Love and Other Wounds (7 page)

“Jackie?”

I looked up and there was Pinkle. Don Pinkle, that is, looking every bit the methed-out redneck that he was. He stood there dope skinny with a sad, scraggly goatee and bags under his eyes that looked like full-grown slugs. If he'd slept in forty-eight hours, it had been forty-eight hours ago. He flashed me a smile, but that isn't the right word, because there wasn't nothing flashing in that meth mouth of his. Teeth yellow and orange and brown like dry dog food. He came by the bar some nights with some of the boys, every once in a while getting on a construction crew to get an honest dollar, which must have felt lonely and out of place in his wallet. He never tipped on a drink, not once.

“Pinkle,” I said like it was the whole conversation, and tried to get back to my newspaper. But he wasn't having it.

“Went by the bar last night.”

“Did you now?”

“Wasn't open.”

I dropped the paper, seeing as it was clear he wasn't going away.

“Now, Pinkle, don't you think I know that?”

“Knocked on the door and everything.”

“Trust in your senses, son. We were closed.”

“Thought I heard voices,” he said, scratching a scratched-up face. His nostrils stood out bloodred and ragged against the trout belly of his skin. “That's why I knocked, see. But nobody answered.”

“Heard voices? You? You can't tell me that hearing voices is some sort of strange occurrence in your life. Not with the shit you've got floating in that lump of gristle you probably call a head. I bet it sounds like happy hour in there most times.”

“I thought maybe you were in there with someone, is all,” he said, trying to give me a saucy look.

I stood up fast and took pleasure in how he scurried back a few steps. Sometimes folks forget just how big I am, or what I used to be able to do. Sometimes I forget myself.

“And I thought,” I said, “that what I do in there or don't do is exactly one hundred percent none of your goddamn business. Care to tell me how I got so misled about that?”

Just then a waitress called out, saying Pinkle's food was ready and that mine was getting bagged up.

“That's a whole lot of food for a body,” he said as the waitress put my two bags on the counter. “Got yourself a tapeworm?”

“Got something to plug that hole I'm getting ready to stomp into your head?” I asked back.

“Not meaning to aggravate you,” he said, holding up his palms.

So I took a few deep breaths and told myself that the dumb twidderpated motherfucker was too stupid to barely breathe, much less know when to leave well enough alone.

I was wrong, it turns out. Pinkle really is stupid, just not as stupid as I gave him credit for. Not that I figured it out by his next move, which was to try to pay for his breakfast with a hundred-dollar bill. It was early yet and of course the joint couldn't handle that, so I groaned and paid for his while mine was still being put together. I didn't even ask where he'd gotten the hundred. I didn't want to know.

“Could you throw in a dollar extra?” he asked me with a sheepish grin. “I need me some quarters.”

“You need to be laying off that dope,” I told him, but pushed the quarters across anyway. “And you need to not think about setting foot in Jackie Blue's until you're ready to pay me back, hear?”

He grabbed his food and hotfooted out the door. I went back to the waitress, who was kind of cute, and gave her a wink. Well, the goat had really woke up, hadn't he?

“Some dude, huh?”

“Yeah, people suck,” she said. “Bank on it.”

“Rosy disposition.”

God, I wish I knew what it was about girls with too much eyeliner and a bad attitude that got to me. Then I thought of Jolene grabbing the brass pole that ran under the bar and I knew that I was good to go again.

“Mister,” she said, pushing my bag of food over to me, “work the night shift at a diner some time, and then you can tell me about how great people are. Especially people like that one.”

I was about to tell her about how I worked a bar and knew how people could be when it struck me that there was something strange in the way she'd said “like that one.”

She stressed the
that
like she could still see him, so I turned around, and there he was at the gas station across the street, jabbering into a pay phone. I didn't like that. And then I remembered that hundred-dollar bill, and I liked it all even less. There was plenty of ways that a man like Pinkle could get some cash money, none of them nice. But to have a fresh hundred to spend on breakfast at the end of a binge, that didn't set right. It was probably nothing, I thought, but decided I'd walk over there and see what he had to say. And then he looked up and saw me crossing the street and dropped the phone. A piece of paper fluttered to the ground in his wake.

A big semi rolled past the road and by the time it passed, Pinkle had a good head start, and besides, I wasn't going to win no footrace with a meth head. I stopped at the phone and picked up the paper scrap. Then I dropped the breakfast. There was
an out-of-town phone number scrawled on it, with one word under it.

Cole.

The chopper was a beauty, all silver fire and wheels. It slouched in front of the front door of Jackie Blue's, which hung open. The wood around the doorknob was splintered like someone had kicked it open. He couldn't have been there long. Less than ten minutes had passed since Pinkle made his call. In fact, when I climbed out of the truck I could still hear the bike's engine ticking. Then that sound was ripped out of my ears by a scream coming out the door. I ran inside, my fists balled at my sides, hoping he didn't have a gun.

He probably had a gun.

