The Elephant of Surprise

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “Look, you got something to say, say it,” Manny said. “I’m starting to get bored.”

  I sneaked a glance at my watch. The time was being eaten up, and if Leonard left when we agreed he should leave, I wanted us to be on that bus. All Manny and I were doing was stalling to make sure the noncombatants got on.

  It wouldn’t be too long before Jordan hit the switch in the generator room and all the lights went out. That would be our cue to haul ass.

  Manny sighed, said, “Why don’t you give us the short-story version of whatever novel you got in mind to tell us, whatever you got in mind to stall us with while you do whatever you think is going to work.”

  “As if I don’t think you got some kind of plan going,” Keith said.

  Manny said nothing.

  Keith leaned back in the chair. He looked comfortable. I half expected him to put on pajamas.

  “Very well,” he said. “Let me lay it out for you.”

  “Lay what out?” Manny said.

  “What you’re going to end up doing.”

  34

  Standing in that reception room thinking on it, waiting for those lights to go off, suddenly our little plan seemed goddamn crazy. We would have a long way to haul with people on our ass, and Wilson Keith, he was smooth and deadly and had the soul of a piranha but with less compassion.

  And if we made it to the bus, Leonard had to drive it through the locked gate, and after that, well…I didn’t know. I didn’t know pig shit from axle grease. It was all a big crapshoot, and Keith had the loaded dice, not us. What we had was a wish and a hope and an old transport bus.

  But Leonard was out there waiting. That was something. Still, bad as it looked for me and Manny, I hoped he wouldn’t wait too long if we were delayed. I wanted to know he and the others, that little girl Nikki, got out of there alive and well.

  I could feel my palm sweating on the back of the chair I was touching. Keith’s voice seemed to be an echo. I took a deep breath, used my martial arts training to find my center. It was dark at that center, and a little loud from the thumping of my heart, but I found it, and I began to relax.

  Keith had never stopped talking.

  “…have to do is consider the reality of your situation. Reality is what dictates ethics and decisions, not morality. Something is fine and moral and ethical until it’s about you and your life. We can all afford to be ethical and moral when our lives don’t matter, but in this case, frankly, yours matters a lot.”

  “Situational ethics,” Manny said.

  “That’s one way to put it, but I call it realism,” Keith said. “You can do nice and fine and right when your ass isn’t on the line, but when it’s money or sex or your life, a person’s viewpoint changes. Let me tell you what you should already know. You’re old enough to have left your teddy bears behind. The world isn’t fair, and right now, you’re caught in the unfair part. Idealism is a shield that melts with age and experience. You must know that. You must know you’re holding only a piece of that shield now, or maybe you know it’s gone already, but, out of habit, you keep hanging on to that bullshit we were all taught when we were young. Think about it. Everyone’s dipping their snouts in the trough. What I’m doing is cutting right through the shit. I don’t know you. I wouldn’t care if I did. I neither like nor dislike you, but to suit myself, to put things at an easier advantage for me, I’m willing to do for you what lobbyists do for politicians. I’m going to offer you money, and you can be my little representatives. Hell, I’ll promote you to senators.”

  “I have a feeling we might end up like the jailer your son hired, under some tin at a junkyard dump,” I said.

  “He took the money, but he didn’t live up to his end of the bargain. My son picked the kind of guy that was a little too proud of himself and couldn’t keep his mouth shut.”

  “But us, who you’ve known a few minutes, we’re a wise pick?” Manny said.

  “I’m picking you, my son isn’t. He couldn’t pick a rotten cucumber over a ripe one. And just for the record, Alton was on my payroll for some time. Let me add something else while we’re having this discussion. Little Miss Nicole has false recollections.”

  “Could be,” I said. “But I think she’s closer to the truth than you are. Her tongue is a lot better now. I thought she talked quite convincingly, although I had to listen close. She’s already got a written statement in, so even if something happened to her, shit, man, you’re sunk.”

