Honky Tonk Samurai (Hap and Leonard)

by Joe R. Lansdale

“I hear you,” said the officer. “Just this morning, my coffee wasn’t quite right.”

  “There you are,” Leonard said. “It’s already started. The end of the world as we know it. The goddamn fucking apocalypse.”

  3

  She’s got a busted rib—cracked, really. Nothing major. Used to wrap them up tight. Not the way it’s done anymore.” The vet, a stocky young lady who had thick shoulder-length blond hair slicked back with mousse, was telling us this as if we were potential interns.

  “So she’ll be all right?” I asked.

  “Long as she takes it easy,” she said.

  “She will,” I said.

  “I’d like to have the bastard did this right here on my table,” she said. “I’d cut his balls off with a dull scalpel.”

  “And we’d hold him down,” Leonard said.

  “When he came around, because he had a kind of accident and was out for a while, he apologized to the dog,” I said.

  “Apologized?” she said.

  “Leonard there actually put the words in his mouth and made him chew on them and like it,” I said. “But he had him say: I am sorry, little doggie, I am a shit-eating asshole and am not worthy to wear your dog collar. I have fleas.”

  The vet smiled a little, nodded at Leonard.

  Leonard was sitting in a chair by the wall. He nodded back. Marvin was leaning against the open door frame. Officer Carroll had taken the dog abuser in. The dog was on a table, lying on her side. She was very patient and even cooperative. I liked that dog.

  Marvin had let us take the dog to the vet. I guess he would have some paperwork to lie about, about how that bastard had jumped Leonard, who was merely trying to stop animal abuse, and then had turned on Marvin when he came to investigate. It wasn’t legal, but it was justice. I could still visualize those slaps from Marvin. Marvin had fast hands.

  The vet shaved some of the dog’s hair and wrapped her up, but not tight. Just a little something to keep the rib firmly in place. She said it probably didn’t need to stay but two or three days, and told us again about how it used to be done and how it wasn’t done like that anymore. I guess she was practicing a lecture she was going to give. I paid the bill out of some of the money we had gotten for watching the guy go to the gym, and we drove Marvin to his car at the cop shop. He said he wanted to talk to us, said he’d follow us back to my place, that he’d come in a little while, had a bit of cop work to do. We went ahead.

  Leonard had recently found his own living arrangements, a shabby place downtown in an old building that had once been a candy factory but was later cut up into apartments. Before the apartment, Leonard owned a house, but he had left that to John, then John left it, and Leonard sold it. Leonard actually made a small profit. This was rare for either one of us. A profit. Though for the first time in both our lives we had a bit of money tucked away and were what you might call almost comfortable. Redneck jobs are frequently short on career potential. You do one till you tire or get fired, and then you move on. We had moved on a lot.

  Leonard’s apartment was a kind of loft with a partition for the bedroom and the bathroom. The landlord was letting him build some new walls for some of the rent. Work he had to have done by a certain time. Leonard decided to hire someone to do it. It was not cheaper than the rent reduction, but it gave him a nicer place to live, and in time it would even out. There was talk of the landlord applying the rent toward a sale. The owner was old and tired of property and renters, and Leonard wanted to buy.

  Leonard had been living there for only a short time, staying at our place a lot until some of the work on the place was done. Before that, he lived at our house full-time. We even had a room built onto it. I loved him—dearly—and so did Brett, but I must be honest: I was glad he wasn’t there all the time anymore. Brett and I were happy empty nesters. We could have more time to ourselves, and we didn’t have to be quiet when we were playing doctor, and my vanilla-cookie-and-Dr-Pepper budget would go down dramatically. This would also help Leonard’s waistline. He loved those vanilla cookies and Dr Peppers severely, but he loved them even more when he didn’t have to buy them. I think he saw eating my cookies and soft drinks as an accomplishment of great importance and took it as a matter of pride.

  It had turned hot by the time we got out of the vet’s, and it was only ten thirty or so. The sun lay down on us like a coat of heated chain mail.

