Joe Lansdale - Cold in July

On top of the chest of drawers I found a Trojan rubber in its wrapper, some keys, change and a stack of magazines. Playboy, Penthouse, Gallery, and some real sleazoid types. I looked through them. I looked through the sleazoid types a couple of times. Maybe it was three times.

I sang “Home on the Range” and went downstairs.

The phone rang.

It was a siding salesman. I told him no and hung up. I looked at the phone a little while. But not long. I had learned my lesson. I had another beer and went to the bathroom.

The phone rang, of course.

I got my pants snapped and zipped without tearing off any important parts of my person, and answered it on the third ring.

“We’d like one of them pepperoni pizzas, all the goddamn fixings, only cut them little fishes off of it. They make me want to throw up.”

“That’s funny, Jim Bob.”

“Ain’t it. Well, we’re over here across from The Caravan Video Store, and from the looks of things, Freddy owns it. Maybe the feds set him up with it.”

“Would they do that?”

“Oh yeah. They owe him. Don’t that take the rag off the bush, though? They take this scumbag and set him up in business and he pretty well does what he wants so the feds don’t have to look stupid. You don’t see them sonofabitches doing stuff like that for the honest man, do you?”

“He been there all day?”

“Mex came by and got him about six-thirty this morning, drove him to work, and even drove him to the Pizza Hut for lunch. You know, they done got the dents out of that Chevy Nova.”

“That’s all you found out?”

“He likes pepperoni pizza.”

“Great.”

“What’s to find out in one day? I doubt there’s going to be that many astounding revelations anyway. Best we can hope for is just get his pattern down and know when to hit him. If we can do it without the Mex around, all the better. Right now it looks like the sonofabitch shares the same pair of shoes with him.”

“Yeah, well… Guess I’m just bored.”

“Jack off. That’s what I do when I’m bored. It can liven up the dullest of days. Go upstairs and read some of them fuckbooks on my dresser.”

“I did.”

“They’ll put a tire tool in your pants, won’t they?”

“I don’t want a tire tool in my pants.”

“You sound a little bit on the cranky side, Dane. Maybe you ought to have you some milk and cookies, crank the living room air conditioner to high, stretch out on the couch there and take you a nap. We probably won’t need you at all today, so unwind.”

“Easier said than done. You’re about out of beer by the way. You want some more, you better bring some home.”

“What about bread and milk, honey? Do we need that?”

“Ha, ha.”

I hung up and went into the kitchen to look for the milk and cookies. I found the milk, but no cookies. I drank the milk, turned the air conditioner on high and stretched out on the couch for a nap. But it didn’t seem right without the cookies.

Next day Jim Bob and I went in the Rambler and Russel stayed home. I pitied him. I hoped he enjoyed reading about ear mites more than I did.

Freddy’s schedule was pretty much like it was the day before. We got into Houston and over to the residential area where he lived about six-ten. We parked in the lot of a Safeway store across from where the highway met the street that led out from the subdivision.

At exactly six-thirty-five, the Nova with the Mexican driving came up the street and turned right on the highway. We followed discreetly in the Rambler. There was no air-conditioning in the Rambler, and by seven it was already a little warm. We followed the Nova through some heavy traffic, but Jim Bob never lost sight of it. I noticed that the Nova had all its windows rolled up. Air-conditioning. I liked that. Here we were, the good guys, and we had a hot Rambler. Worse than that, the bad guy had his own driver and a video store somehow provided him by the FBI. It helped with his hobby, which was taking videos of women being fucked and murdered by himself and the Mexican. He probably had all the major credit cards.

The Nova went out of the main of Houston and onto Highway 59 North, and finally came to a section that had once been thick with tits-and-ass joints, but was now only a few topless lounges and cheap eateries, mobile homes and used car lots. And a video store called The Caravan.

The Nova turned right off of 59 and went around back of the video place. The store was tucked neatly between an outdoor motor sales and a garage that had a sign that said it specialized in foreign cars and transmission work. It was seven-thirty sharp.

We drove on past a ways, then Jim Bob turned around and we pulled off an annex road and found a little truck stop and had breakfast. When that was finished, we went to a used car lot that was cater – corner and across the highway from The Caravan and walked around the lot looking at cars and kicking tires and keeping a sideways view on the video store. A plump salesman with white hair slicked back, wearing a plaid sports coat, maroon tie, lime green slacks and white shoes, tried to tell us why a used car was ten times better than a new one.

Jim Bob had him show us all the cars on the highway side of the lot, and we looked at them real slow and asked technical questions and took turns sitting behind the wheel of each and every one of them. The salesman’s smile had almost fallen down his throat and he was beginning to look a little woozy from the heat. His cheap plaid sports coat had wells of sweat under the arms and there was a ring of it around his neck and a splotch under the knot of his tie.

“Confidentially, Horace,” Jim Bob said, having latched onto the man’s name, “I don’t think I could buy a car I hadn’t driven.”

“Course not,” said Horace.

“We’d like to test-drive a few of these babies. See how they respond. We’ll start with this Skylark, if that’s all right.”

“By all means,” Horace said producing a monogrammed, green hanky and wiping his face. “We here at Horace Williams’s Motors aim to please. That’s our motto, and we live by it.”

“And it’s a good motto,” Jim Bob said. “A business that don’t care about its customers is no business at all. That’s what I always say, don’t I?”

“Yes,” I said, “you always say that.”

“I’ll get the keys,” Horace said.

We drove the air-conditioned Skylark around a bit, going by the video store now and then, never getting too far away from it.

We swapped that car for a red ‘68 Chevy, with air-conditioning, and drove it around, this time actually crossing over to the video store and driving back between the outdoor motor place and going around back. We saw the Nova parked there next to a gray Vette.

Jim Bob turned us around and we went back to the used car dealer. After about five cars, Horace didn’t look nearly so ready to please. He even told us he thought old Ramblers were pretty good cars, and how if he had one, he might hang onto it.

“Guess you’re right,” Jim Bob said. “But we’ll be back tomorrow to look at the rest of them. I think if you’d had that Skylark in metal flake blue we’d have had a deal.”

There was a filling station almost directly across from The Caravan, and that was our next stop. Jim Bob shook hands with the owner of the station. He knew him from the day before.

“This is Phil,” Jim Bob said introducing the station owner to me. He didn’t bother to give my name to Phil. “New man, Phil. I’m supposed to break him in today.”

“Well, I don’t envy you men any,” Phil said. “Hot work sitting out there in a car.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Jim Bob said, and gave him a smile.