Read Online Honky Tonk Samurai (Hap and Leonard) by Joe R. Lansdale - Free Book Online Page A

him flinch every time he saw me. I guess that made me the same as him. Naw. He’s a grown-ass man. A dog expects to be loved. And deserves to. Any man that would kick a dog like that ought to have a knot jerked in his dick, the kind that could only be untied with a butcher knife.
    “Been a tough day, huh?” Leonard said to Brett.
    Brett cocked one eye open and left it open. The other eye finally followed.
    “I didn’t have a pillow, and the mattress is a tad lumpy,” she said, “but I’m tough. I can handle it.” Brett rolled over and put her feet on the floor, smacked her lips, and yawned. She had on jeans and a loose T-shirt. Her red hair had been pinned back, but part of it had come loose and hung across one shoulder. “Girl has to keep up her strength. Besides, I wanted Buffy to learn how to snuggle.”
    “How’d that work out?” I asked.
    “It’s a little like hugging a mahogany end table. Her legs stick straight out and go stiff. But she was sort of getting into it when you two interrupted us. How’d your morning go?”
    “Not sure,” I said.
    “It does seem as if there’s more than the car business going on there, though,” Leonard said. “Fact is, I don’t think the car business is going on in as big a way as monkey business.”
    “I’m not a fan of monkeys,” Brett said. “Apes I like. Monkeys not so much. I think it’s the screeching.”
    “Both monkeys and apes throw shit,” I said. “I think we had some thrown at us today.”
    “Why are you holding that pen like that?” she asked.
    I went to the desk drawer, where I knew there was a box of plastic bags we had bought for a variety of reasons, evidence being one. I unlocked the drawer with my key, which Leonard did not have a copy of, and put the pen in a plastic bag and left it in the drawer. I said, “I’m going to take advantage of our friendship with Marvin and see if I can get him to run the prints of a certain well-turned-out lady ape who I think may be selling more than cars and is the one who flung a lot of shit on us.”
    “Oh,” Brett said. “How well turned out?”
    “Nothing you have to worry about,” Leonard said.
    “No offense,” Brett said, “but you aren’t exactly the best judge of female flesh.”
    “You got a point there,” he said.
    “She was all right, but not my type,” I said.
    “I’ll accept that,” she said.
    “On the other hand, maybe she thought me and Leonard were boyfriends,” I said.
    “If she did,” Leonard said, “and I find out, I will personally set fire to that place, then shoot you.”
    I got comfortable in one of our nifty new chairs, said to Brett, “I think it’s a place that gets a lot of people walking through the lot, but very few people ask about buying. I think they sell some cars but reckon they are mostly taking recommended clients, and it has to do with something besides automobiles. I got the vibe they were selling prostitution, but for all I know they got a big cookie-baking deal on the side, and that’s what they’re selling. I tried to make Frank—that was her name—believe I was a potential prostitute user or cookie buyer. Being with Leonard messed that up. He’s like bringing a wolf to a butcher shop. He just can’t help himself. He was all up in the pork chops.”
    “Oh, now you’re blaming me,” he said.
    “I tried to sell us both, but I wasn’t having any luck. Leonard was a bump on a log. He had nothing worthwhile to offer except claiming to have gotten an inheritance from rich white folks for his gardening expertise and bedroom prowess. Said he gave tours of his petunias. In the winter. He said I had patents for sex toys.”
    “I wish you did,” Brett said.
    “He’s just pissed his charm didn’t do it,” Leonard said. “That he didn’t have any.”
    “A little of that, yeah,” I said.
    Brett said, “No one should really let you guys out without a leash. And really, Leonard? Petunias?”
    “I thought it made me sound sweet,” he