“Drake said you two think you’re funny.”
“There’s that insult again,” Leonard said. “It could take the edge off our comic timing.”
“I think you’re funny,” Brett said, reached her handcuffs over and patted Leonard’s hand.
“Thank you, dear,” Leonard said.
“Laugh it up,” Kelso said. “We’ll see what the jury says.”
We were the sort that when we were nervous we couldn’t help but run our mouths to show we weren’t nervous. It’s not a good habit, but it’s ours. That comment shut us up, though. We sat there in silence, brooding in our pink jumpsuits, until the door opened and Drake came in and looked at us and sighed. He stood there for a long moment, just studying us, like we were a species formerly thought extinct. I thought any moment the rubber hose would appear, maybe a blowtorch and some pliers and a couple of angry German shepherds. He turned to Kelso. “Take their handcuffs off.”
21
After our handcuffs were off, Drake and Kelso went out, leaving us alone. We sat and waited, looking in the mirror that most likely had someone on the other side. At first I counted smears on the glass, boogers on the wall, anything to keep me busy. But that grew boring.
We turned and looked at one another, as if one of us might offer some sort of solution. No great answers unfolded. The nature of the universe was still safe. Stephen Hawking still had the inside track.
We sat there for a long time, then finally began to talk. Brett said, “What’s the point of this?”
“They want whoever is on the other side of the glass to take a good look at us,” Leonard said.
“Why?” Brett asked.
I patted her knee. “Because you are so pretty.”
“Oh. Well, of course,” she said, “duh, there is that.”
“I got a joke,” I said.
“Not now,” Leonard said.
“It’s pretty good.”
“Not now,” Brett said, and I knew that was the end of that.
“I don’t know about you two,” I said, “but I miss Kelso already. He had such sweet, if electrified, eyes.”
“You’d think they’d wipe these boogers down,” Brett said. “I don’t know who they think that intimidates. It’s just nasty.”
“I hear that,” Leonard said.
“And that piss smell,” she said. “It could hold your coat.”
“It could wear it,” Leonard said.
The door opened and Drake came in, and there was a guy with him that had a head like a concrete block. His haircut had something to do with that, gold as an Aryan dream, waxed up in front, flared out on the sides. He had a big hooked nose and thin lips and seemed to have more teeth than a human ought to, something a crocodile might envy, only straighter. His eyes were big and dark brown, like two unwiped butt holes. He reminded me of a villain out of those old Dick Tracy comics.
Drake went over and leaned against the wall, got a whiff of the piss, moved to another corner. The guy with the square head leaned back against the mirror. He said, “There’s nobody on the other side.”
“You say,” Leonard said.
Drake said, “No. He’s right.”
“Damn, glad we got your word on that,” Leonard said. “That makes it all right, then.”
“I locked the door leads into the investigation room,” Drake said.
“You got the only key?” I asked.
“No.”
“Ah,” I said. “No one else would of course use their key and go in there and look at us. … But frankly, we don’t care. Ask what you want. It was self-defense.”
“I know,” Drake said.
That sort of stunned us, but lawmen are tricky.
The door opened and two guys came in. One of them was the guy who had been in Tanedrue’s trailer, the one who wasn’t with the batch we shot up today, the guy whose profile was gone, whose nose was splinted now and taped over good with tape so thick he looked like the Mummy. His forehead looked as if someone had broken in his ball bat on it. A shock of thick hair poked up from the top of the bandages like a rooster’s comb. He went over and leaned against the wall and looked at Leonard. It wasn’t a look of adoration.
I thought, What the hell?
The other guy was a short fat guy in a black suit with a black tie and some black shoes that needed a shine. He looked like an undertaker in a pet cemetery. He blew some breath out between his fat lips, went over and leaned on the wall next to our friend with the tape and the bruises.
The room was starting to get tight. If one more person came in we’d all be wearing the same suit of clothes, and I was sure I needed to change my underwear.
Brett looked at the two leaning on the mirror, said, “There’s boogers on the wall and there’s something on the mirror I don’t think will pass for mayonnaise. Just a word to the wise.”
They stopped leaning.
Leonard glared at the taped-up man, said, “What the hell is the Phantom of the Opera doing here?”
Drake said, “We’ll come to that. But first, we got a little deal for you guys.”
“A deal?” I said. “Think we’re going to rat each other out? There’s people saw what happened. We didn’t go looking to be shot at. I might run over that yard gnome again I got the chance, but getting shot at like that, trust me, I’d rather pass. And you said it yourself, self-defense.”
“You’re going to get the charges dropped, or rather they’re going to definitely turn into self-defense,” Drake said. “No court. No problem.”
“No shirt. No shoes. No problem,” Leonard said. “What kind of bull is this? There’s always court. What’s the catch?”
Drake didn’t say anything. He crossed his arms.
I said, “There is a catch, isn’t there?”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Square Head said. “It’s more like we got your dick in the zipper and we’re pulling it up tight. In your case, ma’am, I guess it’s your tit we got caught up.”
“Then you better have a lot of zipper,” Brett said, “’cause I’m serious in the tit department.”
No one opposed this opinion.
“Agent Tenson here,” Drake said, nodding at the Dick Tracy villain, “he’s with the FBI, and he and his buddy here, Captain Bandage—”
“Man, that’s some funny shit,” Captain Bandage, aka the Mummy aka the Phantom, said.
“They want to talk to you,” Drake said. “Me, I’m just a lowly fucking public servant who’s always got the raw ass from these fed guys sticking their dicks in it, and I hate them.”
“Come on,” Tenson said. “There’s no need to turn this ugly. You and me, I’m sure we got things in common, Drake.”
“Yeah,” Drake said. “These guys, that’s what we got in common. May have been self-defense, but it didn’t just come out of nowhere, these folks wanting to kill them. There has to be a backstory. I don’t like lettin’ them off. They shot a lot of people. They ought to at least have a paddling, a night in jail, noses in the corner. This isn’t right, man.”
“What I want to know,” Leonard said, “is why is the fucking Mummy in on this?”
The Mummy’s voice sounded snotty, which isn’t unusual when your snout is packed with cotton. “It’s Milhouse. I was working undercover. Thanks a lot, asshole, you fucked up a real sting operation just to take some whore home.”
“Her granddaddy doesn’t see her that way,” Leonard said.
“Yeah, but me, I’ve had surgery, and I got to have some more. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Leonard said, and the Mummy came off the wall and Drake stepped over and put a hand against the Mummy’s chest.
“After what he done to you,” Drake said, “I wouldn’t push it. I think he can do it again. And we took the handcuffs off.”
“Yeah,” Leonard said, still sitting, holding his hands up. “They took the handcuffs off.”
“We ought to all just beat him down,” the Mummy, aka the Phantom of the Opera, aka Captain Bandage, said.