And I remember my mother sighing and saying, “Tell me about it.”
We bought a large cardboard container of coffee at Starbucks as well as a quickie breakfast of eggs and bacon inside what might have been an English muffin and drove back to the safe house and ate and sipped our coffee. When we finished, I called Brett. She answered on the first ring.
“How are you?”
“Peachy,” I said and gave her a rundown.
“You had quite a night. I can tell by your voice that you’re not quite right.”
“I saw a person shot, some people hit by a car, blew a man’s kneecap off, was shot at, a lot, was chased by thugs, scolded by Marvin—unfairly, I think—and me and Leonard found Weasel dead in the trunk of his car stinking to high heaven. And the toilet here is small and rocks when you sit on it. So the usual.”
“Sorry, Hap.”
“My own fault, getting into shit like this.”
“So nothing on Sandy?”
“Zip,” I said. “I get to thinking she might be out there, alive, hiding somewhere, or maybe just a stack of bones and rotting clothes under a rock, and mostly what we do is ride around and shoot at people and take a regular shit.”
“There’s not much else you can do, Hap. It’s been some years since she disappeared. And if she’s dead, and I don’t mean to sound cold, but what’s the hurry?”
“If she’s dead,” I said.
“What do you think?”
“That she’s been fertilizing the soil for some time, but I don’t want to think that. What if I’m wrong, and she’s in some hellhole being forced to whore out? Maybe they’re doping her, hurting her. I think about it too long I feel sick to my stomach.”
“I know how you take things to heart,” she said, “even when it’s not your fault and there’s nothing you can do about it. You can only take it a day at a time, love.”
“Look,” I said, “I think you should stay where you are. There’s not enough room here, really. And I think it’s best we just stay separate for now. Can we afford for you to stay where you are or someplace similar?”
“For a while,” she said. “Then we’re going to have to make new plans. And Chance, she doesn’t know about all this, not the real inside scoop, anyway. But she’s no idiot. I can’t find my way into ‘Daddy is back home shooting the kneecaps off bad guys and breaking legs with crowbars, so we have to stay away right now.’”
“I assume she is not in the room with you.”
“Downstairs having breakfast. She thinks we’re just spending time at the hotel because you’re having the house sprayed for termites.”
“That was your story?”
“I thought about telling her you and Leonard had been quarantined for bubonic plague, but that seemed a little extreme.”
“You told the right lie. You know this means we are no longer empty nesters. We have a dog and maybe a daughter.”
“At least it isn’t Leonard. I say that with love.”
“Damn. I didn’t even think to ask I’ve been so preoccupied. What about Buffy?”
“Right here beside me. We got her from the boarder, brought her back here this morning. We couldn’t leave her, Hap. She is really doing well. I think hotel life agrees with her. They not only allow dogs here, they have dog treats and doggie beds and a place outside for them to poop, provided you clean up afterward. This is a life Buffy could become accustomed to. She seems to like watching cartoons.”
“Sounds fun.”
“It is, but what I’m thinking is maybe we should get out of East Texas for a while. I’m thinking up a big lie to justify that, and I may be getting one cornered. I’m going to lay it on Chance when I get it worked out. I have to tell her something. Say I was planning a vacation and she ought to go with me, all expenses paid as long as they aren’t large expenses. I think I can talk her into that, justify it with some bullshit. But Hap, she isn’t stupid. The girl is smart. She’s going to know I’m telling her shit don’t smell when it does. It might take a little time, but she’ll come to it.”
“If anyone can sell her on a line of shit, it’s you.”
“I’m not sure that was a compliment. You know, Hap? I really, really like her.”
“I don’t actually know anything about her. I want to like her.”
“You can’t help but,” Brett said. “I’ll be devastated if she isn’t your daughter. She’s a buddy. We have so much in common, and she’s so young to be such an old soul.”
“Or you’re a young soul,” I said.
“Aw, how sweet. I like that. Baby, I feel like I’m running out on you. Taking a sabbatical during a time when you need me there with a shotgun and some face paint. I just don’t know what to do with Chance under the circumstances. I don’t mind putting my ass on the line, but not hers.”
“You’re making the right choice. Let her have some time when she’s not scuttling to survive. Daughter or not. You like her, that’s enough. And there’s really nothing you can do here. To be honest, I’m not sure there’s much further we can go as far as Sandy is concerned. She dead-ends at the dealership.”
“So you want to throw in the towel?”
“Just because I don’t think there’s much further we can go doesn’t mean I’m smart enough to quit.”
“You’re a terrier, and Leonard is a pit bull.”
“Technically, I think pit bulls are terriers, too. Leonard is waving hello.”
“Wave back. And let him have his cookies, and don’t get killed, okay?”
“Not in my plans,” I said.
“Tell Leonard I said to watch after you.”
“He always does.”
38
I guess we had been at the safe house about a week when things changed. Brett was traveling with Chance and Buffy on some of our money stash, and I had been keeping in contact with her on a daily basis. She said Chance had never been out of East Texas, except for Louisiana, and was having the time of her life. She said this as if she and I were great world travelers.
