Stories (2011)

by Joe R. Lansdale

  Slater inched his way into a wet ditch that smelled of sewer or something equally rank, pressed himself down tight in the mulch and held his breath.

  He listened to the crunching of leaves and the talking of hushed voices for what seemed like an hour but could have been only minutes. Then, when the sounds stopped, he listened some more. Silence reigned for another hour or so. Finally, he heard grumbled cursing, the sound of leaf-crunching feet about their business again.

  They came right up to him, flashed their beam into the ditch once, but the shadows and Lady Luck protected him. He didn't breathe.

  More time passed and the cursing began again, and he heard the sound of heavy feet going away. Car doors slammed, and engine coughed to life.

  Slater crawled out of the ditch and elbowed his way back to where he could get a good look. The moonlight showed the Plymouth pulling away lickety split for Pasadena. It seemed that the goons had given him up.

  Perhaps, thought Slater, they would have looked longer had they known he had memorized their license plates, and of course, he knew their first names, Sol and Jerry. Obviously these were not things that would have worried them earlier. That sort of information doesn't help a dead man.

  Brushing himself off as best he could, Slater made his stealthy way over to the house next to the fence. He wrote a nice note of signed explanation on a check stub, stuffed it in the screen door of the house, hot-wired the '69 Galaxy in the drive with his pocket knife and drove the long way back to Strawberry Street.

  Keeping an eye out for the Plymouth, he parked a block from his office and walked back. He used his key and took the stairs up. He unlocked his office door and went inside cautiously. No one was waiting.

  He got some fresh clothes out of the closet, washed up in the bathroom, and changed. Next he got the.38 out of the desk drawer and loaded it. He put it in his coat pocket, went back down to the Galaxy and drove over to GulfCity and Happy's Good Time Bar, stopping along the way to make a phone call.

  VII

  Happy's wasn't closed but preparations were being made. All the outside lights were off, even the neon, curlicue beer, wine and stripper signs. The inside lights were on. That meant the crowd had cleared or was clearing rapidly. Honkytonkers don't honkytonk under the glare of lights. It cramps the style.

  The last couple in the place was coming out as Slater went in. James the bartender was wiping off tables, pushing chairs around. Slater didn't see any other employees. It seemed they had all gone home. James looked up.

  "Closing, Mr. Private Eye," James sneered.

  Slater got out a cigarette and lit it, slowly. Said, "Do I denote a touch of sarcasm in your voice?"

  James shrugged, balled up the rage and started back for the bar, scooping up a couple of empty beer mugs as he went. He eased around behind the bar, plumped down the beer mugs.

  "I said, I'm closing."

  "So you did," Slater said and he walked over to a stool, sat down across the bar from James.

  "Shall I call the cops?"

  "That won't be necessary. I've already taken care of that. They ought to be here at any moment." For emphasis, Slater glanced at the clock on the wall. "I think you and I have the time we need, however."

  "Time for what?"

  "Chit-chat. Wouldn't want to draw us up a couple of beers, would you?"

  James didn't move.

  "You know," Slater continued, "I really had my doubts about who murdered Krim." Slater looked at James for a reaction. He looked bored.

  James put both hands on the bar top with the rag stretched out nicely between them. "Say your little piece if it'll make you feel better-then, get out!"

  Slater put his cigarette out on the bar top and watched James frown.

  "You see," Slater said, "I thought Martinez was the man at all times. I mean he was right for it, and with your telling me how you saw him lead Krim into the Lincoln... well, that was good, James, real good.

  "But no, it wasn't Martinez. The persons responsible for that were a couple of cops. I met them personally. You knew I would, I'm sure of that. Actually, you're kind of surprised to see me, aren't you?" James didn't look surprised. Slater continued.

  "The only bad thing is the cops slipped. I got away with their descriptions, the car's description and their license number. They didn't try to keep that stuff concealed. Why would they? With me dead, it wouldn't matter.

