Suckerpunch: (2011) (12 page)

His nose was still smooshed, and his eyes were bright with something. I ruled out admiration and brilliance. He had a crescent-shaped scab on his forehead over his right eye, a strange place to have one without any other damage. It looked like someone, maybe him, had put a fingernail there and pushed.

He tapped his fingers on the edge of the table. “A-Wall, how ya been? Wait, no. Now you’re Woodshed, right? Or Woody?”

“Woody,” Marcela said.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

I said, “Lance, this is Marcela. Marcela, Lance.”

“Yeah, hi,” Lance said.

She kept her hands on the table and twiddled some fingers at him.

“Hey, can I slide in here for a second?”

“We’re about to leave,” I said.

Lance said, “Okay,” and I had to move to my left to make room for him sitting down. He smelled sour. “Salads?” He glanced around the table for evidence of more than that. “What are you guys doing tonight?”

“Just a little dinner. We’ll probably head home from here.” I yawned to make it seem as boring as possible. Nothing he’d want to tag along for.

“Cool. So what you been up to?”

“Mostly the fighting.” I didn’t want to ask what he’d been up to; I didn’t want to appear on any accessory warrants.

He nodded.

I let the silence stretch into the fidgeting phase.

Marcela had better manners. “What do you do, Lance?”

“Oh, this and that. Sometimes the other, you know, when this and that aren’t hiring.” He laughed and took a drink of my water. It became his water. “A-Wall—no, shit,
Woody
—he’s probably told you about when we ran together.”

“This is our first date,” Marcela said and winked at me.

“Oh, congratulations,” Lance said. “Super. Yeah, we used to bang around town making all kinds of trouble.”

Marcela glanced at me, and I shook my head. She asked Lance, “What kind of trouble?”

It took him two stories to get to the favor.

First, Lance told Marcela about the time I held a Saudi prince over the railing of a balcony on the fifteenth floor while Lance hustled the two hookers—”ladies of the night,” he called them, using air quotes—out to the car.

Marcela cocked an eyebrow at me, probably thinking pimps and prostitutes were going to be the theme of our relationship. Lance had to hurry and explain that he was the driver, I was the chaperone, and the prince got out of line with a riding crop and leather hoods that were oversized versions of the kind sporting falcons wear. It sounded a little better after that, but I still figured I’d be explaining every detail later.

There was an awkward lull, and I thought that was it.

Then Lance said, “Hey, you still run into Chops?”

“No. Not for, what, maybe six years.” Chops had been one of Shepherd’s associates. I didn’t mention Marcela and I were just talking about Shepherd, and I hoped she would keep quiet about it. Lance never made the cut to work directly for Shepherd and probably still had a gripe about it.

Lance told Marcela, “Chops is a guy we used to work for. I see him now and again. He always asks how our boy here is doing. Now I’d tell him, shit, do a search for Woodshed Wallace, find out for yourself. You know why they call him Chops?”

“How would I know?” Marcela said but made it sound nice, conversational.

Lance hunkered over the table, talking about important stuff now. “Before I met him, I thought it was because he chopped people up; then I thought that’s crazy. Maybe it’s because he has wicked mutton-chops, you know big Wolverine shit flying off his face.”

Marcela shook her head.

“But no. I meet him, and the guy’s face is smooth as a baby’s ass. No hair at all. They call him Chops because the fucker’s got a fake hand and it’s in the shape of a karate chop, and when he gets his panties in a bunch, he starts knocking the edge of it against the table.” Lance hacked the concrete or granite a few times, the funniest thing in the world, then must have hit his hand wrong because he hissed and cradled it under the table.

“How did he lose his hand?” Marcela asked.

“I don’t know.” Lance asked me, “You ever find that out?”

“Nope.” I knew, but I wasn’t going to say it. Let Marcela think I worked for a nice beardless guy who could take a joke like being called Chops because of a fake hand.

Then Lance told her about the time he was driving stolen air bags to LA with me riding shotgun and some of the bags went off in the back of the panel truck, both of us thinking we were being shot at and trying to fit into the glove compartment. The guy we delivered them to said it happened, something about static electricity tripping the triggers.

Lance said, “Then there was the time we
did
get shot at,” and I figured out why he’d sat down.

“We don’t need to go over all that again.” I turned to Marcela. “It’s much more boring than it sounds.”

She looked suspicious.

“And we should get going. Lance, great to see you again.” I started to slide toward him.

Lance didn’t move. He just smiled and said, “Hey, hold on a sec.”

I could have moved him, but it wasn’t that kind of conversation yet. I glanced at Marcela, and she had a little wrinkle between her eyebrows.

Lance said, “Marcy, hey, it’s not as boring as he wants you to think. I don’t have to tell the story, but I can show you the scar. You remember that, A-Wall? That surgeon guy they brought in saying I should be dead already?”

“I remember.”

“And me saying, ‘Well, I
ain’t
dead, motherfucker, so get to work.’ Marcy, the guy almost pissed himself.”

