Leather Maiden

19

I eased over to one of the pines and leaned against it, thinking I would look pretty much like part of it if the blackmailers glanced up the hill. Mosquitoes poked at me and flies attracted to the sweat on my face kept dive-bombing me. I felt like King Kong attacked by aircraft.

I held the camera up and used it to watch Jimmy walk down. He got to the gravel behind the house and stopped. His voice came to me softly, filled my earpiece.

“I’m going to call them out,” he said.

I didn’t say anything back. It only worked one way. A moment later I heard him call.

“Anyone in the house?”

No answer. Time crawled by like it was dragging a cross up the hill.

“Anyone in the house? Come on out.”

I aimed the camera on the back door of the house and waited. After a while it budged open and someone stepped out. It was the guy. He had pulled a ski mask over his face. He walked a few steps toward Jimmy.

“I got backup,” the blackmailer said. “I got someone in the house with a gun.”

“What you got is a girl and yourself,” Jimmy said.

I thought, Don’t play it too heavy, brother. Take it easy. A girl can shoot your ass dead good as anybody.

“You got the money?” the male asked.

“Not right on me.”

“That’s not the deal.”

“You got the DVD?” Jimmy asked.

“I got it.”

“How do I know it’s the only copy?”

“You don’t. But I can tell you this much. You don’t give us the money, this is going to be sent to people you don’t want to see it. Like your wife. The dean at the university. The police department. Everybody. You’ll see this sucker on the Internet, YouTube. I promise. We only want the ten thousand. We get that, we’ll go away.”

“I got to take your word for it?”

“That’s the size of it,” the blackmailer said. “Now where is the money?”

“You talk tough,” Jimmy said, “but you don’t look so tough to me.”

“We’re tough enough. Now, once again, where’s the money?”

“I must have left it in my other pants.”

“I’m telling you, don’t fuck with me.”

“Tell your partner to come outside,” Jimmy said.

The man hesitated. “You got here early, didn’t you?”

Jimmy snorted. “Earlier than you.”

“Come out,” Ski Mask said. “Come on out. It’s all right.”

The girl came out. She had on a ski mask too. She moved tentatively up the hill until she was close to her partner.

“You guys don’t look like heavyweight blackmailers,” Jimmy said. “What you look like are a couple of idiots about to rob their first filling station.”

“That doesn’t change things,” the male voice said. “We got the goods, and we want the money.”

“You sound familiar,” Jimmy said. “You’re disguising your voice, but I know it.”

“You just think,” the male said, but he didn’t sound all that confident.

“No. I know that voice.”

“You don’t know shit, history teacher.”

“How’d you get that DVD?”

“That’s our business.”

“Caroline. What happened to Caroline?”

“That’s not the business we’re working right now,” the male voice said. Jimmy was right. He was trying to talk brusque. He sounded silly. The whole thing was silly. There didn’t seem to be much here that smacked of professionalism. They probably just needed a good spanking.

“Show me the DVD,” Jimmy said.

The male reached in his coat pocket and pulled out the DVD. He held it up.

“Quit fucking around,” the male said. “Give us the money.”

“Let me put this so you’ll understand it,” Jimmy said. “Give me the DVD, or I’m going to walk over to you and kick your ass up so high, when you need to shit you’ll have to move your teeth.”

The girl came up the hill a little then. She had pulled a gun from her pocket when I wasn’t looking.

“Give him the money, Mr. Statler,” she said.

“I got a guy up the hill,” Jimmy said.

“Ha!” said the guy in the ski mask.

I pulled my little flashlight out of my pocket and poked it at them and turned it on, blinked it a couple of times.

“He’s got a night-vision camera and a recorder taking in all of this,” Jimmy said. “He’s got a rifle too, and it’s trained on you. So girlie, I suggest you put that pistol down.”

“Your brother?” said the guy. “He’s the one up the hill?”

“That’s right. You know a lot about me.”

The guy said, “I got this copy, but I got other copies.”

“So now I know,” Jimmy said.

“And we got a gun,” the girl said.

“So you do,” Jimmy said.

“We’re going to take that money,” the guy said.

