“Either kind of clubbing didn’t agree with him,” the female EMT said.
It took me a minute to get what she meant. To do their job, I guess you have to have a sense of humor, lame as it might be.
They looked him over where he lay, and I was glad to hear him come around. He said something that sounded like a whale farting underwater, and then he said, “Nigger,” quite clearly.
Leonard said, “I can hear that, motherfucker.”
The guy went silent.
They loaded him in the ambulance.
“Don’t forget his shoe,” I said, pointing at it. But they didn’t pay me any mind. Hell, they worked for the city.
“We got a bit of a problem here,” Jane said. “You see, once this guy ran for it, and Leonard chased him, it couldn’t quite be called self-defense.”
“I didn’t want him to come back,” Leonard said. “I was chasing him down because I was in fear of my life.”
“Uh-huh,” Jane said.
“He turned on me when I caught up with him,” Leonard said.
“Just be quiet, Leonard,” she said. “Things will go better. You see, the part that’s hard to reconcile, as we in the law business say, is Leonard turning him around and then beating him like a bongo drum. Leonard grabbed him by the throat and hit him a lot.”
“A few times,” Leonard said. “He called me nigger.”
“You called him asshole,” Jane said. “That’s what the witnesses said.”
“He started it,” Leonard said. “And there’s that whole deep cultural wound associated with the word nigger, and me being black and all. That’s how it is. Look it up.”
“No joke,” she said. “You’re black?”
“To the bone,” Leonard said.
Jane turned her attention back to me. “A guy watching all this,” she pointed to a fellow standing over by the open door of the club, “he said Leonard hit that guy a lot.”
“Define a lot,” I said.
“After the nose was broke and the cheekbones were crushed, and that’s just my analysis, Leonard set about knocking out his teeth, said while he was doing it, according to the gentleman over there, and I quote, ‘All the better to suck dick with, you son-of-a-bitch,’ unquote.”
“So, Leonard’s going to jail?”
“What Leonard has going for him is yon man in yon ambulance—”
I looked to see it drive off with the lights on, but it wasn’t speeding and there wasn’t any siren.
“—hit Leonard with a chair first, and he did call him the Nigger word.”
“You mean the N word. When you say Nigger word, well, you’ve said nigger.”
“Did I say the Nigger word instead of the N word?”
“You did.”
“If you’re quoting someone said Nigger, isn’t that different?”
“I think so.”
“Hey,” Leonard said. “Sitting right here.”
“Well, hell, I’ve pulled two shifts,” Jane said. “Another hour on the job and I’ll be calling everybody sweetie baby. Anyway, back to Leonard. Somewhere between the N word and him chasing the track star out into the lot, he hit one of the other attackers with a chair and slammed the other guy’s head into the wall. Ralph, that’s my partner, he’s in there right now trying to get the fellow’s head out of the wall without breaking something. Either wall or victim.”
“Actually,” I said, “Leonard had to have been provoked. He’s normally very sweet.”
“No shit?” Jane said.
“No shit.”
“I don’t think so. But here’s what we’re going to do. You bring Leonard by the station tomorrow morning, not the crack of dawn, but before lunch, and we’ll fill out some papers. I won’t be there. I’ll be snoozing. But I got my notes and I got statements, and I’m going to turn those in, so they’ll be there. And, just as a sidenote, I really did enjoy seeing that fellow’s head stuck in the wall. Before you go, you need to go in there and take a peek, if they haven’t got his head loose. They haven’t, then you don’t want to miss this. It’s a fucking classic.”
I did take a look inside the Big Frog Club before I drove Leonard home, and the cop trying to work the guy’s head out of the Sheetrock was snickering. He looked at me and lost it, made a spitting sound, and let go of him and wandered off, bent over and hooting.
Another cop, smiling, went over and, without a whole lot of conviction, pulled one of the guy’s ears—the other one wasn’t visible—said, “Come on out, now.”
The guy’s head was pretty far through the wall. It was poking into a bathroom. He must have turned his back to escape and found a wall, and then Leonard shoved the back of his head, pushing the front of it through the wall and into the bathroom. He was all scratched up, like a cat had been sharpening its claws on his face.
The bathroom walls had never really been laid out, just Sheetrocked, so it hadn’t been too hard to push the guy’s head through. I took a good look at him. His chin had locked behind a support board, and the back of his head was locked behind another. He had fit in there easily enough, but in such a way he couldn’t get out, and the cops didn’t seem to be working that hard to release him.
I said, “You had some antlers, we could just leave you there and tell folks you’re a deer.”
“Fuck you,” he said, but it was weak and without conviction, so I didn’t take offense.
I used the urinal, which was just under him and smiled as I peed. I didn’t flush. I went back in the main room and saw the back of the guy. He was bent slightly with his butt in the air, standing on his tip toes, probably getting a good bracing from the piss in the urinal.
I went over to the bar, leaned and peeked over. The other guy Leonard had hit was awake and had his back against the bar. A broken chair was on the floor next to him.
I said, “You put your dick in a beehive, my friend.”
“Tell me about it,” he said. “We was just funnin’.”
