Private Eye Four-Pack, page 39
“No thanks,” I said. But I pulled out a chair and sat.
“Wouldn’t hurt you any.”
“Done wonders for you.”
“Thought all you big-time football players were big drinkers.”
“Another myth shattered.”
“Matt didn’t tell me it was you that was coming. I’m honored.”
“You’ll get over it.”
A leggy waitress bustled over. Nice figure, too much makeup, too little covering the nice figure. “Get you something, good-lookin’?”
“You have coffee?” I asked.
“I can make you some.”
“Fine. I take it black.”
“Do you like it slow and easy?” she said, flashing me a smile marred by one crooked tooth, but still nice teeth.
“Just black, thank you,” I said, smiling. She shrugged. I said, “Bring him some coffee, too.”
Easton laughed. “Coffee messes up my alcohol system.” The waitress looked uneasy. “It’s okay,” Chick said to the waitress. “Coffee’s fine.”
“Cream and sugar?”
Easton looked at me, giving me a bent smile. “I want cream ’n’ sugar, daddy?” he asked. I looked back at him. Then he said, “I’ll take mine black, too, like my hero and bestest buddy here. He’s a legitimate American hero, ya know? Caught three touchdown passes in the Super Bowl. Beat the Raiders with the last one. Fucked up the economy. For me, anyway. The Cowboys were a nine-point underdog. I had two bills on the Raiders. You caught that last pass and broke my heart, Storme.” The waitress was looking at me.
“He telling the truth?” she asked. Patted her hair.
“I look like a pro football player to you?”
“Some. Don’t know for sure what one looks like. You’re cute. Got nice shoulders. Could be.” She smiled. Nice-looking working girl.
“He’s drunk,” I said. “Never touched a football in my life.”
She sighed, then shrugged. Left to get the coffee.
“I may drink too much,” Easton said, a big grin on his face. “But I ain’t no liar. What’s the matter? You ashamed of it?”
“No. Doesn’t mean anything, though. Just a game.”
“There’re people who’d disagree with that. Like that waitress. She’s extra deadly. Rodeo beautiful.”
“So, what do you do?” I asked.
“Mostly, I drink,” he said. “Though it isn’t widely known.” When he smiled, little wrinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes. He was going to be difficult to avoid liking. “I show off some. Hire out some.”
“Hire out?”
“Bodyguard. Bounty hunter. Somebody skips with your bail money down, I find ’em, drag ’em back. But I’m only wonderful at it.”
I considered him. He was twenty pounds lighter than me, rangy and lean like a Montana cowboy. Most bodyguards are steroid-bloated freaks with twenty-inch necks and screaming-eagle tattoos, their eyes dark and hooded under thick foreheads. Easton didn’t fit the mold. He seemed too affable, too relaxed. Too drunk. “You don’t look like a bodyguard.”
“I eat fire and shit ice cubes,” he said. “I’m jumping Arnold Schwarzenegger’s wife and he knows it. Chick T. Easton is the name, danger is the game. The T stands for Terrific.” I grinned. Very difficult not to like him. He drained his beer, then asked, “So, what does the man with the best hands in the NFL do when he quits playing games?”
Good question. I was still working on the answer. “Semiretired, more or less. Hunt and fish. Race the moon. You know, you don’t look like a bounty hunter, either.”
“Got a rubber hose, a pair of handcuffs, and an autographed picture of Steve McQueen.” The waitress brought the coffee.
“Thanks,” I said. She smiled. I said, “He says you’re rodeo beautiful.”
She leaned back at the waist and looked at Chick. “Rodeo beautiful? I never heard such a thing. What does it mean?”
Easton stirred his coffee with a swizzle stick that had a little spur on top, looked into the whirlpool he’d made in the coffee, a half-smile on his face. He looked up and said, “Means if I were to bust out the gate with you, darlin’, I’d ride the full eight seconds, jump off, and take a bow.”
She laughed. “You ornery thing.” She slapped him on the shoulder. “You better behave.”
“No offense meant,” he said.
“None taken,” she said. “Just let me know if you need anything.” She smiled at us and walked away.
I sipped my coffee; its warmth spread through me. I was still a little spooked by my encounter in the woods.
