Honky Tonk Samurai (Hap and Leonard)

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “So far, so good,” Cason said.

  Weasel sucked on his teeth, continued. “He does the trio. Car, girl, and trip to Italy. Hear what I’m saying? Then he finds there’s a fourth thing. They set him up in some nice Italian hotel, and they got a hidden camera and they got a movie, minus previews, of him putting the sausage in the grinder, you know. He finds this out when he gets home with the wife and the kids. Gets the bad news there’s a film of his shiny, dimpled ass filmed by his automobile-and-poontang dealers. You following me?”

  “Quite easily,” Brett said.

  “This Ron cat, he works for a big law firm here in town. Got a trophy wife and a lot of good connections. Plays golf with the right people. He’s pulled the right dicks and pinched the right tits, if you know what I’m saying.”

  “Yeah,” Leonard said. “We’re with you.”

  “They start stretching those car payments, this car company,” Weasel said. “He paid in cash, he was that flush, but now it’s not enough. There’s some side money they want for not showing the nice little film of him to the wife, film of him lowering the helicopter into the canyon with this Sandy bimbo in Italy. He was supposed to be on a business trip, and there he is on film, bare-ass, in living color. They send it to him on an e-mail, take a chance, see. Something to really scare him. He checks that e-mail, opens that video, sees himself swinging his pecker, shits enough bricks to build a cathedral, e-mails back with a what-the-fuck’s-up comment. That’s when the serious contact starts. Frank—she, he, it, whatever the fuck she is—starts having him come by and drop off little packages with sizable money in it. He don’t even go home with coupons. Ron goes to this fellow I know, cause being a lawyer in a big law firm he knows some guys not quite on the straight and narrow.”

  “Like yourself?” Leonard said.

  “Like me, and my guess is like you two,” Weasel said, nodding at me and Leonard. “I hear some things here and there. You seem like a couple guys been around the block, and not walking around all of it on a direct path. Taking a few alleys here and there, climbing through a few windows.”

  “Go on,” Leonard said.

  “Ron goes to this guy he knows, one he got off a prison sentence for murder. He knows the guy was as guilty as O. J. Simpson, asks if he can help him out cause he don’t want to keep paying. He don’t want his naked skin on his wife’s or boss’s e-mail, spread around town, then on the Facebook thing, twittered or twatted or some such shit. I don’t know how all that crap works.”

  I had a feeling he knew exactly how that stuff worked.

  “Bring it back on topic,” Cason said. “You’re starting to break gravitational pull, getting way out there.”

  “So Ron asks this old client of his who is not a straight citizen, asks does he know a guy can whack someone, and he’ll pay some serious jack to get it done so that he won’t have to keep paying serious jack for the rest of his life, and, too, he’s just mad, you know. This guy I know tells him no, cause he thinks the money, good as it is, is light in the pants for killing folks, but says he might know someone, and he puts me on it, asks me to see if I can find someone, cause I know the kind of crowd he needs. And Ron, because he has a big mouth, lays out to me exactly why he wants Frank dead. Here he is dealing with blackmail, worried about people knowing his business, and him a lying piece-of-shit lawyer, but he don’t know enough to keep his trap shut. What he’s doing is telling people he shouldn’t all his business he’s worried about keeping secret. I guess he figures he tells the slum crowd, he’s all right, but when you get right down to it, that’s not the crowd to tell. But hey, saying something and having a film of it is not the same thing. I mean, he knows that film gets shown, that’s more than talk. That’s the shine on the baby’s ass. You with me still?”

  “In the neighborhood,” Leonard said.

  “Got to be honest. Thought I could whack Frank for the dough Bantor was paying. I don’t know why he decided on Frank, cause I figure Frank is just the figurehead, not the top of the heap, but hell, who knows? And money is money, and who is who in all this is not important when that stuff is being waved under your nose. Pussy and money can get a man to do most anything but clean a sink after shaving.

