Honky Tonk Samurai (Hap and Leonard) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Marvin. I almost asked for a replay.
    What kept me from asking for that, however, was I had a sinking feeling that I knew why she had come in.

5
    H ere’s what I expected. She had blackmail material, and though I wasn’t involved in the actual ass-whipping, I was there and was part of the deal by proxy, and the way it would come down was all of us on that video, and that included Officer Carroll, were about to get rubbed raw as hamburger meat.
    “You think I’m here to blackmail you, don’t you?” she said.
    “Never crossed my mind. Why would a nice lady like you blackmail anyone?”
    “Shit, boy, you’re a bad liar. If you were a woman you couldn’t fake an orgasm.”
    “All right,” I said. “It crossed my mind. And just for the record, I think I could fake an orgasm.”
    “Totally,” Brett said.
    “I want you to take my case,” said the lady, “if that’s what it’s called. Think that’s what they say on the TV shows, or maybe it’s movies. Are there private eye TV shows anymore?”
    “I don’t know,” I said.
    “Those were always kind of fun,” she said. She seemed to be thinking about a favorite episode of something before she shifted to: “Here’s the way I see it.” She patted the tablet. “I want you to find my granddaughter. The cops gave up. For them it’s a cold case, and from what I can tell it’s not getting any warmer. I’ll be honest. I don’t have any illusions. I’m too old to have any. She’s most likely bones by now, but I want her body found, and I want to know what happened to her.”
    “You don’t need threats,” Brett said. “We just need payment. Actually, I own this agency now, so it’s me you deal with.”
    “Well, that’s the rest of the problem,” she said. “I got some money, but not what it takes to do the deed, cause I presume it’ll take awhile, and usually this stuff is by the hour, right? That’s why I brought the tablet. What’s on it is my down payment. And if you’re thinking of pushing me down the stairs, I got a copy of this elsewhere, somewhere where you can’t get it. I’m pretty tech-savvy for an old geezer.”
    “I think you’re a lying bitch,” Brett said. “How much money you got?”
    “How much you need?” the old lady said.
    They went back and forth with that for a while until it was determined the old lady had about half of what Brett charged for a couple of weeks, having raised her prices from those Marvin used. I guess she was thinking about paying for the paint and the new furniture and a lot of vanilla cookies and the toilet paper for the snazzy bathroom.
    When the money talk was done, and an inferior sum was agreed to, the old lady pulled a manila envelope out of her purse. Inside were some papers and photos of her granddaughter. She was a good-looking girl in a short white dress and those Greek lace-up sandals. She had thick red hair like Brett’s and like maybe the old lady’s original hair used to be. The girl was striking a model pose, which was appropriate, because her grandmother said, “She wanted to be a model when she was a kid, then she wanted to be a journalist. Her name is Sandy Buckner.”
    “What’s your name?” Brett asked.
    “Lilly Buckner.”
    “We have a painting of lilies on the bathroom wall,” I said.
    “What?” Lilly said.
    “Never mind,” I said.
    Brett asked her a few questions, and I listened. Five years ago Sandy had gone missing. She had graduated college with a journalism degree and found that the newspapers and magazines that did hard news had gone the way of the dodo bird and drive-in theaters, so she tried being a weather girl, but she was no good at it. She looked wonderful on camera, but she had zip charisma, as her grandmother put it. It’s odd how that works. There are people who in life are beautiful, but on film, beautiful or not, they have all the personality of a ham sandwich without the pickles, and then there are those who look all right, nothing special, a