“Since you have attempted to renege,” Carlos said, “we will be changing our terms. The price is now five hundred dollars.”
I had a feeling that the price had really been five hundred dollars all along.
Bobby Tone gave the kids a snaggle-toothed grin. “Same situation as before. Take it or leave it. But if you leave it, Carlos and I might be taking it anyhow.”
Then, finally, David Garrett stepped onto the porch.
“Everyone under the age of thirty, back into the house,” he said.
Donny and Tyler complied, but Marisa stood her ground, glaring at Bobby Tone and Carlos.
“No tomarás mi tuba,” she said.
You didn’t have to know Spanish to know what she was saying. If Bobby and Carlos tried to leave with the Gronitz, they were going to have ninety pounds of Bad-Brass wildcat on their backs.
I liked that kid.
But Carlos was looking past Marisa. He and Garrett had locked stares like a couple of angry chickens.
“Tell your student that I don’t speak Spanish,” Carlos said. He said the word student as if spitting out a mouthful of bat guano.
“Marisa, you should go inside,” Garrett said.
“They’ve got the Gronitz,” Marisa said.
“They won’t take it. Go on in with Ms. Owens and the others, and I’ll get this straightened out.”
Marisa took a few slow steps backward, keeping her gaze fixed on Carlos. Then she turned and went inside. Garrett closed the door behind her.
I relaxed a little.
Garrett sighed. “Charlie, I don’t know what you think you’re doing with that silly-ass pistol. It looks like something Yosemite Sam might carry.”
Carlos/Charlie glowered. “You always did want to be Bugs Bunny.” The Judge remained hanging at his side, but his hand twitched.
Bobby Tone cleared his throat. “Uh, Carlos, I have the sense that this situation has transformed into something other than a business transaction. And since you seem to harbor some personal animosity toward this gentleman, I’m going to ask you to return the Judge. A firearm can be useful for making a point, which is why I was happy to lend it. But business should never involve personal animosity.” He held out a hand.
I almost let out a whistle. The Bobby Anthony I had known when I was a kid had carried a .25-caliber pistol in his back pocket and a shotgun behind the seat of his International Harvester. So perhaps I should have guessed that in his old age, he had decided to combine the two. And I also should have guessed that a man who spoke and dressed like Carlos wasn’t really a Judge kind of guy.
Carlos/Charlie had a pained expression, as if a dance partner had drilled a heel into the arch of his foot. But then he flipped the Judge to hold it by the barrel and extended it to Bobby Tone.
Bobby took it, turned the cylinder while squinting at the shells, then tucked it into his waistband. He nodded at Garrett. “Go ahead and straighten out whatever you have to straighten out. Then maybe I’ll have a further proposition. This has been a complicated enterprise, but I’ve invested too much time and energy to walk away now.”
I felt the same way. It was almost as if Bobby Tone and I were cut from the same bolt of cloth. He’d gone to jail and I’d gone to UT, but there are those who would argue there’s not much difference.
Garrett took a step toward Carlos/Charlie, who took a step back and almost fell off the porch. Garrett stopped and shook his head.
“Look, Charlie,” he said, “I’m not mad about your taking the money. I don’t know how you got the PIN number, but it’s okay. I was just glad to know you were back in Texas. I didn’t think you were ever coming home.”
Now I was a little envious of Charlie. As far as I could tell, nobody was glad I had come home. And I hadn’t even broken into anyone’s bank account.
“I had to,” Charlie said darkly. “California isn’t what it was. Texas is where the music I want to play is happening now. I’m starting my own banda, David. I’ve been in Baja with the real guys, learning to play the real songs.”
“Really? Say something in Spanish, Charlie.”
Charlie’s chest puffed out. “No. How’s that? See, as long as you’re not the singer, the real banda guys don’t care what words you’re able to say. It’s about what notes you’re able to play. So now, while you’re tucked away in your school in the sticks, teaching scales and marches, I’ll be making music in the real world for real people.” He pointed a thumb at himself. “No more second-chair fiberglass for me.”
