Vanilla Ride (27 page)

Lights came on in the house as we walked down the hill and the lights were all concentrated in one place, and there was a thin white curtain at the window in the lighted room. We could see their shadows moving across the back of the curtain and eased up close to the house with our guns in hand.

I crept up to the window and looked. I could see through a crack in the curtain. They were sitting at a table and Conners was saying something that was making the fat man laugh.

Leonard slipped away from the window and went around back. I ducked under the window and slid over to the front porch and went up on it and nudged back the screen door and touched the knob, seeing if it was locked. It wasn’t.

I took a deep breath, carefully turned the knob, and gently pressed the door back and edged in and then closed it without really pushing it all the way shut. Now I could hear them talking and I could see a slit of light that let me know there was a doorway and hallway and that the hallway led into the kitchen. I looked across the room, letting my eyes adjust, then made my approach through the opening across the way and down the hall. When I got to the lighted door I saw that the back door was at the far end of the hall, and that’s where Leonard was. If it had been unlocked, he would have already been in.

With the gun held ready, I peeked around the corner and saw the fat man had his back to me and Conners was crossing to the refrigerator. I walked across the open doorway with my eyes on them, but made it all the way across without being seen. I tiptoed to the back door and figured out the lock by touch, and was able to twist it so that the sound it made was hardly noticeable. Then I opened the door and Leonard came in.

We went down the hall, and then with me in front, we stepped into the kitchen. When we did, Conners, who was coming back from the fridge, saw us and started to draw his gun. I said, “I wouldn’t, unless you want a hole in your belly.”

The fat man with his back to us dropped his hand to his holster. Leonard said, “That goes for you too, fat boy.”

Leonard switched his gun to his other hand and reached in his pocket and pulled out the little blackjack and hit fat boy across the back of the neck hard enough to make him fall out of his chair and land on one knee.

“Goddamn,” the fat man said, holding the back of his neck. “That hurt.”

“No joke,” Leonard said. “That’s to show we mean business. We been shot at, beat on, nearly drowned, and had the shit scared out of us by some guns and Big Guy and a dead alligator, so we’re in no mood to screw around.”

Conners was still standing. I had my gun pointed at him. Leonard reached from behind and took Fat Boy’s pistol away.

I said to Conners, “Unfasten your gun belt and let it drop.”

While he did that, I kept my pistol pointed at him. When the belt hit the floor, I said, “Kick it my way.”

He did and I picked it up and slung the belt over my shoulder, his gun at my back.

“Sit down, Conners,” I said.

“Get up, fat man,” Leonard said. “Find the chair.”

When they were both seated, I went over and leaned on the refrigerator, said, “You know we heard you kind of set things up for shooters for the Dixie Mafia.”

“They don’t call themselves that,” Conners said.

“I don’t care if they call themselves the Dixie Bowling League. You know what I mean.”

“You say,” Conners said.

“Don’t he love to talk?” Leonard said. “Hey, fat boy, ain’t you got nothin’ to say?”

“I don’t know a thing,” the fat man said. “I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“I think you would,” Leonard said, and swung the blackjack again, hitting Fat Boy on the neck, knocking him out of the chair.

“You just stay on the floor,” Leonard said. “It’ll save you the trouble of getting up.”

“You’re tough with that sap in your hand,” Conners said. “You wouldn’t be so tough without it.”

Leonard put the sap in his coat pocket and took off his coat. “We can see.”

“Nope,” I said. “I know you can whip him.”

“Yeah, but he don’t,” Leonard said.

The fat man on the ground said, “Conners would tie you in a knot.”

“See,” Leonard said. “He don’t know it either. Get up, Conners. Let’s you and me dance.”

“Not a good idea,” I said. “Having a macho queer moment. Don’t do it.”

Conners got up and I decided I wouldn’t shoot him. I pointed the gun at the fat man on the ground. “You crawl over this way a piece.”