“Yeah, how fun was it?”
“Not so much,” he said.
I got Leonard and drove him home.
When we were at my place, I sat Leonard in a chair in the kitchen. Brett, my gorgeous redhead, came downstairs. She was wearing a pair of my pajamas and she looked cute in them, as they were oversized. She was barefoot and her red painted toenails stood out like miniature Easter eggs. She came over and looked at Leonard.
“Anyone check you over?” she said.
“Wouldn’t let them,” he said.
Brett made him move his hand and the bloody rag. She checked out the wound. She’s a nurse, so she was the right one to do it.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” she said. “I think you can get by without stitches.”
“Yeah, well, it feels bad,” Leonard said.
“Would some vanilla cookies and cold milk make it feel better?” she said.
“Hell, yeah,” Leonard said. “Maybe after the milk, a Dr. Pepper.”
“That can be arranged,” Brett said, “but first, come in the bathroom and let me patch you up.”
When that was finished, Leonard came in with a bandage on his head. Brett got him a plate with some cookies on it and a big glass of cold milk. Leonard sat and smiled and dipped the cookies in the milk.
I said, “So, what happened?”
“They called me a queer.”
“You are a queer,” I said.
“It was their tone of voice,” he said.
“How did they know?” Brett said.
“I made a very delicate pass at one of them,” Leonard said.
“How delicate?” I asked.
“I merely asked him if he was gay, because he looked it, and then the shit hit the fan.”
“Actually, you hit a guy with a chair, shoved another guy’s head through some Sheetrock, and beat the cold dead dog shit out of the other guy in the parking lot. No fan was involved.”
“Yeah, that was pretty much it,” Leonard said, and bit into a cookie.
Next mornin
g we went down to the cop shop. They sent us in to see the chief. He was in his office. There was a cop I had never seen before in there with him. They had a bunch of photos spread out on the desk, and the cop was laughing.
I glanced at the photos. They were of the guy with his head through the Sheetrock.
The cop was trying to get hold of himself, trying to quit laughing.
The chief said, “You can’t act professional, you can just leave.”
The cop went past us and out of the room. He was giggling as he went, trying to hold it in, making a sound like a kid spitting water.
“Have a seat,” said the chief.
There were two chairs on our side, and we took them. The chief said, “We can’t have this, fellows. It’s keeping all my officers from doing their jobs. They keep coming in here to look at the crime scene photos.”
He held up one of the photos.
It was of the guy’s face thrust through the Sheetrock.
“This one,” he said, “is especially precious.”
I made the spitting water sound the cop had made.
“And then,” he said, “there’s this one.”
This was an extreme close-up of the fellow’s face, casting a baleful eye out at us.
The chief even laughed this time. He put the photo down on the desk.
“Everyone in the department had copies made. Officer Jane Bowden took them, in the name of efficiency and coverage of a crime scene.”
“Do you have any wallet size?” I asked.
“No, but we’re having some made up. Listen here, Leonard. You’re lucky. Witnesses said they started it and you had to defend yourself. Bar owner is pressing charges against them. Thing is, them starting it, that’s probably right, but sometimes, it don’t hurt to walk away.”
“It was the chair upside my head kept me from walking,” Leonard said. “It knocked me down for a minute, and then when I got up, I was perturbed.”
“Point taken,” said the chief. “Not only were there witnesses, but one of the three you whipped is a witness himself. In your favor. He’s going to have to pay a fine and some repairs at the club, but he’s admitting they started it.”
“Which one would that be,” Leonard said. “Mr. Sheetrock?”
“No.”
“I’m betting it isn’t toothless,” I said.
“That would be a good bet.”
“So, that leaves the one I knocked over the bar with a chair,” Leonard said.
“Bingo.”
When we went out, we saw the guy who had been knocked behind the bar. He was sitting in the waiting room. He hadn’t been there when we came in.
Leonard touched two fingers to the edge of his eyebrow in salute as we passed.
The guy was about thirty, blond, and in good shape. He might be nice looking when he healed up. His left eye was closed and swollen and black, his lips were red and meaty like rubber fishing worms. As he followed us out into the parking lot, he had a limp.
We were about to get in my car when he came toward us.
Leonard turned, said, “You and me not finished?”
The man held up his hands. “We are. Mr. Pine—that’s right isn’t it? Pine?”
Leonard nodded.
“I want to apologize,” the man said.
“Accepted,” Leonard said. “Good-bye.”
“Wait. Please.”
I had been at the driver’s side, about to get in, but now I went around on Leonard’s side and we both leaned against the car.
“My name is Kelly Smith. I want to hire you.” He was looking at Leonard when he said it.
“Hire me?” Leonard said. “What for? You like to take beatings?”
“Nothing like that. I have this problem. That’s why I was at the bar.”
“Drinking problem?” I said.
“No,” he said, looking at me. “And who are you?”
“A friend,” I said.
He nodded, spoke to Leonard. “Could we talk private?”
“You got something to say, say it,” Leonard said. “Me and Hap can hear it together and no one will cry. We’re not criers.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “There was that movie. You know the one.”
