Joe Lansdale - Waltz of Shadows

Sammy was watching all this with great interest. He moved his head first to his Mom, then to me. Wylie had also reappeared. He too was watching, the porcupine between his teeth. I knew that I was, at this very moment, contributing to the education of boy and dog on how to handle domestic affairs.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Oh, boy. I’ll say, you’re sorry, all right. Take Sammy to school. When you get back you’re gonna get it, mister.”

Sammy got his backpack and we went out and got in my truck. “Mama hates that part about the peanut butter,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“I leave it out all the time.”

“I know,” I said.

“It’s all right, Daddy. She’ll get over it.”

“I hope so.” I opened the garage door with the remote and cranked up the truck and eased out.

· · ·

When I got home Bev was gone. She had driven JoAnn to school. I made sure the coffee was going, then waited on Bev by playing toss the porcupine with Wylie. It made his day. He was so excited I thought he was going to shit himself. He didn’t want to quit playing when I heard Bev drive up, but I went and washed my hands at the kitchen sink and ignored his pushing against my leg.

I dried my hands and poured a couple of cups of coffee and waited for Bev to come in.

When she did, I said, “We got to talk.”

“I’ll say,” she said.

Wylie recognized the signals. He and his little yellow porcupine went away.

“What happened to your eye and lip?”

Bev got her cereal and a bowl and poured her milk and ate, not getting in a hurry about it. When she finished we took our coffee outside on the deck.

It was warming up. The day was bright. There were birds happily singing everywhere. I guess none of them had nephews who were in trouble.

We sat in the deck chairs, and while we sipped coffee, I talked. I told her everything Bill had told me, and I told her what Bill and Arnold and me had done last night, about the mistake in the rooms, everything. I didn’t mention her Mickey Mouse gloves.

While I was on a roll I told her about the time I had gone with Arnold to the liquor store and what had handkey Mappened there, and I couldn’t look at her when I talked about it, but I found a lizard on the deck railing to talk to, and I addressed the story to him and his face showed no evidence of shock or surprise. He took it well, as if that was exactly the sort of behavior he expected of me.

When I finished, I said, “Now you know the kind of guy you married.”

“You think after twenty years I don’t know the kind of guy I married or thought I did? You could have told me all this. You should have. Instead of me, you went to Arnold, your half-brother. A person you haven’t had anything to do with in years.”

“I didn’t want to worry you.”

“We been worrying the hell out of each other for twenty years. Why stop now?”

“I figured when I had it all thought out, I’d tell you.”

“But you didn’t mind telling Arnold before you had it thought out. Right?”

“Can I just say I’m stupid and get out of this?”

“I’ll tell you what you can do. You can let me know how all this is going, and consider me a partner like you’ve always done before, and you can quit trying to protect my feelings all the time.”

“All right,” I said. “Starting now.”

“Then you can start by telling me what’s next.”

“The lawyer,” I said.

“I presume the lawyer is Virgil Griffith?”

“He’s the only lawyer I know personally.”

“He’s good. Least, I always hear he’s good. What comes to me, though, darling, is how do you explain to him the way you got those tapes? It might be said that the evidence was obtained illegally, and is therefore useless. Breaking and entering and theft are still illegal. Right?”

The kind of warm feeling you get when you’re a kid and realize you’ve just filled your pants came over me.

I got the video tapes out of my truck and went around and unlocked my study, which is the bottom floor of our place, and separate of the rest of the house; a kind of mother-in-law quarters.

I slipped inside feeling disappointed. I hadn’t even considered the possibility of the cassettes being dismissed as evidence, due to the way they were obtained.

Still, I didn’t let that stop me. I took the cassettes over to my TV and laid them on top, and went to work.

I have video duplicating equipment down there, because to explain it bluntly, I often duplicate copies of movies for personal use. It’s also a place where I repair damage to rental videos, something I’ve gotten damned good at.

I cleaned the heads on the machines first, then made copies of the videos we had stolen and watched them while they recorded. There really wasn’t anything in the video with Dandke onoc and Fat Boy to assure a jury that money was exchanging hands, but it was certainly suspicious looking, and would convince a jury that Bill hadn’t made up Fat Boy.

I took Fat Boy’s appearance in as best I could, for future reference. He dressed like a poster child for bad taste. He walked like his feet were killing him. He was certainly fat, and he walked funny, but the meat on him didn’t jiggle. It was a hard kind of fat, well-marbled, like a show hog, and his arms were big and firm beneath his coat, filling out the sleeves the way sausage meat fills out a casing. The rest of him was average looking. He didn’t appear to be someone who would take money for shooting someone in cold blood.

As for the other cassette, it helped establish that there was in fact a Disaster Club. I came away from seeing it feeling Bill was dumber than I thought, getting mixed up in something like that.

I also decided Sharon had been one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, and obviously one of the most messed up.

I finished making the copies and fell asleep.

When I awoke, I rolled over and glanced at the clock on the wall. I had been asleep for about an hour and a half. I didn’t feel exactly renewed, but I didn’t feel that my brain was a coconut packed with sand anymore.

I looked Arnold up in the phone book and called him. I wanted to connect. I felt strange, not having talked to him after all those years, then, in one evening and a night and an early morning, we had talked and argued and broken into a couple of apartments and stolen some possibly incriminating video tapes. It seemed like every day business. Very comfortable. Maybe we could start robbing filling stations.

He answered on the fifth ring.

“I was out feedin’ the dog,” he said. “What’s up?”

I told him what Bev had said about the way we had obtained evidence.

“Well, Bubba-son, Beverly’s thinking on her feet, but in this case she’s wrong. You see, cop gets information like that, it’s suspicious, but someone ain’t a law officer breaks and enters, gets information and turns it over to the police, then it can be used in court. ’Course, you got to face the breaking and entering charge.”

“How do we get around that?”

“I’m not sure we do. My suggestion is we leave Billy out of it. He’s in deep enough doo-doo as it is. But you and me, we could take the rap, or I could.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Glad you said that. I wasn’t going to do it. I was just being melodramatic. I won’t let you take it either.”

“Never planned on it. In fact, I’d rather neither of us took it.”

“Maybe we ought to pin it on Billy after all,” Arnold said.

“Ha. Ha. Isn’t there a way around all this?”

“Might be. How well you know this lawyer?”

“He woulft"0em" wdn’t suck poison out of my balls I got snake bit there, but I know him well enough. He’s a good lawyer, I can say for sure. Well connected. Something of an opportunist. He’s won some high-powered cases.”