Hap and Leonard

  We had to deal with that motherfucker, we were going to need a bigger boat. Certainly a bigger axe handle. I think we had to graduate to a baseball bat. Maybe a cannon. He might take the axe handle away from us, swallow it, and pull it out of his ass as a sharpened stick with our names tattooed on it.

  As I watched him walk back to the house, a little chill went up my back and crawled across my scalp. I pulled out my cell and called Leonard.

  “Yeah,” Leonard said.

  “You know, this Henry guy. I just saw him. He’s big.”

  “How big?”

  “Do you remember that robot in The Day the Earth Stood Still?”

  “Ouch.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “He still at home?”

  “Yep.”

  “You gonna keep watching?”

  “Ever vigilant,” I said. “Just wanted you to know what we were up against. And for all we know, he’s armed.”

  “You’re exaggerating?”

  “Nope, I’m being conservative. You know the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The robot in that one. More that size.”

  “Bigger ouch,” he said. “Watch yourself.”

  “If I want to see something way pretty, that’s exactly what I do.”

  I closed up the phone and put on an old rockabilly CD and listened to that. This went on for hours, me sitting and listening to CDs. I went through everything I had twice and got so bored I was close to playing with my dick. Then I saw people coming from across the street toward the lot. A bunch of people.

  I looked at my watch.

  It was quitting time at the chicken plant. Or at least it was a shift change. Pretty soon I’d be the only car in the lot, and that wouldn’t be as good. I was considering what to do next, if I needed a new parking spot or what, when I glanced down the street and saw Henry’s Chevy pull out of the drive.

  I followed him to a Burger King. He went through the drive-through and I pulled in after him. Looking at his head through the back window, it looked as big as a bowling ball, but with a close haircut.

  He made his order, and then I ordered some fries and a big soda, and followed to the checkout window. He went through. I went through. He drove home. I parked again in the abandoned lot. It was just me up there with Agnes, my drink, and fries. And, of course, my precious thoughts.

  Leonard called.

  “You want to switch shifts?”

  “Nope. I’m fine. I think I’ll wait until after dark, then you can drive over and we’ll swap out.”

  I told him exactly where I was parked, and hung up.

  I rolled down my window. The air was cool. The mosquitoes, however, were busy. I was about to roll the window up again when I heard a shot.

  I was positive it had come from Henry’s house. I had seen a flash of light behind the window. And it was a gunshot. I was certain. I had heard quite a few of them. I thought about just going home or waiting for a neighbor to call, but all the houses were dark on either side of Henry’s, and since it wasn’t really late, I figured no one was home. If they were, they might not have even recognized what the sound was. Sometimes shots don’t sound like much, especially when they come from a small-caliber gun.

  I had a revolver in my glove box. I got it out. I picked Agnes off the seat and got out of the car. I put the gun under my shirt, in my waistband. I carried Agnes in my left hand and held her down by my side. The street was pretty dark for the neighborhood. There was no one moving about except a cat, and he didn’t seem all that interested.

  I went across the street slowly and came up in Henry’s yard. I thought I should have called Leonard, but I hadn’t. I had just reacted. In the stealth business they call that poor planning.

  I took out my phone and turned it off and put it back. All I needed was for it to ring while I was putting on the sneak. I went to the front door and touched it, using my shirttail to tuck my hand into. No use leaving prints.

  The door was locked.

  Okay.

  I eased around the edge of the house, and now I had my gun out. I was breathing a little heavy. Maybe Henry had fired the shot. Popping a rodent. Didn’t like a TV show and was showing it what he thought of it. There could be all kinds of explanations. The one I figured most likely was that someone had shot someone.

  Taking a deep breath, I eased my head around the edge of the house, stooping down low to do it. No one was there. The yard was open, with no fence at the back, but there were some thick trees and they went over the hill toward where the highway curved.

  I eased around and took a better look. The back door was a sliding-glass door. It was open. I went over there on tippy-toes and looked inside. Dark in there. I moved away from the door and leaned against the wall and thought things over. The smart thing was to call Leonard. Or go away. Those were good choices and safe.

  Me and my gun and Agnes went inside.

  It was dark and I couldn’t see, and I figured if anyone was still in the house, they’d have had time to adjust to the dark. They would be able to see fine. They’d be able to shoot fine.

  I leaned against a wall and thought that any moment there would be a shot I wouldn’t hear, and it would be all over.

  Around the corner from where I leaned was a hallway. There was a break to the left. There was some light in there, but it was the outside light. It was darker in the house than outside.

  I moved from my spot, inching carefully into the room beyond the hall. It was a kitchen. A nice kitchen with a nice table and chairs and a coffee pot I could see on the counter, and leaning over the sink, his elbows in it, his knees on the floor, was our big guy Henry.

  I said, “Henry?”

  Henry didn’t call back.

