I hit the wing of the ultralight, scrambling for a grip, and my weight nodded it toward the ground. The wing hit. The propeller gnawed at the pasture. There was a sudden whirl as the sky came down and then went up again, followed by a close look at, and a hard impact with, the ground.
I heard a noise like someone dragging a rake through gravel. It was the ultralight spinning in circles like a confused idiot. The money had come loose of the bag and some of it was spinning in the air and some had been caught in the propeller and chopped up. It looked like the last hurrah of a parade, the last bits of confetti thrown.
On my feet, I saw Smoke Stack coming toward me. He was so angry he was actually foaming at the mouth. His face was scratched up.
“Now you get your shot, buddy,” I said.
“I’ll fucking kill you.”
He was like a locomotive. It wasn’t like that night in his house. He was crazed with anger and maybe he had been on drugs, or most likely had just underestimated me. That happens a lot. But he was dead serious now.
I dodged his rush and kicked out. I was trying to hit him in the solar plexus, but he instinctively crunched his body and took the shot on his upraised forearms. The impact, the disorientation of the crash, had me off a bit, so the impact of hitting him like that knocked me down. He leaped on me like a big frog.
I heard Leonard slam the car door and start over. But me and Smoke Stack were into it. I spread my legs and got him between them. He tried to hit me. I put up my arms. I was deflecting most of the blows, but I was taking some of it. Finally I cupped one of his arms at the elbow and swung a leg to the side of his neck. I was trying to pull him into a triangle choke, but the angle wasn’t right. He pushed my leg back so that it was being mashed across my face. It was damn uncomfortable. I used my other leg to kick at his hip, knocking him back a bit, loosening him. It allowed me to swing my leg free. I poked him in the eyes with my fingers, and when he went back and put a hand to his face, I rolled out from under him.
Now I was on my feet, where I preferred to be. I saw Leonard leaning against the car, the shotgun lying on the fender.
“You got him,” Leonard said.
Smoke Stack came in swinging. I ducked him and came up with an uppercut that knocked him back. I kicked him in the nuts then, but he was too high on adrenaline for it to matter. He came swinging again. I glanced the blows off my forearms and got inside and grabbed his head and kneed him inside of the leg. Adrenaline wasn’t enough to stop that pain.
His leg went out from under him. I swung a downward right cross, and back he went. He rolled onto his hands and knees and scuttled and finally got to his feet. He put a hand to his pocket, and when he brought it out, he had a knife.
He crouched, eased toward me. There was sound like a cannon going off and Smoke Stack’s head disappeared in a blur of red and gray and flying white fragments. Within a blink of an eye, what was left of him was lying on the ground.
I looked at Leonard. He was lowering the shotgun.
“You proved your point, and you got your licks in,” he said. “But that knife, that could have been a problem.”
We found that Brett’s and Kelly’s hands were bound with plastic cuffs. We cut those off. I said to Brett, “You all right, baby?”
“Yeah,” Brett said. “I’m fine. All they did was get an unauthorized look at my nubile body. A look like they got, I should have been paid money.”
I grinned at her and we kissed.
I walked back and got the .22. The shell casing was still in it.
We packed up and drove out of there in Leonard’s car, left the money and the bodies.
It was a few weeks later.
A tip had led the police to the bodies in the field. Way it looked was there had been a problem between thieves. Smoke Stack had shot his partner and tried to escape, but crashed. Someone had blown his head off. They took this to be another partner. They were glad to get most of the money back. I don’t know about the shredded stuff. I envisioned some bank clerk gluing the pieces back together like an archaeologist reuniting shards of pottery. It was a silly thought, but it hung in my head.
The other partner, of course, wouldn’t be found. Neither would the .22 that killed the two would-be robbers in the bank lot. The cops had an idea that one of the partners went rogue, first with a .22, then a shotgun. It was a silly theory, but thank goodness they liked that story and were sticking to it. They’re not dumb, just arrogant.
It was a nice afternoon with a clear sky and a light wind. We were in the backyard grilling burgers, me and Brett and Leonard. The doorbell rang. That would be our guests.
