Joe Lansdale - Mucho Mojo

I took my stuff to the counter, plucked a couple of jerky sticks out of a box up front, threw them down with my purchase, and watched some hot links on metal pins turn and sweat and drip inside a humidity-beaded glass enclosure.

The owner had a lot of belly and a lot of gray hair and a sun roof that revealed a dark bald spot. He might have been five two. He appeared to have all his own teeth, and one of the front ones was gold as Rapunzel’s hair. He said, “That do you?”

“Yeah. How’s the dominoes?”

“I’m losing,” he said.

He tallied up my goods on the adding machine, and I continued to look around. I examined a frame on the wall behind the register containing the first dollar the store had taken in, and noted the dollar was play money. Below that, on a shelf, I saw something that startled me. Next to a jar of pickled pig’s feet was a larger jar stuffed with little slips of paper. It looked like one of the jars at Illium’s.

I said, “That jar with the coupons in it? That is coupons, isn’t it?”

He was bagging up my groceries; he stopped, glanced where I was indicating. “Yeah.”

“I’ve seen that setup a couple times,” I said. “The jars, I mean. There something to it besides you saving coupons?”

“That’s the church’s,” he said.

“How’s that?”

“Reverend Fitzgerald, he’s got him a deal with all the businesses in town. We cut coupons, we see them. Folks bring them and donate ’em. Fitzgerald saves them coupons for his youth programs. You know, take the soccer, baseball team out to eat. He’s got this deal with damn near everybody in the city. Even if the coupons expire, they let him use ’em. They gonna make money anyway, discount or not, him bringing in ten, twenty kids at a time, and often. He’s got more coupons than he can use. Illium done told us he gonna stop picking up for a while, he gets this batch. He says they done gettin’ yellow, they got so many. They could take soccer teams out for the next ten years and not run out of coupons. He done s’posed to got this here jar, but he ain’t showed. I reckon he’s been sick.”

Yeah, I thought, real sick.

“Mr. Moon’s the clearinghouse?” I asked.

“You know him?”

“Not really. Know who he is.”

“Yeah, he runs all manner errands for the church. He’s a real do gooder, that Illium. That sonsabitch dies, he’s gone sit on the right side of Jesus, and Jesus gone give him a juice harp, personal like, let him play a few spirituals.”

I figured Illium was probably twanging out a rendition of “The Old Rugged Cross” even as we spoke. I thanked the old man, paid up, and started back to the house, thinking about Illium, the church, Reverend Fitzgerald, and all those coupons, the connection right under our noses all the time.

Next day. A Saturday. Hot. Me and Leonard and Florida and Hanson, out at the lake near my old house, standing on the bank, shadowed by drooping willows, casting fishing lines in the water.

The fish weren’t biting, but the mosquitoes were. They were bad here because of the low areas where the water ran out of the lake and gathered in pools and turned torpid beneath the shades of the willows and gave the little bastards prime breeding grounds.

Florida, dressed in blue jean short-shorts, a short-sleeved blue sailor-style shirt, low-cut blue tennis shoes, and one of those stupid white fishing hats with a big brim that turns up in the front, was doing more slapping than casting.

“You should have worn long pants,” I said. “I told you.”

“Well, damnit, you were right,” she said.

Hanson slapped a mosquito on the side of his face, hard. He looked at his palm. In the center of it was a bloody mess protruding broken insect legs. He wiped the palm on his pants.

“Boys,” he said, “this is just peachy-keen fun, but you didn’t invite me out here to fish. I can tell way you keep looking at each other, so don’t fondle my balls – sorry, Florida.”

“It’s OK,” Florida said. “I’ve heard of them.”

“Get on with it,” Hanson said. “And next time, skip this fishing shit and take me to a movie.”

“I don’t know you’re gonna like this,” Leonard said, “’cause, you see, what we want to do is make some kind’a deal.”

“I don’t like deals,” Hanson said. “It always means some guilty asshole gets off with less than he deserves.”

“We’re not guilty of anything,” Leonard said.

“Except withholding evidence,” I said.

“Yeah,” Leonard said, “there’s that.”

“All right,” Hanson said, reeling in his line, “that’s enough bullshit… You in on this Florida?”

“Nope,” she said. “I’m just a humble fisher girl. And their lawyer, if they need me.”

We all took a moment to slap at a black cloud of mosquitoes. Hanson said, “Let’s go someplace we can talk without pain. Few more minutes of this, I’m gonna need a transfusion.”

We walked back to Leonard’s car, which was up the hill and in the sunlight. The mosquitoes weren’t swarming there, there was just the occasional kamikaze. We took the rods and reels apart and put them in the trunk of the car with the fishing tackle. We poured the worms out so that they might breed and multiply. I watched them squirm around in the soft sand, making their way into the earth.

Florida climbed up on the hood of the car and stretched her legs and scratched at the knots the mosquitoes had made. On her, even the knots looked good. Hanson seemed to be taking note of that himself.

Hanson said, “I’m waiting. And not patiently.”

“Once upon a time,” Leonard said, “me and Hap found a dead guy in a pond.”

“Yeah,” I said, “in a bookmobile.”

“Come again,” Hanson said.

We explained about Illium but didn’t give his name or say where his body was. We didn’t tell him any more than we needed to. When we finished, Leonard said: “It’s gonna look bad for the ole boy, things you’re gonna find on his couch. A box of kid’s clothes and some kiddie fuck books. But it’s bullshit. He isn’t guilty of anything. Neither’s my uncle. You see, all this is connected to those missing kids, but it’s not connected the way it looks.”

“Another thing,” I said, “me and Leonard got to talking last night, thinking about what we’d seen, and we came up with something else. In this guy’s house-”

“The drowned guy?” Hanson said.

“Yeah,” I said. “You’ll find a dirty bathtub with pieces of hay in it. We figure he’d just finished mowing his field, was grabbed by whoever while he was in the bath, and drowned in his own tub. Then they put him in the van and ran it off in the pond. An autopsy will probably show the water in his lungs isn’t the pond water.”

We didn’t say anything else. We leaned against the car and waited. Hanson looked at us for a while. “That’s it?” he said. “You’re not telling me any more than that?”

“We’ll tell,” Leonard said, “but we want something.”

“You’re not in any position to want shit,” Hanson said. “It’s best you talk your asses off.”

“You know we haven’t done anything,” Leonard said. “We want to solve this crime, bad as you, but we want the deal you didn’t give my uncle. You help us solve the case, but we lead.”

“I can’t do that,” Hanson said. “Department wouldn’t stand for it, a couple of amateurs. Why do you think they didn’t let your uncle do it?”

“He was nuts?” Leonard said.

“Well,” Hanson said, “that was part of it.”

“We already got more leads than you on this missing child business,” I said. “You might be amazed what we got.”

Hanson studied the lake in the distance. A soft hot wind brought the smell of it to us. It stunk faintly of dead fish and stagnation. A large bird’s shadow fell over us and coasted away.