  “Sandy was on his list, too, cause she set him up, least that’s how he figures it. Don’t matter. It was some serious jack he was slinging around. Even thought I might could find this Sandy and do her, too, you know, if all expenses are paid and there’s a good fee for the final job. Thought I did good on Frank, I’d be willing to do Sandy, you see. Pop. She’s gone. That’s how I was thinking when the offer was laid out there. Gave it some serious goddamn consideration. Stayed up a night or two thinking on it, decided maybe it’s not my line of work. So I tell this other guy I know might like the job, and finally Ron has his man. Thing is, the man, this hired killer, ends up whacked himself.”

  “Frank got on to the game?” I asked. “Beat him to the killing?”

  Weasel shrugged. “Can’t say. Could have been like that. I doubt it, though. Frank’s not that tough, with a dick or without. Not a pushover or nothing, but killing like that, I don’t think so. Like I said, I don’t think Frank is the top of the heap. Bottom line is someone finds the would-be assassin Ron hired, this fellow I know and put him on to, finds him some miles from here in the Sabine River, or maybe it was the Trinity—shit, I don’t remember. Finds him with no shoes and an engine block tied around his ankles. He’s got a cut throat and no balls, and word around is the cuts on his throat and balls are from a sharp wire, not a knife. Imagine that. Snapping off a man’s goodies with a wire. That’s the rumor, anyhow.”

  “Lots of rumors around,” Brett said.

  “I’m going to believe it, myself,” Weasel said. “You should, too. Guy did this knew what he was doing. You might call him a throat-cutting goddamn deballing expert. Cut the balls off cause maybe that was just part of the fun. Maybe he took them back to lay on the doorstep of whoever wanted it done, like a cat will bring you a mouse. I don’t know. But the balls weren’t found. I guess they could be in the river, eat up by a catfish someone caught later and deep-fried, but I don’t think so. The shoes. I think they just come off in the water, the current, you know?”

  “This guy that was murdered,” Leonard said. “He got a name?”

  “Slide is what I knew him as. Black guy. Tough guy with muscles like you, had a shaved head, had that kind of look you got, except he was missing a light in his eyes. Kind of motherfucker makes a man nervous. Looked like he could spank a cougar and send it to bed without its supper. What he caught was meaner than a cougar. He put up a fight. I got word from a guy I know at the hospital that he had broken fingers, scratches, and one eye near torn out. So he fought back. They scraped under his nails, all that shit, but they didn’t find anything but more of him. And he had been in the water and all, maybe a week. Fucks with the DNA, that water does.”

  “You sure know a lot of guys,” Leonard said. “On the street, in the hospital. Lawyers.”

  “That’s what ole slick-ass Cason likes about me. I’m connected with the shit on the shoes. That’s why he came to me and how I’ve ended up here brightening your otherwise dreary day.”

  “Slide have a last name?” I asked.

  “Don’t know it,” Weasel said. “Me and him knew each other pretty good, but last names didn’t come up. We didn’t discuss pork-belly futures none, either.”

  “You know all this and you don’t know the guy’s last name?” Leonard said.

  “You just got to have it, I can find out, but who cares? This guy’s deader than dirt. Now what happens is the guy Ron asked first, guy told me about it…and you need a name I got it. Thurgood Small. White dude. He’d have made about four of me, some of it fat. Everyone called him Red Mop on account of this toupee he wore and didn’t think anyone knew it wasn’t real hair. Looked like someone froze a fucking flame on his head is what it looked like. Whatever it was made out of, it wasn’t hair. He done a little time, and it was rumo
red he’d done some murders for hire and got away with it. But Ron, he asks Red Mop again, and this time he puts some blocks under the money, adds in some more stuff with zeros, and Red Mop decides this time he’ll do it. He’ll go in and kill Frank, and then he’ll put the pop on Sandy for another slice of the pie, and anyone else Ron needs killing long as the money keeps climbing. Shit, them two killings was probably more than the first two or three blackmail checks ole Ron paid, but Ron, he’s mad now, feels like he got his asshole reamed, and he don’t like it. Matter of pride, I figure, not so much the money.

