The Best American Mystery Stories 3

by Edited by James Ellroy

  All of the property was fenced in barbed wire, but the gate to the property wasn’t any great problem. It was made of hog wire stapled to posts, and there was another wire fastened to it and looped over a creosote corner post. There was a chain and padlock, but that was of no consequence. Wire cutters, and you were in.

  The road in front of the property was reasonably traveled, and even as he slowed to check out the hog wire, three cars passed him going in the opposite direction.

  James discovered if he drove off the gravel road and turned right on a narrow dirt road and parked to the side, he could walk through another piece of unfenced wooded property and climb over the barbed-wire fence at the back of the mule’s acreage. Better yet, the fence wasn’t too good there, was kinda low, two strands only, and was primarily a line that marked ownership, not a boundary. The mule was in there mostly by her own good will.

  James put a foot on the low, weak fence and pushed it almost to the ground. It was easy to step over then and he wanted to take the mule immediately, for he could see it browsing through a split in the trees, chomping up grass. It was an old mule, and its ears swung forward and back, but if it was aware of his presence, only the ears seemed to know and failed to send the signal to the critter’s brain, or maybe the brain got the signal and didn’t care.

  James studied the situation. There were plenty of little crop farmers who liked a mule to plow their garden, or wanted one just because mules were cool. So there was a market. As for the job, well, the work would be holding the fence down so the mule could step over, then leading it to the truck. Easy money.

  Problem was, James didn’t have a truck. He had a Volvo that needed front-end work. It had once been crushed up like an accordion, then straightened somewhat, if not enough. It rattled and occasionally threatened to head off to the right without benefit of having the steering wheel turned.

  And the damn thing embarrassed him. His hat touched the roof, and if he went out to the Cattleman’s Café at the auction barn, he felt like a dork climbing out of it amidst mud-splattered pickups, some of them the size of military assault vehicles.

  He had owned a huge Dodge Ram but had lost it in a card game, and the winner, feeling generous, had swapped titles. The card shark got the Dodge, and James got the goddamn Volvo, worn out with the ceiling cloth dripping, the floor rotted away in spots, and the steering wheel slightly bent where an accident, most likely the one that accordioned the front end, must have thrown some unseatbelted fella against it. At the top of the steering wheel, in the little rubber tubing wrapped around it, were a couple of teeth marks, souvenirs of that same unfortunate episode. Worse yet, the damn Volvo had been painted yellow, and it wasn’t a job to be proud of. Baby-shit-hardened-and-aged-on-a-bedpost yellow.

  Bottom line was, the mule couldn’t ride in the front seat with him. But his friend Elliot owned both a pickup and a horse trailer.

  Elliot had once seen himself as a horseman, but the problem was he never owned but one horse, a pinto, and it died from neglect, and had been on its last legs when Elliot purchased it for too much money. It was the only horse James had seen in Elliot’s possession outside of stolen ones passing through his hands, and the only one outside of the one in the movie Cat Ballou that could lean against a wall at a forty-five-degree angle.

  One morning it kept leaning, stiff as a sixteen-year-old’s woody, but without the pulse. Having been there, probably dead, for several days, part of its hide had stuck to the wall and gone liquid and gluish. It took him and Elliot both a two-by-four and a lot of energy to pry it off the stucco and push it down. They’d hooked it up to a chain by the back legs and dragged it to the center of Elliot’s property.

  Elliot had inherited his land from his grandfather Clemmons, who’d hated him. Old Man Clemmons had left him the land, but it was rumored he first salted the twenty-five acres and shit in the well. Sure enough, not much grew there except weeds, but as far as Elliot could tell the well water tasted fine.

  According to Elliot, besides the salt and maybe the shit, he was given his grandfather’s curse that wished him all life’s burdens, none of its joys, and an early death. “He didn’t like me much,” Elliot was fond of saying when deep in his sauce.

  They had coated the deceased pinto with gasoline and set it on fire. It had stunk something awful, and since they were involved with a bottle of Wild Turkey while it burned, it had flamed up and caught the back of Elliot’s truck on fire, burning out the rubber truck bed lining. James figured they had just managed to beat it out with their coats moments before the gas tank ignited and blew them over and through the trees, along with the burning pinto’s hide and bones.

  ~ * ~

  James drove over to Elliot’s place after his discovery of the mule. Elliot had grown him a few garden vegetables, mostly chocked with bugs, that he had been pushing from his fruit and vegetable stand next to the road.

  James found him trying to sell a half bushel of tomatoes to a tall, moderately attractive blond woman wearing shorts and showing lots of hair on her legs. Short bristly hair like a hog’s. James had visions of dropping her in a vat of hot water and scraping that hair off with a knife. Course, he didn’t want it hot as hog-scalding water, or she wouldn’t be worth much when he got through. He wanted her shaved, not hurt.

