Hap and Leonard

by Joe R. Lansdale

  There’s no way to describe the emptiness I felt. I went downstairs with the note and gave it to Leonard. He read it and went upstairs and came down with a shotgun, two pistols, and a single-shot .22 rifle. None of them are registered. I keep them in a special place in the closet where the ceiling tiles can be moved and the guns can be stored.

  I sat at the table, stunned, and Leonard went out and got Donny and brought him in.

  Donny looked at me, said, “What’s wrong?”

  Leonard gave him the note, said, “That’s your man, Donny. He’s got Brett and your brother. That’s what cowards do.”

  Donny put the note down. “Smoke Stack said no one would get hurt. He said we’d just end up making some money.”

  “Someone will get hurt all right,” Leonard said. “Smoke Stack. And anyone with him. If he hurts Brett, we’ll kill them all and shit on their graves on a weekly basis.”

  “Brett didn’t have anything to do with this,” Donny said.

  “Yeah, and that mattered, didn’t it?” Leonard said.

  I was thinking on what to do next when the cell rang.

  When I answered, Smoke Stack said, “All right, bad ass. We got your woman and she’s going to drive the getaway car for us. That’s ironic, ain’t it, asshole? It didn’t take all that much work to figure who you guys were, ’cause first off, we got the brother, and it didn’t take more than a few burning cigarettes on his chest and he talked right up, told us who you were. How you like that?”

  “Peachy,” I said.

  “We nabbed Donny’s brother at his job just before he started to clean a toilet. Now listen up tight ’cause I ain’t gonna repeat it. We hit the First Commercial Bank at 1:30 today. Anyone should get tipped off before then, or at all, we’ll kill the chick and the brother too. What we’re gonna have the redhead do is drive the getaway car. Ain’t that classic? You take our wheel man, and we take your girl, and now she’s our wheel man. Pardon my goddamn fucking manners. Wheel woman. I hope she can drive, ’cause if she can’t, got to just go on and pop her.”

  “She can drive,” I said. “Don’t hurt her.”

  “Man, that would be a shame, wouldn’t it? Fox like that. She’s fine, man. I don’t know how you got something like that. I see her, and I see you, I got to wonder you got some kind of Love Potion thing going.”

  “Just don’t hurt her. . . . How do I get her back?”

  “You didn’t mention getting the brother back. So, we’ll keep him. We’ll keep him until we’re gone for some time. We give the redhead back, you tell who we are, then he’s toast. Otherwise, a week from now we’ll let him go . . . no. I don’t like that. You see, I’m thinking since you didn’t even ask about him, he’s not such a big worry for you. You get the woman back, then what do you care? We’ll do it the other way. We’ll keep the redhead and give you the brother. A week from now, we’ll let her go. Just so you know, we caught her sleeping. Just sprang the lock and found her upstairs. I made her change, and I watched while she did it. It’s good to know she’s a natural redhead. It’s good to know what she’s got under the hood, so to speak.”

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  “Don’t get rowdy. It might not do to get me mad. And let me tell you something. Other night, you got lucky. I was high as a kite.”

  “Yeah, and you can’t fight either.”

  “Maybe we’ll get another chance and I can show you what I can do when I’m straight.”

  “Maybe we will.”

  “Tell you what. We keep her a week, we’ll give her back, but in the meantime, we might try and put out that little fire between her legs. I’m a regular fireman.”

  “You hurt her, you touch her, you’re dead,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t talk like that, if I was you. There’s all kinds of things can happen between now and then. You could be looking for her for twenty years and not so much as find a hair. That body we left in the woods, in the car, that was a mistake. From now on, there won’t be bodies to find. So you better pay attention to me. You sit quiet. We’ll hit the bank. We’ll leave the brother somewhere, and then we’ll let your woman go in a week. That way, we got plenty of time to do what we want and get where we want. You don’t believe me, call the police. Show up and cause trouble. You might get me, but you won’t get her back. Least not alive. Have a nice fucking day, asshole.”

