Joe Lansdale - Mucho Mojo

“Ten at least. And according to the files all those cases had been looked into, but nothing had been solved. According to written remarks made by a couple of officers no longer on the force, they felt the parents had done the children in because they were too much trouble to care for, but they couldn’t prove it, and they didn’t give a damn. In fact, written at the bottom of one report was ‘One less nigger won’t hurt anything.’ That was just ten years ago. Civil rights is sinking in slow here. At least in the area of law enforcement.”

“There’s always a difference when a crime is a black crime,” Leonard said, “especially if it’s against another black and done in the black section. Black man killed a white, cops’d be on the case like hogs on corn. Listen here, Lieutenant, this lunch is scrumpdillyicious and all, but you’re trying to be too clever. You’re talking, but you’re not saying anything. You’re trying to see if I’ve got any strings you can play, aren’t you? Think maybe I’m holding something back, something could help your case?”

“Could be you’ve forgotten something,” Hanson said. “Could be you know something about him from the past might have something to do with now, the murders.”

“Knew anything, I’d tell you. Him being my uncle or not. Maybe ’cause he is my uncle. You don’t have to burger-and-coffee me to find things out. I told you about the keys, the coupons, the paperback of Dracula. Turned the skeleton in, didn’t I?”

“That’s what you’re doing?” I said to Hanson. “Trying to see if Leonard knows more than he’s told?”

“He ain’t hip,” Leonard said to Hanson. “He can’t see the signs they’re on his face.”

“Yeah, hip’s a problem,” Hanson said. “But you may not be so hip yourself, Leonard. I’m merely being polite here. Getting you away from that place, feeding your face and your partner’s too. I mean, I got a few questions, but they’re all routine.”

Leonard smiled at Hanson.

Hanson smiled back.

A couple of sharks trying to outflank one another.

Leonard said, “Why don’t you run your program by me one more time, and you can leave out the cryptic stuff that’s supposed to scare me, stuff where I’m supposed to think you know more than you know, so if I know more than I’m letting on, I’ll get scared and go all to pieces and spill the beans.”

Hanson said, “All right then. The bare bones. Your uncle said there were child murders. There was no evidence of that. Just evidence that over the years children had come up missing. It wasn’t a case I was familiar with. I gave the file notes on missing kids in the black section a once-over. It didn’t look good, but there wasn’t anything there to go on. What your uncle wanted was for us to give him a team, some men to work with, and he was going to solve the case.”

“He said that?” Leonard said.

“Said he and his associate would prove to us something was happening and who did it.”

“Who was his associate?” I asked.

“He wouldn’t name him. Said it was best he kept his man on the outside. Said he wasn’t willing to turn it completely over to the department because it would be swept under the rug. Said he needed our facilities. Maybe he didn’t even have an associate. Maybe he did.”

“You mean maybe it was me,” Leonard said.

“I didn’t say that,” Hanson said.

“Needless to say,” I said, “you didn’t give Chester his own team.”

“No,” Hanson said. “He was pretty erratic, so he was hard to take seriously. He didn’t really present any evidence, just talked. And sometimes kind of randomly. Like he’d forgotten what he’d come around for. Everytime he showed up, he was a little less with it. Not that we’d have given him his own team if he hadn’t been nuts. No insult intended there, Leonard.”

“None taken,” Leonard said. “But I still don’t know any more than I’ve told you.”

Hanson removed his cigar and put it inside his coat pocket. “OK then,” he said, “I’m through being clever. For now. You fellas want more coffee?”

“I’ll have a Coke,” Leonard said. “Long as you’re buying.”

Three days later and the morning was very bright and the light that came through the windows was splotched with eyeshade-green patches from the sun shining through oak leaves and there were intervals of jet-black shadows made by the bars over the windows.

We had spent the time since the discovery of the body out at our places outside of town, but now we were back. The cops were through and no more kid skeletons had been found, though Leonard had profited fifty-five cents found on the ground beneath the flooring, turned in by Hanson, who may have done it to prove to us he was an honest cop. Hell, it might have even come out of his pocket.

The law had been nice enough to haul off the newspapers and the rotten lumber, just in case a clue was lurking in a knothole or behind the sports sections, and Leonard bought some one-by-eight pine boards and a sack of nails and we went to putting in new subflooring. That’s what we were doing the morning I’m talking about. The boards were fresh cut and the weather so hot you could smell the resin on them and feel a powdering of sawdust on your hands. It was a little odd, putting that flooring down and living in a house where just a few days ago Leonard had made a bony discovery, but with the newspapers hauled off, the smell of new lumber, and the hot sunshine sticking through the windows, the house seemed different somehow, as if it had never held the remains of a long-dead child.

When we had a good chunk of flooring replaced with Lap ’n’ Gap decking, Leonard said, “Let’s break it.”

We poured some lukewarm coffee into our cups and went out on the porch and sat in the swing. It was not so humid this day, so maybe that was better, though it’s always been my contention that at the bottom of it all, the distinction is bullshit. Bake or fry, hot is hot. Least when it’s humid, I know I’m hot, when it isn’t, I get the feeling I’m being cooked up secretively.

We sipped the coffee for a while and looked at the street and watched a few cars go by. Over at the crack house, it was quiet.

Leonard went back into the house and came out with a bag of his favorite cookies, vanilla creme. Well, actually his favorite is vanilla anything. He kept the bag on his side of the swing and didn’t volunteer me any cookies. He made me ask for one.

“You haven’t been the most talkative about all this,” I said.

“A board’s a board,” Leonard said. “You do what I say, you won’t fuck up.”

“Your uncle, Leonard. You haven’t talked about your uncle.”

“I’m still putting it together. Not just the stuff with the skeleton, but my life.”

“Is this going to be one of those insightful moments?”

“I think so. You see, all I ever wanted was to be loved and comfortable and fulfilled in my work. Way it stands, the family I cared about is dead, and has been dead for years, except one, and he just died, and without ever saying he was sorry or just taking me as I am. I guess I’m more comfortable now financially than I was a short time ago because he’s dead, but the house I inherited and loved turns out to have a dead kid under the floorboards, and my uncle is supposed to have put him there, and if that ain’t shitty enough, I’ve got no work to go to or feel good about. Think I sound sorry enough for myself?”

“You could maybe throw in a favorite dog got hit by a truck or something. And you didn’t mention Mama or a train, like in the country-and-western songs.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. And I do have my cookies. What about Florida? What’s she think about all this?”