“You got a lot from a mild conversation,” Leonard said.
“As I was saying, I got some things, and the rest is reporter intuition.”
“So you could be wrong,” Leonard said.
“About some of it, but I think I read between the lines pretty well. The blackmail idea, that’s all speculation, of course. I mean, shit, she’s not going to tell me they’re going to sell me a ride and some ass, and then add, ‘Oh, by the way, we’re going to blackmail you so hard you’ll be constipated.’”
“But you’re in?” I said.
“I thought so. She pulled me up on a laptop right there, saw the job I had. I had to give her my name, you see. Got cornered. Could have given her a false name, but I wouldn’t have had the cover. I tried to make out the Pulitzer nomination had led to a big publishing contract on a book I was writing on my time in Afghanistan. But she started pedaling backwards then. That was all stuff in the bush, not in the hand. She knew better. I think she believed I really had been given a recommendation for the place and that I had a job I loved, blackmail material, but she also figured if I worked at the Camp Rapture paper I wasn’t making much. Not enough to be driving the car I was in and own it. Not enough to buy their kind of car and whatever else they were selling. She wasn’t going to wait for me to finish a book. Frank’s smart. She gets you right up to the door, cracks it a little, shows you some light, lets you hear a little music on the other side, but she doesn’t let you in if you don’t fit all the categories. I could tell she was clicking in that license number on the car I parked outside. I hadn’t parked so she could see it, but some guy came out of nowhere, out there on the lot, looked at the car, and walked away. You can bet the license number came up on her computer.”
“So you were fucked like us?”
“No. Lady owns it shifted it into my name, and we messed with the dates of purchase. You’re not the only one who knows people. It’ll only be that way for a few hours, then it goes back to the way it really is, so we don’t get caught, but I was hoping that was enough.”
“Does this lady of yours work at Motor Vehicles?” I asked.
“Yep,” he said. “But she’s got some inherited money. We take vacations now and again, on her dime.”
Figures, I thought.
“But it doesn’t matter,” Cason said. “Frank has contacts, too, I figure. Some blackmail victims, perhaps, or someone on their payroll. Might be dropping a few dollars at places where she can get things done, including the DMV. She figured it out pretty quick. She didn’t say anything, but I could see it in her eyes. I had been squealed out, or something or other had gone wrong, because she knew from whatever she saw on the computer—whatever that guy in the lot saw and posted when he went back inside. She’s getting information in real time while you sit there. Next thing I knew the catalog was closed, I had her card and a promise to call, and I was out the door. It was done so smooth I hardly realized it until I was standing on the lot.”
“How it worked for us, too,” I said.
“Actually,” Leonard said, “our exit was less smooth.”
“Thanks to you and the goddamn petunias,” I said.
“I fucked it up,” Cason said. “I should have spent a few days building a backstory, setting some things up with friends, contacts. I could have made it work better, but I was thinking it might all just be bullshit. It wasn’t. Now I’ve got my radar up, and I want to find out more about the place. It’s quite the scam, and it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a lot more to it than what we think. I’ve got the nose for this kind of stuff, and I smell a big story here.” He tapped his nose to assure us he did indeed have the equipment with which to smell a story. “I don’t know what’s making it smell, but I want to find out. None of that helps you with Sandy, but maybe she’s in the mix somewhere.”
“She was a journalist,” I said. “Graduate in that profession without a job. What if she got wind of what was going on there and, being a looker herself, she thought she’d slip in, get a job as a car accessory, and find out the true story? She got past all the hurdles for what she wanted to do, slipped in and planned to write about it, and got caught.”
“Maybe she just liked the idea of money from high-class hooking,” Leonard said.
“Also a possibility,” I said. “And some journalists go the whole hog, invest right down to the skin.”
“That would be me,” Cason said. “At least it has been me.”
“All that is interesting,” Leonard said, “but what we got to think about is Sandy, even if her grandmother ought to be run over by a truck.”
“And after she gave you an orange soda,” I said.
“I’m ungrateful sometimes,” Leonard said.
I looked at Cason. “We owe you one.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said. “I’m still on this. You promised me the story if there was a story. I said I smelled one. I plan on keeping the nostrils wide open. I got contacts all over East Texas and elsewhere. There’s this guy here in town called Weasel. He might be able to find me something. He’s into everything, here and within two or three hundred miles of here. For all he’s done he’s only spent five years in the slammer. So he’s pretty connected and pretty sneaky. Weasel may be our guy.”
“Weasel?” Leonard said. “Now, that sounds trustworthy.”
“I don’t know his mother actually named him that,” Cason said. “He’s about five feet tall and slippery without being wet. He doesn’t act dangerous, but I suspect he is, at least to some degree. He’ll do most anything for a buck, and probably has.”
“Can you trust him?” I asked.
“Not entirely, but enough to get what I want if I pay him a little. Out of the money you gave me, of course.”
“So you’re hanging on to that?”
“I’ll give you half back now, but the rest I’m keeping for expenses and Weasel money.”
“All right,” I said. “For now, keep it all.”
We talked a bit more about things, but it was just the same thing we had discussed recycled, and so we quickly called it a night. Cason walked across the yard and drove away.
