Joe Lansdale: Bad Chili

Leonard and I took a look. Some guy I had never seen before lay there, tiger-striped underwear pulled down to his knees. His arms were bent at the elbows, his hands pushing palms up, as if he had ended up that way trying to fend someone off.

He was long and lean and might have been in his thirties. He smelled bad and his gut was swollen. The air conditioning had kept him in pretty good shape and the stink was surprisingly minimal. There was a small, but well-defined hole in his forehead. Not a designer move, this hole. It didn’t go with the gold earring or the toupee that had blown off his noggin and onto the wall like a kitten tossed from a speeding car. A puddle of blood pooled under his head. I figured you rolled him over, you’d find an exit hole about the size of the national debt.

“I think we can safely declare that whoever this fucker is, he’s dead,” Jim Bob said.

“Any idea who he is?” I said.

“One of Pierre’s boyfriends,” Leonard said.

The bathroom door was partially open. I went over there and gave the door a shove. “Oh, shit,” I said.

Flies rose up angrily, buzzed about, then found their footing again. Unlike the body on the bedroom floor, this job had taken some time. Pierre – I assumed it was Pierre from the general build and greasy hair – was naked, his knees on the floor in a pudding of dried blood. He was bent over and leaning into the tub. His hands were tied behind his back with blood-splattered zebra-striped underwear.

There was something long, thin, and dark shoved up his ass, and what had once been his face was a swath of dark ruin and happy flies. His head nodded toward the tub as if bowing in reverence. There was blood on the wall, inside the tub, all around the body. There were footprints in the blood, and there was a towel on the floor where the man who had made the footprints had wiped the blood off his shoes.

Way Pierre was arranged, it was obvious that whoever had shoved whatever up his ass had sat on the commode to do their work. Nice and comfy, easy to get to Pierre’s blow hole. Behind the commode on the wall was a plaque that said READING ROOM.

On the floor next to the commode lay a heavy tenderizing mallet, a gold cigarette lighter, a box cutter, and a pair of tin snips.

I eased in a little closer. Jim Bob and Leonard looked over my shoulder. The stink in there was more intense than in the bedroom. I put my hand over my mouth and breathed shallow breaths. I glanced in the tub. There were some messy things in there. I thought I recognized a dick and balls, but how can one tell about these things when they’re covered in gore and withered from a few days of disconnection? It could have been a blackened and withered banana and two dried grapes, for all I could tell. There were teeth in there too, some gums and jawbone attached. There was also a hole in the tub where a bullet had gone through the back of Pierre’s head and out the front and into the ceramic.

“I guess intimidation is out, huh?” Jim Bob said.

“Yeah,” Leonard said. “I don’t think we can beat this.”

Jim Bob eased past me, lifted Pierre’s head by the hair, squatted down and took a look at his face. “It’s Pierre,” he said, confirming what we already knew. “And he’s had a dental job and a little tattoo work.”

We leaned for a glance. Carved into his forehead with the box cutter was the word WELSHER. Below that, the tip of his nose was missing, and what had once been a mouth was just a gaping hole edged by bone and a tooth hanging by a strip of bloody skin.

“What’s that in his ass?” Leonard asked.

“Barbed wire,” Jim Bob said. “And you can be certain it wasn’t no fencin’ accident. I bet whoever stuck it up there didn’t even grease it.”

“You know who stuck it up there?” I said. “You see the size of those prints? Way that back door was opened?”

“Yeah,” Jim Bob said. “Big Man Mountain.”

“So maybe you’re wrong a second time,” Leonard said. “Looks like Big Man and Pierre weren’t in cahoots.”

“I think the word welsher carved into Pierre’s head explains a few things,” Jim Bob said.

“Explain them to us somewhere else,” I said. “I’ve had about all this I can take.”

We returned to the living room. The air was considerably better in there. Jim Bob said, “I think Pierre made some kind of financial arrangement with Big Man, and Pierre didn’t deliver, and Big Man took it personal. Figure Pierre was in here with his fist up this guy’s ass and Big Man came in and gave them a surprise party. A noise maker for the lover, and a bag of games for Pierre himself. I think toward the end there, it didn’t have nothing to do with money. Big Man had a mission in mind, and it was supposed to end with Pierre dying slowly and badly. And that’s just the way it went. Let’s finish looking.”

We checked another bedroom. It was full of shelves, and on the shelves were rows and rows of videotapes. Jim Bob took a couple of them down, went back to the bedroom with the body and the VCR. Reluctantly, we followed. Jim Bob played a bit of each video.

“Jesus,” Leonard said. “This shit is worse than the ones we got.”

“Later stuff is my guess,” Jim Bob said. “Fucks like this, they start out doin’ a little rough stuff, then they build on it. Pretty soon, it’s beyond a few bites and pinches and ass whippin’s. It steps over into torture. You’ll note, the park isn’t the background for these. More seclusion. More time to make the kind of videos Pierre wanted to make, wanted to sell.”

Jim Bob returned the videos to the shelves. We finished off our little escapade by looking in the garage. No car, but there was a motorcycle. It looked as if Big Man had traded out with Pierre, leaving his bike and taking Pierre’s car.

We left out of there and drove away. It was a hot day now and the car’s air conditioner was off, but I felt a chill anyway.

We stopped at a self-service gas station, threw away the gloves we’d used. I called the police department with a little tip about a house with two dead bodies in it. Before they could ask any questions, I hung up.

I went out to the car. Jim Bob had his hat pushed way back on his forehead and was pumping gas into his car’s tank and Leonard was using Bissinggame’s leisure-suit jacket to clean bugs off the windshield.

I leaned against the car. I kept hearing those damn flies and smelling that stench, seeing that face that wasn’t a face. Poor bastard. Worse yet, he hadn’t even had the taste to wear decent jockey shorts. Who the fuck made them zebra-striped briefs anyway? There ought to be a law against that kind of shit. That and leisure suits.

Leonard trash-canned the suit, came over, leaned next to me. “You know, you dampen that material, it makes a pretty good swipe.”

“Neat,” I said.

“How you doin’, man?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yeah, me neither,” Leonard said. “Lot has changed in a short time. I don’t know how I feel about anything. Poor old Leon.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Clinton is gonna be seriously fucked up.”

“Yeah.”

“Poor Ella.”

“Yep,” Leonard said. “Poor Ella. Know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think the worst is over.”

“You’re talkin’ about our lives,” I said. “Seems to me you’re being foolishly optimistic. Every time we turn around, we’re openin’ up a can of worms.”

Leonard clapped me on the shoulder. “It’s all right, man. We’re both gonna be all right. Big Man had a falling-out with Pierre, took care of Pierre, so Pierre’s no longer a problem. Big Man won’t have any interest in us now. It’s just a matter of time before the law runs him aground. Guy looks like that can’t hide forever. As for King, well, we turn in the tapes to Charlie, and let Charlie sort stuff out. We’ve done all we can do.”