“Down the road. A little diner. Your kind of place, too.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Soul food,” he said and tossed another strip of fat bacon into the air. Dingo gobbled it down instantly.
“Oh,” I said. “You already had breakfast, then?”
“Nope. Waitin’ for you two. Had to feed the dog, though.”
“Okay,” Julie said. “I need coffee. Let’s go.”
We parked in front on a wall that was covered with a mass of ivy. The name of the restaurant was “Jerry’s Place”, an ancient brick and clapboard affair that looked as though it had started off life as a 1920s gas station and had gone through a long series of abandonments before finding its highest and best use as a soul food restaurant. The front door was little more than a couple of clapboards grafted onto steel mesh with baling wire, but the blue paint looked fairly fresh. It didn’t come off on my hands.
The hours were prominently displayed:
OPEN EARLY — CLOSE LATE
Walking into the place was like coming home. It had that day-old bread smell to it that is common among such establishments, but beyond that it had a shabbiness and a Spartan utility that combined in such a way as to command comfort. There were checkered tablecloths, though they were covered in thick clear plastic that had molded itself into a permanent shape, and smooth, straight-backed hardwood chairs. Also the lighting was slightly dim. We passed a table that had a box of yellowed dominoes on it that looked older than myself.
We took a table in the corner near an old jukebox. I took a look at the selections. It was a museum piece, with seventies disco music mixed in with Marvin Gaye and trucker music. It looked as though it was either out of service or that none of the clientele was willing to risk hard-earned money in it.
“Some place, ain’t it?” Hank said.
I could smell the kitchen already, and knew the food was going to be good.
“You haven’t lived, Hank,” I said, “until you’ve tried pork chops that melt off the bone and collard greens that have been steeping since New Year’s.”
“Stop it, Bill,” Julie said. “Damn but I’m hungry.”
The proprietor was a heavyset black woman with a cherubic smile and wide eyes. She seemed pleased to see us. The menus were pieces of tan-colored stiff-backed paper run through a copy machine.
“What’ll you folks have to drink?” she said.
“Coffee,” Hank said. “All around.”
“Fine. Be just a minute.”
We spent a few minutes looking over the menu and discussing it. We were all looking forward to breakfast. It was too bad when we realized we wouldn’t be getting any.
We heard the twang of the screen door opening and thought little of it at the moment. Julie was facing away from the door and I had my back almost directly to it, but Hank was sitting there looking over my shoulder, not saying a word.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Howdy,” Hank said.
I became conscious of the gun pointed at my head and the other one, a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun leveled across the table at Hank.
“Ever’body just be cool,” the man with the shotgun said.
“Oh shit,” Julie said, then quickly: “Hi, Jake. Hi, Freddie.”
“Hi, yourself,” the one with the pistol aimed at me said.
“What can we do for you fellahs?” Hank asked, as calm as you please. He lifted his coffee cup and sipped.
“We’re taking you back, Miss Julie,” Jake with the shotgun said.
“Oh,” Julie said. “I’m going back, alright. But it’s to get Jessica out of there.”
“Ain’t gonna happen,” the other one-Freddie-said.
“What the hell?” Three plates shattered on the hardwood floor almost simultaneously. Our waitress had picked the wrong moment to come out of the kitchen.
The two guns swung to cover her and the shotgun discharged across the table. A hole about a foot wide appeared in the back of a chair one table over and the chair flew end over end.
“Shit,” Hank yelled.
Pistol-toting Freddie got my left elbow in his gut just as his gun swung back toward me. The pistol butt almost connected with my head, but I ducked just in time.
I was dimly aware of several things going on at once: first, that I couldn’t hear all that well, second, that Hank was already out of his chair and grappling with the shotgun, that our waitress was screaming her fool head off and that Julie was using Jake-shotgun boy-as a punching bag.
I had my legs under me and sudden adrenaline working in my favor. As Freddie bent double I launched myself at him with all my weight. The chair underneath me toppled as I left it and I came down on top of him, hard.
I had the wrist from his gun hand in my grip and I slammed it hard into the floor. The pistol, an old Luger, dislodged from his fingers and rattled across the floor.
“You sonuvabitch,” he said. I felt a stinging sensation upside my face. He’d cuffed me a good one.
I reached up, grabbed a handful of greasy hair and forced his head down into the floor, once, twice. After the second time around he stopped moving.
The table where we’d been sitting toppled over and came down on my foot, the one that had been hit by Jake and Freddie’s truck. For an instant I felt the most exquisite, keen-edged, electric-blue pain.
I bit down hard into my lip to keep from screaming, rolled over onto my back and yanked my pulsing foot from underneath the table. A ketchup bottle rolled past my ear.
The tableau going on was one for the scrapbook. Hank had his hands around the shotgun between Jake’s hands, each engaged in a tug-of-war to the death. Julie was on Jake’s back with her hands dug into his face and neck.
“Stupid ass,” she kept saying. “Stupid ass stupid ass stupid ass.”
Hank let go with his right hand, clenched it into a fist and drove it three times in rapid succession into Jake’s nose, cheek and mouth. Jake’s lip split and a tooth tumbled backwards into his mouth. Blood began to flow even as Jake let go of the shotgun and rocked backwards. I noted surprise on Julie’s face-her mouth framed an “Oh!” that I never heard as she fell back underneath Jake.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Ohhhh,” Julie moaned. “My head.”
Hank ran his fingers through her head, feeling.
“She’s got a pretty good knot back here,” he said, “but she should be fine. Wait a minute. I know an old Indian trick. Bill, check on the waitress. She disappeared. I’m hoping she hasn’t called the cops yet.”
“Will do,” I said. I left the two of them there and went back toward the kitchen.
Just as I was about to enter, a tall black man came out. He had a long-barreled twelve gauge shotgun in his hands.
“Whoa there,” I said. “We took their guns away from them.”
“What kinda devilment you brought into my ‘stablishment?” he shouted at me. He raised the shotgun, leveled it at me point blank.
“Nothing,” I said. The hole at the business end was suddenly a cavern hanging in front of my face. A cavern from which quick death in a whirlwind of fire and blood might emerge at any second.
“Put the gun down, stupid ass,” I said.
He looked at me uncertainly.
I yawned.
