Rusty Puppy Read online

  “Doesn’t mean it wasn’t there, and in the end, does it matter how Jamar got there?”

  “It might. Was he dropped off? Was someone there with him that escaped a beating?”

  “Or was he led to a beating?” I said.

  “That crossed my mind. And how did he end up there with three cops beating him to death with old-style billy clubs. Who carries those these days? Timpson didn’t see a police car either. Were they fucking beamed down by Scotty on the Enterprise?”

  I took a moment to consider.

  “Do you think Scotty would do such a thing?”

  “No,” Leonard said. “Not really. He always seemed like one of the good guys to me…So the cops see Jamar, and they are sick of his shit, and here they have him buying dope—”

  “You don’t know that,” I said.

  “No, I don’t. I’m just fishing.”

  “All right,” I said. “They were sick of him following them around, taking photos. They didn’t like the shoe on the other foot, saw their chance to get even. Maybe he wasn’t buying or selling shit, just like his mama said, but they might have wanted to pin dope-buying on him, or -selling. Make it look that way. Decided to have him resist arrest, even if he wasn’t. They gave him a good ass-reshuffling for annoying them, but they got too happy in their work, did the billy-club boogaloo on his head, and he died.”

  Leonard nodded. “Could be. Still, something seems to be seriously missing in Timpson’s tale.”

  “You keep coming back to that,” I said. “He sounded sincere.”

  “And you keep coming back to that. Good liars sound sincere, which is why they’re good liars. He sees this cop killing, goes in the house, and the cops just forget him? They were willing to kill Jamar, why are they letting Timpson go? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Good point. But I get the feeling that’s his story and he’s sticking to it.”

  10

  I decided I’d talk to Marvin at the cop shop. He probably knew some of the coppers in Camp Rapture, could maybe give me a lead into who was dirty there and who wasn’t, who might be a contact worth having, but when I phoned him, he was out. I left a message, and then me and Leonard left for the day. I’m sure there was plenty we could do to find out who did what, but to tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure what it was or how to go about it. I wished right then I had Sam Spade’s private number. Of course, he’d be really old by now, might be missing a step or two. McGruff the crime-fighting dog could be available, though. We damn sure needed someone’s help on this.

  Me and Leonard aren’t so much detectives as we are persistent bumblers, though some detective skills were wearing off on us in spite of ourselves. Thing was, though, Leonard wasn’t exactly on his best game. He was acting tough, as always, and frankly, it wasn’t much of an act. He was the toughest son of a bitch I knew. But he was acting tough, not only in skin and bones, but in emotions as well. He was tough enough, all right, but no one is that tough. I knew he was hurting over John.

  For a while John and his niece had moved in with Leonard, then John left again, and Leonard helped the niece, Felicity, set up her own apartment. She had a job at a Starbucks and it was a good start. Like her uncle John, she was gay, and catching hell from her father because he thought gay was like choosing a haircut and all you had to do was let it grow out or get another haircut. Unlike her uncle John, Felicity knew who she was and was proud of it, and Leonard was her hero. I could understand that. He was kind of mine sometimes.

  Anyway, John left again, for the umpteenth time, and Felicity stayed in LaBorde. Her having only a part-time job gave her time off, which made her think she might could get some college in come next semester. She wanted to be a pharmacist.

  Leonard had plans that night to take her to dinner and a movie, give her a pep talk or some such, so his head wasn’t really into the business at hand. Honestly, we could take a bit of time. Jamar wasn’t going to get any deader.

  I put Buffy in the car and we went home, daring ourselves to catch what the ladies had, though I guess Buffy was immune. In spite of my telling Leonard how I was enjoying a bit of time away from home, I was starting to get lonely. I missed not only Brett, but Chance as well. Each day, I found myself bonding more closely with my daughter.

  Daughter.

  That was really hard for me to wrap my head around, but I liked the idea a lot.

