Waltz of Shadows

by Joe R. Lansdale

  Neither Virgil nor I said anything. Doc said, “Yeah.”

  “Brandy?” Price said, as if he were accustomed to bartending.

  Doc nodded. Price set his glass aside and lightly poured Doc a brandy from a large decanter and brought it to him. Doc took the glass carefully, as if expecting Price to hit him with it.

  Price smiled at him. Doc sucked the brandy down and gave the glass back to Price. “More,” Doc said.

  Price said, “That’ll do you.” He went back to the liquor cabinet and set the glass next to the brandy decanter. He picked up his own glass and sipped. He said, “Now where were we?”

  29

  “I admit to what you say I did,” Doc said, “what’ll happen to me?”

  “They’ll strap you to a gurney and stick a needle full of poison in your arm,” Price said. “Unless I set things different. I can do that. I would do that, provided I get the stuff to see Fat Boy and Snake go down.”

  “You can do that?” Doc asked.

  “I can do any goddamn thing except lick my own balls,” Price said.

  “I’m going to talk,” Doc said. “I’ll need another drink. Something stronger. Switch me to Scotch.”

  “All right,” Price said. He poured Doc two fingers of Scotch and gave it to him. Doc drank half of it and melted into the couch. “Our marriage was a sham,” Doc said. “Tara had a kind of mental cruelty you can’t dream of. She…”

  “Hey,” Price said, “you’re breaking my heart here, but what I want’s the skinny on Fat Boy and Snake. Give me that and save the harp music.”

  Doc sucked in a slug of Scotch and moved it around in his mouth. He swallowed. When he spoke, his words were as dry as an emery board, “All right. I hired Fat Boy and Snake to kill her.”

  “How’d you set it up?” Price asked.

  “An accident really,” Doc said. “You see I have a special interest in certain things. Things that bother some people.”

  “We playing charades here?” Price said. “I’m tired of prodding. Talk like you know some English, or you and me, we’re gonna dance again.”

  “I like them young,” Doc said.

  “Like the big tittied heifer,” Price said, nodding toward the hallway.

  “I like that,” Doc said. “But I like them even younger. I haven’t acted on that, mind you. I just like to think about it now and then. Thinking isn’t doing any harm, is it? Just thinking?”

  Suddenly the child pornography angle Fat Boy had brought into all this clicked. “You like children,” I said.

  “I like to look at them,” Doc said. “You know, naked. Well, a little more than naked, you know?”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said.

  “I just look at the pictures,” Doc said. “I mean, I haven’t touched any children. It’s just the fantasy, you see. Looking at the pictures and thinking about it. Where’s the harm in that?”

  “Just connect the dots,” Price said. “It’s past my bedtime.”

  “Guy I knew out of Houston who came to me now and then for a little work was my connection to Fat Boy,” Doc said. “His name was Jake. Into oil or something. He came to get some tightening around the eyes, mouth, that sort of thing. He used to do a little fishing around here now and then, and he got to thinking all the money he was spending on me made us buddies. I went fishing with him a few times, because he was talking about a breast implant job for his wife. I figured the money was good enough, and he could pay a little more than was needed, so I went along with him. Kind of a business investment.

  “One time we’re out on his boat fishing, and Jake starts talking about his daughter. I’m thinking it’ll be the usual thing. You know, how smart the kid is. The braces on her teeth. Her athletic ability. Stuff you hear parents say. And it started off like that, him telling me she’s ten, and he thinks she’s going to be a real beauty, you know. He talked about how she liked to sit on his lap and kiss him. How he liked to set up the camera and take a few pictures of her naked. Keep in mind, this wasn’t some scumbag. He had money, a good home and job. An attractive wife. He said his wife didn’t mind he took the pictures. She knew he liked to fool around with the kid some, and the kid didn’t mind that much either. They didn’t see it as a big deal.”

  “Who’s telling you she didn’t mind, that it isn’t any big deal,” I asked, “this asshole Jake?”

  “Cork yourself,” Price said to me. “Keep singing,” he said to the Doc.

