Hot in December

by Joe Lansdale

  Cason drove us back to the newspaper in his car, and on the way, he said, “You decide you might like some help, you call me. But if I do help you, me and Booger, you don’t want that on your cell phone, pinging off towers and the like, as they can trace that, and though we can make a legitimate excuse for you calling me, why throw it in the mix? I have burners in the glove box. Call on one of those. But still, don’t call from your house. Go somewhere in town if you can, use it that way. Lot of calls in town, and they don’t know this number, and it’s not connected to you. I use these when I’m talking to sources, sometimes people who don’t want to be known. I carry a stack of the things for that reason.”

  I opened the glove box. There were half a dozen of the phones inside, stuffed in a plastic bag. I took one and slipped it in my pants pocket.

  “Take two,” Cason said. “You make a call, toss it. And if you need to make another, you got backup. You can’t trace those things, you do it that way.”

  I took another.

  “I probably won’t need to call,” I said. “I don’t, I’ll give them back.”

  “I hear you, but just in case. And don’t worry about giving them back. Put them up somewhere, and I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but if you do call, get rid of the phone. One call, you’re done with it. You remember that. Get rid of it.”

  Well, I won’t kid you, driving back to Laborde I was thinking all manner of things and none of them good. I felt a little like a citizen that had just discussed something with a foreign agent that had best been left unspoken.

  Kelly was home when I got there, on the land line, talking to Sue. When I came in, she said, “Baby, want to talk to, Daddy?”

  I took the phone then.

  “Daddy,” Sue said.

  “Hey, doll. You having fun?”

  “Grandma is taking me to the library.”

  “Checking out some books?”

  “No. We’re going to see a movie.”

  “At the library?”

  After a bit of discussion, I figured out the library was showing The Little Mermaid to get kids in the door, and they were laying out books about mermaids and fairy tales and the like, hoping to get new readers. I wished them luck. Reading was one of those things everyone said they didn’t have time for, but it didn’t keep them from telling you the names of every trashy-ass character on reality shows.

  “Okay, sweetie,” I said. “You have fun. Mommy and Daddy love you.”

  “I love you too,” she said.

  When I hung up, I looked at Kelly. She was slim and beautiful and sweet-looking. Her skin was dark, a mixture of Irish, African American, and if rumor was right, Native American, Cherokee, I think. Her hair was black as midnight and so were her eyes. Sue looked like a little version of her, only plump. Looking at her, thinking of Sue, made me choke up a little.

  I thought about her and Sue and the nice life we had, considered it might not be such a smart idea to testify against someone who could make that nice life uncomfortable. But I knew I was going to.

  We missed Sue and talked about her for awhile, as if she had moved to Mars and taken a job with the next exploration team to Jupiter. We hadn’t been apart from her much, and it was hard. It didn’t keep us from planning a night out, though. I figured we would be locked down for a bit after word got around I had seen Will Anthony driving the hit-and-run car and that I was going to testify against him.

  Laborde isn’t exactly the Mecca of great restaurants, but there’s a very good Japanese place we liked. We dressed up a little fancy for a change. Kelly always looks great, and this night her jet-black hair went with the dress she wore, the classic little black dress. It was high on the leg for a kindergarten teacher, but I didn’t have any complaints. I told her she looked good enough to raise the dead while I fastened the clasp of her silver necklace. I wore some dark dress pants, a light blue shirt and a dark jacket. And if I could remember what shoes I had on I’d die a happy man. Bottom line, I thought we both looked pretty snazzy.

  It was about seven p.m. when we stepped outside. It was fresh dark, the street lights were on, and it was as humid as if it were mid-July. I was starting to regret the coat.

  I drove us over to the restaurant. I ate sushi, and Kelly ate some kind of chicken dish with rice, and we were happy as the proverbial clams, talking about this and that on the way home, the business with poor Maddy not forgotten, but at least temporarily put on the back burner.