I went through the house and let Marvin and Kelly and Donny in, walked them out back.
Leonard was flipping the burgers.
We greeted each other, talked.
Donny said, “I haven’t said nothing, and I never will.”
“I believe you,” I said.
“I wouldn’t want you mad at me,” Donny said.
“That’s good thinking,” Leonard said.
“But I wouldn’t say anyway. I . . . I can’t thank you guys enough. You hadn’t done what you did, I’d be dead.”
“Absolutely,” Leonard said.
“Thanks again for saving my little brother,” Kelly said, “and thanks for passing on the payment I owed you guys. I can use the dough.”
“Man,” Leonard said. “You’re the hero. You put yourself on the line. Changed your life, got your ass whipped by me, and thoroughly, I might add, and then you didn’t even have any protection from those guys and still you went to work.”
“You warned me,” Kelly said. “You told me not to stay on the job.”
“Yep,” Leonard said. “We did.”
“And, I sort of squealed when they put those cigarettes on me. I thought I could take it. I was sure I could. One burn and I was already starting to loosen my tongue.”
“It hurts,” Leonard said. “You’re not a professional tough guy. We don’t begrudge you trying to make the pain stop. Besides, in the long run it worked out.”
“Well,” Brett said, stretching out in a lawn chair, her long legs poking sweetly out of her shorts. “All’s well that ends well and doesn’t make mess on the rug.”
“Here, here,” Marvin said.
“You said it right, Brett,” Donny said. “They were hyenas. And I don’t want to be like that.”
“Good thinking,” Brett said.
“I find a woman I care about,” Donny said, “I hope she’s half the woman you are, Brett.”
“Oh, honey,” Brett said smiling. “That’s so sweet. But too optimistic. You can’t find anyone half as good as me. A quarter of my worth maybe, if you’re having a good day. But half, don’t be silly.”
Veil’s Visit
with Andrew Vachss
1.
Leonard eyed Veil for a long, hard moment and said, “If you’re a lawyer, then I can shit a perfectly round turd through a hoop at twenty paces. Blindfolded.”
“I am a lawyer,” Veil said. “But I’ll let your accomplishments speak for themselves.”
Veil was average height, dark hair touched with gray, one good eye. The other one roamed a little. He had a beard that could have been used as a Brillo pad, and he was dressed in an expensive suit and shiny shoes, a fancy wristwatch, and ring. He was the only guy I’d ever seen with the kind of presence Leonard has. Scary.
“You still don’t look like any kind of lawyer to me,” Leonard said.
“He means that as a compliment,” I said to Veil. “Leonard doesn’t think real highly of your brethren at the bar.”
“Oh, you’re a bigot?” Veil asked pleasantly, looking directly at Leonard with his one good eye. A very icy eye indeed—I remembered it well.
“The fuck you talking about? Lawyers are all right. They got their purpose. You never know when you might want one of them to weigh down a rock at the bottom of a lake.” Leonard’s tone had shifted from mildly inquisitive to that of a man who might
like to perform a live dissection.
“You think all lawyers are alike, right? But if I said all blacks are alike, you’d think you know something about me, right?”
“I knew you were coming to that,” Leonard said.
“Well,” I said. “I think this is really going well. What about you boys?”
Veil and Leonard may not have bonded as well as I had hoped, but they certainly had some things in common. In a way, they were both assholes. I, of course, exist on a higher plane.
“You wearing an Armani suit, must have set you back a thousand dollars—” Leonard said.
“You know a joint where I can get suits like this for a lousy one grand, I’ll stop there on my way back and pick up a couple dozen,” Veil said.
“Yeah, fine,” Leonard said. “Gold Rolex, diamond ring . . . how much all that set you back?”
“It was a gift,” Veil said.
“Sure,” Leonard said. “You know what you look like?”
“What’s that?”
“You look like Central Casting for a mob movie.”
“And you look like a candidate for a chain gang. Which is kind of why I’m here.”