  When we got to mine and Brett’s house and came in with the dog, Brett was home from her nursing job. She had quit nursing several times but was so good at what she did that she always got hired back. She looked tired but pretty, her red hair tied back in a ponytail. She said, nodding at the dog, “So we’re having company for dinner? And I don’t mean Leonard.”

  “Hey. I make good company,” Leonard said. “What are we having?”

  “Whatever you’re buying,” Brett said.

  “Oh,” Leonard said. “That limits things.”

  I looked down at the dog. “This is our true guest. This is … well, I don’t know who this is.”

  “Follow you home?” she asked.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Your new dog, Leonard?” she asked.

  Leonard roved an eye my way. “Could be,” he said. “Could be yours.”

  “Can I have her?” I said. I tried to sound winsome and wistful at the same time. Actually, I’m not sure which part of how I sounded was wistful and which part was winsome. Maybe you can’t do both at the same time. Maybe one sounds a lot like the other.

  “Will you throw a hissy if the answer is no?” Brett said.

  “Probably.”

  “Oh, he can throw a grown-up big-ass cracker-style hissy,” Leonard said. “I’ve seen him do it, and I got to tell you, I was embarrassed. It wasn’t very manly.”

  “I can try throwing the hissy in a deep voice,” I said.

  “Nope,” Leonard said. “That’s not how a hissy works.”

  “First how about telling me how we’ve come by a dog?” Brett asked.

  We all ended up around the table, the dog lying at my feet, and I told her while we all had glasses of ice tea.

  “I can’t believe people like that,” Brett said. “This dog looks like a lover, not a biter.”

  “I don’t think she’s old enough to know what she is,” I said.

  “Well, I like dogs,” Brett said.

  The doorbell rang. I answered it. It was Marvin Hanson.

  “So,” I said as he came in. “Hello to the police chief who didn’t tell us he was the police chief.”

  He sat at the table, and I sat down again. He leaned over to give the dog a pat on the head. “Nice dog.”

  “Police chief?” Brett said.

  “Yep,” Marvin said. “You know, that man might want this dog back, and I’m not sure how that will work out in court. He’s going to get a fine for animal abuse and resisting arrest, but he could still throw some stink around.”

  “Give Hap some wheat bread,” Leonard said. “He’ll match him out, I bet you.”

  “I’m serious,” Marvin said. “Could be some court stuff coming up.”

  “I don’t know about court,” Leonard said, “but I know how it worked out on his lawn. Not too well.”

  “We were bullies,” I said.

  “No,” Marvin said. “We were the Fresh Fists of Vengeance.”

  “To be precise,” Leonard said, “you were the Slap and Backhand of Vengeance.”

  “Don’t forget the knee,” I said.

  “Yeah, and the knee,” Leonard said. “But that lacks a certain ring.”

  “What’s the legal damage?” I asked Marvin.

  “For me or for you guys?” Marvin asked.

  “Give us the whole package,” Leonard said.

  “Well, the police officer saw him attack me,” Marvin said.

  “Yeah, well, all right,” I said. “Should we say we saw him attack you, too?”

  “That would be handy,” Marvin said. “But the lady next door saw it all hap
pen, and she filmed it on her cell-phone camera. Got word of that on the way over. She called it in.”

  “Of course she did,” I said, having expected just that sort of thing.

  “But she said she didn’t film the part where Leonard knocked cheese dick around, and she didn’t film me slapping the poo out of him. She’s just got the part where he kicked the dog. Said she thought he looked as if he was going to attack you two, and then me, so she put the blame on him.”

  “She’s such a sweet liar,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Marvin said. “And she’s an old lady and looks very trustworthy, I hear. A little crusty, but all right, I think. I just got my description from Officer Curt Carroll, who had to drive back over there. He said the man who owned the dog was out on the lawn on his hands and knees looking for his missing teeth, thought maybe if he put them in ice they could be put back in. He’s one of those guys thinks he knows all manner of shit but couldn’t tell the difference between shit and wild honey.”