  I went over easy, and a little wide. There was a light switch on the wall next to the sink. I used the back of my wrist to flip it on. The top of Henry’s head was up against the window sill. He must have been looking out the window when it happened. Maybe at me and my car up there at the parking spot; he might have had my number early on, standing there in the dark seeing what I was doing while someone was coming in to see what he was doing. Someone with a gun. There were brains and blood on the wall and a little on the window, and a lot of it had run down into the sink; most of it had gone down the drain, but as the blood pumped slower, it had started to go thick. He was still big, but that didn’t matter much now. You don’t get too big for a bullet, if it’s placed right.

  I didn’t shake him to see if he would come around.

  I leaned Agnes against the wall, got out my phone and called Leonard.

  “Yeah,” Leonard said.

  “You know that big guy?”

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “Henry.”

  “We are not going to have to fight him. We are not going to have to deal with him.”

  Leonard was silent for a moment. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “Not for him it isn’t.”

  “You hurt him?”

  “No.”

  “Killed him?”

  “No. But someone did.”

  “Shit,” Leonard said. “You sure he’s dead?”

  “Oh, yeah. The splattered brains gave him away.”

  Lights jumped around outside the window. I took a look. Cop cars.

  “My turn to say shit,” I said.

  “What?” Leonard said.

  “I think our donkey is in a ditch.”

  The chief of police said, “I see you so much, maybe we ought to have a chair put in, something with your name on it, like those movie directors have.”

  “That would be nice,” I said. “Maybe with a built-in drink holder.”

  We had gotten off the subject, but we had sure been on it a lot for the last hour or so. My butt was tired and I had answered the same question so much it was starting to sound new when I heard it. I was starting to think maybe I should make up new answers. The truth wasn’t working.

  “Why don’t y
ou kind of run over things again,” the chief said.

  “So you can see if I slip up?”

  “That’s the idea, yeah.”

  “I might ought to call for a lawyer.”

  “You asking for that?” the chief said.

  “No, I’m just thinking about it. But without a lawyer, I’m going to say it one more time. I didn’t kill him.”

  “You had a gun on you.”

  “Weak ploy, Chief. Wrong caliber.”

  “You can’t know that,” the chief said.

  “I’ve seen what a gun like mine can do. It would have made a bigger mess.”

  “Maybe you had another gun.”

  “Sure. Two-Gun Hap. What did I do with the other one, hide it up the big guy’s ass?”

  “We can take a look.”

  “Go right ahead. There’s no one going to stop you. Least of all Henry. You can prowl around in there all day. Bring the kids.”

  “All right,” the chief said. “I don’t think you did it.”

  “That’s nice of you,” I said.

  “Least not by yourself,” he said. “I’m thinking there was you and your partner, Leonard, and he got away. Quick out the back door.”

  “That’s a shitty theory,” I said. “He was with Sharon Devon, being a bodyguard.”

  I had told him all of this, but he liked to pretend we had never discussed it. It’s how we danced. I figured Leonard was in another room with someone else, being interrogated same as me.

  “So, what’s your theory?” he asked.

  “My theory is I was there to make sure he didn’t bother his soon to be ex-wife.”

  “And how were you to do this?”

  Now we were getting into new territory. “Idea was to keep an eye on him.”

  “And if he went to see his wife with bad intent?”

  “I was supposed to dissuade him.”

  “And how, pray tell, were you supposed to do that?” the chief asked.

  “I was going to reason with him. Really, man. We been all over this so many times you could tell me my story.”

  “Reason with him, huh,” he said. “I got to keep coming back to the part about you were in his house and he was dead and you had a gun and an axe handle.”

  “Sometimes reason requires visual aids,” I said.

  “Just wrap it up a little,” he said, leaning back in his chair, placing his hands behind his head. “Tell me the good part, about how you went in the house and found him like that. Tell me why you went in again.”

  I sighed. “I was watching the house. I heard a shot. I went down there and went in the back way. The door was open. Henry was hanging on the sink. I think he knew I was following him. Not at that moment. He didn’t know anything right then. But before that I think he knew. He made me.”

  “A clever boy like you?” the chief said.

  “Even squirrels fall out of trees. But maybe he was looking up the hill at me in my car. Someone was in the house. They may have come in the back way. The door was open. They snuck up on him.”

  “That could be Leonard,” the chief said.

  “But it wasn’t,” I said.

  “You might not have found the door open,” he said. “You might have broke in to kill him. The lock had been worked. We could tell from the scratches. A lock kit. You could have come in using that.”

  “Did you find a lock kit on me?”

  “Maybe you stashed it somewhere with the other gun, the one you used to shoot Henry.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I stuck them both down the commode along with my spare Range Rover and flushed them.”

  “Yeah, that doesn’t seem so likely,” he said. “I think all those things together might cause a clog. I mean, you know, after the Range Rover.”

  “What was I saying?”

  “You heard a shot.”

