Mucho Mojo (23 page)

Mohawk thrashed a little, then got still.

I put a hand on Leonard’s shoulder. “Let him go, man.”

Leonard let him go, and Mohawk fell off the bed and onto the floor. He was out. With that choke, it only takes a few seconds.

Leonard got Mohawk by the feet and dragged him out of the bedroom, and I watched from the hallway as Leonard pulled him onto the front porch, and down the steps, Mohawk’s head thumping the steps like bongos. Leonard laid Mohawk out in the yard and came back in the house. He reached down and got Parade Float by the shirtfront and boosted him to his feet and put the big bastard over his shoulder and turned to me.

“Drag ’em out,” he said.

I went over and picked the woman up. She was very light. A temporary feeling of guilt went over me, hitting her like that, but then I thought of the gun pointing at my balls and her firing it, and I wanted to hit her again. I took her out in the yard and laid her between Mohawk and Parade Float. I went back inside and got hold of the guy with the broken knee and pulled him onto the porch and shoved him off. He screamed all the way and really screamed when he hit the ground.

In the distance, we could hear the ambulance sirens.

“Inside,” Leonard said.

We went inside and into the bedroom where Mohawk had been. Leonard pulled the mattress off the bed and started dragging it through the doorway. He piled it in the hallway, and I followed after him as if I were a strand of toilet paper stuck to his shoe.

We went into the kitchen, and Leonard rumbled around and found a box of kitchen matches. He tried to open the box but was so wired he dropped them on the floor. I picked up the box and opened it and got a match out and struck it on the side of the box and handed it to him.

He grinned at me. The devil was behind that grin. He took the match and carefully lit a curtain over the kitchen window. The curtain began to blaze. I got a match out, went over to a sack of overflowing garbage, struck the match on the counter and looked at the flame. I saw the overdosed child in it, saw the dead bodies beneath the house, the bones in the trunk, the shadowy shape of Illium.

I dropped the match on top of a grease-splattered Hamburger Helper box. A moment later the sack was flaming. I kicked the fiery sack under the kitchen table and the flames licked up and caught the plastic table cloth. The table itself was littered with garbage. It caught fire pretty quick.

We moved down the hallway, and Leonard took out his pocketknife and cut the mattress open. I lit the stuffing inside, and the mattress blazed mightily.

We did the same sort of thing in the bedroom with the curtains and the sheets. Leonard rescued his shotgun, and we went over to the bathroom and found some bottles of alcohol in the medicine cabinet. We sloshed that around the place and lit it. Flames raced up the walls.

By the time we walked out the front door our matches were used up and the house was seriously on fire. There were ambulance attendants in the yard, looking at Mohawk and the others. There was an ambulance at the curb.

“Not those assholes,” Leonard said, pointing across the street. “There’s a boy over there.”

One of the attendants looked at us, let his eyes rest on the shotgun cradled in Leonard’s arms. “Easy, fellow. We’re on it.”

I looked at MeMaw’s house. I was sure she was up now, sick or not. Lights were on all over. There was an ambulance out front. Attendants were sliding a stretcher into the back of it. Hiram was on the front porch. He looked over at me and Leonard. The red-and-blue lights from the ambulance strobed across him, blended with the yellow-white porch light. He didn’t lift his hand toward us.

I turned back to the crack house. I could see flames behind the windows, like the light inside a jack-o’-lantern. One of the windows exploded suddenly, and a thick coil of black smoke rolled out into the night. It carried a stench with it. Burning plastic perhaps. Or just all the badness in that house on fire.

“Those old wood-frame houses certainly do catch quick,” Leonard said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Lumber’s mellow when it gets that old.”

Me and Leonard walked back to Uncle Chester’s house. Leonard had tossed my .38 onto the porch, and he showed me where it was, and I got it.

We went inside and waited for the inevitable.

Holding cells are very small and short on comfort. And this one smelled like a dog kennel. Me and Leonard were sitting on the floor with about ten other guys, and the floor was cold and hard and not a single throw pillow was in sight. A drunk kept trying to put his head in my lap and wanted to call me Cheryl.

There was one toilet in the place, but you sat down on it to take a dump, everyone was going to be looking at you. I can take about anything, but I like private toilet space. In my book, defecation is not a spectator sport. It wasn’t that I needed to go, but I was worried about the situation if the necessity arose. Of course, the bars and the back wall of the cell were painted a very comfortable blue, and that’s supposed to be a relaxing color if you’re trying to make with a bowel movement. If memory serves me, however, green is better. Perhaps I could suggest that to the jailer. Get an audience with the mayor.

