“You two already fucked up royally once tonight,” I said. “How?s it feel, knowing you screwed up
and your boss got his head handed to him.”
Larry?s face turned purple. He made a funny sound in his throat and took a step toward me. But before
he could raise his hand a fist came from my left and caught him on the corner of the jaw. The top part
of his face didn?t budge; the bottom part went west. His jaw cracked like a gunshot. He was so ugly, it
was hard to tell whether the look on his face was one of pain or surprise. A second later his eyes did a
slow roll and he dropped to his knees.
He made a noise that sounded like “Arftoble.”
The Stick was standing beside me, shaking out his knuckles.
The other tough went for the Stick and I pulled my .38 from under my arm and stuck the barrel as far
up his left nostril as the gun sight would permit.
“Don?t you hear good?” I said.
He stared at the gun and then at me and then back at the gun. The Stick kicked him in the nuts as hard
as I?ve ever seen anybody kicked anywhere. He hit the ground beside his partner; his teeth cracked
shut, trapping the cry of pain. It screeched in the back of his throat. Tears flooded his eyes. He fell
forward on his hands and threw up. The other one was shaking his head, his jaw wobbling uselessly
back and forth.
“Gladolabor,” he said.
I thought about what Cisco had told me, about how Stick was young and not too jaded, and about how
I might give him a few pointers on due process. Now was hardly the time. He was doing just fine. I
put my artillery away and smiled.
“Y?know,” he said, “we got a pretty good act here.”
“Yeah. Maybe we should tighten it up a little, take it on the road,” I agreed.
Stick and 1 checked over the terrace, ignoring the two stricken mastodons.
“Obstructing the scene of a crime,” he mused. “Where did you come up with that?”
“It sounded good,” I said. “Did it sound good to you?”
“I was convinced,” he said. “Cisco says you?re a lawyer; I figured you should know.”
He stepped into the gazebo and threw on the lights. The calliope music started, but the merry-goround was destroyed, tilted on one side like a bloody beret. It was eerie, the mutilated horses frozen in
up-and-down positions, heads blown away, feet missing, while the calliope played its happy melody.
“Cisco likes to tell people I?m a lawyer, to impress them,” I said. “I never practiced law”
“How come?” he asked.
A bloody horse?s head, with flared nostrils and fiery, bloody eyes, lay at my feet. I lifted it slightly