“Oh, The Last Airbender,” Leonard said. “Yeah. That sucked. That could make anyone cry. And what was up with that 3-D? It should have been in Smell-O-Vision.”
Kelly stood there while we went through our act. When we finished he said, “What I need is someone to do something tough that’s a little against the law.”
“How little?” Leonard asked.
“Well,” he said, “maybe a lot more than a little.”
We went to a coffee place and got a table near the back wall. There was music playing, and there were a few people at tables, and a nice-looking woman in very short shorts came in. Never been a fan of the heat, but for some things, you had to love summer.
Leonard said, “Hap, pay attention.”
“Right with you,” I said.
“I’ll tell Brett,” he said.
“I’m back, just watching the scenery, not trying to move it around.”
Kelly had been looking at her too. Now he looked at us. He said, “I wasn’t really with those guys last night.”
“Sure looked a lot like you,” Leonard said.
“I know,” Kelly said. “I meant they aren’t friends.”
“You fought like they were your buddies,” Leonard said.
“We didn’t fight well,” he said. “You kind of walked through us.”
“I staggered a little,” Leonard said. “That chair hurt.”
“You went down and you came up like a jack in the box,” Kelly said. “When you did that, I thought you were fucking Dracula.”
“Actually, I would have been Blacula. Ever see that old movie?”
Kelly shook his head.
“Never mind,” Leonard said. “Look, it’s nice, you buying us coffee and a Danish—”
“I’m having an apple fritter,” I said.
“Okay,” Leonard said. “Danish and fritters, but if you’ve got something to say besides I’m sorry and let me buy you coffee, then let’s move on. Me and Hap are busy men. We got places to go, things to do, and people to see.”
“Not really,” I said. “Our day is pretty open.”
Leonard gave me a sour face.
“I’ll pay you to help me out,” Kelly said.
“We talking about moving a piano?” Leonard said.
“No,” he said. “We’re talking about maybe you having to rough someone up.”
“First off,” Leonard said. “Why? And how much?”
“It’s my brother, Donny. He’s in deep doo-doo,” Kelly said.
“What kind of doo-doo?” I asked.
“He got in with these fellas that rob armored cars,” Kelly said.
We all sat there for a moment and let that statement hang between us like a carcass.
“This is starting to sound like doo-doo that’s too deep,” I said.
“It’s deep all right,” Kelly said. “He’s only twenty-one. Good kid, really.”
“Except for wanting to rob an armored car,” I said. “I would consider that a possible blemish on his character.”
Kelly nodded.
I said, “He’s twenty-one, you’re like, what, thirty? You guys are some years apart, aren’t you?”
“Thirty-one, and yeah, he was like a surprise,” Kelly said. “Dad wasn’t all that good about hanging around anyway, but that little surprise, Donny, it was more than he could handle. He took the car out for an oil change, and just kept going.”
“So what’s this got to do with me?” Leonard asked.
“You know that robbery took place in LaBorde last year, the armored car guards at the bank?”
“Yeah, I remember,” Leonard said. “They got the guards when they were transporting the money out of the bank to the truck. Just walked up with masks on and had guns and locked the guards in the back of the truck. I
t was maybe, what, two hundred thousand dollars they got?”
“About four hundred thousand,” Kelly said. “They must have had someone waiting that drove up, picked them up, and took them away. No one knows. All they know is they were there with Halloween masks on one minute, then they had the money, and then they were gone. That was it. Took the guards’ guns and put the guards in the back of the armored car and put plastic cuffs on them. Fastened one cuff to their left ankle, one to their right wrist. Then had them put an arm behind their back and fixed it there and pulled the plastic down to the other ankle, linked it from behind. That way they couldn’t move well, damn sure couldn’t run.”
“That’s cute,” I said.
“Was your brother one of them?” Leonard asked.
“No, but I think he’s about to be.”
“And, pray tell, why do you think that?” I asked.
“Because in his room he’s got some articles about the heist,” he said.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Leonard said. “Hap has books about Satan, but he ain’t a Satanist. At least, as far as we know.”
“Those damn books and that rap music,” I said. “They can change a man.”
Kelly ignored me. Sometimes it’s all you can do. He said, “Yeah, but Donny, he has these friends come around, and they lock themselves in the back room for hours. I know they’re smoking dope. I can smell it. But what I really worry about is I think these friends are the robbers and they want to pull my brother in.”
“That’s a big guess,” I said. “Any reason to have it?”
“These guys, they’re a real tough bunch,” Kelly said. “And as you can know, I’m not so tough.”
“You take a good fall, though,” Leonard said.
“You still don’t have any serious reason we should believe your brother is about to be part of a robbery.”
“I heard them talking. I was sort of sneaking around, and I heard them say they needed a driver. The guy talking was the one Donny calls Smoke Stack. That’s the name they all call him. I guess ’cause he smokes all the time. I don’t allow it in the house, but he smokes anyway. I asked him not to once, and he just lit up and smiled at me, went in the back room with Donny. Hell, even Donny is tougher than me. He grew up different. He grew up tough. I can almost guarantee you these guys are going to rob another armored car, and they’re going to pull Donny into it.”