“She did.”
“But we came to kill her.”
“Doesn’t seem to hold it against us. I feel sort of mission unfinished, you know, but she patched you up, brother, so what was I gonna do?”
“What?”
“You keep saying that.”
It was because I was so stunned, I didn’t know what to say. After sitting there stunned for a moment, I found a few words. “The money. I don’t get it.”
Leonard patted the duffel bag, which was lying next to him on the couch. “Look, man. Focus. She gave me three hundred thousand to return to the Dixie Mafia, with her regards, and gave us a hundred thousand to keep, or pretty close to it—minus what the kids spent, we spent, and she spent. But, man, it’s still over ninety thousand. She kept a hundred thousand for herself.”
I sat up on the couch. “She trusted us to return the money?”
“I know. What you gonna do? She asked for my word.”
“And you gave it?”
“Of course.”
“And she accepted it?”
“Duh. I got the money, don’t I? What the fuck is wrong with your hearing?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “The world feels like a big banana.”
“What?” Leonard said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It don’t mean nothing.”
“You’re delirious,” Leonard said.
“Maybe,” I said, and passed out again.
58
It was a few days later and I had my arm in a sling, courtesy of a veterinarian Marvin knew who wouldn’t report he had treated a gunshot wound. He said whoever had done the first aid had done a good job.
Anyway there I was in a sling and we were in No Enterprise sitting in the little station/cafe with connecting grease monkey shop. It was me and Leonard and Marvin Hanson, Conners and his fat friend, and two other guys. One of them was Cletus Jimson, and he was a fortyish guy with tattoos on his knuckles that I couldn’t make out but were meant to be some kind of symbols. I guess they were Chinese, which, considering he was supposed to be a stone racist and the current head of the Dixie Mafia in this part of the country, seemed odd to me. Marvin had managed to get us in touch with him through Conners. The guy with Jimson had a lot of bulges in his coat. Some of them were muscles, some of them were guns. His head was shaved and he had a crease on the side of his head that looked to have been put there by a blunt instrument.
“So, you kill a bunch of our guys, and you want to come and make a truce?” Jimson said.
“That’s about right,” I said. “We also bring gifts.”
“Gifts,” Jimson said. “What kind of gifts?”
I had a box with me and it was tied with ribbon. I picked it up and put it on the table and he untied the ribbon and picked up the lid and looked inside. I knew what he was looking at. Three hundred thousand dollars.
“That’s not a gift. That’s what’s owed me.”
“Not by us,” I said. “We sort of came into this deal sideways.”
“Yeah?” Jimson said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“He come over and pistol-whipped us,” Conners said.
“Actually, most of it was done with a blackjack if I remember correctly,” Leonard said. “Oh yeah, and there was that part where I just plain ole pure-dee whipped your black ass with assholes and elbows.”
“Yep,” I said. “That’s the way I remember it too.”
“So you brought me my money home,” Jimson said.
“Courtesy of Vanilla Ride,” Leonard said.
“She really a woman?” Jimson said.
“Oh yeah,” I said.
“How about that,” he said. “A split tail that’s a gunner. That’s some precious stuff, that is.”
“Precious,” I said.
“Conners here,” Jimson said. “He tells me he knows Marvin here, says Marvin says you guys went to kill her and didn’t, but killed my guys instead.”
“That Marvin, what a blabbermouth,” I said.
Marvin Hanson chuckled.
“It seemed like the right thing at the time,” I said.
