Lassiter 06 - Fool Me Twice (27 page)

“
Jo Jo, tell me all about
it. What’s going on? Whatever it is, we can work
together.”

“
All right. I owe you that.
I owe you the truth. I’ve been so unfair to you. The night Hornback
was killed, you went to meet my brother ...”

“
Go on,” I said.

Then, the
unmistakable
creak
of a foot on the ladder to the loft.

“
Kip, c'mon
now!”

Another
creak
.

“
Cut your uncle a
break.”

No sound at all.

“
Kip! You’re starting to
bug me. I’ve got some business to finish here.”

Then a sound like a muffled voice.

I untangled myself from Jo Jo, and in the
darkness, found the lamp once again, clicking it on.

Kip was there all right, but a large hand
was clamped over his mouth, and he was tucked like a bedroll under
a heavily veined arm that could have been sculpted from stone.

“
Fool me twice,” said Kit
Carson Cimarron, “and you’re dead.”

CHAPTER 19

THE STORK AND THE
SNAKE

“
Let the boy go,” I said,
getting to my feet.

Cimarron dropped Kip to the floor.

“
I tried to yell.” Kip was
on the verge of tears.

“
It’s okay,” I
said.

“
I tried to warn you, Uncle
Jake, but the big bastard just sneaked up on me. If I’d have seen
him, I’d have kicked him in the nuts.” When scared, some people
clam up. Others just babble. Kip was a babbler. “I mean, he’s
uglier than Mike Mazurki in
Some Like It
Hot
, and—”

“
It’s okay, Kip. Now, get
out of here.”

“
...bigger than Richard
Kiel with those steel teeth in
The Spy Who
Loved Me
, and meaner than Alan Rickman
in
Die Hard
.”

“
Now, Kip!”

Kip scrambled down the ladder. Cimarron
hadn’t moved. He wore jeans and boots and no shirt, his chest and
shoulders throwing a huge shadow against the far wall. Next to me,
Jo Jo was clutching the blanket to her throat.

“
Josefina,” Cimarron said,
“what the hell’s going on here?”

“
Simmy, he forced me,” she
said, her eyes moist, her voice choking.

What!

“
He hit me, just like he
used to.” Now the tears were gushing. “He tore off my clothes and
just forced me.”

Who he?

“
You knew what he was
like,” Cimarron said, his voice devoid of emotion. “You told me
yourself. Whatever possessed you to let him get close?”

It couldn’t be me they were talking
about.

“
I don’t know, Simmy. I
thought he’d changed. He made promises to me. Oh, I feel so stupid,
so filthy...”

So ashamed. She left that one out.

“
Wait a second!” I turned
to Jo Jo. “I don’t know what game you two are playing. Maybe you
get your kicks this way, but I don’t. Now, tell Wyatt Earp the
truth. Tell him why I

came here.”

“
Jake wanted to take me
back to Miami. He wanted me to leave you and go back with him, but
I wouldn’t, Simmy, and he became enraged. He hit me and called me
names, and then he . . .”

“
This is crazy!” I shouted.
“You’re both crazy. Every which way I turn, I get set up. Jo Jo,
what the hell are you doing?”

“
Shut up, lawyer.”
Cimarron’s expression hadn’t changed, and his voice had a touch of
sorrow, of sad inevitability. “My woman goes out to the barn to
polish up her saddle, and she doesn’t come back. I mosey over, and
I find you. First, you steal from me. Then you trespass on my land,
and now you violate my woman.”

He seemed to think about it a moment, then
began speaking again, even softer, as if discussing an idea with
himself. “No one could blame me. No, it would be understandable. I
warned you. I told you what I would do, and you flouted me. My
woman on my own property. How much can a man take?” He turned to
face me head-on, his eyes drilling me. “I’m going to inflict some
pain on you, partner, and when I’m done with you, there won’t be
enough left for a buzzard’s midnight snack.”

He moved toward me, slowly, methodically,
with a sense of purpose. No excitement, no urgency, no flooding
emotions to drain energy and detract from the business at hand.
With his bushy mustache and bare chest and belly bulging over long
pants, he reminded me of one of those bare-knuckled fighters of a
century ago.

