“We’re not actually too good at anything, are we?”
“Sadly, I was just thinking that,” he said.
Leonard drove us to the office. I never let go of that pen. We pulled up in the lot. The sign for our office had changed, of course. It said BRETT SAWYER INVESTIGATIONS. That was done right away, and Marvin did it. He had to make sure no one thought he was working both sides of the street.
Just for luck, I checked for the bicycle lady and the shorts she likes to wear. She has a very successful store downstairs. You wouldn’t think you could sell and repair that many bicycles, but then again, you got to see her in those shorts so much of the time. They make men and some women want to buy a bicycle or a hippopotamus, and catching sight of her in those sweet little things is as fine and satisfying as a tour of petunias in the dead of winter.
Neither she nor her shorts were on display. There were no petunias, either. Not that I’d recognize one if I saw it.
8
When we came into the office the air-conditioning hit us in a pleasing way. It wasn’t as savage as the air in the car-lot office, but it was showing summer some anger. The couch was pulled out, and Brett and Buffy were asleep on it. Brett woke up when we closed the door but only moved a bit and didn’t open her eyes.
Buffy raised her head in a tentative manner, like she was expecting a beating. When she looked like that I wanted to drive over to that fellow’s house and pull him out of it and kick him around the way Leonard and Marvin had. I wanted to see him on a daily basis and do just what he had done to a helpless, loving dog. I wanted to see him flinch every time he saw me. I guess that made me the same as him. Naw. He’s a grown-ass man. A dog expects to be loved. And deserves to. Any man that would kick a dog like that ought to have a knot jerked in his dick, the kind that could only be untied with a butcher knife.
“Been a tough day, huh?” Leonard said to Brett.
Brett cocked one eye open and left it open. The other eye finally followed.
“I didn’t have a pillow, and the mattress is a tad lumpy,” she said, “but I’m tough. I can handle it.” Brett rolled over and put her feet on the floor, smacked her lips, and yawned. She had on jeans and a loose T-shirt. Her red hair had been pinned back, but part of it had come loose and hung across one shoulder. “Girl has to keep up her strength. Besides, I wanted Buffy to learn how to snuggle.”
“How’d that work out?” I asked.
“It’s a little like hugging a mahogany end table. Her legs stick straight out and go stiff. But she was sort of getting into it when you two interrupted us. How’d your morning go?”
“Not sure,” I said.
“It does seem as if there’s more than the car business going on there, though,” Leonard said. “Fact is, I don’t think the car business is going on in as big a way as monkey business.”
“I’m not a fan of monkeys,” Brett said. “Apes I like. Monkeys not so much. I think it’s the screeching.”
“Both monkeys and apes throw shit,” I said. “I think we had some thrown at us today.”
“Why are you holding that pen like that?” she asked.
I went to the desk drawer, where I knew there was a box of plastic bags we had bought for a variety of reasons, evidence being one. I unlocked the drawer with my key, which Leonard did not have a copy of, and put the pen in a plastic bag and left it in the drawer. I said, “I’m going to take advantage of our friendship with Marvin and see if I can get him to run the prints of a certain well-turned-out lady ape who I think may be selling more than cars and is the one who flung a lot of shit on us.”
“Oh,” Brett said. “How well turned out?”
“Nothing you have to worry about,” Leonard said.
“No offense,” Brett said, “but you aren’t exactly the best judge of female flesh.”
“You got a point there,” he said.
“She was all right, but not my type,” I said.
“I’ll accept that,” she said.
“On the other hand, maybe she thought me and Leonard were boyfriends,” I said.
“If she did,” Leonard said, “and I find out, I will personally set fire to that place, then shoot you.”
I got comfortable in one of our nifty new chairs, said to Brett, “I think it’s a place that gets a lot of people walking through the lot, but very few people ask about buying. I think they sell some cars but reckon they are mostly taking recommended clients, and it has to do with something besides automobiles. I got the vibe they were selling prostitution, but for all I know they got a big cookie-baking deal on the side, and that’s what they’re selling. I tried to make Frank—that was her name—believe I was a potential prostitute user or cookie buyer. Being with Leonard messed that up. He’s like bringing a wolf to a butcher shop. He just can’t help himself. He was all up in the pork chops.”
“Oh, now you’re blaming me,” he said.
“I tried to sell us both, but I wasn’t having any luck. Leonard was a bump on a log. He had nothing worthwhile to offer except claiming to have gotten an inheritance from rich white folks for his gardening expertise and bedroom prowess. Said he gave tours of his petunias. In the winter. He said I had patents for sex toys.”
“I wish you did,” Brett said.
“He’s just pissed his charm didn’t do it,” Leonard said. “That he didn’t have any.”
“A little of that, yeah,” I said.
Brett said, “No one should really let you guys out without a leash. And really, Leonard? Petunias?”
“I thought it made me sound sweet,” he said.
“That’ll be the day,” I said. “And his story was a lot worse than that, but I’ll spare you the details.”
I got up and plucked us bottled waters from the little fridge. We all sat down and sipped water while me and Leonard told Brett more about what we may have found out. It all seemed less likely by that point. Frank hadn’t really said anything incriminating, not actually. I began to think I had imagined a connection between cars and prostitution and Sandy’s disappearance. I might as well have thrown in a Bigfoot sighting.
