The Big Book of Hap and Leonard Read online

I said, “You want me to get inside?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I called the police yesterday, well, it was the sheriff ’s department, but they wouldn’t do anything.”

  “Not twenty-four hours?” I said.

  “Actually, it has been. Over. But the thing is, they’ve dealt with her before.” I didn’t know all the details on that, but I figured as much. Tillie tended to get in trouble, run off from time to time, so they weren’t quick on using man power to chase a sometime prostitute and drug user, and full-time pain in the ass.

  “Okay,” I said. “Going to make an executive decision. I’m going to break in.”

  There were houses around, but no activity, and I didn’t see anyone parting the curtains for a peek, so I got a lock-picking kit out of the glove box that I use with the agency from time to time, went around back, and got to it. I’m not that good a lockpick, and to tell the truth, it’s seldom like on TV, least for me. It always takes awhile. This door was easy though, so it only took me about five minutes, and then me and Brett were inside.

  Brett called out. “Tillie. Robert. It’s Mom.”

  No one answered. Her words bounced off the wall.

  “Hang by the door,” I said.

  I went through the house, looked in all the rooms. There was no one handy, but in the living room a chair and a coffee table were turned over, some drink of some kind spilled on the floor and gone sticky, a broken glass nearby. I went back and told Brett what I had seen.

  “Maybe now we can get the law interested,” I said.

  Outside, out back, I saw there was a thin trail of blood drops. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now, coming out of the house and with the sun just right, I could see it. It looked like someone had dropped rubies of assorted size in the grass. I said, “Brett, honey. Go out to the car and sit behind the wheel. Here are the keys in case you need to leave. And if you do, leave. Don’t worry about me.”

  “Bullshit,” she said. “We’ll get the gun out of the glove box.”

  I have a concealed carry permit, but I seldom carry the gun. Fact is, I don’t like the idea of one, but in my line of work, and I don’t just mean watchman at the dog food plant, the other stuff sometimes requires one.

  We went and got the pistol out of the glove box, an old-style revolver, and walked after the blood drops.

  It trailed into the woods, and then we didn’t see much of it anymore. We went along the trail a bit more, and I saw where something had been pulled into the bushes, mashing them down. We went up in there and found a body lying on the ground. It was lying facedown. I shouldn’t have moved the body, but I nudged it with my foot so as to turn it over. The face looking up at me was that of a young man and it had eyes full of ants and the victim’s nose was flattened and scraped where it had been dragged along the ground. There was a bullet hole in the chest, or so I assumed. I had seen a few of them, and it had been delivered right through the shirt pocket. I could see there was another one in his right side. I figured one shot had wounded him, he had made a break for it, and whoever shot him caught up with him and shot him again, then dragged him in the bushes. I also noted the man had tattoos up and down both arms, and not very good ones. They looked as if they had been put there by a drunk trying to write in Sanskrit and hieroglyphics. Either that or a cellmate.

  Brett was standing right there with me. She said, “That’s him.”

  “Meaning Robert, Tillie’s boyfriend.”

  “Yeah,” she said, and started looking around. Me too. I sort of expected to find her daughter’s body, but we didn’t. We even went back to the house and walked through it without handling anything but the doorknob, just in case we had missed Tillie on first pass, stuffed under a bed, in a closet, or in a freezer. They didn’t have a freezer and she wasn’t under the bed or in a closet.

  I put my pistol back in the glove box of the car and called 911.

  What they sent out was a young guy wearing an oversized pair of pants and a badge as shiny as a child’s Christmas dreams. He had a gun on his hip that was large enough to think he might have been expecting elephants to give him trouble. He had on a cowboy hat that seemed too tall, the brim too wide. He looked like someone playing shoot ’em up. He told me he was a deputy.

  There was another guy with him, older, sitting on the passenger side of the car. The young guy got out and the old guy didn’t. He just opened the door and sat there. He looked like a man waiting for retirement and not sure he’d make it. He might have been forty, but there was something in his face that made him seem older. He had a smaller gun on his hip. I could see that clearly, and he had a cowboy hat on his knee.

