Joe Lansdale - Captains Outrageous

Leonard leaned against the wall and let the nine mil hang by his side. Jim Bob bent over Cesar, stood up, looked at Hermonie.

“You have some intuition,” I said to Jim Bob. “You were right about there being a struggle in the yard.”

“Intuition is really just the unconscious mind learning to talk to the conscious.” He gestured toward Hermonie. “One for her and it’s over with. Cesar, not so easy. What’s that tell you?”

“He didn’t talk,” I said. “So they gave him hell.”

“Shit, he talked. I would have. I tell you what happened. Hermonie here, she called Juan Miguel and told where the girl was.”

“But why?” I asked.

“Because she wanted what she thought Juan Miguel could give her,” Leonard said.

“Yep,” Jim Bob said. “Leonard, you aren’t as dumb as you look.”

“Thanks.”

“I never really trusted her,” Jim Bob said, “but I didn’t think this. I didn’t think she was this stupid. I just thought she was a shit and a bad pick for Cesar. Goddamn, Cesar didn’t deserve this.”

“Who the hell does?” Leonard said.

“You actually think she called Juan Miguel?” I said.

“They finished her easy,” Jim Bob said. “No torture. They just popped her. That tells me she thought maybe she could make the big money. Maybe Ileana talked Hermonie into it. Said I’ll see you get paid good. I’ll get you in good with Juan Miguel you get me out of this.”

“Who did she think she was dealing with?” I said.

“She had no idea,” Leonard said.

“No,” Jim Bob said, “she didn’t. She didn’t like us, and according to Cesar, she didn’t like him much either. But I don’t think this is what she expected. Maybe she thought Cesar would get his, but she figured she was doing Juan Miguel a favor, so she thought she was all right. Would make some big money out of the deal. Get a chance to end up with what she thought she deserved. Juan Miguel had other plans. He decided to thank her by not torturing her. He gave her what he thought she deserved.”

“So now Juan Miguel knows we were going to ambush him?” I said.

Jim Bob nodded. “I’m sure Cesar said what he had to say.”

“And now,” Leonard said, “we don’t have our bargaining chip. And we aren’t going to get any money, and we aren’t going to surprise him… Ferdinand… where is he?”

“Out back,” Jim Bob said. “They took him out there and hacked him to pieces. I wish he’d had a machete. I wish he’d had his chance… Probably that goddamn giant did it.”

“What now?” I said, and was surprised at how hoarse my voice was.

Jim Bob took off his battered hat and ran a hand through his hair. “Well, three things occur to me. Let’s wipe our fingerprints up, and hope there aren’t too many old ones. They come up, we get hauled in, we were visiting Cesar. He’s a friend of mine, so maybe we can swing it. I doubt anything’s missing. I don’t thing Juan Miguel would give a shit about anything Cesar owned.

“Second thing is we get the hell out of here quickly. Third thing is Cesar might have told him we were staying at the hotel. Since we got everything we own in the car, I say we check in somewhere else. We don’t go back.”

We wiped down what we knew we had touched, eased out of there, and with Brett at the wheel, we drove briskly away.

We moved to a smaller hotel. Jim Bob carried the suitcase with the shotgun in it to his and Leonard’s room. Leonard kept the nine mil. I kept mine. I kept the suitcase with the rifle.

We were too stunned to eat. Too shocked to think. That was good. I had been thinking too much. I may not come up with class plans, but I could at least come up with something. I had been trying to be too damn smart. I had let Jim Bob the pro do what the pro knew how to do, and it hadn’t been enough. The pro was good. He was grand. But sometimes the way you kill a bug is just step on it. You don’t think about it too much. You don’t go get bug spray or call the exterminator, or talk to the bug and tell it why it must die, or try to bargain money from it, you just step on it.

Brett watched a Mexican television show for a while, not understanding a word of it, then fell asleep. I sat and watched her sleep. I thought about poor Beatrice, how she looked after that animal Hammerhead had had at her. It had to be him. Hammerhead was the one. He was the one that had come for me and killed Charlie instead. That’s what Juan Miguel said. I thought of Cesar. He had done his best to help us. He had tried to be a friend. And Hermonie. How horrible it must have been for Cesar to have been betrayed by her. More horrible than the torture.

And Ferdinand. If they had given him a machete like Jim Bob said, let him fight it out with Hammerhead, he would have died happy. And he might not have died. He had been a terror with a machete.

God. All that blood. The skin peeled back on Cesar’s hands and feet. I kept thinking about his eyes. His mouth. The way his pants cuffs were rolled up. Somehow that hit me the hardest. Just that simple little thing, the careful rolling up of the cuffs so they could peel the flesh higher.

I got up quietly, checked on Brett. She was snoring like a lumberjack. I got some of the hotel’s stationery out of the desk drawer, a pen. I wrote.

Brett, I love you.

You wake up and read this note, you be cautious. I’m leaving the nine millimeter on the desk. You keep it, go stay with Leonard and Jim Bob. Trust me on this. Tell Leonard I love him. A man couldn’t ask for a better brother. Don’t tell him that unless I don’t come back. No use giving him the big head. Tell him I love him, but that doesn’t mean I forgive him for everything. He won’t know what he needs forgiving for, but I like the idea of making him nervous.

This isn’t a suicide note. This isn’t a so-long note. It’s a just-in-case note. You read it, you remember that. It’s just in case. I’m going to do what always sounds so hokey, but tonight sounds exactly right.

I’m gonna do what a man’s got to do, and I’m going to do it without dragging anyone else into it. If you figure what I’m doing, try and help me, you’ll just fuck it up. But if I’m not back by tomorrow, then I didn’t do it. It’s best you just take a plane home and forget about all this. Leonard and Jim Bob will do whatever. And I have a pretty good idea what that will be. I want them to. But better yet, I want them to end up going home with you. I want Leonard to be with John and Jim Bob to be with his pigs. Leonard and John in a carnal sense, and for all I care, Jim Bob and his pigs in a carnal sense. Actually, I kind of like that idea.

So go home and forget about all this.

Except for me. Remember me awhile. Then forget me.

I keep writing because I don’t want to go.

I’ve got to go. I keep waiting, keep messing around here, I’ll be waking you up asking you to proofread this. I go now, I may get back before you know I’m gone, then I can tear up this silly tripe and we can go home.

Love, Hap.

P.S. I don’t come back tomorrow disregard what I said before. Have Jim Bob and Leonard kill that sonofabitch. But you go home.

The keys to the car were on the table where Brett had left them. It was easy for me to walk out with the suitcase containing the rifle, scope, and silencer. I drove along the highway, half expecting to see a dark car filled with Juan Miguel’s two thugs and the impossibly large Hammerhead.

How would he fit in a car? Did they have to drive a convertible? Did they pull him behind them in a trailer?

I kept thinking about all kinds of stupid things. I felt as if I was coming undone, a piece at a time.

The moon laid greasy patches of light along the road and the road rose up and curved. I could see Juan Miguel’s great house standing tall with its palms and its thick high wall, the moon above and behind it like a chunk of suspended lard.