Devil Red (2 page)

2

We got out of the car and started across the dark yard, went over the dry grass, and up on the back porch. I looked back toward the baseball field and the dark there, just in case someone was watching.

Nothing.

Leonard leaned an ear against the door.

“Quieter than a politician’s brain,” Leonard said.

“We ought to leave it that way.”

Leonard touched the door and pushed gently. “This is a weak and shitty door,” he said.

I didn’t say anything this time. I knew it was too late. It was on.

Leonard stepped back and stomp-kicked the door hard. The door’s lock broke and there was a sound of splintered wood and the door swung wide and slammed against the wall, and we were in.

There was a hallway, and we went along that quick. There was a room to the left with the door open, and I looked in there. There was nothing but heaps of trash. I looked at Leonard and shook my head. The house stank of cigarettes.

Leonard went down the hall ahead of me, a man on a mission. I rushed to keep up. He boldly opened a door on the right and went in and I looked in after him. There was a mattress on the floor, and a woman on it, and there was a window to her right and a bit of moonlight coming through it. All I could tell about her was she was dark-skinned and her eyes were wide and she was nude from the waist up; the rest of her was covered in bedclothes. I knew from the way her head went a little to my left that she was watching someone in the corner, and I said, “Watch it!”

Leonard wheeled and a gun fired and everything went bright for a moment and a bullet whistled through the air and smacked into the wall. I saw Leonard move, and he was across the room fast as an arrow in flight. I could hear the air split as he swung the bat. The gun barked again from the shadows, and I jumped. I rushed inside the room, even though I wanted to do anything but that.

Leonard had someone on the floor in the corner and his bat went up and then down. The person on the floor screamed, and I heard something behind me. I turned in time to see a black giant in undershorts fill the doorway, then come into the room carrying a cane knife, wearing a moonlit expression that wouldn’t pass for humor.

He cocked back the cane knife and I swung the bat at him, hit him in the shin. He barked and stumbled. I hit him again, this time in the side. I heard him grunt and he dropped the cane knife at my feet. I put one foot on it and pushed it back and away from me, into the shadows.

I heard Leonard’s bat come down hard, and I heard him say, “How do you like it?”

But I had my own business. The giant tried to get up and I hit him across his broad back. He made with another grunt but got up, and I swung for his kneecap. He went down screaming, rolling on the floor, clutching at his knee. His shadow rolled and crawled along the wall with him.

Leonard said to his man, “You got some money?”

The guy on the floor, who I figured was Thomas, was only wearing undershorts. Just as a fashion note, his and Chunk’s shorts did not match. He said, “You robbin’ me?”

“Nope,” Leonard said. “I’m takin’ back somethin’ you took that don’t belong to you. Where’s your wallet? And you better hope there’s money in it.”

Thomas had one hand up, to try and ward off the bat. He was otherwise stretched out on the floor, his head lifted a little.

“My pants are on the floor, by the bed. Wallet’s in the back pocket.”

“I’m on it,” I said. I went over and found his pants and took out his wallet and went over to the window where the moonlight was shining in. I stood to the side so I could watch the big man on the floor. He was still rolling around moaning and clutching at his knee. I figured I had destroyed it. It had been one hell of a swing.

“He’s got maybe three hundred dollars,” I said.

“Take a hundred,” Leonard said, standing over his victim, the bat raised. “That covers what’s owed, plus a bit for our time and him trying to shoot us, and a little extra for the bats.”

I took out the hundred and dropped the wallet on the floor. I looked at the girl. She was kind of pretty, or would be with twenty pounds on her. The last meal she looked to have had probably came out of a needle and didn’t have taste. I wanted to save her, of course. I wanted to save everyone. I wanted to be somewhere else as well, and I wanted to be someone else, and I wished I hadn’t flunked algebra in high school.

I held up the hundred. “Got it,” I said.

“Good,” Leonard said.

“You’re crazy, man,” said Thomas. “I’ll come for you.”

“I don’t think so,” Leonard said. “You’re a fuckin’ coward.”

I saw the man turn his head and look at the gun he had fired. It was on the floor where Leonard had disarmed it. It was maybe six feet away.

Leonard said, “That’s right, go for it. I’d love to make a homer with your head.” Leonard lightly tapped Thomas’s shoulder with the ball bat.

I could see by the way Thomas’s shoulders drooped that hope for the gun had gone the way of his young dreams. He was screwed and he knew it.