Leonard said, “Is it a problem I sleep in my old room?”
“Of course not,” I said.
Inside, Leonard headed to his room, the one we had built onto the house for him, and I went upstairs. Brett was lying in bed with the lamp on, reading a book. Buffy was lying beside her with her head in Brett’s lap. I told her Leonard was staying the night in his old room.
“Okay,” she said. “How’d it go with Mr. Slick?”
“A little of something and a lot of nothing,” I said and told her some of what he told us, because as the owner of the business she needed to know.
“So Weasel’s our next step.”
“Unless we can find more steps,” I said.
“This is turning out to be harder than I thought,” Brett said. “This private-eye crap.”
“Sorry you quit the nursing job now?” I said.
“Still not missing wiping asses,” she said, “though now and again I long to change a colostomy bag. As for the detective business, what I’m feeling is I’ve bitten off more than I can chew with two sets of teeth. Now I’m worrying about paying the building payment, the lights, water, Internet.”
“I always feel like I’ve bitten off more than I can chew,” I said. “And usually I have.”
“But it works out?”
“Mostly. I have to chew some of it for a long time, though. Sometimes a little of it slops out of my mouth.”
I took off my clothes and put on my pajamas and crawled under the covers. Brett turned out the light. “No alarm tomorrow,” she said.
“Suits me,” I said, and we held one another. Buffy started pushing in between us, trying to find her spot.
It was very nice, very homey, and very comfortable. Why can’t things stay comfy like that?
15
Me and Brett got to the office about ten. It beat going into the chicken
-processing plant at 6:00 a.m. or working in the fields from daylight to dark, but the idea of being an office man hadn’t quite taken hold of me. I had also given Cason our advance from Ms. Buckner, and that made me a poor office man and might require a bit of explanation to Brett later.
When Leonard came we went to the house to exercise. Out in the carport we lifted light free weights, then worked on a score of self-defense techniques, sparred lightly with boxing for a while, then switched to kickboxing. There was no way to do ground work comfortably, which is one reason it can be overrated. You fall down on cement or the hard ground, it’s different than if you’re working a mat or fighting someone whose basic approach you know, someone who doesn’t have a knife or pistol in their pocket or a buddy around the corner, or doesn’t have ring rules about gouging out your eyes. Going to the ground is not a choice I’d make on purpose. Still, it was a weakness in our game, because you don’t always get to choose if you stand or go down.
Leonard and I went at it for a while, making light contact, not anything brutal, just keeping ourselves loose, but it was hot already and nearly lunchtime, and we weren’t kids anymore, so we gave it up, went in the house. Leonard took a shower downstairs, and I took one upstairs. Leonard still had some clothes in a drawer in his room, and he had those on when I came down. I had changed into something loose and comfortable. I decided to make sandwiches for all of us to have at the office. While I was opening a can of tuna and putting it into a bowl to mix, Leonard said, “Seems we’re on to something, way Cason talked.”
“Yeah,” I said, spooning the right amount of mayonnaise into the bowl. “They’re careful. Once they get their hooks in someone, they’ve got them in deep, and the cash cow just keeps supplying the milk until it can’t anymore. Or they sense their victim is worn out enough to say, ‘Get me some popcorn and I’ll show the film myself.’ Maybe then they back off. It could become a standoff. You don’t care anymore, but now neither do they. So you don’t speak up about it, and they don’t show it to anyone. Everything stays even. I think it’s a careful con. They’ve done it enough to know when they can’t do it anymore, and I figure there’s some law involvement.”
“Some palms greased?”
“Yep. That way, say it’s a guy, he keeps his mouth shut because he can’t get any relief from either side, the law or the blackmailers. By just taking it in the ass, he keeps the wife, job, or both, or his civic pride, and they’ve made a healthy amount of money before whoever being blackmailed gets to the point where he, or she, doesn’t give a flying fuck anymore.”
“Thing is, our job isn’t to worry about the whores or the blackmail, it’s to find Sandy.”
“But can we actually leave the blackmail part alone?”
“Probably not,” Leonard said. “And they are most likely entwined.”
We wrapped the sandwiches in plastic, put them in a paper bag, got some cans of diet soda out of the refrigerator, including a Diet Dr Pepper, which Leonard cursed but would still drink in spite of the lack of sugar, and headed out to Leonard’s truck.
As he drove us over there, I said, “I’ll just mention this once, and then you can do with it what you want. How is it with you and John? Done?”
“I hope so, but then when it gets late, I hope not. I miss him then. I keep thinking if I had said this or that, or done this or that, it might be different. But I know deep down I wouldn’t do those things. I’m not going to ask a god I don’t believe in for forgiveness before I suck John’s dick or he sucks mine. But sometimes, when it’s late, I think I can do it for him. But a minute passes, and I know I can’t do it for anyone. I guess I’m selfish.”
“Just honest with yourself. After midnight everything is important, until about three or four in the morning, and then it’s still important, but less so. And then when you wake up in the morning most of it isn’t important at all.”
“I appreciate your letting me stay with you and Brett again.”
“You’re my brother. You’re always welcome, even when I don’t want you around.”
