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  Kimber looked lovingly at Shelby.

  “Anything happened to my woman,” she said, “I’d plain lose my mind.”

  The way they were gazing into each other’s eyes, I wondered should I yank the IV-drip from my arm and give them the room; it was getting mighty toasty in there. Then Kimber dragged Shelby into her arms and kissed her just the way I’d imagined I’d be kissing her, sensuous tongue and all. My throat went dry. I swallowed hard. It felt like they were kissing so long the nurses changed shift. To Shelby’s credit, she seemed uncomfortable with me being there and withdrew from the embrace. She wiped Kimber’s lipstick from her mouth and readjusted her sling, which had got a little rumpled. “Reggie doesn’t want to see this.”

  Well, I didn’t and I did, you know.

  Shelby leaned over my bed and brushed my hair from my forehead like she was taking my temperature. After seeing what I’d seen, it was probably a little high.

  She said, “Get better, tough guy.”

  Then she pecked me on the cheek like a sister kissing her kid brother.

  “Feeling better already,” I lied.

  Shelby straightened up and Kimber took her hand, and then they left the room together, and I was left alone. Racked with a symphony of pain, both inside and out, I thought again about what that damn fool Dalton said, “Pain don’t hurt.”

  Maybe one day, given time, and enough booze, I’d be able to convince myself that the only reason things hadn’t worked out between Shelby and me, was because all along she’d preferred girls.

  3.

  * * *

  By the time Harry got around to visiting me, and I hadn’t been holding my breath, he’d been fitted with a new glass eye. He was still getting used to it. When the eye wasn’t staring at his nose, it’d swivel about the socket like the peeper of a possessed ventriloquist’s dummy, or glance suddenly over my shoulder as if someone was looming behind me, making me jumpy. He’d also shaved his mustache, maybe as some kind of penance; like Tom Selleck, Harry looked weird without facial hair, his upper lip oddly exposed and vulnerable.

  Harry scraped a chair next to my bed, and placed the urn he was carrying on his lap. “Gizmo,” he said, in a reverent voice. I averted my eyes, guilty. “At least, I hope there’s some of him in here. I shoveled up what I could. It’s hard to tell for sure. The lot is some kinda mess.” He shook his head solemnly, for Gizmo or his car dealership, I couldn’t say.

  “You’re insured, right?”

  He gave a bitter bark of laughter.

  “Sure. The insurance should just about cover the cost of the divorce lawyer.”

  Turns out, Mrs. Muffet’s kennel club conference in London, England had in fact been a ruse. Suspecting her husband of infidelity, Mrs. Muffet had hired a gumshoe to monitor his movements while she was away. The photos of Harry and his secretary Miss Clemens ‘working late’ proved more than sufficient grounds for divorce in Mrs. Muffet’s favor.

  “She’s cleaning me out,” Harry said.

  I vaguely recalled him telling me that everything he owned was signed in his wife’s name. For business reasons, he’d said.

  When I failed to produce a violin from under my pillow, and start playing him a sad song, Harry said, “I’m hoping, I give her what’s left of Gizmo—” He shook the urn and rattled the cremains: “—maybe she’ll take me back.”

  I thought he shouldn’t count on it. “And if she doesn’t?”

  He gave a self-pitying shake of his head that swiveled his glass eye towards his ear. “Damned if I know. Start over, I guess.”

  “Harry …” I broke it to him gently. “Have you ever considered, everything that’s happened, it’s been a sign from the Man Upstairs to change your ways?”

  Not bad advice, now that I thought about it.

  “Pretty drastic sign, dontcha think?”

  “Well, maybe He’s been sending you a bunch of smaller signs, only you’ve had your head stuck so far up your ass you haven’t noticed?”

  Harry stroked his upper lip where his mustache had been. I was starting to suspect he hadn’t shaved it himself, after all, that the doctors had shaved it for him. He appeared to be giving what I’d said serious thought, but I knew it’d been in one ear, out the other, and it wouldn’t be long before he was neck-deep in some other shit. The difference was, when it happened, I wouldn’t be there to bail him out. From herein, Harry Muffet was on his own. My heroing days were over.

