"I just didn't act very smart. I'm sorry," I said.
"Where is the gun?" the older of the two cops said. He was big and bareheaded and wore pilot's sunglasses.
"In the house."
"I suggest you leave it there. I also suggest you call us the next time you think somebody's trying to hurt you."
"Yes, sir, I'll do that. Actually I tried. Didn't the handbill man call you all?"
"The what?"
"A guy who puts handbills on front doors. I sent him to the grocery to call you when I thought my line was cut." I realized that I was getting back into the story again when I should let it drop.
"I don't know anything about it. Believe me, I hope I don't hear any more reports from this address. Are we fairly straight on that?"
"Yes, sir, you're quite clear."
They left, and I tried to reorder my morning. When the squad car had pulled up out front, some of the neighbors had come out on the porches. I determined that I was not going to be a curiosity who would hide in his house, so I put on my running shorts and an old pair of boat shoes and began pulling weeds in the front flower bed. The sun was warm on my back, and the clover among the rye grass in the yard was full of small bees. The willow trees out on the river were bent in the breeze. After a few minutes a man's shadow fell across my face and shoulders.
"The phone was broke. I had to go up on Broadway," the man said. His clear blue eyes looked down at me from under his cap.
"Oh, yeah, how you doing?" I said.
"Look, I'm sorry to send you running off like that. It was sort of a misfire."
"I saw the cops leave from the corner. So I had me a soda. Everything worked out all right, huh?"
"Yeah, and I owe you five bucks. Right?"
"Well, that's what you said. But you don't have to, though. It was three blocks before I found a phone."
"A deal's a deal, partner. Come inside. I'll get my wallet."
I opened the screen and walked ahead of him. He caught the screen with his elbow rather than his hand when he came in.
"Could I have a glass of water?" he asked.
"Sure."
We went into the kitchen, and as I took a jelly glass out of the cabinet I saw him slip both hands into his back pockets and smile. I filled the glass from the tap and thought how his smile reminded me of lips painted on an Easter egg. He was still smiling when I turned around and he raised the slapjack and came across my forehead with it. It was black and flat and weighted at the end with lead, and I felt it knock into bone and rake across my eye and nose, then I was falling free into a red-black place deep under the basement floor, with a jelly glass that tumbled in slow motion beside me.
I woke as though I were rising from a dark, wet bubble into light, except my arms were locked behind my head, I couldn't breathe or cry out, and I was drowning. Water cascaded over my face and ran down my nostrils and over the adhesive tape clamped across my mouth. I gagged and choked down in my throat and fought to get air into my lungs and felt the handcuffs bite into my wrists and the chain clank against the drainpipe under the sink. Then I saw the handbill man squatting on his haunches next to me, an empty iced tea pitcher in his hand, a curious expression on his face as though he were watching an animal at the zoo. His eyes were sky blue and laced with tiny threads of white light. He wadded up a ball of paper towels in his hand and blotted my face dry, then widened my eyes with his fingers as an ophthalmologist might. By his foot was one of his handbill sacks.
"You're doing all right. Rest easy and I'll explain the gig to you," he said. He took an Instamatic camera from his bag, focused on my face and the upper half of my body, his mouth askew with concentration, and flashed it twice in my eyes. My head throbbed. He dropped the camera back in his bag.
"I got to take a piss. I'll be right back," he said.
I heard him urinate loudly in the toilet. He flushed it, then walked back into the kitchen and knelt beside me.
"The guy wants before-after shots," he said.
"So I give him before-after shots. He's paying for it, right? But that don't mean I have to do everything else he wants. It's still my gig. Hell, it's both our gig. I don't think you're a bad dude, you just got in the wrong guy's face. So I'm going to cut you all the slack I can."
He looked steadily into my face. His eyes were vacuous, as clear and devoid of meaning as light itself. i "You don't understand, do you?" he asked.
"Look, you piss a guy off bad, you make him look like shit in front of people, you keep turning dials on him, you show him up a punk in front of his gash so they ain't interested in his Dream-sicle anymore, he's going to stay up nights thinking about you."
His eyes were serene, almost kind, as though it had all been explained in a way that should be acceptable to even the most obtuse.
"You're a little thick, aren't you?" he said.
"Look, you're supposed to go in pieces, left lung, then cock in the mouth. But I say fuck that. At least not while the guy knows it. Nobody tells me how to do my work, man. Hey, this maybe isn't much comfort to you, but it could be a lot worse. Believe me."
He put his left palm flat on my chest, almost as if he were reassuring or comforting me or feeling for my heartbeat as a lover might, and reached behind him into the canvas sack with his right hand. The knife was a foreign imitation of the Marine Corps K-Bar, t with a stainless steel blade, saw teeth on the top, a black aluminum handle with a bubble compass inserted in the butt. I remembered seeing them advertised for six dollars in the Times-Picayune Sunday magazine.
The back door was shut, the yellow linoleum floor glistened with sunlight from the window, water ran from my hair and drenched shirt like ants on my skin, my own breathing sounded like air being forced through sand. His hand moved down my sternum over my stomach, toward my loins, and he shifted his weight on his knees, cupped the knife palm up in his right hand, and moved his eyes slowly over my face. I clanged the handcuff chain against the drainpipe, tried to twist away from him, then jerked my knees up in front of my stomach as a child might, my voice strangling in my throat.
He took his hand away from my body and looked at me patiently.
"Come on, man. Trust me on this one," he said.
A shadow went across the glass window in the back door, then the handle turned and Clete came through the door as though he were bursting through barrel slats, flinging the door back against the wall, knocking a chair across the linoleum, his.38 revolver aimed straight out at the handbill man's face. He looked ridiculous in his old red and white Budweiser shorts, T-shirt, blue windbreaker, crushed porkpie hat, loafers without socks, and nylon shoulder holster twisted across one nipple.
"What's happening, Charlie?" he said, his face electric with anticipation.
"Throw away the shank or I blow your shit all over Streak's wallpaper."
The handbill man's vacuous blue eyes never changed expression. The white threads of light in them were as bright as if some wonderful promise were at hand. He set the knife on the floor and grinned at nothing, resting comfortably on one knee, his right forearm draped across his thigh.
"Charlie almost got away from me," Clete said.
"Sal told me he took his rental back to Missoula and caught a flight last night. Except Charlie's been getting some nook up on the lake and his punch told me she's supposed to meet him at the airport tonight. thought you were a pro, Charlie. You ought to keep your hammer in your pants when you're working. Roll over on your stomach and put your hands behind your neck."