On the way over to the motel the lovebugs pelleted the windshield and collected beneath the motionless wipers like dead soldiers in trenches, left greasy yellow and green spots all over the glass.
We got to the LaBorde Motor Inn about ten minutes before one and parked in front of a row of doors. I had brought the pistol from my glove box, and I stuck it under my shirt against my spine.
Brett has a thigh holster, and she wore a skirt so she could wear the holster and the snub-nose .38 she owns. It’s not that she goes around wearing a thigh holster and a .38, but recent events had led to this, and she has a license. In Texas, with the right training and certification you’re allowed to carry a concealed handgun. It’s a law Leonard loves and I hate, but I’m a hypocrite, because I keep a revolver in my glove box, and from time to time on my person. I’m even more of a hypocrite because, unlike Brett, I never bothered to get a license.
We walked to the metal stairs, went up and found the number the caller had given Brett, and knocked. Thirty seconds didn’t pass before the door opened and a face showed over the chain inside the door, and it was some face. It looked like first base after a hot season in the Astrodome: pocked and beaten and not too clean. He stuck the face out enough so I could see his nose had been broken and some teeth with it, and recently. Behind the face I could see a body that looked as if it ought to be used to hold up something heavy. He took the chain off for a better look at us, and we got a better look at him. He wore a dirty white dress shirt and black pants with gray pinstripes and shiny black dress shoes, except for the toe tips, which looked to have been dipped in shit.
“You Brett?” he said.
Brett nodded.
“We told you not to bring nobody,” he said.
“You, or whoever I spoke to, said I could have someone drive me,” Brett said.
“We thought you meant some other woman,” the face said.
“I didn’t say that,” Brett said. “What’s it matter?”
“I don’t know it matters,” said the man, “but we didn’t think you’d bring no man.”
“Well,” Brett said. “I don’t know why you shouldn’t have thought it.”
“Hey,” I said, “do I look dangerous to you?”
“Naw, you don’t look dangerous,” he said, and he walked away from the door and we followed inside.
The first thing I noticed was a midget sitting on the bed. I think that’s normal, noticing a midget first. He had on a tailored blue Western suit and shiny blue cowboy boots and a gold cowboy shirt with silver snaps and a string tie with a silver cow head clasp holding it together. The suit looked as if it had once been expensive and nice, but now it was covered in filth and so was the shirt. The steer horns leaned a little too far left and somehow gave the midget an unbalanced look, as if he had been laid out without the use of a plumb line. I figured originally a hat had gone with the outfit, but now his blazing red hair was scattered over his head in such a way if you took a photo of it, it might look like a man with his head on fire, à la Brett’s ex-husband. He had a big thick cigar in his mouth, but it wasn’t lit, and his feet dangled off the side of the bed almost two feet from the ground. He had a face I couldn’t judge for age. He might have been thirty or forty or fifty. For all I knew, he was twenty-one and constipated or had just previously passed a kidney stone.
Second thing I noticed was the big guy had drawn a little silver automatic out from behind his back. The rest of the room sort of lost interest for me after that.
The big guy sat down in a chair with his automatic and held it against his thigh. Next to his chair was a table lamp, and on the table was a glass containing a clear liquid that I guessed from the smell in the room wasn’t water. And considering how rank our hosts smelled, this meant some goddamn serious drinking had been going on.
“What’s the gun for?” I asked.
“He’s the nervous type,” said the midget.
“What about you?” I said. “You nervous?”
“No, I’m not nervous,” said the midget. “Not as long as he’s got the gun. Y’all sit somewhere.”
Brett took a chair and I sat on the edge of the bed so I could see both guys. I said to the big guy, “You shoot that off, you got the noise to worry about.”
“I’m not that worried,” said the big guy.
“Drink?” said the midget.
Brett and I declined. Brett said, “One of you called me about my daughter.”
“That was me,” said the midget.
“Told me you had information and to bring money for it, and I have. Five hundred dollars.”
“We should have said a thousand,” said the midget.
“But you didn’t,” I said. “You said five hundred and here we are with it.”
“It’s all I got,” Brett said.
“And we don’t know what you got is worth five hundred dollars,” I said.
The big guy said, “It might not be worth five cents, but we can take the five hundred dollars anyway.”
I reached quickly behind my back, under my shirt, and pointed my gun at the big man. I said, “You might not.”
The midget laughed. “You know, you could be right.”
The big man wiggled the gun against his thigh like he wanted to lift it. I said, “Nope, nope, nope.”
“Easy does it, Wilber,” said the midget. “This man’s got a look in his eye. Like someone who might have grown up on cowboy movies.”
“Let’s just have you put the gun on the table there, away from your drink,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to confuse what you might be reaching for.”
The midget made with his odd laugh again.
Brett moved slowly and smoothly and her hand went under her skirt and came back out. She was holding the snub-nose. She pointed it at the midget.
“Oh, ho,” said the midget.
“Just in case you got a gun too, shorty,” Brett said.
“I got one,” the dwarf said, “but it’s in my suitcase.”
“I told you that was a dumb place to put it,” said the big man, placing his automatic on the table.
“Turns out you’re right,” said the midget. Then to me: “I thought you said a gun would make noise.”
“It will,” I said, “but like your buddy here, I’m not that worried about it. Now, you either got something to say, or you don’t.”
“We got plenty,” said the midget. “First, I’d like to say you got good legs, lady.”
“Thanks,” Brett said. “My day’s made.”
“I’d also like to know what these bugs are all about. Is this a consistent thing here in East Texas?”
“Every year about this time,” I said. “They’re not usually this thick. Don’t usually mate this long. Lots of them are supposed to signify a forthcoming bad winter or lots of rain. Might be both. Least that’s the folklore.”
“In Oklahoma we’re having quite a run on mosquitoes,” the midget said. “Big things. Very fat. They carry disease, you know?”
“We’ve got mosquito problems here too,” I said. “And roaches. And June bugs. And all manner of squiggly-shit bugs who have names I don’t know, but that’s all the entomology lesson you get today. Tell us what you got to tell, or we walk. With the five hundred dollars.”
“Walk, you don’t learn about daughterpoo,” said the midget.
“Yeah,” I said, “but we walk after I pistol-whip the both of you, and what the two of you learn is it hurts.”
“You look like a man would hit a midget,” said the midget.
“You betcha,” I said, and tried to sound convincing, the way Leonard would sound, because he was definitely a man would hit a midget, or anyone who fucked with him.
The midget touched his jacket, said, “I want to reach inside here, get a match and light my smoke. That okay?”
“No,” Brett said. “I don’t like it.”