  The younger man listened to us make our statement. He looked interested, and wrote some stuff down on a notepad. I told him I had a gun in my glove box and I had a permit, just so things wouldn’t get dicey in case they found it later. After a time, the older man got out of the car and came over. He said, “You get it all down, Olford?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the deputy.

  I saw then that the guy in front of us had a badge that said SHERIFF on it. It looked very much like those kind of badges we used to buy as kids, ones came with a cap gun and no caps. You had to buy those separate.

  He asked us some of the same questions, just to see if we’d trip up, I figure. He didn’t look at me much when I answered. He studied Brett constantly. I didn’t blame him. She looked fine, as always. Long red hair tumbling over her shoulders, great body kept firm through exercise, and the kind of face that would make Wonder Woman beat herself in the head with a hammer.

  “Walk me,” said the sheriff to me.

  “I’m coming too,” Brett said. “I’m no shrinking violet.”

  “I bet you aren’t,” said the sheriff. “Olford, you go sit in the car and get your notes straight.”

  “They’re straight, Sheriff,” Olford said.

  “Go sit in the car anyway,” he said.

  We walked along a ways. The sheriff, who we learned was named Nathan Hews, said, “Olford is the mayor’s boy. Whatcha gonna do?”

  “Did he get his uniform from Goodwill?” I asked.

  “Don’t be disrespectful,” the sheriff said. “He stole that off a wash line.”

  We came to the body. I said, “I turned him over.”

  “Not supposed to do that,” Sheriff Hews said.

  “I know. But I checked to see if he was alive.”

  “When they look like this, facedown or faceup, you got to know they’re dead.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “You know something,” the sheriff said. “You called things in, said who you two were, I made some calls, checked some things out. The chief over in LaBorde, he said you’re a real pain in the ass. That you usually run with a black guy named Leonard.”

  “Yep, that’s me,” I said. “I mean, I run with a black guy named Leonard. I don’t know about the pain in the ass part.”

  “I think you do,” he said. “Chief told me some things.”

  “Blabbermouth,” I said.

  When we finished looking at the body, we walked back to the car. The sheriff had Olford get a camera out of their car and go out and take some pictures.

  “We don’t have a real team,” he said. “There’s me, Olford, one other deputy, and a dispatcher. Sometimes we get free doughnuts though.”

  “That’s keeping in form,” I said.

  “You betcha,” he said. He looked at Brett. “You seem to be holding up well, considering your daughter is missing and a man is dead.”

  He was still playing us, trying to see we had anything to do with the business that had gone down.

  “Trust me,” Brett said. “I’m worried sick.”

  We had to stay at a motel for a couple of hours before the sheriff showed up with a lack of information. “We didn’t find your daughter,” he said to Brett. “That could be good news.”

  “Could be,” Brett said. What the sheriff had missed in his absence was Brett breaking down and crying, bu
t he probably noticed the red in her eyes. She listened to what he had to say and went into the bathroom and closed the door.

  He said to me, “Listen, I’m going to square with you. Going to tell you what you probably have already figured. I’m a one-horse sheriff in a one-horse town with two deputies that are working their first murder case. They’re more suited to chasing down renegade cats and dogs and figuring out who stole whose graham crackers at the nursery school. If we had one. I’m not telling you to go off on your own, and there’s bigger law can be brought into this. But I was you, from what I know about you, I’d tell you on the sly, which is what I’m doing now, just in case you don’t get it, to do some looking on your own.”

  I nodded, said, “You got any idea where I should start?”

  “I said I was a one-horse sheriff, but I once upon a time did some city work. I came here so I’d see fewer bodies. So far, I’ve seen fewer. This is the first murder that isn’t a suicide I’ve seen in five years. The dead man is Robert Austin, he was for some shit. The girl, your woman’s daughter, word was she did some business, if you know what I mean.”

  “That word is probably good,” I said.

