“Just let me go back to Tanedrue,” Gadget said. “He’s not going to bother me.”
“Except when he’s making a field goal with your head,” Leonard said. “There’s that, and, oh yeah, about a ton of drugs you can suck up your nose.”
“You don’t know how it is,” Gadget said. “I’m … I’m in pain. And Hap hit me too.”
“Yes,” Leonard said, “but it was swift and beautiful and full of the power of love.”
“Ha!” Gadget said. “He still hit me.”
“You had it coming,” Marvin said. “Never thought I’d say such a thing, but you did.”
Gadget’s lip went pouty. She said, “You still don’t know how it is.”
“I don’t know how it is,” I said. “But I’ve seen it before.”
“Just let me go back,” she said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Leonard said. “These guys suck rat bag. And you’re on your way to being just like them.”
“At this point,” I said, “I’m not even sure Tanedrue might not blame you for their situation. There’s no future there for you, Gadget.”
“There’s no future for me anywhere,” Gadget said. “Just let them do what they want.”
“That’s the drug willies talking,” I said.
“We’re going to get her help,” JoAnna said, and she reached out and touched Gadget’s shoulder.
Gadget shook her head. “No use, Mama. I’m lost.”
“No, you’re not, honey,” Rachel said, and I saw the fire in her eyes. She had it, always did. I knew what Marvin saw in her first time I met her, and right now I was seeing it again.
“Don’t talk that way, baby,” JoAnna said. “You’re not the first one to make a mistake. I’ve made a few.”
“Yeah, but I made more than a few in less time,” Gadget said.
That floated for a moment, then I said, “This business boils down to this: Marvin, you and your family need to pack up some things and hit the road.”
“You act like these guys are fucking CIA,” Marvin said. “They’re a bunch of goobers.”
“It’s not the original goobers I’m worried about,” I said. “It’s all them other goobers.”
“With me and Hap here, the rest of you gone,” Leonard said, “it makes for a smaller target. And we’re not an easy target.”
“I can vouch for that,” Marvin said. “I thought you two would be dead years ago.”
“Gee, thanks,” Leonard said.
“Actually, that was a kind of a compliment,” Brett said.
“Oh,” Leonard said. “My bad.”
“But this is my mess,” Marvin said.
I nodded, said, “Now I’m really going to pour on the juice. You’re a cripple and you’ll just get in our way. We need you to whip someone’s ass with your cane again, we’ll call you up. But we’re past that. Maybe way past. Way I see it, Tanedrue may just let us out of the picture. He’s got nothing to gain. He’s not getting his drugs back, and I bet he can figure pretty quick we don’t have that kind of money to pay back what it was worth. So he could let us go.”
“That’s what I think,” Marvin said. “That’s what I always thought.”
“On the other hand,” I said, “he lets us go, then he can’t even tell his bosses that he avenged the loss, and I think he’s the kind of guy that thinks he’s some kind of player, wants to look good in front of his posse. Last time he tried that, he got his ass kicked. So he could feel vengeful. Power, control, being in charge, that’s all very important to these little sucks, and it’s even more important to the middlemen and the men at the top. The other thing”—and I looked at Gadget when I said this—“they may come for Gadget. Not because Tanedrue loves her—”
“He does, you know,” Gadget said. “He does.”
“Sure he does,” Leonard said. “That’s why he beats on your ass.”
“I get out of line,” Gadget said.
“Honey,” Brett said, “that is pure-dee ole bullshit. Unless you’re trying to kill him and he’s fighting back, you aren’t out of line enough to warrant any kind of physical beating. You think we’re in fucking Afghanistan. Pardon my French.”
Gadget put her head on the table. JoAnna put her hand on Gadget’s back and looked hard at Brett. Brett looked back equally hard. JoAnna averted her gaze. I could sympathize. When Brett put “that look” on you, you didn’t want to mess with her. In her eyes you could see the next world war.
“What Hap was saying,” Leonard said, “guy like this, he might come and try and get Gadget. He might even come to kill her.”
Gadget lifted her head. “He wouldn’t. He loves me.”
“There’s no way to argue with that,” I said. “She believes it and you can’t talk her out of it. Not until the drugs are out of her system. And even then, not easily.”
“You don’t know nothin’,” Gadget said, jumping up from the table, running to the back of the house, disappearing into a bedroom, slamming the door.
JoAnna looked at me, said, “No use being hard on her. It doesn’t help.”
“She shouldn’t get off scot-free,” Marvin said. “Problem with this world is we’ve lost the idea of shame and guilt. We need a little of that. No one thinks they ever do bad anymore. They just do different.”
“I’m sorry we’ve disrupted things this morning,” I said to Rachel. “I didn’t mean to scare you or your family, but this is how it is.”
“I’m not so scared,” Rachel said. “I once fought a serial killer with a hammer. JoAnna was with me. We aren’t shrinking violets.”
Marvin nodded. “She did. When I was on the job in Houston.”
I had heard the story before, but I didn’t let on. Every now and then Marvin brought it up and told it over. About the Houston Hacker. It had been his biggest case as a big-city cop.
“My granddaughter, my family,” Rachel said. “I got to do what’s right for them. I’ll tell you honestly, I don’t like you two, never have. And Brett, I just don’t like you on sight. You act like you’re better than everyone else.”
“Well, duh.”
“And you’re a smart-ass.”
“That’s all right,” Brett said, looking prim and beautiful. “I’m not selling happiness, and when I go to bed at night I have my witty repartee to keep me company. And Hap. And since we’re expressing ourselves, you aren’t exactly at the top of my love list either.”
They locked eyes for a moment, then Rachel looked at me and Leonard. “But I’ll say this about you two—you’re straight with things. You know how to do what you do. I don’t even want to know what it is you do, even if I have a pretty good idea. So me and JoAnna and Gadget, and yes, you, Marvin, we’re leaving here tomorrow.”
Brett raised her hand. “Don’t forget me.”
Rachel looked at Brett with those hard eyes of hers. Brett looked back. Neither broke gaze. “And yes,” Rachel said. “You too, Brett. We can hate each other politely.”
“I ought to stay,” Marvin said.
Rachel stuck her finger in Marvin’s face. “I’ve been through a lot of shit with you, baby, and I’ve held it together. I been through you mess-in’ with another woman. I’ve been through your cop days in the city and in LaBorde. I’ve dealt with your accident, your leg, and all manner of hell. I’ve set by your bedside watching them feed you through a tube, and I’ve fed you like a baby when you didn’t have the strength to lift a finger. You are going, or we’re going without you, and don’t look for us to come back if you don’t go.”