“You might if I had it with me. But you move toward me, even if you shoot me, my brother up there is going to put a bullet in your heads so fast you’ll never even hear the shot that gets you.”

The two blackmailers stood their ground.

Jimmy said, “You put that gun down, girlie. Then the two of you stretch out on the ground, or I’m going to start feeling unpleasant. My brother up there, he’s got an itchy finger. He’ll blow your fucking heads off.”

The guy turned toward the girl. He let out with a yell. “Run, baby. Run.”

Problem was, they broke in opposite directions. The guy went left, the girl went right. Jimmy leaped toward the girl. His hand flashed out and she screamed. Her gun went sliding across the gravel and she did a somersault and rolled down toward the house and nestled up in the vines like a fly in a web. The guy turned and started running back toward her. He raised his hand above his head, like he was going to strike Jimmy with his fist. Jimmy stepped right into the middle of him and hit him quick with the asp. Hit him right between the legs. The guy went down, his knees folding under him, and then he lay back with his head on the gravel and I could hear him moaning all the way up the hill, and not just through the monitor. Jimmy hit him again, this time in the forehead.

I started down. Jimmy stood over the guy, raised the asp again. I could still hear him on the monitor. “You shit. You fucking shit. Give me the DVD or I’m going to crack your head wide open, then hers.”

“Easy, Jimmy,” I said, as I came nearer. “Just take it easy.”

We made them go inside the Siegel house. It was dark in there, of course, and the only light was from my flashlight. It smelled musty inside and there were lots of spiders on lots of webs and the dust was thick and it came up from the floor when you moved. When I flashed the light around I could see the walls were the color of unchewed snuff. The girl was crying, lying on her side, holding her leg where Jimmy had whacked it with the asp. The guy was sitting with his back against the wall, his knees pulled up, his arms wrapped around them. We had pulled the ski masks off, and where the asp had hit the guy he was bleeding; blood was in his dark hair and running down his face. I tossed him his ski mask back, said, “Wipe your face with that.”

The girl had begun to whimper less. I put the flashlight on her. She was pretty, with short blond hair, and thin as a rail.

Jimmy had her gun and he was pointing it at them. The gun business made me nervous. I had seen too many guns and I had seen what they could do, and I had seen how sometimes things happened that wouldn’t have happened just because of them.

“Hold it by your side,” I said.

Jimmy did that, but he walked back and forth, agitated.

“Where’s the goddamn DVD?” he said. “All of them.”

“I just got the one,” the guy said, and worked it out of his coat pocket. He tossed it to me and I caught it and held it. The guy said, “Can I take off this jacket? It’s hot.”

“Why did you wear it?” I asked, knowing the answer.

“To keep the DVD and for a disguise,” he said.

“You try and pull something besides your arm from out of that coat, and my brother here will put a hole in your head,” I said, fearing he might do just that.

“You didn’t have a rifle up there, did you?” the kid asked.

“No,” I said. “But Jimmy’s got your girl’s gun now, and he’s got one of his own. Don’t push him.”

“Girlie,” Jimmy said, “why don’t you take off that coat too, and be careful about it when you do.”

She whimpered once, moved to a sitting position and worked the coat off. She was wearing a dark sports bra and she had dark tattoos on her stomach around her navel, all down her arms. I couldn’t tell what they were, flowers maybe. She tossed the coat across the floor toward us. She said to Jimmy, “You hurt my leg with that thing. You hurt it bad.”

“Forgive me if I don’t give a shit,” Jimmy said. “Put the light on that boy.”

I did.

“Hold your face up,” Jimmy said.

The kid did that. He had a red mark between his eyes where Jimmy had whacked him. It wouldn’t leave a permanent mark, but it would bruise up.

“Hell, I knew I knew you,” Jimmy said. “You’re in the history department. I don’t know your name, but I know you. You can fucking figure on failing now, ’cause I’ll sure think of your name in time.”

“I’m not in your classes,” the boy said.

Jimmy let out with a laugh. “Well, that saves you, doesn’t it?”

The girl bawled some more, paused to say: “I’m scared of spiders.”