Joe Lansdale - Leather Maiden

Finishing off the trail, coming out of the woods, they started down the hill, two shapes with the moon fully outlining them and the house below, the vines looking like some kind of strange dark ocean, the waves frozen, the house being the biggest, darkest frozen wave of all.

They walked down to the gravel behind the house and stopped there for a moment. They were wearing light coats. It was way too hot for coats. The guy leaned over and kissed the girl on the cheek, then they slid in close and held each other for a while.

After a moment, they broke apart and went on down to the house. They worked at the vine-covered door for a long time, and then it came open and they slipped inside.

“I don’t know,” Jimmy said. “I don’t know what to do.”

“It isn’t midnight yet. Just wait. Could just be a couple grabbing a quickie.”

We lay there in the tent behind the skeeter net until about eleven-thirty. No one else had shown.

“I can’t believe it,” Jimmy said. “That has got to be them.”

I looked at my watch. “Still half an hour. Someone else could show. In the meantime, I think we ought to wire you up.”

We got out of the tent, and while we fought mosquitoes, we put the receiver on his belt and pulled his shirt down over it. The way it was set was like a baby monitor. Whatever Jimmy heard, I’d be able to hear up here with a little piece that went in my ear, like one of those walking phones. And I could record it.

When I had him fixed up, he turned on the receiver and said a few words, and I could hear them in my earpiece. I said, “It seems all right. I don’t know how it’ll work when you’re down the hill apiece, but it ought to be fine.”

Jimmy went over to his motorcycle. There were saddlebags on it, like a horse. He reached in one of them and took out a pair of gloves and a little snubnosed revolver in a holster that was mostly just a strap with a little belt.

“I thought we went over the gun business,” I said.

He came over with another pair of gloves and tossed them at me. “We might end up leaving some print somewhere down there, and we don’t want to do that.”

At the time, I thought Jimmy was being a little excessive, but later I was glad for the gloves. I pulled them on. When I was finished, I gave him a hard look.

“I still don’t like the gun. You can keep ignoring me, but I’m going to keep saying it. The gun, it’s not a good idea.”

“Don’t panic. I’m going to strap it to my ankle. It might be them that loses their cool. They do, I’d like to have a fighting chance.”

“They’re a couple of kids.”

“And maybe,” Jimmy said, “they’re the couple of kids who killed Caroline, as well as the ones blackmailing me.”

“I don’t like the gun business.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not going in blazing. But I don’t have any money either. They might take that personally.”

“Thing is, you got to get them to come outside,” I said. “I can hear you in the house, but I can’t see you and I can’t film. I need to get their faces on the film. Tell them you left the money outside, hid it up the hill. Anything to get them out of the house. What I’m saying as plain as I can say it is don’t go in the house. Don’t get out of my sight.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

We climbed back in the tent and waited. Just after midnight, Jimmy and I got out of the tent and I got the camera and made sure my earpiece was in good, and we tested the equipment again. I adjusted the telescopic viewer on the camera and looked down the hill. The infrared view reminded me of the tools I had used in Iraq. Something about that made my skin crawl. I took a deep breath, looked at Jimmy.

“Everything okay?” he said.

“I think so. About that gun.”

“I’m cool,” Jimmy said. He reached in his back pocket and pulled out a short cylindrical pipe, or at least it looked like a pipe. He flicked his wrist and a narrower, longer piece popped out. It was an asp, an expanding baton. “I also got this.”

“Why don’t you pull a goddamn cannon down there with you,” I said.

“Believe me, I thought about it.”

Jimmy looked at the house below, took a deep breath, started walking.

19

I eased over to one of the pines and leaned against it, thinking I would look pretty much like part of it if the blackmailers glanced up the hill. Mosquitoes poked at me and flies attracted to the sweat on my face kept dive-bombing me. I felt like King Kong attacked by aircraft.

I held the camera up and used it to watch Jimmy walk down. He got to the gravel behind the house and stopped. His voice came to me softly, filled my earpiece.

“I’m going to call them out,” he said.

I didn’t say anything back. It only worked one way. A moment later I heard him call.

“Anyone in the house?”

No answer. Time crawled by like it was dragging a cross up the hill.

“Anyone in the house? Come on out.”

I aimed the camera on the back door of the house and waited. After a while it budged open and someone stepped out. It was the guy. He had pulled a ski mask over his face. He walked a few steps toward Jimmy.

“I got backup,” the blackmailer said. “I got someone in the house with a gun.”

“What you got is a girl and yourself,” Jimmy said.

I thought, Don’t play it too heavy, brother. Take it easy. A girl can shoot your ass dead good as anybody.

“You got the money?” the male asked.

“Not right on me.”

“That’s not the deal.”

“You got the DVD?” Jimmy asked.

“I got it.”

“How do I know it’s the only copy?”

“You don’t. But I can tell you this much. You don’t give us the money, this is going to be sent to people you don’t want to see it. Like your wife. The dean at the university. The police department. Everybody. You’ll see this sucker on the Internet, YouTube. I promise. We only want the ten thousand. We get that, we’ll go away.”

“I got to take your word for it?”

“That’s the size of it,” the blackmailer said. “Now where is the money?”

“You talk tough,” Jimmy said, “but you don’t look so tough to me.”

“We’re tough enough. Now, once again, where’s the money?”

“I must have left it in my other pants.”

“I’m telling you, don’t fuck with me.”

“Tell your partner to come outside,” Jimmy said.

The man hesitated. “You got here early, didn’t you?”

Jimmy snorted. “Earlier than you.”

“Come out,” Ski Mask said. “Come on out. It’s all right.”

The girl came out. She had on a ski mask too. She moved tentatively up the hill until she was close to her partner.

“You guys don’t look like heavyweight blackmailers,” Jimmy said. “What you look like are a couple of idiots about to rob their first filling station.”

“That doesn’t change things,” the male voice said. “We got the goods, and we want the money.”

“You sound familiar,” Jimmy said. “You’re disguising your voice, but I know it.”

“You just think,” the male said, but he didn’t sound all that confident.

“No. I know that voice.”

“You don’t know shit, history teacher.”

“How’d you get that DVD?”

“That’s our business.”

“Caroline. What happened to Caroline?”

“That’s not the business we’re working right now,” the male voice said. Jimmy was right. He was trying to talk brusque. He sounded silly. The whole thing was silly. There didn’t seem to be much here that smacked of professionalism. They probably just needed a good spanking.

“Show me the DVD,” Jimmy said.

The male reached in his coat pocket and pulled out the DVD. He held it up.