Joe Lansdale - Cold in July

“Just in case someone might miss it,” Ann said.

“Yep,” Jim Bob said. “The paper, or whoever was instructing the paper, wanted to be right sure someone out there thought Freddy had bit the big one. That’s why the cops took advantage of this burglar thing and tagged the body with Freddy’s name. If Freddy’s dead, then there’s nothing but a cold trail, and ain’t no use in anyone looking for him.”

“Why would anyone be looking for him in the first place?” Russel said.

“Getting to that. I said I found two mentions of Freddy. Other was about a month earlier. Said one Freddy Russel was going to turn state’s evidence on a bunch the paper called the Dixie Mafia.”

“Hell,” I said, “I remember seeing that. Went in one eye and out the other. And I sure don’t remember Freddy’s name.”

“No reason you should. That article was tucked on a back page and was about a paragraph and Freddy’s name was mentioned once. I’m sure if the FBI had its way, it wouldn’t have been mentioned at all. But they took some pains to correct that a month later when they gave that dead burglar Freddy’s handle.”

“The FBI?” Russel said.

“Those are the fuckers behind all this,” Jim Bob said. “That’s why Price let you out, Ben. It was the wiser thing to do under the circumstances. They didn’t want you and Dane raising a stink that would point to Freddy again. Price is probably like most local law. He don’t give a damn for feds, but he’s got to grease their assholes if he wants to or not. And when this burglar came up colder than a carp, he saw what the FBI was looking for. A goat. And better yet, the fucker’s killed right killed rhere in Freddy’s own town. It’s a match made in fucking heaven’s what it is. His identity for ole Freddy’s. The guy you killed, Dane, probably didn’t have a family or anyone he could be hitched to easy, so they gave him Freddy’s name.”

“Okay,” I said. “But I still don’t understand why.”

“What I got from that little paragraph in the paper,” Jim Bob said, “is that Freddy was with these Mafia types, doing whatever Mafia types do, and things got shitty and the shit got over his head, and the law came down on him, and to keep from getting mashed under their boot heels or those of his ole buddies, he sang like a fucking parakeet with a hot coat hanger up its ass.”

“And in return,” Russel said, “they gave him immunity.”

“Uh huh,” Jim Bob said, “and they went him one better. They didn’t announce it, but it seems logical to ole Jim Bob here that since the dead Freddy ain’t the right Freddy, they had plans for the right Freddy all along. They tucked him underground. That was probably part of the deal all the time. Freddy agreed to sing for a new identity, and the FBI went for it, and when he was through with the concert, they pretended to let him free for a time, when he was in fact hidden. So the Dixie Mafia is running around looking for him so they can skin the hide off his balls, and not too long after, this asshole breaks into your house, you shoot him-”

“And when I ask Price if he knows him, he says yes on the spot and sticks him with Freddy’s name,” I said.

“Bet he did know him,” Jim Bob said. “Knew enough about him to think he could get away with it. Saw what the feds were needing, and maybe Price saw a promotion out of it, a feather in his cap somehow. He called the FBI, told them what had happened and what he had done, and the big boys went for it. If they’d hated his idea, he’d have called you back and said it was all a mistake. The fella killed wasn’t Freddy Russel after all. He just thought it was cause they looked a little alike, and-”

“None of this would have happened,” I said.

“That’s the size of it,” Jim Bob said. “Price has been trying to cover his and the feds’ tracks ever since.”

“I’m beginning to understand how my wife died like she did,” Russel said. “She was lying to me about Freddy. He was trouble all along.”

“Like his old man,” Ann said, and if you could sharpen words and throw them, hers would have gouged out the back of Russel’s head about a foot.

Russel looked at her and there was no sarcasm in his voice when he said, “Just like him.”

“You know where Freddy is, don’t you Jim Bob?” I said.

“Yep,” Jim Bob said. “A lot of what I’m telling you was guesswork at first. Just me looking at a thing and putting it in line with my experience and coming out with what seemed likely. But I’ve verified it all, and found out some more since, and I do know where he is.”

Russel got out a cigarette and lit it. I noticed his hands were trembling slightly. Your own flesh and blood can do that to you.

“If you know,” Russel said too casually, “then the Dixie Mafia can find out too, can’t they?”

“Maybe,” Jim Bob said, “But they got to have the right connections. And I think if it was that easy for the witnesses to be found, there wouldn’t be any relocation program. The FBI folks may not be Einsteins, but they ain’t as dumb as the news people want you to think. And they’re pretty damn loyal-least to one another. They might tell someone they trust something they shouldn’t, but most of them wouldn’t give a thug the time of day. And if things start looking bad for their witnesses, the people they’ve relocated, they usually move them. That’s not to say they hang out with the people they move night and day. They don’t. They get them set, let them go, and give them a number to call if they have problems. They’re pretty much on their own after that. But that’s because the FBI has pretty good faith in its relocation programs. Once in a while there’s a hole somewhere and a bug gets in the batter, but not much. They hide a lot of folks when you get right down to it, and most of those folks stay hidden.”

“What kind of connections do you have?” I asked.

“Ben,” Jim Bob said, “you remember Calvin Hedges?”

“Arrested me for drinking a couple of times over in Smith County. Kept me overnight and let me loose. Hell, I was just a kid then. He still alive? He must be eighty years old.”

“Eighty-five,” Jim Bob said. “Claims his pecker still gets hard as a screwdriver. He isn’t sheriff anymore, but his boy Calvin, Junior, works for the FBI, and old Calvin owed me a couple of big favors. I called in one of them.

“I had him phone his boy and have the boy call me. Took a couple of days to arrange it on account of Junior was out of pocket, but he did call and said he’d do me the favor.”

“Pretty agreeable, wasn’t he?” I said.

“Like I said, his old man owed me a couple of favors, and the boy wanted to help pay them off. One of the favors the old man owed me had to do with Junior his ownself, and Junior knew it. He also knows I’m one of the good guys, and he was willing, after a line of bullshit, and me putting it on him pretty hard about how he and his old man owed it to me, to tell me what I wanted.”

“Freddy’s location,” I said.

“Wasn’t that easy. He wasn’t gonna put his neck in the noose that far. But he works in the records department and he gave me an access code to the central FBI computer. That’s kind of like a gal giving you the key to her apartment. I got another code or two from him and… Well, to make this a little easier on you folks, a computer, if you know what you’re doing, is a sneaky booger. There’ve been fifteen-year-old kids that knew how to use them and managed to break codes as tough as the Department of Defense. It takes time to do something like that, but you can damn sure do it. You got to first get some of them low-level access computers to give you what you need, and you use them to move up to the superusers. And if you’re real good like me, and you can get the codes you need without having to hunt for them, you can save yourself a lot of time and wiggle in there like a snake, and get what you want with less chance of getting caught with your drawers down. Them computers are something. You take one of them dudes and a modem and you can damn near do anything but walk the dog with ’em.”