Fool Me Twice

by Paul Levine

  “No,” he said, stepping to the wall and pulling down a bullwhip from a wooden dowel peg. “He’s not going anywhere. I’m going to flog him. I’m going to leave scars he’ll remember till the day he dies.”

  The yell came from my left. Cimarron and I both looked that way.

  “I am Spartacus!” With that, Kip charged him, a five-pronged pitchfork aimed at the big man’s groin. Cimarron pivoted to one side, reducing the target to his flank. The blades glanced his leg, and then in one smooth motion, Cimarron grabbed the pitchfork just where the wooden pole met the steel fork. He did have a lot of quick.

  With a flick of the wrist, he lifted boy and pitchfork, Kip hanging on, as if practicing his pole vault. Cimarron shook the pitchfork and Kip tumbled to the floor.

  “Next time,” I said to my nephew, “don’t yell first.”

  “No need for this,” Cimarron said, cocking his arm, and sailing the pitchfork over my head. I ducked anyway, and it landed with a thud in the far wall, where it sunk in and vibrated like a tuning fork.

  “Now, boy, you git out of here,” he said to Kip, who hesitated.

  “I’ll be all right,” I lied, and Kip headed for the open barn door, looking back at me with sadness and fear.

  “Now, you,” Cimarron said. “Let’s finish this.”

  We stood maybe fifteen feet apart, facing each other. “I’ve never touched a woman against her will in my life,” I said. “She’s lying to you. I don’t know why. I don’t know who killed Hornback, or what happened to Blinky, or why Jo Jo came up here, or even why I followed her, but I know I didn’t touch her.”

  Cimarron brought his right hand up behind his ear and snapped his wrist forward. The bullwhip flicked toward me unseen, and cracked, the tip catching me on the shoulder. I thought I’d been stabbed. I backed up, trying to get out of range, and Cimarron advanced, lashing the whip at me, coming up short. He lowered his arm, flicked his wrist, and this time, the tip caught me on the thigh, sending a stinging pain down my leg.

  He had cut off my path to the open door, and now I hobbled toward a window, but this was one he had boarded up after the hailstorm. Two steel support posts supported the loft here, and I squeezed between them to block the oncoming whip. Cimarron still tried, though, snapping the leather against the steel posts with the sound of ricocheting gunshots.

  After three or four tries, he dropped the whip and just came after me. I backed farther along the wall, studded with dowels hung with bridles, reins, and blinders. Still facing Cimarron, I moved backward, my hand feeling along the wall, until my fingers wrapped round the cold metal of a bit and bridle.

  He was on me then, reaching for me with open palm, trying to grab me around the neck. As he did, I swung the bridle, and the bit cracked his front teeth and sunk between his jaws. I kept pushing and he gagged, his tongue stuck under the bit. I had his head bent back, and still I pushed, cutting the sides of his mouth, his tongue and gums, forcing his mouth open, farther still.

  Then he bit down.

  He clamped the metal bit between his jaws and stopped my movement. Both my hands were on the bridle, and both his hands were free. He boxed my ears with a thunderous double punch. I sank to my knees, my head ringing, and he kicked me in the solar plexus. I pitched forward, heaving, and he grabbed my hair and knocked me over backward. I stumbled back two steps, tripped over a two-by-four railing and tumbled into a corncrib. I was on all fours, gagging, staving off the urge to vomit, trying to catch my breath.

  Cimarron stood watching me, his eyes blazing with hate. His tongue flicked the corners of his mouth, where blood trickled down his chin. I tried to get to my feet, but the corncobs rolled under my feet and I fell. When I looked up, Cimarron was pointing something at me. At first, I thought it was a gun.

  I blinked twice.

  “Don’t move, lawyer, or I’ll nail you to the barn wall. I’ll crucify you, and no court in the land would convict me. Even the Lord would understand.”

  I was trying to get up again.

  “I mean it, lawyer.”

  “Jo Jo,” I called out. “Where are you? Tell him the truth. Tell him how you got me out here. Tell him that you told me he beat and raped you.”