  “Very convenient the old lady looks trustworthy,” Leonard said. “As for ass wipe, I hope he doesn’t find his teeth.”

  “How many was he missing?” I said. “I only saw one.”

  “Two, I think,” Marvin said. “Anyway, Gummy, as I like to think of him, isn’t pressing charges. He at first had a different point of view, but I pointed out you guys were just good Samaritans who saw an animal mistreated and went to help. I think he bought that. There’s some truth in it, but then there’s that whole lying part about how we were attacked.”

  “He did swing at me,” Leonard said.

  “We’ll let that count for something,” Marvin said. “Thing is, he’s done, you’re safe, so am I, and besides, I’m the police chief.”

  “You were just trying to frighten us with that stuff about how he might want his dog back, weren’t you?”

  “Just a little,” Marvin said. “I have to get my licks in on you guys somehow. You’ve certainly given me enough grief.”

  “There’s a little something we’re all curious about,” I said. “How did that whole police chief thing happen? We work for you, you know—seems that would have come up.”

  “Does, doesn’t it?” he said. “But it didn’t. And I’ll tell you why. I thought maybe I was being foolish, trying to get back on the cops. But now my leg’s healed up and I’m able to work and I had a good record there, and better yet, the city council came to me. Seems they can’t keep police chiefs or officers. They change all the time. They got a lot of quitters, one in jail for this or that. By the way, you know they painted the jail pink and make the convicts wear pink jumpsuits now?”

  I held up my hand. “Been there, wore a jumpsuit.”

  “Pink,” Hanson said.

  “Yep, and a little loose-fitting, I thought, though more attractive than you might think. Comfortable because it was loose, I guess. The pink is supposed to be a deterrent to crime, embarrassing and all that.”

  “Do you think it works?” Hanson said.

  “Not so much.”

  “Me, either. First thing I do next week is have all the jail cells repainted. They can keep the pink jumpsuits until they wear out. No. You know what? I’m ordering the standard orange ones right away. They can afford that. Can you believe that shit? People raping and murdering, and their conclusion is to paint the jail pink and have the shits wear pink jumpsuits. The goddamn death penalty doesn’t stop them, but they think butt-hole pink will.”

  “It’s a mystery,” I said. “But I’m still more mystified that you’re police chief.”

  “Yep, me too,” Leonard said.

  “I like pink,” Brett said.

  “The conversation has moved on, Brett,” I said. “So why you, Hanson?”

  “Oh, there’s been some good chiefs, but so far the good ones have left because they can’t stand how things get done in this town or because they got better jobs doing the same thing in places they like better. There’s some good cops here, though. Kid that was with me you met. Some of the detectives like Drake and Kelso, few others. They’ve lasted awhile. But they want someone they think can hold things together better. They heard how I had an agency, was doing good physically now. How I had all that experience in Houston and here, so they came to me, hoping they could lure me away. They could.”

  “Don’t they have elections for that sort of thing?” Leonard asked.

  “That’s sheriff,” Marvin said. “Here police chief isn’t an elected office, it’s a pick-and-choose on the part of the city council. I got picked. I officially started today, but mostly I just rode from the office out to where you guys were. When I came in first thing, first day at work, first crack out of the box, I hear that a guy who’s been kicking a dog was getting an ass-whipping in a yard near where I sent you guys to scout. I knew who it was, of course.”

  “We’re so predictable,” Leonard said.

  “In some ways, yes,” Marvin said. “Thing is, well, I can’t keep the agency.”

  “There goes about a third of our employment,” Leonard said.

  “More like three-quarters,” I said. “We’ve been prosperous these last few months, and now we won’t be prosperous. It’s back to day labor and field work.”

  “There’s always bouncing, janitorial work, and sexing chickens,” Leonard said.

  “Yeah. I forgot we had so many options.”

  “It’s a conflict of interest to have that kind of business and be in the law business, too,” Marvin said. “Besides, I got to go more by the law now. I’ve turned back to being respectable.”

  “Clean underwear and all that,” Leonard said.

