I wished I had a vicious dog. I wished I was at Brett’s place, in bed with her, holding her close. I wished I’d win the lottery. I sort of wished I’d gotten the job at the chicken plant, even if I had to jack off roosters. I wished I was a thousand miles away.
I felt as if I had just closed my eyes, then morning light was in my face and I got up.
It was early yet. Brett was not off work. I decided to dress and drive over to the hospital, catch her as she came out, see if she wanted to go somewhere for breakfast.
The day had cleared, the air was almost sparkly, and the birds were out in force, singing various operas. The streets were shiny-slick with water and there were few cars moving about.
As I drove off the highway and into the parking lot, I saw a cop car. There were medical personnel rushing about. My stomach sank. I parked and leaped out. I started walking very fast toward the sirens, the lights, the commotion. Another cop car whipped into the lot and whirled over there. People were coming out of the hospital, across the way, from houses nearby.
I walked even faster, but now a crowd had sprung up, most of them from the hospital staff. I grabbed a guy by the elbow.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
Another man standing next to him said, “Some guy shotgunned some people in a car. Big guy. He shotgunned them. I talked to a guy saw it happen. The cops got the guy saw it over there, talking to him.”
I pushed through the crowd, got cussed, kept pushing. I made my way to the forefront. I could see Brett’s car. The windshield was blown away. There was glass all over the place. They were lifting a man onto a stretcher. Even from a distance, I could see it was Leon. Big bad Leon. Minus the top of his head.
Oh, Jesus.
They covered him quickly.
On the driver’s side of the car they were lifting someone else out. A woman in a nurse’s uniform. Suddenly I was right there. Looking down on a woman’s body. Her entire face was gone. Hell, her head was practically vaporized.
Shotgunned.
Both of them shotgunned.
I put my hand against a car and held myself up. A cop grabbed my elbow. “Hap,” he said.
I turned. It was Jake, a cop I knew a little. “Did you get the guy did it?” I asked.
Jake shook his head. “No, we got a pretty good description, but we didn’t get him. We will. You all right, man?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus, Hap. You know these people?”
“Yeah. I got to go.”
“You’re all right?”
I ignored him.
“I might need to talk to you,” he yelled after me.
I shoved through the crowd and back to my car. I started it up. I drove away from there, nearly ran a half dozen people off the road. I drove over to Leonard’s. He wasn’t there. He’d be at Brett’s, waiting for her to come home. Waiting for me to stop by.
* * *
I used my key and got the door open. I went to Leonard’s closet, pulled his twelve-gauge out of there. I got the box of shells off the top shelf. My hands trembled as I pushed them into the loading chamber and put a handful in my front pants pocket.
I had been sleeping while Brett was murdered in the hospital parking lot. Sweet, beautiful, foul-mouthed Brett.
Brett and Leon.
I had been sleeping.
I had been stupid.
How could I think having a watch on her would matter? Not even Leon could handle Big Man Mountain. I could see it now. Mountain had merely waited until Brett got off work; then, as a punishment to me, he had shot her to death. Leon would have tried to stop him, but it didn’t matter. Big Man had shot them both, fast as he could pump a shotgun.
Leonard and Jim Bob had been right. I should have gone savage. I should have gone wild. Had I done that in the first place, gotten rid of Big Man Mountain’s employers, Brett and Leon would still be alive.
I was climbing in my truck with the shotgun when Jim Bob pulled into the drive. That’s right. Nine o’clock, me and him and Leonard were supposed to meet. I’d have to take a rain check.
“Hey, Hap, where you goin’?” Jim Bob yelled.
I didn’t answer. I backed out, drove very fast along the street toward the main highway, and when I reached it I drove even faster, toward King Arthur’s place.
27
The world grew smaller as I drove, the exterior of the truck becoming nonexistent. I didn’t remember the road at all. Just the world growing smaller, smaller, until it was nothing more than the cab of that truck, then my space on the seat, then the inside of my head. I drove with one hand on the wheel, the other on the shotgun stock, touching it as tenderly as a lonely man might touch his privates in the dark.
