Читать книгу Klick, the Dick - Milam Smith - Страница 5

“Never been there.”

“Man, you joking or what? I’d heard you and Chan were in the Army together.”

“Yeah, so?” I glanced at my watch.

“And you two never been to ‘Nam?”

“Peace-time Army,” I said. “After Viet Nam.” I frowned. Where the heck was Chan?He’d called from the airport just thirty minutes ago.

“Man, I’d heard Chan was a real bad-ass. And never been to ‘Nam. Huh.”

He made it sound like if a man hasn’t been in a war, he hasn’t ever been shot at. As if getting shot at was something to do. Almost as much fun as getting shot, huh.

I looked up at the sun, hanging at ten o’clock. Hot enough to be afternoon. I squinted at the glare and held my hand up to shade my eyes. Drops of sweat tracked down my face. Ninety-nine percent humidity and no clouds in sight. It was only early May.

I had the feeling it was going to be a long day.

“Hey, damnit, you deaf? I’m talking to you.”

I frowned some more. I looked at the guy, standing there giving me a go-to-hell look with his mean gray eyes. He wore a black leather jacket, green camouflage t-shirt underneath, green camy pants and black jump-boots, the kind of boots a military man gets in Korea with two-inch rubber soles. I didn’t even know the man’s name.

He was chewing a tobacco plug crammed in his wide jaws. It fit his image, along with the Marine-short hair; so short it was hard to tell what color it was under the Peterbilt cap he was wearing.

If I was broiling just dressed in jeans, yellow t-shirt and deck shoes, then the man in front of me must’ve felt like a Christmas turkey.

He held a shiny silver, pump 12-gauge Remington shotgun in his left hand. I held a matching one.

“Chan did hire you, right?” I asked him with a taste of wonder in my voice.

“Nah, he wasn’t around but was short a hand, and I was hanging around. Thing is, if he sent me, what’s he need you for?” He topped that off with a mean grin, trying to get a rise out of me, I guessed.

I had the shotgun cradled in my arms like a baby. It’ didn’t seem worth the trouble to put it down and smack the man in his red face. Besides, the shotgun wasn’t mine.

I grinned back at him. In his boots we stood eyeball to eyeball. I glanced around his thick neck and saw Chan walking up behind him. I looked back at the guy and gave him my best smile.

“What’s your name, anyway?” I asked, sticking my hand out.

He took the hand, but suspicion clouded his eyes.

“O’Hara.”

I forced myself to stifle a laugh. “Nice meeting you, O’Hara.”

Then Chan was there. O’Hara turned, his right hand snaking under his jacket as if he were reaching for a pistol.

Chan stopped and looked down at both of us. He stood six-feet three, and that was without any fancy boots. He looked slim standing there in a black suit, but I knew he outweighed my one-ninety by a good forty pounds. At least.

Guessing what was coming, I grinned even bigger. O’Hara squirted some tobacco juice between his lips. Brown spittle dribbled down his chin as he asked, “You Chan?”

Chan eyeballed me. He looked back at O’Hara and nodded at him, just giving up that blank oriental face and nothing else.

“Well ya’ gook, can’t you talk, or what?”

After a nice beat or two more of that silent look, Chan spoke. What he said was, “I talk it enough to fire your dumb ass,” in as twangy a Texas accent I’d ever heard.

O’Hara’s neck hairs bristled. His squat body tensed. It seemed as if his leather jacket squeaked as O’Hara’s shoulders bunched. I wondered if Chan would let him swing first.

Nope.

Chan’s forearm swung up like a hatchet right into O’Hara’s square face. The only sound O’Hara made was the crack of his jawbone breaking. He sunk like wet tissue paper and made some more noise when his thick head smacked the sidewalk.

I bent down and looked around his head. I grabbed one of O’Hara’s big ears and lifted his head, looked under it. Then I let go of his ear. His head thumped, like the sound of kissing bowling balls.