  “In the end, it’s her word against mine. And I have a few of my spots picked, so to speak.”

  “Spots?” I said.

  “He means money invested in lawmakers,” Manny said. “More crooked cops like Alton.”

  “You said that, not me. I only hinted that I have friends in high places. Cops are actually on the bottom of the stack. There are others I have in my pockets, and they have more power. I’m merely suggesting we should be friends because it would be in your best interests.”

  “We are not your friends,” Manny said.

  “You ought to try to be.”

  “I was a friend of yours, even a passing acquaintance, I wouldn’t like to look at myself in the mirror, see what was in it,” I said. “Besides, you just made it perfectly clear no one is worthy of having a friend, because in the end, we’re all going to turn on one another if the need arises.”

  “Mr. Collins, you are just a half-assed private investigator. Surely you see and do some pretty unworthy things from time to time.”

  “There are lines I don’t cross.”

  “Let me put this in a way that will make sense to both of you. We all have loved ones. Some of them, like my son, who is outside, can be a cross to bear. There are times I think a sack of shit and the brain in that boy’s head couldn’t be any different, but he is my son. That said, if it comes down to me or him, I’ll tell you truly, and I don’t know that he knows this, but considering how I’ve lived my life, he must have some idea…I would throw his ass under the bus, and I would drive the bus over him, then back it up if it was about my survival. My dick still works, and I can find a woman to bear a child. I can make another son, but the empire I’ve put together, I can’t remake so easily. You two, however, being as you’re such idealists, might be more considerate of your family, and therefore maybe you truly would try to jump in front of the bus I’m driving to protect them. You do, that bus will run right over you. But if you want to get on the bus, well, hey, I can make room for both of you, and your friends and family too. Hell, bring the dog and cat, a pet goat, I don’t give a shit. But it has to come out my way.”

  I saw where he was going with this. I hoped Brett had decided to leave, to go on to Tyler and take everyone with her. I wished I had been able to call her and verify that. I wished a lot of things right then. I took a deep breath, tried not to show how scared I was. I put a smile on my face. Maybe Keith was right. Maybe it all did come down to situational ethics.

  “You didn’t put together shit,” I said. “You took over this crew and all the money that came with it when the people who had it before got nabbed, killed, or you helped finish them off. You didn’t build a goddamn thing. You took in a short time what others spent years building. Not that I have any admiration for those assholes either.”

  “The ability to take something is important, Mr. Collins. That’s called having the wisdom to recognize favorable circumstances. It’s called power.”

  “Is that what it is?” I said.

  “I’m giving you both an opportunity. I don’t know where Mr. Pine is, but I am giving him the same opportunity. I want it to go well for all of you and the people close to you. That said, you make a different choice, I got to do what I got to do. I mean, hell, I know who you two are, and I know who matters to you.”

  “Let me give you a note, and you might want to stick this on your refrigerator. My family, you touch them, and I will kill you and everyone who works for you.”

  He laughed. “That’s bold for a fifty-year-old man.”

>   “I’ll help him,” Manny said. “And let me tell you something. Hap, he’s spry.”

  “This is your one chance to walk out of here instead of what’s left of you being washed out with a hose. Let us have Miss Beckman. You don’t even know her. She’s just a chink white-trash bitch, and I do mean white, who stuck her nose in where she shouldn’t have. You want to give up your life for someone you don’t know? You don’t even have to hand her over, so you won’t have that on your conscience. Just leave, and we’ll take care of her. You’ll find a nice package in the mail in a few days, something substantial inside that will help you forget what happened here…You can say we took you by surprise, put you in a jail cell, then grabbed the girl. We could do that, you know. Put you in a cell so it doesn’t look too obvious. There are ways to make this look okay.”

  “You’re not letting us walk,” I said. “You’re not letting anyone walk. And I couldn’t forget doing something like that if I got a million-dollar check weekly and starlets from Hollywood came in daily to hold my balls while I changed pants. I’d rather be dead. Though the starlets would be nice.”

