Mucho Mojo (13 page)

Hanson looked at his tea and said, “You got any milk for this? I like milk in mine.”

“They just have curdled milk,” Florida said.

“I don’t like it that bad,” Hanson said. “What about sugar?”

“Would you like a rose in a vase to go with it?” I said.

“No,” he said, “but I’ll have some of those cookies.”

Leonard pushed the cookie sack at Hanson, a little reluctantly, I thought. In fact, I didn’t think he’d been sharing them all that well with Florida and myself.

Hanson crunched a few cookies and sipped some tea.

“You got questions for us, Lieutenant?” Leonard asked.

“No,” Hanson said.

“Then you have something to report?” Leonard said.

“I do,” Hanson said. “I thought you might like to know the preliminary forensic findings.”

“That’s awful chummy of you,” Leonard said.

Hanson shrugged. “I’m divorced. I’m lonely. And I got nothing better to do.”

“Why don’t I think that’s why you’re here?” Leonard said.

“You’re one suspicious sonofabitch,” Hanson said. “Your uncle’s house is involved. Possibly your uncle. You found the body. I thought it would be only fair I kept you informed.”

“Don’t pay any attention to Leonard,” I said. “He was raised in a barn.”

Hanson took a sip of his tea and frowned. He put the cup down, said, “We had a forensics guy come in from Houston. He’s taken the bones back with him, but he looked them over here, gave us a preliminary report. He could revise his opinion somewhat, he gets a good look, but the forensics guy says the skeleton in the box belongs to a nine- or ten-year-old boy. and he probably died of severe trauma to the head. After that, the body was cut up to fit into something small.”

“The trunk,” Leonard said.

“No,” Hanson said. “Originally, the body was in a cardboard box. On the bones were paper fibers and remnants of a kind of glue found in cardboard. Could I have some more tea?”

His cup was half-full, but I poured him some more.

“You’re saying the body was put in a cardboard box, then the box was put in the trunk?” Leonard said.

Hanson shook his head. “Nope. There’s not enough remains of the cardboard in the trunk for it to have ever been put in there whole. What about that sugar?”

I got Hanson the sugar bowl and a spoon.

“You got a longer spoon? You can’t stir good with these short ones.”

“No wonder you’re divorced,” I said. “And no, no teaspoon.”

Hanson stirred sugar into his teacup. He said, “The body was put in the cardboard box originally, but by the time the bones were put in the trunk, the cardboard had, for the most part, disintegrated. Some of the cardboard fibers stayed with the bones. Another thing. The clay on the bones doesn’t go with your uncle’s dirt beneath the house. The dirt found on the bottom of the trunk.”

“Then the body was moved from somewhere and put in the trunk?” Leonard said. “And before it was moved, it had been in the ground for some time.”

“Looks that way,” Hanson said. “But that doesn’t let your uncle off the hook. Sometimes a murderer kills in one spot, moves the body, buries it, then moves it again. If your Uncle was sick, he might have thought about the body enough he wanted to be near the corpse, went and dug it up. Put it here.”

“Uncle Chester wasn’t sick,” Leonard said. “That kind of thing isn’t sick anyway, it’s sickening.”

“I’m not saying anything concrete about him,” Hanson said. “I’m just speculating. We don’t even know this was a sex crime. It could have been murder, flat and simple.”

“Does it matter?” I said.

“Yes,” Hanson said, “it does. It’s a sex crime, it may not have ended with one victim. It was a murder, maybe a blow struck in anger, whatever, this could be the whole of it.”

“Can the forensics guy tell from the skeleton if the child was sexually molested?” I asked.

“No,” Hanson said. “Least not preliminarily, and I doubt later. Just not enough left to work with. He did determine the child was killed some eight or nine years ago.”

“The magazines in the trunk indicate a sex crime, though, don’t they?” Leonard said.

“They point that direction,” Hanson said.

“Any take on the magazines?” I asked. “Were they buried as long as the body? Seems to me, had they been, they’d have gone the way of the cardboard box.”

“Smart question,” Hanson said. “They were added to the trunk in bad condition, but not bad enough to have been recovered with the skeleton when it was moved from its grave to the trunk. They weren’t in the ground as long as the corpse.”

“So you haven’t any proof this skeleton is tied in with the child disappearances?” I said.