  I heard the floorboards creaking overhead and caught sight of her coming down the ladder. In a moment she was beside Cimarron, clutching the blanket at her throat, looking small and vulnerable. “He raped me, Simmy, and then attacked you. And you’re right, no one would blame you. You’ll never even be charged. I know. It’s what I do for a living. You were protecting a loved one and defending yourself. It’s justifiable homicide.”

  “She’s lying,” I said, my voice weak and unconvincing. “She’s lying about everything.”

  I was half crouching, half standing, like some prehistoric ape-man, ancestor to us all. He aimed the stud gun at my chest, then carefully lowered it toward my groin, then lowered it an inch more.

  “You’re bluffing,” I said. “It won’t fire that way. The barrel has to press against the target ...”

  Whomp. A carbon steel nail ricocheted off an ear of corn beneath my feet.

  “...unless you modified it,” I said.

  Cimarron slipped another nail into the barrel, raised the gun, aimed at the center of my forehead, then turned his wrist a fraction of an inch.

  I felt the whistle of the nail by my ear and heard it whomp into the wall. Again, he slipped a nail into the barrel. Whomp, into a cross-hatched beam just above my head.

  When I looked back at him, he was aiming at my midsection. Click.

  “Damn. Josefina, there’s a full clip over by the sawhorse.”

  Cimarron stood ten feet away. I could launch myself out of the corncrib, lower a shoulder and send him flying. I could fake and juke and zig and zag and get the hell out of there. Sure, and I could fly to the moon, but at the moment, I couldn’t lift one leg. Exhaustion and fear had paralyzed me.

  I saw Jo Jo hand Cimarron something, heard the sound of metal sliding against metal. He was pointing the stud gun at me again. “A fellow could grow tired pulling this trigger all day. Gives you respect for roofers and carpenters. I’ve got some pretty strong wrists, and already I’m getting tuckered out. Maybe I should just end the game.”

  He aimed at my heart, lowered to my groin, moved down to my knee, then back to the heart. “Bang,” he said, then laughed as I winced.

  He quickly moved the gun to a point high over my head.

  Whomp. Another nail into the barrel. Whomp. Again, a high shot. Just what the hell was he doing?

  I heard a tearing sound and looked up in time to be hit in the face with a dozen ears of field corn, kernels hard as pebbles, cobs heavy as nightsticks. And then another dozen, and then a deluge. Down they poured through a mesh screen at the bottom of the silo torn open by the nails.

  I tried to scoot on hands and knees, but I slipped again, and the com continued to fall. I raised my arms above my head, but I was knocked off-balance and buried, facedown, as still it poured over me.

  Air.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  I tried to inhale, but the weight of an elephant pressed down on my back. I wriggled to one side and took in a breath.

  Dust.

  I coughed and sputtered and struggled to gulp in air.

  From somewhere I heard his muffled voice. “Lawyer eats all my corn, the animals will starve this winter.”

  I squirmed some more, managed to take one breath, then was conscious of movement. Mine. I was being pulled backward by my ankles. Then I was hoisted up and over the crib railing and tossed to the floor. I was flat on my back, and in a moment, Cimarron was on top of me, sitting on my chest pinning my arms down at the wrists. He didn’t weigh any more than the Appaloosa. Then he released one of my wrists and slapped my face with an open palm, and then the back of his hand, his huge knuckles hitting me hard across the bridge of my nose.

  He dug into his shirt pocket and pulled out a handful of nails, placing them in his mouth. He loaded one into the
gun, reached around my head and pulled at the top of my sweatshirt. I felt the cold metal of the gun barrel against my neck.

  Whomp. A nail tore through my sweatshirt and into the floor.

  “Maybe the lawyer needs a haircut.” He loaded a nail, placed the barrel at the top of my skull, then slid it over the skull. Whomp. A nail skimmed my head and sunk into the floor, giving me a new part in my hair. He slid off me and placed the gun just below my crotch. Another nail in the barrel, another shot into the floor, close enough to make various parts of me retreat northward.

  The rest was a blur. A nail that just missed my kneecap, another alongside my foot. One alongside each temple, the noise deafening. Finally, a last shot between my splayed fingers. Then he dropped the gun into the straw.

  “Josefina,” he called out. “I’m gittin’ tired of this. The fireplace is lit in the house. Take one of those branding irons in there and heat it up good. I’m going to show this fellow what we do with rapists out here.”

