Rusty Puppy

by Joe R. Lansdale

  After having a lunch of some very bad soup I heated in the office microwave, I gave Buffy a pat, got my coat, and drove over to Camp Rapture. It was a fairly short drive from LaBorde, and the projects looked like a place where dreams went to commit suicide and hope got screwed in the ass.

  It was a cold day, and my breath came out white when I got out of the car. I pulled my coat tighter around me, started walking along the cracked sidewalk toward a row of apartments. They looked rough. The bricks were chipped, the walls were painted with graffiti, sweet nothings like I FUCKED YO MAMA AND HER PUSSY STANK.

  There were similar remarks here and there, names plastered on the wall with what the police liked to call gang signs. Sometimes, if the same signs were on an underpass, they claimed they were satanic. They liked to keep it simple. Whatever they wanted them to be, they became.

  Cops in Camp Rapture had really gotten a bad rap of late, though for that matter, they had always had a bad rap, and there was some evidence it was deserved. Not six months ago, they had “discovered” a car thief in a ditch near the car he had stolen, and he’d been shot in the back of the head five times. He was written down as a suicide. That didn’t hold up, of course, but I think they thought it might, which gives you some idea of their level of professionalism.

  I saw a group of young black men moving in my direction. Late teens and twenties. They were walking that kind of tough-guy walk where one leg seems to drag behind the other. They had their hands in their pockets and there might have been something other than hands in those pockets. Not expecting a shoot-out, I hadn’t brought my gun with me. I hated how it was for them, young men without jobs or much in the way of future plans, but mostly I hated there were five of them and there was one of me.

  “How are you gentlemen?” I said as they gathered around.

  “We fine,” said one of them. He was a tall kid with long, lean muscles and a red shower cap on his head. I’ve never quite understood that fashion statement, but I will say this: If it rained or he decided on a quick shower, he was ready.

  “What you want?” said the one with the shower cap.

  “Money and fame, of course.”

  “You a smartass?” said Shower Cap. This question came up frequently.

  “Yep.”

  “You won’t be so smart with your teeth on the ground and your ass kicked up around your neck.”

  “I would neither be smart nor happy if that were to happen,” I said. “I’m looking for a fella. You might know him. I have an apartment number.”

  “We know him, you can bet your white ass we won’t be pointing him out,” Shower Cap said.

  “Well, as I prefer not to bet my white ass, thank you for your time,” I said.

  I walked through a gap in the near circle they had made and didn’t look back. When it came to young men with nothing to do and chips on their shoulder, you handled it the way you handled junkyard dogs. Show no fear, don’t make eye contact, and walk away slowly and hope they don’t bite you on the ass.

  I walked toward where I thought the number of the apartment might be but wasn’t. The numbers were wonky. I went around the other side of the apartment. There were a bunch of kids playing on that side, boys and girls, eleven years old or so, kicking a ball around.

  They stopped as I came around the corner. White-man sightings were as rare as Bigfoot in those parts. One of the little girls said, “What you doing around here?”

  She was rough-looking, had her hair in cornrows, and was wearing clothes that looked to have been handed down from someone larger. She had on pink tennis shoes with dirty white shoestrings in them. She wore an oversize T-shirt with writing that said MY ASS MATCHES YOUR FACE.

  Charming.

  “Looking for someone?” I said.

  “You po-po?”

  “I am not the po-po. Aren’t you kids supposed to be in school, or maybe setting fire to something?”

  “It’s Saturday, fool,” the girl said.

  “You know,” I said, “it is.”

  “Course it is, and tomorrow be Sunday, and the day after that be Monday.”

  “In school, I bet you make As.”

  “Naw I don’t.”

  “But your marks in personality are high, aren’t they?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I’m looking for a man named Timpson Weed. I got five dollars for the first person points me to where he lives, and if he actually lives there, I got another five when I come back from seeing him.”

  I was already out a large part of my initial down payment on the case.

  The little girl gave me the hairy eyeball, like a banker considering your credit report. “Let me see you money.”

  I took a five out of my wallet and held it between my fingers.

  “Right there,” she said. She pointed at a door on a landing above us.

  “I was told number nine-oh-five, not six-oh-five.”

  “You know so good, why you asking?”

  “That is a very good point.”

  I had asked because the lady who hired me said she couldn’t remember if it was a nine or a six. This way I had confirmation. Either that or I had just been worked out of five dollars.

  I gave her the bill, went up the stairs and over to the door. I could smell cooking food from under it, chicken and dumplings and a lot of onions. I could also hear the TV going, a game show. I knocked on the door. I waited through a couple of ice ages before it was opened.

  It was a short woman with a flower pattern on her housecoat. She was about thirty-five. She had her hair cut close. She was a little thick, with breasts that appeared to need somewhere else to live, there not being enough room in the housecoat. She wore fluffy pink house shoes, a fresher pair than those Mrs. Elton had worn; must have been a trend. They were open in the front and her toes stuck out and her toenails were painted silver. Her fingernails didn’t match. They were red.

  “What you want?”

  “And good afternoon to you.”

  “What the fuck you want? I got things to do.”

  “I was told this was the address of the charm school.”

