Rusty Puppy

by Joe R. Lansdale

  The waitress glided behind us and started through a door at the back. She paused at the door, cocked her ass, and gave Leonard a look that a straight man would remember on his deathbed.

  Leonard said, “Save it, honey, I suck dicks.”

  She looked startled, lost her smile, went on through the door and out of sight.

  “I bet you do,” the bartender said.

  “Oh, I do. Just not yours.”

  The bartender realized Leonard was serious, and his mouth made a shape like he had just bitten into a sour persimmon.

  “I like my dicks clean and attractive, and I like the bodies attached to them not to look like they pull a beer wagon on its way to the barn.”

  “I done told you where my foot’s gonna go,” said the bartender, “but considering what’s been up your ass, I’m reconsidering that.”

  “Your foot goes in there, little gel might get on it. I just had a fresh one up there this morning, and I don’t mean a foot. Wasn’t that good, actually. It was like fucking a bedpost with Vaseline on it. I like it warm and loving. This wasn’t. That’s all right, though. A dick in the ass is better than a greased cucumber any day.”

  The bartender was going through a list of snappy comebacks in his head, but his mouth wasn’t delivering.

  Leonard checked his watch.

  This confused the bartender.

  “How long does this fucking song last?” Leonard said. “What is that shit?”

  “Music,” said the bartender.

  “That what you call it?”

  “I like it,” I said.

  “You got no taste in music,” Leonard said. Then to the bartender: “Jesus, you need to get you some Hank up in here, some Loretta, Kasey Lansdale, Merle Haggard, or Reba. Going too fast for you? I was wanting you to write this down. You know, make a list for your distributor.”

  “You some kind of hoedown nigger?” the bartender said.

  “I thought you was about to put a foot up my ass,” Leonard said. “I think you got a certain hesitation, is what I think.”

  About that time Timpson Weed came in and strolled over to us. He sat on the stool by me.

  Bartender said to Timpson, “You know these motherfuckers?”

  “The white one.”

  “That would be me,” I said, raising my hand.

  “I’m starting to like him better than the other one,” the bartender said.

  “It’s all right,” Timpson said, nodding at me. “I invited him in to talk. I don’t know this other one.”

  “This is my partner, Leonard Pine,” I said. “We work together.”

  “On what?” the bartender said.

  “Freelance plumbing,” I said. “Let’s have that beer and Diet Coke, and whatever this man wants. Put it on my tab.”

  “You don’t have one,” said the bartender.

  “Fix me one up,” I said. “You got any peanuts?”

  “Not for you,” the bartender said.

  We slid away from the bar and went over to a table and sat down.

  “You have me come here so you could screw with me?” I said.

  “I ain’t screwed with you,” Timpson said.

  “Yeah, but the bartender has.”

  “Me and him ain’t got our legs tied together,” Timpson said. “He does what he wants.”

  “Like you don’t know a honky is going to get his chain jerked in here, or worse,” Leonard said.

  “He looks like he can handle himself,” Timpson said. “I seen them scars over his eyes, knot on his nose.”

  “He handles himself all right,” Leonard said.

  “So you were fucking with me?” I said.

  “Some,” Timpson said.

  He looked at Leonard, said to me, “So who is this dude?”

  “Same guy he was a minute ago,” I said. “Leonard Pine.”

  The barmaid brought our drinks over, but she didn’t look at Leonard this time. She put them down and moved away quickly. As expected, there were no peanuts.

  I nodded at Timpson. “Tell again what you saw? Tell me what you couldn’t say at the projects.”

  7

  I could say it,” he said, “but it worries my woman to hear it. She don’t want no cops coming down on us. I tried to do the right thing, and that didn’t work out so well. Ain’t no right thing when you come from around here.”

  “Let me get my violin out,” Leonard said.

  “What?” Timpson said.

  “Forget it,” I said. “It’s just us now. No cops. Me and Leonard work together, so we both need to hear it.”

