Joe Lansdale: Captains Outrageous

“Oh, just come in and shut up,” Brett said.

There were two suitcases setting on either side of Jim Bob. He picked them up, carried them into the room. He put them on the bed.

“What you got there?” Brett asked. “Sex toys?”

“You wish,” Jim Bob said. “Cesar’s contacts. They’re bad boys.”

Inside one suitcase was something wrapped in a white towel. Jim Bob removed that, laid it carefully on the bed. It was a bottle of chloroform.

He removed a folded duffel bag from the suitcase and unfolded it. It was about six feet in length. Beneath it were a couple of blackjacks, a slapjack, and four nine-millimeter automatics. The other case contained ammo clips and several pieces that went together to make a rifle and a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun. The rifle had a scope and a silencer. There was ammunition for both guns.

“I still think shooting him from a distance is the way to go,” I said.

“He must know who it is that kills him,” Ferdinand said.

“Yep,” Jim Bob said. “It’s a grace note. Five seconds of knowing you’re about to die, for whatever reason, is a long goddamn time. Shooting him from a distance is just doing the motherfucker a favor.”

“All right,” I said. “Outline it.”

“For what we’re doing here,” Jim Bob said, “the guns are out. We take the blackjacks, or the slapjack, our hands, whatever. We use the chloroform. We get these two guys down quick, we nab the woman, put her out of commission, and we’re out of here.”

“How are we out of here?” Brett asked.

“We stick the woman in the duffel bag, we check out, we get in the black van out front that Cesar will have waiting, we go to the airport, and he drives the woman back to his place. We meet there.”

“Why don’t we just put her in our pocket and walk out?” Leonard said. “A duffel bag? That’s it? A fuckin’ duffel bag?”

“It’ll work,” Jim Bob said. “Trust me.”

“So we’re supposed to meet them as they come up the elevator,” I said. “What if someone rides up the elevator with them?”

“They won’t,” Jim Bob said. “Cesar says they never ride up or down with anyone. They wait until they have it to themselves. Safety precautions.”

“Don’t these guys know what Cesar looks like?” Brett said. “I mean, hell, they cut the tip of his finger off and slapped his ear silly.”

“These men may or may not,” Jim Bob said. “But they won’t see him if he doesn’t want to be seen. Cesar’s good. Almost as good as me.”

“Why so much protection?” Brett said. “Is she made of gold?”

“She’s protected because of people like us,” Jim Bob said. “Juan Miguel protects his property, and to him, she’s property.”

“So the elevator opens on this floor,” Leonard said. “What’s to prevent someone else being in the hallway, seeing us go at these guys?”

“Nothing,” Jim Bob said. “We deal with that if it happens.”

Just before six the phone rang. Jim Bob answered, listened, hung up. He turned to us.

“Yippie ki ’eah.”

I put the slapjack in my back pocket, Leonard took a blackjack, and Jim Bob brought only himself. Ferdinand said, “And me?”

“You’re going to have to wait in the room,” Jim Bob said. “When we knock, you be right by the door and let us in. Got me?”

Ferdinand nodded.

Brett opened the door for us and tagged along behind carrying a towel. She had poured it full of chloroform, and the stench of it was strong in the hall.

“This is so fucked,” she said.

“I’m about to swoon here,” Leonard said. “Brett, you think maybe you got enough of that crap on the towel?”

“Too much and you’ll kill her,” Jim Bob said. “Hit her with it quick, then get it off her face.”

No one was in the hallway. We stopped at the elevator. The numbers on the elevator light were racing toward our floor. Then the other elevator started moving up.

“Which elevator are they in?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Jim Bob said.

“Oh, shit. That’s good.”

We tried to stand casual, just a wad of folks waiting to get on the elevator. The door opened. A short, stocky woman just shy of three thousand years old with sparse hair dyed shoe polish black and at least twenty-five whisker hairs to match, also dyed, stepped out of the elevator carrying a white poodle with a leash.

Brett leaned close to my ear, spoke softly. “Maybe we should sap her once for not getting rid of that mustache.”

“Twice,” I said. “She also has a poodle.”

The woman moved slowly, putting the dog down, leading it on its leash. She had just turned the corner away from the elevator, out of sight, when the other elevator’s light hit our floor and the door opened, and there was one of the most astoundingly beautiful women I have ever seen.

She was probably five seven, a little over a hundred pounds, well built, face like an angel, large black eyes and soft black hair that flowed to the middle of her back. She wore a short blue dress and matching high heels. Her legs were fashioned from a dream. She looked very elegant.

The guys on either side of her were well dressed, but not so elegant. They would have looked the same in thousand-dollar suits or tablecloths. They looked about as casual as meat gravy stains on a white shirt.

As they stepped out of the elevator, Jim Bob said something pleasant in Spanish, stepped aside. As they passed, the guard on the left eyed Jim Bob. Brett took hold of her skirt, pulled it up and scratched her leg, causing the skirt to ride almost to her hip.

The guy looked.

Jim Bob sapped him. It was a good lick. The guy stumbled, Jim Bob leaped on him, started beating him like a hamburger steak.

The other guy was on the move now, his hand going inside his coat. Leonard grabbed that hand with his left, poked the man in the eyes with his right. The big bastard grunted, his hand came out of his coat, he tried to reach for his face, but Leonard had that hand. Leonard twisted slightly, and the dude flipped, hit the floor hard, banging the side of his head. I kicked the poor bastard hard as I could. He didn’t go out, but he didn’t act as if he was in any hurry to get up.

Leonard bent down over him and went to work with the sap. It sounded like a carpenter driving a pesky nail. Even after I thought the guy was out, I heard the sap ring a half dozen more times.

Brett had wrestled the woman to the floor and was trying to push the chloroform-filled towel over her face, but no luck. The woman started to scream.

Jim Bob pulled Brett off the mistress, brought his palm down swift, but not too hard on the woman’s forehead, just above the eyebrow at the left corner.

She went out.

I was standing, panting. The place stank of chloroform. I had moved away from the elevator wall, and now I could see down the hall. The woman with the poodle had stopped, listening to those screams.

Brett stepped into the hallway. “A bug. A spider. It frightened me.”

The woman looked puzzled.

Jim Bob stepped into view, he spoke Spanish. The woman grinned, said something in Spanish. She and her dog went on down the hallway.

“What did you say?” Brett asked.

“Just what you did. I told her you saw a spider.”

“What did she say?”

“What a sissy. Words to that effect.”

“I’m not sure I like that.”

When the old woman was out of sight, Leonard removed the guns from the bodyguards, got one of the guys by the leg and started dragging him down the corridor toward Jim Bob’s room. Jim Bob got the other guard by the leg, and I picked up the woman. She was as small as a child.

I looked down at her. A small purple bruise was forming at the corner of her eye. She was so gorgeous I felt as if her beauty were sucking out my soul. I could see why Juan Miguel would leave his wife. It’s a hard thing to admit beauty alone can make you crazy, but a woman like this, good God, she could make you crazy.