I waited awhile. They didn’t come out. I stood up, stretched my legs behind some tall plants, took a leak again, went back to my spot, lay on my side with my back against the wall. I knew it was not a good idea, but I couldn’t help myself. I was exhausted. I slept.
When I awoke I had a taste in my mouth like a well-used cat box. The greasy moon was gone and the sun was a ball of flaming lead burning away the clouds, heading up toward high noon.
I was sweaty and my face was dirty where I had slept with it pressed to the ground. I brushed myself off, moved my tongue around in my mouth trying to move the rotten taste about.
I peeked through the slit in the shrubs, saw nothing. He was probably sleeping in. Maybe getting a morning quickie with the wife, then brunch.
I wondered how that worked for the wife. She knew he had a mistress. Did she say, “Hey, did you and Ileana have a good hump last night? You did wash your pecker before we did it, didn’t you? What shall I get her for her birthday? Edible underwear?”
It was such a weird situation, and yet to them it was as normal as a nose on a face.
A pocked and diseased nose.
Maybe he wasn’t sleeping in. Maybe he had already left, and me, the lone assassin, had slept through it.
I wondered if Brett had seen my note.
Surely.
By the sun it was about ten o’clock I figured.
What was Brett thinking since I hadn’t come back?
Had she told Jim Bob and Leonard?
Would they do something foolish like rent a taxi and have it drop them off so they could go into the house, guns blazing, looking for me?
Nope. That was more my kind of plan.
More Leonard’s kind of plan. Jim Bob wouldn’t let that happen. He might come in guns blazing, but he wouldn’t arrive in a taxi. He’d be sneaky.
Hell, I had been sneaky, and in the end I had hidden in the bushes and taken a nap.
I was thinking about that, when suddenly I realized I was looking directly at Juan Miguel.
36
HE SEEMED to just appear, standing at the edge of the pool. He was in all his naked glory and quite fond of himself, stretching his arms, rolling his shoulders. He looked left and right, then checked his package, shook it, let it go.
I could see it in his eyes, in the relaxed way he stood and stretched, the slight smile on his face.
He was happy.
He was the king.
The king’s package was fine, ready to be used at any time. The envy of all others, that package. Men feared and admired him, women wanted him.
The universe was his.
A strange feeling came over me. Of watching in slow motion, of moving in slow motion. I had had a similar feeling before. In fights. It’s always that way. You may be moving fast, but to you it’s slow, and everything around you is moving slow. But life is heightened. It’s as if in that moment of violence you feel directly connected to the world around you, as if you are in tumultuous union with the universe.
This moment was stronger than ever before. I remember wiping my eyes, rubbing out the sleep. I had been sitting on my ass, but I rose up on my left knee, raised my right knee, put the rifle against my shoulder and looked down the sight. The sight was very fine, like a little blackhead in the center of Juan Miguel’s face.
He was rolling his neck now. I watched him roll it. I wanted him to stop moving just for a moment. The way you’re supposed to shoot someone is you aim at the biggest part of them, but I wanted Juan Miguel’s head.
I was putting the little blackhead on his face, when I heard a noise and saw, coming around from the rear of the house, Hammerhead. He was naked except for a white beach towel wrapped between his legs and around his waist. It made him look as if he were wearing a huge diaper.
That’s all right, I told myself. That’s all right, Mama, that’s all right with me.
I put the sight back on Juan Miguel as he lifted his arms and touched his hands in dive fashion, and as he lowered them to make his leap into the pool, his head lowered, I shot him right in the top of it.
There was a cough from the silencer, a flash of red juice, a flurry of hair, a whirl of skull like a hubcap fragment, and Juan Miguel dropped his arms and went into the water. There was a burst of dark blood, like ink from a Technicolor squid.
I shifted, floated the barrel, put the sight on Hammerhead.
He had just removed the towel from himself, probably preparing to swim with his boss. He held it in one hand like an oversized hanky he was passing to someone. His jaw hung low, his eyes were fastened on Juan Miguel’s body floating under the water, dropping slowly to the bottom.