  I put the cell away and told Leonard what Smoke Stack said.

  I said to Donny, “He won’t let your brother go, and he won’t let Brett go. He knows we know who he is, and he’s determined to pull the armored car job anyway. Out of spite. He’s trying to prove he’s smart.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Donny said. “I guess I haven’t been thinking.”

  “You ought to be sorry, kid,” Leonard said. “You’ve stirred up the goddamn bees’ nest.”

  “He might let them go,” Donny said.

  “No,” I said. “His pride is what this is about. He knows at some point we’ll tell somebody, so I figure he’ll do the robbery, then tell us he’s going to let the brother go, and we can pick him up at such and such a place, but neither brother nor Brett will be alive by then. And they’ll be waiting for us. They’ll ask that you come along, like they’re gonna take you back. But you know what? They plan to kill us all. No witnesses, and then they’re back in business. Cops will know it’s them that did it because of circumstantial evidence, but thinking and proving, that’s two different things. They could lay low for a year or two and then launder the money somewhere, come out good. And my figure is everyone in that group, except Smoke Stack, will turn up dead. He’ll end up with all the money and no one to talk about how things were done.”

  “You know, it’s not a nice thing to say,” Leonard said, looking at Donny, “but this is all your fault.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” Donny said.

  “Damn straight,” Leonard said.

  “It’s not all your fault,” I said. “I was Kelly, I’d have told too. No one is as tough as they show in the movies. I should have thought that angle. We tried to play this one too nice.”

  “Hap likes being nice,” Leonard said. “Me, I don’t care for nice.”

  “Will you go to the police?” Donny asked.

  “We could take that chance, but we won’t,” I said.

  Donny looked at the floor, then up at me. “It’s not an armored car this time.”

  “No?”

  “They’re just going to hit the bank. Two inside, and then they’ll come out and the getaway car will be waiting. I wanted to tell you that. He shouldn’t have bothered Kelly and Brett.”

  “I bet Smoke Stack stays in the car,” Leonard said.

  “Yeah,” Donny said. “Him and one of the others. And the driver.”

  “And now that driver is Brett, and your brother will be in the car too,” Leonard said.

  “All right,” I said. “That doesn’t change much, it might make it easier, no armored car guys to worry with.”

  “Yeah, it really doesn’t matter,” Leonard said. “But you showed some balls by telling us, by stepping farther away from that asshole Smoke Stack.”

  “What will you do?” Donny asked.

  “What Leonard said earlier. We’ll kill them all and shit on their graves.”

  It was still early in the day. My guess was they would keep Brett and Kelly alive until they were finished with the job. That would be their insurance until they didn’t need them anymore. I had to hold onto that idea. It was my only comfort. Still, it wouldn’t be long after the job was over that both Brett and Kelly would end up dead.

  I called Marvin and told him the situation.

  “So, how about I park somewhere where I can see them do the robbery. The asshole even told you the bank.”

  “He thinks he’s untouchable.”

  “I can be an eyewitness later. Say I saw them. Right after I shoot the living hell out of them.”

  “Just be a witness,” I said. “Don’t get involved. Leonard and I will take car
e of them.”

  “I know that,” Marvin said. “I never thought otherwise. But I can do my part.”

  “Not for us you won’t,” I said.

  “I didn’t say anything about it being for you and Leonard. It’s Brett I’m talking about.”

  “And I appreciate it, but just watch what goes down so you can say you saw them there. If you see us, kind of forget that you did.”

  “If they call me on the witness stand later and ask if I saw you two?”

  “Lie under oath.”

  “Certainly. I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page.”

  We met Marvin at a drive-through eatery about noon, had some coffee. I don’t remember if I drank mine or not. We were sitting in Marvin’s car. Leonard’s car was parked beside it. Donny was sitting with us.

  “Donny, you stay with Marvin,” I said.

  “You don’t have to worry about me running,” Donny said. “I want my brother back. I want you to get Brett back. She was right. I do get to choose.”

  “Yeah, well,” Leonard said, “talk is cheap.”