  “So Ron’s guy, Red Mop, goes after Frank, and then next thing I hear, he’s not doing so hot, either. Died same kind of way. Second smile under his chin, propped him up down by a railroad track somewhere in our small world, pants down around his knees, dick hanging out of his shirt pocket, balls whacked off and gone, along with his toupee. Now two of the guys I knew was in on the deal were whacked. That got the hair on my balls to stand up, so me, I went quiet as a mute mouse in house shoes. Looked over my shoulder for a while. Two, three years go by, and no one comes to kill me. So I’m thinking I’m sliding. They, being whoever hired this deballing fellow, don’t know it was me that was the middle guy, or so it seems. I fell through the cracks. Two more years or so slip on, and I’m still here because I kept my big mouth shut.”

  “Until now,” I said. “Five hundred dollars and you’re singing.”

  “Cason told me a thousand,” Weasel said.

  I looked at Cason. He grimaced. “I did.”

  “All right,” I said. “A thousand. But still, why now?”

  “Haunts me some, you know. It’s on my head. Never even seen the bodies, but I can imagine them cause I know people who know people who know the cops, and they got the news, the specifics from them, the cut throat and balls and all.”

  “You told us that part,” I said.

  “Did, didn’t I? Man, I just thought I could do something like kill Frank and maybe Sandy. Just thought it. I see this dead dog got hit the other day, you know, on the highway, and I pull over and throw up. I know now I couldn’t have done no such thing. Think I’m even more puny now than I was then. I can step on roaches and I can rat out people, but killing for money, I can’t go there. That’s some kind of house I don’t want to live in.”

  “Aren’t you scared to tell us all this after keeping quiet for so long?” Brett asked. “Even for the money?”

  “A little,” Weasel said. “You got big mouths, I’m scared a lot.”

  “They don’t have,” Cason said.

  “That’s some partial comfort, brother. It’s bothering me, this thing I considered doing, and had I done it, I’d have that shit heavy on my head. I didn’t, but I led to the hit men getting hit, and they could just have easily have done the job they were hired to do. That would have been on my head, too. That’s why I’m laying it all out to you. And there’s the money Statler here is offering, too, so I’m not claiming just to be a good fucking Samaritan. But my conscience, and the money…well, I think, why not? Next day or two I’ll be out of town for good. Going back up north. I’ve been down here, let me see…seven, eight…no, nine years, and I don’t get it here. I’m going back where plain old bad people are just that. They don’t come with a side of ‘honey chile’ and grits, then a blackjack or a pipe upside the head and a soda bottle jammed up the ass, or throats and balls cut off with sharp wire. Now I get my money?”

  Cason looked at me.

  “What about Sandy?” I said. “She doesn’t show up in this story a lot.”

  “Not a major player is my guess,” Weasel said. “Think she did her part, and it was over. Could be Red Mop got to her before he got his balls lifted, and that’s why she isn’t around to spend Christmas. I’m going to guess she quit stinking about five years ago. But hell, I don’t know. I know he didn’t get Frank, so that means he may not have got this Sandy, either.

  “Frank’s company could have done this Sandy in for some reason or another. I don’t really know Sandy, just of her. Couldn’t pick her out of a fuck movie if her name was tattooed on her naked ass in neon. Never met her. All I know is the name Sandy, and I got that from the guy Ron talked to, Red Mop, one they found down by the railroad tracks.”

  “And Ron?” Leonard asked.

  “He turned quiet, like me. Decided he wasn’t such a manipulator. Quit trying to hire killers. He’s still alive. I figure they figure he gives up on trying to be a gangster they’ll let him keep living. Guy like that, he goes dead, it might be bad for Frank, or whoever he…she…is connected with, so they might think it’s better to let Ron live. And maybe Ron’s still paying the blackmail. I don’t know. I know this. Me and him are alive, and my balls are still swinging, and whatever happens to him is on his head, and the same goes for me, and he ain’t my goddamn worry. I’m taking the thousand, and couple days from now, I’m gone. I won’t even leave any body odor.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Cason said.

  “All right, look down on me you want, but you won’t be looking long, cause I’m going to be out of here like a goddamn winter goose. I had to talk to people, ask about this shit Cason wanted, and one of them, well, they might see a dollar in it for them, and there’s guys out there that would eat a pile of shit and call it a chocolate soufflé if they were getting paid. I figure they would spring it all loose on me first chance they got. Way I figure, on down the road, this Ron, he might turn up dead after all. You know, enough time goes by. Some kind of accident, you see. I don’t want the same for me. Neither me nor Ron are talking, not about that, and not to each other, but could be at some point Frank, his bunch, his boss, they could be thinking they want to make sure that never happens, the us-talking part. So when we think we’re safe and they got enough distance between what went on, they hit us. That’s my thinking. About that money? Going to need that for traveling.”