Hammerhead crouched, dropped the towel, turned his head, looked in the direction from which he thought the shot must have come. In that moment he saw me in the foliage. Our eyes snapped together like padlocks. I fired again.
It was a good shot, but not as good as it would have been had he not moved. It went through his throat, low and on the right side. He snapped a hand to the wound and let out a bellow. I put three in his chest as fast as I could pull the trigger.
Where he clutched his throat blood was running through his fingers. Three little holes appeared on his chest without much blood.
The pool was in front of him and he hit the water running, went down, not quite over his head, tried to trudge along the bottom. The water bounced him up and down. I took a bead on his eye and let it rip.
His head snapped back. When it righted itself, he continued forward. Much of the pool’s surface was slick with his and Juan Miguel’s blood and it kept widening as if its job was to paint the remaining blue red.
As Hammerhead climbed out of the pool, a real feeling of terror went over me. This bastard had three in the chest, one in the throat, and one through the eye, and he was still coming.
As he stepped out of the pool on my side, I aimed for his kneecap, popped him twice. The knee went away. He collapsed, tried to raise up on his elbows, but I shot him again, about where the neck meets the shoulder.
This time there was a big burst of blood, like a pipe full of pressured rusty water had broken.
Hammerhead’s head snapped forward on the cement at the edge of the pool. He pulled himself forward another inch or so, then lay with only his foot jerking and one hand vibrating. The hand quit, then the foot.
I took a deep breath.
I looked about.
No wife.
No assholes. They were probably watching bowling on TV.
I took the wrench out of the suitcase and took the rifle apart. My hand was shaking so much it took me longer than it should have. I put the pieces in the suitcase.
I looked up.
Still no one. I tossed the suitcase over the fence. I climbed on a slanting palm near the fence, inched up it with the speed of a ground sloth with its leg in a sling.
I made it to the fence and looked down. It didn’t look good. I didn’t see the suitcase. I’d need that. It had fingerprints all over it.
I walked along the top of the rock wall until I found a place I felt I could descend, went over and started working my way down. Below I heard a car, looked. It went zooming by. I wondered if they had seen me.
It was easier and faster going down in the light than it was going up in the dark. I made the ground fairly easy, looked for the suitcase, didn’t see it.
Worse, the car was gone. There was windshield glass on the ground, so I knew during the night, while I slept, someone had smashed the glass and hotwired the rental.
Typical.
I eventually located the suitcase. It was up the hill, hung up in some roots and bushes.
I took a deep breath, started up again. I got the suitcase, and as it still had my belt through the handle, I slung it over my neck and shoulder and climbed down.
I brushed myself off as best I could and started walking.
* * *
It took an hour or so for me to reach the main road. I had walked along about fifteen minutes when a
large ancient truck with sideboards appeared. It pulled up beside me. In the seat were five men wearing straw hats. One of them stuck his head out the window and said something in Spanish. He was young-looking, with a split between his teeth. He had taken advantage of the split and had inserted a straw between it. It moved around in his mouth when he spoke.
I finally realized they were asking me if I wanted to ride.
“Sí,” I said.
I climbed in the back, over the sideboards, found I was company to three large black and white hogs. In one corner of the truck was a large pile of hog shit, and as we bounced along, so did it, creeping its way toward me.
They let me and my suitcase off in town and I walked to our hotel. I wondered if Brett, Leonard, and Jim Bob were still there.
I went straight to Jim Bob’s room and knocked. If it was someone else I’d just claim the wrong room and go away.
Jim Bob answered.
“You asshole,” he said. “You thoughtless asshole. We been worried fucking sick. Serve you right if you were dead.”
“Hi. Good to see you too.”
I went inside. Brett was there, she pushed past Leonard, who was trying to shake my hand, grabbed me, kissed me on the face.
“Wow,” she said. “What have you been rolling in, Rex?”
