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  “There’s a dead man outside and there’s a gun on the ground along with your shoebox full of money in the dead man’s car.”

  “Have that drink.”

  “I’m all right. You call a doctor?”

  “No.”

  “Guess what? You told me what happened, I brought one with me.”

  He called out, and an older man with a bag came in and looked at me. The doctor said, “It’s not as bad as it looks, but he’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “Even I can figure that out, Doc,” McGinty said.

  “You promised it would be just you,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, I’m a cop. I lied.”

  * * *

  I was in the hospital for a couple weeks, and by the second week, I was doing a lot better. McGinty came in with a tape recorder, cranked up my bed, and tucked a pillow behind my head.

  “Now that I’m feeling better, String Bean coming in with the phone book?” I said.

  “That depends on how talkative you are,” McGinty said and turned on the recorder.

  I told McGinty the whole story except the part about the money. I lied about that. Of course, there was the money in the shoebox, and I told him that was all I got out of it. He said it was four thousand, they had counted it. I knew what that meant. String Bean, the other cops, maybe McGinty himself, had helped themselves to some more. It didn’t matter. I told him what I knew except where the real money was. He recorded it all.

  At the end of the second week, I wasn’t tip-top, but late afternoon, he and String Bean took me out of the hospital and drove me to Nancy’s house.

  “So you got nigger blood?” String Bean said as we sat in the car by the house.

  “I’m part colored,” I said.

  “That explains some things,” String Bean said.

  “Leave him alone, String Bean,” McGinty said.

  “Sure.”

  “I mean it.”

  We got out of the car, me moving slow, and went to the animal cemetery. I pointed at the pony’s grave, said, “That’s where they are.”

  Jeff and the other uniform I had met at the cop station arrived not long after us and came down to the house where we were waiting

  Fifteen minutes later, a truck with a long trailer and a backhoe on it showed up.

  McGinty jimmied the back door of Nancy’s house, got three chairs out of the kitchen, and put them on the ground by the cemetery fence. Me and him and String Bean sat in them.

  They rolled the backhoe off the platform, cranked it up, ran it right over the fence, flattening it, and started digging up the grave. With that backhoe, it didn’t take long.

  Jeff got down in the grave with a shovel, probably to pry up the lid. “Oh God Almighty, the stink,” he said.

  The other uniform stuck a hand into the grave and gave Jeff a lift up. Jeff came over to where we sat. He said to McGinty, “That might be her. I guess it is. There’s the other man in there too, like he said.”

  “Okay,” McGinty said.

  Some more people came out later, and they took the bodies out and carried them off in an ambulance, obviously not in any hurry about it.

  “I guess the pony gets to stay,” I said. “He’s been through some shit.”

  “All tucked in,” McGinty said.

  He had walked out earlier to look in the grave while String Bean sat beside me and smoked a cigarette. When he came back, he sat in the chair next to me.

  “That part about not knowing where the money is,” String Bean said, “I don’t know I believe that.”

  “The five thousand in the shoebox, that’s all I got out of the deal, and you and your pals got some of that.”

  “Man, you shot that nigger good,” String Bean said.

  “Why don’t you go see what’s in the shed?” McGinty said to String Bean.

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because I told you to.”

  String Bean got up and headed for the shed, but he didn’t go in. He stood out there by it and smoked another cigarette.

  “I don’t know where it is,” I said. “Nancy hid it. Didn’t tell me where. She might have told Walter.”

  “That wouldn’t be any better than if she told the pony, would it?”

  “She might have buried it somewhere.”

  “We’ll be digging, but I got this feeling we won’t find it.”

  “She was clever,” I said.

  “You’re pretty clever, Edwards, but not clever enough, I guess.”

  “If Cecil had missed, and I’d got rid of him and his car, I might have got away with it.”

  “Nothing like that goes to plan, but I think had you wanted to, you could have made up a story about that. I wouldn’t have believed it, but I’m surprised you didn’t try one on me.”

  “One thing weighs on the other, and finally it all just gets too heavy.”

  “You know how this is going to turn out for you, don’t you? So you might as well say if you know where it is.”

  “Would if I did. If I did know, figure you and the boys might want a piece of it.”

  “That’s no way to talk about your local law enforcement.”

  “I know my chickens.”

  “By the way, talked to your sister.”

  I almost held my breath. “How was she?”

  “She didn’t know anything either. We looked around over there, that little trailer house she shares with your mama. We didn’t find anything. Some things were packed, but she said she’s going off to school. You know about that?”

  “I thought she might.”

  I was thinking if Melinda hid it, it wasn’t going to be found. I was still wondering where my pellet rifle had ended up. She didn’t want me shooting birds. She could hide an elephant behind a sapling.

  “Maybe lying runs in the family, though. You left the station the other day, I was starting to think my wiggle was wrong for the first time. I almost felt bad I had String Bean work you over.”