  It was quiet in the house, and Chance lay on the couch as if dead. Brett was in the kitchen heating water. Buffy went over and sniffed Chance, then lay down in front of the couch.

  Brett spoke softly when she saw me.

  “Cold medicine. It knocked her on her ass,” she said. “I’m just now recovering from the same stuff.”

  Brett’s face was pale and her nose was red and her eyes looked watery. She had her hair pulled up and tied at the back of her head. I thought she was beautiful.

  “Feel better?”

  “For the moment,” she said. “I think it’s actually more than a cold, some kind of flu. I do okay, and then I’m not okay. It’s like constantly being run over by a train, revived, and run over again. You really should stay at the office. Let me assure you, you don’t want this stuff.”

  “As a nurse, don’t you know what this stuff is?”

  “Former nurse.”

  “So you forget everything when you quit being a nurse?”

  “I was never very good at diagnosing myself, because I so rarely get sick.”

  I moved closer to her. She stuck her palm against my chest.

  “I’m not kidding. No kissing or hugging. This virus is a bitch with a hammer.”

  “Maybe a kiss would make it worthwhile,” I said.

  “Hey, I kiss like an ace, but even my wonderful wine-sweet kisses wouldn’t be worth it.”

  “Actually, your lips do look dry.”

  “They are. I’m making hot tea. Want some?”

  “Sure.”

  “Get the honey.”

  I prowled through the cabinets for the honey. It was in one of those plastic bears. I put it on the table, told Brett to sit, and finished making the tea. I found some animal crackers, something I liked and Chance loved, and put the box on the table.

  “My stomach won’t take it,” Brett said.

  “More for me,” I said.

  “You better save Chance some of those,” she said.

  “Do I have to?”

  “She’s your daughter. Do you want to become like Leonard, way he is about vanilla cookies?”

  “I do not.”

  “You and her are a lot alike. Genetics isn’t for nothing, you know.”

  “Love of animal crackers is no doubt a deeply embedded genetic trait. As for environment, I’m not sure we’re offering her the best there is. That being my fault, of course, not yours.”

  “We are doing fine. You are doing fine.”

  Brett sipped her tea.

  “All I can taste is hot,” she said.

  I tasted my tea. It was fine and sweet with honey, but then again, I wasn’t sick. My taste buds were working. I had an animal cracker.

  “Tell me what you have going?” Brett said.

  I told her about Louise and our interview with Timpson Weed.

  “Sounds like you’ve earned your sixty-five dollars, and then some.”

  “I suppose so,” I said.

  “But you want to keep digging?”

  “You know I do.”

  “All right,” Brett said. “Let’s talk about it. So the kid was following the cops around, and the next thing you know, he’s dead, and Weed says he saw him beat to death in a field by the project houses by some cops?”

  “Yep.”

  “Know what bothers me about that?” Brett said.

  “The fact that three cops in plain sight beat a kid to death? Leonard also brought up the part about them just letting Timpson Weed sail loose, and that no cars were seen by Timpson, or so he said. People live there, they notice things like that. They knew I was on-site b
efore I actually got out of my car.”

  “What I’m thinking is, why were the cops that stupid? Why didn’t they arrest him, take him in, or, if they really had a grudge, why didn’t they take him somewhere else and kill him? That would have been smarter.”

  “Perhaps they didn’t intend to kill Jamar,” I said. “They were mad and it got out of hand. And maybe, simply put, it was a situation of opportunity, and they’re not that smart.”

  “Could be,” Brett said, and sipped at the tea and made a face.

  “Stupid people get jobs too,” I said. “Thing is, folks that get the badge a lot of time couldn’t get a merit badge from the Cub Scouts, but they want the job and are persistent, qualified or not. Next thing you know, they’re carrying a gun and an attitude and have a badge pinned on their chest.”

  “There are good cops.”