Marcela said, “Who is Marcy?”

Lance ignored her and looked at me. “But the thing I remember most is right before he put me under, you said you owed me one. That made it all worth it.”

“Oh, that’s sweet,” Marcela said.

I was appalled, but the guy deserved an Oscar. I checked to make sure my fork was still on the table and not in his hand, jabbing into his leg to get some tears flowing.

Lance blinked a few times and said, “Yeah, don’t let him fool you. He looks like a lion, but he’s just a kitten inside.”

Marcela laughed. “No more Woodshed for you; now you’re Kitten Wallace.”

“Perfect!” Lance said. “No, wait: purrfect.”

I was surrounded. “Everybody, calm down.”

Lance nodded and got rid of his giggles and put his hands flat on the table. “Oh, man.” He sighed, then failed at sounding casual. “So, can you help me out with something tonight?”

Behind him on the dance floor, a girl tipped out of the sedan chair and disappeared into the lowly masses. A turquoise high heel geysered into the air and became a trophy that was passed hand to hand until someone threw it over the railing onto the floor near our table.

Lance followed my gaze, then plucked the shoe off the floor and put it on the table. He held the heel in his left hand and the toe in his right and made it tap-dance.

Marcela frowned at it.

Lance spun the shoe, read the label, and checked how far it could bend. “Huh.” He kept it in his hands and looked at me. “A-Wall?”

“Woody,” Marcela corrected. She stared at the shoe and didn’t put much into it.

“Right, sorry. Woody, can you?”

“What is it?” I owed him and it was bad form asking, but if I hurt his feelings, maybe he’d leave.

He didn’t. “It’s no big deal.”

Alarms started going off. I expected the next sentence to either be about storing nuclear waste for him—just for a year—or helping him get his car out of the ocean.

“I owe some money to a guy, and I don’t have it yet, and I have to go tell him I’ll have it soon. Nothing’s going to happen—he’s not like that—but it won’t hurt to have you standing there with your sleeves rolled up.”

I ran through it again in my head. No uranium or scuba gear. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“This guy isn’t in Kansas City or anything, right?”

Lance used the shoe to wave that away. “Nah, he’s off the Strip. In a bakery.”

“A bakery?”

“What do you want, a sign that says Illegal Bookmaker?”

I thought about it some more. “How much?”

“Ah, that’s not important.”

“What I want to know is, do you owe enough to kill
two
people over or just one?”

Lance stuck his bottom lip out at the shoe and shared its loneliness. “It’s not that kind of deal.”

“When is this supposed to happen?”

He brightened. “I’m already late.”

I took a breath. “All right. I have to take Marcela back; then I’ll meet you out front. Thirty minutes.”

“What?” Marcela cut in. “No, you’re not taking me back. It’s boring there. I’m coming with you.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.

“Who cares?”

“There is that.” I asked Lance, “Is this a place where she can wait outside without armored protection?”

“Dude, it’s a
bakery.
She can have a muffin while she waits.”

“Oh, I like this,” Marcela said.

“Good?” Lance asked.

I wasn’t ready to call it that yet. “We’ll see.”

Lance slapped the table and started to slide out but was stopped by a girl in a small black dress who looked like she’d been through an industrial washing machine. Lance recoiled.

“Can I please have my Veronica back, you fucking pervert?”

“Huh?”

“My
shoe?”

“Jesus, yes. Take it.” Lance handed her the shoe.

She leaned on the table and tried to glower at him while she put it on, but it was apparently too hard to do both. She focused on the shoe and spun and clomped away.

We stood and watched her go. Her other foot was bare.

“Damn,” Lance said.

Marcela made a noise in her throat. “I hate high heels.”

“Yeah?” Lance looked her over. She came up to his chin. “They’d make you taller.”

“So why don’t you wear them?”

Lance beamed at me. “She’s a keeper.”

“Like it’s up to me.” We got to the door and began the expedition of finding the exit in a Las Vegas casino.

We made it onto the Strip and started walking north. The Golden Pantheon was near the south end, so we had some ground to cover and distractions to avoid. A guy handing out flyers and hollering in English switched to Spanish when he saw Marcela and tried to give her one of the shiny cards covered in pink and flesh tones.

She smacked it away and said, “I’m from Brazil, stupid.”

The guy swerved into Portuguese without a pause and baffled Marcela into taking one of the flyers. She looked at it and muttered and gave it to me, then wiped her hand on her jeans. I tossed it into the next trash can on top of a pile of its kin.

The Strip was full and flowing both ways, people rushing to the next casino or stopping every ten feet to take a picture of one another in front of something lit up and sparkling. We found a group of movers and drafted in behind them. The flyer hawkers kept trying, but we walked fast and kept our hands close to our sides.

“How far?” I asked Lance.

“Other side of Sahara, just past St. Louis. You want to get a cab?”

I looked at Marcela.

She said, “I want to walk. I like the smells.”