  “I know I felt bad about it.”

  McGinty was watching String Bean.

  “Bean, he was in Korea too. He lost a brother over there.”

  “It was tough,” I said.

  “Bean didn’t have any sense or conscience when he left, and he came back with less. Wasn’t working on the cops, he’d be rolling drunks. He caught some shrapnel in the head. Why he wears his hat pulled down like that. Never takes it off. Fucks wearing it, shits wearing it, sleeps wearing it. I figure he showers in it. Korea. Some fucking police action that was. They can call it anything they want, but it was war.”

  “Seemed that way to me.”

  “I looked up some things about you.”

  “Figured you would.”

  “You got some medals in Korea. Killed a gook practically bare-handed, saved some of the boys.”

  “I wasn’t trying to save anybody but me.”

  “Thing about that shit, you’re told it’s all noble and brave and heroic, and then you go over there and make it out alive, come back to what you left, and find out the thing you wanted to come back to wasn’t there in the first place. And if it was there, you know what happens?”

  “What?”

  “We look at that good thing and start figuring how to make it nicer because we’ve seen what isn’t nice. Start planning on how to turn enough into more, and more is never enough.”

  “More better deals,” I said.

  “Did you love her, Edwards?”

  I knew who he was talking about, of course.

  “At first it was just lust, then it was love, and then it wasn’t. Hell, I don’t know. In some kind of way, I still love her. Sometimes I can still hear her scratching at that box.”

  “That’s cold as ice, Edwards.”

  “It seemed a lot like Korea at the time. I figured it was me or her.”

  We kept sitting there as it grew darker. More cops came and some convicts wearing traditional convict black-and-white-striped outfits were hauled in. Floodlights were set up and the con
victs were given shovels and they started digging up all the graves. Or what they thought were graves. I’d told them the pony was the only thing buried out there other than Nancy and Walter, but they weren’t taking my word for it. They were looking to see if more bodies were there, maybe. Certainly they were looking for the money.

  “Would you do me a favor, McGinty?”

  “I don’t owe you any favors.”

  “This is a little one.”

  “I’m not pulling your dick for you.”

  “What I’d like, if you’ll do it, is if you’d walk with me over to the drive-in, let me turn on that big light. At night, it’s a pretty sight.”

  “I don’t get it, Edwards, but fine. That’s all you want, considering what’s going to happen to you, all right, we can do that.”

  We got up and walked over to the drive-in. I wasn’t getting around too good, so it took a little time.

  “The switch is in the concession.”

  I went to the door, McGinty following, and pulled it open. It wasn’t locked. Behind the concession counter was a little switch, a regular-looking light switch, and I clicked it on. That got the lights on the drive-in symbol going.

  “What would you say to some popcorn and a Coke, McGinty?”

  “I’d say yes.”

  “It’ll take a little while to get it set up.

  “That’s all right. They got a lot of holes to dig.”

  I went behind the concession and started the popcorn popper and got the soda dispensers set up.

  Working behind the concession, looking out through the wide glass window at the front, I could see the drive-in screen.

  So big. So white. So empty.

  When the popcorn was popped, I put some in bags, just like I did for customers, and gave a bag to McGinty. I got cups and opened up the ice machine and scooped ice out of it and into the cups. I decided the machine ought to be turned off so it would quit making ice. I did that.

  I asked McGinty what drink he wanted, then poured us up some. As I was handing him his, I said, “You’ve seen executions?”

  “Couple. I prefer to stay home and watch Gunsmoke.”

  “When they throw the switch to the chair, you think it hurts much?”

  “I don’t know. Those been in the chair didn’t have a chance to tell us about it. But figure it don’t hurt all that much, and it’s quick. They throw the switch, and the devil is showing you your motel room.”

  “Can we go outside and sit on one of the swings?”

  “Why the hell not?”

  We went out and I sat in one swing and McGinty in another.

  “You thought any more about telling me where the money is?”

  “Like I told you, I don’t know where it is.”

  “So that’s a no?”

  “Yep.”

  We took our time, ate our popcorn and drank our sodas. From where we sat, you could turn your head and see the big lit-up drive-in finger. Bugs buzzed all around it, like worshippers. The light was really bright where it fell on the lot closest to the concession.

  McGinty was looking at that.

  “Looks like molten gold is flowing on the ground,” he said.

  “It’s fool’s gold, McGinty. Fool’s gold.”

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  Joe R. Lansdale is the author of nearly four dozen novels, including Rusty Puppy, the Edgar Award–winning The Bottoms, Sunset and Sawdust, and Leather Maiden. He has received eleven Bram Stoker Awards, the American Mystery Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature. He lives with his family in Nacogdoches, Texas.

  Also by Joe 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

  The Elephant of Surprise

  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