“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.”
50
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.”
“All right,” Leonard said. “But you know those guys aren’t through with us.”
“Yep.”
“We’ll deal with them again.”
“Yep.”
“I thought Conners was at the top of our list. You said to put stars by his name.”
“Yep.”
“So why didn’t we just nip it in the bud?”
“I’ve tried my best to explain.”
“And your explanation sucks.”
“I just couldn’t shoot them out of their chairs like that, in cold blood.”
“What if Vanilla Ride is sitting in a chair?”
“I’ll ask her to stand up.”