I put my arms up in a defensive mode,
remembering the last time with Cimarron. At least now, I had my
clothes on. “She’s making a fool out of you, Cimarron.”

“
Now why would she do that,
lawyer?”

I didn’t know.

He stayed an arm’s length away and threw two
quick left jabs. They bounced off my shoulder, but not without
reminders they’d been there. I feinted with a left and threw a
straight right hand that he blocked with his left forearm, and it
hurt me more than it did him, my supposedly healed knuckles flaring
with pain.

He was a bigger, stronger man with a longer
reach. Usually, that was me. I would have to maintain space—the
outfighting range—then come right at him with direct frontal
attacks. A tall, powerful fighter concentrates on offense and
doesn’t worry about defense. He uses the reach advantage to work
over the opponent from a safe distance. A shorter, smaller fighter
needs to in fight, defend, and counterattack by shortening the
offensive space and lengthening the defensive space.

He came at me again, and I sidestepped,
glancing a left off his temple as he came by me. I fought the urge
to throw a combination and waited for a chance to counterattack. I
didn’t have long to wait.

He turned and came back squarely. I spun
around to get more room behind me and retreated in the peacock
style of kung fu. Cimarron lunged at me with a looping left, the
weakest punch he had thrown, and I stepped inside and peppered him
above the eye with a right and then a left hook aimed at his chin
that caught him on the neck.

I jumped back again and let him advance.

“
Chicken shit,” he called
out. “What’s the matter, you afraid?”

“
Go fuck a sheep.” My wit
knows no bounds.

This time, he stayed out of
my range, feinted a left, and shot a foot at my groin. It lacked
the speed of the
Mae kekomi
front thrust kick, and I avoided it by taking a
step backward. He nearly lost his balance, and I was tempted to
step forward, but I resisted, and he caught himself, cursed, and
came at me again while I circled, keeping him from pinning me
against a wall.

He tried another kick, this one shorter. I
was in a praying mantis defense, and I hooked his heel and spun him
off his feet. He landed with a thud on the wooden plank floor, and
again, I fought the urge to attack. Get tangled up wrestling on the
floor with him, and I wouldn’t have a chance.

He got up and approached me warily. This
time I was holding my own. I had hung around enough gyms to pick up
the odds and ends of the manly art of self-defense, and at the
moment, I was using the womanly art of Wing Chun. It’s designed to
help a woman fend off a man, and I wasn’t so full of machismo that
I missed its relevance here. The object is to wear down a larger
attacker by making him miss. My strategy was to infuriate him, make
him lose his patience. At the same time, I was testing his
endurance. With him chasing me, throwing punches would deplete
him.

There’s an analogy in the animal kingdom. A
stork attacks a snake with its beak, but the snake darts away, then
lunges for the stork’s head. The stork deflects the counterattack
with its wing, and the whole process starts again. Whoever wears
out first will likely lose an eye or suffer a fatal bite. If both
are exhausted, they withdraw and live to fight another day.

Right now, a draw sounded just fine. I had
come here, adrenaline flowing, wanting to inflict serious damage. I
had felt strong, my confidence fueled by virtuous anger. Now, I was
merely defending myself, having been wrongfully accused. The power
of righteousness resided in K. C. Cimarron’s meaty fists.

This time, he faked the
kick, and I dropped a hand to deflect a foot that never came. He
hooked me in the ribs, either with his right fist or a
sledgehammer, I couldn’t tell which. I used my right hand as a
claw, the
kumade
in karate. I went for his eyes and ended up sticking two
fingers in his nose. I was too close inside, and he wrapped his
left arm around my head. He cocked his right hand to smash me in
the face, and I pulled back with all my strength, flexing my knees,
twisting my torso, trying to break free. My movement threw him off,
and his punch landed on my forehead, but he never let
go.