  “You said Frank’s bunch,” I said. “Who does Frank work for?”

  “You see, it’s just that kind of thing made Ron quit. He realized he hits Frank, maybe this Sandy, that’s just the tip of the spear. Ain’t you been listening? I done said that more than once, that I don’t think Frank is the brains behind all this. I know her a little, enough to know she’s smart, but she ain’t that damn smart. Ron figured out he would have had to hire someone to kill every goddamn body, and he wasn’t even sure who was holding the cards.”

  “So who can you name?” I said. “Come on—toss us something for our thousand smackers.”

  “Well, a guy that’s got a finger in the pie is Doug Creese. His father, James, was just a bare-ass redneck that got lucky because he could make good barbecue. Said James used to find dead animals on the highway, fix them up good with sweet barbecue sauce and a long time in the smoker. Not unusual for old backwoods barbecue stands, using highway meat. People like that could barbecue a turd and make you think it was a sausage link. But his son, Doug, one you got to worry about, took it over, got prime meat and no more roadkill. He opened a string of barbecue houses. Played like they was upscale, charged more for a chopped beef than a filet mignon, and there was folks willing to pay the dough for it cause they thought they was, like, getting more for their money, it being on a fancy bun with seeds in it and shit. It was an all-right sandwich, but price like that, you could raise and kill a cow yourself and butcher it out cheaper. Well, all right, that’s an exaggeration.”

  “Oh, really?” Brett said.

  “Oh, hell, lady, you are so hot-looking I can take insults off you all day.”

  “Why, thank you, Weasel,” Brett said.

  “Creese’s Barbecue,” Leonard said. “Shit, I heard of that. Hell, I’ve eaten it. Good barbecue. But like you say, the prices are stiff. They’re damn proud of it.”

  “Yep,” Weasel said. “Creese’s Barbecue. Doug wasn’t really interested in barbecuing meat, though. He wasn’t interested in having pocket money and a car didn’t smoke oil. He wanted more. Wanted to fart half-dollars and shit thousands.
He’s that kind of guy. Hell, I’m that kind of guy, but I’m starting to know that isn’t going to be how it is for me. It’s always going to be pecking shit with the chickens, as you boys say. I come to that conclusion one long night after I looked in the refrigerator and realized I had a head of black lettuce and a bottle of water about half drank up.”

  “Actually,” Cason said, “it’s not your good or ill fortune we’re interested in.”

  “Not that I was thinking it was,” Weasel said. “Doug uses the barbecue success to finance some other businesses, ones not so on the up-and-up. Finally, the barbecue gets famous, and he sells the joints, and for big money. That sets him up high and tight, but it’s still not enough. He was already running some low-level hookers in New Orleans. Had some meth labs cooking and all manner of shit going on. But now he has big money, and though he sold the barbecue places, he still gets a cut, so he’s got that dough pouring in, so he starts running higher-class whores, ones who can walk on stiletto heels without wobbling and can cross their legs with a happy promise. He starts setting up more businesses for fronts, finds ways to make big money in a lot of ways, some of them legal, some of them not so legal.”

  “Like car lots and blackmail,” I said.

  “That would be it,” Weasel said. “People don’t really know the businesses he owns because of the way he hides them. Some he’s up front with, but others he dresses down so it isn’t so out front. He’s the tail that wags the fucking dog.”

  “So it’s really the former barbecue guy owns the car lot?” I said.

  “That’s how I hear it, and all that comes the fuck with it, but I tell you, that’s just what I heard. All I got is what I heard. I heard most of it lately, when I was asking around, stuff I hadn’t heard before, or stuff that didn’t quite have a shape to it. Barbecue Doug may just be another cog in the wheel, which could be a really, really big wheel. One thing for sure, he lays low. Don’t see him around much. He’s tight to the house. Goddamn, I need a smoke or a chew. You know, I didn’t chew until I got around all these goddamn cracker motherfuckers here in East Texas.”