  “This guy, Robert, sold drugs and sold her. Town like this, people who used her services . . . well, everyone knows. Everyone here knows the size of their neighbor’s turds and can tell one’s stink from the other. Thing is, Robert, he was most likely selling drugs for Buster Smith. Buster runs a Gospel Opry show over in Marvel Creek.”

  “I was born there,” I said.

  “Then you know the place. Used to be tough as a doorstop and sharp as a razor. All that booze out there on Hell’s half mile. Now it’s a town known for antiques and all the tonks are gone. The Gospel Opry, well, they say that’s a cover for old Buster. Marvel Creek sees him as a pious businessman. Me, I see him as a man gives real Christians like me a bad name.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “He’s about fifty with slicked-back hair and a very cool manner. Wears awful plaid sports jackets all the time. I’ve met him a time or two, when I was over that way. I even went to the Opry once. Good entertainment. But the word kept drifting back about him, and though it’s rumor, I’ve come to believe it. He’s an operator living a simple life on the surface, putting himself in a squeaky clean front while he does the bad stuff out the back door. He’s got everyone that matters over there in his pocket.

  “Another thing, there’s a guy named Kevin Crisper hangs out at the Go-Mart here, sits on a bench out front. It’s his bench. He works his drug deals there, and rumor is, though we can’t prove it, he works for Buster. I keep a watch on him, but so far I haven’t caught him doing what he shouldn’t be doing. He has a guy or two to help him out. They all got a few snags on their arrest sheet, but nothing that keeps them anywhere behind bars. I mean, I know what they’re doing, and I can’t prove it. I can’t do to them what needs to be done. Thing is, though, Kevin Crisper does sales of drugs and gets a percentage. Buster gets the lion’s share because he provides the goods. At least the dope. Tillie, and I want to say this before your girlfriend comes back, she was a self-operator, but word was she was getting pretty deep in the drugs, and that maybe she didn’t know if she was about to shit or go blind. She was down in the dead zone with one brain cell or two for a life preserver, and that was it. Robert, he might have been farming her out through this Kevin. Probably was. And Tillie, like I said, she might as well have been a blow-up sex doll, way her mind was messed up.”

  “And you know all this and couldn’t do nothing?” I said.

  “That’s right,” he said. “Isn’t that nice? Listen here, chief in LaBorde said you were smarter than you looked, so I’m thinking what I said before. There’s stuff you can do I can’t. Law and all. But, you get caught doing it, I didn’t tell you to do it, and you say I did, I’ll call you a big fat liar. I’ll even arrest you. How’s that for modern law enforcement?”

  “I can live with it,” I said.

  It took some doing, but I finally talked Brett into letting me take her home. I called Leonard on my cell, but he didn’t answer his. I left him a message. I drove over to downtown Bullock, which was a cross street, and went over to the Go-Mart and found Kevin Crisper. He was a man in his forties trying to look thirty. He had similar tattoos to Robert. Kevin looked like a man who had been soaked down wet and overheated in a microwave. Skin like that was last seen on Tutankhamun’s mummy. That said, he had muscular arms, the kind of muscles some people are born with, long and stringy and deceptively strong.

  I walked over to him, said, “I hear you can sell me some things.”

  “Some things?” he said. “What kind of things? I look like I got something to sell? Pots and pans? Maybe gloves or shoes?”

  “I was told you had some entertainments. Guy named Robert told me. You are Kevin, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s me.” Kevin lifted his head, said, “When did Robert tell you that?”

  I backdated the time, just in case Kevin had some idea when Robert bit the big one. I added, “He said there’s a girl that could do me some favors, you know. For some money.”

  “You heard all that, huh?”

  “I did.”

  “He didn’t offer just to take care of you himself?”

  “He said he worked for you, and that I should talk to you.”

  “That’s funny he should say that,” he said.

  “Look, you got the goods or you don’t. I got money. I want some services. I’d like to party with a girl and I’d like to make myself right. You know where I’m coming from.”

