Joe Lansdale: Devil Red

“It didn’t sound any kind of way,” Marvin said. “Don’t worry about it.”

She stood up from behind the desk and stuck her hand across at Marvin and he shook it.

She didn’t sit back down, and she didn’t shake our hands. “I think I’ve explained everything, Mr. Hanson. I’ll let you fill your men in.”

Hanson nodded, and she started for the door. Statler stood and spoke to her. “Do you mind if I meet you in the car, dear? I want a word with the gentlemen. You can handle the stairs fine, can’t you? And watch how slick it is.”

“I’m not an invalid,” she said. “I’m just sad.”

“Of course,” Cason said, turning on a smile that if it had been an inch wider and a smidgen brighter, might have knocked out the local electric grid.

After she went out, Cason waited a moment, picked up the check she had written from the desk, and returned to his seat and rested the check on one knee with his hand on top of it. We all watched the check like buzzards discovering what was thought to be dead might still have some life in it, and just might get away.

Cason said, “I know what she told you seems like an impossible job, because of the time factor. It’s a cold case. But I want to say, she’s serious. I brought her over here because she’s a friend of my mom’s and because I know a little about her subject. I’m a newspaper reporter. I’ve looked into this case, there’s something to it.”

“So,” Leonard said, “what you’re saying is don’t just cash her check and hang out here drinking coffee?”

“Something like that,” Cason said.

Marvin said, “I not only resent that, I resent it enough to come out from behind this desk and slap the shit out of you. Even if one of these boys has to hold me up to do it.”

“It might take more doing than you think,” Cason said.

“My goodness,” Leonard said, “you must have had an extra bowl of oatmeal this morning.”

“You want to be first?” Cason said.

“Hey, Cason,” I said. “You look like a guy might be tough, but you mess with Leonard, when they’re cutting you open and putting your ruptured liver in a jar, your ghost will still be trying to figure out what truck hit you and when.”

Cason looked at Leonard for a long moment. Leonard said, “What he said.”

Cason smiled, studied Leonard. “You two are buddies. That is so sweet.”

“Yeah,” I said, “we’re tough, and when times are rough we can sew our own clothes and grow a garden.”

“Really?” Cason said.

“No,” I said. “But we’re tough.”

Cason smiled. “All right,” he said. “We’re all tough guys. It’s just that Mrs. Christopher is a friend of the family. Was my third-grade teacher. Her family has money, though she doesn’t look like it or act like it. Her dead husband was in oil, and he was in a lot of it. She came to me for help because I used to work for a paper in Houston doing investigative reporting. Now I’m over in Camp Rapture, writing a bullshit column. I decided she needed help that could be on it twenty-four seven, and that wasn’t me. Camp Rapture doesn’t have a private investigator, but she saw your ad. I was a little reluctant, but I didn’t know what else to do for her.”

“Good to know we’re deeply wanted and widely respected,” Leonard said.

“I put those ads in every paper in a fifty-mile radius,” Marvin said. “Your paper got me the only response.”

“Try the online ads,” Cason said. “More people read those these days. I’m lucky I got a job, way newspapers are changing. But, the thing is, I knew a lot of investigators when I worked for the paper in Houston, and I didn’t think much of them. They mostly took up time and took up money. So I wanted to make sure you really would look into things.”

“You can bet we’ll look into them,” I said. “Marvin is so honest it hurts our feelings, and we’re so honest we hurt our own feelings.”

Cason grinned. “Mr. Hanson has my number. You need anything, give me a call. I have a friend who is a bear for research. Maybe we can help you.”

“We’ll keep it in mind,” Marvin said.

Cason put the check on the desk, smoothed it out where he had wrinkled it by pressing his palm across it twice, and went out. As he closed the door Leonard said, “Please do be careful of the stairs.”

When he was gone, I said, “Damn, he’s out of our sight, what, three seconds, and I miss him already.”

“Too bad he isn’t gay,” Leonard said. “For him, I could ditch John in a minute. He wears Old Spice. I like Old Spice.”

“Frankly,” Marvin said, “he’s just the kind of guy I’d like to punch in the mouth.”

“And,” Leonard said, “he’s just the kind of guy I’d like to have put something in my mouth.”

“One of you is mean,” I said, “the other one is nasty.”

Marvin locked up and we walked downstairs to the lot. The girl in the shorts was no longer visible in front of the bike shop, but I checked just in case.

“Now, what exactly is it we’re saying we’re gonna do?” I asked Marvin as we walked. “We’re all up in Cason’s face, and we’re all behind you, and we don’t even know what we’re talkin’ about.”

“That isn’t new for you, is it?” Marvin said.

“Ha. Ha,” I said.

“For all we know,” Leonard said, “you’ve signed us up to jack off donkeys at an animal sperm bank.”

“And the way I hear it,” I said, “you get through with the donkeys and go home, they don’t even call or write.”

“I’ll explain at lunch,” Marvin said. “You get the money back?”

“We did,” Leonard said, “and a teeny bit more. We figured it wasn’t dishonest for him to tip. Mrs. Johnson can use as much of it as she can get.”

“What I’m wondering,” I said, “is what if Thomas and his friend Chunk want revenge on us or the client?”

“Would they?” Marvin asked.

“Well, one of them is missing a kneecap,” Leonard said, “and the other one will have to have his girlfriend pick his nose, wipe his ass, and pull his crank because his hand is kind of swollen up.”

“He had it comin’,” Marvin said. “The sonofabitch.”

“Some people might think the same of us,” I said.

Marvin gave me a confused look.

“He’s been reading some self-help books or somethin’,” Leonard said.

I took the hundred I had taken from Thomas’s wallet and gave it to Marvin. “Here’s the booty.”

“We’ll take it to her,” Marvin said, and put it in his wallet.

The day had started to grow cooler, but not so cool it was uncomfortable. The sky was gray and there were strips of gloomy clouds across it and they had fuzzed out the sun so that it looked like a lightbulb burning behind gauze. In the distance, on the horizon, in line with the street, the sky was darker and I saw a strip of lightning jump and flash away. The rain that had come early in the morning and retreated now had a companion, and it was blowing our way.

We drove in Marvin’s car over to Mrs. Johnson’s house, which was on the edge of the area where we had been last night. We parked in her gravel driveway and got out. It was a very small house, but brightly painted in a kind of marigold color, and there were flower beds on either side of the little gravel walk. All the flowers were dead or sleeping.

The rest of the neighborhood looked like a war zone.

The house next door was up high on stone blocks, and lying just under it was a dead cat. It had been there long enough to have gone flat and was mostly an outline made of bits of white hair, scattered bones, and a skull. There was just enough flesh on the body to hold it in place. From where the cat was lying, and the looks of the place-a car out front with grown-up grass and a washing machine lying on its side-I had a feeling there wasn’t anyone over there looking for their kitty. The cat, like the washing machine, was just part of the landscape to Mrs. Johnson’s next-door neighbors. They might have been all-right people doing the best they could, but I got to tell you, you got a dead cat lying in your yard you ought to bury it. That’s my motto. No dead animals in the yard for more than fifteen minutes.