  Upstairs we undressed, not bothering with pajamas, slowly began to touch one another, and it was a very good time. Afterward we kissed and fell asleep.

  For a while there, it seemed like the perfect night.

  Nine

  I may have heard them, but it didn’t register. I was pretty deep in sleep, and when I stirred it was to caress Kelly who was in the crook of my arm, causing it to go numb as a monk’s plans for New Year’s. I was gently removing it from beneath her head when the bedroom door opened and a flashlight beam hit me in the face.

  I sat up quickly, but by then the beam was right on me, and then there was a blow to the side of my head that made my ears ring and knocked me back on my pillow. Then I heard Kelly scream. I tried to sit up, but I was hit again. Then Kelly made a noise that let me know she’d been hit as well.

  I turned my aching head toward her. She was sitting up and the sheet had fallen away from her, revealing her nude breasts. The light jumped over her body, and the dried sweat made it gleam as if oiled. She had a hand to the side of her head. I felt something cold and metal press against my head, a voice came close to my ear, said, “You haven’t done bad for yourself, have you?”

  Next thing I knew we were both jerked onto the floor. Me on one side of the bed, Kelly on the other. I could tell there was more than one person in the room. I don’t know if it was true instinct, or if instinct is just subtle observation you’re not aware of. But I sensed more than heard movement. I was certain there was someone else when another light flashed, and I saw the light lower, like a setting moon, and realized whoever was holding it had just sat down in the chair in front of the dresser, straddling it like a horse.

  The man in the chair said, “You and me, we could have some problems. And if I’ve got a problem with you, I got a problem with your wife, though I might have a bit of good feelings toward her for a little while. Maybe a long while, and then, not so much. Then I got to feel less good about her, same as you, and I know you got a daughter, too, and it could be unpleasant for her.”

  “What do you want?” I said. “If it’s money, we haven’t got much in the house. You’re welcome to it.”

  “I have some jewelry on the dresser,” Kelly said. “Take it and go.”

  “Frame-shop owner probably doesn’t buy very expensive jewelry,” the voice said. “And I don’t need whatever is in your wallet. What I need is for you two to get up and get dressed, and make it snappy. We are all going for a little ride.”

  I was thinking don’t go with them. Don’t get in a car. Fight. Die here. Never go with them and never get in the car. But I couldn’t do it. Not with me in the dark with my balls hanging out and them with a light in my face and holding guns, because I was pretty sure the cold metal I had felt against my head was not a curling iron. If I tried to fight, it would be a short fight, and it would be about Kelly too, and maybe something worse for her than just a bullet in the head, so I hesitated. I thought I would look for my moment. Which, of course, once you wait that long, is never going to come.

  It was like when I was in the army in Afghanistan. You saw your enemy pointing a gun at you, you had to act then. You thought about it, you wouldn’t be thinking long.

  We got dressed in the dark. I pulled on what I had worn to dinner, minus the jacket, and Kelly pulled on the little black dress and slipped into house shoes. They made a point of shining their lights on us while we dressed, making us feel all the more vulnerable because we were nude. Then they prodded us out of there. There was a third person in the hall, and I had flashlig
ht glimpses of faces now. One of those faces was Will Anthony, the man who had killed my next-door neighbor. My stomach seemed to sink to the floor. I knew who had us now and why.

  They took us outside, right through the front door. A big car was waiting. A nice car, a big black SUV. The street lights gave it a dark green sheen. We got in the back seat, and a man who looked a lot like an older version of Will sat by Kelly; he would have been the one sitting backwards in the chair in front of the dresser. Will slid in beside me. The other man got behind the wheel. The flashlights were out by this time, and in a moment the big car was purring along. As we passed under the street lights and Christmas lights, I saw the older man put his hand on Kelly’s thigh, let it rest there. My testicles seemed to shrink and the contents of my stomach turned sour.

  He said, “You know who I am?”

  I lied about it. “No.”

