Bad Chili (20 page)

I hurt something awful downstairs in the ball department, but I changed the tires while Jim Bob kept guard with the shotgun. “Why’d he just do the tires?” I said. “Why not screw something else up?”

“I think we interrupted him,” Jim Bob said. “And he didn’t want any part of this shotgun.”

I changed the tires as fast as I could, constantly expecting a shot in the back. But Big Man Mountain didn’t come out of the woods with his little ankle gun blazing. He didn’t offer to help me with the lug bolts. A Saint Bernard didn’t bring me a keg.

When all four spares were on, Jim Bob put the flats in the trunk along with the jack and drove us out of there. I couldn’t hold out any longer. The pain was too much. The activity had made it worse. I passed out on the car seat.

When I awoke, Jim Bob had my feet and Leonard had my arms. I looked up at Leonard. He said, “Take it easy, brother. You all right now.”

“Funny,” I said. “I don’t feel all right.”

I closed my eyes and they carried me away and put me on a cloud and the cloud was comfortable, except for a fire built between my legs, but I couldn’t move to get away from the fire; no matter how hard I tried it followed me, and finally I slept, fire or no fire, and in my dream heads kept exploding, and two rabid squirrels, one with a pocked face, the other one black with a shaved head, bit me repeated on the balls, while another squirrel, very plump with oversized feet and a beard and devil’s horns, turned a crank on a battery that threw sparks.

When I awoke it was early morning, still dark. There were strands of light in the darkness outside, but the strands seemed to be suffering against the night, as if blackness had decided to push the light back and hold it down until it stopped breathing.

And maybe it just seemed that way because I had witnessed two men killed and hadn’t had any breakfast and my balls felt as if someone had borrowed them during the night for a game of Ping-Pong and had put them back in reverse.

I went into Leonard’s kitchen, saw Jim Bob sitting at the table with Leonard. They were drinking beer. Jim Bob had his hat cocked back on his head, his legs resting on a chair.

“Breakfast of champions,” I said.

“There you have it,” Jim Bob said. “Pour these suds on a bowl of cornflakes, you get all the vitamins you need for a day.”

I got a glass and the milk jug out of the fridge and sat at the table. I poured milk in my glass. Even doing that made my balls hurt.

Leonard said, “Jim Bob here’s been tellin’ me about last night. Just started telling me some other stuff. Actually, now that I think about it, I been tellin’ him stuff, and I don’t know why.”

“I’m charmin’,” Jim Bob said.

“Yeah, and I could be fuckin’ up, talkin’ like that,” Leonard said. “I don’t even know you.”

Jim Bob grinned. “Like I said. I’m charmin’.”

“You saved my man’s life, here,” Leonard said. “That gives you some points. But it don’t give you the game. Know what I’m sayin’?”

“I think I’m pickin’ up the important parts,” Jim Bob said.

“Way I see it,” I said, “I could use lots of explanation. And let me throw in a tip, Jim Bob. Don’t try and follow people in a yellow Pontiac. It’s conspicuous.”

“Hell,” Jim Bob said. “I know that. I wasn’t all that worried you saw me or not. Not later on. I followed you lots you didn’t see me, yellow Pontiac or not. Actually, my preferred toolin’ vehicle is a red fifties Cadillac I call the Red Bitch, but right now it’s in the shop. Or to be more exact, it’s being rebuilt from the tires up. I fucked that baby up big-time. Ran it into a brick wall tryin’ to run over a sonofabitch tried to kill me.”

“You’re quick to take people out, aren’t you?” I said.

“Wooo,” Jim Bob said. “Now that he’s at the house all safe and sound with his balls in his drawers, he don’t want to like no killin’s. Let me tell you something, Collins. Wasn’t for me, you’d have charcoal briquets for nuts right now. You think I could have gone in there last night and them boys would have just challenged me to a paper-rock-scissors contest?”

“Ole Hap here,” Leonard said, “he swats a fly, he’s gonna brood on it for a couple days, maybe put out a little sugar on a dog turd for the relatives.”

“I’m just saying two men are dead. I’m not saying I’m against you saving my life or protecting your own. It had to be done, but I’m not proud of the fact.”

“Hell, I’m proud,” Jim Bob said. “Only thing I regret about drizzly shits like that is I can’t kill them three or four times apiece.”

“How do you know about us?” I asked.

“He’s a private detective,” Leonard said. “He also knows Charlie.”