He said, “So, why’d you do it? Why’d you quit?”
“I grew up,” I said.
“It’ll happen, unless you’re careful. You were the first white boy since Lance Alworth who could go uptown for it.”
“Meanwhile, babies were born, people went to work at real jobs, got married, sent the kids to school. Me, I was catching footballs. Everybody acting like it gave me significance.”
“Pretty cynical.”
“Sorry. Don’t mean to be. After a while it didn’t mean what it did at first. Money got in the way of the fun. Besides, it’s not exactly real life.”
“Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” he said, then sipped his coffee. “Or something like that.” He shrugged.
“Well,” I said, “you’re the most lyrical bounty hunter I’ve ever known.”
“Not just another pretty face.”
“Look. I’ve got to run over to the sheriff’s office. Think you can sit here without drinking the place dry and propositioning the waitress with your cracker-barrel wise guy routine?”
“Too much temptation. Besides, I need to go with you. Check wanted posters like us bounty hunters do. See if anybody’s wanted—dead or alive. The dead ones are easier to catch.”
“My truck’s parked in back,” I said.
“Good. I’ll drive. I’m in no condition to be walking.”
It was 6:30. We stepped over red-and-white Budweiser cans and broken pavement, grass peeking through the concrete like the last hairs on a balding man’s head. Twilight swallowed the opaque light from the sun, which was an angry orange blister on the western horizon. Easton smelled of cigarettes and whiskey, yet his gait was sure and his step had a spring to it.
We turned the corner and saw the Bronco. Three men leaned against it. They were laughing roughly and sharing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, a six-pack of Olympia on top of the hood. I thought I heard Easton chuckle low in his chest. I didn’t see anything funny.
“What’s up, guys?” I said. I didn’t want trouble, just my vehicle. They were in their late twenties. Cowboy boots and baseball caps with seed company names on the crown. One of the hats said Shit Happens! Perfect.
They leaned against the Bronco, passing the bottle around, tilting it to their lips, then wiping their mouths on their sleeves. I felt very tired. The only other car in the lot was an aging copper-colored Mark IV with a torn vinyl roof, its glory days a memory. Two of the men were over six feet tall—one slender and one much heavier than the others, looked to go about 260. The heavy guy had a full beard like Charlie Daniels. Didn’t look like a fiddle player, though. Mr. Shit Happens was a small, ferretlike guy with a three-day-old beard. Been watching Miami Vice reruns.
“Evenin’,” said the third man, a lean cowboy with a long jawline. “This your car, boy?”
Two tours of Indochina, seven years in the NFL, and I’m still a boy. Oh, well. Dignity in the face of ignorance is difficult, but attainable. I nodded. Smiled. I was saving my searing Clint Eastwood squint.
“Nice ride,” said the fat guy.
“Hope you don’t mind us using it,” said Shit Happens, leaning against the door. “Not that we give a big shit.” Since he was so incredibly witty, they all laughed. Guffawed, in fact. If there is anything I hate, it’s being guffawed at by people with room temperature IQs.
I tried to get around the ferret to open the door. “Excuse me,” I said, trying for affable. He didn’t move. Odd. My affable is generally infallible. Must’ve had a hole in his upbringing. “May I get in my truck?”
“When we’re done,” he said, hooking a thumb in a belt loop and passing the whiskey bottle to Jawline.
I exhaled through my mouth. Rubbed my face with a hand. “Well,” I said, low, to Easton, “I’ve heard you talk and I know you can drink, but now I could use some of that Terrific stuff.”
“Showtime,” he said. Cleared his throat. Smiled. “Fellas. We don’t want to interrupt the fun. Just want to take the truck. We’re late for piano lessons. No problems, huh?”
Half the whiskey was gone. Enough distilled courage to keep them from moving. Local toughs. Probably roughed up drunks once in a while. Terrorized the college kids. Something to brag about on the night shift at the canning factory. Jawline looked the toughest of the three, though Fatbeard would be the hardest to put down. Jawline was lean, flinty—a couple yards of angles and bones. He unfolded his arms and eyed Chick. Ferret Face leaned nonchalantly against the truck, a nasty smile on his face. He was the least of our worries unless he was radioactive.
“When we’re done, asshole,” said Fatbeard. “Come back later.”