They did a tour of Sun Records in Memphis, went to Nashville for a few days, and were uncertain where they were going from there. Thing was, they had to come home sometime because the money would run out. It might not be so bad now. The bikers were still in the can. Frank was stashed away somewhere, and if she were able to give a bit more insider information than she already had, she might do a lot less time, not that she deserved less. Jim Bob wasn’t off the hook altogether, and neither were we, but so far we were still footloose and fancy-free.
I called and had our mail and newspapers held until we were ready to pick them up. I wondered if Chance’s DNA test was in the mail. I was almost afraid to find out. The door at the office had been fixed, but except for the workmen who had been out to do the job and our dropping by quickly to check on the door, we had mostly laid low at the safe house. As for leads on Sandy, we were out of ideas.
We were sitting on the porch in lawn chairs, letting the hot air settle on us, trying to figure what we were going to do next, when Jim Bob showed up. He wasn’t driving the Bitch. He came in a late-model black pickup truck. It looked like a lot of trucks. Nothing fancy. No dice hanging from the window. No plastic Jesus. No curb feelers. He parked in the drive in front of the garage.
He got out and came across the yard. “Qué pasa, motherfuckers?”
“How’d you find us?” Leonard asked.
“I’m a detective. Don’t be silly.”
“Marvin told you, didn’t he?”
“I was smart enough to ask, wasn’t I?”
“For a moment I thought the safe house wasn’t so safe,” Leonard said.
“I’m sure it isn’t,” Jim Bob said. He came up on the porch and sat on it with his feet on the steps. The gray boots he wore had blue stars sprinkled over the toes. His snap-pocket cowboy shirt was blue as well. He took off his hat and placed it on his knee.
“So far no trouble,” I said. “And we’re ready to go home.”
“You
might want to hold up on that one,” he said. “Unlike you, I haven’t been hanging out on the front porch of a supposed safe house eating cookies and drinking coffee and playing with my pecker.”
“We have neither coffee nor cookies,” Leonard said.
“Guess not,” I said. “Leonard ate all the cookies and drank all the coffee.”
“I drank coffee because we are out of Dr Peppers.”
“Well, we do have peckers,” I said.
“You got some news?” Leonard asked.
“Well, me and the barrel racer broke up. I had too much stamina.”
“That’s your news?” I said.
“No. I been researching our hired killer with the comic-book name—the Canceler—and I been looking deep into the car company where Frank worked. I have friends in the FBI, some others on the edges of organized crime, and a few snitches I wouldn’t call friends but I would call reasonably reliable. I been putting together quite a résumé.”
“Where is it?” Leonard asked.
Jim Bob tapped his head with a finger. “Right’cheer. That car company has its main hub in Fort Worth, but its tentacles stretch all over the place. Houston. Austin. Dallas. There’s one in Tyler and one in El Paso. There’s one in Denver, Chicago, Los Angeles, and a number of other places. LaBorde must have been a long shot for them, but then again, they’ve been here for a while, so they are doing well enough. Most people here don’t have money, but the ones who have it really have it, and some of the ones who have it really want cool cars and women and long trips to Italy. Course, they didn’t know being blackmailed came with the deal.
“As for the Canceler, well, he’s supposed to have killed a lot of folks in a lot of places, people who seem to have something to do with the car company. Clients turn up dead, maybe because they wouldn’t pay or got sideways with the companies. Maybe they threatened to go to the police or were going to testify. I don’t know the reasons, but that’s fair-enough guessing. Also others that may or may not have bought cars but were internal problems or external problems—snoops. Weasel would be a prime example. I heard about him, by the way. He sure could build a good website.”
“Marvin told you?” I said.
“Yep.”
“Sandy could have been one of those snoops,” Leonard said. “And she might have paid for it.”
“A cog in the wheel that didn’t quite fit. Don’t know yet. But the thing that doesn’t add up, when I started looking at all the similar killings my FBI buddy let me in on, is the timing. Too many killings too close together, happening in too wide a range to be one person. There’s a crew. Have guns, will travel. They operate to create this idea that it’s one deadly bastard, but it’s several mean-ass bastards. They get paid well to do what they do and to make it scary. That way, word gets around, especially to the underworld: you don’t fuck with the dealership, because if you do, you get whacked and lose your balls. It’s all been men they’ve whacked that I know of, but maybe they just aren’t as theatrical with women. Sandy, for example. Which may be why she hasn’t turned up. Thing is, they fucked up by being too generous with their killings. That way, cause of times and locations, we know it’s not one killer, it’s several. And from what my friend at the FBI says, sometimes it’s several of them on one job. Inside sources think it’s eight people, and they think they know who the eight people are, but they won’t get nailed because the FBI has contacts in the organization that are helping them out.”
“It’s like Frank was saying,” Leonard said. “They let some bad people go to nail other bad people.”