  Harry said: “Listen, Reggie. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I got you mixed up in this. Who knew, am I right? Thanks for saving my life, man.” He chuckled. “I guess this makes us even, huh?” He saw my expression and quickly said, “Of course, I can see how you might view things a little different. So with that in mind—as just a small token of my appreciation …”

  He fished in his pocket and produced a set of keys.

  “I thought you lost everything in the fire?”

  “I did,” he said. “Repo’d this baby last night.”

  I laughed, despite myself. “You’re some piece of work, Harry.”

  He tossed me the keys and nodded at the window. “She’s right outside.”

  I dragged myself from bed, hobbled to the window and peered down into the parking lot. All I saw was an ’82 Chevy Wideside. Painted on the hood was a bloody-beaked pterodactyl, its membranous wings extended as it screeched from the fiery pits of hell; the kind of paintjob I would’ve gladly splurged six-months wages on. Attached above the front bumper was a gleaming chrome winch; dangling from the rear a pair of ornamental brass testicles.

  I strained to see if there was a piece-of-shit Pinto tucked behind the Wideside.

  “Where is it?”

  “You’re looking at it,” Harry said.

  “Are you shitting me?”

  “Just like Lee Majors drove in The Fall Guy!” Harry said, beaming. “Now the divorce lawyers don’t know about this, so mum’s the word.” He tapped his nose slyly and his glass eye jittered in the socket. “We cool?”

  I hated myself for being so susceptible to bribery.

  “Harry—I don’t know what to say.”

  “How about sorry for killing my wife’s dog?”

  I winced. “Jesus, Harry—I am sorry about that!”

  He cracked a smile. “Ah, don’t be,” he said. “I always hated that ugly fucking mutt.”

  He stood up to leave, juggling the urn from hand to hand before tucking it under his arm. “See you ‘round, Reggie.”

  I gave a weary laugh as he walked out the door.

  Christ, I hoped not.

  4.

  * * *

  When my medication was reduced, and I was back to being my borderline coherent self, Randy-Ray Gooch came to take my statement. He’d spared me a lot of the legal red tape that ensues when a bungled drug deal cum kidnap for ransom results in an explosion big enough to level a used-car dealership. I’d still have my day in court—I’d gotten away with kayoing a jackass, but somehow PETA had learned about my involvement in the cocaine overdose of a Chinese crested terrier—but for now, Gooch said I’d earned a break.

  He pulled up a chair and straddled it backwards.

  Pretty nimble for a guy in his condition, I thought, but didn’t say anything.

  “Any word on Coogler?” I asked.

  “Still at large,” Gooch said, resisting the urge to spit on the hospital room floor in righteous anger. “We found his car out at Beetner’s Leap, but no one’s buying he took the plunge. Hell, not even Beetner hisself leapt from that bluff.”

  Beetner’s Leap was a notorious suicide spot, named after a scam artist who’d attempted to outwit his creditors by faking his death. It hadn’t worked. The goons had eventually collared Beetner and hurled him from the very same bluff. Since then, the name had stuck, much like Beetner when he hit the ground.

  Gooch seemed certain Coogler was long gone, most likely being sheltered by the neo-Nazi underground railroad. “All this heat on him, the man would have to be crazy coming
after you now,” Gooch said, with the confidence of a man whose own ass wasn’t on the line.

  “He is crazy,” I reminded him.

  “There is that,” Gooch said. “Yeah, probably best you keep your eyes open till we drop the net on him. Fact is, the more I hear about this Mitchell Coogler sonofabitch, the more it turns the hairs on my balls white.”

  I caught the twinkle in his eye.

  “The hair on your—” I said, “It grew back?”

  “Every strand.” Gooch grinned. “Seems just catching the bucket seller was enough. I always reckoned it was psychological.”

  “Good for you, Randy-Ray.”

  He nodded proudly. “Anyways …” He produced a bulging file folder.

  Coogler’s file contained a flipbook of mugshots.

  It was startling to see the man’s transformation from a juvenile, into the Mitchell Coogler I knew and loathed—piling on the muscle over the years, desecrating his flesh with jailhouse ink, experimenting with various styles of facial hair: Full-beard, Handlebars, Fu Manchu, Soul Patch, Hitler, of course, until finally, Circus Strongman. Only those stone-cold killer’s eyes remained the same.

