“Not as good a hiding place as I had hoped,” she said.
“Hey, Jackrabbit,” Leonard said.
Johnny said, “Hey.”
We turned and looked where he was looking. The bed. Underneath it we could see someone lying on the floor. Johnny walked over to the bed with his gun drawn.
“I am not armed,” said the body from under the bed.
And then the body inched its way out into the open.
It was Professor.
52
We hustled Professor and Jackie downstairs, and Johnny went out to his car and brought me a T-shirt with a Marvel Creek Police Department logo on it. The logo was red. The shirt was blue, like me. I pulled it on. It was Johnny’s size. You could have put two of me in it.
In the living room we all sat down, and I said, “So the baby wasn’t fed to the hogs?”
Professor laughed. “You got that story from George. That’s what he was told. What we wanted him to think. Look here, Delf, you see the baby is okay and Jackie is okay, so what’s the problem?”
“My brothers aren’t okay, and George isn’t so good either. And you can add Red and the twins to the pile.”
“The twins too?” Professor said.
“They weren’t as bad as you thought,” Johnny said.
“Oh, they were bad,” I said, “just me and Leonard were more bad.”
“They came with good recommendations,” Professor said. “I paid them well. But just for protection. Nothing more.”
Delf looked at Jackie. “What the hell?”
“We fell in love,” Jackie said, and she gave Professor the sweetest look I have ever seen a woman give a man. It made my skin crawl.
“Black baby,” Johnny said. “What gives, Professor? What about all that segregation shit?”
“I had a front to keep up,” Professor said. “Without it, I’d lose influence.”
“Professor doesn’t care about color,” Jackie said. “Not really.”
“Jackie and me, we were a few days away from heading for someplace nice,” Professor said.
“I got it,” I said. “You and Jackie moved the money around so it wouldn’t show you always had access to it. She’s a whiz with numbers and computers, you’re a con man. You don’t believe in anything. You two took off—you three, actually—she and the baby would be thought dead, and you’d just be thought gone. That takes care of a lot of problems.”
“Jackie changed me,” Professor said. “That baby changed me. Boy’s not mine, but it might as well be. I was selling all the hogs tomorrow. The farm. That was going to be the easy running cash.”
“And you decided to tie up loose ends, like George,” Leonard said.
“I didn’t say that,” Professor said. “Listen here. There’s a lot of money. Let us go, you could end up with some of it. All of you.”
“Write down he tried to bribe us,” Delf said to Johnny.
Johnny didn’t write down anything, but he nodded.
I looked at Jackie, sitting on the couch, the sleeping baby in her arms.
“I have a feeling the missing librarian didn’t move off anywhere,” I said.
53
Leonard was home in LaBorde with Pookie on the day I went out to Miss Cinner’s house with Delf and Johnny and a couple of men with shovels.
Delf and Johnny went through the place and found nothing outside of dust motes, a cutout section of carpet from the living room, and a damp smell in the kitchen.
The backyard was enclosed by a tall wooden fence. There was a scattering of flowers. The grass had grown up high, and it was especially high in one spot at the edge of the fence where the ground was slightly sunken.
Delf had a couple of minions dig there. While they did that, me and Delf and Johnny stood over them watching. Johnny even had his arms crossed. You would have thought we were important, way we stood there doing nothing.
“Funerals for the deputies tomorrow morning,” Delf said. “You coming?”
“I’ll be there. It could just as easily have been me,” I said. “So, the twins?”
“Dug one out of the hog shit,” Delf said. “The other one got pretty well eaten by the hogs, even the clothes got eaten, except for one shoe. I’m looking for an amputee that might need it.”
“What’s peculiar,” Johnny said, “one in the shit, we took his fingerprints, and they’re not in the system. We don’t really know who they are and may never know unless DNA turns up something. I have a feeling it might not.”
The diggers were at it about fifteen minutes before they found something. The missing patch of carpet. It was rolled and wrapped in duct tape. They cut the carpet loose of the duct tape and inside was a badly decomposed body. There was a ferocious stink about it.
We stood around the hole and looked down on what was inside.
Delf put his hands on his hips, crinkled his nose, said, “Miss Cinner, I presume.”
54
It was late at night and I was back home in my own bed, having been to two funerals in one day. I was sleeping sound, all things considered, when Brett elbowed me awake and clicked on the lamp on her side of the bed.
“What?” I said.
