Vanilla Ride (7 page)

“Thanks, Hap.”

“I’m just afraid you keep trying to hook up those motel Internet connections to your laptop you’ll put your eye out. So I want you here, safe and sound.”

“Thanks, brother. Can I have the last cookie?”

“No.”

We sat there and looked at the cookie. I said, “You haven’t given up on John yet, have you?”

“No. But I got a rule. If you’re ashamed of being gay, I’m ashamed of you. I say, Queer up. I take into account John’s getting some shit and was raised in such a way as to not think he’s on the right path, but I was raised that way myself. I got over it by the time there was hair on my balls. Actually, John shaves them for me, but you know what I mean.”

“Too much information, partner. Besides, I think a man ought to have hair on his balls.”

“Now that John won’t be doing that for me anymore, are you interested in doing the shaving?” Leonard said, and smiled.

“I’d just cut them off, problem solved. Actually, several problems solved. Your relationships would be less strenuous and that pesky hair problem would be over with. You could just hang out with Bob and be happy.”

Leonard sighed. “And if things aren’t bad enough, Bob died.”

“Oh, man. Sorry.”

Bob was Leonard’s pet armadillo. They had been close. Well, Leonard had been close to Bob. It was hard to tell how Bob felt. But he did hang around and would sniff Leonard’s hand and eat out of it. He lived in Leonard’s closet a lot of the time. Went outside to do his business, like a dog. Had a bowl with his name on it.

“It was like his little clock ran down,” Leonard said. “I buried him out back near a little wallow he had made. You know how he liked to dig.”

“He was an armadillo, Leonard. It’s what they do.”

“I know. But he was kind of cool. I liked him.… Hell, Hap, I don’t know. Short time back, life was good, felt like I was fartin’ perfume and crappin’ chocolate candy. Now things suck the big ole donkey dick. John, the way he’s actin’, and now my ’dilla goin’ down. It sucks the oxygen right out of you.”

I couldn’t tell if Leonard was more upset about John or Bob. I studied his face, decided it was a draw.

“Sorry, man,” I said. “Really.”

“Thanks. It don’t help worth a damn, but I’m glad you said it,” and his voice wavered a little. “Actually, I’m thinking of trying to write a soap opera, call it
Lives of the Homos.”

“Leonard?”

“Yeah.”

“You can have the last cookie.”

Leonard stayed with us about three days. After work we played chess, talked nasty, read books and discussed them; we talked about which was cooler, Marvel Comics or DC. Leonard thought Marvel. I thought DC. Brett liked Archie Comics. That immediately excluded her from the discussion and a bit of respect was lost. We listened to music. We rented movies and played Monopoly. Brett proved to be adamant about having the silver dog as her token, and she won a lot. I saw her steal some money from my pile once, but let it go. I called her on it when we went to bed and she made it up to me and the authorities were not called, though Archie Comics was not entirely forgiven.

It was fun having Leonard around for a while, and we hated to see him go, but he finally rented a little apartment on the other side of town, said he was calling John daily, that they were talking and he was guardedly optimistic, hoping things would resolve quickly because the hair on his balls had grown back.

I came home from work one day, sweaty and dirty and feeling like something the dogs had dragged under the porch and gnawed on, and there was a police car parked out front of the house at the curb. There was a big black guy with a cop’s uniform and a cowboy hat about the size of a life raft sitting in one of my lawn chairs smoking a cigar big as an erect horse dong. When I parked in the driveway and got out, the stench of that damn cigar wafted over to me and damn near curled the hair on my eyebrows.

I went over, said, “Let me guess. No Enterprise Police Department.”

“Ah, hell, man, you ain’t that smart,” he said, turning his head as if he wanted to pin me with just one eye. “You read that off the side of my car.”

“You’re right.” I sat down in a lawn chair and looked at him. I said, “So, you took a wrong turn or what?”

“No. I’m in the right place. They said you were a smart-ass, both of you were, and I figure you’re the white guy.”

“That’s observant.”

“Yep. I had a whole month of cop college and I read a book on fingerprinting once. I took a couple of courses in identification too.”

“Wow!”