  Her voice was a whisper. “Simmy, why not just finish it?”

  He was sitting on my chest again, and I felt him turn to face her.

  “I don’t know about that.”

  I stretched my right arm out as far as it would go. Beneath my hand, I felt something metallic.

  “I want him to suffer for what he did to you, but I’m not going to kill him. Scar him, maim him, put the fear into him so he never bothers you again, but I’ve never killed a man, and I won’t start now.”

  “If he lives and starts talking, it’ll just complicate things,” she said. “Keep it clean and simple.”

  My hand had worked itself around the metallic piece, which was hot to the touch. I hadn’t used one since Hurricane Betsy lifted the shingles and tar paper off Granny’s roof with 140-mile-per-hour winds when I was still a kid. I was going to use it now. I didn’t know if the clip had a bullet left or if there was a nail in the barrel, but I had very little to lose in finding out.

  I made a show of moving my left hand, just to distract Cimarron. He saw the movement and used his right hand to pin down my left. Then he smacked me in the face again with his free hand. In that instant, I came up with the stud gun.

  Heavy sucker.

  It took me a long second to get it pointed at his chest.

  Too long.

  His hand grabbed it underneath and swung it up. It was just passing his forehead when I squeezed the trigger. At the same moment, his left fist smashed straight into my chin. I wanted so to hear the thunk of carbon steel into flesh and bone, but all I heard was a metallic click followed by the crash of surf against rocks and the volcanic roar of exploding pain.

  My last conscious thoughts were merely a series of sounds.

  The sounds were far away and dreamlike, echoing against the dented tinplate of my skull. The world was spinning on a wobbly axis. Everything seemed so slow, except the hot ice pick of agony that flashed from jaw to brain.

  Did I really hear anything through the fog? Yes, there it was: a thud, a grunt, a muffled whomp, and as I slipped into the cool quiet darkness, a hazy image of Blinky Baroso floated high above me, laughing, calling me something, a lousy judge of character. Finally, his voice faded, and I was swept away by a feeling of ultimate and unyielding dread.

  CHAPTER 20

  DO, RE, MI

  Jail food is to food as military music is to music.

  Hard biscuits and fatty bacon and greasy meats. Maybe

  the idea was to induce cardiac arrest and save taxpayers money. The jailer was a potbellied, slack-jawed man of sixty who looked as if he’d been eating the jail hash for thirty years. He was a football fan, and when I told him I had chased the oblong spheroid for a living, he treated me with kindness and respect and brought me pizza and beer. Then I made the mistake of telling him I was now a lawyer. He shook his head sadly, spat on the floor, and said no wonder I ended up here.

  Or was I a lawyer?

  The Florida Bar had begun disbarment proceedings.

  Judge T. Bone Coleridge had ordered me to show cause why Kip shouldn’t be transferred to the custody of the state H.R.S., and when I didn’t appear in court (having been unavoidably detained, as they say, in Colorado), he adjudged me in contempt of court. Actually, contempt was too mild a word for how I felt about the courts.

  I was under indictment in Miami for first-degree murder of Kyle Hornback, local securities dealer. Yeah, that’s what the paper called him. It sounded better than con man, flimflam artist, swindler, extortionist, or racketeer. In death, we are all judged more kindly. The crueler the death, the kinder the obit.

  I was under indictment in Aspen for second-degree murder in the brutal slaying of Kit Carson Cimarron, ranch owner and civic activist, according to the local weekly.

  Civic activist? I suppose they’d call Bonnie and Clyde interstate bankers.

  Completing the list of my legal troubles, I was also being dunned by a record club for three CDs I had never ordered. I wrote a couple of letters telling them what they could do with The Best of Jim Nabors, but their computer kept threatening my credit rating, heaven forbid.

  Okay, so I was a little bitter, sitting in the Pitkin County Jail. Florida and Colorado were drawing straws to see who had the pleasure of providing me with room and board for the next twenty-five years or so, and in Florida’s case, maybe causing a brief power shortage in the immediate vicinity of Raiford Prison. Right now, Colorado had dibs on me under the ancient legal maxim, possession is nine tenths of the law. This was a matter of great consternation to Abe Socolow, who pointed out to a Colorado judge in typical lawyerly fashion that (a) I committed my vile deed in Florida prior to coming to Colorado; (b) Florida had charged me with an even more serious crime; and (c) Florida had indicted me first.