“Don’t sound unpleasant,” she said.
“If you’re waking me for sex, I forgive you,” I said. “If not, I don’t forgive you. I was dreaming I was Batman.”
“It’s not for sex, unless you really are Batman. Okay, here’s the reason I woke you up. What’s your favorite color?”
“What the hell?”
“Okay, your favorite number?”
“Jesus, Brett.”
“Just fucking with you. Look here. I can’t sleep. I got questions and need some answers. Let me get this straight. Jackie and Professor became partners?”
“You woke me for that?”
“Yep,” she said. “She must have been something in the sack, to get him to give up his prejudice like that.”
“Professor really fell in love with her, and he didn’t care if she gave birth to a litter of rabbits. She got her hooks in him, and he liked it. Wouldn’t surprise me if it didn’t go both ways. He might have been next on her list to steal from. She might have even had plans to do him in.”
“What about the librarian? Who killed her?”
“Could have been any of Professor’s crowd, even her cousin Ace. Jackie was working everyone. Neighbors saw Jackie there, but after a point they didn’t see Cinner. Appears Jackie took over the place. No telling what was done to Cinner to get her banking information. Miss Cinner thinks she’s got a friend, and instead, she has the devil. I don’t know. I’m guessing. We may never know.”
“What about Sebastian?” she said.
“Again, no idea, same as when I got home. No revelations in my sleep.”
“So that’s it?”
“That’s it. Hey, baby, now that we’re awake, how about we try and reach the moon?”
“Are you asking to have sex?”
“Begging.”
“No, thank you,” she said, rolling over and turning out the light. “I’m sleepy now. Good night.”
55
Couple days later, me and Brett and Leonard met the Mulhaneys at the office. We told them Jackie was in jail, told them what had happened.
“I hate telling you this, but she told the chief over there that she has nothing left for you two,” I said. “And don’t come see her in jail.”
Thomas looked sullen. Judith looked somewhere between sad and relieved. She was very pale that day and seemed to have turned frail.
“Thank you,” she said. “Better to know than to not.”
Leonard mentioned there was an outstanding debt for services rendered. They smiled and left.
About a month after our meeting with the family, Jackie was released from jail. Professor copped to everything, said he forced her to do what she did, and Jackie didn’t argue against it. That got her off the hook. I don’t think anyone believed she was innocent. They just couldn’t prove she was gu
ilty, not with Professor taking the rap like that, and I think her having that baby helped the court decide to let her go free and take care of the child.
But the topper came one afternoon when Brett got back to the house from shopping and said, “Did you hear?”
“Hear what?”
“In Marvel Creek, someone shot Jackie and her baby to death.”
“What the hell? Wait a minute. What was she shot with?”
Brett shook her head. “A gun. That’s all I know.”
Not long after, Leonard came over. He had heard about it too.
“She was at the Professor’s property, and someone broke in and shot her, and then the baby, who was in a bassinet. One shot to the head with a twenty-two for both.”
I said, “Where did we first hear that probable scenario?”
“Thomas,” Leonard said. “Come on. Drive me.”
56
We rode over to the mobile home where Thomas lived with his mother. One end still had the tarp over it. There was a brand-new mobile home moved in next to it. The big truck was parked near the new home and it had a set of new tires on it and fancy hubcaps.
Driving up in the yard, we saw there was a black wreath on the door of the new trailer.
Leonard got out of my car and walked up the steps in front of the trailer’s entrance and knocked hard on the door. I stood below the steps and rocked on my heels. The air was warm but still as death.
It took a while, but Thomas answered. He was wobbly and drunk and his pants were unzipped and his underwear was showing.
“What the hell do you want, nigger?” Thomas said.
Leonard grabbed Thomas by the throat so fast it was like a CGI effect. He pulled him out of the doorway of the mobile home and turned a little and sent Thomas hurtling over the steps and onto the ground.
Thomas started to get up. I said, “Stay there, if you know what’s good for you.”
“What the fuck is with you guys?” Thomas said.
Leonard went over and squatted near Thomas, who was in a half-lying, half-sitting position.
“Where’s your mother?” Leonard said. “I don’t mind she hears this.”
“She died, had a heart attack a week ago, you black moron,” Thomas said. “Why there’s a wreath on the door. You ain’t getting another cent from me, by the way, don’t care if I do owe it.”
Leonard ignored him, looked at the brand-new mobile home, glanced at the new tires on the truck. I saw his expression change as he turned his attention back to Thomas.