We moved like that, back
and forth across the loft, a couple of drunken sailors trying to
dance. He was puffing hard now. Big, but not in shape. I caught the
whiff of sour mash whiskey on his pained breaths. As we struggled
in each other’s grip, feet scuffling along the wooden floor, I
found a point of leverage, planted my feet, pivoted a hip and swung
him backward into the wall. His head
thunked
off a wooden plank, causing
more damage to the wood than his skull. When he came off the wall,
his knees seemed to buckle, and I went at him.

Mistake.

He was playing possum. I threw a left, which
he ducked, and then he came inside and doubled me over with a short
right to the gut. I gasped and he moved behind me, slipping an arm
under my chin and across my neck. I flailed away at him, but caught
only air, and his grip tightened, squeezing off my air.

Still choking me, he slammed me headfirst
into the wall. This time, the plank cracked, or maybe it was my
skull. I heard Jo Jo screaming. “No, Simmy! You’ll kill him!
Don’t!”

How thoughtful.

How considerate.

How late.

I was about to black out, but just then the
pressure eased around my neck. I opened my eyes, but I was dizzy,
and Kit Carson Cimarron seemed to be spinning around me. I lifted
an arm to fend him off, and he grabbed me by the wrist, twisted it
behind my back and spun me into the wall again. This time, I hit it
with my full weight, and the plank tore loose and fell to the
ground outside. I am wider than the plank, or I would have gone
with it, which would have been fine with me.

I bounced off the wall, and he grabbed me by
the same wrist, twisted it behind my back again, and whipped me the
other wav where I smacked into a wooden railing that looked over
the stalls. Maybe the railing had termites, or maybe the equation
of my mass times my velocity was too much energy for the old wood.
Whatever the reason, the railing split and I fell through open
space.

I landed with a thud on a thousand pounds of
Appaloosa. It was moving, and making noise, and I slid to the
floor, where it stepped on me and kicked me. I covered my head with
my arms, and rolled over, spitting out blood and dirt and straw,
trying to focus my eyes. Above me, half a ton of horseflesh was
baring its teeth, stomping its feet, and loudly complaining about
sharing its stall.

I was aware of voices. Jo Jo was shouting,
but I couldn’t make out the words. Kip was out there somewhere,
too, saying something, and suddenly, I was worried about him. If
Cimarron killed me, what would he do to the little witness?

I tried to clear my head. I heard footsteps
on the ladder. Heavy footsteps. I hoisted myself to my feet,
grabbing the mane of the horse. If this were a movie, when I fell,
I would have landed astride the mighty steed without doing any
damage to my private parts. I would have whispered some magical
incantation in the great beast’s ear, and he would pound down the
door to the stall. With a Hi-ho, Silver, I would have scooped up
Kip, and we would have galloped out of the barn and into the
moonlight, the evening breeze tousling my hair.

But this wasn’t a movie, and I could barely
see, and as best I could tell, my head was covered with a mixture
of blood and horseshit.

The stall door swung open, and I heard his
voice. “C’mon out, lawyer. I’m not through with you.”

I eased back to the wall, behind the horse,
where they tell you never to stand. I smacked him on the rear, and
he bolted through the open door, with me right behind.

K. C. Cimarron was not born yesterday, and
he had a lot of quick for a big man. He stepped to one side and did
not get trampled or even brushed by the horse, but at least I had a
moving pick bigger than Charles Barkley, and it got me out of the
stall without being clobbered.

The horse bolted for the open door, and I
stepped that way, but Cimarron anticipated the move. He blocked me,
and I raised my hands in surrender. “Enough. I’ve had enough.”

He stood there watching me.

“
Simmy!” Her voice came
down from the loft. Shrill and hysterical. “Simmy, he raped me! Are
you going to let him go?”

Wait a second. Didn’t she just try to stop
him from killing me? Just what the hell was going on here?

“
No,” he said, stepping to
the wall and pulling down a bullwhip from a wooden dowel peg. “He’s
not going anywhere. I’m going to flog him. I’m going to leave scars
he’ll remember till the day he dies.”

The yell came from my left. Cimarron and I
both looked that way.