Rumble Tumble

13

A lot of things went through my head right then, but none of them told me why the midget and Wilber were here. From what they’d said their lives were on the line and this would be the last place they should be.

But there they were, standing just inside the door, looking at me as if they had just sighted the Virgin Mary in see-through panties and high heels.

I think it took the midget a moment to put it together, but I could tell Wilber knew who I was right away. His mouth fell open and his eyes widened. I believe he and I were mirror images at that moment.

Wilber reached down and got hold of the shoulder of the midget’s suit, trying to alert him, but there was no need. Red had figured it out. Wilber bent down and Red said something in his ear, then smiled at me. Red walked behind one of the couches and over toward the fireplace.

I stood there a moment, trying to decide what to do. One thing was certain. The pickle was out of the jar.

I started walking slowly toward the door, hoping Wilber would let me pass, and knowing he wouldn’t. I tried to go wide to his right, but he said, “I don’t think so.”

I didn’t hesitate. I kicked out hard and caught Wilber in the thigh with the toe of my shoe. It was a good shot, right where the muscles group, and he let out a grunt and bent over. I shifted slightly away from him and snapped my foot up in a back hook and caught him with my heel in the face as he was bent. I made a run for it then, but one of the big guys in the hand-tailored suits appeared. He was so large that when he stood in front of the door it disappeared.

I faked by raising my hand, and he looked up, and I kicked him in the balls, trying to make a field goal somewhere in Central Texas.

It was a good ball shot, but either this guy had nuts of steel or had used so many steroids his ’nads had gone to seed, because all he did was make with a grunt and come at me.

I couldn’t deal with his size and strength, so I tried to sidestep, but I bumped up against somebody, one of the girls, a customer, whatever, and he hit me with a glancing right that jolted me so hard the coins in my pants pocket changed denomination.

I tried to hit him back, but found it hard to do from the floor. And besides, the ceiling was falling on me.

Or so it seemed. It was No Balls coming down on me, and he had hold of my coat and was lifting me. He drew back his fist. At that moment I was so stunned, I sort of welcomed any blow he might give me, but there was still enough reflex in me, still enough of the fighter, that I responded by poking my fingers into his eyes.

He barked, dropped me. I rolled against someone, tried to get up. But the someone was Wilber. He hooked his arm over the back of my head, under my neck, had me in a guillotine choke. I stomped his foot and grabbed one of his legs behind the knee and broke his balance while I swatted his balls with my free hand hard enough for them to replace his Adam’s apple.

He let me go and I squatted and struggled for the revolver in my ankle holster. About that time the door swung wide and there was an explosion and plaster rained down from the ceiling like snow.

I glanced up, and there was Leonard holding the double-barrel, one barrel displaying smoke and sending out a gunpowder stench that temporarily masked the incense in the room.

No Balls had recovered again, and he wasn’t afraid of a shotgun. Or was too stupid to know what it was. He charged Leonard. Leonard sidestepped, swung the double-barrel and hit the big bastard so hard that guy’s distant relatives must have jumped in their chairs.

The big man struck the door behind Leonard, slamming it closed, knocking out the bottom panel with his head. He tried to pull his head back through and Leonard banged him with the barrel again, this time across the ribs, then pointed the shotgun at the other muscle guys who had stupidly made a knot over on the left side of the room. All except the guy in the blue suit and Cement Head, that is. Cement Head was standing in front of Blue Suit, ready to take whatever might come, and Blue Suit was calmly looking over his guard’s shoulder.

Red, wearing his stupid ten gallon hat, was standing next to him, close to his hip, watching the events.

I shouldn’t have, but I looked at Wilber on his hands and knees, trying to get up, and was overcome with rage. I swung my foot in an arc and brought it down on the back of his neck brace with a snapping motion. Wilber screamed, hit the floor and lay there holding his neck. “That hurt! That hurt! Oh, God, that hurt!”—like maybe it was supposed to feel good.

“Well, Hap,” Leonard said. “Looks like you’ve shit in the porridge again.”

“I’ll say.”

I pulled my ankle gun and backed toward Leonard. The big guy with his head through the door was trying to pull it out again. Leonard let him this time, then rapped the barrel over his head harder than ever. The big guy decided to lie down and rest for a moment, but I could see he was twitching already, working to get up.

