Die Laughing 2: Five More Comic Crime Novels

by Ben Rehder

  We’re careful to look around first to see who’s in earshot. Last thing we want is to offend some redneck named Earl.

  Or Rydell.

  The cracker crime czar with the two-tone mustache flashed before my eyes, and I relived just enough of the previous night’s scare to finish off my buzz. Damn.

  One thing kept bugging me. If Rydell Vance had the brainpower to run drugs, manage whorehouses and launder money, shouldn’t he be too smart to commit kidnapping just to have a chat with me? From his point of view, our meeting seemed riskier than necessary. I didn’t need much persuasion to keep quiet about what I’d witnessed. He could’ve accomplished the same thing by calling me on the phone.

  I guessed an outlaw like Rydell doesn’t worry about backlash. He’s a predator with no natural enemies. Doesn’t fear the cops, doesn’t care about civil rights or good manners. He’s amused when his woman calls him a “ridiculous shitbag.” Flying Corvettes, kidnapping, threats? All in a day’s work.

  What would it be like to live that way? Powerful enough, fearless enough, to not answer to laws, bosses, spouses or in-laws. Not caring what other people think. Simply not giving a shit.

  Wouldn’t it be a relief?

  Chapter 12

  This time, I made it all the way to my own desk at Honeydew Construction. But before I could catch my breath, my burly father-in-law filled the doorway.

  The creases on his flushed forehead were lined up in angry V’s and his bloodshot eyes bulged. He leaned across my desk and said hoarsely, “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  There’s never a good answer to that question. I sat very still.

  “You’ve been gone for hours. I send you out to solve a simple problem, mostly to get you out from underfoot, and you vanish.”

  “Well, I had lunch and—”

  “You come in here reeking of beer and marijuana. I could smell you from my office as you walked down the hall!”

  My face warmed. I said, “I don’t know what you think you smell, but—”

  “Don’t bullshit me, boy. I lived through the Sixties. I know pot when I smell it. And this isn’t the first time.”

  I rolled backward in my chair, but there was a wall in the way, and I could go no farther.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Maybe I’m a little out of control today. I had quite a shock last night, and I didn’t get much sleep—”

  “On the fucking couch.”

  That pulled me up short. “Excuse me?”

  “Darlene told me you two had a fight. That you went stomping out of the house, drunk, after you got home from that bar where you nearly got yourself killed.”

  “It wasn’t my fault that—”

  “You stayed out half the night. Slept on the sofa in your clothes. You were still snoring away this morning, when Darlene took one look at you and ran home to her mama, crying.”

  Bart straightened up and took a deep breath, getting himself under control. He stuck his thick hands in his pants pockets to keep them still.

  “Then you drink your lunch and smoke dope and waltz back in here like you own the place. Let me remind you of something, Eric. You don’t own the place. And if you don’t pull your shit together, you never will. I’ve slaved my life away, building this business, and I’ll be damned if I’ll leave it in the hands of a son-in-law who’s a drunk and a dopehead.”

  He turned to leave, but stopped in my doorway.

  “Take the rest of the day off. Get sober and think about your life. Think about your future. Think about Darlene’s future.”

  Then this parting shot: “For God’s sake, Eric, grow up. Be a man.”

  Chapter 13

  Being a man, I spent the afternoon drinking at The Busted Nut. Clorette wasn’t working at that hour, and the place seemed forlorn without her. Just me and a few serious day drinkers, nursing beers. Merle Haggard on the jukebox. “Mama Tried.”

  My gaze kept drifting out the grimy windows to the scrape on the asphalt. Butch Gentry’s last mark on the world.

  I’d survived the near-miss car crash only to wreck my own sorry life. Bart Honeydew was busily writing me out of his will, and I’d be lucky if he let me keep my job. My only hope was to quickly patch things up with Darlene.