  “Of course. Marvin is the best. I know a few others. But there are still plenty that when they were kids they got a participation trophy for coming in dead last, and they’re still mad about it. What is a fact is the kid, Jamar, was following them around, pissing them off, filming them. They didn’t expect it, didn’t like it, and the kid ends up dead.”

  “Uh. I’m feeling worse.”

  Brett stood up with her cup of tea and poured it in the sink.

  “Should I take you to the doctor?”

  “Nope. I’m a nurse. Remember?”

  “Were.”

  “Hasn’t been that long.”

  “Now suddenly you’re falling back on your nursing credentials.”

  “I like to work it the way it works best for me.”

  “You make a good nurse but a lousy patient.”

  “That’s probably right,” she said. “Look, I got to go back to bed. Will you check on Chance, see that her fever is going down? Mine sort of comes and goes, so I guess she’s in the same boat.”

  “You look pretty weak. Need help upstairs?”

  “No. I got it.”

  Brett headed up and I went over to the couch and gently touched Chance’s head. It was warm, but not on fire.

  I went back to the table and finished my tea. I sat there and thought about what Brett had said, and the more I thought about it, the more I wondered. Maybe she and Leonard had the right kind of suspicions. Would the cops just beat the kid to death there in plain sight? They wanted to kill him, why not get him in the car and take him some place isolated and fix him so he’s fertilizing grass. Thing was, why were they following Charm in the first place, which was the business that led to them following the brother? Those thoughts ran around and around in my head like a mouse on a hot stove.

  I finished up with the tea, put the cookies away, cups in the dishwasher, started for the hall bathroom. I stopped when I passed the couch. I looked at the young woman sleeping there, my daughter. She was covered in an old quilt Brett had inherited from some relative, and all that was visible was her head on a couch pillow, her black hair tumbling over it. She looked like her mother, or at least the way I remembered her. I could see parts of me there too. Not in a Frankenstein-monster stitch-up kind of way, but in a blend of two people.

  Being a father had as much to do with being present as it did with genetics. More, actually. A lot of what we say is genetics is proximity, by my reckoning, and the way we learn to be human is by example. I wasn’t sure how good my example was. I had killed people, and I had hurt people. All for good reasons, I told myself, but at three in the morning, and sometimes in moments like now, I wasn’t so sure I was anything more than a thug who justified his actions. Leonard, at least, believed in himself and the choices he made. I was more shaky about those things.

  Chance stirred a little. I went over and sat in a chair across from the couch. She opened her eyes and saw me.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey. You still have a fever. Brett said it was really high before. Not as much now. I felt your forehead.”

  “I dreamed a bird lit on my head. That was you.”

  “Most likely. Any better?”

  “Just feel unbelievably tired. Hard to pick up my arms sometimes. Brett, she’s been really sick.”

  “I know. She was up a bit, but now she’s back in bed.”

  “It’s more than a cold.”

  “Brett thinks the same. Flu is my guess.”

  “You’re going to end up with it,” she said.

  “I hope not. You get better, you and me, maybe we could do something.”

  “Arm wrestle?”

  “We could.”

  “Badminton? Perhaps a little polo, take part in a tractor pull?”

  “You’re kind of a smartass.”

  “From what I can tell, you and Leonard and Brett are all smartasses.”

  “It’s not as positive a trait as you might think.”

  “But you stay a smartass.”

  “Some of us have looks and some of us have brains, and some of us are just smartasses. We embrace what we have.”

  She sat up on the couch, pulled the blanket around her. She reached down and gave Buffy a pat on the head.

  “Can I get you something?” I asked.

  “Orange juice.”

  I went into the kitchen, washed my hands, poured her a glass of orange juice, and gave it to her. “Can you eat anything?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t get quite as ill as I did thinking about food now, but my stomach is still not crazy about the idea.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “You know, you look all right.”

  “Well, I’m not sick,” I said.

  “Not what I mean. You said some got the looks and others got the brains. Mama thought you looked good. I think a lot of women might.”

  “So you’re saying I didn’t get the brains?”

