“I gave you the tools to find the tools,” I said.
“True, but I’m your boss, and shit rolls downhill in a large stinky ball. Catch.”
35
I went over to Leonard and Pookie’s room, told them what Brett told me.
“Bottom line,” Leonard said, “it’s like that movie where they say follow the money. We follow that, we find what happened to Jackie and her baby, if there is one. All this talk about segregation, shit, it’s the money, you wait and see.”
“Why not go talk with George?” Pookie said. “He works for Professor, and us knowing George was stealing money from Professor, even if he didn’t end up with it, might not be something he would want revealed. Could give us some leverage and make him cooperative.”
“I like it,” Leonard said.
“Me too,” I said.
36
We got directions to George’s home from Brett, but when we drove out there, there was a burned-down house with a washing machine in the yard, blackened by fire. No one had lived in that spot for a long time. Somehow, George had gone off the grid, at least temporarily.
Plan B was since we were close to Longview, we would drive over there, and Pookie would rent a car and drive back out to the hill over the junkyard, find someplace to park, and see when George headed home. For all we knew, George had left the day before and was on vacation in the Bahamas. But as it stood, Pookie observing him and following him home and then giving us a call with directions was the best we could come up with. We wanted to talk to him somewhere other than the junkyard, somewhere away from Professor’s influence, should he coincidentally be at the yard.
We figured this was a good plan because George hadn’t met Pookie, and he didn’t know the rental, but he knew my car and he knew me and Leonard.
By the time we got to Longview and rented the car and stopped to have coffee and a snack, because Pookie insisted, it was near what we thought would be George’s quitting time.
Me and Leonard drove to a place not far from the junkyard but out of sight and parked and waited to hear from Pookie. We hoped no one thought we looked suspicious.
We played I spy for a while, but there wasn’t that much to spy, and Leonard cheated. He changed what he had spied if he thought I was figuring it out. It was like playing with a five-year-old, but with a nastier vocabulary.
After a bit, the rain, which had left us for a while, came back. The sky turned dark and the clouds rolled in and there were splashes of rain on the windshield.
Leonard’s cell rang. “Got you,” Leonard said into the phone, then clicked off. “Pookie is following him. We’ll get a report from him with directions shortly.”
Pookie called back, and we followed his directions. George didn’t live far from the junkyard. He lived down a road that ran into a path through the woods. It was a narrow road of shipped-in caliche and it worked good for the tires in the rain.
We saw Pookie parked off to the side. He had the rental car turned around, facing us. We pulled up in front of him. He got out in the rain and ran toward us, slid into the backseat.
“Just a bit farther up the road,” Pookie said. “Best to walk from here.”
“Did he see you?” I asked.
“Please,” Pookie said. “Fucking spy satellite couldn’t have found me, I am that stealthy.”
We got out in the rain and started walking. We didn’t have umbrellas or raincoats. What we had was wet clothes and skin. It was a damn shabby night, and I felt pretty shabby myself.
Only good thing was we didn’t have far to go.
George’s house wasn’t a house but a double-wide trailer that looked as if it had been recycled from a major storm event. The windows had cheap curtains over them, and the bottom of the trailer had a dark outside waterline. The front door had a green lumber porch built up in front of it with an overhang. Rain cascaded off the slanted porch roof in a waterfall so thick it could have drowned a hippopotamus wearing diving gear.
I bet it was nice inside. Probably an example of interior decorating at its best. Lots of deer heads and a couch covered in camouflage, a shit-ring around the toilet, and maybe some cum-stained towels.
It was the only trailer on that lot, and it was set into a cutaway of the forest, which left it exposed out front and with trees at the back and on the sides. There was a pole with an automatic light on it, and it was on because the rainy sky had turned the world dark and soon the night would add to it.
In the glow of the light, I could see a small TV satellite dish on top of the trailer and I thought I recognized three struggling blades of grass on a patch of clay out to the side of the trailer along with some random spots of caliche.
In the caliche driveway, a soda-pop-orange truck was parked.
We spread out. I went left and Leonard went straight to the front door, hunkered down on the tacked-on porch. Pookie went right.
When I came around to the back of the trailer, I saw one window had open curtains. I ducked down under it and glanced over at Pookie coming up from the other side of the trailer. There was a door at the back of the trailer and a few steps leading up to it.
I met Pookie at the porch, and we got up close to the door and pressed our ears against it. We could hear a TV going. It was the usual twenty-four-hour redneck-news channel.
There was no overhang on the back porch and the rain came down on us like wet bullets. I was so miserable, I was ready to do something even if it was wrong.
I left Pookie where he was and went back to the window with the open curtains, lifted my head, and peeked inside. I could see George sitting on the couch with his shoes off, his socked feet up on a stool.
I edged back to Pookie, got out my lock pick, and went at it, silently as possible. In the meantime, Pookie sent Leonard a text letting him know what we were doing.
The lock snicked softly, and when it did, I jerked the door back, and Pookie and his pistol slipped inside.