Thinking and wondering, how come the horrors happen to me and those I care about? What the hell have I done? Who’s throwing the dice?
Well, this one time, I was going to throw the dice. I was going to throw them right down King Arthur’s throat.
* * *
The driveway to King Arthur’s trailers was blocked by a metal gate. I got out of the truck with the shotgun, climbed over the gate, and started walking briskly toward the trailers.
As I neared the trailers, a huge rottweiler appeared. It barked at me once, started to run toward me in that menacing manner dogs have. I lifted the shotgun, shot it in the head. It did a flip, splattered and slid on the red clay and lay there, one back leg flexing.
“Sorry,” I said. “Nothing personal.”
I walked faster, and now I was at the front of the closest trailer’s door. One of the goons who had been in King’s car that day jerked open the door, a nine in his hand. I was close, real close. I swung the shotgun stock up and connected with his chin. He straightened up and went backwards and lay on the floor, showing all the enthusiasm of a bearskin rug. I climbed over him, picked up the nine, tossed it backwards out the open door behind me.
I came along the hall, striding fast, and another one of the guards presented himself. I lifted the shotgun. He leaped aside as I fired and the blast took out a chunk of the trailer’s back wall. I heard him making a rustling, scuttling noise somewhere out of sight, then I heard the back door open and slam, and I knew that big bad motherfucker wasn’t so bad after all, that he was running fast now, and if nothing got in his way, he ought to make the edge of the goddamn Atlantic Ocean by midnight.
“King!” I yelled. “King!”
I picked a door to my left, blasted it with the shotgun. It flew open, and I was inside, and there was King, lying in bed, Bissinggame beside him. They sat up quickly. Both were nude. Bissinggame had a peach-colored leisure suit draped over a chair. On the chair were jockey shorts, peach socks, and white shoes.
King had his hat on the nightstand beside him and he had his hand in the nightstand drawer, reaching for something.
“I thought you hated queers,” I said.
I shot the nightstand. It exploded. A lamp crashed. A .45 that had been in a drawer, before it became kindling, clattered to the floor. King jerked back a bleeding handful of wood splinters.
“Goddamn,” he said.
“I just been to the hospital,” I said. “My girlfriend. And a friend of mine. They’ve been shotgunned to death by your man, Big Man Mountain.”
“He’s not my man,” King said, and he was as calm as a man about to order lunch in a restaurant.
“Jesus!” Bissinggame said. “I’m not queer. I’m churchgoing. He makes me do this.”
“Big Man is your man,” I said. “He’s always been your man. I can’t believe I listened to you. I want you to know, you sorry cocksucking asslicking piece of pig shit, what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna blow your ass away. Bissinggame, you want out of here, go now!”
Bissinggame slid out from under the covers, reached for his underwear on the chair.
“Go naked, or die naked,” I said.
“I’m gone,” Bissinggame said, and he came around the edge of the bed. Then I saw his eyes
go wide, and I knew someone was behind me, but I didn’t care. It didn’t matter to me. Nothing mattered to me but that King would die. I jerked the shotgun to my shoulder and pulled the trigger.
I shot a big chunk of ceiling to pieces, and the pieces fluttered down all over the room. I wasn’t sure how that happened, until I realized there was a black hand on the barrel of the shotgun. I turned to fight, but the hand was Leonard’s, and he pushed me and pulled the shotgun away from me and flung it in a corner.
Leonard pulled an automatic out from under his shirt and held it casually. “It ain’t your style, brother,” he said. “You ain’t the one for it. Hell, you know that. I know that. Besides, you’ll be doin’ it for the wrong reasons and you’ll feel bad about it in the morning.”
“But I’ll feel good now,” I said.
There was a commotion in the hallway, a yell, a bunch of grunts, then a falling sound. Jim Bob came in holding his blackjack. He looked at me. “You gonna take a place, you got to secure it, Bub. There was another one in the house. Now there’s two on the floor. Motherfucker tried some Tae Kwon Do kicks on me, only he ain’t so good. Tae Kwon Do ain’t so good no more. Fact is, it ain’t been Tae Kwon Do for twenty years. It’s been that tournament shit.”
