Joe Lansdale: Bad Chili

“Reckon so,” I said.

“You know, today’s been different.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“No, I mean it’s been me keepin’ you from goin’ off half-cocked. Usually, it’s the other way around.”

“That’s what’s bothering me,” I said. “I came within an inch of killing a man for no reason other than anger and suspicion. One squeeze of the trigger, I’d have been no better than Big Man, Pierre, or the rest.”

“On your worst day, you’re better than all of them,” Leonard said. “You’d killed King, it wouldn’t have hurt my feelin’s.”

“Leonard, sometimes you scare me.”

Jim Bob went inside to pay for the gas.

I said, “He doesn’t seem particularly perturbed, does he?”

“I have a feeling that weird fuck has seen more bodies and strange shit than we have, Hap.”

“All I know is I feel like my life has been poisoned. I come home from a shitty job, get bit by a rabid squirrel, find out my insurance policy sucks the dog dick and my best friend is accused of murder.”

Leonard nodded. “I know. One day I’m living with this guy I love, next thing I know he’s run off with a grease ball, then Raul’s killed, and I find out he was a grease ball himself. It’s pretty disconcerting. I thought I could choose my men better than that.”

“Considering my fuck-ups with women, I can’t say much,” I said.

“You’re right,” Leonard said. “You can’t.”

“I think Brett might be different. I want to believe she is. I want to believe I’m different. That I’ve changed. That I’m not quite so stupid.”

“Well,” Leonard said, “Brett strikes me as one hell of a lady. As for you, howsabout we not hope for too much?”

Couple days later, as reinforcement, I phoned Charlie and told him most of what I knew, holding very little back. The cops had already been to Pierre’s and had found the videos. There were videos without face bars on them as well, so most of the people involved in the sorry business could be identified.

“I want to thank you and Leonard for the stuff you stuck in my mailbox, Hap.”

“What stuff?”

Charlie laughed. “All right. Play it that way. But some helpful sonofabitch put two videos and a notebook full of coded phone numbers in there. One video is about grease, the other is about sex and violence.”

“Does it help any?”

“Doesn’t hurt. Fact is, this is one time where an entire ring of assholes is gonna get nailed. A few of the bikers involved won’t get pinned, ’cause there ain’t enough proof, but there’s a string of video-store owners right now whose assholes are suckin’ wind. I hate to give you any fuckin’ credit, but you and Leonard can be proud of yourselves on this one.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but at what price?”

“At the price had to be paid,” Charlie said. “You could have done better. You should have had the law in on it, but the law wasn’t worth a shit on this one. You did all right, Hap. You and Leonard and Jim Bob. There’s anyone ought to feel bad, it’s the law.”

“Long as you don’t,” I said. “Your hands were tied.”

“I ought not to have let them been tied,” Charlie said. “I don’t know I’m thinkin’ clear as I ought to be.”

“Can you keep mention of me and Leonard out of this?”

“Yeah. We can use Jim Bob a little. He don’t mind and it won’t hurt him like it might hurt you. He was hired to do a job, you see, even if being a private detective don’t exactly make everything he did legal.”

“Maybe you could drop the two boys in the cabin,” I said.

“We found them fellas,” Charlie said. “One I thought I knew I did know. The other one’s got a record long as the other. Scumbags, both. We’re gonna blame it on Pierre. That way Jim Bob isn’t put on the spot, and neither are you.”

“Pierre wasn’t the kind to do his own handiwork,” I said.

“Maybe, but we’re gonna make it look like he was.”

“That’s not very nice,” I said.

“No,” Charlie said, “and it ain’t even legal.”

“What about Jim Bob?” I said. “Haven’t seen him since the day we found Pierre with a length of fence up his ass. He didn’t say ’bye or kiss my ass, he dropped us off and was gone.”

“That’s his way. Saw too many Lone Ranger movies when he was a kid. He’s gone back to Pasadena. His job was finished. He can tell his client the stalk-and-rape ring is busted and he can go back to farmin’ hogs and waitin’ for the next job.”

“What about Hanson?”

“I been over to see him, Hap. He’s doin’ pretty goddamn good. Amazing, actually. He gets better, I’ll tell him all this shit. He’d want to know.”

“What about Big Man Mountain?”

“Still hasn’t turned up. He took off in Pierre’s red Mercedes.”

“That ought to show up.”

“My guess is he dumped it right away, caught a bus to someplace hot and dry.”

“Right now, Texas is hot and dry.”

“Drier yet. Mexico.”

“I don’t know I should ask, but how about the wife?”

“We’re separated, Hap. I think maybe it won’t work out, know what I’m sayin’?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s seein’ this fuckin’ insurance guy kind of regular-like. Did I tell you he smokes?”

“Yeah.”

“Sonofabitch,” Charlie said.

“I hear that,” I said.

Ella was buried the next day. I went to the funeral with Brett. Day after that, Leon was put down. Leonard and I got together, made a deal to pay for his funeral. Doing that tapped me out, but it didn’t matter.

It was a hot day with a hot wind and the striped funeral tent rustled as the preacher talked a hot wind of his own. Leon got as good a sendoff as a launch party for the dead can be, considering, as is often the case, the minister who preached the sermon didn’t know him from creamed corn.

Later, when me and Leonard and Brett walked with Clinton out to his car, he said, “Wouldn’t none of that stuff preacher said about Leon true.”

“It’s just the way it’s done,” Brett said.

“Yeah,” Clinton said, “well, they ought to do it some other kinda way. They made Leon all out to be this suit-type man. Shit, I’m gonna miss my bro.”

“I’m sorry, Clinton,” I said. “It’s sort of my fault.”

“More like mine since I asked you and Leon to help out,” Leonard said.

“And mine,” Brett said. “He was helping me.”

“No, it ain’t y’all no kind of way,” Clinton said. “It’s that sonofabitch killed him’s fault. Me and Leon, we knew what we was gettin’ into. You folks hang tough.”

Clinton, trying to hold his head up and stay solid, climbed in his car and clattered away.

“I got to tell you,” Brett said. “I first met those two, I thought they were just a couple of ignorant thugs. I think now they’re better than most of the educated people I know.”

“Leon and Clinton,” Leonard said, “they invented grit. I’m gonna miss ole Scum Eye. He was a stand-up guy.”

Brett took us both by the arms. “So are you two guys,” she said. And with her holding our arms, we walked down to my pickup and drove away from the hot wind and the striped funeral tent, the headstones rising up sad and white and gray.

Next few days weren’t so bad. Things started to sort themselves out. I got a job at a club, bouncing. The pay wasn’t much, but I figured I could do it for a week or two until I found something else. Only thing was, I didn’t start for a couple of days, and I was dead broke.

Brett soothed that. She managed to take some time off from work, even if she didn’t have it coming. We spent a lot of time together, at her place and mine, getting to know each other better, and from my end I certainly liked what I had come to know.