Conners came around the table. Leonard moved a little to the side of the table, and then they were facing each other, six feet apart. Conners hulked over Leonard, though Leonard’s shoulders were easily as broad as his.

Conners had his hands up. So did Leonard. They stood that way for a long moment. Leonard said, “You waitin’ on an engraved invitation?”

Conners moved then, swung. Leonard ducked under it and hit Conners in the nuts with a right uppercut, then he swiveled and kicked at the inside of Conners’ leg, catching him just above the ankle. It brought him down.

Conners did a push-up and Leonard let him. When Conners was up, he said, “Them chink tricks ain’t gonna help you none.”

“They seem to be working all right,” Leonard said.

Conners came again, throwing a right cross that was so slow you could have gone out and bought a paper and been back in time to dodge it. It went over Leonard’s right shoulder, and Leonard kicked
out and caught Conners on the side of the leg, mid-thigh. The nerve cluster there lit up and Conners went down with a yelp. When he hit the floor, Leonard kicked him in the jaw. Conners fell on his back and groaned.

“You can get up if you want to,” Leonard said.

I will say this, Conners could have just lain there, but he didn’t. He got up and came again, and this time Leonard moved to the right and jabbed right-handed and caught Conners over the eye enough to make him step back, and then it was like a wolf at the slaughter. Leonard hooked Conners in the belly with a left, and then it was a double right jab to the face, and finally Leonard kicked out with his front leg and caught Conners in the lower abdomen and sent him flailing back against the table, which crashed underneath his weight, causing the fat man to slide on the floor and out of the way.

Conners lay in the wreckage of the table, bleeding from the mouth.

Leonard looked at Fat Boy. “Now, how about you?”

The fat man shook his head.

“Damn skippy,” Leonard said, then looked at me. “That’s what I meant to do to that big guy.”

“Me too,” I said, “but it didn’t work out.”

“Yeah, I just couldn’t get warmed up.”

“Was that it?”

Leonard toed the fat man a little, making him roll over on the floor so he could get to the refrigerator. He found a can of beer in there and brought it out and popped the top and took a foam-dripping swig. “There, assholes. I drink your beer. I kick your ass. And you will give us some information.”

When Conners and the fat boy were back in their chairs, Leonard took the sap out of his pocket, said, “Just so you know, I’m ready to warm you up again.”

“Tell us about the hit folk,” I said. “We’re tired of getting shot at. Tell us about who you sent after us, and just to make it easy on you, don’t say you don’t know what we’re talking about. Just talk or I’m going to give you to Leonard again.”

“We just do as we’re told,” Conners said.

“And why is that?” I said.

“Why do you think?”

“Money” I said, “and now that you’re in, you don’t want someone coming after you, am I right?”

“Something like that.”

“But you’re a bigger dog in all this than you’ve let on. You, and probably your fat friend here—certainly your fat friend—you pick the hitters, so you’re pretty well connected. What the fuck is your name, fat friend?”

“Sykes,” he said.

“I prefer Fat Boy,” I said. “Now, how goes it, Conners? How’s it work?”

“I’ve made some connections over the years,” Conners said. “I’m a cop. You meet people that know people, and you find you can make deals.”

“Sweet deals.”

Conners nodded.

“So, to get right to the fuckin’, no foreplay where is the woman you hired to kill us?”

“Woman?”

“Yep. She hit one of our pards, and blew up Hirem’s kid and girlfriend, and put me and Leonard in a hospital for a while, and just so you know, we’re mad.”

Conners smiled. “Vanilla Ride. I didn’t even know it was a woman. I got her contact a couple years back. She’s made ten hits for what you call the Dixie Mafia. She’s made hits for others. Made them through me. Sometimes those hits are more than one person. You two are supposed to be dead.”

“It wasn’t from want of trying,” I said.

“I’ve never even seen her, or a lot of the hitters. I got contacts, I told you.”

“Tell us how to contact Vanilla Ride. Me and Leonard thought we’d drop in, say hello.”

