Dead Aim

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “Hand me the case,” Leonard said. “While you’re at it, hand me the gun. Never mind.”

  Leonard went over the seat and was on top of Givens so fast Givens probably thought Leonard had a warp drive up his ass. I glanced in the mirror. Leonard was practically sitting in Givens’ lap. He reached the gun from under Givens’ suit coat and threw it in the front passenger’s seat. Then he slapped Givens across the face, twice, fast as the beat of hummingbird’s wings, then got off Givens’ lap and picked up the briefcase. Givens held his hand to his mouth as blood dribbled between his fingers.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Givens said.

  “I thought I did,” Leonard said. “Soon as I saw that bulge in your coat, I knew you’d lied to us, that you were putting our lives in danger by bringing your gun, or that there was more to things than you wanted us to know.”

  “Another thing,” I said, “just for the record, we brought guns ourselves. Because, you know what? We didn’t believe you. First, you’re a lawyer, and that’s a mark against you, and second, you still got a thing for Sharon, and third, you putting up that kind of jack for your former wife seems unlikely, love her or not. You may be a lying scum bag lawyer who makes a lot of jack, but it’s hard to think even you got seven hundred and fifty thousand just lying around? Possible, not likely. So, that means you got something else going on here. Something that might even make you look like a bit of a hero, and we would be there to witness you turning the money over and taking the girl back. That could ingratiate you to Sharon, couldn’t it?”

  “We don’t do this right,” Givens said, “it’ll turn out bad. Real bad.”

  Leonard opened the briefcase. “Well, now, ain’t this some shit,” he said.

  Leonard turned the case toward me. It only had a pile of empty manila folders inside.

  “That won’t pass for money,” I said.

  “No,” Leonard said. “It won’t.”

  I pulled over to the side of the road and put the car in park and looked back over the seat at Givens.

  “Lay it out,” I said. “No stalling. No stories within stories. Lay it out.”

  ***

  “No one was meant to get hurt,” Givens said.

  “Yeah,” I said, “it’s all fun and games till someone loses an eye.”

  “Henry owed the money, and well, I know the people involved. You might say I handle their affairs.”

  “You’re their lawyer,” I said. “The Cox family.”

  “That, among other things.”

  “That’s goddamn typical,” Leonard said.

  “I do odds and ends for them here and there. Henry owed them and they wanted their money, and they knew I knew Sharon and that I had been married to her.”

  “Favor time,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “They wanted me to put the screws on her to make Henry give up the money. I thought if we had someone threaten Henry he’d give it up. I was sure he had money in some hidden account somewhere. They sent Unslerod around and he didn’t work out so well.”

  “Henry turned out to be tougher than they thought,” I said.

  “He did,” Givens said. “Then Unslerod decided he’d blackmail me by threatening to let Sharon know I worked for the organization.”

  “The organization,” Leonard said. “I like that. The Dixie Mafia and Cox you mean.”

  Givens nodded.

  “That meant you had to get rid of Unslerod,” Leonard said. “And when you did, the woman just happened to be there.”

  “Something like that,” Givens said, and I saw in his eyes then something that made me shiver a little. He may have been a frightened weasel, but I knew in that moment I had to keep my eye on him. Because nothing is more dangerous than a frightened weasel. They have no loyalties but themselves.

  “That was cold,” Leonard said.

  “He was a deadly man,” Givens said.

  “But not so deadly you couldn’t sneak up on him and shoot him,” I said. “And then the woman.”

  “It just worked out that way,” Givens said. “I used a credit card on the door and I surprised him. Well, he surprised me too. I shot him, and then I went in the bedroom and she was there and I didn’t have any choice. I shot her too.”

  “No choice, huh?” I said.

  “I didn’t think so,” Givens said.

  “So what happened next?” I said. “Better yet, let’s go back in time to Nora.”

  “I didn’t want to do that, but I set it up so Jackie could meet Nora. He got her interested in him, and then she moved in with him.”