“It sounds way too precious,” Brett said. “A car lot that sells poontang to rich people. Why bother? Why not just set up a simple escort service?”
“The cars are the lure, and the word gets around through satisfied customers. Expensive cars and expensive women. It could be a gold mine for them.”
Brett shook her head. “I don’t know. It may be monkey business, but it may be a totally different monkey than the one you’re suggesting.”
“Could be,” I said. “But high-end clientele do things in different ways. No dimly lit massage parlors with stained towels or street-corner hookers with more germs than the Centers for Disease Control. That’s too raw for them. This is elevated business for people who are willing to spend serious money. It may be hard to believe, but not only can they attract people from other places for the service, there are lots of people right here in town with money. Some of it is even legal. Lilly Buckner said Sandy came into some good money working for the car company, and then all of a sudden she wasn’t in good money at all, or didn’t seem to be, since she lifted her grandmother’s goods. The good money could have been for the services that came with the car—sex, drugs, a party. I don’t know. Maybe something happened, and she found out something else about the business she didn’t like. Could be she was actually researching what was going on there to do an exposé—going undercover, trying to use that journalism degree.”
“But she got caught?” Brett said.
“And she needed money to run,” Leonard said.
“What I’m thinking,” I said.
“I’m still skeptical,” Brett said. “I mean, a car you can use every day, but this call-girl thing, paying that much money for a car and a one-time hump. No ass is worth that much.”
“Except for yours, of course,” I said.
“Oh, you are in for so much loving, Hap Collins,” she said.
“What I
’m saying is it could be like an exclusive membership. Now that you’re in the club, the ass is there when you want it. You still pay, but not as much as the first time, because you were buying a car with it.”
“Yeah, all right,” Brett said. “I hear you. Still skeptical.”
“I just want a cookie,” Leonard said. “I know they’re in that drawer and you have the key.”
“What do you think about all this, Leonard?” Brett asked.
“I want the key to that drawer,” he said.
“About the car lot and the prostitution business,” she said.
“Oh. I think it’s what Hap says, and I’d still like a cookie.”
“Maybe tomorrow.” I said.
“Don’t be mean, Hap,” Brett said.
“He needs to learn delayed gratification,” I said.
Brett opened the drawer with her key and gave Leonard a cookie. He ate it slowly and happily. But he watched carefully as she relocked the drawer and put the key away.
“Dang it,” I said. “You broke down, baby.”
“Okay, laying the Sandy Buckner problem aside,” Brett said, “there has been some good news. The lady who had you snooping on her husband came by and paid her last check and said she was happy with the results, though curiously she’s divorcing her husband anyway.”
“What?” I said.
“Said she didn’t like him keeping secrets from her. But you know what I think? I think the marriage just played out, and she was looking for a way to end it.”
“You figured all that because she gave you a check?” Leonard asked.
“No, actually she told me that,” Brett said. “Said she was happy for twenty years, or thought she was, and then one morning she got up thinking he was cheating, and he wasn’t, but she hoped he was. Said he’s devastated and she feels a little bad about it, but she’s moving on anyway.”
“People are strange,” I said.
“I called Marvin to offer him his part of the payment,” Brett said, “but he doesn’t want it. He says all of it is ours to have. He’s keeping himself clear of the old business so there won’t be any misunderstandings.”
“Does this mean dinner out for me and you and John and Leonard?” I asked.
“Buffy would be alone,” she said. “I don’t think she’s ready for that.”
“Good point,” I said.
“We could order something and have it here or at the house,” Brett said.
Leonard shook his head. “John and I are going to pass. We’re working on things. I think I need to sort of hang close. He’s like your new dog right now. Vulnerable and confused. And me, I’m not too good at dealing with vulnerable. I kind of see it as a weakness. John comes and he goes. He’s on about things. He’s off about things. All that shit just makes my ass tired. I’m sick of talking about it, but I want a decision.”
“He’s vulnerable, like Buffy,” I said, “but he acts like a cat.”
“Tell me about it,” Leonard said. “Just get over it or get on with something else and let me know where you stand. I hate all this back-and-forth bullshit about our feelings and such. My feelings are I care about him and I want to go to bed with him and I want to watch television with him, and now and again I want him to just leave me the fuck alone.”
“That’s part of the problem,” Brett said. “You wanting him to just leave you the fuck alone now and again. Maybe you ought to at least pretend to be understanding.”
“I suppose,” Leonard said, shifting his butt onto the edge of the desk, crossing his well-muscled arms. “But you know what? Just pull your pants up and get on with it. I get so tired of all the whining. Do what it takes or shut up.”
“Oh, that has got to be good pillow talk,” I said.
“Pretty understanding and romantic,” Brett said.
“Yeah, John don’t care for it much,” Leonard said.
“Sometimes a little white lie never hurts anybody,” Brett said. “Tell him you feel his pain and understand his feelings, and that it’s something the two of you will get through together. It might even come true.”
