Bobby Tone stepped in between them, clucked his tongue, and pulled the Judge from his waistband.
“What I’m hearing,” he said, “is that whatever the two of y’all decide to do, I’m gettin’ nothing. Not from a purchase today, and not from resales down the line. And I was being so careful not to be greedy, too, since this was a new line of business for me. I was happy just to be a facilitator and to be paid accordingly.”
Garrett eyed the gun. “I’ll give you seventy-six dollars for your trouble. That’s all I have on me.”
Bobby kept the Judge pointing downward, but he cocked it.
“Seventy-six bucks?” he said. “Man with a charitable bank account and all? No, I’ll need at least a thousand to release the tuba from the custody of this minivan.” He paused and scratched his jaw with his free hand again. “Actually, I’ll need the thousand just to walk away without shooting you. And I’d have to shoot both of you, so no one could accuse me of racial bias. One thousand dollars. And then y’all can do whatever you like with the tuba and the sousaphones and the glass fuckin’ harmonicas and whatever else you got.”
Charlie looked at him. “You know I only have five hundred tonight. There isn’t a thousand dollars on this porch.”
Bobby Tone raised the pistol. “Then one of you needs to go get it.”
“Or you could have five hundred and seventy-six dollars right now,” Garrett said.
Bobby didn’t seem to hear the offer. He began swiveling the barrel of the Judge back and forth, pointing it first at Charlie and then at Garrett.
“Eeny,” he said. “Meeny. Miney. Moe.”
Then the front door opened, and Elizabeth stepped out. She had her cell phone in her hand, and she looked straight at Bobby Tone.
“Do you want the sheriff out here?” she asked.
Garrett groaned. “Elizabeth, no—”
Bobby stopped swiveling the Judge, and he lowered it a bit. But he gave Elizabeth a wry look. “Ma’am, nobody from the sheriff’s office could be out here in less than thirty minutes. And if you were to make me worry that you’d accuse me of wrongdoing, why, I could just shoot all of you to prevent that.”
I tensed again. Bobby Tone didn’t know I was there. So if my knees cooperated, I might be able to be on him before he could react. Or I might not. I prepared to flip a mental coin.
At that moment, I heard the crunch of tires coming from the driveway again.
Well, good. I had been wondering how this situation could get any more complicated. Now I was about to find out.
12. Everybody’s Beeswax
No one on the porch seemed to hear what I heard. They were all wrapped up in their four-way Texican standoff.
A slow, black Chrysler 300 came idling up the driveway past my hiding place. Its lights were off. And except for the soft crunch of its tires, it was almost silent.
I had a premonition that this new development meant the Judge was going to express its opinion again.
So as the car idled past me, I came out in a crouch and tucked in behind its rear bumper. Maybe, if I got close enough, I could at least try to jump onto the porch and shield Elizabeth.
Then someone—Carlos/Charlie, I thought—finally spotted the Chrysler and yelled. So I was ready when the car came to a halt, and I didn’t whack my head on the trunk.
I looked around the glowing left brake light just as the Chrysler’s headlights came on, flooding the porch. Bobby Tone, Charlie, Garrett, and Elizabeth all winced in the glare.
Then the driver’s door opened, and the driver stepped out. He kept the open door between himself and the porch.
“Everybody just stay right like you are,” he said in a deep, phlegmy voice. “I suspect I’m gonna have to arrest somebody. But let me get a look so we can figure out who.”
It was Ernest, also known as Deputy Beeswax. At some point after I had encountered him that morning, he had apparently decided he ought to do more than stand around. But he had just made a tactical error.
The first shot from the Judge took out the Chrysler’s left headlight. Its roar was still rattling in my skull as I jumped forward, grabbed Ernest by his gunbelt, and shoved him into the car facedown on the front seat. His deputy hat fell to the floorboards, exposing a scalp the color and texture of a bathroom scrub brush in the blue glow from the dash.
Up on the porch, everyone was shouting and the front door was slamming.
“Get the hell off me!” Ernest yelled into the passenger-seat cushion. “Whoever you are, you’re interfering with an officer of the law.”
I held Ernest down with a forearm across his neck and a knee on his rump. “I don’t think you’re even on duty,” I growled, trying to disguise my voice. I was going for something between Winston Churchill and Batman. “This isn’t a squad car. There’s no radio.”
“I got one in the glove box,” Ernest said. “All I got to do is turn it on. And it don’t matter if I’m on duty or not. All I need is a reason to believe a crime is in progress. Getting a headlight shot out and your knee up my ass both qualify.”
The Judge exploded again, and I heard the other headlight shatter. I glanced up through the windshield and saw that the porch light and the lights in the crooked house had been turned off, too.
“Listen, Deputy,” I said. “I’m an innocent passerby, but I happen to know the only things at stake here are a few band instruments. Nothing worth getting shot over.”
Ernest tried to shake me loose. “I agree,” he said. “So let me up so I can shoot back.”
That struck me as a bad option. Bobby Tone hadn’t hit anything but headlights. But if Ernest returned fire, somebody might get killed. And it might be me.
Bobby Tone shouted from the porch. “Hey! I’m guessing y’all are associated with these kids, and that you don’t know your heads from your taints any better than they do. My suggestion is you get that vehicle off the driveway so I have a clear exit. I’ll give you—oh, two minutes. That sounds generous to me. That sound generous to y’all?”
“That’s fine!” I bellowed.
Ernest increased his efforts to dislodge me, but I held firm.
“Listen here,” he said, panting. “As long as we have two minutes, Mr. Innocent Passerby, I want you to understand something. I’ve been a Texas law officer for forty years, and there are rules I’m bound to follow. One of those rules says if a suspect discharges a firearm in my direction, I, by God, discharge one right back.”
I groped for Ernest’s .357 with my free hand. “I respect that,” I said. “But all of my own rules are devoted to self-preservation. So I’m gonna work with that.”
Sure enough, the strap over the grip of Ernest’s .357 was still unsnapped. The pistol slid into my hand as slick as a pumpkin seed.
“I dunno what you think you’re gonna do now,” Ernest said. “That ain’t loaded with nothin’ but empty cartridges.”
I was baffled. “Why on earth would you do that?”
Ernest managed a chuckle that came out more like a grunt. “I’m semiretired in Kingman County. I generally find that the intimidation factor of a pistol works just fine without actual bullets. Besides, this way, some asshole grabs my gun, joke’s on him.”
“That’s funny, all right,” I said. “Almost as funny as a deputy approaching what he thinks is a crime in progress without live cartridges or backup.”
“There’s crimes, and there’s crimes,” Ernest said. “I observed a scrawny old redneck and some guy dressed like Roy Rogers driving a scabrous minivan with a WOMEN FOR OBAMA bumper sticker. Looked suspicious, so I followed. And now you’ve implied that in addition to stealing a twenty-four-dollar Plymouth, they’re involved in a recent case of grand theft tuba. But until now, neither situation would have seemed to call for live ammo. What should I have hoped to shoot, a sousaphone?”
“You wouldn’t be the first,” I said. “But I guess that line about a Texas lawman always firing back was bullshit.”