  Elliot had his brown sweat-stained Stetson pushed up on his head and he was talking the lady up good as he could, considering she was digging through a basket and coming up with some bug-bit tomatoes.

  “These are all bit up,” she said.

  “Bugs attack the good’ns,” Elliot said. “Them’s the one’s you want. These ain’t like that crap you get in the store.”

  “They don’t have bugs in them.”

  “Yeah, but they don’t got the flavor these do. You just cut around the spots, and those tomatoes’ll taste better than any you ever had.”

  “That’s a crock of shit,” the lady said.

  “Well now,” Elliot said, “that’s a matter of opinion.”

  “It’s my opinion you put a few good tomatoes on top of the bug-bit ones,” she said. “That’s my opinion, and you can keep your tomatoes.”

  She got in a new red Chevrolet and drove off.

  “Good to see you ain’t lost your touch,’’ James said.

  “Now, these here tomatoes have been goin’ pretty fast this morning. Since it’s mostly women buyin’, I do all right. Fact is that’s my first loss. Charm didn’t work on her. She’s probably a lesbian.”

  James wanted to call bullshit on that, but right now he wanted Elliot on his side.

  “Unless you’re doin’ so good here you don’t need money, I got us a little job.”

  “You case some spots?” Elliot asked.

  “I didn’t find nothin’ worth doin’. Besides, there’s lots of old folks where I was lookin’.”

  “I don’t want no part of them. Always home. Always got dogs and guns.”

  “Yeah, and lawn gnomes and sprinklers made of wooden animals.”

  “With the tails that spin and throw water?”

  “Yep.”

  “Kinda like them myself. You know, you picked up some of them things, you could sell them right smart.”

  “Yeah, well. I got somethin’ better.”

  “Name it.”

  “Rustlin’.”

  Elliot worked his mouth a bit. James could see the idea appealed to him. Elliot liked to think of himself as a modern cowboy. “How many head?”

  “One.”

  “One? Hell, that ain’t much rustlin’.”

  “It’s a mule. You can get maybe a thousand dollars for one. They’re getting rarer, and they’re kind of popular now. We rustle it. We could split the money.”

  Elliot studied on this momentarily. He also liked to think of himself as a respected and experienced thief.

  “You know, I know a fella would buy a mule. Let me go up to the house and give him a call.”

  “It’s the same fella I know, ain’t it?”


  “Yeah,” Elliot said.

  ~ * ~

  Elliot made the call and came out of the bedroom into the living room with good news.

  “George wants it right away. He’s offerin’ us eight hundred.”

  “I wanted a thousand.”

  “He’s offering eight hundred, he’ll sell it for a thousand or better himself. He said he can’t go a thousand. Already got a couple other buys goin’ today. It’s a deal and its now.”

  James considered that.

  “I guess that’ll do. We’ll need your truck and trailer.”

  “I figured as much. “

  “You got any brown shoe polish?”

  “Brown shoe polish?”

  “That’s right,’’ James said.

  ~ * ~

  The truck was a big four-seater Dodge with a bed big enough to fill, attach a diving board, and call a pool. The Dodge hummed like a sewing machine as it whizzed along on its huge tires. The trailer clattered behind and wove precariously left and right, as if it might pass the truck at any moment. James and Elliot had their windows down, and the cool April wind snapped at the brims of their hats and made the creases in their crowns deeper.

  By the time they drove over to the place where the mule was, the smashed spider clouds had begun to twist their legs together and blend into one messy critter that peed sprinkles of rain all over the truck windshield.

  They slowed as they passed the gate, then turned right. No cars or people were visible, so Elliot pulled over to the side of the road and got out quick, with James carrying a rope. They went through the woods, stepped over the barbed-wire fence, and found the mule grazing. They walked right up to it, and Elliot bribed it with an ear of corn from his garden. The mule sniffed at the corn and bit it. As he did, James slipped the lope over its neck, twisted it so that he put a loop over the mule’s nose. Doing this, he brushed the mule’s ears, and it kicked at the air, spun and kicked again. It took James several minutes to calm it down.

  “It’s one of them that’s touchy about the ears,” Elliot said. “Don’t touch the ears again.”

  “I hear that,” James said.

  They led the mule to the fence. Elliot pushed it almost to the ground with his boot, and James and the mule stepped over. After that, nothing more was required than to lead the mule to the trailer and load it. It did what was expected without a moment’s hesitation.

  There was some consternation when it came to turning truck and trailer around, but Elliot managed it and they were soon on the road to a rendezvous with eight hundred dollars.

  ~ * ~

  The place they had to go to meet their buyer, George Taylor, was almost to Tyler, and about sixty miles from where they had nabbed the mule. They often sold stolen material there, and George specialized in livestock and just about anything he could buy quick and sell quicker.

  The trailer was not enclosed, and it occurred to James that the mule’s owner might pass them, but he doubted the mule would be recognized. They were really hauling ass, and the trailer, with the weight of the old mule to aid it, had slowed in its wobbling but still sounded like a train wreck.