  “The more he talked, more I sorta, you know,ta, you liked it,” Doc said. “The idea, I mean. I had experienced those kinds of thoughts now and then. You know how it is. See a naked kid in a photograph. Out swimming at the pool, wearing little bathing suits—I’m not talking about boys, understand. I’m not talking anything strange.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I said. “You’re some special project.”

  “I don’t see the big deal,” Doc said. “You’re making a big deal.”

  “You were saying,” Virgil said to Doc.

  “I asked the guy a few questions, and pretty soon he’s telling me all of it. How he’s been showing the girl that love between a father and daughter, sexual love, isn’t so bad. Explaining how it’s a special relationship… I can see that, can’t you?”

  “No,” I said.

  Neither Virgil nor Price said anything. Price looked bored, and Virgil had on his lawyer expression, which could have meant anything or nothing.

  Doc looked at his drink and lifted the last of it to his mouth and tossed it back. “Next time he came up, we went out on his boat, and he had a few pictures of him and the daughter. You know, doing it. They were really tastefully photographed.”

  “That makes me feel better,” I said. “I’d hate to think they were grainy or blurred or something.”

  “Go out in the hall again, Small, you can’t shut up,” Price said.

  It was tempting, but I felt I needed to know all this. I had already fallen into the sewer by accident, I might as well spend a few more minutes bobbing about with the turds.

  “So Jake says if I like this sort of thing, he can make some arrangements with his daughter, who does what he says. Get me kind of a date, you know? But it didn’t work out. I mean, I wasn’t going to do it anyway. I was just thinking about it. I just wanted to see the pictures.

  “Anyway, Jake was murdered. It was all over the newspapers for a week. Whole family was rubbed out. Him and the wife and the little girl, and nobody was ever picked up for it. I thought that was the end of it. But one day this guy came by the office, like he was there for a consultation. I saw him in private, in my office, and I thought he wanted liposuction, way he looked. But he didn’t want anything done. He said he’d known my friend in Houston, and they shared some interests.”

  “Fat Boy with a few pictures.” Price said.

  “Yeah,” Doc said. “Just two or three pictures, then. One of them of Jake with his daughter. Couple other kids with adults. Fat Boy said he could provide me some stuff, if I wanted it. Though any more pictures would cost me. He gave me the pictures and told me a number to call. I got it on my mind I’d like to see more of what he had, so a week later, I called the number. Fat Boy met me after work, drove me out to a place in the woods around Busby. An old abandoned sawmill. I mean, this place was out in the boonies. I got to thinking maybe I’d gotten into something more than photos, and I was right.

  At the mill, there was a guy with a snake tattooed on his head. Stunk like an outhouse. Couldn’t stand dn’t saround him without getting sick. Fat Boy told me it’s because of his stink, that this guy, Snake, has a place out at the sawmill. Got a generator for electricity. Big Satellite dish. Big tank for water. There’s a field out back Fat Boy uses for a landing strip. I could see a little plane parked there.”

  “Enough of the Better Homes and Gardens tour,” Price said. “You were saying about Fat Boy and Snake, the pictures.”

  “We went in the mill, and this one big room they let me into, it was like a store. Photographs all over the place.
Boxes of them. Fat Boy said they sold tons of the stuff. That it wasn’t that unusual, what I liked, and I should look around and see if there was something that caught my fancy.

  “I looked at what they had, bought an assortment of photographs for what I thought was a fair price, and right before we got ready to leave, Fat Boy said, ‘By the way, you ever see any of this?’

  “He went over and got this box of photographs out of a locked desk drawer. They were dead children. Some recent dead. Some starting to rot.

  “I asked Fat Boy where he got the pictures, and he said he bought them, and not to worry, and why didn’t I take a couple. I asked if the kids were acting, if there were special effects involved in the rotted corpse pictures, and he just shook his head. He said they were dead already, so what did it matter if I took a couple. It wasn’t going to change things for the kids. I took them.