“Nope. Other than circumstantial. Leonard’s uncle talking about child murders, a skeleton being found here. Children missing in the community over the years. That’s it, really.”

“What do you think, Marvin?” Florida asked.

“I don’t know,” Hanson said. “It do be a puzzle, and I hate them. Agatha Christie shit. Never can figure that stuff out.”

“Any chance I might see those files about the missing children?” Leonard said.

“I don’t think so,” Hanson said. “What good would that do?”

“Seeing them, knowing my uncle like I did, maybe I might see something that’ll shed some light.”

“I doubt it,” Hanson said.

“Very conscientious,” Leonard said. “But sounds to me you could use all the help you could get. I think maybe you might even be asking for help.”

“Well,” Hanson said, “the subconscious is a tricky sonofabitch, but my conscious mind knows better than to bring a civilian in on this. To be honest, after all this time, someone figures out exactly what happened here, even who the child is, it’ll be an accident. That’s how most of this gets solved, by accident. If it gets solved.”

Hanson tipped his teacup up and got up from the table. “Gentlemen. Lovely lady, who I apologize to again for my past rudeness, and stupidity. I have to go. I have work to do.”

“Tonight?” Florida said.

“Every night,” he said. “It’s either that or watch TV, so I take files home and work.”

“Considering most of it gets solved through accident,” I said, “any of what you do matter?”

“Very little,” Hanson said, “very goddamn little.”

That night, with the rain heavy on the house, a sweat-cooled sheet drawn over us, I held Florida in my arms and had the sad, dreamy sensation that no matter how tight I held her, she would soon slip away.

I kissed her on the nose, and she opened her eyes and blinked and closed them again, said softly, “Can’t sleep?”

“No,” I said.

“Horny?”

“Not really.”

She opened her eyes again and looked at me. “It’s the rain.”

“I guess so.”

“What’s the matter?”

“How are we, Florida?”

“What?”

“How are we? You and me?”

“We’re OK.”

“I mean, really?”

She eased out of my arms and raised up on one elbow. I couldn’t see her features clearly in the dark. “We’re how we’ve always been.”

“And how is that?”

“You’re not going to get complicated.”

“Maybe.”

“We haven’t been together that long.”

“Long enough for me.”

“The cliché is women are the ones who always want to get married.”

“I didn’t say anything about getting married.”

“But if we get serious, that’s what you mean?”

“I guess so.”

“Every guy I’ve dated has been ready to put a ring on my finger, Hap. A few dates, especially if they get a piece of ass, they want to tie the knot.”

“I don’t want to hear about that part . . . dating. Is that what we’re doing?”

“Yes, we’re dating. We’re fucking too, but that’s sometimes part of dating.”

“I thought we made love.”

“Oh, Hap. Don’t get technical.”

“Fucking’s technical. Making love is the same as the flow of a river. A cloud in the sky.”

“Where in hell did you get that shit?”

“I think the big-cheese monk on
Kung Fu
said it to Grasshopper. Ever watch that? David Carradine didn’t know kung fu from shit.”

“Before my time. I’m twenty-nine.”

“No shit?”

“You think I look older?”

“No. I just thought you were older. Lawyer and all.”

“See, Hap, way it works, some of us go to high school, get out, go to college, and in my case, law school, then go right into gainful employment. Some of us.”

“Is there a hidden slight in that?”

“Some. Hap, I like you. I like you a lot. You’re funny. You’re a decent guy. You’re not bad looking, and you make love beautifully. But you don’t strike me as a secure bet.”

“You’re boiling it down to financial prospects. What happened to love?”

“I’m not in love—hear me, completely. But I could be. In love, I mean. But...”

“But what?”

“My mother married for love. My father married to be mothered. After I was born, he decided he’d work when he wanted to. He had a college education, Hap. He was smart. He was a sweet man. But my mother ended up working and supporting him and me both, and every now and then, the time of year was right, he’d work at a pecan orchard over by Winona. He liked to make just enough for a six-pack or two before he came home. I love my father. But my mother was miserable. Is love worth that?”

“Who says I’m going to lay around with my feet propped up watching TV reruns while drinking six-packs of beer?”

“What’s your profession, Hap?”

“I do field work most of the time.”

