“For the record,” Bad Tiger said, “I never liked you much.”
Timmy leaned forward slightly, then fell on his face.
That’s when it happened.
As Bad Tiger turned, Strangler, quick as a card cheat, dipped down and grabbed one of the weights and threw it, hit Bad Tiger in the face. Bad Tiger groaned and fell on his back. Strangler stepped forward and put his foot on Bad Tiger’s gun hand. He pushed his weight down till Bad Tiger let go of the gun.
Bad Tiger made a noise like a rat trapped in a fruit jar, managed to jerk his hand free. As he got to his feet, Strangler hit him with a punch that knocked him across the room and into the front door.
The door wasn’t closed so good, and when Bad Tiger flipped backwards against it, it flew open and he went tumbling down the stairs.
“Now I’m going to show you how you really hit someone,” Strangler said, and picked up the little barbell.
By the time he started for the door, Bad Tiger was gone.
46
Outside, we saw Bad Tiger running across the lot in the direction of the rides. Strangler took off after him.
Jane said, “Well?”
She broke into a run, and we followed.
Darting between people and around concessions and booths, we followed Strangler and Bad Tiger to where the air was filled with the grinding and clanking of gears, shifting seats, and people yelling and laughing.
Bad Tiger was making good time, but Strangler, big man or not, was making better. We kept running after them, and then Bad Tiger came up against a swirling ride and stopped. The chairs with people in it swung down and back up, around and down again. Bad Tiger seemed kind of frozen by it. He looked at the ride; then he turned and looked at us. But mainly he looked at Strangler and that barbell.
Bad Tiger reached down and pulled up his pants cuff. There was a little holster there, and in the little holster was a little revolver.
Like I said, it wasn’t a big gun, but any gun if it’s pointed at you is big, which is why little men love to carry them.
He pointed it at Strangler.
“I ain’t running no more,” Bad Tiger said.
“You’ve run all your life,” Strangler said. “You ain’t nothing but a runner.”
“Yeah, you think so. I tell you, I ain’t running from you no more. You best just let me go.”
“Without your money.” The way Strangler said it, I thought he was about to break out and snicker.
“I don’t need no money. Banks got plenty of money.”
“Nah,” Strangler said. “I let you go, I figure I’m going to have to see you again, and I don’t want to.”
Strangler advanced with the barbell.
“Then I’ll shoot you.”
“I just don’t care,” Strangler said, and stepped forward.
Bad Tiger fired the gun.
47
The bullet hit Strangler, I knew that, but all he did was grunt and shift a bit, and then he was walking again. Blood was running down his side. His mouth was twisted up and there was spittle on his lips.
Bad Tiger looked at Strangler like he’d just discovered that a martian had landed at the carnival. He was so startled, he backed up a step.
He fired again.
This time I heard the bullet slam into something behind us. I turned my head and saw one of the teddy bears at a booth topple over, bleeding white cotton stuffing.
Strangler was less than three feet away from Bad Tiger now. He made a noise in his throat like a dog growling over a bone. People had started to understand what was happening. A lady screamed. There were yells from the spinning ride. The guy that worked the ride lever said, “Hey now, hey now,” and he made a quick retreat around the other side of the ride. I hoped he was going to get some law.
Bad Tiger yelled and pulled the trigger.
The gun barked.
Strangler staggered, but he still didn’t go down.
Bad Tiger took one more step back, and that was when it happened.
He stepped right in between the whirling seats of a ride, but he was there for less than the blink of an eye. The next seat swinging around caught him solid, and I got to tell you, it was an amazing and a horrible sight.
It lifted him so quick it was hard to believe it was happening. It was like he had learned to fly.
He was tossed like a Raggedy Ann doll. It flung him up, and he fell back down. But he didn’t hit the ground. He was struck again by another seat and bounced into a pole. That bounced him back into another spinning seat, and that one caught him in such a way that he was knocked across the lot at a height of about thirty feet. He went like he had been shot out of a cannon.
We watched with amazement as he crashed into a popcorn stand and it exploded in a rain of white puffy corn and a running man. Oily butter leaked yellow over the ground. Bad Tiger’s suit soaked it up like a fresh biscuit.
Bad Tiger didn’t move. He was facedown and one arm was twisted behind his back like he was trying to scratch a hard-to-reach spot low down.
“Oh,” Tony said. “Oh my.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Oh my.”
Dazed, we walked over to Strangler. He was holding his hand against his left side. There was a bloody spot on the right side of his bare chest as well. But Strangler, he was still standing.
A crowd gathered around Bad Tiger, but then they just stood there looking at him. One man stepped forward and nudged Bad Tiger’s body with the toe of his shoe, like he was trying to wake him up.
Someone else yelled, “Get a doctor!”
Strangler said, “I can tell you from here. Ain’t no need to check his pulse.”
48
A while later an ambulance sped up with its siren on and two men jumped out and opened the back and rolled out a stretcher, headed for where Bad Tiger lay.
They picked him up and turned him over gently, put him on the stretcher. One of the men carrying him, said, “Well, he’s ate his last pickle.”
A man in the crowd pointed at Strangler.
“He was shooting at that guy, the one without a shirt, and he backed into the ride while he was doing it.”
“Not our department,” said one of the ambulance men.
They put him in the ambulance and drove away. No siren, moving slowly. No one in a hurry now.
We walked with Strangler to his trailer. Inside, he put the false bottom in the trunk, replaced the barbells and all the rest back inside, and closed the lid. He sat on the couch and looked at Timmy. Timmy looked smaller than I remembered.
After a while, the cops came, two of them. They knocked on the door politely, and when I let them in they looked at the body on the floor, then at us. One of the cops was thin with a sweet face. The other was a stocky cop who looked like he ate bullets for breakfast and cannons for dinner. For supper, maybe the cannonballs.
Jane was wrapping Strangler’s side. There was already a bandage on his chest.
She said, “I reckon both bullets are still in him.”
“He looks spry for two bullets,” said the stocky cop.
“Yeah, well,” Jane said, “he is naturally spry.”
The cops walked over and looked at Strangler.
“Someone called a doctor,” said the thin cop. “He’s on his way.”
“I’m all right,” Strangler said. “It wasn’t much of a gun.”
“You could still use a doctor, ” Jane said.
“You know,” said the stocky cop, “we got a body on the floor, we got another one thrown through a popcorn stand, twisted up like a Boy Scout knot, but we ain’t got no explanation.”
“He tried to rob Strangler,” Jane said.