“You gonna defend me? How you gonna do that? I may not know exactly what you are, but I can bet the farm on this—you ain’t no Texas lawyer. Hell, you ain’t no Texan, period.”
“No problem. I can just go pro hac vice.”
“I hope that isn’t some kind of sexual act,” Leonard said. “Especially if it involves me and you.”
“It just means I get admitted to the bar for one case. For the specific litigation. I’ll need local counsel to handle the pleadings, of course. . . .”
“Do I look like a goddamned pleader to you? And you best not say yes.”
“‘Pleadings’ just means the papers,” Veil said, his voice a model of patience. “Motions, applications . . . stuff like that. You wanted to cop a plea to this, Hap wouldn’t need me. I don’t do that kind of thing. And by the way, I’m doing this for Hap, not you.”
“What is it makes you so special to Hap?” Leonard asked, studying Veil’s face carefully. “What is it that you do do?”
“Fight,” Veil said.
“Yeah,” I said. “He can do that.”
“Yeah, so can you and me, but that and a rubber will get us a jack-off without mess.” Leonard sighed. He said to Veil, “You know what my problem is?”
“Besides attitude, sure. Says so right on the indictment. You burned down a crack house. For at least the . . . what was it, fourth time? That’s first-degree arson, malicious destruction of property, attempted murder—”
“I didn’t—”
“What? Know anyone was home when you firebombed the dump? Doesn’t matter—the charge is still valid.”
“Yeah, well they can valid this,” Leonard said, making a gesture appropriate to his speech.
“You’re looking at a flat dime down in Huntsville,” Veil told him. “That a good enough summary of your ‘problem?’”
“No, it ain’t close,” Leonard said. “Here’s my problem. You come in here wearing a few thousand bucks of fancy stuff, tell me you’re a fighter, but your face looks like you lost a lot more fights than you won. You don’t know jack about Texas law, but you’re gonna work a local jury. And that’s still not my big problem. You know what my big problem is?”
“I figure you’re going to tell me sometime before visiting hours are over,” Veil said.
“My problem is this: Why the hell should I trust you?”
“I trust him,” I said.
“I know, brother. And I trust you. What I don’t trust, on the other hand, is your judgment. The two ain’t necessarily the same thing.”
“Try this, then.” Veil told him. “Homicide. A murder. And nobody’s said a word about it. For almost twenty years.”
“You telling me you and Hap—?”
“I’m telling you there was a homicide. No statute of limitations on that, right? It’s still unsolved. And nobody’s talking.”
“I don’t know. Me and Hap been tight a long time. He’d tell me something like that. I mean, he dropped the rock on someone, I’d know.” Leonard turned to me. “Wouldn’t I?”
I didn’t say anything. Veil was doing the talking.
Veil leaned in close, dropping his voice. “It wasn’t Hap who did it. But Hap knows all about it. And you, if keep your mouth shut long enough, you will too. Then you can decide who to trust. Deal?”
Leonard gave Veil a long, deep look. “Deal,” he finally said, leaning back, waiting to hear the story.
Veil turned and looked at me, and I knew that was my cue to tell it.
2.
“It was back in my semi-hippie days,” I said to Leonard. “Remember when I was all about peace and love?”
“The only ‘piece’ I ever knew you to be about was a piece of ass,” Leonard said kindly. “I always thought you had that long hair so’s it could help you get into fights.”
“Just tell him the fucking story,” Veil said. “Okay? I’ve got work to do, and I can’t do it without Leonard. You two keep screwing around and the guard’s going to roll on back here and—”
“It was in this house on the coast,” I said. “In Oregon. I was living with some folks.”
“Some of those folks being women, of course.”
