the right hand side of the room, wreathed in Charlie’s smoke, was Florida. She was leaning against the wall next to a fold-out chair. She was dressed in jeans and a tight white T-shirt; she was a knockout. Just what I needed to see at a time like this. Then again, I knew she’d be here. She was mine and Leonard’s lawyer, and when I got my one call, I’d called her.
“Hap,” she said.
“Florida,” I said. “Thanks.”
Leonard nodded at her.
Hanson said, “Charlie, watch ’em. I got to wash my hands. I been pullin’ a guy’s dick.”
Charlie didn’t look up from his rag. He just lifted a hand over it. Hanson went out and shut the door.
I glanced at Mohawk and Mohawk glanced at me. He’d looked better. His mohawk was leaning a bit to the left, and there wasn’t one ounce of cockiness about him. There was a knot on the side of his head where I’d hit him. He looked away from me and took in Leonard.
Leonard smiled at him. It was one of those smiles Leonard can give that you’d really prefer not to see. Mohawk’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and fell back down. He dropped his eyes to the floor. The cigarette between his fingers was almost burned down to his skin. He sucked it once and dropped it. It nearly hit the ashtray. He said, “Where the hell’s my motherfuckin’ lawyer? They got their lawyer here, I want mine.”
“Got to call him first,” Charlie said, and turned a page on his rag.
“You ain’t let me call shit, man,” Mohawk said. “That ain’t legal.”
“Hey,” Charlie said, “we’re busy, we’ll get to it.”
“You look busy,” said Mohawk.
“The work of the mind is subtle,” Charlie said.
During this exchange, Charlie hadn’t once looked away from his paper. He kept reading. After a few moments, without taking his face out of the paper, he said, “You know, there’s some strange things in the world. They found a picture of Elvis in an Egyptian tomb.” He put the paper down and looked at me. “You know that, Hap?”