  Fucking Darlene. Running to mama, lining her family up against me. I was always in the minority, always outvoted, always the black sheep. Only one permissible way to live one’s life, and that’s the Honeydew way. Work hard every weekday. Church on Sunday, golf on Saturday, sex on Friday night, if you must.

  I was sick of their bullshit, but what could I do? They owned me. Unless I wanted to walk away empty-handed, naked unto the world, I had to kowtow to Bart. Promise I’d never, ever drink or smoke dope or raise my voice or look up from my work again. Maybe, after a few years of model behavior, he would forgive my youthful crisis, and I’d get back in his good graces.

  Could I possibly eat that much shit? Did I even want that life, spending every day under Bart’s watchful eye and every night inhabiting the same house as Darlene?

  Would she even take me back? Ruth probably spent the day poisoning her daughter’s mind against me. Once Bart revealed my lunchtime sins, Darlene might decide she’d had enough. Might decide to end the whole thing. Then what?

  I’d have nothing. No wife. No job. No connections. I’d be set adrift.

  Where would I go? Certainly not back to Ohio. Nothing for me there. After my dad’s black old heart gave out, my mom fled the Rust Belt and retired to a condo in Arizona. I’d barely kept in touch with relatives and old schoolmates in Ohio.

  I’d left Cleveland as soon as I graduated high school, and had come out here to attend Chico State, which I’d read in a magazine was a top-rated party school. I majored in weed and coeds, and fell in love with California.

  I met Darlene in a Western Civilization class, and was charmed by her brittle liveliness. She was like a fragile chandelier, capable of dazzling beauty and jarring noise.

  Marrying her had seemed an easy answer to all the questions facing me at graduation. It gave me a place to live, a job, a family, a lifestyle. How was I to know that it would all become an oppressive rut? That I’d become an indentured servant, waiting for whatever crumbs fell off Bart Honeydew’s table. That Darlene’s crystalline personality would shatter into sharp shards and bloody daggers. I’d wanted to stay in California, to wallow in its warm embrace, but now I felt trapped here.

  I sucked down the last of my beer and looked around the dim saloon. Bleary welfare cases stared back. Tattooed rednecks with prison-yard squints. Woolly lumberjacks, still bitter about losing their jobs to spotted owls.

  Down the way stood a sloppy drunk named Lyle, who wore one of those black T-shirts that say, “I’m With Stupid.” The fat white arrow pointed down at his own crotch.

  I needed air. I stumbled outside, certain of one thing: If the Honeydew family cut me loose, I’d get the hell out of Calabama.

  Chapter 14

  I woke Thursday to find myself fully dressed on a lumpy sofa, facing a window filled with painful orange dawn.

  The coffee table before me was buried under empty bottles, smudged glasses, a filthy ashtray, greasy paper plates, an empty pork rind bag, roach clips, dry flies, a copy of “Field & Stream,” a stack of CD cases topped by the Allman Brothers’ “Live at Fillmore East,” a baggie of heavy-duty Humboldt County bud and a ceramic bong shaped like a mermaid. From my horizontal perspective, the junk formed a beer-bottle skyline, a city of ruin.

  I tore my eyes away from this miniature Gomorrah in search of the coffee producing the scorchy aroma that had gradually overpowered the scents of stale beer and marijuana smoke and crunchy socks.

  “Better shake a leg, Eric.” Cody’s voice. “You need to go home and clean up for work. Old Bart will be sniffing you up and down today. You can’t afford to smell like a party.”

  I creaked to an upright and locked position. A piledriver clanged inside my head. My skin felt gritty. I couldn’t breathe th
rough my nose, and my mouth tasted like an emergency room floor.

  “I feel like shit,” I said.

  “You look like shit.”

  “Thanks.”

  Cody stood in his open kitchen, watching the gurgling coffeemaker. He wore a wife-beater undershirt, dusty work jeans and a faded red cap that said “Logan’s Roadhouse.”

  He poured two cups of coffee and brought them over. Rarely have I been so grateful to anyone.

  After I scalded my mouth, I said, “I told you last night about Bart running his nose over me?”