37
George jumped to his feet as we came in, got caught up in the stool, and fell on his face. He started crawling toward the corner of the room where a shotgun leaned against the wall. I sort of accidentally stepped on his hand and stood on it with most of my weight.
He let out with a scream. By then Pookie had the shotgun.
I took my foot off George’s hand, said, “Why don’t you sit on the couch, partner.”
He sat on the couch, which was not covered in the expected camouflage but had been nicely decorated in what appeared to be coffee, beer, and probably ejaculation stains. He sat there with his teeth gritted, holding his injured hand against his chest.
I picked up the stool George had tripped over, pulled it back a few feet from the couch, and sat down on it. Pookie gave me the shotgun. I placed it across my knees.
Pookie went over and turned on the light.
I looked around. There was indeed a deer head on the wall, and the nose of it looked to have been a moth buffet. One of the eyes looked as if it might fall out of the head. There was a cobweb in one nostril.
“What the fuck are you guys doing?” George said.
“We thought this was where the party was,” I said.
“Fuck you,” he said.
“Man, that told us off,” I said.
“Yeah,” Pookie said. “I feel told.”
Pookie picked up the remote from the arm of the couch and cut off the TV racket, tossed the remote on the couch by George, then moved to the front door to let Leonard in.
Leonard came inside. He had been under the porch overhang, but he was still damp. He shook like a dog, slinging rain everywhere, including on me.
“You’re the first nigger ever through that doorway,” George said. “And you’ll be the last.”
“Yeah. You look like you’re in a great position to give me shit.”
Leonard sat in a fat-cushioned armchair and kind of worked his ass around on it.
“I’ll burn that chair when you’re gone,” George said.
“Oug
ht to burn this whole place down, way it looks,” Leonard said. “I’d start with that fucking couch. What the fuck, man? All that money Jackie put in the bank, and you never got around to buying a nice place, and now she’s gone, and you’re left with dick, and I bet it’s a little one.”
“What money?” George said. But I could see his eyes had brightened with interest.
“Don’t go dumb,” I said. “Or dumber than usual, anyway. You were stealing money from Professor. If Professor found out, bet you told him Jackie stole it for Ace, since he ended up with it.”
Of course, he hadn’t actually ended up with it, but I thought that was a good place to start.
“Goddamn it,” George said.
“Bet it hurts to think Ace was working his weenie in your gal’s pussy,” Leonard said. “Big, black wiggle-weenie. Even made a baby with her.”
“That kid didn’t last long,” George said, and there was an odd look on his face. It looked a lot like the one he’d had when I stood on his hand.
“Here’s the thing we’re thinking,” I said. “We have all of Jackie’s accounting, how and where she put Professor’s money. He may not even know yet it’s missing, and the thing is, we got a clear trail to you, buddy. We can prove a lot of that money was in your account before it was in Ace’s and then, later on, someone else’s.”
“Someone else’s?” George said. “Someone besides Ace?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You didn’t know about that. You knew about Ace because I bet she told you. Kind of a jab. That might be why she can’t be found. You didn’t like being made a fool of, though, frankly, George, I think you should accept fool as your full-time job.”
“Wait a minute, now,” he said. “I didn’t do nothing to her.”
“Remains to be seen,” I said.
“Look here, I didn’t know she was doing that,” George said. “Not at first.”
“And when you did,” Leonard said, “you told her to put it back in Professor’s account. Want us to believe that?”
“Sure. I didn’t want that money.”
“I call bullshit on that,” Pookie said. “I think you’d steal quarters off a dead man’s eyes.”
George jerked his head toward me. “Who the hell is this plug?”
“He’s going to be the plug that sticks that pistol in your ear and gets rid of about forty years of ear wax,” Leonard said.
I could see that George had gone from being frightened to being terrified. And I don’t think it was the gun threat that was doing it.
“Thing is, your fault, Jackie’s fault, the fault in the stars,” I said, “doesn’t make a lot of difference. I think you try and explain to Professor how you didn’t know it was going on, that’ll be like kicking a dead rabbit and telling someone it’s jumping.”
Sweat beads popped on George’s forehead. Outside, thunder rolled and the rain came down harder than before, spattering on the cheap mobile-home roof. Loud enough I had to speak up.
“Know what I think?” I said. “I got an idea you did use some of that money, maybe laying you out a getaway plan, and Jackie might not have gotten away with it all.”
“Yeah,” Pookie said, “wouldn’t it be funny if some of it traced to a nice house and truck somewhere. Probably in another state.”
“Never did nothing like that,” George said.
“Let me get right to it,” I said. “You need to tell us about Jackie, where she is—”
“I got no idea,” he said.
“Don’t interrupt my man when he’s talking,” Leonard said.
“Like I was saying. You tell us what we want to know, and we won’t tell Professor what you don’t want him to know.”
George hung his head.