  “Week later, he comes by my office again, bold as hell, says he’s got something really special. I went with him, and when we got there, there was Snake with these two other guys. They were out to the side of the mill, had picks and shovels and were working on the ground there. I thought they were putting in plumbing. Fat Boy made a point of telling me the two guys were cops, and that he worked for the cops.

  “I thought I’d been set up, and Fat Boy was going to arrest me for buying child pornography. But that didn’t happen.

  “He walked me out to where they were digging. I could smell Snake before I got there, and something else. We got up to the digs I saw what the something else was. A child. A little boy. Eight or nine, I guess. He was naked, lying on his back in a hole about four feet deep. They had a camera and tripod out there, but I guess they were through doing what they were going to do, because time I got there and saw what was in the hole, they started shoveling dirt and old piles of crumbled sawdust on top of him. Snake said something like, ‘There’s a lot of milk cartons out there with pictures on them wasting space.’

  “I realized then Fat Boy had been playing me like a fiddle. I could spring the cops on him, but if he and those guys were really the law, then I wasn’t sure how they could make things look. My reputation would be destroyed.”

  “The cops.” Price said, “Can you describe them?”

  Doc described them. Price said, “Descriptions like that. They could be anybody.”

  “They all had guns,” Doc said.

  “Lot of people got guns,” Price said. “Go on with it.”

  “Fat Boy took me back up to e back uthe mill for a drink. He showed me some more pictures while I drank it. I could tell now the pictures were taken there. Some were torture shots. Taken in the mill. I asked him how he got the kids, and he said it was easy. They normally went out of town, Houston, Dallas, some place like that. Nabbed them by offering them free toys and stuff. Or just grabbed them in broad daylight. They had quite a system. I asked him how he felt about it, and he said he didn’t feel anything about it. He said Snake got something out of it, but what charged him was commerce and the deal. He liked putting something together. He told me he put me together. That he put Jake together. Said without people like me and Jake he might be an accountant. You believe that? Tried to lay their murders at my feet.”

  “Seems to me,” I said, “that’s the kind of thinking you’d understand. You didn’t love your wife to death, you know.”

  “She was an adult,” Doc said. “She had coming what she got. And I didn’t do it. Fay Boy did it.”

  “Why don’t we move on to that part,” Price said. “About the wife.”

  “I’m coming to that. Fat Boy asked if I was going to say anything and I assured him I wasn’t. He told me he had connections everywhere, and no matter how I told my story, he could make himself clean and make me stink. He admitted it was him and Snake killed Jake and his family. That the wife wanted Jake and the kid dead because she was jealous Jake liked doing it with the little girl more than her. But Fat Boy did the job on all three of them after she paid him half the money, cause he had a whim he ought to do it that way. That’s what he said. A whim.

  “I bought some photographs from him, one of the boy they buried, and he drove me back. I didn’t see him for a while. I got to seeing Bambi, girl you met in the hall.”

  “Bambi?” Virgil said.

  “Barbara,” Doc said, “but they call her Bambi. We got to running around, and she looked young, and she was legal, so, I figured that was the way to go.”

  “And you still had your pictures,” Price said.

  “Yeah,” Doc said. “I still had my pictures. So things began to heat up with me and Bambi, and things got worse and worse with the wife, so I got to thinking about Fat Boy doing Jake in for money. It seemed like a way to rid myself of Tara. I thought if I wasn’t here, and I offered to pay twice his price, gave him a couple installments to show I was sincere, then paid a couple more after it was done, promised to slip him a thousand or two a year from now on, he’d like the free money and wouldn’t have one of his whims.”

  “But my nephew got into your plans,” I said.

  “It helped in one way,” Doc said. “It gave Fat Boy someone to pin things on. Except the nephew got away,” he nodded at me, “and told you and started a kind of chain reaction.”

  “And now here we all are,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Doc, “Here we all are.”

  30

  Price poured himself a drink and perched on the chair. He said to Doc, “Where’s your stash? Don’t look dumb. Go get it and be back pronto.”

  “I don’t keep it at the house,” Doc said.

