He nodded. “Say I know how to get this girl, the stuff you want to get right, you think I’d have it on me? Think I got that girl’s pussy in my back pocket along with a sack of blow?”
“That would be handy if you did.”
“Listen here, tell you what. I like Robert, and since he sent you, I got a place where you can come for the stuff and the girl. We don’t use a motel. There ain’t but one and everyone knows everyone.”
“So where is this place?”
“You going to be around tonight?”
“Could be.”
“You want some leg and some head-twister, then you got to be around.”
“Head-twister?”
“Stuff I’m selling. It’s a mixture. You take this stuff your dick gets hard, your head gets high, and you’ll have so much fun you’ll drive over and slap your mama.”
“That right?”
“Way I hear. ’Course, I don’t sample that shit myself.”
“That’s not much of a selling point,” I said.
“Oh, it’s not that. I sample the girl, of course, but the rest of it, that’s product, man. You dip into your own product, especially with it being available, you can get in Dutch pretty quick.”
He gave me a time and an address. I thanked him and tried to look excited. I drove over to the one café and parked out front and sat behind the wheel and called Leonard again. I had some idea that the Michigan thing was near wrapped up, that he ought to be driving back down and in Texas by now, but it appeared it had taken more time than expected because I got the same thing. No answer. I left him a detailed message, even told him where I was supposed to be and at what time. I gave him the same directions Kevin had given me. I went in the café and had some coffee and a sandwich. I figured I might want to be fortified. I bought a sack lunch and an axe handle at the feed store and put it in the car, and then I drove out to where I was supposed to meet Kevin. Only thing was I was four hours early.
* * *
I tried Leonard a few more times, leaving the same directions, but whatever he was up to, it didn’t involve having his phone on. The location Kevin gave me was not deep in the woods, but it was out of town, which would of course suit his kind of services. But since I didn’t think Tillie, possibly the only lady working the grid, so to speak, was truly available, and since I knew Robert was dead as a pair of posthole diggers, and had a suspicion Kevin knew it as well, I thought I wouldn’t rely on his hospitality to bring Tillie straight to me. Me and Brett and Leonard had rescued her once before, a few years back, from something stupid she had gotten herself into that sounded a lot like this, and frankly, there was a part of me that wanted to leave her to it. I couldn’t do that because she was Brett’s daughter. That was the big part. The other part was I was me. I seem to be one of those guys who would help a rabid dog across the street if I thought it were confused on directions.
I thought over the directions I had been given, then varied from them. I found a little road to go down, a hunting trail, and then a little path off of it. I parked there and hoped no one found my car and decided they’d like to hot-wire it and drive it off, or for that matter, just vandalize it. I got my pistol out of the glove box and stuck it in the pants at the base of my spine, and pulled my shirt over it. I got the food I had bought extra at the café, a hamburger and fries and a canned Diet Coke, tucked the axe handle under my arm, and walked to where I understood the meeting place to be.
When I could see the house, which seemed pretty rickety and set off partly in the woods, I was pretty sure my suspicions were confirmed. Anyone coming here expecting pussy and drugs was a dumb-ass. I wasn’t actually expecting either, but I was a dumb-ass, because here I was. I went to the house and checked the door. It was locked. I went around back. The door there was locked too, but it was thin. I thought that would be my surprise entrance, kicking the door down. I could do it now, and wait on him, but if he came around back, or that was his preferred way of entering, the joke could be on me.
I walked off in the woods to the left of the place and found a tumbled-down tree to sit on. I had my supper, which was all right if you had no taste buds and your stomach was made of cast iron. I only ate a few of the french fries, being as how they were greasy enough to give a garden statue the shits. I drank the Diet Coke and ate the burger. The meat seemed suspicious, but I was already hungry. I always got hungry when I thought I might kill someone or get killed myself.
As it grew dark, mosquitoes came out and buzzed around, and a few bit me. I wondered if they were carrying the West Nile virus, or maybe something worse. I slapped at them. I caught a chigger on its way up my pant leg, heading for my balls; I felt proud to have rescued them.
After a while I saw Kevin drive up and park and go inside the house. I saw a light go on. He didn’t have Tillie with him. He didn’t seem to have anything with him. He was early too. I thought I would wait a few minutes then surprise him. I looked at my watch. I’d give him a few minutes to feel secure, then I’d surprise him. ’Course, if he had a gun, which he would have, the surprise would be on me. ’Course, I had one too, but when guns come into play, anything can happen.
I thought about this, and I thought about that, and then I thought I felt something cold at the base of my skull, and since this was the dead of summer, even if it was just now dark, I knew it wasn’t a cold breeze.
It was a gun barrel.
I can’t explain how much like a dick I felt. Here I was putting the sneak on them, and they had put the sneak on me. I turned around slowly. A short fat man with a face that looked like it had been used for missile targeting, it had so many pocks, was smiling about $15,000 of much-needed dental work at me.
“I could shoot you, you know,” he said.
“Yep,” I said.
“What we’re gonna do, is we’re gonna walk up there and see Kevin. Stand up first.”
I stood up, leaving the axe handle on the log. He patted me down with one hand and found my pistol and stuck it in one of his baggy pants pockets. He picked up the axe handle with his free hand and tapped my shoulder with it.
“Walk on up to the house,” he said.
I was getting old, I figured. Any other time I would have been prepared. Or so I told myself. I had thought I was being smart getting there early, but they had put the sneak on me, putting moon-crater face in the woods to wait, and Kevin to come up like a staked goat.
“There’s a road behind the woods here, dickhead,” said Moon Crater. “I come up on that, then through the woods. I hid out and waited. I thought I might have to do some serious sneaking, but you picked a spot not that far from me. It was easy, man. Kevin said he thought you thought you were a smart guy, but you’re not really so smart, are you?”
“I have to agree with that,” I said.
In the house Kevin was waiting. He said, “No snatch or juice for you, huh? ’Course, that isn’t what you were coming for, were you? I didn’t like your looks from the start.”
“You ain’t got no mirrors at your house?”
Moon Crater whacked me across the back of the legs with the axe handle hard enough I went to my knees.
“I got a suspicion you got some other reason to see me. I got a suspicion you might be looking for Tillie or Robert. I got to tell you, I think you know Robert’s dead.”
“You got me,” I said. “I know he’s dead. What about Tillie?”
“She’s all right, but she won’t be long,” Kevin said. “Mr. Smith likes to get all the juice out of a product before he lets it go. He gets her hot-wired enough on something or another, he can sell her out until there’s nothing to sell, you know. She then gets a hot shot, looks like an accident. They find her in a ditch somewhere with toadstools growing out of her ass.”