“That certainly helps with the detective work, doesn’t it?” I said.

“That’s a fact,” Jim Bob said. “But I done told Leonard some of this stuff.”

“How about you go over it a little more?” I said.

Jim Bob upended his beer. “You got any more of this piss?”

“Fridge,” Leonard said.

Jim Bob got up, found himself a beer, sat down. He twisted off the top and took a deep jolt. He sounded like a pig sucking on a nursing bottle.

When he had slogged about half the beer down, he sat the bottle on the table, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, said, “I reckon I can give you the short sporty version.”

“I get the feeling nothing you say is going to be short,” I said.

Jim Bob grinned at me. “You got a point there. I won’t kid you, I like to hear myself talk, ’cause I’m so goddamn interestin’.”

“Then make me interested,” I said.

“Whoa, goddamn it, hold off,” Jim Bob said. “Incoming.”

Jim Bob lifted his hip and let a fart fly.

“I been saving that one,” he said.

“It was nice of you to share it with us,” Leonard said.

“Yeah, well, sniff deep and you can have a Mexican dinner secondhand,” Jim Bob said.

“Don’t you get a little tired working so hard to be folksy?” I said.

“Naw,” Jim Bob said. “I figure it’s kind of an edge. People don’t know what you’re really thinking. They think you’re just a shallow good ole boy.”

“But you aren’t?” I said.

Jim Bob gave me a dazzling smile. “Naw, Collins, I ain’t. But you can believe what you want.”

“Jim Bob’s here because of a kid named Custer Stevens,” Leonard said.

“That’s right,” Jim Bob said. “His parents live in Houston. I have my office over in Pasadena, Texas. Or I call it an office. It’s a little pig farm I own. These days you got to shoot the bad guys and raise your own meat, ’cause the pay for private detective work stinks.”

“You’re drifting again,” I said.

“So I am,” Jim Bob said. “Well, this Stevens, his boy come down here to go to the university. Damnedest thing was they sent him here to get him out of the big city, thought he’d be nice and safe here. Neither one of ’em knew Custer liked to suck dicks. Anyway, Stevens had a chum down here named Richard Dane. Few years back I did some work for ole Dane, and Dane recommended me to Stevens.”

“You get around, don’t you?” I said.

“I certainly do,” Jim Bob said. “There ain’t hardly a town in East Texas I ain’t worked in one way or another. There’s people all over the place got problems, and I’m a problem solver.”

“You left out what this Dane recommended you to do,” Leonard said.

“Well, this boy, Custer, he come down here and got in with boys liked to do the brown-eye express, and pretty soon he’s hanging out in the park shoppin’ for goober. He meets a guy, and this guy takes him into the middle of the park, then a bunch of guys jump out, beat him up, knock Custer’s teeth out, make him do a circle suck and a goober jerk for about fifteen minutes.”

“And they put it on film,” I said.

“Exactly. Custer decides to phone his parents about the fact he’s a Hershey highway kinda guy, tells them what happened. They get all bent out of shape about his sexual preference, but when they drive down to see him, see the beatin’ he’s took, hear about the video, they forget all that shit and do the right thing. They go to the police. They talk to the chief. He gives ’em a line of shit, but they can tell pretty quick-like he don’t give a fuck about a fag and they get vibes he thinks the whole thing serves the boy right.

“To shorten it up, the boy leaves school, goes home, and they wait for justice. And wait. And wait. Chief ain’t do’n dick. He’s shufflin’ some papers. Now, Richard Dane comes in. He’s in contact with Stevens, and he’s the one recommended the boy go to college here in the first place, so Dane, he feels guilty. He tells Stevens I done some work for him once came out satisfactory, and he might want to hire me to snoop around. Stevens hires me. I know Charlie on the department from a little job a year back. I call him, drive down to visit. Charlie helps where he can, but it ain’t much. He tells me about the other beatings in the park. All of them swept under the rug by the chief, so I start poking my nose around and this fella McNee keeps comin’ up.”

“Horse,” I said.

“That’s the one,” Jim Bob said. “I check out the park, this guy’s always around. There’s gay action, this guy’s around. You wouldn’t believe how many propositions I got from goober grabbers while I was doin’ this.”

“You don’t hear me propositionin’ you,” Leonard said.

“Yeah, well, it was just the good-lookin’ ones,” Jim Bob said. “I was flattered, but I don’t swing that way. But hell, I played the game a little. There was even one with a fat ass and a funny hat I might have had a fantasy or two about.”