  When they were about twenty-five miles away from Taylor’s place, James had Elliot pull over. He took the brown shoe polish back to the trailer and, reaching between the bars while Elliot fed the mule corn on the cob, painted the white around the mule’s nose brown. It was raining lightly, but he managed the touch-up without having it washed away.

  He figured this way Taylor might not notice how old the critter was and not try to talk them down. He had given them a price, but they had dealt with Taylor before, and what he offered wasn’t always what he wanted to give, and it was rare you talked it up. The trick was to keep him from going down. George knew once they had the mule stolen they’d want to get rid of it, and it would be his plan to start finding problems with the animal and to start lowering his price.

  When the mule was painted, they got back in the truck and headed out.

  Elliot said. “You are one thinker, James.”

  “Yes sir,” James agreed, “you got to get up pretty goddamned early in the morning to get one over on me. It starts raining hard, it won’t wash off. That stuff’ll hold.”

  ~ * ~

  When they arrived at Taylor’s place, James looked back through the rear truck window and saw the mule with its head lowered, looking at him through sheets of rain. James felt less smart immediately. The brown he had painted on the mule had dried and was darker than the rest of its hide and made it look as if it had dipped its muzzle in a bucket of paint, searching for a carrot on the bottom.

  James decided to say nothing to Elliot about this, lest Elliot decide it realiy wasn’t all that necessary to get up early to outsmart him.

  Taylor’s place was a kind of ranch and junkyard. There were all manner of cars damaged or made thin by the car smasher that Taylor rode with great enthusiasm, wearing a gimme cap with the brim pushed up and his mouth hanging open as if to receive something spoon-fed by a caretaker.

  Today, however, the car smasher remained silent near the double-wide, where Taylor lived with his bulldog, Bullet, and his wife, Kay, who was about one ton of woman in a muumuu that might have been made from a circus tent and decorated by children with finger paints. If she owned more than one of these outfits, James was unaware of it. It was possible she had a chest full of them, all the same, folded and ready, with a hole in the center to pull over her head at a moment’s notice.

  At the back of the place a few cows that looked as if they were ready to be sold for hide and hooves stumbled about. Taylor’s station wagon, used to haul a variety of stolen goods, was parked next to the trailer, and next to it was a large red Cadillac with someone at the back of it closing the trunk.

  As they drove over the cattle guard and onto the property, the man at the trunk of the Cadillac looked up. He was wearing a blue baseball cap and a blue T-shirt that showed belly at the bottom. He and his belly bounced away from the Caddy, up the steps of the trailer, and inside.

  Elliot said. “Who’s that?”

  “Can’t say,” James said. “Don’t recognize him.”

  They parked beside the Cadillac, got out, went to the trailer door, and knocked. There was a long pause, then the man with the baseball cap answered the door.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “We come to see Taylor,” Elliot said.

  “He ain’t here right now,” said the man.

  “He’s expectin’ us,’’ James said.

  “Say he is?”

  “We got a mule to sell him,” James said.

  “That right?”

  “Mrs. Taylor here?” James asked.

  “Naw. She ain’t. Ain’t neither one of them here.”

  “Where’s Bullet?” Elliot asked.

  “He don’t buy mules, does he?”

  “Bullet?” Elliot said.

  “Didn’t you ask for him?”

  “Well, yeah, but not to buy nothin’.”

  “You boys come on in,” came a voice from inside the trailer. “It’s all right there, Butch, stand aside. These here boys are wantin’ to do some business with George. That’s what we’re doin’.”

  Butch stood aside. James and Elliot went inside.

  “So is he here?”James asked.

  “No. Not just now. But we’re expectin’ him shortly.”

  Butch stepped back and leaned against the trailer’s kitchen counter, which was stacked with dirty dishes. The place smelled funny. The man who had asked them to come inside was seated on the couch. He was portly, wearing black pants and black shoes with the toes turned up. He had on a big black Hawaiian-style shirt with hula girls in red, blue, and yellow along the bottom. He had greasy black hair combed straight back and tied in a little ponytail. A white short-brimmed hat with a near-flat crown was on a coffee table in front of him, along with a can of beer and a white substance in four lines next to a rolled dollar bill. He had his legs crossed and he was playing with the t
ip of one of his shoes. He had a light growth of beard and he was smiling at them.

  “What you boys sellin’?” he asked.

  “A mule,” James said.

  “No shit?”

  “That’s right,” Elliot said. “When’s George coming back?”

  “Sometime shortly after the Second Coming. But I doubt he’ll go with God.”

  Elliot looked at James. James shrugged, and at that moment he saw past Elliot, and what he saw was Bullet lying on the floor near a doorway to the bedroom, a pool of blood under him. He tried not to let his eyes stay on Bullet long. He said, “Tell you what, boys. I think me and Elliot will come back later, when George is here.”