  "Now, I don't know it for positive, but when I called the police, which was right before I came here, I left that license number with them. I'm sure when they run it down, it'll belong to a plain-clothes, GulfCity cop that looks like a gorilla. I'm sure, too, that discovery will lead to the identification of his egghead friend.

  "You see, James, they have to be cops-the same cops this place passes the payoff money to. That's why there wasn't any investigation in this area. Those two were the officers in charge. Slick, James, real slick."

  "And why am I hearing all this?"

  Slater ignored him. "Oh yeah, they have to be cops. How else would they know Yank was hiring himself a private detective. He asked around at the GulfCity and the Pasadena stations, that's how. I'll even narrow it down a little more. They were GulfCity cops. I know that because, when I left the GulfCity station tonight and started home, these two goons show up and try to do me in."

  "Like I said, Slater. Why am I hearing all this?"

  "What I'm getting at is the murder of Jason Krim."

  "Can't pin that on me. I was right here all the time."

  "Oh, I believe you were here. Like I said, the cops did it." Slater glared into the bartender's eyes. "But I think you paid them to lean on the old man."

  James flipped the rag from under his hands and draped it over the edge of the bar, got a cigarette out and lit it with a disposable lighter. He put the cigarette pack and the lighter back in his pocket. Slater thought maybe his hands were shaking just a little.

  James said, "Atso?"

  "Uh-huh, atso."

  James took some puffs on his weed, smiled around it. "You're not sticking me with no bum rap."

  "I figured maybe you didn't mean for them to kill him," Slater admitted. "Just teach him a lesson. Too bad. Those guys like their work. Maybe the old warhorse put up a bigger fight than they expected. He was old, but no pushover."

  "If you're trying to scare me to death," James said, "you're doing a lousy job." He moved down the bar toward the spot where his hand had disappeared during his and Slater's first heart-to-heart talk.

  Slater eased his.38 out of his pocket and laid it on the bar, kept his hand on top of it.

  Slater said, "My memory's better than that. Both hands on deck."

  James put his hands where Slater could see them, opened and closed them. He tried to maintain his confident air, but there was sweat on his upper lip and the sarcastic smile was a little crooked now.

  "May I have a drink," he asked.

  "Sure. Why not-but do be careful. I'm very excitable."

  James turned to the counter slowly, picked up a shot glass and a bottle, poured himself a healthy one, went back to his station at the bar.

  "Remember the hands," Slater advised.

  "And just why should I go to all this trouble?" James asked, then tossed off half the drink.

  It would be nice if it were really complex, some kind of boxing-world scandal, drugs, that sort of thing. It's a lot older and less complicated, however. Jealousy, or, maybe more directly, rejection. You couldn't stand that Leona turned you down for an older man, and a black one at that."

  "You can't prove a damn thing."

  "Now I'll grant you that a lot of this is guesswork, but when the cops start looking, I bet they find a lot of juicy material to work with. Not that they'll need it. Those two-bit cops will probably sing to high heaven. You'll be in the song, James."

  James turned his shot glass around and around in his hand. His eyes were hooded, his lips drawn.

  Slater went on, "Here's how I got it figured. Jason comes in and makes
a hit with Leona. Too bad for James-boy. He's not quite the romancer he thought and, worse yet, in your mind, it's a turndown for an inferior. What a blow to the ego!

  "Now let's take two crooked cops who like the long green and, since they don't mind stretching the rules to get it, and, since you're onto their little racket here, maybe you have a little talk with them.

  "Maybe you tell them that if they'll lean on the old man, you'll see that they get a few extra bucks. You know Jason's routine, so, you point him out and they wait for him to leave. You might even be hoping that Leona will be with him, most likely would be since he doesn't drive.

  "Anyway, damned if things don't work out better than expected. You even get your fall guy. Martinez comes in, gives Jason a hard time and stomps out mad in plain sight of everybody. Your cop friends are posted nearby and they spot him leaving, know who he is.

  "That's when they catch that he's driving the Lincoln, and that little piece of information is good for later. That makes a nice believable touch when you tell me you saw Martinez loading the old man in the back seat.

