Joe Lansdale - Captains Outrageous

I looked. The sun was bright on the house and there was a blinding reflection off a great satellite dish that looked like a flying saucer that had landed on its edge. There were palms and shrubs and flowering plants to the left of the house that grew so thick they completely concealed anything that might be behind them.

It was a huge house, mostly glass and stone, surrounded by a fence of rock and mortar positioned at the peak and around a great rise of land covered in greenery and scrubby trees. The way the rise sloped toward us, you could see the close-clipped backyard and the swimming pool and patio. Their view from up there would be terrific. You would see the road below, the greater highway, and beyond that the sandy white beach and the deep blue sea.

There was a man sitting at a table under a patio roof, shirtless, shoeless, wearing a pair of khaki shorts. He was talking on the phone. He was middle-aged, brown, a little heavy.

Closer to the fence was the pool. Someone was swimming in the pool. I watched. It was a woman. She climbed out. She was tall and lean and dark with shoulder-length black hair. She looked middle-aged, and she looked to have worn well. I could tell that even from a distance. She was topless and proud of it. Walked with her back straight, shoulders back, her breasts forward like copper headlamps. The bikini she wore was a dark color and covered her in the front but did little to hide anything else.

“Damn,” I said.

“Ah, that would be his wife you are seeing,” Cesar said. “Is she nude?”

“Damn near it.”

“She likes to go without the top. Sometimes she wears nothing at all. Juan Miguel. He often goes nude. They are very much into the nudity. They travel to nudist camps worldwide I am told. They think the life is healthy. And then there is Hammerhead. Do you see him?”

“Nope,” I said. “Damn. She’s a beauty… And he’s screwing around with another woman?”

“Alas, it happens. And she too is magnificent, this other woman. And younger.”

“They always are,” Brett said.

“If the guy takes off his pants,” Leonard said, “let me know. Then I’ll want a look.”

“I would like to see,” Ferdinand said.

“Look,” I said.

He looked through the telescope. “I want him to see my face before he dies. I want him to know why.”

“We all do,” Brett said. She stood with her arm around my waist.

“I’d just settle for him being dead,” I said. “A good rifle, and bam, he’s out of here.”

In fact, I knew it was a shot I could make if I had the right instrument. I had learned to shoot a rifle on my daddy’s knee, and though my close vision wasn’t what it used to be, I could still see far away and well.

“No,” Cesar said. “I agree with Ferdinand. He must know.”

“After he knows, he’s got a long time not knowing,” I said. “What’s the difference? We got to do this thing, why not just do it?”

Because I will think of it forever,” Cesar said. “And I will cherish it forever. The look on his face when I explain.”

“You have to have time to explain.”

Cesar grinned at me.

“I don’t think you’re going to find this type of revenge all that satisfying,” I said.

“Oh, I will,” Cesar said. “Are you losing your stomach for this?”

“I’m beginning to think I never had the stomach for it.”

Brett took hold of the telescope, said, “Let me take a look.”

She said, “Oh, my God. That must be Hammerhead. Jesus Christ. You put a sock and shoe on his dick, stroked it a couple times, he could use it as a third leg.”

I took over the scope.

“My Lord.”

The man was monstrous and naked. He had come into the yard carrying a barbell decked with weights. I saw now there were other weights in the yard, and there was a weight rack. Hammerhead was completely nude. Miguel’s wife had stretched out on a towel and was rubbing her long legs with lotion. She had put on sunglasses. Her head was turned in Hammerhead’s direction, head tilted slightly like a dog that had spotted a salami, and in way, she had.

Hammerhead’s body coiled and the weights rose, he uncoiled and they lowered. He repeated the process. Muscles crawled and knotted under his flesh like angry pigs struggling in a sack. He was the biggest man I had ever seen. Not the tallest, or the heaviest. Just the biggest. His shoulders were broad enough to maybe just hold up the sky. His chest was like the Hoover Dam. His arms were big enough to be used to beat the World Wrestling Federation to death all at the same time. His penis hung long and limp and seemed as big around as my wrist.

“He is one big motherfucker,” I said.

“Is he as big as Big Man Mountain?” Leonard asked, referring to a wrestler we had crossed paths with once.

“He could hide Big Man Mountain under his nut sack,” Jim Bob said, glancing through the scope. “I told you he was big, didn’t I, Hap?”

“Let me look at this,” Leonard said. He took a look. He said, “Good God, his goober and balls look like grapefruits hanging off a fence post. He got that thing up someone’s asshole they’d have to get it out with crowbars, maybe dynamite it free. He is one creepy motherfucker. Maybe a rifle shot for the both of them isn’t such a bad idea. Or in his case, maybe a couple land mines.”

“No,” Cesar said. “I will not do it that way.”

“Nor will we,” Jim Bob said. “Now we need to get started.”

We had to wait a few days and watch the mistress. Actually, I didn’t watch anything. Cesar, Ferdinand, and Jim Bob did the watching. They took turns near the mistress’s house, parking nearby and observing, sometimes from a distance with the scope.

Me, Brett, and Leonard got the cushy part of the deal, which probably meant Jim Bob was afraid me and Leonard would fuck things up.

Brett and I stayed at the hotel, in bed a lot. Leonard spent time in the swimming pool. Each day the three of us met for lunch, and in the afternoons, Ferdinand and Jim Bob, or Ferdinand and Cesar, or some combination of the three would meet us back at the hotel for dinner while the other watched. Ferdinand was very uncomfortable when he was one of the two who joined us for dinner. He was not used to restaurants.

It was one of the few times in my life I had lived like I had money, and I was enjoying it.

I did have money. But it was seeping away daily, like a sand angel washed by the waves.

About four days after we arrived in Playa del Carmen, Jim Bob met us for dinner without Ferdinand or Cesar. We were sitting at a poolside table, and Brett had ordered margaritas for herself and Leonard, and they were going at it when he walked up.

“Just you today?” I said.

“That’s right. Cesar and Ferdinand are on their way to Mexico City.”

“The mistress went shopping?” I said.

“Looks that way. She went to the airport. Cesar gave me a cell phone, left me sitting under a palm tree, followed her in the car, then called me back. They were at the airport. He said she was getting a ticket to Mexico City.”

“How does he know?” Brett asked. “She might have been getting a ticket to Juarez.”

“He knows,” Jim Bob said. He smiled at her. “He’s a detective. Remember?”

“Ah,” Brett said.

“Cesar and Ferdinand were about to get tickets to follow. Guess they did. He said for us to meet him in Mexico City at the Presidente Intercontinental Hotel. After I got all that, I walked a couple miles, hitched a ride, and here I am.”

“When do we leave?” Leonard asked.

“Not before dinner,” Jim Bob said. “I can assure you of that.”

The summer days were long, so it was still full light by the time we finished dinner and took a taxi to the airport in Cancun. We bought tickets, waited about an hour, and flew out. The plane was poorly air-conditioned, so it was a stuffy, hot flight.