The inside of the bar looked like someone had picked the whole place up, turned it upside down, and given it a shake. The register was popped open and the cash drawer hung crookedly out, the shelf lifted to search out the underneath. Bottles had been shoved off the shelf, some of them breaking on the floor. A cloud of booze stung my eyes and plugged my nose. All this came to me out of the sides of my mind. Right there in the foreground was a big old boy with an arm inked with jailhouse tats wrapped around Jolene's throat. His other hand muffled the screams with his palm. Jolene's eyes bulged out over his hand, and her own hands didn't fight his but instead clutched her black leather purse.

“Just stand back there, pops,” he said with an Oklahoma twang. “Keep a cool head and we can all walk out of this.”

“Funny words coming from a man just trashed my bar.”

He barked a little laugh at that.

“Brother, I just got here. This little bitch,” and he gave her
a shake for emphasis, “is the fucking source of all our troubles, yours and mine. I don't know how she's been playing you, but if I had to guess, I think I could. I know how she suckered me.”

He took his arm away from her throat and cupped the crotch of her leather pants. She tried to say something through his other hand, but it kept it muffled.

“Played me but good, brother, and now she's playing you. When I came through that door she'd done cleaned your register out.”

I took a step forward. The place was cleaned out, all right.

“You really Jackie Blue?” Cole asked.

For the first time in a long time, I said yes.

He shook his head sort of sad like.

“Well, that's what I get for opening my big fat mouth. I done told this cooze enough stories about Jackie Blue back in the day to fill her head with 'em. See, my pops used to ride through here, and he always told me that back then the hardest man in the hills was Jackie Blue. And so when we'd ride by, I'd always have to tell this bitch here about it. I guess I might have oversold you and made Jolene here get some mighty bad ideas.”

She tried to shake her head, but I could see it was true. She'd known just who I was the moment she'd walked through the door. Makes sense. Lucky is just what you call someone when you don't know how smart they are.

“That may be,” I said, “but still all the same, if a gal wants to take her leave of you, it's best to let 'em go without a fuss. What do you say?”

He laughed and yanked Jolene's purse out of her hands. He shook it and it dumped out on the floor, and first out came all my money that she stole and then came pinkish-white bricks, one two three.

“Brother,” he said as I watched the Nazi dope pile on the floor,
“it ain't the leaving so much as the stealing that bothers me.”

Well, damn.

“All right,” I said. “I see it now. She done played you and then she played me. Figures. So you take what's yours and get on out and we'll call it a day. How's that sound?”

“Sounds fine,” he said, then turned to Jolene. “Scoop that shit up—leave Jackie Blue's money—and let's get going. Let you have one last ride before you get yours.”

“No,” I said. “You don't get it. The lady stays.”

He looked at me like I gone plumb crazy.

“Jackie, I know she's got a snatch like hot butter, but come on—this bitch is pure poison. You can't want her to stick around after she tried to rob the both of us.”

That's so. But as much as I might like to see it, I can't let him hurt her. See, even if it was partway, or even in total, a lie, that girl made me wake up last night—she made me see who I am.

“Sorry, son,” I say to him. “But one way or another you're taking your hands off her.”

The fear hit his eyes and I thought it was going to be easy, but then the fear went away. At first I wasn't sure why, but it's that his young ears heard it before mine did. The sound of a group of motorcycles rolling down the road.

“Now Jackie, I got all sorts of respect for you, but I got to think of my own rep too. Can't let my boys think I got taken by a slut and a geezer.”

He reached behind him and pulled a little flat pistol. He moved the girl in front of him, as a shield like. His boys were rolling into the lot. I had about fifteen seconds to make it right.

I walked in stepping to the right, putting Jolene totally between us. That suited him fine, he thinks, as I'm not going to hurt the woman. But also it meant he can't see me clear to shoot me. I took Jolene's head in my hands—our eyes met and
I laughed—and I slammed her skull straight back into Cole's nose. He dropped and just for a second I stood holding Jolene by the head like I was getting ready to lay a Hollywood kiss on her. But instead I tossed her to the side so I could stomp Cole while he was down. Three times did nicely. Then I picked up the pistol with my right and his shaggy greasy hair with my left and I dragged him to the door, just in time for his three buddies to come to full stops on their bikes. The dust swirled up and their engines roared and I stepped into the storm of it all, dragging Cole behind me. By God, I felt good.

“Welcome to Jackie Blue's,” I said.

Shit.

Shit.

Shit.

Five people, plus me, here in the lobby. I've ushered the tellers from behind their stalls. One hot number in a green dress, one cow-eyed woman with a cat on her coffee mug. So that's two. Three is this wrinkled old fart in a sweat-stank security guard uniform. Four is the lone customer, some kid wearing a leather jacket, black like mine. Number five is Mister Suit, Mister Push the Button, Mister Brains All over the Fucking Floor. I told him in and out in two minutes and no one gets hurt.

I told him. Maybe he was a little hard of hearing. Don't push the button. He pushed the button. So I swabbed out his fucking earwax with a Q-Tip of the gods. If he'd listened, there wouldn't
be the five cop cars outside and I wouldn't be playing eenie-meeny-miney-hostage. He pushed me to Plan B.