  Timpson Weed gave Leonard a hard eyeball, but that didn’t cut any ice. Leonard didn’t blink. Timpson turned his attention to the two men in the back booth. They looked at him for a moment, then looked away.

  “I went out on the landing to smoke,” Timpson said. “I could see what anyone could see if they was out there. Figure there was plenty witnesses, but I’m the only one ended up talking. What I saw was this boy getting a beating out there in the lot. Last time I seen a beating like that it was on television and it was Rodney King, only he was big and this boy wasn’t big at all. Teenager. They hit him so much like a piñata, I expected him to shit candy.”

  “Sure they were cops?” I asked.

  “They had on cop uniforms. Three of them. They had nightsticks, them old-fashioned kind, and even though it’s some distance, there’s enough light there to see by. They looked at me, and I went in the apartment.”

  “How long did the beating go on?” Leonard asked.

  “Before I went inside, maybe a minute or two, but a lot of smacking takes place in a minute or two, as they had them a three-man team. I wasn’t all that against it, as there’s these meth heads all up in there, and my woman’s son by another man, he died of that stuff. She had a little problem on it herself for a while. But I tell you, in that time I seen them, they beat on that boy until he was flat as a rug, and then they looked and seen me, and like I said, when they looked and saw my ass, I went inside. I expected I’d get me a knock on the door. But I didn’t. Next day I find out who that boy was. Not no drug dealer that anyone knew of. Though some said he was there to buy from some of them wandering niggers we got there, ones think they’re tough. I heard a story about a man wearing a hat like you come up and knocked a couple of them fuckers so hard their nuts flew off. That was you, wasn’t it? I’m putting it together now.”

  Leonard nodded. “I think their nuts come a little loose, not completely off. I was feeling a little poorly that day.”

  Timpson grinned, then almost immediately turned as serious as a rattlesnake.

  “I got to thinking on that beating, and I thought, buyer or seller or whatnot, he was just a kid and he took a hard whacking, hard enough to smack his life loose. But he didn’t have that drug-dealer look. You can’t tell by looks all the time, but you get so you got an idea. I went down to the station and reported on those cops. No one had heard of them, way I described them. No record of a call-out to the projects. They didn’t know nothing, including their own shoe size. I come back to the apartment, and then I got word to that boy’s mother, what I seen, and I tried calling some people that said they could get me up in there with the police chief, but what that got me was a cop car following me for a few days. Finally I dropped it. I never mentioned it again. I didn’t want to be another dead nigger in a ditch with his asshole pulled up over his head. Boy’s mother tried to talk to them, brought up what I saw, and that’s when the police start on my ass again. I drive to town to get a six-pack, they was there. I go in the toilet at a filling station, hell, they was damn near there to wipe my ass. I didn’t say no more about it. I got the picture and the frame it was in. They quit following me again. I shouldn’t be saying nothing to you. I don’t want to get dragged in on it, but I can’t forget how it sounded out there, them clubs laying into that boy. I could hear bones break up like peanut brittle. It was some shit, I tell you that.”

  “We’ll keep you out of it for n
ow,” I said.

  “For now?” Timpson said. “Man, I come in here and try to do you a solid, and you gonna put me out there in it again?”

  “Only way you’d have to come back in it,” Leonard said, “is we get enough shit on those cops that killed that boy, the law might want them to put you on the stand.”

  “Camp Rapture ain’t got no law. It’s a goon town when it comes to law.”

  “Case like this,” Leonard said, “I bet we could get a trial moved to someplace like LaBorde. Cops there are run by a good man and a friend of ours. You’ll get played fair by him.”

  “I don’t trust any cops,” Timpson said. “I could start having some memory loss.”

  “You could,” I said. “But I think you could still hear them bones breaking like peanut brittle in your head. We find out what the hell happened and why—”

  “He got beat to death is what happened,” Timpson said.

  “—we’ll nail the killers’ dicks to a wall, then maybe you’ll feel freer to talk to the authorities.”

  Something passed over Timpson’s face that was hard to identify. It could have been a heavy thought; it could have been gas.