“Yeah,” Jim Bob said. “It’s fucked-up, man. I always say when the law breaks the law, there isn’t any goddamn law. I don’t care who they’re nailing: if there’s stuff going on as bad as what they’re focused on, it’s still bad. For them it gets down to closing high-profile cases. At the moment, bunch of dead rich guys, or a bunch of dead thugs that were going to challenge the company, are no skin off their asses if they can nail some others more easily. That fake money-laundry business, for one. That’s just folks being set up by the bad folks so they can turn them in and get paid, and paid a lot. I told my friend this, the fed, and he says, ‘We know. But it’s easier to nail the money-laundry folks, even if they’re innocent, than a bunch of bad motherfuckers that will kill you.’ ”
“Damn,” I said.
“Our friends in the government,” Jim Bob said. “Tomorrow the worm may turn, but right now the feds are getting what they want out of the deal. In the long run, even if they turn on these guys, they’ll end up letting most of them go, giving them new identities and hiding them in the witness protection program. That could mean the Cancelers, too. It’s less embarrassing for the FBI that way. They don’t have to admit they been ignoring crime to catch crime. Of course, these guys, they get new identities, and pretty soon most if not all are back at their original business, and it becomes even more embarrassing for the feds, so they got to continue keeping it under wraps. Deeper they get into this, the more desperate they are to hide it.”
“That is fucking wrong,” Leonard said.
Jim Bob nodded.
“Knowing that and changing it are two different things. Thing is, the car company is vengeful, and since their cheap biker help blew the job, well, they’ll send someone from the crew, or all the crew. The Cancelers, if you will. Local law enforcement will suddenly find their hands are tied, at least where it would matter to us. The feds will put the pressure on them. The bikers will get tossed into the deal as patsies and serve time, but the real big wheels, they’ll keep on turning, and so will their hit men, ones who grease the wheels for the real owner, who seems to be our Barbecue King.”
“So it’s just a matter of time before the Cancelers know where we are,” I said.
Jim Bob made a clicking sound with his tongue.
“It’s possible we might negotiate our way out, say we’re going to hang up investigating Sandy. We could be put with the right people to have that meeting. Kind of a catch-and-release program, but then again, you have to know they might catch and not release.”
“You know us better than that,” I said.
“I do. You’re not smart enough to quit.”
“And besides,” I said, “we slither out of the deal for now, who’s to say they won’t come back later and whack us just to make sure?”
“My thoughts exactly,” Leonard said.
“And mine,” Jim Bob said.
“So what do we do?” I said. “Wait until they decide to hit us?”
“That could be an idea,” Jim Bob said. “Thing is, it could be any time. Now. Tomorrow. A month from now. What we got to do is prepare, and then we got to annoy the shit out of them until they come out of the dark. Or find a way to take the fight to them.”
“The Barbecue King?” Leonard said. “We brace him.”
“That’s a good idea,” Jim Bob said. “Go to the top.”
“That will get the shit stirred, no doubt,” I said. “But we do that, and there really are eight of those guys, then we got to consider all eight might come after us at once.”
“Three into eight goes how many times?” Leonard said.
“It goes badly,” I said.
“We need a crew,” Jim Bob said. “I’m sure we would do just fine, the three of us, but I don’t know about you guys, lately I get a little more tired than I used to.”
“Me, too,” I said.
“Not me,” Leonard said. “I can fight all day and fuck all night.”
“Sure you can,” Jim Bob said. “But maybe we ought to put this crew together anyway.”
“I have an idea or two,” I said.
“Good,” Jim Bob said, standing up, talking as he walked toward his truck. “Me, I’m going to venture out into the wilds, fearless and handsome. Strong and noble. One man alone against the elements.”
“So what’s that mean?” Leonard said.
“Figure we’re in for a long haul, so I’m going to go buy some groceries
and such. I’m not back in a couple, three hours, you fuckers start looking for my balls. If you find them, find me next. I’ll need them back.”
39
I gave Cason a call.
“Hey,” he said. “I been researching the shit out of things. Or, rather, I got a friend here at the paper who has. He’s like a computer wizard. You know what he figured out?”
“That there is more than one killer?”
“There goes my news.”
“Weasel’s dead,” I said.
“No shit? Damn. I didn’t like him and can’t say I miss him, but I got some good information from him. I had already sort of cut him loose, though, knowing he was planning to move. Guess he didn’t do it soon enough.”
I told him what we knew about Weasel. “That’s not for public consumption, but in time it can go into your article, leaving me and Leonard out of it.”
“Who’s going to believe an article about a league of assassins?”
“I don’t think they’re quite that impressive. Eight guys who kill people is all they are.”
“That’s pretty impressive.”
“It’s presumptuous, but me and Leonard want to set things right.”
“No way that can ever be done,” Cason said.
“Not completely,” I said. “But in increments. I’m tired of not sleeping in my own bed. I’m tired of being nervous. I’m tired of Brett being gone on a permanent vacation until this is over. I want my life back. We need to put together a crew to help us get things straight.”
“That won’t be me. I did a thing not long back for an old army buddy, and it wasn’t a thing I wanted to do, but I went against the grain and did it. I’ve had enough. But I know a guy who lives for this stuff. He throws in with you, long as you don’t fuck him over, he’ll stay until things are done. Someone else comes along next week, hires him to whack you, well, he might just sign up. You can never tell about Booger.”
“Booger?”
“What he prefers to be called. And believe me, he is a booger.”