  “So, someone slipped in and shot Henry. I heard the shot. I went down there. When I did, whoever killed him saw me. I figure they were in that patch of woods behind the house. They called the cops. It put you on me and off of them, whoever them is.”

  “The one with the lock-pick kit and the right-caliber gun?” he said.

  “That would be him or her, yes.”

  “You want a candy bar?”

  “What?” I said.

  “Candy bar,” he said. “I got a couple in the drawer.”

  “Really?”

  He opened his desk drawer and took out two Paydays and put them on the desk. “Go ahead,” he said.

  I took one and peeled the wrapper off and put it on the desk. “It’s a little warm, kind of melted,” I said.

  “It’s free,” he said.

  “That’s true,” I said, and took a bite. When I finished chewing, I said, “You don’t think I did this, do you? I mean, you said you didn’t, but really, do you?”

  “No, but you’re the kind of guy who could do it,” he said.

  “Shoot him in the back of the head?”

  “I think you’d do it any way you could get it done,” he said. “I planned to shoot a guy big as Henry, I’d have shot him in the back of the head. You know, these are pretty good.”

  “Yeah,” I said, and ate the rest of mine.

  The chief eased out his breath. “No, I don’t think you did it, but it’s my job to ask, and I can’t treat you any different from anyone else.”

  “And if you act like you’re really on my side, give me a candy bar and all, I’ll slip up and tell you something that will hang me.”

  “It’s the sort of thing that’s happened,” he said.

  “But not to me,” I said.

  “So it’s not working?”

  “Nope.”

  “You can go,” he said. “But we might come back around to this again. Same questions. Maybe some new ones to go with it. Could be your answers will change.”

  “Just restock on candy bars,” I said.

  I got up and went out.

  Leonard came to the house about an hour later. When he came in I poured him a cup of coffee and put it on the table along with a bag of vanilla cookies.

  “I had a candy bar,” I said. “Did you?”

  “No . . . they gave you a candy bar?” he said.

  “Yep. It’s my charm.”

  “What kind of shit is that?” he said. “They didn’t offer me a candy bar. They didn’t offer me a fucking stick of gum.”

  “Did you talk to the chief?”

  Leonard shook his head. “I talked to a major asshole who was about five-four and wanted to be six-six and wished twelve inches of that would be dick. Tell you another thing, I saw Sharon there when I came in, and she looked at me like I had crapped a turd on the tile.”

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Yeah. And the guy grilling me, he said she rolled over on us.”

  “They lie like that to get you to give things up,” I said.

  “I know that, Hap. You think I don’t know that?”

  “I know you know that,” I said. “I’m just saying.”

  “What I’m telling you though, I saw her there in the hall, and I got the vibes.”

  “Tell me about the vibes,” I said.

  “I think we been butt-fucked vibes, that’s what they were.”

  “Define butt-fucked.”

  “She had you go over there to watch the guy, and then she had someone go over there and pop him, and guess who takes the rap?”

  “They’re going to have a hard time proving I shot him with the wrong gun and hit him with an axe handle when I didn’t.”

  “They think she hired you and me to pop him,” Leonard said. “That’s how it looks, so to help herself out, to make them not think that, she’s got to paint us like we went rogue on the deal. Just decided it was easier to lay him down than to follow him around. She may have had it planned that way all along.”

  “It could be like that,” I said. “Though you were at her house.”

  “But that doesn’t do you any good, and she could still make me part of
the plan. Say I wasn’t there. I could get the rap as the actual shooter.”

  “She sure seems to be tossing us on the track in front of a train quick-like,” I said. “Quick enough you got to wonder.”

  “Yep. . . . Where’s Brett?”

  “She picked up a shift for a friend. . . . So what do we do now?”

  “I suggest,” Leonard said, “we don’t let ourselves get screwed any more than we already have. That’s what I suggest.”

  “How do we do that?” I asked.

  “I ask questions, as wise men do. I do not provide the answers.”

  “So, you think I’ll come up with something?” I said.

  “Probably not,” he said. “Why I asked where Brett was.”

  At Marvin’s office I sat in the chair in front of the desk and Leonard sat on a stool by the counter with the coffee. He had the bag of vanilla wafers with him. He had not offered me or Marvin any, and I was the one who bought them for him. He was sipping a cup of Marvin’s bad coffee and eating the wafers. He would put one in his mouth and close his eyes and look as satisfied as a lion with a gazelle in its stomach. If he had had a Dr. Pepper, his favorite drink, he would have floated to the ceiling and farted vanilla.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Marvin said, after I explained it to him. “You know what’s worse? She never paid her bill.”

  “That is the least of our worries,” I said.

  “It’s high on my list,” he said. “Hey, I didn’t ask you guys to kill him. I just wanted you to do right, get me paid so I could dole out a few bucks to you two. That way, I would have enough for a house payment.”