“Hog shit,” I said. “Really.”
“He has,” Jim Bob said. “If there’s one smell I know, it’s hog shit, and that’s hog shit.”
“You killed him, didn’t you?” Leonard said.
“He and that Hammerhead are two of the deadest motherfuckers you’ll ever see.”
“Good,” Jim Bob said. “Goddamn good.”
“Who says you have to have good plans to get the job done?” Leonard said.
“You know,” I said, “I sort of thought you guys would charge to my assistance. Note or no note. It was just for dramatic effect.”
“I slept late,” Brett said.
“We didn’t see it until a few minutes ago,” Jim Bob said.
“I was considering just how bad I wanted to kill you,” Leonard said, “then I thought maybe Juan Miguel and Hammerhead would do it for me, so I went back to sleep.”
“He did not,” Brett said. “He was having a shit fit. We were just about out the door, come to help.”
“Yeah,” Leonard said, “but I wasn’t going to dress up for it.”
“You’re a dumbass,” Jim Bob said.
“Yeah, and don’t ever do it again,” Leonard said. “It ain’t good for my heart. And besides, since when do you have enough brains to do anything without me?”
“It was lonely without you, brother,” I said.
Brett suddenly began crying. She said, “You asshole. You thoughtless asshole.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Yes, you are,” she said. “Now, for goodness sake, shower, then let’s go home.”
While I showered Jim Bob rented us another car, disposed of the suitcases, and brought us food. We ate, checked out, rode to the airport.
We turned in the car there, Jim Bob talked to the other rental agency, explained our car had been stolen from the hotel, filled out the proper forms, and we sat around in hard plastic chairs waiting for our flight.
“Did they buy the theft story?” Leonard asked Jim Bob.
“I believe they did,” Jim Bob said. “When I want, I can charm the ass off someone.”
“It’s your way with the language,” Leonard said.
“You betcha.”
We kept watching, half expecting Juan Miguel’s two goons to show. Except Jim Bob.
He said, “With Big Daddy dead, those two haven’t the sense to get in out of the rain. They’re probably still trying to wake Juan Miguel and Hammerhead up.”
Our flight was late, so we sat a long time, but once on the plane I fell asleep immediately and by the time we were landing at Houston Intercontinental, I felt as if I had been on board for no more than a few minutes.
37
FOR ABOUT THREE MONTHS I still watched for Juan Miguel’s goons. But Jim Bob was probably right. They were lost now, maybe working for the old lady. Or perhaps she blamed them and had used her considerable money to have them whacked. Perhaps they had gone to barber college and were now doing honest work in a border town, cutting hair, powdering the back of customers’ necks.
I thought about César, Ferdinand, and Hermonie, left there in that house. We hadn’t contacted anyone. How long would they go before they were found? A day? A week? A month?
I guess it didn’t matter when you were dead.
It was odd, walking away from all that, going back to being a security guard at the chicken plant. But I hadn’t fallen back completely into old habits. I had started part-time at the college, taking courses in history. I wasn’t exactly sure why, but for the first time in years I felt like I was doing something that counted, even if I wasn’t sure what it counted for.
Leonard got another job, security manager of a bakery. All he does now is sit in the office with his feet up, eat sweet cakes and cookies and make sure everyone else does the work. He’s even gotten a little fat.
He and John are happy.
Jim Bob’s back with his hogs.
Hanson is walking without a cane now. A little slow, but he’s walking. He’s still wearing Charlie’s hat.
Me and Brett?
Well, we haven’t gotten married, but we still talk about it. It doesn’t seem quite as urgent as it did in that hotel room in Mexico, but the thought is still there.
The other night Brett and I were sitting out in her yard, which I had mowed and freed the lawn chair from, and I was sitting in that lawn chair, and she in another, just sitting there with the moon and the starlight above, a bug-thronged streetlight in view, when a blue Cadillac pulled up at the house, parked next to the streetlight, and killed the motor.