The two teller women sob, the young guy looks like he wants to bad, and the old man sits with a look on his face like I got up every day of my life for this?

“I don't want to die,” the teller in green, the pretty one, says. She says it again.

“Anybody here who does want to die?” I ask. “A show of hands. No one? Okay, we'll just consider that a given from now on, so there's no use saying it anymore. Behave and we all go home tonight.”

The cop cars all face us, the doors open like wings and the cops crouching behind like baby birds. Baby birds with guns. And one's got a bullhorn and he says something but the alarm is still ringing and there are glass doors between us so whatever he says comes out wah-wah-woh-wah like Charlie Brown's teacher. It's okay; I know what they're saying: come out with your hands up and forget about that bag of money and we'll overlook that capital murder charge puking blood on the floor behind you.

Wah-woh-wah is right.

All right, eenie-meeny-miney-moe to the green-dress teller. The cow-faced one looks relieved, like finally, not having a man look twice at her is paying off. Like every stay-at-home Saturday and second of loneliness was worth it. Because now she gets to have more of them.

I admit it. I'll look better on the evening news with this green dress next to me. A gun to her head and a bag of cash in hand, holding her tight to me. Fucking rock-and-roll album cover, right?

“Let's go,” I say as I take her by the hand. “Everyone else, sit tight, right, and don't even think of running.”

I walk the green dress into the sunshine and insanity. So
many guns cock it sounds like maracas. Helicopter white noise: live teevee with the overhead view, more cameras across the street. And me with blood on my face. I hope someone is taping this, McGuire or someone else at the Mayfield saying oh, shit, that's Tyler.

Wah-wah-woh-wah the cop with the bullhorn says, and I could understand him if I tried. But we aren't bargaining here. I've got four hostages, I've got time, they've got nothing I care about. I want a car, I want no one following me and the girl. They'll send helicopters after me, sure, and if they didn't the teevee guys would. But Plan B is worked out for that. Wait and see.

So I yell what I want. Twice. Three times. “Drop the guns,” I yell, “or I'll do her.”

She flinches away from the promise of her death. It knocks me off balance a bit, and then where her head used to be, where mine was a second ago: pink mist. I never even hear the shot, just the pop of her head. I drop her. She falls like a sack.

Sniper.

I pull the trigger copwards, firing behind my back as I make for the door. Little gusts of hard wind puff past me. Chunks of concrete dance at my feet. I get in the door somehow, the three hostages on their feet, ready to run but frozen.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I say, “we're all back to square one, so let's have a seat and think over our options.”

I do ugly math. Three hostages. Someone over at the precinct is going to get a talking-to tonight about that pretty little head-shot thing in the green dress. Oh, yes, someone is going to convene a panel, maybe even a committee, over that young woman bleeding out next to that bag of cash. The bag of cash on the sidewalk.

Shit.

Shit.

Shit.

I dropped it when I dropped her. Maybe twenty grand if I'm lucky. I didn't have time to count it. I was going to count it later, hiding in the storm drain off I-70, waiting for McGuire or whoever to come pick me up and put me in the trunk of their car.

I need that money back in here with me, and then I can start looking for another way out. The roof maybe, or an air duct or something. Plan B just needs a little break to still work.

I point the pistol at the young dude and say, “Hey, guess what, get out there and grab my cash. And if you run, I kill one of these nice people here, understand?”

He shakes his head at me idiot style, so I break his nose with the gun butt. I have three people's blood on me and it's not even noon.

“Now you get out there, grab the bag, and back in. Do it in five seconds and you'll be the first one I let walk. Promise.”

So he goes out the door and he doesn't get two seconds before they light him up.

Shit.

Shit.

Shit.

And the cops kill their second hostage of the day. They saw a leather jacket that looks like mine and a bloody face and someone gave the okay and down the dude goes.

I blast a few shots out the window. The charging cops thought I was dead. They freeze and retreat. None drop. Man, if I'm in this thick, I think, I'd like to tag a cop. Just might yet. “On your feet, old man,” I say, and his face hasn't moved yet, like he got bad Botox: get the paralysis, keep the wrinkles. “I need that bag. You walk out slow, they'll see you for who you are, you walk back in. You fuck it up and I pull the trigger on
her.” I point the gun. Cue the teller's squeal. “And then I shoot you in the back. Understand?”

Maybe your adrenaline dries up when you're old or maybe this bastard has huge old balls, because he doesn't flinch or frown or even blink: just nods. And stands. And walks.

Out the door, check. No shots fired, check. He picks up the bag, check. And starts walking toward the cops.

Shit.

Shit.

Shit.

I keep my word and pop the girl goes down. I turn the gun to the old man's back, bang bang both wide, then click click click. Dry. The old man makes it to the cops. My money goes with him.

No cash. No hostages. Not long before the cops do the math and figure what that adds up to.

I pull my spare clip from my pocket. Plan C. I had to work out Plan B; Plan C comes ready-made. It's there on every job I've ever pulled. I slide in the clip. Wild Bunch time. Butch Cassidy time. Hope a few cops splatter before that last freeze frame.

Shit.

Shit.

Shit.