“I contact her by mail. No e-mail. No phone number. I drop her a letter from a false address to a P.O. box, and the letter has names on it, some general information, where these people are. Then we get a FedEx from her with the names we gave her and she’s got a line drawn through them when the job is done, and then the big dogs pay her at
that P.O. box. She, huh? A woman. Now that’s something. I thought Vanilla Ride was some big guy with a shotgun. And you guys, you were on her list with lines drawn through your names, drawing flies somewhere. That’s what I was thinking, what I was hoping.”

“She speculated a bit too much,” Leonard said. “We’re still here. Tired and pissed off, but here. She was on our tail, but she got cocky.”

“Got a question,” I said. “Did Vanilla Ride return the money?”

“No, not yet,” Conners said. “Someday it’ll just turn up on the right doorstep. No one will see who dropped it, it’ll just show up. She knows everyone in the business, where they live, what they do. That’s what makes her so deadly. Damn, a woman. Sounds like my kind of broad.”

“What’s the address?” I said.

“I give it to you, you’ll kill us,” Conners said.

“You don’t give it to us I’ll kill you,” I said. “I’m in no mood to play games, man. Give me the address.”

“You’ll let us go?” Conners said.

“I don’t want any more blood on my hands than I already have.”

Leonard looked at me. I said, “I mean that, Leonard.”

“Yeah,” Leonard said. “I know you do.”

“He wants us dead,” Sykes said.

“Yep,” Leonard said. “I do.”

“So how’s it gonna be?” Conners said.

“It’s gonna be nice enough, you give us that address.”

“It’s a post office box in Arkansas.”

“All right. Give it to us, and let me just say this. If we go on a wild-goose chase, or anyone gets on our tail, we will come right back to you and kill your asses dead, and then shoot you daily for a week just to make ourselves happy. Tell us what we want to know, this is a way you get out of it scot-free, but you screw with us, we hold a grudge.”

“Hell, I hope you find her,” Conners said. “No idea she was a woman, but you find her, from what I know of her work, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

“You tell us how to find her, you get to live,” I said. “Hell, man, it’s your choice.”

Leonard looked at me like a puzzled dog, said, “They hired Vanilla Ride for the Dixie Mafia. She tried to kill us. What makes these assholes so special?”

“I want who hit our man and those kids and took the money and tried to blow us up, so I’m willing to trade.”

“How do we know your word is good?” Conners said.

“You know as much as we know yours is good,” I said. “Make a choice. Now.”

Stopping by the all-night station/store in No Enterprise, we bought some traveling goods and filled up the gas tank and I looked for the guy in the garage, but he and his fuck book were not present and the door was locked. It was too late to work and too late to read. Maybe he was home doing what he had been reading about. Most likely he had the book in his left hand and himself in his right.

One of the things we bought was some bright blue stationery and envelopes. I wrote down the address Conners had given us on it, put it to Vanilla Ride, and then I wrote Conners’ address, which he had been so kind to give us, in the left-hand corner as the sender. Since they couldn’t phone her or find her any quicker than we could, I wanted to get things started. I wrote “Hi” on a piece of the blue stationery and folded it up and put it in the bright blue envelope and laid it on the dash of the car, waiting until we could buy a stamp.

We started for Arkansas, cruising along not listening to music, just quiet for a long time. We had left Conners and Sykes tied up in their kitchen with lamp cords and stripped sheets. I figured they’d work themselves loose in a couple hours or so.

Leonard finally broke the silence, said, “You know that was stupid, letting them live?”

“I do. But I think I have to draw the line somewhere.”

“You draw the line on them but you’re traveling all the way to Arkansas to kill Vanilla Ride.”

“It seems a little more personal.”

“I see them all as one big nest.”

“I’m sure you’re right, but I guess I’ve decided to focus my anger all on one, the one put the bomb under the car and killed Tonto and those kids and gave us a stay in the hospital.”