  She laughed a little. “Brett likes you for some reason.”

  “There are still desperate ones in the world,” I said, “and I think in Brett’s case, her eyesight might be failing, and she likes having someone less intelligent than her around.”

  “You undercut yourself a lot, but I’m not even sure you believe it.”

  “Oh, that’s where you would be wrong.”

  “And you three, you, Leonard, Brett, you’re all bright. I like being here. I like talking about something besides what Mama’s boyfriends talked about. Guns. Jesus, which was funny, considering they were gun fanatics and drunks, and when they weren’t talking about Jesus, they were cursing black people, gays, and so on. A few of them had been in prison. None of them had read a page of the Bible, but to hear them tell it they were God’s right-hand men.” She paused a moment. “Leonard seems to really like guns, but he’s okay.”

  “Leonard likes what they can accomplish, but he’s not someone who dresses them up and talks to them. He doesn’t talk about ammo and gun grips like he’s talking about beloved family members. Well, actually, he doesn’t have any family members.”

  “There’s you and Brett. Me, I hope.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You’re right. He’s my brother. And, Chance, I want you to know, I’m not a perfect kind of guy. I have some skeletons in my closet. I need to be clear about that.”

  “Brett’s told me some of it. I figure there’s a lot more to it than she’s told me, but I know this: you’re a good man.”

  I actually blushed. “I’m not so sure,” I said.

  “I am,” she said. “I know you are.”

  “Who you want me to be.”

  “I truly believe you are a good man.”

  “We’ll give that some time to sort out,” I said.

  Right then, one thing was for sure—I wanted to be a better man than I was. For Chance.

  11

  After sitting by myself in the kitchen, reading an old and not-too-good Western novel now and again, I answered a brief call from Marvin and took a moment to make myself another cup of tea, which I drank quickly.

  Chance was asleep again on the couch, Brett was still asleep upstairs, both of them loaded to the gi
lls with fresh flu medicine. I was bored. I called Leonard and he came by and picked me up. I brought Buffy out to the truck with me and let her hop in the backseat. It was one of those four-door truck jobs with a shortened truck bed so as to allow a backseat.

  “Wasn’t sure you’d want to leave your house,” I said.

  “Why not. Me and Felicity went to eat, then to the movie, and, well, I could tell she wanted to go home and look at Facebook or some such shit, so I took her. Only so much time a young person wants to spend with a middle-aged person.”

  “Middle-aged, huh? Double your age and tell me that you are truly middle-aged.”

  “I’d rather not,” Leonard said. “I went home, sat around, and there’s no one there but me. I played with my dick awhile, but the dick wasn’t interested. Ever have that happen?”

  “My pecker is always curious and up for adventure.”

  “I don’t doubt that. I remember one time when we were on a fishing trip. We were up, let me see, Caddo Lake, I think, and we were coming back, and we stopped in that little town—”

  “Dangerfield.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Pretty sure that was it. Pretty sure I see this coming.”

  “We found this café, stopped to get a bite, and you start chatting up the waitress.”

  “Hair black as a raven’s wing. Lips like rose petals falling apart, to quote a Bob Wills song.”

  “Yep,” Leonard said, nodding. “So you start chatting, and the next thing I know the place is closing and we’re going to take her home, and she has you get in the backseat with her, and damn if you two aren’t going at it like a couple of goddamn jackrabbits back there, and there I was in the front seat, a few inches from all that business. Didn’t know where I was going, just driving around like an idiot because she never gave me her address, and if that wasn’t bad enough, you didn’t just screw her until her lights dimmed, you kept going, trying to put them out. She kept saying, ‘Oh, baby, I’ve come, can’t you come?’ And you’re just pounding her so loud that old wreck of mine is vibrating like an egg timer, and you say, ‘I’ll get there when I get there,’ and then she’s screaming and yelling, ‘I’m doing it again,’ and then you still didn’t quit.”