Marvin came out on the porch with his cane, and Gadget walked by him like he wasn’t there, went inside and slammed the door. Marvin looked back at her through the screen. I could see his shoulders slouch. JoAnna, Gadget’s mother, came out on the porch. She looked at us and tried to smile, then went back inside. I heard her call out for her daughter.
We hadn’t moved away from the truck. We leaned against it and waited. Marvin came out and nodded at me. “Thanks.” He looked at Leonard. “Thanks.”
“We didn’t have anything else to do,” Leonard said. “Me and him, we usually save this day for a little Bible study, but all the dirty parts we’ve read so much they don’t do anything for us anymore.”
Marvin ignored Leonard, as was often his custom, looked at me, said, “You got her back, but other than that, how did it go?”
“Let me see,” I said. “We went to the trailer, and the guy you beat with the cane was playing with his balls, which he kept in a somewhat overly snug pair of Scooby Doo boxer shorts. Leonard jerked him out of the trailer and bounced his head, and then we went inside and some guy got kicked in the balls a few times. A guy got his face flattened on a wall. The guy who was playing with his balls pulled a gun and Leonard shot him and I stuffed the bullet hole with a shirt.”
“Bullet hole?” Marvin said.
“Yeah,” Leonard said. “I shot the guy you beat with a cane.”
“You shot him?”
“In the fat part of the thigh.”
“He was shooting to kill,” I said. “But he missed and only wounded him.”
“He was going to shoot us,” Leonard said.
Marvin shook his head. “Damn, I’d have gone myself, guys. You know that, hadn’t been for this bum leg.”
“You think we don’t know that?” Leonard said.
“You could catch some shit for shooting someone, even if it wasn’t life-threatening,” Marvin said.
“Yeah, maybe,” Leonard said. “Hap, he threw a dog out the window.”
“It was trying to bite me … We got rid of the guns and Leonard lectured them on fixing the place up a bit. Gave out a fashion tip … Oh, and there was dog crap all over the place. Oh yeah, I broke their CD player and stomped the shit out of a really bad rap CD.”
“That’s an oxymoron,” Marvin said.
“They had drugs,” Leonard said.
“And not just a little,” I said. “Not some baggie of grass. Gadget… she’s got some juice in her moose, man. She’s hooked on the snort. She’s not just smokin’ weed.”
“No,” Marvin said.
“I’d recommend some kind of clinic, and quick,” I said. “You give her any slack, she’ll be back out there snorting some of what I flushed down the toilet. She thinks she’s in love with numb nuts, Tanedrue, but down deep I think she knows he’s what nature wipes its ass on. Just isn’t ready to face it. Not yet. Way I figure, Tanedrue has got her hooked on drugs so he can use her until he doesn’t want to use her. Hell, man, I don’t need to tell you that. You know how it works. Sorry we got to lay it on you like this.”
“Yeah,” Marvin said.
“It ain’t good news,” Leonard said, “but it’s the news.”
“I think we’re home free, far as those yo-yos are concerned,” I said. “All done.”
Marvin thought for a moment, then said, “Cops over there are dirty as a wino’s drawers. Drug dealers own them, so don’t be so sure they won’t try and screw you over, bring in some artillery, a mechanic to go with it, and it’ll be my fault. I shouldn’t have asked you.”
“No one else to ask,” Leonard said. “No one else would be so stupid.”
“You have a point,” Marvin said.
“My take is the dirty cops might not like we fucked with their guys,” I said, “but I can’t see them doing anything about it. They don’t really know who we are. Gadget didn’t tell them, ’cause she didn’t even get our names right. They know we’re connected to you, though. That I’m sure of.”
“I sort of let slip how much I enjoyed you beating Tanedrue’s ass with the walking stick,” Leonard said. “But then again, I wasn’t really trying to hide. We didn’t do no sneakin’. I did want to mention, however, that Gadget said you said we thought we were funny, as if it weren’t confirmed.”
Marvin ignored that.
“It was pretty much our usual plan,” I said. “We just went in there and beat the hell out of ’em, tossed a dog out a window, shot one of ’em in the leg, and messed up the paneling. It got a little wilder than we thought. I know that’s a synopsis of a synopsis I already gave you, but that part about us not being really funny, that really hurt, man, and I didn’t want to revisit that territory.”
“I see scratches,” Marvin said, nodding at my face.
“He tried to fuck a cat,” Leonard said, “and the cat didn’t like it.”
“Those look like some pretty good claws,” Marvin said. “Like maybe Gadget did it.”
“Now I remember why you were a good policeman,” I said. “I had to hit her. I’m not proud of it.”
“You did what you had to do, I’m sure,” he said.
“We got to go,” I said. “Gadget, she’s got to have some serious detox, buddy.”
