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  “We got quite the conundrum then, don’t we?” Cox said, and grinned a little.

  “Pretty conundrummy,” Leonard said.

  Speed was a little to my left rear, but I could see him well enough. Across the way was Crew Cut, and not far from him were Cox and the girl, Jackie and Givens. Leonard was off to my right.

  “You know what?” Leonard said. “I’m going to step a little wide, in case my man here decides to shoot. He’s got dead aim, but I don’t want to be in the line of fire. He might let a lot of bullets go.”

  “You really good?” Speed asked me.

  “There’s all manner of opinions floating around,” I said.

  “He will blow your head off, Speed,” Leonard said, without looking back at me, keeping his eyes on the others. “It will happen so fast you’ll never know you have a hole in you.”

  I thought: Don’t build it up so much, Leonard. This Speed guy, he looks like someone who would like to try me out, and I’d rather not. But I didn’t let on I was worried. I smiled a lot. I was one confident and happy looking sonofabitch.

  “I’m thinking I might like to try you, fast man,” Speed said.

  Shit. I knew it.

  “We don’t have to, you know,” I said.

  “You sound a little scared,” Speed said.

  “It’s just I don’t like having to clean my gun,” I said. “All that smoke in the barrel. The cost of a bullet.”

  “You know what I think,” Speed said, pushing his coat back so the butt of his holstered gun could be seen. “I don’t think you’re that—”

  I drew and wheeled and shot him, right in the center of the chest. I wheeled again, toward Crew Cut. He was struggling his gun out of the holster beneath his coat. I shot him in the arm. The gun he’d grabbed went flipping away and he fell back against the car, grabbed his arm, said, “Shit.”

  Leonard had his gun out now. It was about time.

  “Damn, Hap,” Leonard said. “That was some good shooting.”

  “Wasn’t bad,” I said. “Disarm the dick cheese.”

  Leonard pointed his gun at them. He said, “You, Nora, you get their guns from them, bring them over here and toss them on the ground behind the car. You get feisty, I’ll put a hole in you. I got a rule, anyone tries to hurt me gets hurt, male, female, wild animal. And if they got hide-out guns, those better come out slow and easy too, not be hanging around for later. Something like that would make me irritable, and like the Hulk, you wouldn’t like me when I’m mad.”

  Nora did as she was told. It was quite a pile of guns she dumped behind the car. When she was finished, Leonard said to her, “You come over here and get in our car. Sit in the backseat, put your hands in your lap and look prim.”

  Nora got in the back seat of the car the way a child in trouble will do.

  I went over to Speed. I had been watching him carefully ever since he hit the ground, except for when I shot the crew cut fellow. He was bleeding badly and his eyes were blinking very fast. He wasn’t even trying to reach for his gun. I knelt down beside him.

  “Damn, my man,” Speed said, coughing a little. “I never even cleared leather.”

  “That’s because I’m faster than you,” I said.

  Speed made a barking laugh that tossed blood onto his lips. “You’re the real deal,” he said.

  “Frankly,” I said, “I didn’t know that until just now.”

  I pulled his gun from its holster, just in case he might be stronger than he looked, though the way he lay there he gave the impression that lifting his fingers would be a serious workout. I lifted his head up so he wouldn’t choke on his blood. I turned my head, said to the young man: “Your name is Jackie, right?”

  He nodded.

  “You have the sports coat man there give you

  his coat.”

  “My arm hurts,” Crew Cut said. “And I like this coat.”

  “Give him the coat anyway,” I said, “or you won’t have to worry about hurting.”

  Jackie went over and Crew Cut worked his way out of the coat. Jackie brought the coat to me. He said, “Don’t hurt Nora. This wasn’t any of her idea.”

  “I don’t believe that,” I said, “but she isn’t going to get hurt as long as she doesn’t get cute. Now, sit down there on the ground in front of my car.”

  Jackie went over and did just that. I rolled the coat up and put it under Speed’s head.

  “Bullet didn’t have much impact,” Speed said, still gurgling blood.

  “It was enough,” I said.

  “I mean I didn’t feel it so much,” he said. “But I can hardly move.”

  “That’s because you haven’t had time to feel it,” I said. “Now shut up. You’re spitting blood.”

