Joe Lansdale - Bad Chili

“The rest of the tape is just more of this,” Leonard said.

“I don’t get it. Why would Raul mail himself a tape of some bikers sucking crap out of cisterns and putting barrels on trucks?”

Leonard cut off the VCR and the set. “Do you remember that article I read to you a few months back? Out of the paper?”

“No. I hardly remember where I was yesterday.”

“Man, you got to pay more attention to the newspapers,” Leonard said. “Grease nappers.”

“Grease nappers? What grease… Wait a minute… The folks stealing grease from restaurants, selling it to the recycling folks. It was kind of a humorous article. Something about ‘Police Set Grease Trap for Suspects.’”

“That’s it. Except the police didn’t catch anyone. And if you remember, there’s lots of money in grease napping.”

I went back to my spot on the couch. I said, “You tryin’ to tell me Raul was filming grease nappers, and they caught him, tortured and killed him over it?”

“There’s lots of money in grease,” Leonard said. “Silly as it sounds, with just limited facilities, you can make up to a couple thou a day. Better-organized than that, hittin’ LaBorde, Lufkin, Tyler, you could make a hell of a lot more. Maybe ten thousand a day. People have been murdered for a lot less than that. And if they thought the whistle was going to be blown, they could have murdered Raul, and it wouldn’t be for grease. It would be for money.”

“All right,” I said. “Say the grease nappers were filmed by Raul. You got to ask yourself, why? I mean, since when is Raul an investigative reporter?”

“I don’t know he was. I think these tapes belong to Horse Dick, the cop. He’s undercover, acting like one of the guys. That’s why it jumps around. Sometimes he’s helpin’ them do the work. Then, when he’s standin’ over to the side, smokin’ a cigarette, pissin’ or somethin’, he filmed them with a hidden camera. Later he had the stuff put on video, for easy viewing. While he’s doing this investigation, he falls in with Raul and they start swappin’ spit and sperm, and pretty soon it’s pillow talk, and Raul knows everything Horse Dick knows. That could be what led to Raul’s demise.”

“What about the chief? Wouldn’t he have this information? If so, why would Horse or Raul hide it in your mailbox?”

“Maybe Horse Dick didn’t have time to get the stuff to the chief. Maybe he was waiting until he had a full investigation. Maybe the chief has a copy. I don’t know. Thing is, I believe Raul got wrapped up in this business pretty tight, got to thinking he was some kind of hot-shit undercover guy himself. Horse Dick tells him things are getting tight, maybe they ought to get rid of the tapes for a while, so Raul mails them to my old address. That’s his handwriting on the envelope. Then, when Raul gets caught by the bad guys, he doesn’t tell them where they are. How’s that sound?”

“Lots of things wrong with that scenario. Why would Raul and Horse Dick not turn the evidence over to the chief, they thought they were in trouble? Why wouldn’t Raul tell these thugs where the videos are? Torture like that, you’d tell anyone anything they wanted to know. And if you don’t mind me saying so, Raul wasn’t that tough.”

“I don’t really have an answer for that, but things occurred to me. Back when I was burning those crack houses, rumor was the chief was getting a slice of the drug pie, which was why the houses kept being built up. Him and the owner of the houses were supposed to be in cahoots.”

“Never been any proof of that,” I said, “though I don’t doubt it.”

“Chief sent Horse Dick in to investigate drugs through the bikers. Maybe this is law enforcement, and maybe its the chief’s way of getting enough evidence on the bikers to make sure he gets a cut. Horse Dick figures this out, so he doesn’t hand in the videos. He hides them. That kind of explains why the chief isn’t pursuing this business. It could be more than just the gay thing.”

“Problem with that theory, Leonard, is the video is of grease nappers, not drug lords.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Leonard said, and relit his pipe. “But it could all connect.”

“I guess. Sounds thin to me. But if drugs were happening along with the grease napping, wouldn’t there be videos of drug activity?”

“Maybe this was the best Horse Dick could get on them,” Leonard said. “Could be like the way you use income tax fraud to get gangsters for worse business. Nail them for grease, you put the drug business out of business.”

“There’s something in that,” I said. “What about the other video?”

“I was going to give it a look-see, but then you came home. My guess is more of the same.”

We loaded the video. It wasn’t about grease napping. It was two guys walking, and it was easy to recognize the place. It was LaBorde Park. I recognized the bench the guys were walking past. I knew the camera view was being taken through the shrubbery across the way. The lighting was bad, just some of the pole lights in the park, and the camera jumped this way and that, but it was enough to see the two guys. They stopped walking, and one guy put his hands on the other guy’s shoulders. Now that their faces were toward us, code bars appeared, disguising their features. The guy who was being held by the shoulders got down on his knees and unbuckled his partner’s pants, probed for goober, found it, put it in his mouth.

Suddenly some fellas burst out of the bushes. They rushed the guy doing the suck work, and the guy having it done on him stepped back and watched. The guy who had planned to treat the other one got kicked, slapped, and rolled in the dirt. This went on so long it was almost too much to watch. After a while the guy who had offered his dick came over with his tool still hanging out and a knife in his hand. He put the knife to the assaulted man’s throat, made him do what he had wanted to do in the first place. While the guy on his knees sucked, the guy with the knife used his free hand to pull a cigarette pack out of his pocket. He shook out a smoke and put it where the bar code was. His hand put away the pack and came up with a lighter, then the lighter flame went behind the code bar. The lighter came down and was put away. From the way the smoker acted, he could have been alone.

The guy on his knees was still at work; the smoker used the knife to tap him on the head, to keep a kind of rhythm, sang, “Mama’s little baby love shortnin’, shortnin’, mama’s little baby love shortnin’ bread,” over and over. And he wasn’t even in tune.

The others stood around and jeered and watched and wore their code bars. When the job was finished on the smoker, the others got in line and took their turn.

When they were all finished, they shoved their victim down and went away. The camera went off and the video showed us some blackness, some gray, then it was over. It was one of the most humiliating things I’d ever seen.

“Not exactly Oscar material, is it?” I said.

“Jesus,” Leonard said. “What was that all about?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Was it staged?”

“I don’t know,” Leonard said. “But I tell you this, if it was, it sure blurs the line… Amateur films?”

“Maybe. But what’s the deal? One film on grease napping, the other on gay bashing? Or is it supposed to be some kind of sex tape?”

“It didn’t have anything to do with sex, Hap. It’s about power, man. Gays, they’re more of a target than women or blacks. Most folks think a gay gets a beating, they get what they deserve.”

“Could have been a gang of gays doing it,” I said.

“That’s possible,” Leonard said, “but straights like their dicks sucked bad as anyone, especially when it humiliates someone and empowers them.”