I had a momentary sinking feeling, thinking those dicks from Mexico had caught up with us, but then I saw Mr. Bond come out from behind the wheel and close his door. He went around and opened the other.
A fragile-looking woman with her hair in a ponytail and a bandage across her face got out of the car carefully, pulling crutches after her.
I stood up, but Mr. Bond held up his hand in a wait there signal.
I remained standing. Sarah Bond crutched over to me. Her face was a wreck of stitch tracks and little swellings, that white bulgy swathe across one eye. When she spoke she was missing teeth and her voice was a little airy.
“Thank you for saving my life,” she said. “I owe you everything.”
“You owe me nothing.”
“They say they can fix me good as new with ortho work and plastic surgery. Except for the eye.”
“That’s good,” I said. “That’s real good.”
“Mr. Collins, you will always be my guardian angel.”
She positioned her crutches, leaned toward me, puckered her lips. I lowered my cheek and she kissed it.
“She wanted to tell you that,” Mr. Bond said. “And I want to thank you again for sparing my daughter. God bless you, Hap Collins.”
When they were gone, Brett and I remained in the yard, sitting in our chairs. My cheeks were wet.
“You’re such a softie, Hap Collins,” Brett said. “And I love you so much for it.”
“Sometimes we do something right in spite of ourselves, don’t we?” I said.
“Sometimes,” Brett said.
BOOKS BY JOE R. LANSDALE
LEATHER MAIDEN
After a harrowing stint in the Iraq war, Cason Statler returns home to the small East Texas town of Camp Rapture, where he drinks too much, stalks his ex-wife, and takes a job at the local paper. There he uncovers notes on a cold-case murder. With nothing left to live for and his own brother connected to the victim, he makes it his mission to solve the crime. Soon he is drawn into a murderous web of blackmail and deceit. To make matters worse his deranged buddy Booger comes to town to lend a helping hand.
Crime Fict
ion/978-0-375-71923-3
LOST ECHOES
Since suffering from a mysterious childhood illness, Harry Wilkes has experienced horrific visions. Gruesome scenes emerge to replay themselves before his eyes. Triggered by simple sounds, these visions occur anywhere a tragic event has happened. Now in college, Harry feels haunted and turns to alcohol to dull his visionary senses. One night, he sees a fellow drunk easily best three muggers. In this man, Harry finds not only a friend that will help him kick the booze, but also a sensei who will teach him to master his unusual gift. Soon Harry’s childhood crush, Kayla, comes and asks for help solving her father’s murder. Unsure of how it will affect him, Harry finds the strength to confront the dark secrets of the past, only to unveil the horrors of the present.
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-27544-8
SUNSET AND SAWDUST
In the middle of a cyclone, beautiful, red-haired Sunset Jones shoots her husband, Pete, dead when he tries to beat and rape her. To Camp Rapture’s general consternation, Sunset’s mother-in-law arranges for her to take over from Pete as town constable. As if that weren’t hard enough to swallow in Depression-era East Texas, Sunset actually takes the job seriously, and her investigation into a brutal double murder pulls her into a maelstrom of greed, corruption, and unspeakable malice. It is a case that will require a well of inner strength she never knew she had. Spirited and electrifying, Sunset and Sawdust is a mystery and a tale like nothing you’ve read before.
Crime Fiction/978-0-375-71922-6
The Hap and Leonard Novels
SAVAGE SEASON
Hap Collins and Leonard Pine are best friends, yet they couldn’t be more different. Hap is an East Texas white boy with a weakness for Texas women. Leonard is a gay black Vietnam vet. Together, they stir up more commotion than a firestorm. But that’s just the way they like it. So when an ex-flame of Hap’s returns promising a huge score, Hap lets Leonard in on the scam, and that’s when things get interesting. Chockful of action and laughs, Savage Season is the masterpiece of dark suspense that introduced Hap and Leonard to the thriller scene. It hasn’t been the same since.
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