“Gifts,” Jimson said. “What kind of gifts?”
I had a box with me and it was tied with ribbon. I picked it up and put it on the table and he untied the ribbon and picked up the lid and looked inside. I knew what he was looking at. Three hundred thousand dollars.
“That’s not a gift. That’s what’s owed me.”
“Not by us,” I said. “We sort of came into this deal sideways.”
“Yeah?” Jimson said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“He come over and pistol-whipped us,” Conners said.
“Actually, most of it was done with a blackjack if I remember correctly,” Leonard said. “Oh yeah, and there was that part where I just plain ole pure-dee whipped your black ass with assholes and elbows.”
“Yep,” I said. “That’s the way I remember it too.”
“So you brought me my money home,” Jimson said.
“Courtesy of Vanilla Ride,” Leonard said.
“She really a woman?” Jimson said.
“Oh yeah,” I said.
“How about that,” he said. “A split tail that’s a gunner. That’s some precious stuff, that is.”
“Precious,” I said.
“Conners here,” Jimson said. “He tells me he knows Marvin here, says Marvin says you guys went to kill her and didn’t, but killed my guys instead.”
“That Marvin, what a blabbermouth,” I said.
Marvin Hanson chuckled.
“It seemed like the right thing at the time,” I said.
“I don’t like that,” Jimson said.
“Get some better guys,” Leonard said.
Jimson sat back in his chair and looked at Leonard. If he thought Leonard was going to flinch he was out of his mind.
“So,” Jimson said, “you two, you’re tough guys, huh?”
“That’s about it,” Leonard said. “But we’d like to end this. We got put into this when we didn’t want to be.”
“How’s that?”
I explained.
“That’s some story,” Jimson said when I was finished.
“It’s true,” I said. “I say you’ve wasted a lot of guys on us, and I say it’d be best we didn’t shoot at each other anymore. There’s your money back.”
“It wasn’t about the money,” he said.
“I know that,” I said, “but it’s our peace offering, your money back.”
“Yeah,” Leonard said, “and now we’re going to sweeten it.” He reached inside his coat pocket and brought out ten thousand dollars in ten one-thousand-dollar bills.
“That’s nothing,” Jimson said.
“It’s ten thousand dollars,” Leonard said, “and it’s money we don’t owe you. Call it a present, a peace offering.” Of course, Leonard failed to mention that there was a little over eighty thousand dollars we had left for ourselves.
“Like I said,” Jimson said, “it’s not about the money. I spent more trying to have you guys hit.”
“And what they’re telling you,” Marvin said, “is why spend any more?”
“I could pop you right here,” Jimson said. “All of you.”
“No,” Leonard said, “I don’t think so. You could try, but I don’t know it’d work out.”
“You people,” Jimson said, “you always got to be smart-asses.”
“When you say ‘you people,’” Leonard said, “do you mean queers or niggers? I’m a little perplexed on the matter.”
“You’re queer?” Jimson said.
“I’m so queer queers call me queer.”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s pretty queer.”
“Isn’t it?” Leonard said.
“You aren’t going to do anything here,” Marvin said to Jimson. “That would be plain stupid.”
“I got some law here,” Jimson said. “I could make it look the way I want.”
“Maybe,” I said, “and maybe not, but it won’t do any good if you’re dead, now, will it?”
Jimson grinned. “All right. All right. You guys, I give you this, you got you a set, both of you, queer or not.”
“It’s just me that’s queer,” Leonard said. “I’d rather not be included with heterosexuals. Bad for my reputation.”
Jimson turned and looked out the window, then picked up his coffee and drank. “We call it even, that means you stay out of my business, right?”
“Unless that business gets into our business,” I said. “And I don’t know how Vanilla Ride feels about things. Me and Leonard and her have a truce. But you guys, I don’t know. She might not like you sent men to kill her.”
“I sent them for you.”
“Well,” I said, “far as I know, they’re still in Arkansas.”
“I’ll worry about Vanilla Ride,” he said.
“Just a polite warning,” I said.
“Fair enough,” he said.
“But we owe them one,” Sykes said. “Me and Conners.”
“That’s your problem,” Jimson said. “Me and them, we’re done.” He hesitated a moment, then turned to Conners and Sykes. “And you know what, you two, you’re done too. Leave them alone. They come around on some other matter, that’s something else. But on this, you’re done. You took a lickin’. Learn to like it.”
“Good advice,” Leonard said.
“Don’t push it,” Jimson said, stood up and pushed his chair back. His man got up at the same time. Conners and Sykes got up too.
Leonard said, “Been good doing business with you, and just one last thing. Keep your word. We expect it. You don’t, we won’t like it.”
Jimson smiled. “Say you won’t?”
“Absolutely,” Leonard said.
“Yeah … well,” Jimson said, and he and his man and No Enterprise’s finest walked out and got in their cars and drove away.
We ordered pie.
59
Couple months later, upstairs in our bedroom, my arm all healed and wrapped around Brett, she said, “You’re not exactly hot with the flesh pistol tonight.”
“No,” I said, “I’m not.”
“A lot on the mind?”
“You know it.”
“You told me everything, didn’t you? Got it off your chest?”
“Yep. But I still feel like I have a hole in me.”
“You’re healed up fine.”
“I don’t mean that, and you know it.”
“It’ll pass, baby.”
“I hope so. I just don’t think I was cut out to do what I do and not feel bad about it.”
“Leonard’s not bothered.”
“No, he’s not. He said, ‘If they deserve it, I got no problem. They don’t deserve it, then I got a problem. They deserved it.’”
“Words to live by.”
“I guess.”
“Vanilla Ride … Leonard said she sort of liked you.”
“He has a big mouth. And I think she said what she said as a kind nod to my courage. Truth was, I was scared to death.”
“But you went out there and did a stupid thing knowing it was stupid.”
“That’s called stupid, not courageous.”
“I have to agree.”
“I guess I was caught up in the moment. Thing I got to think—to consider—is Vanilla Ride. Beautiful young woman like that, what was done to her? Why is she like that? Why did she learn the skills she learned?”
“Some man is at the bottom of it, I can promise you that,” Brett said.
“Most likely. Probably childhood. Bottom line is she killed Tonto. He wasn’t any friend, but he was our partner, so we were supposed to do something. The kids, they didn’t deserve it. They were just stupid. Shit, she tried to kill us. All that, and in the end we let it slide.”
“But she helped you against the others.”
“True.”
“And she cut out the lead in your arm.”
“Also true. It makes the whole thing kind of confusing, at least in the sense of trying to figure where loyalties lie.”
“So, she was beautiful?”
“Not like you.”
“You liar.”
“Really.”
“Keep on.”
“You are the beauty of all beauties.”
“That’s what I want to hear. Bet her real name isn’t Vanilla Ride.”
“Bet you’re right.”
“But you’re thinking about her, aren’t you?”