“Let me leave you with two bits of advice, one verbal, the other demonstrative,” Leonard said. “First, don’t rob and hurt old ladies. Second,” and with that Leonard brought the bat down on Thomas’s hand where it rested on the floor. The scream Thomas let out crawled up my back and nestled at the top of my skull and took a shit.

“That’s the demonstrative tip,” Leonard said. “That’s to let you know messin’ with and hurtin’ an old lady, that’s gonna get you hurt. You come back, you touch her, next time they find you it’ll be with this bat up your ass and your dead mouth wrapped around Chunk’s dead dick.”

Thomas was holding his hand, which, in the moonlight, looked kind of flat to me. He was breathing fast and lying on the floor, completely stretched out. A sound like a dying mouse seeped out of his mouth.

Leonard leaned over him. “Let me make it even more clear. You bother me, or send someone to bother me, or my brother here, provided you even know who I am, who he is, and I’ll kill them, and then I’ll kill you, even if I don’t know for sure you sent them. And then I’ll kill you after you’re dead. That’s how much I’ll kill you. Savvy, asshole?”

Thomas had his mouth open and was holding his hand. It was like he wanted to speak but nothing would come out.

“Savvy!” Leonard said.

“Savvy,” Thomas said.

“That’s good.” Leonard said, then went over and picked up the gun and put it in his belt. He looked back at Thomas. “I’m not just whistlin’ out of my ass. I mean what I say.”

“Yeah,” said Thomas. “I got you.”

“But do you believe me?”

“I do.”

“Let me hear an amen.”

Thomas looked at Leonard like he’d lost his mind. So did I. Leonard just kept looking at Thomas, waiting.

“Amen,” Thomas finally said.

“That’s right, ass wipe,” Leonard said, turned toward the door, stopped, and looked down at the giant. He said, “You can get big as you want, Chunk, but eyes and balls and kneecaps, they’re what we like to call vulnerable. Tell him, Hap.”

“Vulnerable,” I said.

“Don’t let me see your ass around either,” Leonard said. “You might consider a different climate. Comprehend what I’m saying?”

The man didn’t speak. Everyone in the room was so quiet, we could hear their IQs drop. Of course, they didn’t have far to fall.

Leonard kicked him on the kneecap he was holding. Chunk bellowed.

“Well,” Leonard said.

“I understand,” Chunk said.

I looked down at Chunk, and even in the dark, I could tell he was looking at Leonard the way I sometimes looked at him, like he was looking into a deep dark pit that had no bottom.

“Good,” Leonard said. “Our work here is done.”

I looked at the woman on the bed, said, “Probably goes without sayin’, but maybe you might not want to say or do anything either. And you’re maybe two pounds shy of organ failure. Eat something greasy.”

She nodded.

“Good,” I said. “Thanks.”

3

Out back we slung the baseball bats in the direction of the ball field. We went and got in the car. Leonard said, “You thanked her? And gave her a diet tip?”

“It just sort of came out,” I said.

“It took the edge off my witty remarks.”

“Sorry.”

“Well,” Leonard said. “You got to be you. How about we go by Wal-Mart, buy some cookies-and-cream ice cream, some vanilla wafers to dip in it?”

“Nothing like leg breaking and dessert,” I said.

“I broke the motherfucker’s hand, and I think I got a rib too,” Leonard said. “You’re the one broke a leg. A kneecap.”

“I can still hear it crack,” I said.

“Maybe we’ll get a couple cartons of ice cream, brother.”

Leonard started up his car and pulled out.

I said, “That really made you feel good, didn’t it, Leonard? Hittin’ that guy.”

“I don’t know good is how I feel, but satisfied sort of fits,” Leonard said. “And he didn’t shoot me, so I feel good about that. Motherfucker would have done better to throw the gun at me, his aim was so bad.”

Leonard took Thomas’s gun out of his waistband and handed it to me and I popped out the clip and cleaned it with a Kleenex. I wrapped the clip in the Kleenex and Leonard drove by a Dumpster behind a mall and I dropped it in. Then we drove out to the edge of town and I wiped the pistol clean and wrapped it in a piece of newspaper from the backseat and gave it to Leonard and he carried it out into the woods. When he came back, he said, “There now, all done. I dropped it down an armadillo hole.”

“If we hear of armadillos taking over possum kingdom, then we know what happened,” I said.