“Cut the shit,” Leonard said. “Get on with it.”

“I’m doin’ this for a while, then this Raul shows up. He’s with Horse. I start seein’ him around. It don’t mean nothin’ until I go to the park one night with my standard queer duds on—”

“What are standard queer duds?” Leonard said. “Do I look like I got on standard queer duds?”

“Well, I don’t know what you got on underneath,” Jim Bob said.

“You’re startin’ to fuck with me,” Leonard said. “I don’t like it.”

“Like it or don’t like it,” Jim Bob said. “There’s a way most of them fellas dress. I ain’t puttin’ ’em down for it, but they dress a certain way, ’specially if they’re tryin’ to get their cable up a butt. I dressed way I seen them dress. And it worked. So there.”

Leonard leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed. He looked as if he could eat ground glass and chew nails.

Jim Bob said, “I’m tryin’ to connect with these fucks beat up Custer Stevens, so I’m roamin’ the park day and night, and one night this fella, a good-sized fella, comes up to me and makes with the come-on.

“I’m thinkin’, now, if this guy just wants to play and I lead him on, I’m gonna feel kinda silly when it gets to the part where I’m supposed to swing my rope, but I play along, and this guy leads me to a spot, and these guys come out of the bushes on me. I had to give a couple of them an attitude adjustment with my blackjack.”

Jim Bob suddenly produced the blackjack from his back pocket and slapped it into his palm. “Couple of shots from this and it’s lights out and a headache in the mornin’. Them fuckers bolted. When they did, I seen there was someone else runnin’, some fuck in the bushes. I chased after him. He had a video camera. I was closin’ on him when this guy — one led me into ambush in the first place — caught up with me and jumped me. It was the fella I shot to hell last night. White guy with the moon craters. I wrestled that fuck all over the park, got him in a step-over-toe hold, and cranked on that baby a while.”

Jim Bob replaced his blackjack, sucked more beer, continued.

“By this time his buddies, ones weren’t unconscious, got their shit together, and one of them had a gun, and I hadn’t brought mine, and I knew that was my cue to go to the house. So I darted, and they let me dart. I made it to my car, and what do I see as I’m jettin’ away from the park? The guy with the video camera, and he’s gettin’ on the back of this Harley, and ole Horse is drivin’, and you got one guess who this video man was.”

“Raul,” Leonard said.

“On the nosey,” Jim Bob said. “They were videotapin’ this shit for their pleasure. Or, to be more precise, for money.”

“Raul was the cameraman?” I said.

“You betcha,” Jim Bob said.

I watched Leonard’s face do a series of moves, then settle.

I turned back to Jim Bob. “Did you know these tapes were going underground to video stores?”

“Having encountered similar things before,” Jim Bob said, “I sort of put it together. And it didn’t take a genius to figure the folks I had my little tadoo with in the park were the ones beat the Stevens kid up and that Horse and Raul were connected. I followed them. And later I followed them some more. Sometimes one, sometimes both.”

“I guess all that watchin’ got you connected to me and Hap,” Leonard said.

“Yeah,” Jim Bob said. “And I found out Raul went out to King Arthur’s place to cut hair, and later to his plant. And then all this shit starts comin’ down, and I get to puttin’ it all together, tryin’ to make a case I can give the cops, and guess what. I lose track a bit, next thing I know Horse gets his head blown off and Raul disappears.”

“And what did our intrepid investigator deduce from all this?” I asked.

“I figured Leonard done ’em both in. I figured I had to follow that part of the story too, you know, construct the whole picture. So I come here and I see you come out of the house, Hap. I been spot-checkin’ you two ever since. You got good taste in nurses, Hap.”

“Leave her out of this,” I said.

“Nothing raw meant,” Jim Bob said.

“Charlie knew all this?” Leonard asked.

“Nope,” Jim Bob said. “I didn’t keep Charlie informed. I got the original info from him, then I was on my own. I didn’t even know he knew you two until after Horse bought his ticket. I seen him talkin’ to you then. And I talked to him yesterday some.”

“When did you decide I wasn’t the killer?” Leonard asked.

“When the cops decided you weren’t,” Jim Bob said.

“But still you followed?” I said.

“That’s right,” Jim Bob said. “I didn’t know exactly what I was followin’, but I was followin’. I was checkin’ other leads too. You guys weren’t the only ones. You’re lucky I was followin’ last night.”

“And why were you?” I asked.