  “By the way,” I said, “in case you choose wrong, I’m not worrying about you running. Marvin will shoot you.”

  “I will,” Marvin said. “A whole lot.”

  “Maybe somebody ought to shoot me,” Donny said. It was a little dramatic, but right then I think he meant it.

  Leonard raised his hand. “Who’s for it?”

  “Right now you just stay out of trouble, Donny,” I said. “This kind of stuff is our business.”

  “Yeah, like we don’t fuck up regularly,” Leonard said.

  “Not this time,” I said.

  “But they said for you not to come,” Donny said. “That if you did they’d kill her.”

  “They’ll kill her anyway,” Marvin said. “So, it’s then or not at all.”

  Leonard and I got in his car. We had put false license plates on it that morning, and we had a roll of false pinstripe to use. It was a stick-on thing you could remove easily, then wipe the sides of the car with some rubbing alcohol and it was like it had never been there. It was a little thing, but it was something that might throw an observer off.

  Just to keep the disguise theme going, Leonard and I were going to wear hats.

  Marvin was to drive to a spot across from the bank. A hotel parking lot. It would be quite a coincidence, him being at the hotel parking lot at the same time as the robbery, considering he’d turned in information about them earlier. Information that didn’t pan out. But, he planned to tell them the hotel had a hell of a catfish buffet, and that he liked to take it in now and again, just happened to be there when the whole thing went down. Donny being there might take a bit more explaining, but in the end, truthfully, I didn’t think it would matter. Not with what I had in mind.

  We stopped in a lot behind a closed supermarket and got out and quickly put the pinstripes on the car. We put our hats on and drove to a place across the street from the bank. It used to be a mercantile store, but like most things downtown, it had gone the way of the dodo bird. From where we were, we could see the bank and we could see the hotel across the way. Marvin and Donny were parked in the lot.

  The little mercantile lot was now a free parking lot, and it was full of cars. Mostly people who worked for the bank. We didn’t try to find a parking slot, we just drove to the rear of where all the cars were and pulled up there. As we sat, a police patrol car came by on the street between us and the bank. He didn’t look our way. Which was good. I had the .22 bolt-action rifle in my lap; it held one shot at a time. In the back seat was a shotgun. We had pistols in the glove box. No land mines or golf clubs.

  I opened the door quietly and got out of the car and looked over the roof, and over the roofs of the other cars in the lot. From there I had a clear shot.

  I got back in the car.

  I looked at my watch. 1:15.

  I took a deep breath. Leonard said, “It’ll be all right.”

  “It’ll be all right when it’s all right,” I said.

  “We’ll get them.”

  “He could have lied about the time,” I said. “He could have done that.”

  “Yep,” Leonard said, “but I think he feels safe. The coward’s way is to be brave when he holds the cards. Not when he doesn’t.”

  “I just hope I’m not the one to hurt her.”

  “Hell, Hap, when was the last time you missed a shot?”

  I tried not to remember when that was, tried not to imagine I could miss.

  “Listen, brother,” Leonard said, “I can do the shooting for you. I’m not like you. You know, in Vietnam I killed a lot of men. The only ones I feel bad about are the ones I tried to kill, shot at, and missed. I remember them better than the dead ones ’cause all I can think about is they may have gone on to kill one of us. I’m not like you. I don’t carry the burdens of popping off a bad guy. I can get closer somehow, and I can do it.”

  “No you can’t. You’re an all right shot, but when it comes to this business I’m the one to do it. And it needs to be done from as much distance as the shot will allow.”

  “You got me there.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I do.”

  I never learned to love guns. Didn’t sit around and talk about how big a hole they can put in something and from how far. I didn’t need bigger, better, and more. I don’t enjoy the smell of gun oil, don’t even like cleaning them. I don’t know all the brand names and all the calibers and such.

  But I can shoot a long rifle better than damn near anybody outside of a trained sniper, and I’m okay with a handgun if it’s not too extreme a shot. I just have a knack to aim at something and hit it. Put a long gun in my hands and I can normally put a shot up a gnat’s ass, and that’s without the gnat bending over and pointing to the target.