I looked up at Chan. “You’re in trouble now, boy. See that? You done went and cracked a city sidewalk.”

“What’s up, Clyde?”

I frowned at Chan as I picked up the shotgun O’Hara had been carrying. I tossed it to Chan. He snatched it out of the air as if it were a toothpick.

“That the funniest greeting you could think up?” I said to his grinning face.

Now I held a shotgun and so did Chan. Two guys standing on Vickery Street carrying shotguns, less than a mile from downtown Fort Worth. One man draped unconscious on the sidewalk. A little after ten in the morning. Yeah, we got a few looks from passing motorists as they sped by.

The building we were standing in front of was a warehouse that looked a hundred years old. The bricks were so faded it was hard to tell if they were originally red, pink, or white.

Chan bent over and grabbed O’Hara’s collar. He dragged him over to a door and propped him against it. By looking at the hinges I could see the door opened out. Chan had blocked the way of out of this side of the building. And the way in, too.

“I guess we’re not going in this way, huh?”

Chan just gave me a ‘oh-really’ look.

“Who was that guy?” Chan asked as we walked around to the alley-side of the warehouse. The alley was a pocked gravel drive. Our feet made puffs of dust as we walked.

“Don’t you know the man, you hired him?”

“Well, I didn’t want to admit it.” He paused a beat for his explanation. “See, he’d been hanging around the office the past two weeks. I knew he was a soldier-of-fortune type, but he kept telling everyone how he’d heard what a hot-shot I was, and how he wanted to really work for me and all that kind of stuff. I like being flattered.”

“I guess it depends on who’s doing the flattering.”

“Yeah,” Chan admitted. “Now you tell me.”

We stopped in front of a padlocked door. Chan dipped a hand into his breast pocket and pulled out a key. The long skinny kind with a twisted end that opens most any simple lock. He was holding his shotgun over his left shoulder like a good ‘ol boy out duck hunting. Even with just one free hand he had the lock open inside a minute. He slowly opened the door.

In a whisper he said, “Ready or not…?”

I rolled my eyeballs and then followed him in.

It was cool inside, which was a relief. Of course, a dog’s shadow would’ve been a relief, too. It seemed like a big warehouse, the empty kind of big that is only an illusion. Then there was the noise. At the other end of the building there was a truck and trailer rig. Two guys were taking boxes from the truck. I assumed the boxes were the reason we were here. Retrieving them, probably.

We walked slowly and quietly towards the truck. I gripped my shotgun in both hands as if I meant business. Chan still held his casually.

“This was kind of a special call,” Chan whispered like a slow leak. “Didn’t have any of my regulars around when this old client called.” It sounded as if he were still trying to explain the last minute hiring of O’Hara.

Chan runs one of the best protection agencies in Texas, and the best in the city. I don’t work for him on a regular basis, but I was a friend, and I was in when he called. Sleeping on my desk, but in. I had been up all night working two different cases. I had another to finish after noon, too. But I had made time for Chan. Of course I let him know all this as we walked towards the truck.

He laughed aloud, causing me to jump. “Well then. Let’s get it done.”

I shhsssed, giving Chan an I-don’t-need-this look. Too late.

The two guys turned and looked at us. They looked like O’Hara’s brothers, only they were dressed like truck drivers. They wore khaki pants and plaid shirts, long sleeves rolled up past the elbows. Stocky and mean-looking. Truck drivers, yep. One of the guys pulled a pistol from his pants. Now they looked like big armed truck drivers. Uh-oh.

The guy with the pistol pointed it at us. Then he fired. I brought up my shotgun and blasted back, a little high. My ears rang and gunpowder smoke made my nose flinch.

There was a loud shriek. The guy had dropped his pistol and grabbed his face. Now he sounded more like a little boy stung by a bee.

“What are you trying to do, put the guy’s eyes out?” Chan asked as he stepped in front of me. The other truck driver was running now. His buddy was wriggling and screaming on the floor. If I hadn’t been using one of Chan’s shotguns loaded with salt, the man on the floor would never have needed another hat.