  “You realize I’m suggesting it could turn out that way, Mr. Collins. Not the starlets. The dead part.”

  “In the long run, the law will get you,” Manny said.

  “That is so precious. I keep telling you, the law and justice and the American way goes out the window when money shows up.”

  “Not for everyone,” Manny said.

  “People love the power of the law, not the law. Christians don’t love Jesus, they love John Wayne. Kindness to the poor and the meek, do you see that happening? Turn the other cheek? And another thing—I can’t let small-time assholes like this girl run over me and my family business. I let this go, then others will challenge me. Maybe those others will be a lot better than you two and some split-tail albino. You have to have some standards, you’re going to run a business, especially my kind of business.”

  I glanced at my hand resting on the back of the chair, at my watch. It was just about that time.

  If Jordan didn’t fuck it up.

  “We might be better than you think,” I said.

  “And you might not,” Keith said.

  “Listen,” I said. “Let me ask you a question. Do you ever wonder what it’s like when it goes completely dark?”

  “What?” he said.

  The generator lights went out.

  35

  Dead black.

  Jordan had done his job, and on time. It was so dark you couldn’t see an inch in front of you.

  I heard Manny slip out of the chair, and then me and her started for the door, making our way by memory and feel. Shots were blindly fired. I could hear them hit the plasti-glass, but that stubborn stuff held, though it wouldn’t for long.

  Manny and I ran for it. I tried to charge through the doorway at the back and ran smack into the wall.

  I heard Manny fall; I groped around for her, got her up. I reached in my pocket for the flashlight, brought it out, popped it on. We could see the open doorway and went through it. Behind us I heard the plasti-glass crack from more gunfire.

  When we were through the door I made sure it was closed tight, put the chair under it, but Manny had a better idea. In the glow of my flashlight, she used the keypad by the door to lock it, then we grabbed up the guns and slickers and hustled toward the exit.

  We got to where we could see the door that led to the generator. It was wide open. The flashlight showed no one was in there. Jordan had hauled ass like he was supposed to.

  We moved to the other open doorway, one that led into the short hall that extended to the exit. We hurried along, and as we got closer to the end of the hallway, I turned off the flashlight, jammed it in my pocket.

  We hit the exit door like a stampeding buffalo herd, and all of a sudden, we were outside in the coal-mine dark, the rain slashing us, the wind blowing our hair, cutting us like cold razor blades. It was so dark we couldn’t see the steps under us. We couldn’t see the bus. Hell, we couldn’t see the parking lot.

  “We’ll have to use a light,” Manny said.

  I fumbled my long gun to her, and against my better judgment, I got out the flashlight. I turned it on, flicked the light toward the lot so we could see the bus. I got a glimpse of Leonard at the wheel, other shapes behind the wire-net-and-glass windows, and then we were moving swiftly, slipping a little as we went. Water was not so deep there, but it was deep enough to flow over our ankles. It was cold, and it took only a few steps before you could feel it seep into the flesh and chill your bones. It was so unsettling and uncomfortable, I think a polar bear would have taken his chances back inside the cop shop.

  “I’m cutting the light,” I said, “keep going straight.”

  I cut it. We kept plowing ahead. And then there was a shot. It zipped through the night and slammed into something, but thankfully that something wasn’t us. Next thing we knew, we were running up against the bus, feeling our way around it, making our way to the door. I could hear the bus motor humming, and then I heard the hydraulic door open. There was a dull green light on the dash of the bus, and that made it so we could see. Leonard’s face was softly painted by the light. He smiled green teeth at me.

  “Good to see you,” he said.

  “Likewise.” I glanced toward the back of the bus. Shapes. Except for Nikki—she was closer to the front—I couldn’t make out anyone.

  “Everyone good?” I said.

  Everyone agreed they felt good enough, then Jordan said, “Come on, man, let’s go.”