Another bad thing about a holding cell is you don’t exactly meet a great crowd of people. A lot of them are criminals.

The people we’d had our row with weren’t around. I figured Parade Float was visiting an oral surgeon, and the rest were at the hospital. But we had some real cuties nonetheless. One of them, a greasy white guy with the physique of an industrial meat freezer and a swastika tattooed on his forehead in red ink, got his dick out and pissed between the bars on a jailer’s leg. A cop came over and yelled at him, and the guy pissed on the cop. The cop hit the bars with his nightstick and cussed, and the big guy laughed and turned around and shook the dew off his dick.

“Fucking assholes,” the big guy said, then he quit grinning and looked all of us in the holding cell over. “You’re assholes too,” he said.

None of us assholes argued with him. Me and Leonard, we were tired and sore assholes. The big guy, without putting his dick up, wandered over to the far edge of the cell and intimidated a sad-looking little Mexican guy by giving him the hairy eyeball. Also, a guy staring at you with his dick out will make a person nervous.

Hanson came up to the bars and stood looking inside. He was dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans and what looked like house slippers. His stomach bulged inside the T-shirt, but it looked hard, like a washpot. The wet end of a chewed cigar stuck out of the T-shirt pocket. I gave him a little wave. He smiled insincerely and spread his arms wide. “My boys! How are you?”

“We’re a little tired, Lieutenant,” Leonard said.

“Arson and assault, trespassing,” Hanson said. “These things wear on you. Jailer. Open up.”

The jailer opened up. Hanson stood in the open doorway and said, “My boys, come to me.”

We got up and started out. The big guy with his dick out came over and tried to follow after us. “Not you,” Hanson said, and after we passed Hanson pushed the guy back inside.

“Piss on you,” the big guy said and thrust his hips forward like he was going to piss on Hanson. Hanson reached very quickly and grabbed the guy’s crank and yanked it as if he were popping a whip. The guy made a noise like a sudden hole in a helium balloon and went down to his knees.

Hanson said, “Put that thing away, or I’ll have it mounted on a board.”

Hanson came out of the cell, the jailer closed the door, and Hanson gave us a soft shove down the corridor.

*  *  *

We came to a door and Hanson reached between us and opened it. “Gentlemen,” he said.

We went inside. It was an office full of smoke. Charlie was sitting behind the only desk in the room with his feet propped on it. He had thin soles on his shoes. He had a copy of a trash rag and was reading it. He had his suit coat slung over the back of the chair, and he was wearing a green pajama shirt stuck in his slacks, and he had his porkpie hat tilted back on his head.

Mohawk was sitting in a fold-out metal chair on the left side of the room. Just sitting there smoking a cigarette. There was an ashtray on the floor in front of him and it was filled with cigarettes. There were stomped out cigarettes all around the ashtray.

Charlie wasn’t paying Mohawk the least bit of attention. He didn’t look at us when we entered the room. He was deep into his rag.

On the right hand side of the room, wreathed in Charlie’s smoke, was Florida. She was leaning against the wall next to a fold-out chair. She was dressed in jeans and a tight white T-shirt; she was a knockout. Just what I needed to see at a time like this. Then again, I knew she’d be here. She was mine and Leonard’s lawyer, and when I got my one call, I’d called her.

“Hap,” she said.

“Florida,” I said. “Thanks.”

Leonard nodded at her.

Hanson said, “Charlie, watch ’em. I got to wash my hands. I been pullin’ a guy’s dick.”

Charlie didn’t look up from his rag. He just lifted a hand over it. Hanson went out and shut the door.

I glanced at Mohawk and Mohawk glanced at me. He’d looked better. His mohawk was leaning a bit to the left, and there wasn’t one ounce of cockiness about him. There was a knot on the side of his head where I’d hit him. He looked away from me and took in Leonard.

Leonard smiled at him. It was one of those smiles Leonard can give that you’d really prefer not to see. Mohawk’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and fell back down. He dropped his eyes to the floor. The cigarette between his fingers was almost burned down to his skin. He sucked it once and dropped it. It nearly hit the ashtray. He said, “Where the hell’s my motherfuckin’ lawyer? They got their lawyer here, I want mine.”