  He really said a-b-c while making his argument. Lawyers tend to argue in threes, building to dramatic conclusions. Some lawyers get confused and say a-b-3. Once in a while, just to see if a judge is listening, I’ll sing out do-re-mi.

  But now, I was just a spectator, wearing jail coveralls, sitting on a hard bench in the county courthouse, trying to listen to words like venue and jurisdiction and equity and conservation of judicial resources.

  Florida, said Abe Socolow, representing the people of that great state.

  Colorado, said Mark McBain, prosecutor in these here parts.

  Florida versus Colorado. It sounded like an old Gator Bowl between the runners-up in the SEC and Big 8. I wouldn’t have minded being sent back to Florida. After all, I hadn’t killed Hornback, and I did kill Cimarron. At least, I thought I did, though I didn’t have a recollection of actually rocketing a nail straight into his right ear and out his skull just above the left ear, spraying bone and blood and gray matter over a fine English riding saddle that was now marked state’s exhibit twenty-three. In fact, the last thing I remembered, the stud gun didn’t fire. I think.

  When I woke up in the hospital with my ankle shackled to a bed, a sadist posing as a doctor was shining a light into my eyes and poking me here and there. My ears were ringing, and he was saying something about a concussion, some tenderness in the area of the liver and minor internal injuries that reminded him of a head-on car crash. In the next twenty-four hours, I discovered the rest without any help. Bruised ribs on the left side where Cimarron had hooked me, welts on my forehead, scratches and scrapes on my face where I landed squarely against the side of the barn, red blisters every place the bull whip kissed me, plus a collection of abrasions and contusions just about everywhere else.

  Still, I seemed to be doing better than K. C. Cimarron. A cop whose name I didn’t catch sauntered in and told me Cimarron was dead and that anything I said might be used against me. Did I want a lawyer. Hell no, I didn’t even want to be a lawyer.

  I was bleary and had a splitting headache but was semi-happy to be alive, and when local prosecutor McBain strolled into my hospital room, brown leather satchel in hand, I didn’t have the presence of mind to clam up. When he turned on his tape recor
der and asked whether I wanted to make a statement about splattering Cimarron’s brains on the barn wall, I told him it was the first time I ever drove a nail straight in my life. McBain nodded appreciatively at such candor and asked how many men I had killed over the years, and I decided it might be a good idea to either get counsel or plead insanity on the spot.

  Jail time.

  Except for the food, it wasn’t so bad. I had my own cell, part of the status derived from being a crazed killer.

  I wasn’t bored. Not with the parade of local lawyers who were itching to represent me. There was one barrister who was a part-time ski instructor, another a part-time wilderness guide, yet a third who was a part-time white-water rafter. There was a woman lawyer who piloted hot-air balloons in her spare time and another who took off Wednesdays to ride in amateur rodeos in Snowmass. I’m all for Renaissance men and women, but at the moment, I wanted a hard-boiled, do-or-die, go-for-the-jugular lawyer who would bleed for me, not leave me naked and alone in the dock on the first day of trout season.

  One day, a local chap named DeWitt Duggins stopped in to see me. We sat across an old wooden table from each other in the visitors room. He was a short, trim man in his mid-thirties with shaggy brown hair and John Denver granny glasses. He had just finished a case in Mesa County in which his client pleaded guilty to killing three elk, and like lawyers everywhere, he wanted to tell war stories.

  “Caused quite a stir over in Grand Junction,” Duggins said, proudly, impressed with the enormity of it all. “After all, three slaughtered elk.”

  “A serial poacher,” I responded gravely.

  “A first-spike bull, a five-spiker, and a cow.”

  “Get him a good deal?” I asked, hopefully.

  “Nine-thousand-dollar fine, ten years.”

  “Probation?”

  “Prison.”

  “Ten years in prison! What do they do if you kill a human up here?”

  “Don’t get that many murder trials. They’re treated rather special, I’m sorry to say.”