“Goddamn it,” he said. “Jackrabbit said we could bleed off more money. To wait. We’d be filthy rich. I didn’t buy anything. I don’t have a goddamn thing waiting anywhere. Don’t even own the junkyard. Professor, he bled me off, said he was helping me. I wanted to pay a bill, I had to go to him to get permission. I worked for that son of a bitch for years, and that’s the thanks I got. I wanted to fuck him over by taking some of his money. And I was sick of those goddamn twins. Always sneaking around.”
“That’s a sad fucking story,” Leonard said.
“Jackrabbit said we would take the money and go, and then after a time she quit hanging around with me and I started getting pissed, and then I find out she’s fucking Ace, and then I wanted my money, or my share, anyway, and I wanted rid of her.”
“I bet you wanted rid of Ace too,” I said.
“Sure,” George said. “Then I found out the accounts she made for me, they were empty. Every cent. There wasn’t even electricity left in those online accounts. I told Professor that I didn’t trust Jackrabbit, said he ought to have someone look at his books. That was my way of getting back at her. He hired some smart-ass from Houston to give the records a check and saw how his money had been shifted. But me, I was in the clear. Ace had the dough by then. Professor never knew I had it, way I figured it.”
“We found her records,” I said. “And they will show you had that money for some time. It will be hard for Professor to believe you didn’t have a clue. We could explain to Professor what you did and just walk away. How will that work out for you? I think those twins will be paying you a visit. It might be best to give us all the information there is to give, because you might end up with the cops, and they like you better when you’re cooperative.”
I let him mull that over.
“Of course, me and Leonard, we’re not law. We can do what we think is best.”
“Yeah,” he said, “and how good will your best be?”
“It’s what you got,” I said. “We’re it, Georgie.”
“I tell you some things,” George said, “you got to protect me best you can.”
“Sure,” I said.
It hurt me a little to know I was telling a lie.
38
I looked at Pookie, said, “It might be time for you to go.”
Leonard got up, walked over to Pookie, and said, “You go on back to the bed-and-breakfast. You can’t be here. Some things the law can’t see and still be the law. We’ll catch up to you later.”
Pookie looked hesitant.
“I mean it,” Leonard said.
Pookie nodded. He and Leonard touched hands, and out Pookie went.
“He’s with the law?” George said. “You said no law.”
“He’s gone now,” Leonard said, and he sat down in the armchair again.
“Tell us something we don’t know,” I said to George. “For that matter, tell us some things we do know, but don’t get cute. Don’t try and beat around the bush.”
You could see George’s brain weighing the possibilities, and then you could see him give in.
“Like I said, I told Professor about the scam Jackrabbit had going, like I had found it out and was turning her in because I wanted to save him his money, money Ace had. I was also mad about the kid. I thought it was mine when she got pregnant. She didn’t tell me otherwise. I thought she was going to the library, turned out she’d been fucking Ace. I was thinking I was going to be a father, and I was getting used to the idea. Then one day she doesn’t come to work, and then the money is gone out of my account. I find out about Ace, and then the baby’s born and it’s black as motor oil. Seen her and it around town a time or two. I didn’t want nothing to do with her then, but I won’t kid you, I was mad about that money too.”
“And that’s when you told Professor,” I said.
“Professor decided it wasn’t going to stand, him being snookered, and by a woman with a nigger baby. No way. You got to understand, he talks smooth, but you fuck with him, he’ll jerk a knot in your dick. Or he’ll have someone do it for him. The twins or someone else. One night, she’s off to the store, her and that kid, and Professor has them nabbed on the way out.”
“By you?” Leonard said.
“No. I couldn’t do that. I didn’
t like what she’d done, that kid and all, and I hated Ace, but I couldn’t do that, knowing what he was going to do. Anyway, Professor had done what he had done. He told me I could have Ace. I followed him one night to her old place, snuck up on him, grabbed the back of his jacket, jerked him down, and killed him with a Boy Scout hatchet. Those motherfuckers are sturdy.”
“About Jackie and the kid?” I said. “What did he do to them?”
“Can I have a smoke?” he said.
“Light up,” I said.
He scrounged around in his shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of smokes, shook one out, and lit it with a lighter he had in the same pocket.
“Professor had her and the kid brought out to the hog farm.”
“And you’re saying you weren’t there?”
George shook his head briskly. “No. No way. But Professor and Red both told me about it. He had Red and the twins throw the kid to the hogs, like it was hog food. It didn’t take them hogs long, Red said. Hog, if it’s hungry enough, can eat a body like a cheese sandwich, and a little body like that…”
George paused. He actually did look bothered. He took a deep drag on his cigarette.
“I’m glad I didn’t see it,” he said.
“Jackrabbit fed to the hogs too?” I said.
“No. They were going to, wanted her to see what happened to the baby as punishment, but when they did that, she tried to climb over the barrier and get to the child. They held her back. She fought like a tiger, Red said, managed to break loose and get away. Baby was ripped apart by that time. She got through the woods out there and they couldn’t find her, and then Jackrabbit wasn’t around anymore. I think if they got her, they’d have said. They both told the same story.