Joe Lansdale - Devil Red

“Should we talk to him?” Cason said.

“That could be tricky,” I said. “It’s like stirring up a snake. He’s sleeping all quiet like, hibernating maybe, and we go in there with a stick and twist him around with it, piss him off, and we are in for some shit when he may not have anything to do with this. So, we could get bit for nothing.”

“I got the impression you boys get bit a lot,” Cason said.

“That’s why we don’t want to get bit again,” I said.

Leonard looked at me, then looked away. He said to Cason: “I don’t mind talkin’ to him. We need to, we will. But is he the only one on your list? I think before we stir him up, we got to decide if these murders connect somehow with the murders in Oregon and the like. I think Jimson would kill his mother if he thought he could get a nickel for her bloody Tampax, but I don’t think he’d go out of the South. He’s sort of regional.”

“Yeah,” I said, “his territory is East Texas and western Louisiana mostly. I reckon he could do some business outside of this area, but I don’t know the business he’d do would be that sort of thing. He’s got his niche here. He’s got contacts and has the right people paid off, but up north, not so much would be my guess. What I think Jimson likes is being a big frog in a small pond. It’s his comfort zone.”

“Anyone else on that list suspect?” Leonard asked.

Cason nodded. “Couple others, but the thing is they aren’t that big-time. They’re little operations, and I got a feeling our killer, our Devil Red, is well trained and works for big money. That’s why I thought of Jimson. He’s much bigger time than the other two jokers.”

“Where are they from?” I asked.

“Midwest,” Cason said.

“Kincaid isn’t afraid to do business with bad people,” Leonard said. “Keep their taxes clean and fresh. So that makes it even more likely he would have been willing to make some kind of deal to get even for his son.”

“Maybe he just does their taxes and tells them how to save on weather stripping their homes,” I said.

“Yeah, right,” Leonard said.

“If Kincaid did arrange it, I’m not sure I blame him for wanting to get even,” I said. “Losing first a daughter to drugs, then a son to murder is bound to weigh on and mess up the mind-”

“Wait a minute,” Leonard said. “I just had a flash. Detectives like to call it inspiration.”

“Yeah,” I said. “What do you call it?”

“The drug-dead daughter,” Leonard said. “What do we know about her?”

“I think the whole she’s dead part about covers it,” Cason said. “Let’s look into it,” Leonard said.

“May I ask why?” I said.

“Yes,” Leonard said. “You can ask, but I got nothing to say about it yet. I may be full of shit.”

“All right,” Cason said. “We can check on her. I’ll get Mercury on it.”

After Cason left, we called Marvin and asked if he could set up a meeting with Jimson. The whole thing about telling Cason we didn’t want to see Jimson really meant we didn’t want Cason in on it. We had a history with Jimson. All bad. We didn’t want to put Cason on Jimson’s doo-doo list.

We sat around for about an hour, then Marvin called us back.

“What’d he say?” I said, pressing my cell phone to my ear while standing at the kitchen window, looking out at the yard, the house beyond. It had turned off clear and the sun was out, but there was ice in little spots where the water ran out of the grass and collected along the concrete walk at that side of the house. If I was married to Brett and had a child, the most I’d have to think about today was maybe going to work and coming in to read the papers and play with the kid. It was a pipe dream, but I liked it.

“He said he didn’t want to see you,” Marvin said.

“That’s not nice.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“I don’t know about you,” I said, “but my iddy-biddy feelers are crushed to the bone.”

“Mine too, but that’s what he said. He also said eat shit and die.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“Yeah. Actually, I didn’t talk to him. But the message from his associate, one of his bodyguards, was pretty much in that ballpark.”

I turned to Leonard. “Jimson doesn’t want to see us.”

“Then we should respect his wishes,” Leonard said.

Within fifteen minutes we were on our way to the little burg of No Enterprise. It wasn’t much of a place, a four-way stop with a string of buildings here and there, but for some odd reason, Jimson lived over in that area and did a lot of his business in a little service station that also had sodas and liquor and snack goods, had some tables in the back with some chairs, and sold hamburgers. Good burgers, bad fries. The pie was good too.

Jimson spent a lot of time there in the afternoons with his goons. If he wasn’t there, well, we’d have chocolate pie with meringue. If he was there, we’d probably have it anyway. Maybe a hamburger. Me and Leonard, we believed in living large. It’s just how we roll.

It took us a little over half an hour to get there because there were some low spots in the highway and water ran across those, and in this weather they had frozen, making an occasional shiny ribbon of ice across the road. Mostly it took us a while because Leonard had a new country music CD and he wanted to hear all of it before we stopped. He said, “They get rowdy, and I get killed, I like to know I heard all of it.”

“You’re dead, what does it matter?”

“It’s the idea of it,” he said. “I just want to know I consumed it all, at least once.”

“You’ve heard it before.”

“But it’s a different collection of the same songs. I like that they’re in a different order.”

“Jerry Lee Lewis singing country sounds pretty much like Jerry Lee Lewis singing country in any order.”

“Oh yes, and oh so good.”

I had to agree. He told me to shut up and played the CD.

We were both armed. I had my permit pistol, and Leonard had a sawed-off shotgun without a permit fitted inside his long coat. He flared the coat back, he could pull it out of there faster than you could blink.

When we arrived the cafe part was absent of Jimson and thugs. In fact, it was absent of any patrons. There was a guy at the counter, and when we sat down back there, he said, “You got to come up here to get menus.”

I got up and got us a couple of menus. I noticed there was a large jar of pickled eggs on the counter and a small jar with a kid’s photo on it and a request for money due to burns received in a car wreck. I put a buck in the can and took the menus back to where Leonard had picked seats. There was a door back there that was an emergency door. It didn’t open from the outside. Anyone came in, they had to come in the front door and come along the path between the counter and the tables to reach us. There was a wide row of glass to our left, but we were sitting at a table where I had my back against the wall, and had a bit of wall to protect me. Leonard was point man. Anyone came up, he could see them through the glass, and if need be he could cut down on them with that shotgun, start pumping out loads.

We ordered two hamburgers from the guy when he came over. He was a little nasty-looking for a man who worked as a cook. His fingers were nicotine stained and his teeth were the same. In fact, where the stains were missing, black decay had filled in between his teeth like dirt washed down from a hill.

Leonard said, “Two hamburgers, no fries, hold the hepatitis.”

“What?” the man said.

“I mean wash your hands. I like to think that’s nicotine, but for all I know it could be from you sticking your finger up your ass.”