Honky Tonk Samurai (Hap and Leonard) Read Free

said.
    “I was just angry,” said the man.
    The guy gradually got himself collected enough to get to his feet. Marvin put his left hand on the guy’s right shoulder, said, “Were you kicking this dog?”
    “She kept pulling the leash,” the man said. “I was trying to teach her.”
    “What were you teaching her?”
    “To behave. To quit yanking me.”
    “So you kicked her?” Marvin said. “That was your instruction?”
    “Had it coming. Hell, it’s a dog. My dog.”
    Marvin’s right hand moved then. It was quick, a slap to the guy’s bloody face, a back hand, another slap, a swift knee in the nuts, and the guy was on the ground again. Marvin looked at the officer. “Damn if I wasn’t just angry.”
    “You were just trying to teach him,” Leonard said.
    “I can’t believe that,” said the officer. “That son of a bitch tried to resist arrest. And to the brand-new police chief.”
    “Yeah, ain’t that something?” Marvin said. “No respect for the goddamn law.”
    “Sign of the times,” said the officer.
    “Next the sun will go cold,” said Leonard.
    “I hear you,” said the officer. “Just this morning, my coffee wasn’t quite right.”
    “There you are,” Leonard said. “It’s already started. The end of the world as we know it. The goddamn fucking apocalypse.”

3
    S he’s got a busted rib—cracked, really. Nothing major. Used to wrap them up tight. Not the way it’s done anymore.” The vet, a stocky young lady who had thick shoulder-length blond hair slicked back with mousse, was telling us this as if we were potential interns.
    “So she’ll be all right?” I asked.
    “Long as she takes it easy,” she said.
    “She will,” I said.
    “I’d like to have the bastard did this right here on my table,” she said. “I’d cut his balls off with a dull scalpel.”
    “And we’d hold him down,” Leonard said.
    “When he came around, because he had a kind of accident and was out for a while, he apologized to the dog,” I said.
    “Apologized?” she said.
    “Leonard there actually put the words in his mouth and made him chew on them and like it,” I said. “But he had him say: I am sorry, little doggie, I am a shit-eating asshole and am not worthy to wear your dog collar. I have fleas.”
    The vet smiled a little, nodded at Leonard.
    Leonard was sitting in a chair by the wall. He nodded back. Marvin was leaning against the open door frame. Officer Carroll had taken the dog abuser in. The dog was on a table, lying on her side. She was very patient and even cooperative. I liked that dog.
    Marvin had let us take the dog to the vet. I guess he would have some paperwork to lie about, about how that bastard had jumped Leonard, who was merely trying to stop animal abuse, and then had turned on Marvin when he came to investigate. It wasn’t legal, but it was justice. I could still visualize those slaps from Marvin. Marvin had fast hands.
    The vet shaved some of the dog’s hair and wrapped her up, but not tight. Just a little something to keep the rib firmly in place. She said it probably didn’t need to stay but two or three days, and told us again about how it used to be done and how it wasn’t done like that anymore. I guess she was practicing a lecture she was going to give. I paid the bill out of some of the money we had gotten for watching the guy go to the gym, and we drove Marvin to his car at the cop shop. He said he wanted to talk to us, said he’d follow us back to my place, that he’d come in a little while, had a bit of cop work to do. We went ahead.
    Leonard had recently found his own living arrangements, a shabby place downtown in an old building that had once been a candy factory but was later cut up into apartments. Before the apartment, Leonard owned a house, but he had left that to John, then John left it, and Leonard sold it. Leonard actually made a small profit. This was rare for either one of us. A profit. Though for the first time in both our lives we