“Naw, it’s cool. Come on, Marisa. Kiss me again.”
“Marisa” was a name I recognized from a few days before, when I’d subbed a college-prep comp-and-lit class. She had been a tiny, dark-haired young woman with huge brown eyes and a hint of a Tejano accent. She had said some perceptive things about D. H. Lawrence’s “The Rocking-Horse Winner.” I had been impressed enough to remember her.
But as it turned out, she was just another teenage criminal. It was disappointing because I hadn’t expected any of the kids involved in the theft to be smart. Sure, these particular thieves had been smart enough to get in and out of Kingman Rural High School at night without being picked up on security video—but there were only three working cameras, and two of them were aimed at the main entrance. It wouldn’t take any valedictorians to avoid them.
When I heard the wet sounds of Marisa and Donny gnawing at each other’s faces, I crept to the Civic’s rear fender and looked around it. I was within ten yards of the house now, and my angle was straight toward the west side of the porch. There wasn’t even a railing. If the kids and their buyers stayed where they were, I would see the whole deal.
In the pickup bed, Donny was doing his best to turn his make-out session with Marisa into something more. But Marisa was disengaging every few moments to rise up and watch the proceedings on the porch. I was amused. But I had to watch the porch, too.
Three Caucasian high-schoolers—Jared and the girl from the couch, plus Donny’s football buddy Tyler—stood with their backs to the open front door. Tyler was a lumpy-nosed, stubble-headed bruiser in blue jeans and a Toby Keith T-shirt who was destined for a career in either the NFL or the liquor-store-holdup industry. He hadn’t had jack to say about “The Rocking-Horse Winner.”
Two adult dudes stood with their backs to the van. One was a pink-faced, grizzled white guy wearing a NASCAR cap who could have been a less-beefy, much-older clone of Tyler. He looked about sixty-five or seventy, but some of that might have been due to hard living. I thought I recognized him as a long-ago skunkweed associate of my old man’s, but I couldn’t be sure.
The other guy was a slim, fair-skinned hombre with a grim expression and gunmetal-gray eyes. He looked to be in his mid-thirties. He was wearing a white cowboy hat, a gold-paisley-embroidered red jacket over a black shirt with white-pearl buttons, a gold bolo tie and wristwatch, crisp black slacks, and pointy-toed red rodeo boots. Here was another man who knew that comfort sometimes had to be sacrificed for style. Or maybe he had just come from a gig.
NASCAR-Cap Guy was talking. “—appreciate the offer, but we’d prefer to evaluate the goods out here. Carlos and I can drink our own beer, know what I mean?”
Tyler grinned and stuck out his hand toward the man in the cowboy hat. “Carlos, is it? I’m looking forward to earning your business.”
I winced. Tyler was doing an imitation of an appliance-store salesman. It was not good.
Carlos didn’t like it, either. His eyes narrowed, and his shoulders twitched. He did not extend a hand to meet Tyler’s.
NASCAR-Cap Guy gave a forced chuckle. “Uh, ‘Carlos’ ain’t his real name. I’m just calling him that for the purposes of this transaction. And you should call me Mr. Anthony, as I told you on the phone, on account of I’m your respected elder. Now, let’s get on with it.”
Yup, this was the guy I remembered from when I was a kid. Bobby Anthony. Daddy had called him Bobby Tone. He had gone to the pokey for a while. And my mama had not liked him even a little bit.
Tyler dropped his hand. The scowl on his face said that Carlos and Bobby Tone had disrespected him, and he was offended.
I winced again. Bad move, Tyler. These guys might pull your spine out through your nose.
Fortunately, the scowl passed in an instant, and Tyler turned into Willy Loman again. “Well, sure, of course! Let’s get on with it! Jared, you want to bring ’em out?”
Jared looked confused. “All at once?”
“Kaylee can help.” Tyler nodded toward the blond girl, who was looking down at her feet and brushing her hair from her eyes.
Now Carlos cleared his throat and spoke. He was dressed like a banda musician and standing on a porch in Texas, but his voice sounded as if it belonged to an Anglo news anchor in Connecticut.
“As I understand it,” he said, “you have three different models available. I suggest you bring them out one at a time, so I can evaluate them individually.”
Tyler and Jared stared dumbly, and Kaylee continued looking at her feet. Then Bobby Tone barked at them. “Goddamn, boys, what you waitin’ for?”
Tyler flicked a hand at Jared, and Jared hurried into the house. Kaylee scuffed her flip-flops, but otherwise didn’t move.
In the bed of the Ford, Donny grunted. I looked up and saw that Marisa had been watching the porch with her arms propped on the sidewall of the pickup bed. But now Donny was trying to pull her back down.
“Donny, no!” Marisa said, no longer whispering.
Donny grunted again and kept pulling. Marisa vanished downward, and I had the sick feeling that I might have to do something. Which would be really stupid of me.
“Donny! Basta ya!” This was accompanied by the sound of flesh being smacked. I guessed it was Donny’s face. And I relaxed a little.
On the porch, Carlos glanced toward the Ford. Which was pretty close to glancing toward me. I held my breath.
But Carlos didn’t let his gaze linger. He turned back toward Tyler, checked his wristwatch, and muttered something about amateurs.
Marisa rose up to look over the sidewall again.
Donny stood, hissed “Screw this,” and jumped to the ground. Then he stomped to the porch.
“ ’Bye,” Marisa whispered. Her back was toward me, but I had the sense that she was smiling.
I smiled too. Then I looked toward the porch again.
Tyler scowled again as Donny hopped onto the porch. “You need something, bro?”
“Yeah, but I ain’t gettin’ it.”
Bobby Tone cleared his throat. “If you boys could put your love lives on hold until we’re done, we’d appreciate it.”
Then Jared came back outside, lugging a trapezoidal black-plastic case that was almost as big as he was. He flopped it onto the concrete porch with a thud, and Tyler squatted down to snap open the latches.
“Feast your eyes on this, gentlemen,” he said.
The top of the case swung up so I couldn’t see what lay inside. But I could see the sour expression on Carlos.
“Uh, no good?” Bobby asked.
Carlos gave one slow, grim shake of his head.
“Mucho asso sucko,” he said. He still sounded like he was from Connecticut.
Bobby Tone took one step forward, put a work-boot-clad foot against the case, and kicked it off the porch. When it hit the ground, the big white bell of a sousaphone tumbled out, rolling a few feet in my direction before it came to rest facing the porch. The coiled white tubing of the rest of the instrument fell from the case, and then the case flopped over on top of it.
“Hey!” Donny yelled. “What the hell?”
Carlos regarded Donny and Tyler with a dark glare.
“Fiberglass,” Carlos said. His voice was a growl.
He reached behind his back, under the jacket, and came out with a revolver so big that it looked as if it belonged in a cartoon.
Then he cocked it and blasted away at the sousaphone bell.
He was a good shot, too.
3. Bull-shiit!
I ducked behind the Civic’s left-rear tire. The movement might give me away, but it was better than catching a pellet. Carlos fired five rounds in all, each one making a noise like a half stick of dynamite. I recognized the sound: .410 Magnum shotgun shells.
When the last echo had died away and my humming ears could make out the voices of shouting teenagers, I risked a look around the Civic’s bumper again. The sousaphone bell now sported five golf-ball-sized holes and a peppering of smaller wounds. The grass around it was dusted with white-fiberglass snow.