“That’s right,” Brett said, “they will need more proof, but that tip could start movement in the right direction. After that, you get stuck on what to do, just come to me and I’ll figure it out from there.”
NEXT DAY WE went over to the University and drove around for awhile before we could find a visitor’s parking spot that wasn’t filled, and walked over to the building where Kelly worked as a janitor. On the bottom floor students moved about and an older woman in a janitor’s uniform was pushing a trash cart. She looked about as excited as a corpse.
We asked her about Kelly, and what she told us sent us by elevator to the fourth floor. Leonard wanted to push the button, and I had to let him, or I would never hear the end of it. He likes pushing buttons on elevators. I can’t explain it. But, every time he gets to do it, for several minutes afterward, I must admit, I feel slightly deprived.
There were no students on the top floor. I went to one of the windows and looked out. I had gone to the university for awhile. I had been a good student. I enjoyed it. I still liked the atmosphere of a university, but I was too lazy to finish up my education, and most likely the classes I’d taken long ago in stalking the wooly mammoth and how to build a fire with flint and steel and a gust of wind, were no longer valid.
We looked around a while and found an open door and heard some clattering, went in there and discovered Kelly banging a garbage can against the inside of his cart so it would empty.
Kelly looked up at us. The swelling around his eyes had gone down. He said, “You wouldn’t believe the stuff you find in these cans.”
I leaned my ass into the desk up front, and Leonard took a seat at one of the standard desks in the front row. Kelly put the garbage can back in place by the teacher’s desk, said, “Well.”
“We reckon you’re right,” Leonard said. “Those people Donny is running with, they’re not up to any good, and that means neither is Donny.”
“Can you do something about it?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But here’s the thing. We do what we’re talking about doing, you might not be safe. You might not want to go home for awhile.”
“How long’s awhile?”
I shook my head.
“I see,” he said. “And you can get Donny out of this?”
“You can’t make a man believe what he doesn’t want to believe,” I said. “But we can try and show Donny that things aren’t as good as he might think. In fact, they’re really worse than we thought.”
“How?” Kelly asked.
We told him about the dead man in the car, what we suspected. When we finished, Kelly found a desk and sat down. He said, “Shit, how does stuff like this happen?”
“Humans,” I said.
“Yeah,” Leonard said, “they can be pesky.”
“So,” I said, “What we’re asking is, do we go ahead with things? Cause if we do, it might make it hot around the old hacienda. Meaning, you need to not be there. And the job here, I don’t know how safe it keeps you.”
Donny nodded slowly. “I got some place I can go for awhile. I mean, I can figure that out. But the job, I need this job. I need it bad. I can’t just walk away.”
“We can’t guarantee your safety, you stay on the job,” I said. “We don’t recommend it. We didn’t have any trouble getting to you, and if they decide to find you, it won’t just be to talk.”
“I’ll leave the house,” Kelly said. “But I’ll stay with the job. Go ahead and do what you need to do.”
“We’ll need a photo of Donny,” I said.
“I can do that, after work,” Kelly said. “But, you will try to save him, won’t you?”
“We’ll do what we can,” Leonard said, “and more often than not, that’s a lot.”
MARVIN WAS OUT of it now, and we didn’t work in shifts after that. We just drove over together and parked down the street from where Kelly lived. Every now and then we would move the car to a new position, so no one in a house nearby would call the law on us.
Kelly had followed our advice and found a new place to stay. We told him not to tell us where. That way we didn’t have information we didn’t need and wouldn’t want to accidentally spill.
We also had something else. A last gift from Marvin. Having been a former cop, he had good connections. He got us information on Smoke Stack. Once he knew where he lived, and what his car license was, it wasn’t so hard. Marvin wasn’t sure about the other guys, but he was sure about Smoke Stack. The license led to the car, and that led to a description, and that led to a rap sheet. I had that with me. And a grainy photo that had been faxed to Marvin and that he gave to us. Smoke Stack’s real name was Trey Manton.
Leonard had a small flashlight on and he was using it to look the photo over again and read the rap sheet. We had already done that, but it was a way to pass the time. Leonard spent a lot of time looking at the bad photo. He clicked off the light and closed the folder and put it on the seat between us, said, “Man, that guy looks like he tried to roller skate in a buffalo herd.”
“I’m going to guess the buffalo may not have turned out so well. And he’s done time for drugs, and he is, shall we say, a violent person, as his prison time shows.”
“We are violent ourselves,” Leonard said. “But we’re the good guys.”
“I guess that’s one way of looking at it,” I said.
“Rather us as tough guys, than people like Smoke Stack as tough guys.”
“And yet another way of looking at it.”
Leonard gave me Smoke Stack’s photo. I looked at it again just to have something to do. I gave it back, and took the photo of Donny and looked it over. He looked like the usual, pimple-faced, sassy ass kid. It was a full body shot, and it made me think of the photos I’d seen of Billy the Kid, only without the cowboy hat, the rifle and the six gun on his hip. But it had the same attitude about it. The rifle and six gun had been replaced by sagging pants and tennis shoes that looked too big for his feet. The strings were untied. That’s showing them.
As it got dark and they didn’t show up, we decided to go to their place and have a chat. Maybe Donny was already with them. With Kelly gone, maybe he no longer saw a need to go home. Next thing was they’d move into Kelly’s house and never let him come back. They were the type. I had seen it before.
When we got over to the address Marvin had given us, we parked down from their house in the lot of an abandoned convenience store. It was about three blocks from their house, but seemed the best place to park. Everything there was as Marvin said. The houses and most of the convenience store were burned out and you could smell the dead fire still. Something had set the whole block on fire. Where the burned buildings ended, the woods took over, and up on a hill with some logged out acres behind it, was the house.
I opened the glove box and got out my automatic and gave Leonard his. They were both in black holsters, but the guns themselves did not match. Brett thought it would be cute if we got matching guns with our initials on them.
We got out of the car and Leonard pulled out his shirt and lifted it up and clipped on his holster. He arranged his shirt around it. It was only hidden if you weren’t looking for it or you were blind in one eye and couldn’t see out the other. I clipped mine to my belt. I was wearing a loose tee-shirt, so it didn’t cover much.
“Ready?” I said.
“I was born ready,” Leonard said.
“Scared?”
“I never get scared.”
“Bullshit.”
“Okay, I’m a little scared. Let’s get it done before I get more scared.”