the edge.
'What can I do for you, mister?' she said.
'I'll have the address of that one-armed fucker,' I said, then slammed the back of her left hand with the flat sap. Probably harder than I meant to. Betty snapped the doors locked, then turned to cover the swamper with the little pistol.
'Motherfuck!' Annie screamed, then, undeterred, reached across the bar for my shirt, so I slapped her on the fat right elbow with the sap.
'You ain't going to be popping nobody with that hand,' I said, 'and if you don't tell me where to find that Molineaux son of a bitch, I'm gonna put knots on your head a goat can't climb.'
'I don't know nobody by that name,' she said. A fat tear slipped out of her eye as she cradled her arm.
'That one-armed bastard, lady.'
'He goes by the name of Morrison, mister,' the swamper said quietly behind me. 'I'll show you where he lives. Just don't hurt her no more. Please.'
'You best be right, old man,' I said, 'or I'll be back and burn this fucking place to the ground and barbecue this sucker-punching bitch with it.'
'Don't worry, sir,' the swamper said, shuffling toward the front doors. 'Rollie pays good but not that good.'
Before they left, Betty said to the fat woman, 'You better put that hand in the ice, ma'am. It might be broken.'
'What about my elbow?' she wailed.
'Just a stinger, I'll bet,' Betty said. 'He's good with his hands.'
Annie didn't seem mollified, but she stuffed her huge hand deep into the ice.
'You're out of fucking control,' Betty whispered as she touched my nose lightly as we went out the door. I had no way to disagree. Just kept sniffling through the day.
The swamper directed us to an older but fairly well-maintained brick house a few blocks from the bar. 'Roland Morrison' was printed on the mailbox.
'You want me to knock?' the swamper asked.
'Fuck that,' I said. 'Honey, if this old fart runs, shoot him in the foot.'
The swamper smiled. 'Hell, man, I ain't run in thirty years.'
'This ain't no time to take it up again,' I said, then, guessing that this wasn't the sort of neighborhood where any of the residents would bother to investigate any sound short of automatic gunfire, I kicked in the hollowcore door.
The front room was cold enough to hang meat, the air conditioner blasting on high. Molineaux slept, even through the crashing of the door, passed out on the couch, wrapped in a dirty blanket, one knobby knee sticking out, his single arm dangling to the floor. A bottle of Lagavulin Scotch – probably a gift from his daughter – and several empty beer cans sat on the coffee table. The large, new television murmured in the corner. Stale beer farts filled the room.
I eased my boot down on Molineaux's fingers, pinning them to the carpet, then placed my right hand over his face, pinching off his nose and covering his mouth, and holding his stump with my left.
The one-armed man struggled to breathe, but I held on until he turned blue. I let him have a quick breath, then cut his air off again until his face turned a deep, painful purple.
After Molineaux sucked in a couple of ragged breaths, he growled, 'You son of a bitch, if I had both arms, I'd beat your fucking head in.'
'Forget it, man,' I said. 'You've probably always been the kind of yellow-bellied bastard who had some excuse.' I turned him loose and stood up, saying, 'But if you want, asshole, I'll tie one arm behind my back.'
Molineaux struggled to sit up. 'Shit, man, I've got such a hangover I can't even see straight. Mind if I have a taste?' He jerked his head toward the half-empty bottle of Scotch, and I nodded. He grabbed the bottle, had a hit that made it bubble, then tried to backhand me with it.
While his arm was drawn back, I broke Molineaux's nose with a quick left jab, then I suddenly flashed on the one-armed man aiming vicious kicks at my crotch, so I let him have a full-bore right cross. I felt teeth and jawbone break under my fist. Molineaux flew over the couch, crashed into the wall, then sprawled, unconscious, on the couch, blood and teeth dribbling out of his mouth.
'Dammit,' I said, turning him on his side so he wouldn't strangle on his own blood.
'Jesus,' Betty said quietly.
'Reckon you killed him?' the swamper asked.
'He's not dead,' I said, 'but he's going to be difficult to interrogate with his jaw flapping loose.' I turned to the swamper. 'What's your name, sir?'
'Joe Willie,' the black man said softly.
'Well, Mr. Willie -'
'Joe Willie Custer,' the black man corrected me.
'Well, Mr. Custer,' I continued, 'would you mind answering a few questions?'
'Not the way you ask them, man.'
'Don't worry, sir,' I said, pulling my money clip out. 'Name your price.'
'How about a hundred?'
'How about two fifties?'
'Better than a poke in the eye with your right hand, man,' Joe Willie said, stuffing the bills into his shirt pocket.
'Listen, I've already beaten up a fat lady and a one-armed man,' I said, 'so be cool. I'm not about to start roughing up senior citizens now.'
'I'm cool, man.'
I asked, 'What was this asshole doing here?'
'Hiding from the law, everybody thought, but I don't know exactly. Mr. Morrison showed up six or seven years ago with too much money for this neighborhood,' Joe Willie said. 'Then a couple of weeks ago, he started spreading money around, saying if anybody came around looking for his daughter, we were to discourage him. But I guess you weren't discouraged.'
'No, but I'm sure as hell confused,' I said. 'You take off, Mr. Custer. And please, keep your mouth shut. You know I'm the kind of son of a bitch who will come back.' Then I pulled off two more fifties. 'Give this to Annie. But don't tell her I'm sorry, because I'm fucking not.'
Joe Willie added to his stash, thanked me, then shuffled out of the room.
'What now?' Betty wondered.
'Toss the apartment and hope for the best,' I said. Without much hope.
But once again, good luck prevailed over hard work. I found the crumpled envelope in a plastic trash bag in the Dumpster in the alley with a return address for a Molly Molineaux just off the Strip in Las Vegas. I went back to the apartment, filled a homemade bindle with baking powder, left it open on the coffee table, then decided against binding Molineaux's good arm to his ankles, and fixed the door as best I could. A few minutes later I found a pay phone at a convenience store on our way to Hobby Airport and called 911.
'That should keep Molineaux busy for a few days,' I said to Betty as I climbed back into the Caddy with a couple of cold beers. 'At least until the lab finds time to test the baking powder.' I cracked one of the beers and sucked about half of it down in a single swallow. 'Jesus, what a morning.'
'Honey, I've got to say something,' Betty ventured.
'What?' I said, braced for some conversation I didn't want to have. 'Want to go home just because I lost it?'
'I've never been afraid of you before,' Betty said softly, 'but I saw your face when you whopped that fat lady and when you hit the guy so hard that teeth flew out, and quite frankly it scared the hell out of me. Perhaps it's time to take a break.'
I worked my way through the maze of construction and crazed traffic toward the airport without answering her.