He grinned at me around his cigar. He had strong creases around his mouth when he grinned and his eyes were slightly bloodshot. One ear floated out from the side of his head as if signaling for a turn. He didn’t strike me as over fifty. He had a hard body with a bit of a gut and arms that could twist a full-grown pig like wet wash. I remembered that Marvin had told me he was one of two fat guys. Boy, was he full of it. This John Law was big enough and mean enough looking to use an elephant’s ass to store his shoes and make the elephant like it.

“You already talk to my buddy?” I asked.

“No. Thought I’d talk to you. Hear you’re more reasonable and you don’t have lace on your panties.”

“You’re right. I am. And that lace remark, not smart. Leonard heard you talk bad about him like that, he might stick you in your hat and piss in it after you.”

“Doubt that.”

“A man with confidence,” I said. “I like that. I know a lot of confident men Leonard has handed their teeth.”

“Yeah, I hear you two think you’re tough guys. Be that as it may, what I know about you and him and me, I’d say I’m doing some better than either of you.”

“Probably. Less graft in the jobs we have.”

For the first time he didn’t look amused. “All right, let’s get formal. My name is Budd Conners. I’m half the law out of No Enterprise.”

“Do the two of you count as one lawman?”

He thumped ash from his cigar on the ground. “Let me tell you why I’m here.”

“Let me guess. I stuck my dick in your territory.”

“Something like that. You can wise off all you want, but I’m here to do you a favor.”

“I could use some yard work done.”

He leaned forward. “Listen, asshole. Listen good, and tell your partner what I’m going to tell you.”

“Should I take notes?”

“You can take notes, or you can just let it whistle through your ears. This way, I came to you and told you and I’m giving you a chance. Those guys you fucked over, shot one in the leg, took that girl from, flushed their dope down the shitter, they didn’t like it.”

“Well, I hope not.”

“They’re mad at you, and the more connected guys who work the dope through them, guess what? They’re pissed too.”

“Get in line. Me and Leonard piss a lot of people off.”

“I can believe that. I can believe you two are not going to listen and you’re going to wind up with your body parts in separate trash bags in different parts of the county.”

“This isn’t the first time we’ve been threatened.”

“I don’t doubt that, peckerwood. But this has put a little pressure on me. The organization that runs those turds you slapped around, they got folks that run them, and they are bad folks. The Dixie Mafia.”

“Do they have Dixie flags and still whine over the South being unionized into the rest of the country? Do they talk about cotton a lot? Get weepy about the Old South? I don’t know about you, but nothing—absolutely nothing—touches me less or bores me more than those assholes. I was you, a black man, I’d throw my rag in with someone else.”

“It’s bigger than any of that. Some of them, they come out of the Aryan Nations, out of the prisons. But they aren’t so down on the brothers anymore. They just don’t want them to fuck their sisters. They feel they can do business with them, anyone else for that matter. These guys, they don’t care about any war but their own little money war. They’re all about commerce and respect, ass-wipe.”

“Watch your language. I’m sensitive, and I just might go sensitive all over you.”

He leaned back in the chair and grinned. “I’m twice your size.”

“And I’m twice your mean.”

“So you say. Do you want to hear me out or not?”

I looked at my watch. “Might as well. It’s still a couple hours till dinner.”

“They aren’t getting their dope back, so maybe they’ll think to make some kind of example out of you. That would be their way. The low guys on the turd totem pole can’t take care of you, then they’ll bring in the middle guys. That don’t work, then the middle guys will bring in the top guys, and those guys will hire someone that’ll be meaner than a bucket of rattlesnakes. They won’t dirty their hands. They’ll bring in real talent. But they probably won’t have to go that far. Enough guys with no real talent is still a lot of fuckin’ guys.”

“So how do they know it’s us done all this? Could be two other guys of equal handsomeness and anger management issues.”

“You’ve already admitted it was you.”

“I was just playing.”

“Sure. Tanedrue figured you were friends of Marvin Hanson, the grandfather, and all he had to do was ask around. You weren’t that hard to figure. You could maybe pay back the money they lost.”

“Oh yeah, that’s gonna happen. If it cost a dollar to fart I’d have to sweat instead. Don’t be an idiot. We aren’t paying anybody anything, and mostly because we don’t want to. And, by the way, how do you, a fine law-abiding police officer, know all this? Could it be because you’re in cahoots with them? My God, say it ain’t so. Aren’t policemen here to protect us? If that isn’t true, my world has been turned upside down.”

