Freaky Deaky

Picking the knots out of the man's shoelaces woke him up some more. One thirty in the morning he believed maybe a drink would help him go to sleep. Donnell said, "Yeah, that's what you need"-on top the fifth or more of scotch, the fifth of gin, the half dozen cans of beer the man'd had today-"a nightcap. Why don't I bring it to your bed?"

And if that didn't do it, hit him over the head with something.

Donnell went downstairs wishing he had a baby bottle.

Fill it with booze and let the man fall asleep sucking on it.

There was scotch at the bar in the library, but no ice left from the man's evening entertainment; the refilled trays in the fridge underneath the bar weren't half frozen. He'd have to get a couple of cubes from the kitchen. Always something, catering to or picking up after. He turned off the light in the library, walked through the front hall to the dining room turning lights on, pushed through the swing door to the butler's pantry and was in darkness again edging into the kitchen, running his hand along the wall. There it was. Donnell flicked the light on, turned and said, "Jesus!" loud, feeling his insides jump.

A man and a woman were sitting at the kitchen table.

He said, "Jesus Christ Almighty," sounding out of breath.

They were grinning at him now.

"How'd you get in here?"

Robin said, "It wasn't hard," and looked at Skip.

"Was it?"

Skip let Robin handle it. When Donnell wanted to know what they thought they were doing, Robin told him they were here because he'd fucked up. Donnell said, "Wait now, I have to hear this." But first had to run upstairs, get the man settled with his nightcap. He left and Robin said to Skip, "Bring our stuff in."

"All of it?"

She said, "We're going to use it, aren't we?"

Skip went out through a back hall where there were two doors: one that went into the garage and the one he'd jimmied open with a screwdriver, nothing to it. (Coming in, Robin said, "No alarm system?" He told her maybe Donnell was afraid a burglar alarm might catch one of his buddies. Skip bet, though, the ex-Panther had a gun in the 1 house.) He went out through the busted door to the VW parked in the drive by the garage. First he brought their bags in. Robin, still alone in the kitchen, was looking in the refrigerator.

When he came in the next time, lugging the wooden case of Austin Powder, Used in 1833 and Ever Since, Donnell was at the kitchen table talking to Robin.

He looked up, appeared to become rigid, and said, "You ain't bringing that in here."

In this moment Skip decided he wasn't going to have any trouble with Donnell. If the man was ever an ass-kicking Black Panther he must've forgotten what it was like.

Skip put the case on the end of the table away from them and Donnell stood right up. Look at that. Made him nervous Skip could tell Robin saw it, too.

She said to Donnell, "It won't hurt you," with a tone meant to soothe him.

"All we want to do is stash it someplace. By Monday morning I promise it'll be gone."

Skip liked that. It would be gone, all right, along with whoever was standing nearby. He wanted to wink at her, but she wasn't through with Donnell yet, saying to him now, "You must have a gun in the house."

Skip could tell Donnell didn't want to say.

"I believe there might be one."

"I'd find it if I were you," Robin said.

"You know why?" Talking down to him, making the guy ask, No, why?

Skip didn't care for her tone now, going from soothing to bored and superior. Or the way she said, "

"Cause your buddy the cop's going to come looking for you. The kids you sent to do a job on him blew it."

That wasn't right. She wasn't there, she didn't know what she was talking about. It seemed to antagonize the man, from his expression, more than it scared him.

Skip stepped in and said to the ex-Panther man to man, leaving the snotty woman out of it, "Actually it wasn't they blew it so much as they misread him, thought it was gonna be easy and it wasn't. What she's trying to say, Donnell, we don't want to make the same mistake."

Donnell said, "Mankowski is coming here?"

Skip said, "Imagine he will. See, but I'm the one set him up with the brothers. He comes here with a wild hair up his ass-man, I'd like to have something to hold him off with. You dig?" Skip shook his head as though imagining that situation and then said to Donnell, "A long time ago I tried to buy a gun off a you. You didn't know who I was, you told me to take a hike. Well, I wouldn't mind borrowing one now, for my own peace of mind. What do you say?

Or-I don't like to think about it, but if it does get down to the nitty-gritty and one of us has to take him out, well…"

Donnell went upstairs to find the gun, and now Skip had his chance to wink at Robin, giving him a cold look.

"Hon, that's how you do it with niggers that used to be Black Panthers.

You don't talk down to 'em or you don't arm-wrestle 'em, either. You act like we're all created equal, got bussed to their school and loved it."