Chan didn’t use his shotgun. He pulled something from his jacket. I could tell by the lift of his shoulder that it was something heavy and aimed at the running man.

Then boom.

“For crying out loud!,” I yelled, jumping. It sounded as if Chan had fired off a cannon. My ears weren’t ringing anymore. Now I was plain deaf.

Chan turned and grinned at me, showing me his pistol. An old Dragoon Colt that pre-dated the Civil War, probably.

Back by the truck the other guy was screaming louder than his buddy. I walked over. There was a pistol on the ground by the man and I kicked it away. The poor guy was holding his leg, trying to staunch the blood spurting from a big hole above the knee. The guy would’ve had to put a fist into the hole to stop it.

The way the two truck-drivers were screaming Chan and I had to get out of the building so we could hear each other talk.

Outside I said, “What’s worse, no eyes or no leg?”

Chan shrugged his shoulders. He had put his straight face back on. Police sirens were coming at us around the corner of the alley.

“See,” he said, “I owed this guy a favor.”

“A paying favor, right?”

“Yeah, don’t worry, this is a pay job. Anyway, he had gone in early this morning and done a surprise inventory, noticed a few missing television sets. I’ve done escorting work for him. Strange guy. But he has the money.”

“Why not the cops?”

Chan grinned. “Wanted to make sure his workers would see what happens to cheaters.”

“Those two in there work for him?”

“From the description, yeah. I hope I got the right address.”

Two cop cars popped around the corner and dashed down the alley at us. The sirens died with a pathetic moan. The cars skidded to a stop, but threw a half-ton of dust into the air at us. When the cloud of dust had settled, Chan’s black suit was white, the four cops were pointing guns at us behind their car doors, and Chan was holding out a badge.

***

“What time is it?”

Chan looked at his gold Rolex. I had a watch, but I enjoyed looking at Chan’s thousand-dollar one. Mine was a Timex.

“Ten ‘til noon.”

We had been in the alley for more than an hour since we had shot the truckers. The cops had made us wait for the detectives, who questioned Chan more than me, because I kept telling them I didn’t ‘habla ingles.’ I do have dark brown hair that looks black, and a dark complexion, but I don’t really look Mexican. But they had believed me, because, after all, they are Fort Worth cops.

Besides, the guys seemed in awe of Chan. They had listened to him reverently while casting squinty looks at me. Chan was well-known, especially after what he did the last time Reagan had visited the city.

That wasn’t the only reason they ended up cutting us some slack. Chan had used Thomas Shinn’s name. He was a close friend, and a Loo’tenant on the force. And then there’s the Chief of Police’s policy. Cooperate with private detectives whenever possible. He looked at it like having free help. Of course, us dicks weren’t mentioned in the reports. That was the trade-off. They got the credit for the busts. P.I.s don’t like a lot of attention anyway. Chan wasn’t really a private dick, although I was.

Finally they had dismissed us, after getting Chan’s autograph.

I yawned dramatically after Chan told me the time. I gave him a mean white-boy look and told him I had a noon movie to catch. Then I asked him where he got the badge, since he wasn’t a cop anymore.

“Shinn.”

“Oh.” That still didn’t tell me much. Chan wasn’t elaborating, though. Sometimes he’s like that. Playing the oriental stereotype, even though he was a fifth-generation Texan.

The cops left, and the ambulance had long ago left. I had given Chan back his shotgun. I didn’t own a shotgun, but if I did it wouldn’t have been loaded with salt. Twelve one-ounce pellets would be more my style.

“What movie?” Chan wanted to know.

“It’s a case I’m working on.”

“A private investigator hired to watch movies?” Chan snickered. “Maybe I’m in the wrong line of work.”

“It’s on Main Street.”

He analyzed that in a few seconds. Then he smiled. “I get it,” he said.

“Only in your sleep,” I said to him over my shoulder as I walked away.