“You know what I make in salary?”

“I could care less.”

“Not a lot. Drugs are all over. You think I stop some drug traffic I stop drugs? That I stop people from wanting to use them?”

“No. But it is your job.”

“Look, I’m gonna tell you something, ’cause it’s just you and me in your crappy yard. Drugs go on. Money is being made. It’s like pussy. Someone is always gonna sell it and someone is always gonna buy it, and sometimes, that pussy, it’s got a disease and it kills people. You takes your chances. No one makes you buy it, use it. So what if me and my partner, who is a nice fat white guy named Reggie who is like a brother to me and will hate your guts if I hate your guts… what if we get a little piece of the action? They’re gonna buy from someone. So who the hell does it hurt if they’re getting what they want?”

“The people who are paying you not to take a piece of the action. And you might toss in the ones it kills or the ones get addicted. Until it’s legalized and they got that stuff in a vending machine, your job is to not make money off of it.”

Conners took a big suck on his cigar, blew the smoke toward me. I was so manly I didn’t wave it away, just squinted my eyes, trying to look like Clint Eastwood. I probably looked like a guy with smoke in his eyes.

“I’ve heard some things about you and your boy,” Conners said, “and you sound a little self-righteous, considering what I’ve heard you’ve done.”

“Don’t believe everything you’ve heard, lawman. And let me give you another line, right out
of Billy Jack
. Ever see that movie?”

“No.”

“There’s a line where he says: ‘When policemen break the law there is no law.’ After that he beats the crap out of some guys, but that’s not the point. It’s corny and it’s movie crap, but it’s right. I don’t owe you a fucking thing. You come to warn me and you think I’m supposed to thank you for it, but mostly you want me to stay out of your business, because you are the scum at the bottom of this big old pond and what you’re afraid of is that me and Leonard are going to ripple the surface so much that the big frog on the big lily pad is going to hop on your head. You aren’t doing me any kind of favor. Now get out of my yard before I take that cigar out of your mouth and shove it up your ass.”

He stood up so fast he knocked over the lawn chair. “I ought to kick you into next week.”

I stood up carefully. “Start kicking. You’re out of your jurisdiction.”

He stood there with his fists clenched. A vein vibrated in his neck like the string on a stand-up bass. Provided the string was really big.

I didn’t want any part of him, but I didn’t want him to know it. I managed not to piss myself, tried to look like I was thinking about something pleasant, like a politician waiting for a free blow job.

He took a deep breath. “All right. I tried. You warn that fart, Hanson, warn him that he’s in this too. I was him, I’d take that split-tail you two rescued, pack all of you in a bus and head for the high country, or just some goddamn rabbit hole. Change your names. Change your sex. ’Cause they’re comin’, smart-mouth. And when they do, you ain’t gonna like it. It might be the little fucks first, but they ain’t nothin’.
You might take care of them. But then it’s the others, and I tell you again, you ain’t gonna like it.”

“Neither are they,” I said.

Conners tossed his cigar on the lawn, gave me a last look that told me there was nothing he’d like better than to reach up my asshole and jerk me inside out. “When it comes down,” he said, “remember your old Uncle Conners tried to tell you how it was going to go.”

“That’ll certainly cheer me,” I said. “But I wouldn’t count me and Leonard out just yet, Uncle Tom … Oh, sorry, that was Conners, wasn’t it?”

“You don’t know a thing. Ain’t no Uncle Toms no more, just a fella trying to do business.”

“One way of looking at it, I suppose.”

“It’ll be a clean sweep,” he said. “Not just you and Leonard, but those around you. You have a woman, don’t you? That’s what I’ve heard. And Hanson, his family. I don’t want to see that, something happening. Truly, I don’t.”

“Here’s a feather for your cap. I ever think you have anything to do with screwing around with me and mine, some morning you just might find yourself dead.”

“You threatening a law officer?”

“I don’t consider you much of an officer. Besides, you couldn’t arrest a fly here. You’re nothing but one of a two-man operation in a little town that has its presidential elections in a filling station. You two are so small-time you probably share a dick. So don’t come in here and act like the FBI. You are nothing to me. And yeah, that is a goddamn threat, with bells and whistles on it.”