Joe Lansdale - Hyenas

“Sure, it could be like that.”

We jogged along, silent for awhile. I could tell Leonard was thinking things over, and I let him.

Finally, I said, “So, are we going to check it out?”

“Say we take it easy. We determine if the kid really is in trouble. If these guys really are robbers, and if there’s anything we can do about it without getting locked up. I reckon we ought to do that much.”

“That’s how it is then,” I said, and we bumped fists.

WE GOT OUR friend Marvin Hanson to come in with us. He runs a private investigation agency, and he was once a cop. Sometimes we work for him. Last job we did was simple and we didn’t get paid because the client didn’t like the outcome. He didn’t pay Marvin so Marvin couldn’t pay us.

Because of that, Marvin owed us a favor.

We had him meet Kelly. We had him watch Kelly and Donny’s house, see where the kid went, and when he went, and if he went with some guys that looked tough.

When he finished a shift, I took over, and then Leonard took over. We had been at this for a couple of days. We were posted down from the house twenty-four seven, near an empty soccer field with grown up grass and missing goal nets.

So, it was Marvin’s watch, and I was home with Brett, and we were upstairs in bed reading, and Leonard was snoozing on the couch downstairs, having finished his shift watching Kelly’s place not too long back. I put the Western I was reading down, glanced at the clock. Twelve midnight.

I was about to turn in, get some sleep before I went on at eight a.m., and the door bell dinged. I don’t like it when the door bell dings that late.

I got my automatic out of the drawer by the night stand, and Brett got her revolver.

“I’ll check,” I said. “Leonard’s down there, and if it’s anything nasty, you call the cops.”

I went downstairs, but the door was already open. Leonard was letting in Marvin.

I said, “Man, that was a short shift.”

“Yeah,” Marvin said.

Marvin has a limp and a cane. He was quick to find a chair. He took off his hat, which had once belonged to a friend of ours, and rested it on his knee. He said, “Things went a way I thought maybe you ought to know about.”

“SO, ABOUT NINE-THIRTY I’m sitting in the car, thinking I’d like to be home in bed with the wife, when I see a car pull up at the curb. Four guys get out. One of them looks like he lifts weights. Lots of weights, big weights, heavy weights.”

“That would be the loveable Smoke Stack.”

“Yeah, for all that muscle business, he’s smoking like the proverbial smoke stack.”

“Oh, Marvin,” I said. “That is good. Him smoking like a smoke stack and having the name Smoke Stack. You are so clever.”

“Yep. They go around back, and then coming back from around the house I see all of them again, and this younger guy that I figure is Donny. They got in the car, tight as coins in a miser’s wallet, and drive away. I followed. They went out to the warehouse district, and I went with them, but sneaky-like. They never saw me. They went down where the rentals are. It’s one of those cheap places. No cameras, no security gate. You just drive in and take your padlock off your shed. I couldn’t follow them in, so I drove across the street and looked. I could see through the fence and I could see them park, and I could see which storage building they opened. I could see a car in there. An older car, a muscle car. Something that could run like a spotted ass ape if needed.”

“Ah, the old spotted ass ape,” Leonard said. “How fast do they run?”

“They are very fast,” Marvin said. “So, they’re there awhile with the door pulled shut, and I could see they had a light on because it was shining under a crack at the bottom of the door.”

“That is some of that ace detective work you’re famous for,” I said.

“My guess is, if they’re planning a robbery, that storage shed is their villains’ lair.”

“Probably has a basement in there, test tubes and shit,” Leonard said. “It’s like the evil Fortress of Solitude.”

“I got another guess too,” Marvin said. “When the other robbery went down, the one with the guards, about a month later they found a guy in a car out in the woods with a bullet through his head. He’d been dead for awhile. At the time it was unexplained. Just a random murder. But, I been thinking maybe the dead guy was their getaway man. And when he got them away, they put him away. My guess is Donny is next on the list. They get some young guy doesn’t know squat, they use him for the robbery, for the driving, then they pop him and the cut is bigger. Next time they got plans, they recruit again. Each new driver doesn’t know about the other. It works until the word gets out they’re finding lots of dead people in stolen cars with false license plates.”

“So Donny is just a tool for them to use and then destroy,” I said.

“That’s my guess. Another thing, I followed them after they left the warehouse. They didn’t take Donny home. They drove him to a house on the edge of town. Most of the block there is burned out, and beyond it the town quits and the woods start. It’s a rundown place where the back acres have been sawed over by pulp wood workers. I parked there for a little while, then drove to the warehouse and got closer to the building they were in. It’s number fifteen. Then I came here. I could go back and finish my shift, but I don’t know I need to now.”

“Probably not,” I said. “We know where they keep the getaway car, and we know where they live. And that they may have sold pulp wood.”

“That pulp wood money could be the way they financed the first robbery,” Marvin said. “Bought the getaway car. Now they got money from the first robbery to pull another. They aren’t living high on the hog out there, so they’re keeping what loot they got tamped down for now, which is smart.”

“Marvin,” I said, “your work is done.”

“So we’re even on what I owe you two?” he said.

“We are,” I said.

“Good luck to you,” Marvin said, got up and picked up his hat and cane. “If you need me for anything, even or not, give me a call.”

Marvin went out and closed the door.

I looked up and saw Brett was sitting on the top stair looking down, listening. I smiled at her and she waved. She was wearing those oversized pajamas and my bunny slippers with the ears on them.

She said, “How about we have some milk and cookies?”

“Hell, yeah,” Leonard said.

WE SAT AT the kitchen table and had our milk and vanilla cookies and thought on the matter. Way we saw it, if we waited until they decided to rob an armored car it would be too late.

First off, we didn’t know when they had their little heist planned, and we didn’t know if they might tire of Donny and pop him. We didn’t even know if they were actually the robbers, but it sure seemed likely, and we were going to play it that way.

We thought about a number of cool ways to go at it, and we explained them to Brett, and she said, “Why don’t you just go over and confront them, tell Donny how things went with their past driver. Otherwise, while you’re making your plans, he could already be the wheel man and dead and under some log in a creek somewhere.”