“Third man passed us in the yard, running,” Leonard said. “I suppose you made a face at him, Hap.”
I didn’t answer. Leonard turned his attention to Bissinggame. “Goddamn, Bissinggame, you call that a dick? Put somethin’ over that thing ’fore it makes me sick. Looks like a little old grub worm with pecans tied to its tail. Hell, get back in bed.”
“He makes me do this,” Bissinggame said. “He pays me a lot of money, so he makes me do this.”
“Shut up,” Leonard said. “You got a shit ring on your dick. Get back in bed.”
Bissinggame got back in bed, pulled the covers over his hips. King sat up in bed. He didn’t look any different than when I came in. Found nude with a man. A shotgun pointed at him. His car ran off the road. A bowl of chili. Everything was the same to him. He leaned over the side of the bed, picked up a pack of cigarettes and a lighter with his splinter-filled hand. He got out a cigarette, lit it and puffed it. Blood dripped off his hand onto his chest and onto the sheets. He said, “Now what? So you know I’m a lyin’ sonofabitch. I fuck men. I fuck women. I’d fuck my goddamn dog, but I figure you killed it.”
“I regret the dog,” I said.
King grunted. “Bissinggame here, shit, he’s a Baptist church deacon. Ever fuck a deacon, nigger?”
“Can’t say that I have,” Leonard said.
“Well, they give a whole new meaning to the word tight-ass,” King said and laughed.
“King had Brett and Leon killed,” I said. “Let me have the shotgun back, Leonard. I just want to do what you and Jim Bob wanted to do in the first place.”
Leonard looked at me. “You go on outside,” Leonard said. He went over and picked the shotgun up where it lay against the wall.
“You kill him instead of me, it ain’t the same,” I said.
“It’s not your way, and you know it,” Leonard said. “Go outside.”
“You’re wrong,” I said. “I can kill him. I want to kill him. Let me have the shotgun.”
I lunged for Leonard and the shotgun, but Jim Bob stepped in and hit me across the back of the hand with the blackjack. I went to my knees for a moment, eased slowly to my feet. The pain passed quickly.
Jim Bob grabbed my shirt collar, said, “Come with me, or the next one’s upside your ear.”
“He’s going to kill him. I want to do it,” I said.
Jim Bob jerked me around and I rabbit-shot him one in the ribs. Jim Bob bent. Leonard flicked out his left hand, caught me on the back of the head, and down I went. Then Jim Bob twisted my wrist into a lock, used it as come-along, took me out of there.
Behind me I heard King say, “You gonna shoot, nigger, get it over with, otherwise I’m gonna get up and take a shower. Throw a little alcohol on this hand.”
* * *
Out in the yard Jim Bob said, “You gotta calm down, Hap. You got to listen.”
A shotgun blast went off inside the trailer.
“Jesus!” I said. “Fuck that sonofabitch!”
A moment later Leonard appeared in the doorway holding Bissinggame’s leisure suit. He came down to where we were standing.
“You shouldn’t have done it,” I said.
“Oh, I don’t intend to wear it,” Leonard said.
“I don’t mean the leisure suit, you idiot,” I said. “You shouldn’t have killed King. Now it’s your neck. I wanted to take him out. I didn’t care what happened to me. I wanted to see that smug sonofabitch’s head go to pieces. I didn’t want you in on this shit.”
“I know,” Leonard said. “But I didn’t shoot anybody. I just shot another hole in the ceiling.”
I stared at him. Leonard took one of my arms, Jim Bob the other. “For Christ sakes, you’re letting him off scot-free,” I said.
“He didn’t do anything,” Jim Bob said.
“You said it was him,” I said. “You said he was behind it all.”
“I thought he was,” Jim Bob said. “Guess what, I think I could be wrong. And let me tell you, Hap. This bein’ wrong—I find it disturbing. It ain’t somethin’ I’m used to.”
28
Jim Bob drove my pickup with me on the passenger side. He parked it behind the fireworks stand not far from King’s place. Leonard picked us up in his rental, took us back for Jim Bob’s car.