  “The what?”

  I was being uppity and an asshole, but all I was trying to do was help Louise Elton get a fair shake for her son and I had gotten nothing but shit from an eleven-year-old on up. For all I knew, Louise’s son Jamar was a bad guy and had died being bad, but the idea was to find out, and so far I was batting nothing. On the other hand, considering how it was in Camp Rapture, at least in some sections, I’d be suspicious too, especially if they thought I was a cop.

  “Who’s that at the door?” I heard a voice say.

  I tried peeking around the woman in the doorway, but that wasn’t possible. She had a way of moving so that she was in my eye line. A moment later a big black man without a shirt came to the door and eased her aside.

  “What’s all this racket?” he said.

  “This peckerwood done here asking questions,” the woman said.

  “Go on back in there and watch the stove. And pull that goddamn housecoat together, woman.”

  She gave me a look that almost knocked me over the railing, then disappeared in the back to watch the stove and whatever was cooking.

  “What you want?” the big man said. He was really big. Tall, wide, and though he had some belly, it wasn’t all fat that was moving around under it. Somewhere in there were some abdominal muscles that wanted to show me they were still hard, just slightly marbled.

  “Are you Timpson Weed?”

  “What if I am?”

  “Louise Elton sent me?”

  “She did? She still on that business with Jamar?”

  “Still is.”

  “That nigger’s dead and most apt to stay that way. Ain’t nothing else for it.”

  “I’m a private investigator, and she hired me to check into his death. See if maybe there was more to it than the police say.”

  “Course there is. Always is.”

  “Police aren’t
always out to screw you,” I said. “I know some good ones.”

  “Ought to try being a nigger for a day.”

  “Black cop, I’m talking about.”

  “Yeah, he’s just a white man painted over. I’ve had some experience.”

  I didn’t see any point arguing.

  “I’m just trying to help her out,” I said.

  “Taking her money, you mean.”

  “Not much money.”

  He studied me for a while. “I ain’t got nothing much to say.”

  “Tell me the little you have to say?”

  He had grown quiet, as if there were spies in the woodwork.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “It’s to help a lady out. If it’s not what she wants to believe, then that’s better than not knowing what happened.”

  “Tell you what, you buy me a beer.”

  “Where?”

  “The joint outside the city limits. Seven o’clock.”

  “Joint have a name?”

  He laughed. “That’s just it. It’s called the Joint.”

  “Seven p.m. I’ll find it.”

  “Might want to bring a razor and a billy club with you. The clientele is old-school.”

  “Meaning?”

  “They don’t like white guys. Hell, they ain’t that fond of each other.”

  3

  I went downstairs and started across the lot, and here came those young men again, the red shower cap in the lead, all of them doing that leg-drag act. I had a feeling they had decided to give me a bit of a bounce just to show Whitey who was in charge down here. I was glad to let them be in charge.

  I glanced around to see if there was another way to my car, but there was only a clearing to the right and the projects to the left. The clearing led across a dried-out field of grass littered with broken bottles and no telling what all. On the other side of it was another housing project. I would have had to have packed a camp stove and provisions to walk that far around to avoid trouble. That’s what I should have done anyway, but my pride wouldn’t let me. Or, to be more exact, I was too lazy to do it.

  The little girl I gave the five dollars to came out of an open door in the projects and said, “You find him?”

  I stopped, kept an eye on the young men. They were still coming.

  “I did,” I said.

  “Then you owe me five dollars now, don’t you?”

  “Guess I do.”

  “Ain’t no guessing about it.”

  I got five dollars out of my wallet, glanced toward the young men. They had stopped and started to mill, like they were waiting on me. Behind them, coming up the walkway, I saw Leonard. He had gotten my message, which meant he had been near home when I called. He was walking in that kind of swagger he has, his head held up; his eyes, even from a distance, looked like two hard nuggets of coal. He had on a shadow-black fedora, his new affectation, and he wore it like he was a black Humphrey Bogart and was swinging two sets of nuts.

  “Them boys don’t like you none,” said the little girl, glancing in their direction.

  “I don’t even know them.”

  “That why they don’t like you.”

  “I don’t plan to agitate them.”

  “They always agitated. That big one, got on the blue shirt, that Laron. He lives to fuck people up.”

  “You got a mouth on you, kid.”

  “Ought to heard my mama.”

  “What about the one in the shower cap?”

  “He bad as Laron. Laron, he don’t talk much, but Tuboy, he a talker, and he sneaky. He got a razor he carry behind his back under his shirt.”

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  “Won’t do you no good.”

  The boys were starting to come my way again.

  “They gonna sort yo’ shit just ’cause they can.”

  “It might sort out different than they expect.”

  “Why, you gonna turn into a bunch of white boys? That your superpower?”

  “My superpower is a friend in the right place,” I said, and started toward the crowd of men.

  Leonard had come up behind the boys now. He had already read the situation, and since he had on his badass hat, he was talking shit.

  “Get the hell out of the way,” I heard him say, and they parted before him as if he were a Mack truck. Leonard isn’t a little guy, but he’s not supersize either. He always gives the impression of being bigger, way he talks and walks. He leads with his dick, as one old man we trained martial arts with once put it.