  He nodded. “Say I know how to get this girl, the stuff you want to get right, you think I’d have it on me? Think I got that girl’s pussy in my back pocket along with a sack of blow?”

  “That would be handy, if you did.”

  “Listen here, tell you what. I like Robert, and since he sent you, I got a place where you can come for the stuff, and the girl. We don’t use a motel. There ain’t but one and everyone knows everyone.”

  “So where is this place?”

  “You going to be around tonight?”

  “Could be.”

  “You want some leg and some head-twister, then you got to be around.”

  “Head-twister?”

  “Stuff I’m selling. It’s a mixture. You take this stuff your dick gets hard, your head gets high, and you’ll have so much fun you’ll drive over and slap your mama.”

  “That right?”

  “Way I hear. Course, I don’t sample that shit myself.”

  “That’s not much of a selling point,” I said.

  “Oh, it’s not that. I sample the girl, of course, but the rest of it, that’s product man. You dip into your own product, especially with it being available, you can get in Dutch pretty quick.”

  He gave me a time and an address. I thanked him and tried to look excited. I drove over to the one café and parked out front and sat behind the wheel and called Leonard again. I had some idea that the Michigan thing was near wrapped up, that he ought to be driving back down and in Texas by now, but it appeared it had taken more time than expected because I got the same thing. No answer. I left him a detailed message, even told him where I was supposed to be and at what time. I gave him the same directions Kevin had given me. I went in the café and had some coffee and a sandwich. I figured I might want to be fortified. I bought a sack lunch and an axe handle at the feed store and put it in the car, and then I drove out to where I was supposed to meet Kevin. Only thing was, I was four hours early.

  I tried Leonard a few more times, leaving the same directions, but whatever he was up to, it didn’t involve having his phone on. The location Kevin gave me was not deep in the woods, but it was out of town, which would of course suit his kind of services. But since I didn’t think Tillie, possibly the only lady working the grid, so to speak, was truly available, and since I knew Robert was dead as a pair of post-hole diggers, and had a suspicion Kevin knew it as well, I thought I wouldn’t rely
on his hospitality to bring Tillie straight to me. Me and Brett and Leonard had rescued her once before, a few years back, from something stupid she had gotten herself into that sounded a lot like this, and frankly, there was a part of me that wanted to leave her to it. I couldn’t do that because she was Brett’s daughter. That was the big part. The other part was I was me. I seem to be one of those guys that would help a rabid dog across the street if I thought it were confused on directions.

  I thought over the directions I had been given, and then varied from them. I found a little road to go down, a hunting trail, and then a little path off of it. I parked there and hoped no one found my car and decided they’d like to hot-wire it and drive it off, or, for that matter, just vandalize it. I got my pistol out of the glove box and stuck it in the pants at the base of my spine, and pulled my shirt over it. I got the food I had bought extra, a hamburger and fries and a canned Diet Coke, tucked the axe handle under my arm, and walked to where I understood the meeting place to be.

  When I could see the house, which seemed pretty rickety and set off partly in the woods, I was pretty sure my suspicions were confirmed. Anyone coming here expecting pussy and drugs was a dumbass. I wasn’t actually expecting either, but I was a dumbass, because here I was. I went to the house and checked the door. It was locked. I went around back. The door there was locked too, but it was thin. I thought that would be my surprise entrance, kicking the door down. I could do it now, and wait on him, but if he came around back, or that was his preferred way of entering, the joke could be on me.

  I walked off in the woods to the left of the place and found a tumbled-down tree to sit on. I had my supper, which was alright if you had no taste buds and your stomach was made of cast iron. I only ate a few of the french fries, being as how they were greasy enough to give a garden statue the shits. I drank the Diet Coke and ate the burger. The meat seemed suspicious, but I was already hungry. I always got hungry when I thought I might kill someone or get killed myself.

  As it grew dark, mosquitoes came out and buzzed around, and a few bit me. I wondered if they were carrying the West Nile virus, or maybe something worse. I slapped at them. I caught a chigger on its way up my pants leg, heading for my balls; I felt proud to have rescued them.