I rode with Leonard as Jim Bob followed. We drove east, way out to a roadside park, pulled over. Jim Bob pulled in behind us. We gathered at a concrete picnic table. There was a cool wind blowing, but you could feel warmth creeping into the breeze. Another half hour to an hour the air would be sticky as Velcro.
“You know, I’m going to kill King anyway,” I said.
“If you do,” Jim Bob said, “make it a lot less obvious.”
“You’ve made it harder now,” I said. “He’ll be expecting me. He’ll maybe even call the cops.”
Jim Bob shook his head. “Naw. He may act cool, but he ain’t anxious the word gets around he brown-rings. It don’t go with his image. That’s what King is. Image. I’ll say this for him, though. He ain’t excitable.”
“How the hell did you two know where I was going?”
“We can come to that in a moment,” Leonard said. “Listen here, Hap. Leon is dead, but Brett isn’t.”
“Horseshit!” I said. “What the fuck they going to do? Give her a new head, pump a little blood in her heart, prop her up with a stick? Believe me, you asshole, she’s dead.”
“No,” Leonard said. “Leon and Ella are dead.”
I sat silently for a moment. I was looking at a brick barbecue cooker. Someone had stuffed it with trash. A crow lit on it, pecked at something between the bricks.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“We been tryin’ to tell you for a time,” Jim Bob said. “But you won’t shut up.”
“My God,” I said. “Brett is okay?”
“Right as rain,” Jim Bob said.
“After you left Brett’s,” Leonard said, “she called Ella. Ella wanted to swap shifts with her this week.”
“Oh, God,” I said. “I forgot.”
Leonard said, “Brett called, Ella answered, said she’d call back. She did, about twenty minutes later. She was at her mother’s. She’d walked out of the trailer while Kevin was sleepin’, walked down to a fillin’ station and called a taxi. She called Brett from her mom’s. Seems Ella finally decided she was gonna leave her husband, but she had to go to work in a couple hours and she didn’t have any more money after the taxi. Leon drove Brett’s car over there to give Ella a ride to work. They got to the hospital—”
“Big Man was waiting and thought Ella was Brett,” I said.
“Nope,” Leonard said. “Big Man didn’t shoot anybody. It was Kevin. He didn’t want her leavin’. He was waiting on
Ella. He recognized Brett’s car, saw Ella driving. He had his shotgun. He walked over and shot her, killed Leon, who I figure was trying to protect her.”
“You know it was Kevin?” I said.
“Uh-huh,” Leonard said. “He drove over to Brett’s house, stood out in the front yard with a shotgun and a pistol and yelled obscenities and said he’d killed the bitch, et cetera. Somehow, he blamed Brett. Least that’s what we were gettin’ from his rantings. Before any of us could do anything about it. Shoot him. Call the law. He put the revolver against his eye and took the A-train.”
“I’ll be goddamn,” I said.
“You’d killed King,” Jim Bob said, “you’d have killed him for something he didn’t order done.”
“Thing is, cops were on this Kevin asshole pronto,” Leonard said. “Someone at the hospital knew who he was, seen him do the deed, and told the cops. They didn’t have any trouble spottin’ his car, following him over to Brett’s. They got there before the gunsmoke from Kevin’s pistol cleared. We were standin’ out in the yard when they showed up. One of the cops said he saw you at the hospital. Said you took out of there like a bat out of hell. I had a pretty good idea where you were going. I left Clinton with Brett and went after you.”
“And me,” Jim Bob said. “I was on my way to Leonard’s house to tell you boys some new business. That look in your eyes and the shotgun told me you weren’t just goin’ for breakfast, so I followed. Met Leonard in King’s yard. Now I’m learning some of the details for the first time.”
“Poor Leon,” I said. “Poor, poor Ella.”
“Poor Clinton,” Leonard said. “Fact is, I don’t want to leave him with Brett long. He’s a messed-up man. Something came up, well, he might not be up to his usual standards.”
“Leon wasn’t up to his,” I said.
“They aren’t pros,” Leonard said. “They’re just a couple schmucks like us. Jim Bob’s the only pro here.”