  “You know what, I don’t believe you,” he said. “But just in case you’re dumber than I think. I’m Pye Anthony, and the young man with the gun in your ribs is my son, Will. He hit you in the head, I popped your sweetie here.”

  “Glad to meet you,” I said.

  Pye laughed. “No, you’re not.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’m not.”

  Nothing else was said, but Pye kept running his hand along Kelly’s leg. She was sitting as stiff as if she were a manikin. She turned her head slowly toward me. I can’t tell you how that killed me, her looking at me, probably thinking: Why don’t you do something? Thinking I was her big protector, and that I’d make things right, but I didn’t think that was going to happen. I might die trying, but I thought that would be the best of it, a blaze of glory and a short burning fall. I had to do better than that; I had to bide my time and hope. That said, there wasn’t much hope there.

  The car cruised out of town to where the woods got thick, and then we took a wide road through the pines. Finally we took a broad turnoff that went through a metal framework with Anthony Construction stenciled in the metal overhang.

  We were driven down the road a good piece, past a large metal building, and on out to the back of the property where we could see a bulldozer placed in the shadows.

  After we parked, we sat in the car for a long moment, no one speaking. Pye had pushed up the bottom of Kelly’s dress and was running his hand high over her thigh. She looked frozen. “Smooth,” he said. “Really smooth.”

  “Stop it,” I said.

  “Go fuck yourself,” he said.

  I felt the anger rise inside me, and for a moment, I thought I was going to lunge for him, but then I felt Will’s gun in my ribs. Will said, “You want to stay friendly. It’s best if you do, so I’m really going to heavily suggest it.”

  Pye said, “Let’s all get out.”

  And so we did. They led us up the rise to where the bulldozer rested, and stopped near it. From where we stood we could peer down into a very large, dark pit behind it. There was enough moonlight I could see that it had been scraped about thirty feet deep and was very wide. In that moment I knew what might end up at the bottom of it. I think it would be nice if I could say I only felt fear for what might happen to Kelly, but the truth was I felt it for myself as well. I had to work to make my knees stay firm and not melt underneath me.

  “Lean there against the dozer,” Pye told us.

  By this time two more men had joined us, came out of nowhere, and suddenly the whole place lit up. There were rows and rows of spotlights on frames, which I had been unaware of on our way up the rise. For a moment I was blinded. The man in front of me was nothing more than a dark shape, then gradually my eyes became reasonably adjusted to the glare, and I was able to get my first real solid look at Pye. As I said, he and his son looked a lot alike, but now that I could see Pye more clearly, I should add that though their resemblance was strong, the elder Anthony’s face seemed to hold his past in it, and by that I mean there was something about that face that made me feel even weaker and more lost than I had a moment before. In the dark it was hard, in the light it was a place of ruin. There were bad deeds there, embedded in his flesh like scars; in fact, there were actual scars, and I had seen enough wounds to know that most likely they had come from a knife fight. They stitched little patterns across his cheeks and forehead, like maybe Dr. Frankenstein had put him together in a hurry.

  The son came over to stand by him then, and no doubt in my mind when he was his father’s age, if he made it that far, they would be twins, minus the knife wounds, unless fate stepped in to help that part out. Right then I would have loved to have been the one to make that possible for the bastard.

  “Word—rumor, we’ll say—has filtered down to us that you think you saw my son in a car and you think his car hit and killed a woman,” said Pye. “Is this true?”

  “Yes.” Of course, I thought about lying, but I knew that was pointless. If Pye Anthony thought it was really a rumor he wouldn’t have bothered to bring us here.

  “Ah, okay. Well, rumors like that, they can cause problems. They can cause a man to go to jail, or even be executed, depending if you can’t buy the jury off. Understand?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Now, let me put this so you can appreciate it. You and your cunt here need to pay close attention. If you look down into that pit, what I can tell you for sure is people can slip. Right after they get a bullet in their head. Though, like I was saying about your wife, we might have to make sure she gets a bit of entertainment before the bullet—“

  “You son of a bitch,” I said.