Now Garrett was pissed. “So you’re going to skim from Mom’s bequest and buy and sell instruments ripped off from schools? Instruments that Mom’s money helped pay for in the first place?”
“Mom left that money to help musicians,” Charlie said. “Not just school bands. And you were supposed to consult me. But you did it all yourself. So I’m expressing my disagreement.”
Bobby Tone interjected. “Hold on, now. Are y’all saying that the two of you have the same mother? I find that chromatically unlikely.”
I almost spoke up to tell him he was being rude, then decided that would be rude as well.
Garrett gave Bobby a quick glance. “Not your business,” he said. Then he looked back at Charlie. “You’re really going to get what you want by stealing from kids?”
Charlie’s upper lip warped into a sneer. “Just from kids who don’t care. If they did, they wouldn’t be selling their school’s brass.”
“It’s not the band kids,” Garrett said. “They tried to call me as soon as they found out what was going on. But I—I had my phone turned off. So they did what they thought best. And they didn’t call the sheriff because they didn’t want their friends to go to jail, for which you should be grateful.”
“New girlfriend?” Charlie asked. “That’s usually what it means if someone needs you and you’ve found something better to do.”
Oh yeah. These guys were brothers.
“What I’m telling you is, the band kids didn’t steal anything,” Garrett said. “The only thing they did wrong was try to protect a couple of white-trash jocks.”
There were shouts of protest from inside the house. Donny and Tyler both objected to the characterization. As a member of that tribe myself, though, I felt the term was accurate.
Bobby Tone cleared his throat. “Excuse me, sir, but that’s a term I too find offensive.”
This time, Garrett didn’t even look at him. “Tell me you’ve never used an equivalent term for black people, and I’ll apologize.”
Bobby scratched his jaw. “Point taken,” he said. “But we’re getting off topic. Have you boys got your shit straight enough so we can complete our transaction?”
Garrett turned on him. “Don’t you get it? There isn’t going to be a transaction. You and Charlie are going to remove the Gronitz tuba from your car, and then you’re going to return the Conn sousaphone. You’ll also provide money for a new bell for the King. In exchange, nobody’s going to jail.”
“And what am I supposed to do then?” Charlie asked.
Garrett turned back to him. “You’re my brother. So come stay with me. Return as much of the money as you’ve still got. We’ll figure it out from there.”
Charlie gave a short, sardonic snort. “On your terms,” he said. “With no banda for me.”
“Like I said, we’ll figure it out.”
Bobby Tone stepped in between them, clucked his tongue, and pulled the Judge from his waistband.
“What I’m hearing,” he said, “is that whatever the two of y’all decide to do, I’m gettin’ nothing. Not from a purchase today, and not from resales down the line. And I was being so careful not to be greedy, too, since this was a new line of business for me. I was happy just to be a facilitator and to be paid accordingly.”
Garrett eyed the gun. “I’ll give you seventy-six dollars for your trouble. That’s all I have on me.”
Bobby kept the Judge pointing downward, but he cocked it.
“Seventy-six bucks
?” he said. “Man with a charitable bank account and all? No, I’ll need at least a thousand to release the tuba from the custody of this minivan.” He paused and scratched his jaw with his free hand again. “Actually, I’ll need the thousand just to walk away without shooting you. And I’d have to shoot both of you, so no one could accuse me of racial bias. One thousand dollars. And then y’all can do whatever you like with the tuba and the sousaphones and the glass fuckin’ harmonicas and whatever else you got.”
Charlie looked at him. “You know I only have five hundred tonight. There isn’t a thousand dollars on this porch.”
Bobby Tone raised the pistol. “Then one of you needs to go get it.”
“Or you could have five hundred and seventy-six dollars right now,” Garrett said.
Bobby didn’t seem to hear the offer. He began swiveling the barrel of the Judge back and forth, pointing it first at Charlie and then at Garrett.
“Eeny,” he said. “Meeny. Miney. Moe.”
Then the front door opened, and Elizabeth stepped out. She had her cell phone in her hand, and she looked straight at Bobby Tone.
“Do you want the sheriff out here?” she asked.