  “That’s right,” Marvin said. “I even change socks daily.”

  “You sure gave your first day a swell start,” Brett said.

  “Yeah, I know. I could have been back at the agency after one day, but it worked out.”

  “This what you want?” I said. “Police chief?”

  “I loved my work there as a lieutenant, and I was practically police chief then, so I’m taking the job. I’m back in law enforcement. But thing is, I got to close the agency or sell it. I was thinking you two might want to take it over.”

  “What’s the price?” Leonard said.

  “What I was thinking,” he said, “is you buy all the office equipment, take up the payments on the place, cause I’m buying the building, and you can start right away. Owner financed.”

  “Us?” I said. “You’re really talking to us about owning a business? I don’t know our names and ‘business owners’ ought to be said in the same breath.”

  “I know,” Marvin said. “It’s a scary thought.”

  “I don’t know I want to run a business,” I said. “I like the work all right, but that’s just getting paid, not running the business—paying property taxes, insurance, and the like. Keeping up with this and that. What if a pipe breaks?”

  “Fix it or get it fixed,” Marvin said.

  “One I don’t like to do, the other one costs money,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Leonard said. “That’s not for me, either. Fixing pipes or running a business. I tried a lemonade stand once and had to fight two little white boys who called me a black cocksucker. I whipped the shit out of them. Hell, it was ten years after that before I sucked my first cock.”

  “It’s good to be precise on cock sucking,” I said.

  “Have it your way,” Marvin said. “But I’m selling out, and I’m offering you the best deal I’ll offer anyone.” He looked at Leonard. “Call it my cocksucker discount.”

  “That’s nice of you,” Leonard said.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “I’ll do it,” Brett said.

  We all looked at her.

  “I’m nursed out,” she said. “I’m tired of the hours, and I’m tired of wiping asses and changing bandages. I’ll buy out the equipment and take over the business, pay the bills. Hap and Leonard can work for me.”

  “You’ll be our boss?” I said.

  “W
e can make it work,” she said.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You know,” Marvin said, “that’s a good idea. Gets me out from under it, and you can make it work, Brett. You don’t even need these two dopes. I can get you a private investigator license easy peasy. I know folks that know folks.”

  “I was thinking that,” she said. “That I didn’t need these two guys.”

  “Wait a minute,” Leonard said. “Did I say I was out? I don’t think so. I don’t even like Hap.”

  “I’ll provide a certain amount of vanilla cookies as part of your payment,” she said.

  “Dr Peppers?” Leonard asked.

  “That, too,” she said.

  “Hell, then, I’m surely in,” Leonard said.

  “Hap?” Marvin said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess so. We go on like we are? No license for us two, just slave labor?”

  “Of course,” Brett said.

  “Yeah,” Marvin said. “You work under Brett’s license like you did mine.”

  “When does this start?” Leonard asked.

  “Right now the business is going to close. I turned in the report to the lady with the gym-conscious husband, and that was the last of it. She owes one more payment. But the business can restart when Brett wants it to start, long as it’s before the next building payment, and of course there’s paperwork to do. Thing is, it’s not going to cost that much to get started. It doesn’t pay like nursing, though, Brett.”

  “Trust me,” she said. “Nursing isn’t exactly big money. Good, steady money, but not big money. Besides, like I said, I’m worn out with it. I’ll give my two-week notice when I go in tomorrow. And I think they’ll let me leave right away. They owe me vacation time.”

  And that’s how I went to work for my girlfriend at what became the Brett Sawyer Agency.

  4

  At least Marvin had liked the paint. It wasn’t pretty paint, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure what color you would call it. Faded rust, perhaps. But it was the paint that had come with the inside walls, and there was nothing about it that bothered me, but Brett, she had other ideas. Leonard and I ended up painting the office a light mint green. It did look better, but I thought of it as a waste of time. It wasn’t like we were trying to run a boutique. Next thing you knew there’d be flowers in vases, a bird in a cage, and a painting that looked like a bag of crayons had exploded.