  “Mitchell Coogler … He’s got a rap sheet as long as that jackass’ pecker. Made his bones as an enforcer for the Aryan Brotherhood. He’s been in and out of the joint ever since he was old enough to burn a cross. Always bullshit charges. Nothing that could ever put him down in the hole for life. The way Coogler’s slipped through the cracks in the System, it’s like he’s some kinda Teflon Nazi.”

  Gooch turned to the next file.

  “Coogler’s cellmate, William aka Billy aka ‘Kermit the Frog’ Barnes …”

  Billy’s mugshot showed the punk squinting through a mask of frog-green paint.

  “He’s what you might call a natural born fuckup.”

  “Sounds familiar,” I said. “Why’s he green like this?”

  “I’ll get to that.”

  The last file, and the most recent mugshot, showed Edgar Dubrow. He was sneering into the camera, unrepentant as a Nuremberg Nazi. “You already know this shitbird,” Gooch said. “We picked up Dubrow, put his feet to the fire till he squealed. Between what Dubrow told us, and the statement you made, here’s what we know …”

  5.

  * * *

  Billy Barnes must have wondered how his life might’ve panned out, he hadn’t robbed that savings and loan. It’d seemed like a sweet deal at the time. A quick dollar stickup to buy his sweetheart Charlene that engagement ring she had her heart set on, and to give them a start in life. He’d planned it all carefully, and to Billy’s credit the robbery itself went off without a hitch. It was the getaway was the problem. He was fleeing the bank with the cash in a sack when the dye-pack exploded, coating the kid in Kermit-green paint that blinded and burned, left him balled on the sidewalk in hot agony, easy for the cops to scrape up. The arresting officer said to his partner: “Jeez, you think this is the guy?” They still laughed about it when they told the story.

  Six-months into Billy’s prison bit, the dye had hardly faded. It had proved next to impossible for the first time felon to project a don’t-fuck-with-me aura when he looked like a Muppet. With his boyish looks, and a funny arrest story to share on the yard, Billy Barnes became a popular young man among many of the more hardened convicts. It sure as hell wasn’t easy being green.

  Fortunately his new cellmate, Mitchell Coogler, had been there to take Billy under his wing—and into his bunk, the latter being a small price to pay for Coogler’s protection from the other jailhouse rapists. At least, that’s the positive spin Billy tried to put on things, the first night he wadded his ruptured asshole with toilet paper.

  Of course, he had tried to explain to Coogler that he was not homosexual. That he was, in fact, engaged to be married. (Billy was still holding out hope that he could patch things up with Charlene; she’d sent him a Dear John note following his arrest.) Coogler had listened to Billy politely, apologized for the misunderstanding, and then proceeded to beat the punk to an inch of his life.

  Billy regained consciousness with scrambled brains, missing teeth, a burning butt, and the overwhelming urge to do anything Coogler told him if it saved him from future beatings.

  For three long years, Billy bit his pillow and counted down the days till the end of his sentence. Coogler was released six months before Billy. This wasn’t the blessing Billy had at first assumed. Coogler had simply passed him on to his Brotherhood brothers for ‘safekeeping.’ Presumably, he’d also told them: “And help yourself to all the rump you can pump,” because they sure as hell had.

  The day of Billy’s release, determined never to return to jail, punished and rehabilitated in the most painful way possible, he’d hobbled from the big house …

  Only to find Coogler’s black Toronado waiting for him in the parking lot.

  “Get in,” Coogler said, leering at Billy like a Tex Avery wolf. “It’s been six months. We gotta lotta catching up to do.”

  Billy didn’t understand.

  “I—I thought what happened was a jailhouse thing?”

  Coogler nodded, as if he’d thought the same. “Tried it with a woman when I got out,” he said. “Didn’t take. Truth is, I—I love you, Billy-boy … Now get in.”

  “But—”

  “Bitch, don’t make me tell you twice.”

  Billy glanced back plaintively at the watchtower guard.

  The guy smirked and turned his back on Billy.

  Billy trudged to the car like a condemned man going to the gallows.

