The Two-Bear Mambo (19 page)

I opened the door before he was on the porch. He smiled at me, closed the umbrella, leaned it against the porch wall and shook hands with me. "I see the squirrel's still hanging around."

"Yeah," I said. "He likes it here. I call him Bob. He calls me Mr. Collins."

Charlie took off his hat, removed the cover and draped it over the handle of the umbrella. He put his hat back on, took off the raincoat and stretched it over my glider. All of this was done very slow and precise.

When he came inside he tossed his hat on the couch, took off his cheap sports coat, hung it over the back of a chair, sat down beside his hat and smiled in that pleasant manner he has, loosened his threadbare tie, crossed his legs, wiggled a Kmart shoe.

"Are those shoes real plastic, Charlie?"

"You betcha. I don't stand for imitations."

"And that hat, isn't that like Mike Hammer wears?"

"I certainly hope so."

"Want some coffee?"

"You betcha."

I fixed us both a cup, sat back in my chair and stretched my feet out.

"Christ, Hap," Charlie said. "Put on some drawers, or cross your legs different. I don't want to look at your balls."

"That's not why you came out?"

"Come on, man."

I went and pulled on some faded jeans, but kept the robe on. I came back, recovered my coffee. Charlie was in the kitchen, pouring himself another cup. He went through the cabinets and found the bag of vanilla cookies I keep on hand for Leonard. He opened them, brought them into the living room, put the bag on the couch next to his hat and began eating the cookies.

"Want one?" he asked.

"Only if you're sure you don't mind."

"Not at all."

He held the bag out and I took one, dunked it in my coffee and ate it. Charlie said, "Nobody eats these with as much pleasure as Leonard."

"You're right."

"I like to watch him eat them," Charlie said. "He gets that look that cartoon dog used to get when he was given a dog biscuit. You know, the one hugged himself and floated up and then floated down, he was so happy. What was that fuckin' dog on? Quickdraw McGraw?"

"I think so," I said. "How's Hanson, Charlie?"

"Same."

"I think I'll go by and see him."

"Go by, or don't. He won't know one way or another. You come in there butt-naked with a feather up your ass, or dressed in your Sunday Go to Meetin's, it's all the same to him."

"What do the doctors say now?"

"Not much more than before, only they're less optimistic."

"I didn't know they were ever optimistic."

"You hear them now, you'll think before they were goddamn foolish with optimism."

"Shit."

"Yeah. Shit. Another week, they think he can go home. Might as well, he can hold down a bed there good as he can at the hospital. They'll send some tubes and pee-bags with him when he goes. Maybe, on good days, he can be used for a doorstop. Just roll him up to the door to hold it open."

"Who'll take care of him?"

"He's going home to Rachel."

"His ex-wife?"

"Yeah. Go figure. It was her idea. She and her daughter are gonna take care of him."

"I thought Rachel had a boyfriend or something."

Charlie made a patting motion at his shirt pocket, like he was looking for cigarettes, didn't find any, put his hand back in the vanilla cookie bag and pulled out a wafer. He waved it at me, said, "Did. And the boyfriend wasn't keen on the idea, but she sent him packing. Believe that? Hanson and Rachel. They haven't lived together since I don't know when, and now she's gonna take him home and empty his pee and make sure he's got gruel in his food tubes, washrag his balls and wipe his ass. I don't get it."

"Me neither. Must be the daughter's influence."

"Maybe so. Tell you something else, Kmart is all but gone. Another week, won't be nothing there but an empty building and the parking lot."

"So, that's why you came. You want to hold a little memorial service or something?"

"What I come to say is you and Leonard are in pretty good shape." '

"We going to court?"

"Only to testify against folks. I don't think you'll get much backlash. It'd just make those fuckers look stupid. Ray Pierce, one you call Bear, he finally broke down and named Kevin Reiley as the other Klan man, which is of course who Cantuck said it was all the time. You know, I don't think that Cantuck is such a bad guy, you get to know him."

"Good. What about Brown? Pierce name him?"

"No. There was enough business there for us to bring him in for questioning, but we didn't nail him. And I wanted to, believe me. He's a smug sonofabitch. White trash with money and a business degree. They're like roaches, guys like that. They're hard to get rid of, hard to kill . . . oh, and Pierce didn't name that officer—"

"Reynolds."

