Joe Lansdale - Captains Outrageous

“She’d want to see you.”

“Give her my best, will you?”

“Sure. You enjoying your time off?”

“Just starting. I’m going to pay off some bills and go on a cruise.”

“Something you’ve always wanted to do?”

“No, not really, but I got talked into it by a friend of a friend. I’m going to take Leonard with me.”

“Have the best time possible. And Hap…”

“Yeah.”

“You ever need anything. Anything. Come to me. I’ll do the best I can.”

“Thanks.”

“Enjoy every penny.”

“Sure.”

I took a last look at Sarah and went out of there, on down the elevator, out to my car, her shattered image in my head, tears in my eyes. In that moment I wished I had just gone on and shot and killed the cocksucker.

I drove over to Charlie Blank’s place. He was off that day and had invited me to lunch. Marvin Hanson was going to be there. Former lieutenant on the LaBorde police force. He had been in a terrible car accident, then a coma, and had finally come out of it. After months of rehabilitation, he was much better, but in a wheelchair. The only time I’d seen him since the accident was at his house, and he was comatose then. I regularly asked about him, kept up with him through his best friend, Charlie.

After their separation, Charlie had let his wife have the house. He was living in a trailer on a couple of acres he was buying. It was a pretty nice area, actually. Out by the lake with some trees. When I drove over there it was a warm day and Charlie was sitting in a lawn chair by an outdoor grill and a picnic table. Hanson, looking very thin and pale for a black man, was sitting in the wheelchair. He was wearing a baseball cap that said ASTROS on it. When he saw me, he gave me a kind of sly grin.

“You and Leonard burned anything down lately?”

His voice was a little weak, and he talked out of the side of his mouth, as if his face and lips were too tired or lacked the muscles to form words.

“No, haven’t had any matches,” I said, shaking his hand, which was surprisingly strong. “How’re you feeling?”

“Like I drove my car into a goddamned tree, that’s how.”

I sat down in a spare lawn chair. I could smell meat cooking on the grill.

“What are we having?” I asked.

“Steaks,” Charlie said.

“Man, that’s uptown.”

“Not where I bought this meat. I said we were having steaks, I didn’t say they were any good. I got a feeling this meat might have come off horses found dead at the pony rides.”

“You’re looking pretty good,” I said to Hanson.

“Liar,” Hanson said. “But had you seen me before, you’d know I really am.”

“I did see you before, but you were, to put it politely, sleeping.”

Hanson nodded. “It’s been hell. Good thing about it, me and my wife have reconciled and the feeling’s come back in my dick lately.”

“Then your worries are over,” I said.

“Not quite. I want to have sex, it’s an ordeal to get situated, and though I got the feeling back and the ol’ weenie has got some steel in it, I haven’t got any thrusting power. By the time me and Rachel get set, I’m worn out.”

“He’s getting some tingling in his legs,” Charlie said, getting up to fork and turn the steaks. “That’s a good sign.”

“That’s great,” I said.

“I’m working with a physical therapist, and I’m studying martial arts. Shen Chuan and Combat Hapkido. There’s a guy here teaches both systems to the disabled. I’m a little too weak right now to learn much, but it’s helping me out. It’s building strength in my wrist and arms. My physical therapist recommended it.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“I won’t be going back to work at the cop shop, though.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. Not the least little bit. I wasn’t all that loved anyway.”

“I hear that.”

“And, Hap, I suggest you watch the kind of trouble you get in from now on,” Charlie said, “ ’cause I’m quitting myself. Turned in my notice. A month from now, I’m on my own.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“Me and Charlie are forming a business,” Hanson said. “Private Investigations. Charlie’s the legs, I’m the brains.”

“Ho ho,” Charlie said.

“Damn,” I said. “Real private eyes. Charlie, does this mean you’re gonna get sapped a lot and fall into dark tunnels and get laid all the time by strange blondes with long sleek gams?”

“I can do without the sap part,” Charlie said, “but the rest of it sounds all right.”

“You guys are serious?” I said.

“Hanson and Blank, Private Investigations,” Hanson said. “Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

“Blank and Hanson, Private Investigations,” Charlie said, “has a nicer ring to it. Don’t you think, Hap?”

“You’re not getting me in on this.”

“We’ll flip for the name,” Hanson said.

“Not if you’re flipping the quarter,” Charlie said.

“I think that’s great, guys. Really.”

We ate the steaks, a salad, and some bread Charlie had warmed in the trailer oven. They drank beer and I drank ice tea.

Charlie had been joking. It was good meat and well prepared, medium rare with a touch of salt and pepper. We ate, talked, and laughed a lot. When the meal was over Charlie went inside the trailer and made some coffee. Me and Hanson bullshitted a little. Charlie made a couple of trips out. First he brought coffee for Hanson and me. Then coffee for himself and a Tupperware container filled with Hostess Twinkies and cupcakes. “I damn near pulled my thumb out of joint trying to open this damn Tupperware lid.”

“Childproof,” Hanson said.

“Probably,” Charlie said. “You know, I shouldn’t eat this shit, but I got like a serious problem about it. I like it.”

We ate Twinkies and cupcakes and even though Charlie had told Hanson about my adventure at the chicken plant, I told it again, then I told them about the cruise.

Charlie said, “Well, finally, you and Leonard are off to do something where the worst trouble you can get into is cutting a fart in the dining room.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Ain’t it grand?”

John had to drive us over to New Orleans to catch the ship. We got there a day early and took a hotel near Bourbon Street and walked along and watched people wander about. I had once been there during Mardi Gras, and the place was nuts. People everywhere, women exposing their breasts, yelling, floats, the whole nine yards. But this night was not a total waste. We did get to see some guys wearing makeup, hear some great jazz music over at Preservation Hall, and we ate some good crawfish at a place called Mike Anderson’s Seafood.

On the way back to the hotel a drunk naked man took a leak against a wall and staggered into a bar and didn’t come out.

“Do you think he just went in and ordered a drink?” Leonard asked.

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” I said, “and I wouldn’t doubt they gave it to him. He’s probably in there sitting at a table sipping whiskey with one hand and playing with his ding-dong with the other.”

“For an old Baptist boy,” John said, “this is just a little too close to Sodom and Gomorrah for me.”

“Yeah, Hap,” Leonard said, “we better get John back to the hotel before he wakes up naked in an alley with a black leather whip handle up his ass.”

We went to the hotel and took our rooms. Me in mine, John and Leonard together. Where we were staying was in the French Quarter, and because of that, we were paying more for location than convenience. The joint was clean and not nearly as primitive as my place, but then again, I was paying one third of my monthly rent for one night in this cracker box and down below I could hear drunks who seemed more than happy to collect like crows and sing show tunes beneath my window.