  Speed lay quietly on the sports coat.

  I got out my cell phone and made a call.

  ***

  Next day we were at Marvin’s office, in our usual spots. Marvin behind his desk, me in the chair in front of it, Leonard sitting by the coffee machine, munching on vanilla wafers. At least he had bought those with his own money.

  Marvin said, “I called you here to tell you the cops believe your story, about how you thought you were just getting the girl back and they tried to kill you, so you shot them. They’re not too happy about you going out there without calling them, not telling them what the deal was, but I think they’re in a forgiving mood. They been wanting Cox on something that would stick, and you two talking at a trial, and Givens talking to save his own bacon, that’ll nail him. And way I figure it is you’ll be all right ’cause they’ll be shit-blind happy you helped nail Cox.”

  “What about Speed?” I said.

  “They think he’s going to make it and get to go to prison,” Marvin said. “He appears to be as tough as boot leather.”

  “But he’s not near as fast as he thought he was,” Leonard said. “My man here is like fucking Wild Bill Hickock.”

  “I got lucky,” I said. “And I shot him while he was talking.”

  “Well,” Marvin said, “I think his future career is wood shop in prison.”

  “What about Nora?” I asked.

  “The kid, Jackie, he’s saying she didn’t know anything about it, and so’s the old man. She’s gone back to her stepmother. I think the cops will let that stand. Givens will get some time too. He’s backing Jackie’s story about the girl having nothing to do with it. Guess he wanted to have the same story Cox had. He’s helping put Cox in prison, but maybe he didn’t want to go the whole hog, thinks he might get a brownie point or two.”

  “Think he will?” I asked.

  “Nope,” Marvin said. “They will most likely have him shanked in prison. They do, no tears here.”

  Leonard said, “Me either.”

  I have to admit, I didn’t see myself shedding tears for that lying, conniving weasel.

  “I believe Nora thought she found true love,” I said, “and would get some money out of her father, and she’d have some teenage revenge on her stepmother. For what, I’m not sure, but it seems that’s how she was thinking. She was close to her, but maybe she got unclose when she started to grow up and thought Daddy was putting more attention into Sharon than her. No idea really.”

  “Frankly,” Leonard said, “my take is she’s just stupid. Probably glad it’s over, probably glad to be home. Probably forget Jackie in a year’s time. You can bet the way she’ll tell it to Sharon is she was forced. I think that little shit’s a born liar. One of those entitled turds who think they have the best of everything coming just because they are who they think they are, not necessarily who they are.”

  “That’s some serious psychoanalyst shit going on there,” I said.

  “Naw,” Leonard said. “I just sort of made that up.”

  “Actually, that’s what I really thought,” I said.

  “I think that’s what Sharon wants her to do; just pretend things are fine between them until they are,” Leonard said. “In the long run, I think she figures what reall
y happened won’t matter, and she’s probably right. And maybe Nora really did find true love, because Jackie didn’t tell it different, and Cox didn’t say his son was lying, so you got to give the old man points for going with what his son said. I think the cops want to let Nora go. They got the fish they wanted to fry, and could care less about the minnows.”

  “Cox family values,” I said. “Kind of touching. Go figure.”

  ***

  Brett and I were lying in bed. I said, “I love you.”

  Brett turned and put her arm across my chest. “I love you too.”

  “I asked you to marry me, would you? Right now, if I asked?”

  “Are you asking?”

  “I’m running a test,” I said.

  “A test, huh,” Brett said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know, baby. Really, I don’t. I want to, but you know, I got married once before and it ended with me setting my husband’s head on fire.”

  “So, you get married, you have to go for gasoline and a match?”

  She laughed.

  “No, I’m just saying what happened before, my first attempt at wedded bliss. What I’d say about us is this. Let’s give it some thought. Let’s see if it’s something that really matters, and if it does, we’ll get past talking about it. Maybe we’ll decide things are just fine the way they are and we don’t need a piece of paper.”

  “It’s not the paper, it’s the commitment.”

  “I know. I’m just saying let’s think about how much it matters to us. Give it some thought, some time.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “Do you want to play doctor?”

  “No,” I said. “I’d just like to hold you.”

  “Really?” she said.

  “Really.”

  “That works too,” Brett said, and so I held her.

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