"—yeah, him. He didn't name him either. He claims they did it on their own. One of them supposedly saw your car go by when you took the Grovetown turnoff toward LaBorde. He told the others, they got their sheets and came after you."

"So, there's nothing to prove anybody else had anything to do with what happened?"

"That's right."

"I don't believe it. I got a feeling that whole nest of Klan as holes knew where we'd be, and not by seeing us go in that direction. I think Brown was involved, and those boys aren't talking 'cause he's paying them not to talk, and maybe he's giving them a little something to worry about besides jail. Like what might happen to their families."

"There's nothing to prove you were set up, is what I'm saying. But the Klan not only found you and Leonard, they found that black fella helped y'all out. He got his the next night."

"Oh no, Bacon? I hadn't heard."

"I didn't think you needed to before. You were dealing with enough. Handful of Klan members went out to his house and jumped him. Tarred and feathered him, locked him in his car trunk, drove him down to the river bottoms, tossed the keys and left him there. He'd have died of exposure if the trunk had been any good, but it wasn't and he was able to kick it loose, hot-wire the car and get out of there. They say he was hurt pretty bad. He was in a hospital over in Longview couple days."

"Ah, hell. He was scared to death they were going to catch up with him on account of us, and they did. How'd the Klan find out?"

Charlie shrugged. "Maybe Cantuck can tell you, or the Ranger on the case. I don't know they know. Can't say. Damn, I wish I had a cigarette. I think about smoking now and then, you know, sneaking one, but my wife, she smells it on me. I don't care I do it outside in a high wind, little gets on my jacket, in my hair. She smells it."

"And no pussy."

"Yeah. I been thinking about striking up a relationship with the cat. Is that some kind of incest or something?"

"Bestiality."

"Well, I tell you, I'm tired of whackin' off. Funny thing is, you know you're not gonna get any, it's all you think about. Pussy. Pussy. Pussy. When I used to get it now and then, not knowing when, but figurin' I would, I didn't whack off near as much. You whack off a lot?"

"Just once or twice a day. Would you like to know about my bowel movements?"

"Naw, I was just interested if you whack off. Some of the guys at the station, they think it's odd if you whack off. They all say they quit that shit when they were fifteen, or when they started gettin' pussy."

"Everybody whacks off. I don't care what they say, they whack off. Maybe if they're poking someone every night they don't, but when they're not, they whack off. But on a less serious note, about me and Leonard not going to court. You sure? We're okay?"

"Looks like it. I can't guarantee anything. Not really. But Cantuck spoke for you again, said you and Leonard didn't have any choice but to do what you did, tells how you saved him, drove the car through a storm, all that shit. You know the story. Same one he's been telling. You'll talk some more to the law, but I figure you're all right."

"That's good. How's Cantuck?"

"Well, his eye didn't grow back. He's still blind, and he's got a patch. He looks like a pirate turned pig farmer turned small-town cop. He's taking it well enough, I guess. Oh, you or Leonard will have to pay a little fine for having those guns you used. Hidden weapons. I talked to the Highway boys. They agreed to let the rest of the guns in Leonard's trunk get lost so it wouldn't look like you were loaded up and spoiling for a fight. That damn near caused you trouble, all them guns, but Cantuck stood up for you again. He can talk a pretty good line of shit, he wants to. Even if he does refer to Leonard as 'a good nigra.' "

"That's high praise from Cantuck," I said. "Will Leonard get his guns back?"

"Don't try to skin your rabbit and keep it as a pet too, Hap. They agreed to lose 'em, not oil 'em and give 'em back to you with ammunition. Be glad you're not paying big fines and doing a little time. This is serious shit, killing a fella."

"Leonard didn't mean for Draighten to die. He had, he'd have shot his head off from the start. It's not that he gave a shit, frankly, but he didn't kill him outright 'cause he didn't want to hurt my feelings. In the long run, it was self-defense, plain and simple."

"That's why you're not doing time, you and him. This is Texas, after all. And you did save an officer of the law from being killed, and you got him to safety and a doctor. Shit, Hap, you and Leonard, you're goddamn heroes."