  Me and Manny took seats, she behind Leonard, me on the right side not too far from the door. The door hissed closed.

  “Grab your asses,” Leonard said. “Here goes.”

  With that, he shifted a gear, the bus jumped a little, and away we went, straight for the locked fence gate.

  36

  Shots were hitting the bus now.

  “This thing is reasonably bulletproof,” Manny said. “Tires are designed to take small-arms fire. It’s built like a tank.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Leonard said, then he stomped the gas.

  We hit the gate, and bam, I was nearly jolted to the front of the bus, and then I was thrown out of the seat and onto the floor. I hustled myself back into place.

  The gate was knocked flat, and we rattled over it, rolling toward what looked like too much water.

  Leonard turned right and climbed the hill toward North Street, away from the deep stuff, but water was running down the hill in a silver shine and splashing along the sides of the bus. Leonard turned the headlights on.

  In the headlights, the rain on the road looked slick and snotty. It came down fast and looked like a beaded curtain.

  We were near the top of the hill when the dump truck Leonard told us about charged out of the alley, its headlights off. It hit the right side of the bus with a sound like the crack of doom.

  I heard people flying around in the back of the bus, and I was thrown across the aisle and splayed over the seat where Manny had been sitting and was now lying.

  “Goddamn, Hap, get off me,” she said.

  The bus didn’t spin, it just slid on a coating of water. The dump truck kept pushing. Soon we’d be across the street and smacked up against a building.

  I grabbed the pole that was near the front of the bus, used it to guide myself back into my seat again, all of this performed as we slid in slow motion, pushed by that dump truck, its tires struggling to maintain traction.

  Leonard jerked the wheel to the left, right toward where I feared we would collide, and gave it the gas. The front of the bus went left, and the back of it spun right. The back end of the bus hit the dump truck and made it slide, turned it so that it was facing the way it had come.

  “Damn, you do that on purpose?” I said.

  “Of course,” he said.

  I could tell he was lying.

  Leonard turned the bus around as adroitly as a professional stunt-car driver, and th
at was probably an accident too. He drove the bus left through an alleyway, and it looked like a clean escape, and then, damn, that garbage truck Leonard said had been parked out front of the cop shop with the dump truck was at the end of the alley, shiny white in the bus headlights. I could see that big killer I had shot in the hospital sitting behind the wheel. The way the lights hit him, he looked like an obsidian golem. Keith and his minions had planned ahead, moved the garbage and dump trucks into position to block the exits.

  We were speeding toward a head-on collision.

  Leonard slammed on the brakes. The bus slipped a little, made us feel like it was on wet grass. And then he was in reverse, gunning it back out of the alley, using the side mirror to plan his path. A precarious thing, since most of what he had for lighting were the now-busted backup lights. The garbage truck’s lights came on, and the truck roared and rattled after us.

  “We’re all going to die,” the female dispatcher said.

  “Possible,” I heard Manny say.

  37

  The lights from the garbage truck filled the bus like watery honey. I sat looking backward, the direction we were going. In the lights from the garbage truck, I could see the dispatchers clinging to the backs of the seats in front of them. Someone was praying. The others were cursing. Nikki was quiet, something not so surprising for a lady with a sore tongue. Manny and I joined her in silence. Leonard, inexplicably, had started singing “Mama’s Little Baby Loves Short’nin’ Bread.”

  If that wasn’t bad enough, the dump truck was back in the game, and it had turned on its lights and was driving for us, trying to sandwich us between several tons of speeding metal. I was already imagining them finding me with a transmission up my ass, my teeth full of the windshield.

  But Leonard had a bit of a lead on them, and he made it out of the alley before the dump truck hit our ass, before the garbage truck plowed our front.

  He whipped the bus toward the hill that rose up to North Street and gave it the gas. It got traction easier than expected and started climbing. The dump truck looked certain to clip our ass, but it just missed.