on me?”
“Now, now, Weasel, what’s done is done,” Spencer said, holding up his hand again. He felt like a school teacher mediating aggressive children. “There’s no point arguing about this. Now please continue.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Weasel said, shooting Cleavon a triumphant look. “What’s done is done.” He pulled at his goatee, a nervous habit of his. “Anyway, what happened? Well, what happened was, I turned the meat wagon round and high beamed the first car, the Bimmer. It high beamed me back. So it’s on, right? So I come straight at it. The driver in the Bimmer was ballsy, but I was ballsier. I kept my cool. Didn’t blink. At the last second the Bimmer swerves and shoots off the road faster than a cat can lick its ass.”
“Were they screaming?” Earl asked earnestly. “Did you hear them screaming?”
“Naw, Earl, like I said, it happened too fast.” He swept his hands together while making a whistling noise. “Now you see ’em, now you don’t, just like that. Anyway, I knew they wasn’t going nowhere. So I burned rubber all the way home and got on the horn to call Cleave, but he was already talking to Jess, so I told ’em, I told ’em both, what happened. That’s when Cleave, that’s when he took over. So you see, Mr. Pratt, I didn’t have nothing to do with the girl getting away, that was Cleave—”
“There were four of them and only three of us,” Cleavon snapped. “Me and the boys took care of them the best we could—”
“Three,” Weasel corrected. “One was a cripple. And he was out cold. So there was only three, and two of ’em were girls—”
“I’ve had about enough of your smarting off, boy,” Cleavon said, and shoved Weasel, knocking him into Earl. He shoved him again, this time to his knees.
“Cleavon!” Spencer said. “Leave Weasel be.”
“Ehhh,” Cleavon spat next to where Weasel cowered. “The little drink of water ain’t worth it.” He took out his cigarettes and lit up a fresh one while Weasel regained his feet and moved a safe distance away from him.
“So what happened at Lonnie’s, Cleave?” Spencer asked, doing his best to appear empathetic. Lonnie Olsen had been one of Cleavon’s better friends. “How did he die?”
Cleavon shrugged, showing no emotion—if you didn’t know him better. Spencer could tell he was holding back a whole lot of hurt and anger inside. “Happened before me and Jess got there,” he said. “But looked like one of the bucks got hold of his rifle and shot him point blank in the chest.”
“And his boy?”
“Got it bad, real bad, brains all over the floor. You ask me what happened, I reckon the bucks got into it with the boy before Lonnie arrived for not letting them use the phone. They killed him accidentally, ’cause that’s what it looked like with the radiator and all, an accident, and Lonnie came home and went ape shit, killed one of the bucks, then got served himself. But don’t take my word for it. Ask the flying princess here. She was there.” He kicked the blonde in the side of the ribs.
She moaned and squeezed her eyes shut.
“No, that won’t be necessary,” Spencer said. “Your account sounds logical to me. Where had Lonnie returned from?”
“Randy’s,” Cleavon said.
“You called him at Randy’s?”
“First thing I done when I hung up with Jess and Dumbass.” Cleavon eyed Spencer apprehensively. “What? What’s the problem?”
“There’s no problem,” Spencer said. “You did well.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Spence,” Cleavon said. “You don’t think the sheriff… Motherfuckingshitter! The sheriff, he’s gonna find out I called Randy’s, ain’t he? He’s gonna know I was the last person to speak to Lonnie. He’s gonna think I had something to do with what went down at Lonnie’s. He’s gonna put it all together.”
“Put what together, Cleave?” Spencer said amiably, carefully. “You just tell Sheriff Humperdinck, if he asks, that you called Randy’s to see if Lonnie was going to be around for a while because you wanted to join him for a drink. Lonnie, however, told you he was calling it a night and heading home.”
Cleavon screwed up his lips as he thought about this. Then he nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense, don it? I was just calling to see if Lonnie wanted to stick around for a beer. But what if Randy was standing next to Lonnie? What if he heard something different?”
“Like what?” Spencer asked. “What did Lonnie say to you?”
“Shit, I don’t remember his exact words.”
“And neither will