Johnny Temple - USA Noir - Best of the Akashic Noir Series

“Let me know when the sales pitch is over,” Jumpy said. “I’ll get the cash.”

Dreadlock One shifted his angle, moving for a better view of Guy.

“What’re you looking at?”

“That’s what I’m asking myself,” he said.

“Do that again?” Guy said.

“Who’m I doing business with,” Dreadlock One asked, “man or woman? From across the way, you look like a dude; up close like this, you could be a bull-dyke bitch.”

Guy felt Jumpy shift closer to him.

“Happens all the time,” Guy said. “It’s the haircut.”

Guy had blond shoulder-length Jesus hair, slender hips, and sleek Scandinavian features. A man of long smooth planes. Not feminine so much as asexual. A floater. Hovering between the sexes. Some women found him sexy, and just about as many men.

“More than the freaking haircut. It’s your whole entire weird-ass self.”

Jumpy stepped between Guy and Dreadlock One and said, “Why don’t you reach down my partner’s pants and find out?”

The second dreadlock cackled, then grinned a big gold smile. “Yeah, Willie, do it, man, reach your hand in there and squeeze.”

“I was just curious,” Willie said. “It don’t matter. Forget it.”

“Don’t be shy,” said Jumpy. “Reach in, take a handful, make yourself happy. Guy’s cool with that, aren’t you, Guy?”

Willie stared at Guy’s face for a few ticks, then shook his dreads.

Jumpy took two quick steps and grabbed Willie’s hand, took a grip on Guy’s belt buckle, pulled it out, and jammed the dude’s spidery fingers down the front of Guy’s pants.

The other dread had his pistol out and was aiming at Jumpy, ordering him to step the fuck away from his partner, let him go, stop that shit.

Jumpy released Willie’s hand and the man yanked it out of Guy’s pants.

“So what am I?” Guy said.

Willie didn’t say anything. He turned and saw his partner with the pistol out.

“Put that shit away, man. Put it away.”

“So what am I?” Guy said. “Did your field trip enlighten you?”

“Two thousand for the SAW. Five hundred for the loaded magazine. Take it or leave it, no negotiating.”

“Two for the whole caboodle or I’m outta here. Starting now. Ten, nine, eight, seven…”

“Two’ll do,” Willie said.

“Hard bargainer,” Jumpy said. “Tough nut.”

Jumpy and Guy walked back over to the stolen Chevy, Jumpy getting into the passenger seat. Staying there for a minute, another minute with Guy standing back by the trunk waiting, watching, recording.

Jumpy’s door was swung wide open, the overhead light on.

The two dreadlocks were talking near their Olds Ciera, but after a while they started shooting looks over. Willie held the SAW in one hand.

Jumpy sat there and sat there and sat some more until finally the head dread came strolling. Dumbass carrying the SAW one-handed.

“You got the bread or you fucking with me?”

“It’s stuck,” Jumpy said. “Fucking glove box is stuck.”

“Stuck?”

Jumpy leaned back in the seat, gestured toward the glove compartment.

Willie leaned in the door, peered through the darkness.

“You got a screwdriver,” Jumpy said, “something that can pry it open?”

Willie craned another inch forward and Jumpy took a grip on the padded handle and slammed the door closed on the dreadlock’s neck. Opened it and slammed it again and then a third time. Then one more for good luck and pushed the dread out of the way and reached down to the gravel and took hold of the SAW and aimed it out the crook of the open door at Dreadlock Two, who was trotting over with a big-ass chrome .45 in his right hand.

Guy was frozen. It was a freaking movie streaming around him. Every outrageous, amazing second of it. Hand down the pants and all.

The SAW kicked against Jumpy’s shoulder. Jumpy fired again over Dreadlock Two’s head, yelling at him to drop his weapon. Which he did. Not giving it a second thought, just tossing it into the gravel.

The downed dread struggled to his feet. Jumpy aimed the SAW at his chest.

“So what’re we going to have here? Two dead assholes?”

“No, man. Don’t be doing that. Ain’t no need. We just get the fuck up and be gone.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jumpy said. He fired the SAW into the air and the two men sprinted off toward the neighborhood where lights were coming on in bedrooms.

Jumpy got out of the Chevy and walked over to the Oldsmobile. “We got about ten seconds. You coming? Or you want to stay here and get the police point of view on things?”

Guy trotted over to the Oldsmobile and got in.

Jumpy pitched the SAW onto the backseat. Guy could smell its oily warmth. Jumpy must’ve used nearly forty rounds. Which left one-sixty still in the magazine.

Guy started the car. Put the shifter into drive and made a U-turn.

“Can you use any of that?” Jumpy said when they were five blocks away, cruising down Douglas Road into the ritzy jungle shadows of Coconut Grove.

“Think I can,” Guy said. “Yes sir. I think I most certainly can.”

Guy dug the little Sony from his front pocket and found the record button and he started to speak into the miniature device. Jumpy smiled and took them south toward the condo parking lot where he’d left his old Civic.

Sirens filled the night like the wails of predatory beasts circling their night’s meal.

“What’s this mean?” Jumpy held up a sheaf of papers.

He was standing in the doorway of Dr. Guy Carmichael’s tiny windowless cubicle. Guy’s office hours were from four till six. At six fifteen his evening graduate fiction workshop started and ran till nine forty. At the moment it was five thirty, so at worst he’d have to deal with Jumpy for fifteen minutes before he could claim he had to rush off to class.

“Could you be more precise? What does what mean?”

“Okay,” Jumpy said. “What the fuck is this? A fucking C minus on my story.”

“Did you read my comments? Is there something you’re confused about?”

Jumpy looked down the hall, then checked the other direction. He was wearing a white button-down shirt and blue jeans and loafers without socks. Trying to fit in with some preppy image of a college student still surviving from his first fling at higher education back in the early ’70s.

“I wrote what happened. You were there. You saw it. This is what happened. And that’s all it’s worth? Not even a fucking C? What’ve I got to do, kill somebody to get an A?”

“It’s the writing,” Guy said. “Not the events you describe.”

“On my paper you said—shit, where is it?” Jumpy started fumbling through the typed pages, looking for Guy’s tiny scrawl.

Jumpy used a battered Royal typewriter and he whited out his mistakes with big glops smeared across paragraph-sized portions of his paper. Guy admired his stamina, hunched over the tiny machine, those enormous fingers drilling letter after letter onto the white page. Stamina was one thing. Talent was another. Guy had tried hard with Jumpy, made him a special project, devoted hours and hours to one-on-ones in his office and in a bar on Biscayne. But after a minute or two of anything short of unadulterated praise, Jumpy glazed over and slid back into the murky grotto inside his bulletproof skull.

Jumpy found the comment he’d been searching for and put a finger on Guy’s words as he read.

“ It’s not credible that two such dissimilar men would pair up for such an effort. That’s what I mean. Not credible. But we did. We paired up. So why in fuck’s name is that a C minus?”

“You have to convince the reader it’s credible.”

“You’re the reader, Guy. You were fucking there. You were fucking standing right there pissing your fucking Dockers. And you don’t believe what happened right in front of your fucking eyes? I’m missing something here.”