  “Sure you do,” Price said. “Guy with your interests, I bet you got it close for those nights Bambi wants to sleep. She sleep on the same side your wife slept on, Doc? Huh? Quit jerking me around and go get it.”

  Doc got up and left the room. He came back with a small cardboard box. He gave it to Price, went over and sat on the couch and looked pouty.

  Price got out of his chair, put the box on the table and removed the lid. He picked up a couple of photographs and looked at them and put them back on top of the stack. He thumbed through the remainder, said, “You like this, huh?” He put the lid on the box. “All right, Doc, you can keep this stuff. My best wishes. But I got an idea, and you’re going to love it. In fact, I insist you love it. What you’re going to do is you’re going to do what Jake did for you. You’re going to recruit. You’re going to go to Fat Boy and say you’ve made a friend, and this friend wants to buy some pictures. Say what you want, but you lick Fat Boy’s dick enough he likes you.”

  “I can’t do that,” Doc said. “I get caught in a lie, he’ll kill me.”

  “You don’t do it,” Price said, “the state of Texas will kill you.”

  “I guess I can talk to him,” Doc said.

  “Who’s the friend going to be?” I asked.

  “He knows me and you and your brother,” Price said. “Virgil would be good.”

  “Whoa,” Virgil said. “I’m an attorney, not a Christmas turkey. He’s probably seen me around.”

  “But he doesn’t know you on sight, does he?” Price said.

  “I guess not,” Virgil said.

  “I got to figure how I want it to play out,” Price said, “but basically, the whole thing’s simple. We make some arrangements, and we kill Fat Boy and Snake.”

  “Shit,” Virgil said. “I don’t know. I got to think this over a little.”

  “What about the two cops?” I asked.

  “We kill them, too,” Price said, then turned to Doc. “You tell Fat Boy you want everybody you’ve met at the mill to be there, because you want this friend of yours to know there’s cops involved, so he’ll feel safe from the law.”

  “And if he won’t do that?” Doc said.

  “You insist,” Price said. “Be polite, but firm. Tell Fat Boy this guy wants to spill some big jack for some pleasure, but you’ve told him cops are involved, and he wants to see them to know for sure he’s got support in the law enforcement arena. Sa
y he wants to see some badges or something. Say he knows a couple other guys interested in this sort of thing and they got big money. Say what you got to say.”

  “What if Fat Boy snookered me?” Doc said. “What if those two guys don’t work for the cops?”

  “They do,” Price said.

  “I thought you said those descriptions could fit anybody,” Doc said.

  “They could,” Price said. “But so happens they fit a couple cops I know, and they work with Fat Boy on lots of things. They been bucking for detective, and a lot of their collars have been gotten with his help. They’re the ones answered the call over at your nephew’s place that night, Small. I had to think on it a while before I said anything, but I’m saying it now. It’s Frank Harper and Buck Minton. It fits. There’s been dirt floating around their heads ever since I been Chief.”

  “But,” I said, “since the dirt was connected to your dirt and Fat Boy, you didn’t push too hard, did you?”

  “I watch for me first,” Price said, “then everyone else gets a turn if there’s room left over.”

  31

  We were tooling back to the lake in Price’s car. I said, “You promised him immunity if he’d talk. I don’t get it. He had his wife murdered. He’s got all that kiddie porn. How can you do that?”

  “Sometimes you let the little fish swim through the trap so you can get the big fish,” Price said. “And sometimes the little fish get trapped anyway. Just leave it to me, Small.”

  He drove us to Arnold’s cabin and we all got out and leaned against his car. Price said, “Where are y’all really staying?”

  “We have a little place at the bottom of the lake under a plastic dome,” Virgil said.

  “Whatever,” Price said. “I’ll keep the pressure on the Doc and have the particulars unfolded by noon tomorrow. I’ll meet you here, say a little after one and lay it out.”

  Price got in his car and drove away. Virgil and I motored across the lake toward the drug dealer’s place. The lake lapped and hissed and the moonlight came out thin and silver and flowed over its surface like something radioactive.