“Look at it this way: if we’d killed those two, you wouldn’t have to kill these four. Or, worse yet, get killed by them.”
“You are a goddamn sage, Leonard.”
52
One day we’re in the hotel room, looking out the window, having sucked down too much coffee, my personal plumbing backed up to where my insides felt like a brick factory, and I’m thinking a little fruit juice might be good, when Leonard, who is nibbling around the edges of a vanilla cookie, said, “These guys, they here for us or Vanilla Ride?”
“Maybe both,” I said. “Could be they’ve decided she needs to go too. Maybe because she hasn’t returned the money.”
“You think she’ll keep it?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s her plan. I think she’s a professional. But I also think the people she’s dealing with are falling apart. The talent they’ve sent out has cost them big-time, and it would probably be nice to get the money back, but they want us because we’re a couple of amateurs who have survived everything they’ve got, including Vanilla Ride. My guess is they haven’t paid her because she didn’t finish the job, because we didn’t die, and now she’s got their money on top of having not wiped us out.”
“She’s got more money than they think,” Leonard said.
“That too.”
“So, Hirem lied about the amount of money, which was probably because there was extra he was going to give the Mummy and his friend to make sure his son got a good deal with the FBI, and then they got whacked, and then we got the money, and then Vanilla Ride got the money, and she’s thinking, well, they don’t pay me, I got a little windfall. They do pay me, I keep the rest.”
“That’s the way I figure,” I said. “And the Dixie Mafia is thinking they’re running low on guys, and they aren’t considered such bad dudes if they can’t stop a couple of yokels from East Texas, and if they just quit, that looks bad too, so they got to keep them coming. And now, since Vanilla didn’t finish the job, and we’re on her tail, they’re starting to see her as expendable. That way they don’t pay her and she’s dead and they’re rid of her. I bet on top of all that, finding out she was a woman chapped their ass.”
“If only she had been black,” Leonard said.
“Yep, that would have been aces.”
“And gay.”
“Better yet. And we may have it all wrong,” I said. “Guys following us could be just very persistent insurance salesmen.”
53
One night I’m at the window, and the brilliance of the streetlights is all there is in the way of action, and what do my wandering eyes see but a lemon-colored Volkswagen pulling up at the curb in what might be called a sprightly manner, or what I might call in my East Texas vernacular, pretty goddamn fast. A young man, gangly as a puppet, with a dark mustache and a cap from under which shoulder-length black hair hung, got out and went into the post office, walking heavy.
I looked at my nifty Warner Bros. Looney Tunes watch with all the great cartoon characters on it with my flashlight and saw the time was three a.m. The post office lobby was always open. You could go in at any time. Just an old-fashioned town with an old-fashioned mailbox connected to an old-fashioned killer who liked to live quietly in Arkansas. I figured not a lot of folk were out and about at three a.m. in a town like this, and if they were, how many just decided it was necessary to check the mail at this time of night?
It could happen, but it made me curious.
He came out quickly and got in the Volkswagen and started up the hill. I yelled Leonard awake, and since he was already dressed, he only had to roll into his shoes, and then the two of us were on our way downstairs, pulling our coats over our holstered handguns and our manly buttocks.
The fat guy had his turn in the lobby chairs, and when he saw us he stood up and a magazine fell out of his lap and flapped to the ground. Leonard gave him a little wave. We went out and got in our car, Leonard driving, and he cranked it up and started up the hill in the direction the Volkswagen had gone. I looked back and saw the fat man was on the curb with a cell phone to his ear. They weren’t any niftier than we were, which in real life is often the case. There just aren’t that many James Bonds or Mike Hammers outside of the pages of books or the brightness of film.
Of course, Vanilla Ride, now she was another matter altogether. That woman was spooky like Tonto was spooky, only more so, because she had killed Tonto right when he thought he was about to visit the fun house.
That’s just mean.
The road wound up through the mountains, and at one point, going around a curve, I could look back through a split in the trees and see car lights moving along the road behind us. I said, “I figure that’s them.”
“Yeah,” Leonard said, “that is some good deduction there, Sherlock.”
We hadn’t caught up with the Volkswagen, which had to be hauling some serious ass, and we weren’t all that far ahead of our friends the ugly thugs. I said, “When we get around this corner coming up, let me out.”
“Are you nuts?”
“If it goes well, I’ll catch up with you at the bottom of the hill. If you look back and see it isn’t me running down the hill to leap into your arms, and instead it’s them in their car, or even on foot, then I suggest you drive like you’re in a stock-car race.”
I climbed over the seat and pulled the backseat down and got the sawed-off shotgun out of the trunk and a box of shells. When we climbed up the hill and got to where it curved, Leonard stopped and let me out, said, “Nice knowing you, dumb ass.”
“You just watch for me.”
He motored away and I got back in the woods a bit and hunkered down and waited. More time went by than I
