hairy-chested instructor wasn’t fly-specking us. Harsh got his usable arm over the barrel of the shotgun and spun his body completely around and the shotgun was torn from Brother’s grip. The gun sailed about twenty feet, landing in the foam where a wave was falling apart on the sand. Now Brother stood spraddle-legged and wide open for a kick, so Harsh let him have it. In the groin.
Brother fell backward when the kick got him, but instead of turning green and staying down, he got up again at once. Harsh ran for the shotgun. He tripped and fell face first into the wet sand, but got his good hand on the shotgun after what seemed forever, and sat up. A wave came in and broke and drenched him with salt water almost to the hip pockets. He watched Brother. “You want the other barrel?”
“Give me that gun, Harsh.”
“I’ll give you what’s in the barrel, I ain’t kidding you.”
There was a silence—what the fellow would call a pregnant silence, Harsh thought. He glowered over the shotgun sights and kept the muzzle pointed at Brother’s face.
Brother smiled a rather odd smile. If the smile was intended to worry Harsh, it succeeded, for he felt certain Brother was going to come at him again. But Brother turned and walked, in no hurry at all, back to the house.
Harsh tried to get up from the wet sand, but his legs refused the job. He looked down at the shotgun, and then he realized—he was sure by looking at the down hammers—that both barrels had exploded when Brother fired the gun. He had been threatening Brother with an empty weapon.
When Harsh saw Mr. Hassam the next morning, he threw up his arm and waved him over. He was very glad to see him. Mr. Hassam walked into the sun-splashed dining patio adjacent to the kitchen where Harsh was sitting on an iron spider chair eating breakfast. “You got back, eh? It seemed like you were gone forever.”
“I came in this morning early.” Mr. Hassam waved at the table. “I like to get my own breakfast. Excuse me.” He went into the kitchen.
Harsh listened to pans rattling for a time, then moved over to the kitchen door. “What are you fixing yourself?”
“Pompano sauteed in butter with capers. I like fish for breakfast. Could I fix you some?”
“I guess I could go for a little more. I got an appetite this morning, for a change. I’m glad to see you back, Mr. Hassam. I mean that. Nobody else around here offers to prepare me breakfast.”
“Thank you, Harsh. I do not see why you should not be popular.”
“Neither do I, but I keep having run-ins with different people around here.”
“You mean Brother?”
Harsh nodded. “Yeah, that’s who I mean. You know something, I never seen a guy like that bastard. I mean I don’t make him out. No crap. He scares the hell out of me, I’m not fooling you. You know what he tried to do yesterday afternoon? Blow my gut right out of me with a shotgun. Blow it right out of me.”
Mr. Hassam poured coffee into a cup. “Yes. Brother told me this morning. He is very sorry. He said he lost his head. He asked me to express his regrets.”
“He what?”
“He is very sorry, and wants to express his regrets.”
Harsh laughed. “Do you expect me to believe that?”
“Harsh, I could explain how you can avoid future trouble with Brother. I mean, I can tell you some things that may help you exercise restraint and tolerance.”
“I’ll restrain him with a brickbat, he points that shotgun at me again.”
“Harsh, here is the first thing I want to tell you. Brother has a mental handicap, an affliction known as paranoia. It comes and goes, and sometimes it reaches the point where he has to go to a sanitarium and take shock treatments.”
“That’s no news to me, Mr. Hassam. I had figured out he was nuts. You just watch him, anybody would know.”
“Harsh, if you will make allowances for his illness, I think you can handle him. Particularly now, since you bested him in the encounter yesterday.”
“Oh, he figured I licked him, did he? He had me guessing. I couldn’t tell what he thought. He ruined my night’s sleep. I kept wondering when he was going to pop in on me with another shotgun. That’s a tough boy, that Brother. You know what I did, I kicked him right in the privates as hard as I could. It didn’t faze the bastard. He got up ready to eat me. And he would have, except by then I had my mitts on the blunderbuss.”
“That is not so strange.”
“Listen, a kick in the testes like that would put me down for good.”
“Not if you didn’t have them.”
Harsh’s jaw dropped. “The hell you say! Is that what he is? I thought those guys were soft and peaceful.”
“Well, Brother is not. Brother adheres to a routine of rigorous diet and exercise, perhaps to subdue evidence of his handicap, I don’t know.”
“I’m glad you told me about it, Mr. Hassam. Nobody tells me anything but you. I feel kind of sorry for the guy, at that.”
“Yes, and you would feel even sorrier if I told you who did it to him.”
“I would? Why?”
“It was his brother.”
“Jesus. You mean his own brother—Jesus!”
Mr. Hassam tasted of a caper. “El
Harsh stared. “You mean
“Now you’re getting it.”
“Jesus. The first time Brother laid eyes on me, back in that hospital, he gave one hell of a jump. He hated me right off, and he’s hated me ever after. I can begin to see why.”
Mr. Hassam transferred pompano to plates with the skill of a chef. “I trust this information will enable you to be more tolerant.”
“Yeah, it will make his crap easier to swallow.” Harsh accepted one of the plates. “What was the trouble between the brothers, anyway?”
Mr. Hassam smiled thinly. “Miss Muirz. They had a falling out over her.”
Harsh put the plate holding the pompano on the kitchen cabinet. He stood there for a while. “Miss Muirz.” He picked up a cup of coffee and drank it all. “Well, it figures.”
Harsh had intended to bring up the subject of the fingerprints on the bank deposit card but the news about Brother caused him to forget it until after breakfast, when Mr. Hassam brought out the mastic material he had brought with him from New York for the hand casts. The materials consisted of a little tin spray can and a jar of the mastic itself which was the color of taffy candy before it is pulled. Harsh was puzzled, but he followed instructions and sat down and permitted his hands to be sprayed from the can—both hands, the healthy one and the one in the cast. This placed an oily coating on his skin, designed to keep the mastic from adhering to the skin.
Harsh watched Mr. Hassam open the jar of mastic. “Hey, wait a minute. What is this for?”
“You need not be afraid.”
“I ain’t worried about my yellow feathers. What is that gunk, is what I wanta know.”
“We are going to have a custom-made pair of gloves fashioned for you, Harsh.”
“Yeah? Is that right, now?” Harsh drew his hands back. “Just a new pair of gloves, huh?”
“You’re not scared, are you?”
“You know how it is. You’re sure you’re being framed, you get shotguns pointed at your belly, and you get cute answers to questions. I ain’t scared, but I get to wondering.”
“I wish you would go along with me, Harsh.” Mr. Hassam sounded tired. “I have to do this. I have to get these gloves made, gloves which will carry your fingerprints, so that we can place your prints on additional bank deposit cards. You can understand, we can’t run all the way up here from South America with every bank deposit