  “She wasn’t kidnapped?” Leonard said.

  “No,” Givens said, sighing so loud it was like a wind storm blew into the car. “What I thought was it could look like a kidnapping. Cox said that would be good, and his boy Jackie was for it. And so was Nora.”

  “Nora was in on it?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “She was. Big time. Way we arranged it was we’d hold her for ransom and Henry would come through. Like I said, we all thought he had money and was holding back, and that if he thought Nora was in danger he’d give it up.”

  “Only problem was he didn’t really have any money,” I said.

  “Correct,” Givens said. “No money. Or at least I don’t think so now. He loved Nora. I think he would have come through if he had any.”

  “So you revised the plan, and the revised plan included bad things for Henry,” Leonard said.

  “I didn’t so much revise it because I wanted to, but because I had to. Cox had one of his men do in Henry. A black guy named Speed. He’s big as Henry, but more dangerous.”

  “Let me guess the rest,” I said. “You told them they had to do Henry because you knew about the insurance policy. You never planned to give Cox your money until you got the policy money. You’d just pretend to take Sharon off the hook. Me and Leonard would be there as witnesses, and you’d hand them the suitcase full of folders, and they would give you Nora, and you would bring her home like she was let go, and when the money came through, you’d give it to Cox because he liked the plan and didn’t mind temporary ownership of folders and a briefcase. When you paid them the insurance money, minus you and Nora taking a little off the top for your troubles, no one would be the wiser.”

  “It wasn’t all that Henry owed,” Givens said. “But it was enough for them to be satisfied, and it would take Sharon out of the mix.”

  “And you’d look real good in her eyes,” I said.

  He nodded. “I suppose that’s true.”

  “You and Nora are some pair,” I said. “Nora cheating her grieving stepmother for some dollars and for this Jackie Cox, and then you cheating Sharon. Not to mention committing murder.”

  “That’s pretty much it,” Givens said.

  “You know,” I said. “One revision on what I said earlier. I don’t think you brought us along so we could say what a hero you were. I think you brought us along because Sharon insisted. She said she wanted us along to make sure things went well. She wanted us to protect you and Nora. How am I doing?”

  “All right, I guess,” Givens said.

  “You know what, Givens,” Leonard said. “I didn’t check you out so good. I see you are trying slowly to ease your hand down to your sock, where I suspect, just under your pants leg is a holstered hand gun that you hope to pull and shoot me and Hap with.”

  Leonard poked the gun he had gotten off the front seat against the side of the lawyer’s well combed hair, just over his temple. “What you want to do is tug up your pants leg, pinch the gun out by the grip with thumb and forefinger, and hand it to me easy as if it might blow up.”

  Givens did as he was told. Leonard took the gun. He tossed it over the seat into the passenger seat and hit Givens across the head with his own gun, right over the ear. It knocked Givens sideways. He reached up and held his head. When he moved his hand there was blood on his fingers.

  “You sonofabitch,” Givens said.

  “And don’t you forge
t it,” Leonard said.

  I had some tissues in the car and I gave some to Givens and had him wipe the blood off his head and hand.

  “What we’re going to do,” I said, “is we’re going to go through with this plan. Almost. We’re going to have you waltz in there with the briefcase. We’re going to have you be a really nice guy and not let on we know dick about what you’re doing, ’cause if you do, we will kill you deader than a tree stump.

  “When we get the girl, both of you get a drive to the police station. We’ll call Marvin and have him grease the path for us with the cops. We’ll turn you and her over to them, let you figure out how to explain extortion, illegal gambling profits, murder, and fraud, or whatever the fuck crimes we got here. Thing is, we play this right, we get you two and they get the briefcase, thinking they’re going to get insurance money later, and you get to leave without a hole in your head. How’s that plan?”

  “Cox won’t forget,” Givens said.

  “We’ll see how that turns out,” I said. “We got long memories ourselves.”

  Givens didn’t say anything. I figured he didn’t like the plan.

