Joe Lansdale - Mucho Mojo

“What now?” Leonard said.

Before I could answer, the tan Volkswagen, which I had forgotten about, came out from behind the church and turned left. The church lights gave me enough of a view to tell the driver was the woman who had been driving the bus, and she had a little girl with her. Mom, having done her duty, was on her way home with her own child.

“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t think the Reverend was on the bus when it came back. He could have got off out back just now, but I don’t think so. I think he stayed at the carnival.”

“We’ve been hoodwinked, and not on purpose,” Leonard said. “I can’t figure how Fitzgerald did it exactly, but he had prearranged plans with the woman. I don’t mean she was in on it-”

“I know what you mean. He had her drive the kids back, but he had a kid in mind wasn’t on the bus.”

“Someone won’t be missed. Some kid he gave a free pass to. And he had another way of leaving the carnival other than the bus.”

“If we’re right,” I said, “where does that leave us?”

“With the clock ticking,” Leonard said.

We sat silent for a moment, then almost in unison said: “The Hampstead place.”

Leonard drove us by the cop in the leisure suit. He was still watching the church. He didn’t even blink as we went by.

We made our way to the Hampstead place from Uncle Chester’s. Up through the woods on foot. The rain hadn’t slacked, and it was slow going. The wind had picked up and turned surprisingly cool, and it tossed the rain hard as gravel. Tree branches whipped and cut us, and our single flashlight did little to punch a hole in the darkness. We hadn’t taken the time to get rain slickers, so we were soaked to the skin. I wished now we’d bothered to get guns. But all we’d brought were ourselves and the flashlight in Leonard’s car.

When we got to the Hampstead place, we were exhausted. We didn’t want Fitzgerald and his brother to see us coming, so I turned off the flashlight just before we broke out of the woods, into the partial clearing.

Out there, with no light, pitch dark without moon or starlight, the rain hammering us like ball bearings, we only had our instincts to guide us. It was rough going. We could hear the boards in the old house creaking, begging the wind to leave it alone, and we linked arms and let those sounds guide us. I barked a shin on a porch step, and Leonard followed suit. We climbed onto the porch, trying to be as quiet as possible, which was difficult when you felt like your leg was broken. We found our way along the porch to the busted-out window we had used before, cautiously crawled inside.

Rain was driving into the house from the hole in the ceiling and the hole in the roof above. It was so dark inside we couldn’t see the rain, but we could hear it and feel it. We listened for other sounds, the sounds of movement, but there was only the wind and the expected creaking of lumber.

We had no recourse but to turn on the flash, and we used it to avoid the breaks in the boards, but still they squeaked as we walked. We went through the room with the chifforobe and into the kitchen, and it was dry there, and I realized suddenly that my nerves were starting to settle. The pounding rain had been like a severe case of Chinese water torture.

But as soon as we were both inside the kitchen, not really expecting to find anyone since we’d heard neither movement or seen illumination, my flashlight caught a shadow on my left, and I whipped the light that way, and the shadow came at me. I swung the flashlight, and there was a grunt and a shattering of bulb, and the light went out. Then I felt hands on me. I shifted my body and jabbed with an elbow and then there was light on the right of me and I saw Leonard out of the corner of my eye, and he was planting a side kick in a man’s mid-section, and in that same instant my hands felt their way around my injured attacker’s body, and I hip-threw him hard against the floor. Then a light shot up at me from the floor, and behind the light the shadow shape said, “Goddamn you, Hap.”

It was Charlie.

The cop Leonard kicked was named Gleason. I had seen him the day they tore Uncle Chester’s flooring up. He was the fat cop with the bad toupee Mohawk had yelled at. He wasn’t any slimmer, and now his bad toupee was wet and in the light of his and Charlie’s flashlight, it looked like some kind of strange tribal skullcap.

Leonard had really planted that kick. Gleason took a long time to start breathing naturally, but the guy had enough fat nothing got broken. Charlie wasn’t feeling that good either. He had a knot on the side of his head where I had connected with the flashlight.

“Man, that flashlight hurt,” Charlie said.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Goddamn, you motherfuckers are quick.”

“How’s the head?” I said.

“It hurts, what’ya think?” Charlie rubbed the knot on his head. “Goddamn.”

“Sorry, Charlie. If it’s any consolation, I think you broke Leonard’s flashlight.”

“Yeah, well, buy another. My head, I just got this one. What the fuck you two doing here?”

We told him.

“You think Hanson didn’t think of covering this place?” Charlie said. “Jesus, we may not be the incredibly clever sleuths you boys are, but we think of a few things. We even brought along a lunch.”

“Charlie forgot the chips, though,” Gleason said. “I told him twicet about the chips, and he still forgot ’em. A sandwich without chips ain’t no good.”

“Would you lose the chips, Gleason?” Charlie said.

“I just said you forgot is all,” Gleason said.

“The point here is not that I forgot the chips out of our lunch,” Charlie said, “it’s that you two morons are screwing stuff up.”

“I told you we’re sorry,” I said. “Jesus, what you want us to do, shoot ourselves?”

“You could have fucked up an investigation.”

“Considering Fitzgerald hasn’t showed yet,” Leonard said, “I think things are already fucked.”

“Man,” Gleason said, “I think this guy busted something inside.”

Charlie put the light on Gleason. “You’re all right. Lose some fuckin’ weight. And take off that stupid toup.”

“He ought to leave it,” Leonard said. “The bad guys show up, he can scare ’em with it.”

“Yeah, well, you guys laugh,” Gleason said. “I had this special fitted.”

“Fitted for what?” Leonard said. “A fence post? You got more head than you got hair there. You need to shoot and field-dress another mop, pal.”

“Right, you’re Vidal Sassoon,” Gleason said.

And that’s when we heard someone coming through the woods from the back of the house.

“The lights,” Charlie said, and he killed the flash and Gleason killed his. We listened as the tromping came closer.

Charlie whispered, “Spread out, here’s you guys’ chance to use that karate shit on someone deserves it.”

We spread out. I took position by the door that led into the kitchen. I knew Charlie was somewhere to the left of me, and Leonard and Gleason were across the way.

We waited and the tromping went on around the side of the house and onto the front porch, then we heard the porch boards squeak, and not long after, the inside boards squeaked louder. The squeaking came our way. I felt the hair on the back of my neck bristle and there was a tightening of the groin and a loosening of the bowels. A light came from the room with the chifforobe, and the light bobbed into the kitchen, and a man came after it. Then the light swung to the right and its beam fell square and solid on Gleason, standing there like a stuffed bear, his toupee dangling off his skull like an otter clinging to a rock.

“Hey,” the startled man with the light said, and it was Fitzgerald’s voice, and for a moment, time was suspended. Then time came loose and from behind Fitzgerald a monstrous shadow charged into the room, and I moved, and everyone else moved, and I realized then that someone was running away from the chifforobe room, someone who had been with Fitzgerald and his brother, someone who had panicked.