  "Okay, Jason goes out and decides to take a walk. Why not? He hasn't got a car and he hasn't called a taxi. He wants to walk off his anger. His favorite meditating place is nearby. Okay, he walks down into the boonies and the cops couldn't have planned it better themselves, so they follow him down to the pier, and zap! The old man's out for the full count.

  "That's the mess-up. It's unlikely that Martinez would have enough time to beat it around back and clobber Krim just in time for you to take out the garbage. But I'll give you that possibility.

  "What I won't give you is the coincidence that the spot Anibal chooses to dump the body is Krim's one special spot. I suppose you could have lied about the Lincoln, and he could have still followed Krim and done him in, but in that case the cops wouldn't be on my tail.

  "Too many things, James. Far too many. You were reluctant to talk to me, worried about the cops. Then I learned this place has a couple of cops on the payroll and two guys start following me around. Well, it just started to add up.

  "You know, James, maybe if you'd kept those cops off me the three of you might have gotten away with it."

  "Might yet," James snapped and there was a blur of glass and whisky whirling in Slater's face. The detective ducked left, caught sight of James' hand snaking out from beneath the bar. There was a revolver in it.

  Slater's move carried him down and behind the bar just as the shot slammed into the wood and sent splinters into his face.

  The worse part about it was Slater had left his.38 on the bar top. In the movies, he would have leapt up, grabbed it at a roll and shot the culprit between the eyes. This wasn't the movies. Slater had made a frightened, stupid move and that was all there was to it.

  James palmed himself over the bar top and pointed the revolver at Slater's head. His smile was as chill as the arctic wind. "Goodbye, Mr. Private Eye." He cocked back the hammer.

  The room was a cannon roar.

  VIII

  James threw up his left hand like a man tossing confetti to the wind. The revolver flew up and into the bottles behind the bar. The sound of tinkling glass seemed every bit as loud as an avalanche. James' feet went out from under him and he fell against the bar and began to slide languidly to the floor. A red stream blew high and wide from his shoulder and seemed to come down in slow, mesmerized droplets. In the doorway, gun in hand, stood Homicide dick Randle Burney. Two blue suits came in behind him. He walked over to Slater, putting the gun away. He picked a yellow handkerchief that was supposed to be white from his pocket and wiped his perspiring forehead with it. His hand was shaking ever so slightly.

  "You know, Slater," he said. "You're a lot of trouble."

  Slater let himself breathe, got up and went over to the bar for his.38. "I seem to have misplaced this in a moment of crisis," he said in a voice calmer than he felt.

  Burney turned to the blue suits who were hovering over James. One of them said, "Nice shooting. Put the shoulder out of commission."

  "Swell," Burney lied. "I was aiming for his head."

  The blue suit smiled at him. "No notch this time. This one will live. I'll radio an ambulance."

  Burney turned back to Slater, who had gone around behind the bar and poured himself a stiff one. "What was the idea of calling and telling us to meet you here pronto?" That was crazy, Slater. Why?"

  "I don't know for sure. I had to talk it out, get some kind of result. I just had a few clues and a lot of hunches."

  "Uh-huh, and if we'd been one second later we'd have been picking you off the floor with a vacuum cleaner."

  "The license number I left with you. Was it what I thought?"

  "Halfway here we got the radio message. It's the number belonging to a GulfCity cop, just like you thought. We've already got feelers out for him and whoever his partner is. It shouldn't be hard, considering they aren't expecting us to know."

  Slater nodded, went over to look at James. He was mercifully unconscious and breathing heavily. The blue suit had stopped the flow of blood with simple first aid. "I think it hit the bone and went out the back of his arm," the cop said.

  "It's up to the ambulance now," Burney said. "I've got my car outside. I think we better go down to the station, Slater."

  "Fine," the detective said. "But first I need to return a stolen car."

  By the time Slater had finished with the cops and talked with Yank it was almost daybreak. He went home and sat in the dying dark, drank a beer, smoked a cigarette and thought about poor old Jason and the sweet stripper named Leona Blue who loved him.