“But it isn’t like that,” Leonard said. “I can’t listen to that ‘I’m a homo sinner’ shit and not want to start tearing up the place.”
“I bet that homo thing really goes down tight with the gay community,” I said.
“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I don’t much like any community. I don’t want to be part of anyone’s goddamn club other than my own. I don’t have problems with who I am. I don’t want to tell a little white lie about how I understand where he’s coming from, because I don’t.”
“Sometimes you have to lie a little,” I said.
“So you lie to Brett?” Leonard said.
Brett was looking right at me.
“I didn’t say that,” I said.
“You just told me it was a good idea,” Leonard said.
“Actually, she did.”
“You just said the same thing,” Leonard said.
“I was just saying who said what.”
“And I’m just saying you were one of those who said what,” Leonard said.
Brett was watching this like a Ping-Pong match.
Another five minutes and I had extricated myself from the mess with a few white lies, and Leonard and I left to return the BMW.
Leonard chuckled as we rode along. “Got you, didn’t I, brother?”
“That stuff about lying was because of the cookies, wasn’t it?”
“Most definitely was. John’s not the only one on the fade right now. I am feeling quite vulnerable myself. For cookies.”
“At least you’re simple,” I said.
9
That night I invited Marvin and his wife over after Leonard and I returned the car to the Tyler rental and I got mine back. Marvin said he would come, but not Rachel. I expected that. She hates me and Leonard. We saved her daughter once, and she’s appreciative of that, but spending an evening with me would for her be like having her asshole worked over with a plumbing snake.
We ordered from a barbecue joint by phone. I drove over and picked it up about twenty minutes before Marvin showed up. I got Buffy a sandwich as well. Later, I’d take her to the drive-through at Dairy Queen and get her a vanilla cone, a double.
It was a good meal. The sandwiches. Ice tea. We also had some potato chips and a bit of pecan pie that had been frozen since last Thanksgiving. It tasted all right, though. Nobody died. All in all I was off my diet for one night, and I loved it. I felt good enough to give Leonard his cookies had he been there. Back at the office it had been a joke, but now I was thinking about his face and how he had looked. You had to know him well to know the difference, but there was despair there, as much as he knew how to show. Of course, John was the real problem, but a cookie wouldn’t have hurt him. Or I could take him to the drive-through and get him a vanilla ice cream cone, too. He’d like that. Maybe tomorrow. I could even roll the window down and let him hang his head out the way Buffy likes to do. Of course, if he knew I was thinking like that, comparing him to a dog, he’d have my ass on a stick.
When we were done eating I went out of the room and came back with the bag with the pen in it. I told Marvin how I had come by it, told him what I suspected, told him about our visit with Frank. What we had said, what she had said.
“Seems pretty elaborate for a call-girl setup,” Marvin said.
“What I thought,” Brett said. “Ridiculous, really.”
“Leonard agrees with me,” I said.
“There you have it,” Marvin said. “If Leonard thinks so, then we should consider no more. Where is that jackass?”
“Home with John.”
“They’re back together?”
“I think it’s on the fence. One of those with twists of barbed wire along the top. John is feeling gay again and some of his religion and his brother’s influence have faded and in the meantime his pecker has gotten hard, but Leonard doesn’t like it.”
“The pecker
?”
“The situation,” I said. “Doesn’t like having to coax John along. Thinks he should just get over it.”
“That time me and my wife had the troubles, I paid for that for years. Sometimes I still pay for it. Not that I didn’t deserve it. Rachel took care of me through my accident, but we were split in a way, even then, because of me messing around. We were together, but we weren’t. I was there. She was there, but we weren’t there together.”
“As a woman,” Brett said, “I can see her position.”
“As a man I can see it,” I said.
“It was stupid on my part,” Marvin said. “One of many stupid things I did. I’m glad we’re back together, but there’s times when Rachel’s giving me the hairy eyeball, and I sort of get the wish we weren’t together, that I’d moved on. And then I think of being without Rachel and I get sick. I’m sure Leonard is going through all that kind of thinking. And I got to admit, he may be on to something. You got to think there’s a point where you either say high five or drown the son of a bitch.”
“So how are things at home?” I asked.
Marvin laughed.
“Don’t ask that,” Brett said, slapping me on the shoulder.
“It’s all right,” Marvin said. “I’m not sleeping on the living room couch anymore. Being back in bed with Rachel feels funny. Like I’m sleeping in a bear’s den and she’s the bear and she’s going to wake up and claw me to death and eat me and shit me out behind the house.”
“Must make for some restless nights,” Brett said.
“It does,” Marvin said. He picked up the bag with the pen in it, turned it around in the light as if he might actually see her prints with his naked eye. “So you want me to run the prints? You believe there’s something to it?”
“I do,” I said. “See if there’s anything on Frank, or Frankie.” I placed her card on the table. “Note there’s no last name on the card, either. Just Frank. The name of the business and a phone number. I left my name and cell number, but like Frank I didn’t leave a last name. I don’t think it matters, I said. I think she made me pretty quick, knew I wasn’t legitimately rich. And then Leonard clinched it all with the sex-toy patents and the petunias.”
Honky Tonk Samurai (Hap and Leonard) Page 6