“Yeah. I was experimenting with different ways of life. I told you about it. Anyway, I hadn’t been there long. This house, it wasn’t like it was a commune or nothing, but people just . . . came and went, understand? So, one day, this guy comes strolling up. Nice-looking guy. Photographer, he said he was. All loaded down with equipment in his van. He was a traveling man, just working his way around the country. Taking pictures for this book he was doing. He fit in pretty good. You know, he looked the part. Long hair, but a little neater than the rest of us. Suave manner. Took pictures a lot. Nobody really cared. He did his share of the work, kicked in a few bucks for grub. No big deal. I was a little suspicious at first. We always got photographers wanting to ‘document’ us, you know? Mostly wanted pictures of the girls. Especially Sunflower—she had this thing about clothes being ‘inhibiting’ and all. In other words, she was quick to shuck drawers and throw the hair triangle around. But this guy was real peaceful, real calm. I remember one of the guys there said this one had a calm presence. Like the eye of a hurricane.”
“This is motherfucking fascinating and all,” Leonard said, “but considering my particular situation, I wonder if you couldn’t, you know, get to the point?”
Seeing as how Leonard never read that part of the Good Book that talked about patience being a virtue, I sped it up a bit. “I was out in the backyard one night,” I said. “Meditating.”
“Masturbating, you mean,” Leonard said.
“I was just getting to that stage with the martial arts and I didn’t want any of the damn marijuana smoke getting in my eyes. I guess I was more conservative about that sort of thing than I realized. It made me nervous just being around it. So I needed some privacy. I wasn’t doing the classic meditation thing. Just being alone with my thoughts, trying to find my center.”
“Which you never have,” Leonard said.
“I’m sitting there, thinking about whatever it was I was thinking about—”
“Pussy,” Leonard said.
“And I open my eyes and there he is. Veil.”
“That’d be some scary shit,” Leonard said.
“Looked about the same he does now.”
“Yeah? Was he wearing that Armani suit?”
“Matter a fact, he wasn’t,” I said. “He looked like everyone else did around there then. Only difference was the pistol.”
“I can see how that got your attention,” Leonard said.
“It was dark. And I’m no modern firearms expert. But it wasn’t the stuff I grew up with, hunting rifles, shotguns, and revolvers. This was a seriously big-ass gun, I can tell you that. I couldn’t tell if he was pointing it at me or not. Fina
lly I decided he was just kind of . . . holding it. I asked him—politely, I might add—if there was anything I could do for him, short of volunteering to be shot, and he said, yeah, matter of fact, there was. What he wanted was some information about this photographer guy.
“Now hippie types weren’t all that different from cons back then, at least when it came to giving out information to the cops. Cops had a way of thinking you had long hair, you had to be something from Mars out to destroy Mom, apple pie, and the American way.”
“Does that mean Texas too?” Leonard asked.
“I believe it did, yes.”
“Well, I can see their point. And the apple pie part.”
“I could tell this guy was no cop. And he wasn’t asking me for evidence-type stuff anyway. Just when the guy had showed up, stuff like that.”
Leonard yawned. Sometimes he can be a very crude individual. Veil looked like he always does. Calm.
“Anyway, I started to say I didn’t know the guy, then . . . I don’t know. There was something about his manner that made me trust him.”
“Thank you,” Veil said. I wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or not.
I nodded. “I told him the truth. It wasn’t any big deal. Like I said, he wasn’t asking anything weird, but I was a little worried. I mean, you know, the gun and all. Then I got stupid and—”
“Oh, that’s when it happened?” Leonard asked. “That’s like the moment it set in?”
I maintained patience—which is what Leonard is always complaining he has to do with me—and went on like he hadn’t said a word: “—asked him how come he wanted to know all about this guy, and maybe I ought not to be saying anything, and how he ought to take his pistol and go on. I didn’t want any trouble, and no one at the place did either.
“So Veil asks the big question: Where is the guy right now? I told him he was out somewhere. Or maybe gone, for all I knew. That’s the way things were then. People came and went like cats and you didn’t tend to get uptight about it. It was the times.”
“Groovy,” Leonard said.
“We talk for a while, but, truth was, I didn’t know anything about the guy, so I really got nothing to say of importance. But, you know, I’m thinking it isn’t every day you see a guy looks like Veil walking around with a gun almost the size of my dick.”
The Big Book of Hap and Leonard Page 9