  ***

  The meeting place was on the first floor of a two-floor parking garage in Tyler. Just before we got there we pulled over and Leonard made Givens get up front in the passenger seat, and he sat directly behind him. He had both of Givens’ guns and one of his own he had brought, and I had mine from the glove box tucked in a holster at the small of my back, with my shirt pulled down over it.

  When we drove inside the garage we went to spot 15, as Givens said for us to do. A big black car—of course it was black—was waiting. We pulled up behind it and a man got out. He was an exceptionally large black man that moved like a cat; frankly he moved the way Leonard and I do. I’m just telling it like it is. One bad man can spot another, even if that bad man is me and I’m feeling a lot less bad these days. I figured he was the aforementioned Speed. He was dressed in an expensive black shirt, coat, pants, shoes, and a very glossy black dress jacket that couldn’t have been off the rack, not and fit those shoulders. His head was shaved and it looked to have been waxed. It was shiny enough you could have used it as a mirror to comb your hair.

  “You go on and get out,” Leonard said to Givens. “I’d be real cool, I was you.”

  Leonard got out, and Givens got out.

  Speed looked at me behind the wheel. He was expressionless, which was expression enough. Guy like that, not showing much in his features, you had to watch him. Wasn’t the kind of fella that would give you many signals before he shot or punched you or drove a car over your ass.

  I had my window rolled down. I said, “Hey, how’s it hanging?”

  Speed ignored me. He looked at Leonard and Givens. They had come around to the front of the car.

  “Givens,” the big man said.

  “Speed,” Givens said.

  “Hey,” Leonard said. “How about this weather?”

  “Which bozo is this?” Speed asked.

  “Leonard,” Givens said. “Guy behind the wheel is Hap.”

  “How’s it hanging,” I said again.

  Still no evaluation of the general hanging condition of his meat was offered by Speed.

  “Here’s the thing,” Speed said. “You got no guns, right?”

  “Not exactly,” Leonard said. “I actually got some guns.”

  Speed turned his attention to Givens. “You were told no guns.”

  “They go their own way,” Givens said.

  “That’s right,” Leonard said. “Way I see it, since we’re all pals we won’t be shooting anybody, right? You came with a gun, because I see it under your well-cut coat.”

  “You don’t leave the guns,” Speed said, “we don’t go.”

  “How about we get where we’re going, we all put our guns in a pile,” I said. “Till then we keep them. You see, the lawyer here told us your rules, but we’re here to make sure he don’t get shot and we don’t either. To make sure it works out that way, we got to have rules of our own. One of which is we hang onto our guns until it looks like it’s okay to let go of them.”

  I knew that since this was scam, there was no real threat in saying we wouldn’t give them the briefcase. Cox wanted the meeting to happen, to set it up so Givens could give him the insurance money eventually. It was a big joke, but a joke only works if you play it right. Thing was, they didn’t know we were in on the joke. We had a few laughs of our own planned.

  Speed let what I said move around in his thoughts for a while. His expression didn’t change.

  “You follow me out,” he said.

  He got back in his car and we backed out from behind him. He pulled from his parking place and drove off. We followed. I saw that he was on his cell already.

  ***

  When bad guys start directing you outside of town it’s always a crap shoot. But that’s where we were going, outside of town. We passed what used to be Owen Town. It was really nothing more than an asphalt path and a couple of storage buildings. It had never been a town since I was alive, but it used to be a place where aluminum chairs were made. I worked there when I was young.

  We went along until we came to the cutoff for Starrville, a little burg so small most of the inhabitants could have lived in one house, and maybe a shed out back. We didn’t go all the way there. Instead, we stopped in the Starrville Cemetery. There was another black car like the one Speed was driving already parked there. The windows were dark. A man got out from behind the wheel. He was a big white guy with a crew cut. He was almost as big as Speed. His jacket, an ugly plaid thing, fit him the way a designer dress fits a hippopotamus.