  “You told me everything last night, man.”

  “I did?”

  “Twice.”

  I sniffed my coffee. Still an undertone of sweat socks. I wondered if Cody was out of filters, but decided it was better not to ask.

  Instead, I uttered words that are repeated millions of times a day, in every language, all over the planet: “I must’ve been drunk.”

  Cody snorted.

  “It’s all a blur now,” I said.

  “It was pretty much a blur then, too.”

  We sipped coffee for a minute. I tried to remember the night before, but had only a vague recollection of driving here after I left the Nut. Not good.

  “Thanks for letting me crash on your couch.”

  “I didn’t have much say in the matter,” he said. “You just toppled over.”

  “Did you think I was dead?”

  “Nah. You were snoring.”

  The caffeine hit my bloodstream, and I blinked several times. Jungle drums still played inside my head, but I felt more alert.

  “I think I might be able to stand up.”

  “That would be a good start,” Cody said. “You need a shower and a change of clothes. You’ve got to go home.”

  “Right. But, um, Cody?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Darlene might be there.”

  “We’ve all got our crosses to bear.”

  Chapter 15

  Gravel crackled under the tires as my truck roared up the dusty driveway to my home among the oaks.

  I’d decided to fearlessly throw myself at the battlements of my own castle and face down the dragon. Tell Darlene I didn’t have time for yelling and explanations. If I was late to work again, Bart Honeydew would have my ass.

  I boldly killed the engine. Waited half a minute to see if Darlene would fly out the door like a harpy, but nothing happened. I sucked it up and got out of the truck.

  I unlocked the front door and leaned inside, looking around the great room, listening for trouble.

  Nothing.

  I flipped on lights as I went from room to room.

  Nobody home.

  Whew.

  Okay. Time to get busy.

  First stop: The bathroom for ibuprofen, which I washed down with dripping handfuls of tap water.

  A glass-walled shower comes standard in all Honeydew homes, but it always took a while for the water to get hot in ours. I turned on the shower, and gimped into the kitchen in search of coffee. Found some left in the pot from days ago. I poured it in a cup and put it in the handy microwave. In less than a minute, I had a cup of hot mud.

  I tore off my clothes as I hurried to the bathroom, which was rapidly filling with cleansing steam. I jumped in the shower and threw shampoo at my head and whirled in the spray. A quick scrub all over, then I turned off the water and leaped out of the glass booth in a single bound.

  The towel smelled moldy, but no matter. Quick, quick, into some clothes. I pulled on boxers and crisp carpenter jeans and a red polo shirt that said “Honeydew Construction” on the pocket. The tucked-in shirt called attention to my growing belly, but I needed to look neat for Bart.

  I poured Visine in my eyes and gulped more ibuprofen, washing the tablets down with Pepto-Bismol. A tremor ran through my gut, but the resulting tsunami crested somewhere south of my throat, and everything stayed down. I took a cautious sip of mud.

  I brushed my furry teeth until I was foaming toothpaste like a rabid skunk. Ran a comb through my damp hair.

  Taking a deep breath, I braved a look in the mirror. Greenish pallor. Three days’ worth of brown stubble. Bloodshot eyes. My pupils looked like destinations on a highway map.

  Maybe I’d get lucky. Maybe Bart was in a meeting this morning. If I could recover behind my desk for an hour or two before I saw him, I might pull this off.

  I put my stuff in my pockets while I stepped into my dusty loafers. Strapped on my wristwatch on my way to the kitchen. On a pink pad next to the phone, I wrote a quick note:

  Darlene,

  I’m at work. Please call me there. I’m sorry about everything.

  E.

  That wouldn’t be enough to calm her, but it might buy me some time. Maybe she wouldn’t work herself up further while I found a way to come crawling back.

  I clamped sunglasses onto my pounding head and hotfooted it to the front door, still worried she might show up and derail me.

  I snatched open the door, and ran right into the thick chest of Police Chief V. J. Drake.