“That’s not a profession. That’s a temporary job. Or should be. You’re in your forties, correct? And right now you’re living off Leonard—”

“He lived off me for a while. Hey, listen. I pay my bills. I tote my load. I’m not your father.”

“Maybe you aren’t. But I like ambition. I like someone who gets up in the morning and has a purpose. A real purpose. I have one. I want whoever I love to have one.”

“I always look forward to breakfast.”

“You dodge behind jokes too much too.”

“And you don’t listen to your heart enough.”

“My heart isn’t as smart as my head, Hap. And who says I can’t find someone I love who has ambition and purpose? For that matter, maybe my heart isn’t telling me what you want it to hear.”

“I’m not without ambition. I’ve just been temporarily derailed, that’s all. Something will come along—”

“That’s exactly what I mean, Hap. You’re waiting for luck. Waiting to win the lottery. Waiting for something wonderful to show up on the doorstep. You’re not out there trying to make anything happen.”

“I’ve got enough money for now.”

“For now. And it’s not money, I tell you. It’s purpose. Ambition. You’d rather coast.”

“And maybe it looks bad for a beautiful black lawyer to have a rose field worker for a husband too. And I’m white. Let’s throw that turd out and dissect it. Not once since we’ve been...dating, as you call it, have we gone out together. Really out. You come here or out to my place, and we eat here and go to bed and make love, and then in the morning you leave. You don’t want to go to a movie with me, out to dinner, because someone might see you with a white man.”

She rolled over on her back and looked at the ceiling. She pulled the sheet up tight under her chin. “I never said anything other than I had problems with it.”

“So it boils down to I’m white, I’m lazy, I don’t have money, and I could have a better job.”

“That makes it all sound so harsh. I don’t mean it that way. Not exactly. If those things really bothered me, I wouldn’t be here.” Florida rolled over and put her arm around me. “Are you really in love with me, Hap, or are you in love with being in love?”

I thought that over. I said, “You’re right. I’m pushing things. Maybe I just been lonely too long, like the
Young Rascals
song.”

“Who?”

“Before your time. Like
Kung Fu.
”

“Do you want me to go?” she asked.

“In this rain?”

“Do you want me to go in the morning and not come back?”

“Of course not.”

We lay quietly for a while. Then she said: “Hap, even though I’m a racist castrating bitch that wants you to be better than you are, wants you to do something with your life besides be a knockabout, do you think you could find it in your heart, in your itty-bitty white man’s dick, to get a hard-on for me? In other words, want to fuck?”

I rolled up against her, kissed her forehead, her nose, and finally her lips. She reached down and touched me.

“Is that your answer?” she said.

“Sure,” I said. “I have no shame.”

In the gray morning I awoke to the smell of Florida’s perfume and the dent her head had made in her pillow. I had not heard her leave. It was still raining.

After breakfast, Leonard and I went to work on the subflooring, our hammering not much louder than the pounding of the rain on the roof.

We worked off and on until about suppertime. Then the rain quit and so did we. We locked up and took Leonard’s car and went out to a Mexican restaurant to eat, then decided to try and drive out to Calachase Road and see if we could find Illium Moon’s place. That didn’t work, we’d do what you’re supposed to do. We’d scout around till we found someone who knew where Illium lived.

It was still light, the summer days being long here in East Texas, but the sun was oozing down over the edge of the earth, and the sky in the west looked like a burst blood vessel. The air was a little cool and it smelled sweetly of damp dirt.

Calachase Road is a long road of clay and intermediate stretches of blacktop and gravel. It winds down between the East Texas pines and oaks, and in the summer the air is thick with their smell, and the late sunlight filtering through them turns the shadows on the road dark emerald.

We drove around for a while, saw some houses and trailers, but no mailboxes that said Illium Moon. We finally pulled up to a nasty shack that looked as if a brisk fart might knock it over. It was gray and weathered with a roof that almost had a dozen shingles on it. The rest of the roof was tar paper, decking, and silver tacks. The tiles that belonged up there were in ragged torn heaps beside the house, and leaning against the house was a crowbar and a hammer. A couple window screens were swung free of the windows, dangling by single nails. The front porch and front door were flame-licked black. There was a healthy stack of beer cans by the porch that weren’t even damp, and it had been raining solid for nearly three days. Budweiser was a major label.