“You tell him I was an asshole?” Chick asked me.
“No,” I said, keeping my eyes on them. “Maybe he’s intuitive.”
Jawline had the whiskey bottle. We could just walk away and come back later, but I was tired and it was my truck. And I wanted to drive it. Now. Personality quirk.
“He don’t look intuitive to me,” said Chick. “Just another fat drunk. Plenty of those.”
“One more time,” I said. “No trouble. Just want to get in the truck, then we’ll drive away. That’s all.”
“Who’s he callin’ fat?” asked Fatbeard, jerking his head in Chick’s direction. “Who you callin’ fat, boy?”
“Certainly not you, Twiggy. When you go to the movies do you stand at the back, or do they knock out an armrest?”
“What’re you guys doing here, anyway?” asked the ferret.
“We’re from the EPA,” I said. “We’re checking reports of creeping slime. You need to turn yourselves in. Go easier for you if you do.”
Jawline lifted the bottle to his lips as Shit Happens reached into his jacket. Fatso started toward Chick. “You boys want some shit—” he began before he was interrupted by a left hand that snaked from Chick Easton, catching the bearded man in the throat. With the heel of my hand I smacked the bottom of the tilted whiskey bottle, ramming the hard glass into Jawline’s mouth. The glass cracked against the cowboy’s teeth, a sickening sound, and his head snapped back. He yelped, dropping the bottle, and it shattered on the asphalt. I kicked him in the shin and he screamed. Chick jumped up and kicked Ferret Face below the left shoulder, where the man was reaching into his jacket. The kick pinned the hand inside the jacket. There was a distinct pop, like marbles clacking together. The little man screamed and bent over, cradling the damaged arm.
Before Jawline could straighten, I brought an elbow up alongside his jaw, a big target. He staggered back but didn’t go down. He was tough. I aimed a left jab at his throat, which missed and bounced off his shoulder. He rolled away, tried to cover with his arms, and set himself. I shot another left at his head and caught him on the ear. He shook his head, sending droplets of blood flying from his mouth. There was a half-moon cut out of his upper lip, and his teeth were pink with blood. He came at me, bony fists flailing. I took the blows on my arms and shoulders, but they still hurt. He was no boxer, but he’d been in plenty of street fights. The kind of guy willing to take punishment in order to get in his licks and hurt you. But he had too much booze in him. His feet and body rhythm were out of sync, betraying him. I kept him away with jabs and body shots.
Finally, I faked to his midsection with a left, which caused him to drop his arms to cover, then I looped a left hook over his arms that caught him on the point of the chin. It spun him a quarter turn, and I drove a right uppercut into his solar plexus. It felt as good as a three-hundred-yard tee shot. His breath exploded from him in a shower of saliva and blood and he sat down hard on the pavement, blood running from his mouth and nose. He held up a hand. “No more,” he said, wheezing through split and swollen lips. “ ‘Nuff.”
I stepped away from him, and he scrambled to his feet and ran away. He was smarter than his fat friend. The heavy drunk swung wildly at Chick, who leaned away from the impotent punches and slapped him—once, then again. The fat man winced, shook his head, and swung again. Slow learner. Chick slapped his hand away absently, then cuffed him on the ears, left, right, left, right. “Quit,” Chick said. “I can do this all day.”
The ferret tried to get behind Chick, but I grabbed him by the collar and kicked him behind the knee. He didn’t weigh much, and I had him off his feet, using the momentum of his collapse to drive him against the fender of the Bronco. He thudded into the unforgiving metal and slumped to the pavement, moaning.
Chick finished off the big man with a jump kick, the impact snapping his head back. His legs folded under him like paper, and the back of his head cracked against the pavement.
Chick dropped his hands to his sides. Wasn’t even breathing hard. “These are some tough guys,” he said, fishing in his shirt pocket for a cigarette. “Need to be more careful where we hang out.”
I grabbed the ferret by the front of his jacket and sat him against the tire. “Can you walk?” I asked him.
His face was puckered up in a grimace. “My hand. It’s broke. Motherfucker broke my hand.”
“Dirty names,” said Chick, shaking his head. “And I don’t even know your mother. Quit whining and give it to me.” Chick held out his hand, palm up, flexed his fingers as if calling for something. “Come on, let’s have it.”