Garrett groaned. “Elizabeth, no—”
Bobby stopped swiveling the Judge, and he lowered it a bit. But he gave Elizabeth a wry look. “Ma’am, nobody from the sheriff’s office could be out here in less than thirty minutes. And if you were to make me worry that you’d accuse me of wrongdoing, why, I could just shoot all of you to prevent that.”
I tensed again. Bobby Tone didn’t know I was there. So if my knees cooperated, I might be able to be on him before he could react. Or I might not. I prepared to flip a mental coin.
At that moment, I heard the crunch of tires coming from the driveway again.
Well, good. I had been wondering how this situation could get any more complicated. Now I was about to find out.
12. Everybody’s Beeswax
No one on the porch seemed to hear what I heard. They were all wrapped up in their four-way Texican standoff.
A slow, black Chrysler 300 came idling up the driveway past my hiding place. Its lights were off. And except for the soft crunch of its tires, it was almost silent.
I had a premonition that this new development meant the Judge was going to express its opinion again.
So as the car idled past me, I came out in a crouch and tucked in behind its rear bumper. Maybe, if I got close enough, I could at least try to jump onto the porch and shield Elizabeth.
Then someone—Carlos/Charlie, I thought—finally spotted the Chrysler and yelled. So I was ready when the car came to a halt, and I didn’t whack my head on the trunk.
I looked around the glowing left brake light just as the Chrysler’s headlights came on, flooding the porch. Bobby Tone, Charlie, Garrett, and Elizabeth all winced in the glare.
Then the driver’s door opened, and the driver stepped out. He kept the open door between himself and the porch.
“Everybody just stay right like you are,” he said in a deep, phlegmy voice. “I suspect I’m gonna have to arrest somebody. But let me get a look so we can figure out who.”
It was Ernest, also known as Deputy Beeswax. At some point after I had encountered him that morning, he had apparently decided he ought to do more than stand around. But he had just made a tactical error.
The first shot from the Judge took out the Chrysler’s left headlight. Its roar was still rattling in my skull as I jumped forward, grabbed Ernest by his gunbelt, and shoved him into the car facedown on the front seat. His deputy hat fell to the floorboards, exposing a scalp the color and texture of a bathroom scrub brush in the blue glow from the dash.
Up on the porch, everyone was shouting and the front door was slamming.
“Get the hell off me!” Ernest yelled into the passenger-seat cushion. “Whoever you are, you’re interfering with an officer of the law.”
I held Ernest down with a forearm across his neck and a knee on his rump. “I don’t think you’re even on duty,” I growled, trying to disguise my voice. I was going for something between Winston Churchill and Batman. “This isn’t a squad car. There’s no radio.”
“I got one in the glove box,” Ernest said. “All I got to do is turn it on. And it don’t matter if I’m on duty or not. All I need is a reason to believe a crime is in progress. Getting a headlight shot out and your knee up my ass both qualify.”
The Judge exploded again, and I heard the other headlight shatter. I glanced up through the windshield and saw that the porch light and the lights in the crooked house had been turned off, too.
“Listen, Deputy,” I said. “I’m an innocent passerby, but I happen to know the only things at stake here are a few band instruments. Nothing worth getting shot over.”
Ernest tried to shake me loose. “I agree,” he said. “So let me up so I can shoot back.”
That struck me as a bad option. Bobby Tone hadn’t hit anything but headlights. But if Ernest returned fire, somebody might get killed. And it might be me.
Bobby Tone shouted from the porch. “Hey! I’m guessing y’all are associated with these kids, and that you don’t know your heads from your taints any better than they do. My suggestion is you get that vehicle off the driveway so I have a clear exit. I’ll give you—oh, two minutes. That sounds generous to me. That sound generous to y’all?”
“That’s fine!” I bellowed.
Ernest increased his efforts to dislodge me, but I held firm.
“Listen here,” he said, panting. “As long as we have two minutes, Mr. Innocent Passerby, I want you to understand something. I’ve been a Texas law officer for forty years, and there are rules I’m bound to follow. One of those rules says if a suspect discharges a firearm in my direction, I by God discharge one right back.”