  “Don’t count on it,” he said. “Right now, consider me and you two done. I just come here for a beer. But I wish you good luck.”

  “By the way,” I said. “Were these cops white, black, Hispanic…”

  “White,” he said. “Big mothers, except for one. Well, he was big, but not tall. He was about as wide as a beer truck without the wing mirrors.”

  “One more question,” Leonard said. “Who all else did you see out there while you were watching? Who else might have seen what went down?”

  “I didn’t take note,” he said. “I got my ass inside.”

  “Did you see a car the kid might have been driving?” I asked.

  “No. I didn’t. I didn’t even see a cop car. I wasn’t taking notes or taking pictures, just trying to smoke a goddamn cigar.”

  He turned his beer up and finished it, stood, and pushed his chair back.

  “Good night, fellas,” he said. “Try the pulled pork here, it’s fucking divine.”

  He went out.

  8

  We sat and drank our drinks, watched the fellows in the booth at the back. They weren’t interested in us at all. Or at least they pretended not to be. We were about to leave when Leonard turned and went back to the bar. I trailed after him. Leonard put money on the bar for our drinks.

  “You know, I’m going to leave you a tip,” Leonard said and leaned over the bar. “The tip is some advice.”

  “I can’t spend that,” the bartender said.

  “It’s worth having and possibly lifesaving. I wouldn’t give you two cents more than the drinks,” Leonard said, “but this advice is free and valuable. We ever come back in, don’t fuck with us next time.”

  “Don’t come back in.”

  Leonard pondered that idea.

  “That’s fair enough,” Leonard said. “Where’s your shit house? I need to pee.”

  “You can go somewhere else and pee,” said the bartender.

  Leonard leaned away from the bar, unzipped his pants, and got his dick out. He started peeing against the bar, splashing it on the floor.

  “I have to pee now, not later,” Leonard said. “All you had to do was tell me where the shitter was.”

  “You son of a bitch,” the bartender said, and he reached down behind the bar.

  “You’ve been warned,” I said.

  I eased up really close to the bar, leaned my face over it. I was maybe two feet from him. “Best be a bugle you pull out from behind there, and you better know how to play it.”

  The bartender stared into my face. He lifted his hand up. It was empty.

  “Damn,” Leonard said, shaking his dick, the nose-twitching smell of urine in the air. “That was refreshing. You’re lucky I didn’t need to shit.”

  One of the men in a booth at the back stood up, a heavy guy with a bit of a belly.

  “Sit down,” Leonard said.

  The man stretched and sat down.

  Leonard zipped up, made a show of it, slow and tedious, like he was sacking up an anaconda.

  The bartender glared at him. Leonard glared back. I tried to look pleasantly amused, which wasn’t that difficult.

  “You know what, bartender,” Leonard said. “It smells like piss in here. You ought to clean up. Maybe spray some kind of de-stinker around.”

  We went out, not too briskly, but quickly enough.

  As we were climbing into our ride, I said, “Couldn’t help yourself, could you?”

  “He was rude,” Leonard said.

  “Thank goodness you showed him some etiquette,” I said.

  Leonard nodded. “You never know what will stick with and educate a man. And if he didn’t learn anything, at least I got to pee.”

  9

  I drove us away from there and said to Leonard, “What do you think about Timpson?”

  “Got a good story, but maybe too good. Sounded somewhat rehearsed to me, maybe mixed with some truth. I don’t know, I get weird vibes from that guy, like he’s trying to put his life in the middle of the road when he’s been whipping left and right for some time. Shit, I’m not sure he ain’t still whipping.”

  “Sounded believable enough,” I said.

  “Uh-huh, so do them people see Bigfoot now and then, but they ain’t yet convinced me there’s any Bigfoot, and that Timpson fellow ain’t yet convinced me that things went down like he said.”

  “You are very hard to please.”

  “Get the best out of life that way,” Leonard said.

  * * *

  Back at the office, I took Buffy for a walk, and when she finished with her business, me and her went upstairs and I washed up. I got a jar of peanut butter and a half loaf of bread from the cabinet, pulled out a jar of strawberry jelly from the minifridge, used a plastic knife to make a sandwich.

