Bad Chili

28

Jim Bob drove my pickup with me on the passenger side. He parked it behind the fireworks stand not far from King’s place. Leonard picked us up in his rental, took us back for Jim Bob’s car.

I rode with Leonard as Jim Bob followed. We drove east, way out to a roadside park, pulled over. Jim Bob pulled in behind us. We gathered at a concrete picnic table. There was a cool wind blowing, but you could feel warmth creeping into the breeze. Another half hour to an hour the air would be sticky as Velcro.

“You know, I’m going to kill King anyway,” I said.

“If you do,” Jim Bob said, “make it a lot less obvious.”

“You’ve made it harder now,” I said. “He’ll be expecting me. He’ll maybe even call the cops.”

Jim Bob shook his head. “Naw. He may act cool, but he ain’t anxious the word gets around he brown-rings. It don’t go with his image. That’s what King is. Image. I’ll say this for him, though. He ain’t excitable.”

“How the hell did you two know where I was going?”

“We can come to that in a moment,” Leonard said. “Listen here, Hap. Leon is dead, but Brett isn’t.”

“Horseshit!” I said. “What the fuck they going to do? Give her a new head, pump a little blood in her heart, prop her up with a stick? Believe me, you asshole, she’s dead.”

“No,” Leonard said. “Leon and Ella are dead.”

I sat silently for a moment. I was looking at a brick barbecue cooker. Someone had stuffed it with trash. A crow lit on it, pecked at something between the bricks.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“We been tryin’ to tell you for a time,” Jim Bob said. “But you won’t shut up.”

“My God,” I said. “Brett is okay?”

“Right as rain,” Jim Bob said.

“After you left Brett’s,” Leonard said, “she called Ella. Ella wanted to swap shifts with her this week.”

“Oh, God,” I said. “I forgot.”

Leonard said, “Brett called, Ella answered, said she’d call back. She did, about twenty minutes later. She was at her mother’s. She’d walked out of the trailer while Kevin was sleepin’, walked down to a fillin’ station and called a taxi. She called Brett from her mom’s. Seems Ella finally decided she was gonna leave her husband, but she had to go to work in a couple hours and she didn’t have any more money after the taxi. Leon drove Brett’s car over there to give Ella a ride to work. They got to the hospital-”

“Big Man was waiting and thought Ella was Brett,” I said.

“Nope,” Leonard said. “Big Man didn’t shoot anybody. It was Kevin. He didn’t want her leavin’. He was waiting on Ella. He recognized Brett’s car, saw Ella driving. He had his shotgun. He walked over and shot her, killed Leon, who I figure was trying to protect her.”

“You know it was Kevin?” I said.

“Uh-huh,” Leonard said. “He drove over to Brett’s house, stood out in the front yard with a shotgun and a pistol and yelled obscenities and said he’d killed the bitch, et cetera. Somehow, he blamed Brett. Least that’s what we were gettin’ from his rantings. Before any of us could do anything about it. Shoot him. Call the law. He put the revolver against his eye and took the A-train.”

“I’ll be goddamn,” I said.

“You’d killed King,” Jim Bob said, “you’d have killed him for something he didn’t order done.”

“Thing is, cops were on this Kevin asshole pronto,” Leonard said. “Someone at the hospital knew who he was, seen him do the deed, and told the cops. They didn’t have any trouble spottin’ his car, following him over to Brett’s. They got there before the gunsmoke from Kevin’s pistol cleared. We were standin’ out in the yard when they showed up. One of the cops said he saw you at the hospital. Said you took out of there like a bat out of hell. I had a pretty good idea where you were going. I left Clinton with Brett and went after you.”

“And me,” Jim Bob said. “I was on my way to Leonard’s house to tell you boys some new business. That look in your eyes and the shotgun told me you weren’t just goin’ for breakfast, so I followed. Met Leonard in King’s yard. Now I’m learning some of the details for the first time.”

“Poor Leon,” I said. “Poor, poor Ella.”

“Poor Clinton,” Leonard said. “Fact is, I don’t want to leave him with Brett long. He’s a messed-up man. Something came up, well, he might not be up to his usual standards.”

“Leon wasn’t up to his,” I said.

“They aren’t pros,” Leonard said. “They’re just a couple schmucks like us. Jim Bob’s the only pro here.”

We sat for a few minutes, studied the cars zipping by on the highway. I turned to Jim Bob, said, “You said you thought you might be wrong about King Arthur?”

“Could be,” Jim Bob said. “I got to thinking you might be right, that I ought to follow all the leads, not make a snap judgment. I checked out this other fella, other name this Pierre gave you. Bill Cunningham.”

“We didn’t tell you that,” I said.

“I’ll come to that,” Jim Bob said. “Cunningham’s a lawyer. Nothing obviously funny about him. Fact is, I think he’s clean.”

“I thought you said he was a lawyer,” Leonard said.

“You’re right,” Jim Bob said. “I lost my head.”

“So you don’t know anything more than you did know?” I said.

“You know how I got on to King in the first place?” Jim Bob asked. “I come to town, I look around, I connect with this Raul in the park, follow him around, finally over to this hair spot, Antone’s. Raul gets killed, I go in there and ask around, pretend to be a Texas Ranger. Pierre, guy with the cartoon skunk voice, gave me a couple names. Same names you guys got.”

“So?” I said.