  “Hey, man,” said the big one, Laron. “What the fuck you doing? Coming up in here like that.”

  Leonard hooked him to the head with a right and knocked him down. Laron lay still, either unconscious or wisely aware that getting up would be a bad idea.

  Red Shower Cap, also called Tuboy, turned then, brought his hand out from behind his back. I got a glimpse of the razor opening. I started running toward them.

  Leonard stepped up and hit Tuboy in the mouth while he was bringing his hand around. Tuboy fell to his knees and dropped the razor. He rocked in place.

  One of the young men looked as if he might try and pick the razor up.

  “Fixin’ to be a stack of you assholes laying up in here,” Leonard said, whipping his head around, glaring at the others.

  They stepped back.

  I arrived.

  “Good,” Leonard said. “Now you show up. You stop for a bowl of chili?”

  “Came as fast as I could, but I did want that chili.”

  Leonard reached over and grabbed the shower cap on Tuboy’s head, yanked it off. There were cornrows underneath and there was lint in the cornrows.

  “What you got this on for, you stereotypical country motherfucker,” Leonard said. He looked at the others. “I ought to just slap the ever-loving pig shit out of all of you. Living up in here like a pack of roaches, wearing a fucking shower cap. What are you, animals?”

  I thought, Animals wear shower caps?

  “You ain’t got no call to talk to us like that, brother,” said one of the young men.

  “I ain’t your fucking brother. Shoo on out of here, and take these fat asses with you. I’ll keep the shower cap. I’m going to shit in it.”

  They scattered like geese. They didn’t bother to take Laron or Tuboy with them. It was every asshole for himself. Tuboy was still on his knees. His eyes were glazed. He was probably seeing little blue gnomes riding on unicorns.

  “He’s out, Leonard,” I said.

  Leonard used the palm of his hand to push him. Tuboy groaned a little, toppled, and lay on his side.

  The little girl came over. “You think you’re bad, don’t you?” She said this to Leonard.

  “Baby girl, I don’t think, I know I’m bad.”

  “Them boys hold grudges,” she said.

  “Do they now? Well, that’s going to worry me for days. Who the hell are you?”

  “Reba. I was named after a white lady that sings.”

  “Yeah?” Leonard said.

  “Mama liked that cracker shit. I don’t. I like me some real music. I mainly go by Little Woman.”

  “You just made that up,” Leonard said.

  “Startin’ now, then.”

  “I like Reba,” Leonard said. “I mean the singer, if that’s who you’re talking about. You I don’t like at all, you little snot-nosed pile of rat shit.”

  “Leonard,” I said. “Kid.”

  “This ain’t no kid. That there is a fucking four-hundred-year-old midget vampire.”

  “Fuck you,” Reba said.

  “Fuck you too,” Leonard said.

  “You ain’t black at all?”

  “What the fuck color am I? This look like shoe polish to you?”

  “Uncle Tom is your color.”

  “Yeah, well, you want to stay in the goddamn projects and wear your own shower cap and house shoes and whine about the Man keeping you down, you go on and do it. Me, I spit in the Man’s fucking face, tell him
it’s face wash, and he’s got to like it.”

  “I hope you get et up by a tiger,” she said, walking away.

  “Not likely,” Leonard said.

  “Leonard, really? You’re going to pick a fight with a kid?”

  “She started it. Ancient midget-ass motherfucking vampire.” He yelled out to her then. “I hope your fucking tricycle has a flat.”

  She kept walking away, and without looking back, she stuck her hand up in a fist, extended her middle finger.

  4

  Leonard carried the red shower cap out to his pickup like a scalp he had taken in battle. He opened the door on the driver’s side, tossed it inside.

  “Can you believe that? Motherfucker going around with a fucking shower cap on his head, and he didn’t even have a new do drying out under it, just a nappy head. What the fuck, man?”

  “You are not a nice man, Leonard.”

  We climbed in our respective rides and drove back to LaBorde. Leonard passed me with his window down, waving at me and showing me nearly all of his teeth. He had removed his fedora and was wearing the red shower cap.

  Back in LaBorde we drove to the office, went upstairs, Leonard now wearing the fedora again. Buffy met us at the door and I took her out for a walk and to do her business. When she finished and I had a plastic bag of dog poo in the dumpster, I went upstairs and washed my hands. While I did that, Leonard hugged Buffy. He was the one who had rescued her, and I was the one who took her home. He said, “So give me the usual shit about my hat. Get it over with.”

  “I like it.”

  “What’s that? My hearing going?”

  “I like it.”

  “Be still, my fucking heart.”

  “No. The fedora works. Only hat you ever wore that worked, except for a cowboy hat. Though, I have to say, that shower cap was precious. Seemed closer to your true soul.”

  “Fuck you. What exactly were you doing in the projects, anyway? Your message was cryptic. Old as you are, you ought to know the projects ain’t a good place for you to be. You might fall down and be yelling, ‘I can’t get up ’cause a bunch of niggers are whipping my ass.’”

  “I was doing fine,” I said. “Since when have a bunch of jerks like those guys scared me?”