  “You are not exactly in a position to be spry, my friend. Kevin.”

  One of the men, a hulky guy in a black leather coat with a head that looked like at one time might have been in a vice, came forward and slugged me in the stomach, dropping me to my knees. I puked up the nice dinner we had eaten earlier.

  “You cowards,” Kelly said.

  “Would you like to puke too?” Pye said.

  I was barely able to say, “Leave it be, Kelly. I’m all right.”

  I started puking again. No one said anything while I did this. They waited until I was through, almost politely.

  When I didn’t have anything left inside me to throw up, Kevin grabbed me and pulled me up and shoved me back against the dozer.

  “Now, I want you to listen to me,” Pye said. “I’ve been thinking of putting in a pond. Right here. Get some fish, stock it. I have this idea that I could put something in the bottom of this, put a thin film of concrete over it, fill it with water, stock those fish, you know, get a few lily pads and such, and whatever was at the bottom of it all, under the water and the fish and the concrete, no one would ever know about it. You understand what I’m getting at?”

  He waited. I realized he really wanted me to answer. I said, “Yes.”

  “Here’s the other thing. I don’t have to do that. I should. I could just pop you both and put you down and my troubles with you would be mostly over. But, here’s the way I see it. You go missing, and you going to testify and all, well it could come back to me. Most likely will, and then I got to worry with that. It won’t change things in the end, but it’s got lawyer fees and it’s got disruption of business tied to it. So, what I’m going to do is make it real easy for you … Oh, I almost forgot. Kevin.”

  Kevin came forward again. He took a cell phone out of his pocket. He pushed Kelly and me together and touched the phone, lighting it up. He tapped the screen. A photo appeared. It was of my mother’s house in Manny, Louisiana. He slid his thumb over the screen, bringing up photos of our daughter, Sue. I felt my head swim. Somehow, he knew where she was.

  Kevin moved away.

  Pye said, “There’s always room for one more down there in the bottom of the pit, or two, if we decide your mother would like to join you. I think you’re a reasonable man. You want your offspring to survive, your sweet old mother, and this fine wife you have here, so my guess is you’re going to decide that you didn’t really get that good a look at who was in that c
ar, if in fact you did get a look. You got to thinking you were hasty picking my son out of a mug shot and a line up, and you just can’t say for sure it really was him, and in fact, you’re pretty sure it wasn’t. I think that’s what you’re thinking right now. I mean, you know, I’m like a fucking psychic.”

  He touched his fingers to his head and narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, I’m getting like a goddamn message from beyond, and that message is saying you are going to go home tonight, and be a little restless, but in the morning you are going to go to the police station, and you are going to say just what I told you to say. I got that vision right now, and you know my visions are rarely wrong. And if it should turn out wrong,” he said, dropping his hand to his side, “you will be part of my pond, you and your family. You understand that?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Say it louder.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Good. Very good. Now, I was thinking maybe we’d get the phone books, hit you with those awhile, maybe dunk your heads in a vat of water for a bit, just to show we mean business, but it’s late, and frankly I’m tired, and I just don’t see we need the unpleasantness, which would mostly be about me being up late and having some things to do early in the morning, that isn’t too appealing. That being the case, what I’m going to do is have you get back in the car, and my driver here will take you home, and Kevin will ride with you. Kevin, you can sleep in late in the morning.”

  Kevin nodded at the news.

  “All has been said that needs to be said, I think, so, load up and go home, get a good night’s sleep. It’s a weekend. Sleep in. Knock you off a piece. Have a nice breakfast. And then, say before noon, go in and talk to the police. Tell them about the error you made. We all of an understanding here, shit crack?”

  “We are,” I said.

  “Good. I like it when we all have the same mind set. Good night, assholes, and remember, you didn’t see a goddamn thing. And that includes here. You haven’t been here.”