“I get to thinking, what if you’re right and chili man is just a low-rent crook, not into all this. I check out this Bill Cunningham, and nothin’. I get to thinkin’ what could be the source. You know, tryin’ to go back to where the river starts instead of just jumpin’ in and swimmin’.”

“I don’t follow you,” I said.

“The source for your information about King was Pierre. The source of my information about King was Pierre. That don’t mean nothin’ by itself, but why not check this Pierre out? So I watch this Antone’s. Being the astute sonofabitch I am, I notice bikers from next door like to wander in there, but ain’t none of them come out with haircuts or dye jobs.”

“The biker connection?” Leonard said.

“Bikers would show up at the rec hall over there, hang out a while, then go to Antone’s, in the back way, come out with little packages, get on their wheels and ride away. Interesting, huh?”

“Very,” Leonard said.

“That’s number one,” Jim Bob said. “Number two is I call a cop friend in Houston, someone can give me the information but can stay out of our business. This Pierre, it took some time to run him down on the computer, but his real name is Terry Wesley, and guess what? He’s got a rap sheet longer than the pope’s robes. Lot of it is pimpin’ young boys. In Houston he used to meet buses, catch the kids had run off from home. He’d befriend them, pull them into the service. Had them hangin’ around the goddamn Greyhound station hustlin’ goobers. Anyway, Pierre got busted for pimpin’ more than a couple times. Word was, he specialized in providin’ the rough trade. You know, guy comes in, wants to butt-fuck him a boy, likes to slap him around a bit. This way, fucker gets some ass, feels like a tough guy too. You’d be surprised how much of that shit goes on.”

“Sad thing is,” Leonard said, “I ain’t much surprised at anything anymore.”

“Got one more card to play,” Jim Bob said. “I followed one of the bikers carried a package out the back of the hair joint. He took a little road trip to Dallas. I followed. He delivered the package to a video store in Dallas. Got a little package back. My guess, a video for the store owner, money for Pierre, and a nice cut for the biker. Pierre, he’s got these bikers jettin’ all over East Texas. It’s an easy, cheap way to deliver the shit. And another thing, they can dub this crap forever.”

“And there’s always new films,” Leonard said.

“That’s right,” Jim Bob said. “It’s not like they got to have a Francis Ford Coppola behind the lens.”

“Could King and Pierre be together on all this?” I asked.

“I thought about that,” Jim Bob said. “It’s possible. But I don’t think so. I think Pierre gave us King’s name pretty easy. They were partners, he’d have held out.”

“What gets me is it’s gays doin’ it to gays,” I said.

“Welcome once again to the real world,” Leonard said.

“I suggest we have a little talk with Pierre,” Jim Bob said. “Pretend to have taken Raul and Horse’s place as blackmailers, make him push a move. Then we gift-wrap him for the cops.”

We went in Jim Bob’s car to Antone’s. Pierre wasn’t there.

“Well, where is he?” I asked the lady in charge.

She was a heavyset blond lady whose hair looked as if it had been the recipient of many an experiment, the most recent being an incredible rat job that revealed pink patches of skull. She was badly made up with too much powder and lipstick, false eyelashes thick enough and long enough to support a transport plane. She was outgoing and windy as hell; had a mouth like a leaf blower. No doubt she had given phone death to many a listener.

She said, “Well, I don’t rightly know where that little Frenchy is. He kind of comes and goes, you know. I’m in charge most of the time. Name’s Delores. Pierre has other things goin’ on I don’t know much about. Quite the little entrepreneur. Sometimes he’s here all week, sometimes you don’t see him for a week. I ain’t seen him for days. I open up, do hair, teach some of the students how to do hair, then I go home. You smell them peroxide fumes all day, you get so you can’t wait to get out of here. I go home and drink lots of goat’s milk. It’s supposed to help get rid of all kinds of toxins in the body, or at least that’s what my herbal medicine man tells me. He’s this Mex’kin lives on the other side of the railroad tracks. Hear him tell it, there ain’t a goddamn thing that goat milk can’t cure. ’Course, at four dollars a gallon, that shit ought to make you younger, tighten up your love sack, and put your cherry back in it. You boys want to leave a message?”

“He comes back,” Jim Bob said, “just tell Pierre three fellows came by to extort some money out of him, but not to worry, we’ll be back.”

“That’s a hell of a message,” she said.

“Ain’t it?” Leonard said.

“He got a home address?” Jim Bob asked.

“I can look it up,” Delores said. “You know, I been workin’ for that little French twist for a full year now, and he ain’t never invited me or anyone here over to his house.”

“Maybe he hangs his underwear on the doors,” Leonard said.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Delores said. “One thing I can do without is lookin’ at stains in drawers. My husband was terrible about that. I figure he wiped his butt, it was an accident, or his shorts got sucked up his crack. Way I figure, when he died, the undertaker had to use a hose and a putty knife to get him clean.”

“Soul mates, huh?” Jim Bob said.

“Hell, only thing that bastard had any soulful connection with was Championship Bowlin’, a beer, and a bag of taco chips, which is what I figure killed him. I’d have known that, I’d have kept a bigger supply around.”

We followed her into Pierre’s office. She got out the phone book, flipped it open, found his name. “There it is,” she said.

When we were outside in the parking lot, I said, “Gee, Jim Bob, right in the phone book. You’re quite the detective.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Jim Bob said.