  After getting reacquainted at a hot-sheet motel, the lovebirds celebrated Billy’s release with a cultural evening at a neo-Nazi dogfight. It was there they met disgraced former vet, Edgar Dubrow, who was officiating as a pit-side medic. Later, when Coogler hatched his drug-smuggling scheme to pay for Billy’s sex-change operation, Billy had recruited Dubrow to mule the drugs inside Enrique under the guise of an animal rescue. Dubrow arranged for Enrique to be shipped from down Mexico way to Grabowski’s Gas & Zoo. Coogler and Billy waited a week to assess if the cops were wise to their plan. When the coast was clear they came to collect Enrique. Which, unfortunately for Muffet and me, happened to be the very same day we were retrieving Gizmo from Grabowski …

  6.

  * * *

  “And the rest is history,” Gooch said.

  I shook my head and said, “Could’ve happened to anyone.”

  Gooch laughed and started gathering the mugshots back inside the file folder.

  “Sheriff Jaynes hasn’t come seen me yet,” I said.

  “Careful what you wish for.”

  “He still mad about the Strangler thing?”

  “Ho, boy. Real fucking mad,” Gooch said. “And this ‘Showdown at Harry’s Pre-Owned American Auto’ business hasn’t helped cool him off.”

  Showdown at Harry’s Pre-Owned American Auto

  That’s the headline the Bigelow Bugle gave what’d happened.

  Not quite the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

  The photo that accompanied the front-page article was far from flattering. The shutterbug must’ve bribed an orderly, snuck into my hospital room while I was hopped-up on painkillers, and snapped me with my eyes in orbit, tongue lolling from my catching-flies mouth, and a puddle of drool on the chest of my hospital johnny. For all the world, I looked like one of Eliza Tuttle’s mongoloids, sated from the services of a comfort nurse. I just knew that Walt would be adding the picture to my Wall of Shame at The Henhouse, if he hadn’t already done so.

  Gooch said, “Maybe if you’d actually caught Coogler, ‘stead of letting him get away … ?” He shrugged.

  “Yeah, right,” I grumbled, “my bad.”

  Gooch stood up to leave.

  “Listen. When you’re back on your feet, come see me at the stationhouse. We’ll take about getting you deputized. If you insist on getting yourself into this shit then it’s best you’re wearing a badge, if only to keep the Sheriff off your back.”r />
  I thanked Gooch, and told him I’d consider his offer, but the truth was all I could think about was my regular spot at The Henhouse. Sitting at my end of the slab with an ice-cold Coors and a copy of Ring magazine, and nothing more stressful to deal with than an ID to check, or a drunk to turf out …

  And as soon as I was discharged from the hospital, that’s where I went.

  Back to what I knew, and maybe, like Walt once said, back where I belonged.

  EIGHT

  GET TO THE CHOPPER!

  1.

  * * *

  Just another any old afternoon at The Henhouse.

  Small crowd of regulars; Marlene working the stage to lusty howls from the men; Lou parked at his spot at the end of the runway. Marlene seemed a little ticked she didn’t have Lou’s undivided attention, not to mention the bushel of bucks in her G-string that went with it. But Lou was otherwise occupied. Like a proud new father, he was showing anyone he could the photos of Enrique on his camera phone; photos of the jackass grazing harmlessly in Lou’s backyard, I hoped, and not performing again.

  I don’t know quite how Lou managed it, which palms he greased, but somehow he’d been permitted to adopt Enrique; Shelby had worked tirelessly to ensure that the rest of Grabowski’s menagerie found good homes, or were euthanized as humanely as possible. The Lou and Enrique situation reminded me of that Stephen King movie with Jimmy Caan and Kathy Bates. Any day now I expected to hear that Hank Sanderson had loaned Lou his video camera, and that The Famous Mr. Head was launching a comeback.

  I was sitting at my spot at the end of the slab, with a bottle of Coors and The Ring magazine, living the dream I’d had in the hospital. My wounded leg was elevated on the barstool beside me. It was healing nicely, if not prettily. Soon the stitches would come out, and the sawbones would decide if another round of skin grafts was in order. I hoped not. My ass hairs quite clearly didn’t match my leg hairs, and any more skin grafts and my knee would start farting.