“Got to call him first,” Charlie said, and turned a page on his rag.

“You ain’t let me call shit, man,” Mohawk said. “That ain’t legal.”

“Hey,” Charlie said, “we’re busy, we’ll get to it.”

“You look busy,” said Mohawk.

“The work of the mind is subtle,” Charlie said.

During this exchange, Charlie hadn’t once looked away from his paper. He kept reading. After a few moments, without taking his face out of the paper, he said, “You know, there’s some strange things in the world. They found a picture of Elvis in an Egyptian tomb.” He put the paper down and looked at me. “You know that, Hap?”

“No shit?” I said.

“No shit. Painted right there on the fucking wall. Had his hair slicked back and stuff. Had on a white jump suit and aviator glasses. It’s right here in the article. They got a picture.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“Yeah,” Charlie said. “They hunt around the tomb some more, they expect to find a mummy with the facial structure of Elvis.”

“You’re certainly on top of things,” I said.

“You’d be surprised the stuff I know,” Charlie said. “I keep up with current events. I’m real current. Most current is I had to get out of bed ’cause I heard about a fire tonight, and I heard it was you two assholes set it.”

“We looked out our window and saw a fire,” Leonard said. “We went over to help pull the victims to safety. We’re goddamn heroes.”

“That motherfucker’s lying!” Mohawk said.

“Keep your seat, Melton,” Charlie said.

“Don’t say anything else,” Florida said to Leonard. “You and Hap be quiet. You’ll do better being quiet.”

“Ah hell,” Charlie said, “Hap and Leonard, they like to talk.”

“That’s true,” Leonard said. “We can’t shut up.”

Hanson opened the door and came in. He went over to the desk. “You mind I have my chair?” he said to Charlie.

“Naw,” Charlie said, “it’s all right.”

Charlie got up and went over to Mohawk. He said, “Get up, Melton.”

Mohawk looked at Charlie. Charlie grinned. Mohawk got up and leaned against the wall. Charlie sat down and used his foot to move the ashtray and the ill-aimed cigarette butts aside. He scooted the chair forward and put his feet on the edge of the desk and rocked back so the chair was against the wall. He looked pretty precarious.

Hanson sat behind his desk and studied me and Leonard. “First time I seen you guys, I liked you. I don’t like you so much now.”

“That hurts,” Leonard said. “Shit, man, we like you.”

“I been eating Rolaids like they’re candy,” Hanson said. “I almost lit my cigar again. And you guys know why? I’m tired of the bullshit. Arson, that’s a serious crime.”

“So’s selling drugs,” I said. “That boy under our house might even think using them’s a bad idea.”

“He don’t think nothing,” Hanson said. “He died before he got to the hospital.”

Silence reigned for a moment. Leonard said, “I think the whole goddamn police force has got some gall, that’s what I think. These fuckers,” he jabbed a finger at Melton, “they been in that house for ages, selling drugs. They fed that boy dope. That boy is dead, man, and I’m not supposed to have a right to get pissed? I know they’re selling drugs. Everyone here knows it, but now you got us on arson, and you’re saying we’ll do time?”

“Could be,” Hanson said. “I ain’t got shit to do with the way the law works, just with doing what it says.”

“Some law that lets people like this creep do what they’re doing,” I said. “What happened to justice?”

“We get enough evidence, we pick ’em up,” Hanson said.

“And let them go,” Charlie said.

Hanson looked at Charlie. “You quittin’ the force? You with them?”

“I’m a cop ’cause I want to lock bad guys up,” Charlie said.

“I don’t want to pick ’em up so they can come down here to use the phone and toilet. And I certainly don’t want to arrest no citizens on a misunderstanding.”

“Misunderstanding?” Hanson said.

Charlie took his feet off the desk and let the chair rock forward. “Couple of citizens see a fire, go in and rescue some people, I don’t see that’s a crime.”

“They kneed a woman in the face!” Mohawk said. “They knocked out my main man’s teeth.”

“That woman’s a crack head,” Charlie said, “and she got that way ’cause of you. She’s a hooker. She stabbed a girl friend near to death three years ago. She’s got a record longer than a basketball player’s leg. And your main man, hell, he’s fixed up good now. All them teeth missing. You ought to be grateful. He can suck your dick like a vacuum cleaner.”