Leonard opened the door and we backed through it. I heard the sound just a little too late. It was the man I had encountered on the porch. He was rushing our backs like a missile.

Leonard wheeled, cracked the bastard’s head with the barrel of the shotgun, then kicked out and knocked him down. The man came up with a gun in his hand, and Leonard, casual as an angler casting a fly rod, jerked the shotgun down from where it lay over his shoulder, and fired. The man’s left foot went away and he fell to the floor and thrashed like a chicken. Blood went everywhere. Leonard leaned over and casually picked up the man’s pistol and dropped it in his coat pocket. He said, “From now on it’s all left shoes for you, Bubba.”

Leonard broke open the shotgun, put the discarded cartridges in his pocket, and reloaded. He might have been doing nothing more than looking at a splinter in his hand, he was so blasé.

The door in front of us was wide open now, and gradually the bodyguards were sliding into the room. They had guns. No more tackle and punch shit. They were going to kill us.

Red pushed in between their legs, for all the world acting like a kid who was about to see something neat in a peep show. Leonard snapped the shotgun shut. We all jumped, then froze.

There was a sound behind us. I glanced carefully over my left shoulder and saw Brett enter the room. She was carrying a pistol by her side. The old lady who had invited me to have a good time came after her, as if to claw her. Brett turned and swung the pistol against the old woman’s head like she was burying an ax in a log. The old woman went down on her knees and dropped her dentures on the floor and held her blood-spurting forehead, said, “You stinkin’ cunt.” Or so I believe. It was hard to tell without her teeth.

Whatever it was, Brett didn’t like it. She bent down and struck her again, this time behind the ear, not hard, but solid enough. The old woman hit the floor, rolled and cussed and bled all over the carpet.

Brett walked up between us. I said, “Let’s back out.”

I thought all the guns in the room would go off then, but they didn’t.

Leonard shouted, “I pull this trigger, half the room disappears.”

That got everyone’s attention. Maybe that’s what they’d been thinking all along and that’s why no one had done anything. There’s nothing like a shotgun with barrels big as subway tunnels to make you take time to consider.

“All guns go away now, or I pull the trigger,” Leonard said. “Do it!”

A couple of beats as everyone looked at the guy rolling around on the floor, screaming, clutching his ankle, his foot spitting blood. The guns went back inside suit coats.

“You,” Brett said to the midget. I turned my attention to the front of the room.

Red pointed at himself.

“Yeah, you,” Brett said. “Shit pile in a hat. Get over here, you little cocksucker.”

Red looked around for help. No one was offering any.

Leonard said, “Do as the lady says, or you’re gonna be even shorter.”

Red wandered toward us, like an amnesiac man who had just walked free of a plane crash somewhere in the Yucatan. In the doorway I saw Wilber appear, one hand on the neck brace. He looked at me with fire in his eyes.

“How’s the neck?” I said.

The fire in his eyes turned to lava.

I gave Red a quick pat-down, found a revolver under his coat. I put it in my coat pocket. I put one hand on Red’s shoulder, and we started backing. Brett deliberately stepped on the old woman’s hand as we went. The woman bellowed and her teeth, which she had recovered and replaced, flew out again. Brett kicked them across the room, and we kept backing. We backed like that all the way out to the car. The entire gang, bodyguards, whores, and johns, and the old woman who was constantly gumming cuss words, came out on the porch and stood under the porch light looking at us.

Leonard opened the trunk, told Red to get inside.

“You’ve got to be kiddin’,” Red said.

“I look like I’m in a humorous mood?”

“I can’t stand tight places.”

“You think the grave ain’t tight?”

Brett grabbed the brim of Red’s hat and jerked it down over his eyes. She whapped him a good one on the top of the head with the pistol. “Do what he says, dick-lick!”

Red hesitated almost as long as it takes to skin the wrapper off a stick of gum, then, the hat still over his eyes, he got hold of the car, climbed inside the trunk, and Leonard closed it.

Leonard gave me the shotgun, went around, got behind the wheel and started the engine. Brett slipped into the back seat. I slid in on the front passenger side, closed the door, and stuck the shotgun out the window.

We roared out of there so fast Leonard fishtailed and banged Brett’s car into the side of a pickup truck. But that didn’t stop us. With the moon at our backs, we went up and over the hill and away, rattling the midget and the guns in the trunk.