  He kept rolling the napkin with her phone number on it around and around between his fingers, wishing that when he finally got up the nerve to keep his promise, there would be something comforting he could say.

  He picked up the phone and dialed.

  HIDE AND HORNS

  I was recovering from some knife wounds, and was mostly healed up and hoping I wasn’t gonna come up on anything that might get me all het up and cause me to tear open my cuts. I was chewin’ on some jerky, riding a pretty good horse on the plains of Texas, when I seen something in the distance. I pulled my mount up and got out my long glasses and took me a look.

  There was a colored fella like myself lying out there under a horse, had one leg jammed under it, and the horse was deader than a rock. The colored fella was wearing a big sombrero and a red shirt and he wasn’t movin’. I figured he was dead like the horse, cause there was some buzzards circlin’, and one lit down near the man and the horse and had the manner of a miner waiting for someone to ring the dinner bell. There was a little black cloud above the fella I took to be flies that was excited about soon crawling up the old boy’s nose holes.

  I rode on over there, and when I got near, the colored fella rolled on his side and showed me the business end of an old Sharp’s fifty rifle, the hole in the barrel looked to me to be as big as a mining tunnel.

  “Hold up,” I said, “I ain’t got nothin’ agin ya.”

  “Yeah,” he said in a voice dry as the day, “but there’s them that do.” He rolled over on his side again and lay the rifle across his chest. He said, “You give me any cause, I’ll blow your head off.”

  I got down off my horse and led it over to where the fella and his dead cayuse lay. I said, “So, just restin’?”

  “Me and my horse here thought we’d stop in the middle of the goddamn prairie, under the goddamn sun, and take a goddamn nap.”

  “Good a place as any,” I said, squatting down to look the man over, “cause I don’t see one spread of shade nowhere.”

  “And you won’t for some miles.”

  “Course, that sombrero could cover an acre in shade.”

  “It does me good from time to time,” he said.

  I could see that the horse had a couple of bullet holes in its side, and the fella had one too, in his right shoulder. He had stuffed a rag in the hole and the rag was red, and the red shirt looked to have been a
lighter color before it had sucked up all that blood.

  “I ain’t feelin’ so good,” he said.

  “That would be because you got a bullet hole in you and a big old dead horse lyin’ on your leg.”

  “And I thought he was just nappin’. I didn’t want to disturb him.” I bent down and looked at where the leg was trapped. The fella said, “You know, I don’t know how much blood I got left in me.”

  “Way you look,” I said, “not much. There’s a town not too far from here I’ve heard of. Might be someone there that can do some fixin’s on ya.”

  “That’d be right good,” the fella said. “My name is Cramp, or that’s what people call me anyway. I don’t remember how I got the name. Something back in slave days. I think the man got my mama’s belly full of me was called that, so I became Cramp too. Never knowed him. But, I got to tell you, I ain’t up to a whole lot of history.”

  I got hold of his leg and tried to ease it out from under the horse, but that wasn’t workin’ went back to my horse, got a little camp shovel I had when I was in the Buffalo Soldiers, and dug around Cramp’s leg, said, “They call me Nat.”

  He said, “That diggin’ is loosin’ me up, but I don’t know it’s gonna matter. I’m startin’ to feel cold.”

  “You’ve quit loosin’ blood for now,” I said, “otherwise, you’d already be scratchin’ on heaven’s door.”

  “Or hell’s back door.”

  “One ta other.”

  I got hold of his leg and pulled, and it come free, and he made a barking sound, and I looked at him. His face was popped with sweat, and it was an older face than I’d realized, fifty or so, and it looked like an old dark withered potato. I got him under the shoulders and pulled him away and lay him down, went back to his horse and cut one of the saddle bags off with my knife, and put it under his noggin’ for a pillow. His sombrero had come off, and I went and got that and brought it over to him, and was about to lean it on his head, when I looked up and seen four riders comin’ in the distance.

  Cramp must have seen the look on my face, cause he said, “Did I mention that there’s some fellas after me?”