Joe Lansdale - Bad Chili

“I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Raul wasn’t there.”

“They overlooked him.”

“No. They didn’t miss him. Charlie pushes for the autopsy report, looks it over. Coroner, he’d been told to just take it like it looks: someone, assailants unknown, killed Horse Dick, and Raul died in the motorcycle crash. Chief, he don’t want to deal with any other possibilities because of fearin’ it might connect with a gay killin’, then it would come out Horse Dick was a butt-hole bandit and a cop. Thing is, Raul was thrown off the bike, but that didn’t kill him. Whoever they is, ones shot Horse Dick, somebody… They took Raul with them.”

“Oh, shit,” I said.

“Yeah,” Leonard said. “They took him, kept him a while, hooked some kind of battery to his balls and gave him a jumpstart. Several times. Coroner thinks they wetted him up to get the kind of contact they wanted with the cables. They broke his foot. Probably stomped it. They used some kind of bat or board on his knees and shins. They pushed all his fingers back till they broke. They broke his arms and twisted them behind his back and cranked them around some more, making those nerves jump. They finally twisted his neck with some kind of garotte, stove in his head with something heavy, stuck his noggin back in the helmet, took him out there and dumped him where they got him.”

“Christ, Leonard. You’re sure?”

“Charlie’s sure. The coroner’s sure. Raul was lyin’ out there rotting these last few days, but he hasn’t been there the whole time.”

I sat amazed, a little sick to my stomach. “I’m surprised Charlie would tell you all this.”

“You heard what Charlie said earlier. Chief’s tied his hands. Won’t let Charlie do what needs to be done. Ain’t no one gonna do much about this shit. Couple queers aced is almost good business far as the chief’s concerned. As for Charlie, he sounds dispirited. Like he’s losin’ his will to be a cop. So, it’s you and me, bubba.”

I thought about that a moment. I said, “I don’t know it’s our place to deal with something like this, Leonard. It’s police business. I think what Charlie’s implying is we find something good, something helpful, we report it. But he’s not suggesting we take the law into our own hands.”

“You’re not listening, Hap. It’s police business when they want to make it their business. They don’t make it their business, then I got to make it my business.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Maybe I’ll put it to music and you’ll like it better. You want to hear the rest of what I think?”

“Yeah.”

“I think they – whoever they is – tortured Raul for the whereabouts of the tape or tapes. Raul wasn’t a tough guy, but he must have felt strong about this one, Hap, ’cause he didn’t give it up. He lied. Told them what they wanted was where it wasn’t. They tried him out. They checked Horse Dick’s place. No dice. So they talk to him some more in that special way they have. So now he puts them on my place, thinkin’ he’s gainin’ some time to maybe get away. Or maybe he is a tough guy. Tougher than I knew. Whatever, he puts them on me ’cause maybe he thought I could handle them. Figured he sent them there and I was there, I’d handle them. Or maybe he didn’t give a shit about me. But the thing is, they tossed my place and didn’t find anything. They decide to give Raul a little more business, or maybe they just got tired of his bullshit and finished him. Or maybe he died sooner than they expected. Thing is, he goes out without giving them what they want to know.”

Leonard paused to relight his pipe. I said, “Question immediately comes to mind is, how do you know they didn’t find the video? Maybe it was at your place and you didn’t know it. Raul had a house key, could have hid it there. Or maybe they went to your place first, hit Horse Dick’s second. Maybe he had it.”

“I thought of that,” Leonard said. “But I also thought Raul might have hid it somewhere else. So my next question was, where would he hide it? Remember what I told you about all the crap going on at my place, my mail being screwed around with-”

“The other address,” I said.

“That’s why you’re my friend,” Leonard said. “You can keep up with me. Almost. Mailbox out here isn’t checked often. I come out maybe once every month or so. It doesn’t get any mail to speak of anymore since I switched back to the town address. Mostly just junk mail. It’s a huge mailbox, so it’s a pretty safe place to leave something. I drove over tonight, got out my trusty flashlight, looked in the mailbox, and what do you think I found?”

“That Jiffy bag by your chair,” I said.

“Bingo, my man. That and some junk mail. And you won’t believe what’s in the Jiffy.”

Leonard grabbed the Jiffy bag, took a little notebook out of it and tossed it at me. I grabbed it and looked at it. It was a standard promotional-style notebook for King Arthur Chili, a local business.

“I couldn’t make heads or tails out of that,” Leonard said. “Wait before you look. There’s a couple of videotapes inside as well. I’ve seen one of them. I got it loaded in the VCR. I want you to see it.”

Leonard plucked the remote out of his lap, turned on the set and the VCR. I moved over and stood behind him to watch.

There was static and darkness, then gray shapes. The gray shapes became clearer, but never too clear. One of the shapes was a tanker-style truck. It was parked and a hose was being fed from it into a hole in cement, a hole like a cistern, and you could hear the sound of a pump sucking up the contents of the cistern, running it into the truck. The other gray shapes were two men with the truck. One of them was scrawny, with longish hair and a dark cap of some kind. He had on jeans and a jean jacket with the sleeves cut out. No shirt. Classic TV and movie-biker garb. The other guy wore jeans and a dark T-shirt and jackboots. He had long hair tied back in a ponytail. He looked about fifty-five or so and was about the size of the Green Giant who sells peas on the commercials.

“Bigfoot!” I said.

“Bingo again,” Leonard said. “He’s also Big Man Mountain.”

“Say what?”

“Professional wrestler. One of LaBorde’s claims to fame. He was a villain on the circuit. Retired a year or two ago. Read about it in the paper. Word is they retired him ’cause of some shit he had goin’ down, but I don’t remember what it was. But there was a scandal.”

“I seldom read the papers,” I said.

“Well,” Leonard said, “you should. But that’s him.”

“How can you tell? I can’t see his face worth shit.”

“True, but how many long-haired guys have you heard of weigh about three-fifty and stand well over six foot?”

“I don’t know of any.”

“Well, I know of one. Big Man Mountain. Bigfoot, as you call him. He dressed that same way when he wrestled, as a biker. And it appears that’s his normal attire.”

There was more of this, two guys standing around while the hose sucked the contents of the cistern. Then the two guys got in the truck and the video jumped around in blackness and static. When it started up again, there were more clips of this activity with the tanker, and in some cases I recognized where they were, the back of restaurants in town. A Mexican restaurant where Leonard and I often ate because the food was cheap and good, another restaurant where the food was good, but not cheap, and we didn’t eat there. We wanted to, though.

Besides the work with the tanker truck, there were also some clips of this big truck with sideboards and the same guys and two other guys dressed in similar garb. They were parked behind a building, loading barrels onto the back of the truck. As with all the video, the guys looked nervous and furtive.