“What?” said the ferret. His hat was sideways on his head. His eyes were furtive.
“Don’t play games with me. You still got one hand left. Want a matched set? I want what’s in the jacket.”
“Who are you guys?” He was perplexed. One minute he was drinking whiskey, talking tough, terrorizing the parking lot, and the next thing he knows he’s sitting in the chat with a broken hand, his day screwed up, and two strangers standing over him.
“I’m Butch Cassidy, and this here’s the Sundance Kid. Now gimme. Everything in your pocket. Pronto.”
The ferret reached into his jacket with his good hand, mumbling to himself. His right hand had an obscene knot on it. He didn’t look Chick in the eye when he handed him the wheel-shaped disk and the small lump of aluminum foil. The disk was a Japanese throwing star. Chick looked at it and smiled, then his shoulders began to bounce up and down merrily. He held the star up and squinted at it.
“We were in serious danger here,” Chick said. “This man has been trained in the martial arts.” He looked at the man on the ground, whose face was turning red. “Where’d you get it, shit-for-brains? Comic book ad? And what’s this?” He rustled the tinfoil. “Ex-Lax? Looks like rock candy. What do you think, Storme?” He handed me the tinfoil, and I looked at the crystal, the cousin to the ones I’d recovered in the woods where a dog lay dead and a man with an arrow wound had run away from a million-dollar field of dreams.
“It ain’t nothin’,” the man said, licking his lips with a sharp tongue. “Give it back.”
I shook my head and closed my fist around the rock. “Believe we’ll keep it.” The ferret started to protest, changed his mind, then started again.
“You’re pissing on the wrong guy, buddy,” he said. “I got friends’ll fuck up your life.”
“I doubt you have all that many friends,” I said, helping him to his feet. “So peddle that crap somewhere else.” I straightened his hat on his head and made sure he could walk on his own. He forgot to thank me. We got into the Bronco and left him and Fatso to lick their wounds. He gave us the finger as we drove away. Another new friend.
“Let’s get something to eat,” Chick said. “Slapping creeps around always gives me an appetite.”
“It’ll wait.” My hands hurt. The left one was swelling. “Have to stop by the sheriff’s office first.”
“What’s in the foil?”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t. But it wasn’t rock candy.
THREE
The Paradise County sheriff’s office was a new building. Gray brick and aluminum and glass. Landscaped lawn. No potbellied stove with a speckled coffeepot on top. No oak racks of Winchesters on the wall or skeleton keys on a big iron ring. No hardwood floors bleached with use and spur-pocked. No character. No ambience. Progress. Antiseptic and way overrated. A deputy with corporal’s stripes manned the desk. The name on his pocket nametag was Simmons. I asked to see the sheriff.
“He’s out. We got a call from the Silver Spur, a bar. Fight or something. He should be back soon. Can I help you?”
I looked at Chick. He shrugged his shoulders. “No,” I said. “We’ll wait. He said to ask for him.”
Corporal Simmons led us to a small waiting lounge. There was an instant coffee machine, a Coca-Cola machine, and a large windowed snack-and-candy machine, the kind with the corkscrew dispensers to push the candy out. I put two quarters in the big red Coke machine and a scarlet-and-white can clattered out onto the silver lip. Chick shook his head at the offered can and lit a cigarette. I sat on an aluminum-framed davenport with cheap cushions. Drank my Coke. Read a year-old copy of Sports Afield. Black cigarette burn marks pocked the sofa, and the air was rank with the soaked-in aroma of stale tobacco. After a few minutes I closed the magazine.
“Where’d you learn that stuff?” I asked Chick.
“What stuff?”
“Karate.”
“Oh, that. I watch a lot of television.”
I waited for more, but there was no more forthcoming. Okay, so he wasn’t going to say. Fine with me. He had his reasons. I had mine. Been a long time since I’d seen anyone move so quickly, so fluidly. Not since I quit playing football, anyway. Maybe it was the unexpectedness of it. Thought he was a burnout. The boilermakers he’d knocked back hardly affected him. The guy had instincts. I had bruises all over my upper body, swollen hands, and a cut along my neck. They hadn’t laid a finger on him.