“Keep the money,” Leonard said. “You might need it for buying twenty-two shells. Though I think you got a bit of money from somewhere, seeing your new home. Your old daddy, who knew you didn’t like him, I’m thinking he might have given you a call to help him fulfill that fucked-up plan he had, that’s what I think. You’d be all for that. Revenge and easy money in one swoop. Bet you enjoyed pulling that rope around his neck, cutting that key out of his belly, taking that money out of his bank box. It all falls into place now. Want to know what else I figure?”
“I don’t give a shit,” Thomas said.
“Thanks for asking,” Leonard said. “My figure is you already got rid of the twenty-two you used to kill your sister and nephew. I bet you never even knew the kid’s name. I know I didn’t, but you should have.”
“You don’t know nothing,” Thomas said.
“You may think you’re a badass, way you could sneak up on your sister and her son, do them like you done. I got nothing for her. I think she’s as big a piece of shit as you are, as Professor is. But that child never did anything to anyone. Baby’s only crime far as you were concerned was it had dark skin. The kid didn’t even have a personality yet.”
“Get off of me,” Thomas said.
“Here’s something I want you to think about,” Leonard said. “I want you to know that one day you’ll come out of this new blood-paid mobile home on your way to pick up a six-pack, and I’ll be there. Might even call your name. Surprise, motherfucker. And then it’s coming. A bullet. I might even use a twenty-two, same as you. I got one, and mine can’t be traced.”
“I’ll go to the police,” he said.
“Go ahead, my word against yours. What did you hear, Hap?”
“I heard you give your condolences about his sister, nephew, and mother.”
“See? That’s what Hap heard. Your day is coming, cracker.”
Sweat had beaded up at Thomas’s hairline.
“Now, me and Hap are sorry for your loss, but we got to go. I have to oil a gun or two.”
Leonard stood up. He looked at Thomas, pointed his finger at him, brought his thumb down, and said, “Bang.”
57
About six months later, give or take an afternoon, I woke Brett up and asked her her favorite color and got slugged in the arm. A few minutes later I got laid, so that took the pain away.
We had breakfast together, and then she went grocery shopping.
I was sipping a cup of very fine coffee and reading our local rag, which is mostly ads these days, when something caught my eye in the police report.
BODY FOUND, the headline read.
I felt a cold chill start at the base of my spine and move up to my neck and nestle under my hairline like a solidifying glacier.
A man had been found in a ditch partially filled with water. It was a ditch down a clay road in the woods. It was surmised that the man had gone out there to dump his trash illegally.
He was found clutching a plastic bag full of beer bottles. He had a bullet hole between his eyes. A .22 caliber was suspected. Most likely shot at close range. No suspects.
Surprise, motherfucker.
The dead man’s name was Thomas Mulhaney.
I took a deep breath and put the paper down on the kitchen table. I sat there and thought for a little bit. I drank my coffee. I got up and poured myself another cup, sat down again, and reread the article. It said the same thing it had said before.
I carefully folded the paper and took a sip of my coffee. It tasted bitter as reality. I got up and carried it to the sink and poured it down the drain.
From the kitchen window, I could see a crow flying south.
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Joe R. Lansdale is the author of nearly four dozen novels, including Rusty Puppy, the Edgar Award–winning The Bottoms, Edge of Dark Water, and the Spur Award–winning Paradise Sky. He has received eleven Bram Stoker Awards, the American Mystery Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Grinzane Cavour Prize. He lives with his family in Nacogdoches, Texas.
BOOKS BY JOE R. LANSDALE
The Hap and Leonard Novels
Savage Season
Mucho Mojo
The Two-Bear Mambo
Bad Chili
Rumble Tumble
Captains Outrageous
Vanilla Ride
Devil Red
Honky Tonk Samurai
Rusty Puppy
Jackrabbit Smile
Other Novels
The Magic Wagon
The Drive-In
The Nightrunners
Cold in July
The Boar
Waltz of Shadows
The Bottoms
A Fine Dark Line
Sunset and Sawdust
Lost Echoes
Leather Maiden
All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky
Edge of Dark Water
The Thicket
Paradise Sky
Selected Short-Story Collections
By Bizarre Hands
Sanctified and Chicken-Fried
The Best of Joe R. Lansdale
Joe R. Lansdale, Jackrabbit Smile (Hap and Leonard)
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