“It makes me feel better to know someone else is in the house, even if it’s not my house. That I’m not all alone.”
“And if John was at your apartment? How would that feel?”
“That wouldn’t feel so good, either. I think I’d try again, long as I didn’t have to play the games. I’d try until I pissed him off or threw him out. I’m actually thinking of buying a blow-up fuck doll. They have some very nice male ones.”
“Please promise me you will keep it clean,” I said.
“You have my word,” Leonard said.
“And that you will keep it at your place. For all that is holy, I do not want to wake up in the middle of the night and hear you making plastic squeak in our house.”
16
Weasel came by the office the next day with Cason. He was well named. He was small with a large nose and no chin and quick eyes and a wiry muscularity. He looked like he could squeeze through a hole smaller than he was. He was dark-skinned and maybe Hispanic, maybe black, maybe a whole gumbo of all kinds of folks. He wore a black shirt way too big for him. You could have housed two of him in it.
Even coming out of the heat and wearing black, he didn’t seem to sweat much. He was as cool a customer as a corpse. He came in ahead of Cason, gave the room a sweep. He moved like a guy who was used to checking his surroundings, watching for predators or prey.
Cason looked his usual dapper self, though he had a sweaty glow about him, and the front of his blue shirt and the underarms of it were wet with sweat. No deodorant in existence could defeat the onslaught of East Texas heat and humidity. Unless you were Weasel.
Cason nodded at Brett. Brett nodded back. Neither seemed comfortable with the other.
Weasel’s eyes continued to drift over all of us, then held on Buffy, who was holding down the couch. His eyes moved again, finally settled on Brett, who was sitting on the edge of the desk wearing white shorts and a loose green top.
Weasel said in a kind of Yankee voice with vowels so hard you could have used them to crack ice, “Oh, hell, lady, you are one sleek model.”
“Yes, I am,” Brett said. “Thanks for noticing.”
Introductions were made. Weasel had a last name. Rolf.
Cason said, “Weasel’s got some information. It’s sweeter than we thought; not as sweet as we’d like. And I’m going to say it right up front. Maybe questionable.”
“That hurts,” Weasel said. “After all we’ve meant to each other you got to go on and say something like that.”
“I can live with it,” Cason said.
Weasel grinned, took a client chair, and crossed his legs carefully, as if he were a girl in a short skirt and had to be careful about giving a free show. “You let people smoke in here?”
“Only if they’re on fire,” Brett said.
“Fair enough. I got some chew. You got a bottle I can spit in?”
“I can give you a bottle, and you can take it home with you to spit in,” Brett said. “There’ll be no spitting in anything in here.”
“You’re a ballbreaker, lady,” Weasel said.
“Just sanitary,” Brett said.
“Tell them, Weasel,” Cason said.
“I know a little about all this, cause there’s lots of us off the grid, so to speak, who do know some stuff. Know what I’m saying?”
We didn’t respond. He wasn’t waiting for us to. It was just his way of talking.
“I ask around, and I say, what’s the deal here, you know? Not that blunt, but that’s what it finally got to, cause I know some people know Frank, and they think she’s hot, but they don’t know what I know, that she’s an ex-con, a man that got his goober trimmed.”
“So far,” Leonard said, “you haven’t told us anything we don’t already know.”
“All right, then,” he said. “I’m coming to the good part, part worth the money Statler here is paying me. Some of this stuff I asked about, to my contacts, see, some I already
knew. Intimately, you might say.”
“By the way,” Cason said to me. “When he says ‘money’ he means your money.”
Brett looked at me.
“Takes money to make money,” I said.
“Or it just takes money to lose money,” she said.
“Hey, you going to let me say my say here or what?” Weasel said. “You paid for it, so let me give it to you. Otherwise I got things I can do.”
“Go on,” I said.
“There’s a fellow I know, said he knows a fellow named Ron Bantor, and Bantor bought a car from Frank’s place. This was, I guess, five years ago. In fact, this information is five years old, and the fella told me about it, he can’t tell me anything now. But I remember the story.”
“And how did this fellow know about Bantor?” I asked. “And why can’t he tell you anything? Though I have an idea.”
“Coming to that. So this Ron Bantor, he finds out with the car comes some A-one hole. Sorry, lady.”
“Tell it however you will,” she said. “There’s nothing you can say that will cause me to like you less than I already do.”
“So the snatch comes with the car, and the car costs more than it ought to, even with the snatch that comes with it, cause, hell, ain’t none of that snatch made of platinum. And at some point, way I see it, a car is just a car. But more to the point, rumor was the snatch was named Sandy.”
“You know that for a fact?” Brett said. “That her name was Sandy?”
“Heard this whole story from a guy what knew, and I’ve checked with some outside sources, got pretty much the same story.”
“Pretty much?” Brett said.
“Not like this stuff gets written down, lady. It’s a kind of story might grow some hair as it rolls downhill. I can only tell you what I know, hair and all. So Ron, he’s got the car and the girl, this Sandy, but then he finds out it’s got a trip goes with it to Italy, and he wants to take it. Nice trip. Nice tail. Figures then he can come home and ride around in a nice car.”