We took off our gloves, Leonard drove us to Wal-Mart, and we bought ice cream and cookies. I didn’t say much when we got to Leonard’s place, which was recently rented and cheap and in a part of town only slightly better than the one we had just left. We went upstairs and sat in fold-out chairs in a corner that served as a kitchen at a crate that served as a table, and with a spoon apiece, and cookies to dip, we ate and counted roaches racing across the floor. There were a lot of roaches, and some of them were bigger than my thumb. I was glad Brett wasn’t around for a change. She would charge a rhino if she felt it necessary, but the clicking of roach legs on linoleum could run her ten miles and make her climb a tree.

When we were done eating, Leonard said, “You want to go home, or you gonna stay?”

“Drive me home,” I said. “Brett will be waiting. Besides, I don’t want to get eaten by roaches.”

“You have gotten so persnickety,” Leonard said. “I remember a time when you would have named them, made them each little hats, and called them your friends.”

4

On the drive to my place, Leonard shifted his eyes over to me and sighed. He said, “You’re sitting there all forlorn.”

“I feel forlorn,” I said.

“Some things you do, not because they’re pleasant, but because they have to be done.”

“But I’m not sure that was one of them.”

“You got way too many feelings, Hap.”

“I suppose.”

“Look at it this way, brother. I got feelings too, but they’re for those who deserve feelings. There are some people don’t have feelings, and don’t deserve yours. The only kind of feelings they got are pain and fear.”

“Governments use that tactic. Never seems to work too well.”

“We ain’t governments,” Leonard said, as he pulled into my drive. I got out and walked around on his side and looked at him through his open window. He said, “I’ll see you tomorrow at Marvin’s.”

I nodded. He looked at me for a while longer, almost said something, but didn’t. He backed the car into the street and I watched him drive away.

I went inside and locked up and went as quietly as I could upstairs and into the bedroom. I could see Brett’s shape in the bed. I took off my clothes and pulled on my pajama bottoms and got in bed as carefully as possible. When I was positioned, Brett said, “What you been doin’?”

“Killing what’s left of my soul, baby.”

Brett rolled over and put her arm across my chest. She smelled good. “You got the old woman’s money back, didn’t you?”

“We did.”

“I figured you were gonna do that.”

“Last thing I said when I went out was I wasn’t gonna do it. I told myself that when I met up with Leonard. Told myself that when we parked out front of the house where those guys were, and I told myself that up until the moment I swung the baseball bat and took out a kneecap.”

“I knew you were gonna do it.”

“But what is it about me that made you know that? What’s wrong with me?”

“You think things ought to be fair, and they aren’t, and you try and make them fair.”

“I broke a guy’s kneecap. Leonard, he broke the other guy’s hand and maybe a rib, and we scared a young woman who was there. I don’t know how fair that was. We were so mean our mean wore a hat and tie.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Brett rubbed my chest a little, said, “Was he a good guy? Guy’s knee you broke?”

“Not in the least.”

“Did you hurt the girl that was there?”

“No reason to … No. Of course not.”

“Okay. Guy’s hand that Leonard broke. Was he a good guy?”

I knew where this was going, but I went ahead with the ritual. “He’s the guy broke the old lady’s hand, took her money.”

“There you go. If he’s the bad guy, you got to be the good guy.”

“Who says?”

“Me. I just did.”

“Yeah, well, you’re sort of on my side.”

“Big-time. A guy takes an old woman’s money and breaks her hand and she goes to Marvin for help, what are you gonna do? She deserves her money back. It’s not the first time you’ve helped someone and had to get rough. Hell, I’ve had to get rough.”

“I know that. But this wasn’t self-defense, and it wasn’t personal.”

“Anytime you can help someone get back at a bully, it’s personal enough. Baby, you got to learn how to tell the good guys from the bad guys.”

“You sound like Leonard.”

“He can be wise when he sounds like me,” Brett said. We lay there for a while. Brett stroked my chest. “I got to leave tomorrow.

Early.”

“Damn. I forgot.”

“Figured you did. You been kind of preoccupied with your morality and your mortality … But it’s okay. I won’t be gone long. A week maybe.”

“That’s too long,” I said.

“Poor baby. You’re in the dumps.”

“Big-time.”

“Because you got shot a while back?”

“Well, duh, that has something to do with it,” I said.

“Would some sympathy pussy help?”

“Well,” I said. “I don’t know I’ll feel any more right about what I did, and I won’t miss you any less when you’re gone, but it certainly would improve my spirits.”

“I thought it might,” Brett said, shifting to slip off her panties.