Here he sends two of his most popular characters, Hap and Leonard, on a gritty, perilous quest to rescue a Damsel in Distress—although not the kind you usually meet in fairy tales.
BENT TWIG
A Hap and Leonard Adventure
Joe R. Lansdale
When I got in from work that night, Brett, my redhead, was sitting at the kitchen table. She didn’t have a shift that week at the hospital, so I was surprised to see her up and about. It was 2:00 A.M. I had finished up being a night watchman at the dog-food plant, hoping my buddy Leonard would be back soon from Michigan, where he had gone after someone in some case he had hired out to do for our friend Marvin and the detective agency Marvin owned. We did freelance work like that from time to time.
There was no job for me in this one, and since Leonard was without a job at all and needed the money more than I did, he hired on. I had a temporary at the dog-food plant. It was okay, but mostly boring. The most exciting thing I had done was chase some rats I had caught in the feed-storage room, nibbling on some bags of dog food, stealing chow out of some hound’s mouth, so to speak. Those rats knew not to mess with me.
I kept hoping Marvin would have something for me so I could quit, but so far, nothing. I did have that week’s paycheck from the dog-food plant in my wallet, though.
“What are you doing up?” I asked.
“Worrying,” she said.
I sat down at the table with her.
“We have enough money, right?”
“We got plenty for a change. It’s Tillie.”
“Oh, shit,” I said.
“It’s not like before,” Brett said. What she meant was a little of column A, a little of column B.
Column A was where she got in with a biker club at the local poke and got hauled off to be a prostitute, partly on purpose, as it was her profession, and partly against her will because they didn’t plan to pay her. We had rescued her from that, me, Brett, and Leonard. She had then gone off and gotten into a series of domestic problems over in Tyler, but those were the sort of things Brett got her out of, or at least managed to avert catastrophe for a while. Every time Brett mentioned Tillie it meant she would be packing a bag, putting her job on hold, and going off for a few days to straighten some stupid thing out that never should have happened in the first place. Since she was Brett’s daughter, I tried to care about her. But she didn’t like me and I didn’t like her. But I did love Brett, so I tried to be as supportive as possible, but Brett knew how I felt.
“You have to go for a few days?” I asked.
“May be more to it.”
“How’s that?”
“She’s missing.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time she took a powder for a while. You know how she is. Goes off without a word, comes back without one, unless she needs money or a tornado got the double-wide.”
“It’s not all her fault.”
“Brett, baby. Don’t give me the stuff about how you weren’t a good mother.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were young yourself, and I don’t think you did all that bad. You had some circumstances, and you did what you could for her. She’s mostly a mess of her choosing.”
“Maybe.”
“But you’re not convinced.”
“It doesn’t matter. She’s my daughter.”
“You got me there,” I said.
“I got a call from a friend of hers. You don’t know her. Her name is Monica, and she’s all right. I think she’s got a better head on her shoulders than Tillie. I met her when I was there last. I think she’s been a pretty good guide for my girl. Fact is, I sort of thought Tillie was getting it together, and I’ve been keeping in touch with Monica about it. She called to say they were supposed to go to a movie, a girl’s night out. Only Tillie didn’t show. Didn’t call. And now it’s three days later. Monica said when she got over being mad, she got into being worried. Says the guy Tillie lives with, that he could be the problem. He used to run whores, and Tillie could easily fall back into that life. I mean … Well, there’s a bit of a drug problem with the guy, and Tillie, sometimes. He could have gotten tough with Tillie. He might be trying to make some money off of her, or he might have gotten into something bad and Tillie got dragged with him.”
“Monica think he’s holding her at home?”
“Maybe worse.”
“I thought he was supposed to be all right.”
“Me too,” she said. “But lately, not so much. At first, he was a kind of Prince Charming, an ex-druggie who was doing good, then all of a sudden he didn’t want her out of the house, didn’t want her contacting anyone. Didn’t want her seeing Monica. But Monica thinks it’s because he was choosing who he wanted Tillie to see.”
“Prostitution,” I said.
Brett nodded. “Yeah, it’s how those kind of guys play. Like they care about you, or they got some of the same problems they’re kicking, and the next thing Tillie knows she’s on the nose candy again and is selling her ass, and then pretty soon she’s not getting any money from the sell. He gets it all.”
“The pimp gets it all, keeps her drugged, and keeps the money flowing in.”
“Yeah,” Brett said. “Exactly. It’s happened to her before, and you know that, so—”
“You’re thinking it could happen again.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I am.”
“ ’Course it doesn’t matter, and it may not have been planned. He may have just fallen off the wagon and grabbed her as he fell. After he got the prize he wanted, he didn’t want to share it or show it around.”
“He liked showing her around at first, all right,” Brett said. “He liked her to dress sexy, and then if anyone looked, he was mad. She was for him, and yet he wanted to parade her and not have anyone look at the parade. Later on, he wanted to bring people to the parade. Maybe when his drug habit got bad. I don’t know. I don’t care. I just want to know she’s safe.”
“And you want me to check it out?”
“I want us to check it out.”
“Let me drive back to the dog-food plant and quit with prejudice first.”