I groped for Ernest’s .357 with my free hand. “I respect that,” I said. “But all of my own rules are devoted to self-preservation. So I’m gonna work with that.”
Sure enough, the strap over the grip of Ernest’s .357 was still unsnapped. The pistol slid into my hand as slick as a pumpkin seed.
“I dunno what you think you’re gonna do now,” Ernest said. “That ain’t loaded with nothin’ but empty cartridges.”
I was baffled. “Why on earth would you do that?”
Ernest managed a chuckle that came out more like a grunt. “I’m semiretired in Kingman County. I generally find that the intimidation factor of a pistol works just fine without actual bullets. Besides, this way, some asshole grabs my gun, joke’s on him.”
“That’s funny, all right,” I said. “Almost as funny as a deputy approaching what he thinks is a crime in progress without live cartridges or backup.”
“There’s crimes, and there’s crimes,” Ernest said. “I observed a scrawny old redneck and some guy dressed like Roy Rogers driving a scabrous minivan with a WOMEN FOR OBAMA bumper sticker. Looked suspicious, so I followed. And now you’ve implied that in addition to stealing a twenty-four-dollar Plymouth, they’re involved in a recent case of grand theft tuba. But until now, neither situation would have seemed to call for live ammo. What should I have hoped to shoot, a sousaphone?”
“You wouldn’t be the first,” I said. “But I guess that line about a Texas lawman always firing back was bullshit.”
Ernest tried to swing his left fist back at me, but human arms don’t bend that way. “I don’t want to kill anyone over a decrepit mommy-mobile or an oversized bugle,” he said, “but I’m not a fanatic. I’ve got live rounds handy. But I ain’t telling you where.”
“The glove box,” I said. “With the radio.”
Ernest grunted again. “Just let me up, genius.”
I chucked the .357 backwards as far as I could, and I heard it hit the ground past the other cars. Then I felt along Ernest’s belt and found his handcuff holster. And after thirty seconds of struggle, I managed to get his wrists cuffed behind his back. “I’m gonna tell you something in the interest of fairness,” Ernest
said then. “If I find out who you are, you’re gonna have to run until you hit ocean. At which point you will want to start swimming for Cuba.”
The Chrysler was still idling. I sat up on Ernest’s lower legs, waved at the silhouettes on the dark porch, and threw the car into reverse without trying to close the open door. It would have hit Ernest’s feet.
I punched the gas, and the car lurched backward, switchbacking like a panicked squirrel, the open door flapping. When we were past Donny’s pickup, I cranked the wheel to the left, and the Chrysler bounced into the rough grass along the east side of the driveway. Ernest cussed as we hit bump after bump, and I finally stomped the brakes so that we came to rest about twenty yards off the driveway, near the eastern tree line. Then I killed the engine and threw the keys into the night.
“You have bashed up my brand-new car’s oil pan and exhaust system,” Ernest said. “So once you’ve swum to Cuba, you better keep doing the crawl all the way to the goddamn Canary Islands.”
I got out without answering, tucked Ernest’s feet inside, and closed the door. I felt bad about the damage, but none of it had been my fault. So I didn’t think it was fair of Ernest to blame it on me, especially since he had ruined my own evening.
I scuttled along the tree line back toward the crooked house. I had realized there was no more money here for me. But before I ran back across the driveway and made my way to my Toyota, I wanted to be sure Elizabeth and the band kids were all right. Screw the rest of them. They were all crooks, except for Garrett. And he was Elizabeth’s boyfriend, so screw him, too.
I was about halfway back when, up at the porch, the Plymouth minivan spun its tires. Then its lights came on, and it clattered up the driveway toward the road at high speed. There was a lot of yelling from the crooked house as this happened, and I assumed that Bobby Tone was cutting his losses and taking off with the tuba.
I paused to watch as the minivan sped past my position, and there was just enough light for me to see that once again, the Gronitz’s getaway driver was Marisa.
“Man,” I said aloud. “She really loves that tuba.”
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