Joe Lansdale - Mucho Mojo

Hanson looked at Charlie. “You quittin’ the force? You with them?”

“I’m a cop ’cause I want to lock bad guys up,” Charlie said.

“I don’t want to pick ’em up so they can come down here to use the phone and toilet. And I certainly don’t want to arrest no citizens on a misunderstanding.”

“Misunderstanding?” Hanson said.

Charlie took his feet off the desk and let the chair rock forward. “Couple of citizens see a fire, go in and rescue some people, I don’t see that’s a crime.”

“They kneed a woman in the face!” Mohawk said. “They knocked out my main man’s teeth.”

“That woman’s a crack head,” Charlie said, “and she got that way ’cause of you. She’s a hooker. She stabbed a girl friend near to death three years ago. She’s got a record longer than a basketball player’s leg. And your main man, hell, he’s fixed up good now. All them teeth missing. You ought to be grateful. He can suck your dick like a vacuum cleaner.”

“Just the thought of that gets me excited,” Leonard said.

“I’d also like to mention the woman got kneed in the face stuck a gun in my balls,” I said.

“Let’s cool our language,” Hanson said. “We got a lady present.”

“Why all of a sudden?” Charlie said. “And besides, she ain’t a lady now. She’s a lawyer.”

Florida smiled. She said, “Marvin, my clients just saw a fire and went to help.”

“Oh, God,” Hanson said, “not you too.”

“I’m sure the owner of the dwelling, Mr. Otis-”

“Some fat cat honkie, I reckon,” Leonard said.

“One of the fattest,” Florida said. “Mr. Otis, who I know is an upstanding citizen, and a friend of the police chief, would be upset to discover the house he’s renting out is being used to sell drugs.”

“Naw,” Charlie said. “Old fart gets a slice of the action.”

“We don’t know that,” Hanson said.

“We can’t prove it,” Charlie said. “Ain’t the same thing.”

“I’m sure he would be upset,” Florida persisted. “But I know he’d be happy to hear of the bravery of men like Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, who selflessly went to the rescue of the inhabitants.”

“We see our duty,” Leonard said, “we do it. We can’t help it. It’s the way we were raised.”

“Yeah,” Hanson said, “and in the process of doing your duty y’all knocked a man’s teeth out, broke another’s knee, and busted up a woman’s nose.”

“Hey,” Leonard said. “My knuckles hurt. They’re all scraped up. Show him your head, Hap.” I turned the side of my head toward Hanson. Leonard pointed to it. “See there, he’s got a bruise.”

“Christ,” Hanson said.

“Sometimes, in the heat of the moment,” Florida said, “even when you’re trying to do a good deed, you can make mistakes. They were rough, but they saved lives.”

“They set the fire!” Mohawk said.

“I been in that place,” Charlie said. “Knocked the door down and come to visit a number of times. Joint’s a shit hole, a fire hazard. Fire could have started any kind of way.”

“You have a shotgun with you to shoot the fire out,” Hanson said to Leonard. “EMTs said you were carrying a shotgun.”

“I was cleaning it. We heard the boy under the house, didn’t know what it was, and we’d seen the fire out the window, so I rushed out with it in my hand. I was so excited I forgot I had it.”

“Shut up!” Hanson said. “Every one of you, shut up. Charlie, take Melton here to the restroom.”

“I don’t need to go,” Mohawk said.

Charlie stood up and took Mohawk by the elbow. “Sure you do. Come on, I’ll show you how to fold the toilet paper.”

Charlie and Mohawk started past us. I said, “Thanks, Charlie.”

“Us Kmart shoppers got to stick together,” he said, and he and Mohawk went away.

Hanson said, “All right, let’s cut the bullshit. Here’s the deal. I don’t give a damn about that house or Melton and his asshole buddies. I want them nailed bad as you do. I don’t want any more drugged-out dead kids. But I’ve had all the cat-and-mouse I’m gonna do on this child murder thing. I don’t want any more dead kids that way either. You jerks are gonna come clean, or I’m gonna use this arson thing to nail you, and don’t think I won’t.”

“And don’t think I won’t give your case a hard time in court,” Florida said. “Melton wouldn’t exactly make a sympathetic witness. Neither would the rest of the house’s occupants.”

“You’d do that to me?” Hanson said.

“Business,” Florida said, and smiled at Hanson.

Hanson smiled back. “Yeah, guess you would. All right, here’s how it’s coming down. You two saw a fire, went to help, couple of occupants panicked, didn’t know you were trying to rescue ’em, so they got rough, and you got rough, but you saved them. OK?”

Leonard and I agreed.

“I’ll call Melton back,” Hanson said, “explain to him he wants to fight it, he can fight it, but it’s just gonna be shit for him. He’ll talk tough a couple of minutes and let it slide. He don’t want any court trouble, I’ll promise that.”

“He hasn’t seen court trouble till I get on his ass,” Florida said.

I looked at Florida and smiled. She smiled back. For a moment it seemed like we were together again.

“In return for me being the generous fella I am,” Hanson said, “for not dragging your asses through court and sending you upriver, you’re gonna be sweet as sugar to me. You’re gonna tell me some things you know that I don’t know. Got me?”

I glanced at Leonard. He nodded. He said, “I guess we’ve played detective enough.”

He told Hanson about the Hampstead place and what we found. But I noticed he conspicuously left out the sweet Reverend Fitzgerald.

Hanson let us go, charge free. Florida took me and Leonard home. When she pulled into the driveway and we got out, she got out too. The smell of burnt lumber from next door was strong in the air. Florida said, “Hap, can we talk a moment?”

“Sure,” I said.

Florida looked at Leonard.

“I’m worn out,” Leonard said. “I’m just going to take a cheerful look of what’s left of next door, then go to sleep.”

We walked around to the bottle tree and stood there looking at the smoky, blackened shell of the house.

“Mucho mojo,” Florida said.

“What?” I said.

“Much bad magic,” she said. “Next door was mucho mojo. Something my grandmother used to say. Mojo is African for magic.”

“I thought it was sex,” I said.

“That’s because you listen to blues records,” she said. “It is sex, or even the sex organs. But that’s bastardized. Meaning sex is like magic. Mojo means magic. My grandmother knew some Spanish, and when things were bad, she’d say ‘mucho mojo.’ Spanish mucho for much, African mojo for magic. But what she meant when she said it was much bad magic. To her, mojo was always bad.”

“Well, they’re a little less bad next door,” Leonard said.

“Yeah,” I said. “And we can feel good looking out our windows, but they’ll just move to some other street. They’re not really gone, they’re merely inconvenienced.”

“I’d rather inconvenience them than just let them go,” Leonard said. “Scum like that get inconvenienced often enough, they might think the career they got isn’t worth it. It’s the good folks of the world that are supposed to be in charge, not the assholes. Though, in my darker moments, I sometimes fear the assholes outnumber us. By the way, Florida, who’s this Otis guy?”

“White guy who owned the house, and a lot of houses here on the East Side,” Florida said. “I’ve heard he openly refers to these as his nigger rent houses. And it’s pretty well known he gets a cut of the drug pie over here.”