  Speed got out of his car. We got out of ours. After a moment, the back door of the other car opened and a man slid out, leaving the door open. It was Cox. I had never met him, but had seen a couple photos of him on the internet; usually something to do with law-breaking. He always claimed to be innocent, and always got out of whatever problem he was in. He was a tall, lean man with gray, well-cut hair, and a look about him that said he liked things his way. He was dressed in a nice gray suit to go with the hair. My dad always told me not to trust anyone who ran around in the middle of the day with a suit on. If they wore one because they were on their way to preach, he told me to watch them even closer.

  “So,” said Cox, “we’re here to deal.”

  “If you got something to deal with,” I said.

  “They got guns,” Speed said.

  Cox glanced at Speed. “What did I tell you?”

  “No guns,” Speed said, but he didn’t look worried about the situation. My guess is it was mostly show. My bet is when I saw Speed was on his cell phone he was calling ahead to tell Cox we had guns.

  “We just want to play even,” I said. “Your man here has a gun. And I’m going to guess the guy in the plaid coat has one too. Wouldn’t surprise me you had one. All I’m saying is we all keep our guns and stay friends. Having us put ours up and you keeping yours, that wouldn’t be playing fair. And me, I’m all about fair play.”

  “You said we would put them all in a pile,”

  Speed said.

  “I lied,” I said.

  “All right,” Cox said. “We’ll play your way.” He looked at Givens. “Got the money?”

  Givens held up the briefcase they both knew was empty.

  “Good,” Cox said.

  “You got the girl,” Leonard said.

  “I do,” Cox said.

  He looked back at the car. A young man who looked a lot like Cox, but with black hair, got out. He poked his hand back inside the car, when he pulled on it, a girl came out with it. She was dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt. She wasn’t wearing a bra. This wasn’t a negative. She had un-real red hair and a pretty face, but there was something about it that made you want to throw a pie at it.

  Givens said, “These men, they know what the real deal is.”

  I looked at Leonard. He looked at me. The cat had just jumped from the bag.


  Givens walked over to Cox’s car carrying the briefcase. He stood by Cox.

  “They know,” he said. “They know and they’re trying to work me to get the girl back. They know she’s in on it.”

  “Yeah,” Cox said, “and how do they know that? You tell them?”

  “They figured it,” Givens said.

  “That’s right,” Leonard said, “we’re pretty smart for old country boys. We can even tie a square knot in the dark.”

  I let my hand drift to the edge of my shirt. Speed eased his coat back. I think the guy in plaid was still trying to figure out what everyone had said. Cox didn’t look any different at all. Oh, maybe a bit irritated, but nothing more. The girl looked at the young man, who I figured was Jackie, then looked at Cox. She seemed to be waiting for someone to tell her something.

  “All right, so they know,” Cox said.

  “They plan on taking me and her to the police,” Givens said.

  “They do, do they?” Cox said.

  “That’s exactly the plan,” Leonard said.

  No one said anything for a while. A plane flew over. I wished they were parachuting in reinforcements.

  “I think there’s more of us than there are of you two,” Cox said.

  “What a mathematician,” Leonard said.

  “Me and Leonard get to shooting though, your numbers may decrease,” I said.

  “Speed here,” Cox said, “he’s fast on the draw, and he hits what he aims at.”

  “I’m not that fast on the draw,” Leonard said, “and I’m not that good of a shot, but I still might hit something. But him, Hap, he can shoot. That motherfucker is a natural. He don’t really know from guns, but he knows shooting. It’s like a goddamn inborn knack.”

  “This is true,” I said. “I’m like a fucking prodigy.”

  I didn’t add that my expertise was really with long guns, though I did all right with a handgun. And Leonard was right. I didn’t know that much about the workings of guns, really. Not the way gun nuts do; the guys talking about them the way you ought to talk about a woman, but I could hit stuff. As for fast on the draw, I had no idea. I never thought of slapping leather with anyone. I usually had my gun out and ready.