“This is serious police business, Roy.”
“Kiss my ass.” He started to close the door.
I shoved my leg in, pushed the door open again. “Hold on.” “Get your fucking hands off—”
He came at me, a sloppy leap, and I stepped aside. He stumbled down the porch steps, tried to turn and punch at me while he was falling and he ended up on his ass at the bottom. He winced, rubbed a bruised elbow.
“Settle down, Roy.”
“You little—you fucking—prick.” He heaved out the words between breaths, wheezing and red faced, made a grab at my pants.
I put a boot against his shoulder and kicked him back. He sprawled, looked straight up in the sky, still muttering curses. I didn’t feel like a hero picking on a drunk fat man twice my age, but I wasn’t broken up about it either. I was-n’t looking to defend Molly’s honor with some kind of a fair fight, and if Roy was too blitzed to hit back that was all right by me. Frankly, it felt good to dominate the situation for a change.
“You want me to call Chief Krueger? Maybe you’ll listen to him.”
Roy sighed out a groan.
“Maybe you’d take the chief more seriously. What do you say about that, Roy?”
He didn’t say anything.
“How about it? Get the chief on the horn?”
“Okay, I fucking get it,” Roy said. “I’ll go to Howard Boyle’s house. It’s only two blocks.” “Hand over your keys.”
“Oh, now what the fuck for? Jesus.”
“I can’t have you sneaking back five minutes after I’m gone,” I told him. “You can pick up the keys at the station house in the morning.”
He fished the keys out of his pocket and tossed them to me.
I turned back to the house, the open front door. “Molly, you lock up after we leave.”
“Okay.” Her voice floated closer than expected from the dark innards of the house. I supposed she’d been listening the whole time.
“Come on, Roy. I’ll walk you.” I offered my hand.
He took it, and I pulled him up. He dusted himself off with clumsy ham hands. All the fight had gone out of him, and I think if I’d told him to lie down right there on the lawn and go to sleep he’d have done it. All I wanted was for him to get to sleep somewhere.
We walked in and out of dim blotches of street light on the way to Howard Boyle’s house. Roy smelled like booze and sweat. He put one foot in front of the other like he couldn’t believe he was alive, like sooner or later gravity would just say
“Her mother takes off, and I’m left to do everything. I mean, what the hell. I married her and she had a kid and all. I took her in. Both of them. Then Molly’s mother just fucking takes off. And now I got this girl on my hands like some kind of alien, the way she dresses and that freaky, dark-ass music she listens to.”
I already knew Roy’s story, but he told it so sad I almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
“She’s going to be out of your hair soon,” I said. “You know once she’s off to college she’ll never come back. Not here.” Saying it out loud like that hit me right in the gut. “Anyway, you can behave yourself until then.”
“Can’t be soon enough,” Roy said. “Get my friggin’ life back.”
Some life.
Howard Boyle’s house was at the end of the street where the neighborhood petered out and blended into open field, and a half-wrecked windmill beyond. There were a hundred places like this in Oklahoma where a town suddenly stopped and you stood staring into wide open nothing. Boyle’s house wasn’t much more than a shabby shotgun shack, but it still had more room than my trailer. We climbed the steps, knocked on the door. It took a long time for Howard to flip on the porch light and open up.
Howard ran the tire and lube store in town. He’d inherited it from his daddy and hit the skids in the late eighties. Some rich guy from Tulsa who made a habit of snatching up troubled businesses for a song bought the place but kept Howard on to run it. Looking at the slackbellied, balding fifty-something wreck in front of me, I saw a man who didn’t have a damn thing to look forward to when he got up each morning. No family. No legacy. No talent for anything accept changing a tire. Even his boxer shorts looked like they weren’t hiding much. Probably the perfect drinking buddy for old Roy. Sure.
Howard squinted at us and scratched his belly. “What time is it?”
“Late,” I said. “Or early. Depends if you’re coming or going.”
“You arrest Roy?”
“Not tonight. We thought he might crash on your couch.”
Howard made a face, like maybe he wanted to know why but was just too tired to ask. “Yeah, okay.”
Roy started into the house, paused in the doorway. “What’s a man supposed to do? I mean for fuck’s sake, can you tell me that? How does a man know?”
I really couldn’t say what he was getting at, but I said, “We just do our best as we go along, I guess. And maybe it’ll seem like the right thing when we look back on it later.”
This seemed to satisfy him. He nodded and went inside. Howard followed him in and turned off the porch light.
I lit a cigarette and smoked my way back the way we’d come.
I smoked and walked and wondered if that was all bullshit or not.
When I got back to Main Street, I saw the Ford Mustang Mach 1 parked right behind my Nova.
CHAPTER SIX
I was halfway across the street, and they didn’t see me at first, the three Mexicans standing around the Nova looking through the windows. I froze, puffed the cigarette, and wondered what to do.
I didn’t do anything. They saw me first.
They nudged each other, pointed in my direction, stood up straight and moved away from the Nova. I could either haul ass or square my shoulders and get all Johnny Law.
“What seems to be the trouble here, gentleman?” I said.
I’m just not very smart.
They edged closer, taking it slow, looking me over.
All three wore silk shirts, buttons undone to reveal gold jewelry. The one in the lead wore a black shirt. His head was shaved, gold hoop earrings. The two behind him were in red, beards, various tattoos. It looked like somebody had driven though town and puked a Los Lobos tribute band into the street.
One of the redshirts fired off some syllables in Spanish, and I caught the word
The one in the black shirt looked me over again and shook his head. “No.”
My hand automatically went to my belt. No gun. Shit. It was still in the Nova.
The Mexicans grinned and came at me.
I plucked the Winston out of my mouth and flicked it at the lead guy’s face. It bounced off his cheek, orange sparks flying, not really doing any damage, but he flinched and pulled up short. I went low and jabbed a fist in his ribs, heard some of the air go out of him. A second quick punch for good measure.
Some personal history: When you’ve played guitar in as many roadside honky-tonk shitholes as I have, you learn to throw a few punches. You learn that hesitation can earn you a black eye and a fat lip.