  “Want one?” I asked Leonard.

  “I do,” he said while washing his hands.

  I made two.

  I got a dog treat out of one of the drawers, a pig’s ear that was actually made of peanut butter, and gave it to Buffy. She loved those things, though they did make her fart.

  I got Leonard a Dr Pepper out of the fridge and a small carton of milk for myself.

  We sat at the desk, me in the client’s chair, Leonard in the other. We ate our meal.

  “How was your date?” I asked.

  “Dry. He didn’t lubricate very well.”

  “Not what I meant. How was the date itself, without the details on your snake’s journey down a dry well?”

  “Feel stupid about it, going on one of those dating sites.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t know they had those for gay folks.”

  “Yeah. We date too. Some of us own property.”

  “Not what I meant.”

  “It’s new. They match you up. Me and this guy, Terrance, we have the same beliefs, similar background, though he’s better educated—”

  “An extra day in kindergarten and he’s better educated.”

  “Fuck you very much. We fit just about everywhere, except in certain slots.”

  “Okay. Enough.”

  “I don’t just mean those slots,” Leonard said. “For once, I was being metaphorical. On paper, or onscreen, if you will, we are such a match it’s a surprise we aren’t long-lost twins separated at birth.”

  “That could be a messy dating situation if it’s true,” I said.

  “He’s as black as me, got the same politics, likes country music and even likes vanilla cookies of all denominations.”

  “Is he a fool for hats?”

  “That I don’t know. But we got together, and no chemistry. It was like a duck and a rat. They don’t want to hang out. Nice-looking fellow, got a great ass, but dry, and me and him, we don’t really have anything in common outside of what’s on the dating site. I thought, damn, me and him can play country
music while we fuck, have some vanilla cookies afterwards—”

  “A hand wash will be in there someplace, right?”

  “But I find him almost as interesting as a horseshoe tournament.”

  “Those can be tense,” I said.

  “Let’s say almost as interesting as buttering toast, without the butter. Did I mention he’s kind of dry?”

  “I think it came up.”

  “He’s like talking to a cardboard cutout, but with less expression. He has all the humor of a corpse after ten years in the ground.”

  “Maybe your humor sucks.”

  “He’s like one of your jokes. You know the joke, but you don’t know how to tell it. I told it, he thought it was hysterical. One about the big-mouth frog. You can’t do the frog’s small voice. That’s what pulls it off. But that joke was his one laugh. I mean that, he laughed once.”

  “You said he thought it was hysterical.”

  “That was hysterical for him. You see, he knows what humans do, but he don’t know what they’re like. Mostly he’s a mimic. He don’t know how to play it so it ain’t just an act. It’s so obvious, he practically brings his scenery and sound track with him.”

  “Sociopath?”

  “No. Just dull.”

  “I tell great jokes, by the way.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “So, you and him? No more dates?”

  “Not sure. We definitely do not click. He’s a juicy-looking thing, but there’s no juice in him. He’s like a plastic apple.”

  “Damn, this is interesting, but you know what? Let’s talk about the case.”

  “I like to talk about me.”

  “Yeah, but let’s don’t. It always leads to a drilling expedition.”

  “You asked.”

  “My mistake.”

  “All right,” Leonard said. “Here’s what we got. Your lady Louise, she has a daughter, Charm, who got picked up by a shit-head cop and his shit-head partner. They treated her badly and a bad guy stuck a wet finger down her ass crack. A female cop let her go, and the cop got fired. Charm’s brother decided to take care of her by harassing the cops who were harassing his sister. He aggravated the police who were following her around, and the cops killed him. We have an eyewitness who doesn’t really want to talk about it, and who sounds fishy to me, and we got a dead kid. So thing is, or so it seems to me, we got to talk to those cops. Thing that bothers me, though, is how did the kid get to the projects? He had to have had a car. That hasn’t come up, and Timpson said he didn’t see one.”