  Right then, however, all I could think about was that I might miss. I had certainly missed before, but I didn’t want this to be one of those times.

  Leonard knew what I was thinking. He often does.

  “You won’t miss, Hap.”

  We didn’t say another word. Just sat there and watched and listened to each other breathe. I paused once and looked in the mirror on the back of the sun visor. I should note I looked pretty cool in my hat, a brown fedora. Leonard didn’t look so sharp in his. He loved hats, but like I keep telling him, he isn’t a hat person. Every hat he wears looks like something left on a scarecrow.

  1:30 came and they didn’t. Had Smoke Stack given me a line of shit? I felt like I was going to burst out crying.

  Five minutes later we saw a car with two of the guys that had been with Smoke Stack in the house that night. The skinny, potbellied guys.

  The car was a replacement for the one they had originally stored in the shed Marvin told us about. A brown, speedy model. They parked it in a slot and sat for a moment. I got out of the car with the .22 and laid it over the roof. I was a good distance away, and I had a limited shot over the roofs of parked cars. My stomach fluttered.

  Way I figured, those guys in the brown late model would hit the bank, rush out and into the getaway car as it arrived. Smoke Stack, Brett and Kelly, and Stumpy would be in that car. Brett would be at the wheel. When the robbery was done, the others would jump in the getaway car and go. Brett would have to drive them out of there. I hoped like hell she didn’t try to get cute, wreck the car. She did, they’d kill her or the wreck might. With Brett, you never knew. She was a fighter.

  Way they planned it, if things went wrong with the pickup, they had a spare car in the lot. But the best thing was to have a getaway driver waiting so the robbers wouldn’t have to start up and back out. It wasn’t elaborate. It was simple. Simple was what worked.

  The two shitheads got out of the car, ready to go in the bank. They had on gloves and jackets under which I was sure there were guns.

  I had the .22 beaded on the back of the head of one of them. A .22 isn’t a heavy firing weapon, but it doesn’t recoil much and in matters like this, it
isn’t firepower, it’s aim. The .22 had another advantage. It wasn’t particularly loud.

  I took a deep breath, two more, then slowly let out all my air, steadied the rifle. My face was beaded with sweat and a drop ran into my eye. I wiped it away quickly with my arm. The sweat had spoiled my aim.

  They paused, and the one I hadn’t sighted talked on his cell phone. That would be the call for the getaway car, which would be nearby. And that would be the pause I needed to set my shot again.

  They started walking toward the bank entrance. I sighted down the barrel, took three deep breaths again, let out all my air, and gently tugged the trigger. The sound of the shot was like someone snapping a whip. The guy I was aiming at folded his legs under him and sat down quickly like he was about to start meditation. I knew there would be a small hole in the back of his head, but the front would have one the size of a half-dollar. There would be a punch out of bone, an explosion of blood and brains on the concrete. As I watched, slowly, he leaned forward, his forehead hitting the cement.

  The other man with him wheeled and pulled a gun and darted back toward his car. I shot and hit him in the side before he made it. He went down. I could hear him scream from there. He threw the pistol aside and got up on his knees and held both hands up in surrender; he was a professional quitter.

  I could tell he hadn’t seen me yet, had no idea where the shot had come from. He was rapidly turning his head from left to right, front to back, holding his hands up.

  He yelled out to no one in particular, “I haven’t got a gun. I give up. I quit.”

  All I could think about was Brett.

  I timed the turn of his head and shot him between the eyes. He fell back. I tossed the .22 in the backseat and climbed back in the car. About that time, people came out of the bank. They gathered around the bodies.

  We sat where we were. People were looking in all directions. I took deep breaths and let them out.

  “Easy,” Leonard said. “Two down.”

  Then we saw a black SUV pull into the lot.

  Brett was at the wheel. Smoke Stack was beside her. One of the other shits was in the back, the one Smoke Stack called Stumpy. I didn’t see Kelly.