"I'm so glad."

"I finish up here, I'm going to drive over and tell Leonard how things are."

"You could call him from here."

"Yeah, but it's an excuse to see him. And I thought you might want to go."

"I don't know."

"You and his boyfriend don't get along, do you?"

"I think it's me that doesn't get along."

"It was that way with me and Florida. I liked her, but the moment she and Hanson got together, well, things weren't so good between me and Marve. She had a way of looking at him out of the corner of her eye, making him nervous. I tried real hard not to say shit or fuck or talk about my wife not giving me pussy when I was around her, but I don't think I could ever do right."

"Some women are just born spoilsports."

"Hell, I don't know. Marve might feel . . . might have felt that way about my wife and just didn't say nothin'. Hard to say. Relationships are funny stuff. I tell you though, I took a peek up Florida's dress a few times. Couldn't help myself. She was something else."

"I think maybe it was your cultured manners got on her nerves, Charlie. She just hadn't been around so much class before."

"There you go. You got any cigarettes? Cigars? Pipe? I might even chew, you got some Beech-Nut or somethin'."

"Nope. I gave my pipe up. Now I do a cigar couple times a year. This isn't one of those times, so I don't have any. Besides, you don't need it. You're doing good. You smoke, you won't get any from the wife."

"Yeah, okay."

"Do a few shadow figures, keep your mind occupied."

"I do shadows pretty good now, but I've had to quit for a while. I got strained fingers."

"Get out of here."

"No, really. Kind of a carpal tunnel thing from twistin' my hands and fingers around."

I finished off my coffee, asked what I had to ask. "Since we were speaking of Florida in the past tense ..."

"I guess I shouldn't talk that way about her. About looking up her dress and all, not getting along with her. I know how you feel about her, Hap. And she was Hanson's lady and all. I shouldn't talk like that."

"She was here right now, I'd try to look up her dress too. She wore dresses designed for that, and I think she knew it. She'd never admit it, but she knew it."

Charlie nodded. "We don't know anything we didn't know before. Ranger went in there, checked around some, and knows what we know. She was there, then wasn't. Evidence is thin."

"What about the juke joints? No one had anything to say there?"

"Sure, they did. We think of some things, Hap. You see, we do this for a living."

"I didn't mean to offend you."

"I've kept up with this case, even though it isn't mine. Know what I'm sayin'?"

"Sure."

"Florida went in there, tried to see this Soothe as some kind of martyr, and what he was was an asshole. No one disagrees on that. His own folks didn't have nothing to do with him. Everybody was glad he got dead and wasn't nothing more to worry about. Those recordings, the songs written down. That was just his line of shit. No one believes there were any recordings, written songs. None of that stuff. So no one much cared what happened to the guy. Except Florida. And I figure her trying to find out about what happened to Soothe, she maybe put her nose where it didn't belong, and got it pinched. But good. Same stuff you and Leonard think. Nothing new."

"Well, someone cared about Soothe. Or was worried about him. His body was stolen."

"Ranger, Highway boys, think it was voodoo shit."

"Voodoo is primarily charm stuff, mixed with a little Christianity. East Texas cops love to think devil worshippers or movie-style voodoo business is going on in the backwoods. It makes them feel their job is a little more important, less boring if they're dealing with El Diablo."

"Yeah, I see that. I could use a little voodoo now and then. This old-fashioned crime, drugs, spouse abuse, good ole boy murders are wearing me out. As for Soothe, all I know is the body's gone and there's no evidence where it might be. Florida, she was sure this Cantuck had Soothe murdered. A racist thing. I don't think that stands up so good. I think Cantuck done that, he wouldn't have been trying to keep you from getting killed. This Officer Reynolds, I don't know nothin' about him."

"He's some piece of work is what he is, but I can't prove he did anything. He might not be any worse than Cantuck, who seems to be all right on some days. I sort of like it better like the old movies, where you could tell who the villain was because they wore black and twirled their mustache. What's never been explained to me, Charlie, is how Cantuck knew me and Leonard were in trouble."

"Instinct."

"Saying he had a hot flash sheet-heads were trying to kill us, so he saddled up Trigger and came after us?"