Mucho Mojo

17.

East Texas weather, being the way it is, by the time we got back from the church to the house, ready for lunch, it changed. Before we could get mustard plastered on our ham sandwiches, the hot, blinding sunlight was sacked by hard-blowing clouds out of the west. They swept down black and vicious and brought with them Zorro slashes of lightning and lug bolts of rain.

The rain fell cool and solid for two days, hammered the house, churned pea gravel out of the driveway, broke loose the packed red clay beneath, and ran it in bloody swirls beneath the porch and on either side of the house to collect in the sun-burned grass like gore in a crew cut.

The rain was so constant the birds quit hiding. You could hear them singing and chirping between flashes of lightning and rolls of thunder. Not a good sign. It meant the rain would continue, and most likely for some time. Outside, except when lightning zippered open the sky, it was black as the high stroke of midnight on a moonless night.

On the second day of the rain, late afternoon, I glanced up from reading The Hereafter Gang by lamplight and looked at Leonard’s hard profile framed before the living-room window. He had pulled a hard-backed chair there and assumed the position of The Thinker, elbow on knee, fist under chin. He was observing the rain, and I watched as a snake tongue of blue-white lightning licked the outside air above and beyond the bars and strobed his skin momentarily blue. Inside the house, the air became laced with sulfurous-smelling ozone, and I could feel my hide and hair crackle like hot cellophane.

Leonard looked at me. “You told Florida to stay home?”

“Sure, but she listens way you listen. Not at all.”

“Then she ought to be here pretty soon?”

“If she didn’t run off in a ditch.”

Earlier, bored out of my mind and tired of working on the flooring with Leonard, I’d braved the storm with a flimsy umbrella and gone over to MeMaw’s and used her phone and called Florida at her office.

Turned out Florida was doing almost as much business as a nun in a whorehouse. She wanted to come by and eat supper with us. I tried to talk her out of it, the weather being like it was, but she told me she was coming anyway and she’d bring a big Pepsi. I wondered if that was some kind of bribe.

I left MeMaw’s after being happily force-fed a slice of fresh cornbread slathered in butter, and waded back to the house through ankle-deep water that flooded down the street and tried to trip me.

Back inside and dried off, I looked at my watch and calculated when I had talked to Florida and told her not to come and she’d told me she was coming. I computed the normal rate of travel from her office to Uncle Chester’s, doubled it because of the rain.

“She doesn’t show in a few minutes, I’m going to look for her,” I said.

“Then I’ll have to go look for you,” Leonard said. “You drive for shit in bad weather.”

“You’re brooding, Leonard, my friend. What’s the problem?”

“I blew it with Fitzgerald.”

“I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit. It was more like a nuclear disaster.”

“Just can’t stand shits like that guy, hiding behind the Bible and a church, judging everyone’s got a view doesn’t fit tight with his.”

“All you had to do was hold your tongue for five minutes and we’d have known where Illium’s house is. I think he knew exactly where he lived, but he didn’t entirely trust us. After we got what we wanted, you didn’t like the Reverend, we could have soaped his windows or shit on the lawn. Actually, I thought the old boy was pretty polite. He’s at least trying to deal with his community’s problems, and I guess religion is a better way than nothing. Truth is, you were itching for a fight.”

“Have me shot, will you?”

“Not the first thing you’ve fucked up. I can think of all kinds of stuff.”

“Thanks, Hap.”

“Seriously, pal. Reverend’s not the only one knows where Illium lives. It’s not like he’s hiding. We’ll find him when the rain stops.”

About ten minutes later, I heard a car sluicing through the rain. I went to the front door and opened it. The rain was like a steel-beaded curtain hanging off and all around the porch. It slammed the ground with a sound like ball bearings. The wind was the coolest it had been since last fall.

I could see car lights in the drive, and they were all I could see. They went out, I heard a door slam, a black umbrella and a yellow, hooded rain slicker split the curtain of water, and Florida was on the porch, her beautiful face staring out of the slit in the slicker hood. She grinned and held the umbrella down and shook it and collapsed it and leaned it against the wall next to the door.

“Hi,” she said.

“You should have stayed home,” I said.

“Good to see you too.”

We went inside.

“Hello, Leonard,” Florida said.

“Florida,” Leonard said. “I was hoping you wouldn’t get out in this. We been worried.”

Florida slipped off her raincoat, and I hung it on a wood-frame chair by the door. She had on laced workboots, blue jeans, and a loose-fitting plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Under the coat she had been carrying a cloth bag. She sat it on the seat of the chair and spread the mouth of it and pulled out a three-liter Pepsi and a bag of those vanilla cookies Leonard likes.

“Hap told me you were nuts for these,” she said to Leonard.

Leonard got up and took a look. “He’s right. Thanks.” He hugged her.

“You know I’m sorry how things are,” she said.

“Yeah,” Leonard said. “Thanks.”

“First time I haven’t seen you in a dress, Florida,” I said.

“I was doing office cleaning,” Florida said. “I felt like grubbies. Make us some cocoa or something, Hap. I don’t think I’m ready for Pepsi.”

“It’s coffee or tea or slightly curdled milk warmed on the stove,” I said. “Take your pick.”

“That curdled milk sounds good,” Florida said, “but guess I’ll go for the tea.”

I made us a pot of tea, and we were sitting at the kitchen table drinking and eating cookies instead of having supper, when I heard another car come up in the drive.

“Would you get it?” Leonard said. “I’m kind of comfortable next to the cookies.”

“Yassuh, Massuh Leonard, I’s on it.”

I went to the door and opened it and a big shape in a black slicker mounted the porch. He looked a little like the Spirit of Christmas Future. He pushed back the hood of the slicker and smiled at me. It was Lieutenant Hanson.

“Come in,” I said.

Hanson slipped off the slicker, and I took it and led him inside. I hung the slicker over a chair and let the water from it puddle on the floor. I said, “Hey, gang, look who’s here.”

“Damn,” Leonard said, looking through the dividing space between kitchen and living room, “if it ain’t Sherlock Holmes, and come all the way in the rain just to visit. Can I hold your gun, sir?”

“No,” Hanson said, “but you can wear my badge a little while, you promise not to lose it.”

Hanson and I went into the kitchen, and Hanson smiled broadly and said, “Hi, Florida.”

“Hi, Marvin.” Florida had a pretty big smile herself.

“You two know each other?” I said.

“We’ve met a time or two,” Hanson said. “I’ve arrested a couple of her clients.” Hanson nodded toward the cup Florida was sipping from. “That coffee?”

“Tea,” Florida said. She smiled. Rather nicely, I thought.

I offered Hanson my chair and poured him a cup of tea and took my cup and went over and leaned against the kitchen counter and watched him watch Florida out of the corner of his eye. Watched Florida watch him for that matter. I didn’t blame him, she was beautiful. And I didn’t blame her, Hanson was powerful and charismatic and likable, if big and ugly and old enough to be her father.

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.”