  Chapter 16

  The chief didn’t wait for me to ask him in. As I took a startled step back, he brushed past me, saying, “Glad I caught you before you left for work.”

  “I was just leaving,” I blurted. “I’m already running late.”

  “This will only take a minute. Come in and sit down.”

  That galled me, this being my home and all, but I followed him to Darlene’s low-slung divans and we sat across from each other, our knees up under our chins. I took off my sunglasses. He sat with his head tilted to one side, hiding his scarred ear.

  “Your wife’s not home?”

  “She had to be someplace early.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  His hooded eyes watched me as he said, “You having trouble sleeping?”

  “Not really. Why?”

  “You’ve got big circles under your eyes.”

  “Guess I’m recovering from my near-death experience.”

  “You’ll get over it. Think of it this way: You’re looking better than Butch Gentry.”

  Nothing to say to that. I checked my watch.

  “Butch’s family lives on a horse farm out in Palo Cedro,” Drake said. “They’ve got money. They’re offering a reward for information about his death. Twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  “What information? It was an accident.”

  “His parents think there’s more to it. They say Butch was a careful driver. Totally out of character for him to race along Redwood Avenue and fly through a dead end.”

  “Maybe he was drunk.”

  “Not a drinker. A little wine with dinner. Even his ex-wife said she’s never seen him too drunk to drive.”

  “Was he on medication?”

  Chief Drake shook his head, but his baleful eyes stayed riveted on me. A bead of sweat crept down my cheek.

  “Coroner can’t find any reason he might’ve been driving like that,” he said. “Nobody can figure it out.”

  I pretended to think it over. “Beats me. Sorry I’m no help.”

  “You sure you didn’t see anything else? Another car? Somebody chasing him?”

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  He waited for me to blink. Wasn’t easy, in the bright morning light that flooded the room, but I kept my trembling eyelids open until he looked away.

  “I hear you’ve been at that bar a lot since the accident,” he said.

  “No more than usual.”

  “I also hear that a couple of guys came around that night, asking about witnesses.”

  “I heard something about that, too. Were they were working for Gentry’s family?”

  A patronizing smile split the chief’s sandstone face. “I don’t think so. You didn’t talk to them?”

  I shook my head.

  “Maybe they were simply curious, but you might want to watch your step.”

  “Okay, Chief. I appreciate the heads-up.”

  He watched me an
other few seconds, waiting, but I sat still.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll let you get to work.”

  “Great.” I bounced to my feet, which made me dizzy. I paused a second, getting my balance.

  “If anything does occur to you,” Drake said, “call me right away.”

  “Sure, but I’ve told you everything I know.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Didn’t sound like he believed me, but I really didn’t give a damn. I needed to hustle him outside. I might still make it to the office before Bart.

  The chief moseyed toward the door, me right on his heels. I sidled past to hold the door open for him. He went down the steps ever so slowly.

  Past his square head, at the far end of my driveway, a car paused on the paved road. It zoomed away as I spotted it, vanishing behind oak trees.

  Drake didn’t seem to notice. He looked back at me as he reached his patrol car. I waved awkwardly, ducked inside the house and shut the door.

  I’d recognized that car. A black Dodge Charger with tinted windows.

  Holy shit.

  Chapter 17

  I locked the door and hustled around the house, searching for a weapon.

  My options were limited. Given my wife’s temperament, I’d always considered it unsafe to keep a gun. I ransacked the bedroom closet for a baseball bat I hadn’t seen in a year, but found nothing more lethal than an umbrella.

  I went to the bedroom Darlene uses as a gym, and hefted a ten-pound dumbbell. It was covered in a rubberized finish to keep it from scuffing floors. It was pink. But better than nothing.

  I lugged it across the great room and peeked out the front curtains. No sign of the black Dodge. Maybe they were waiting for Chief Drake to clear out. Maybe they were circling back.

  I went to the kitchen, and swapped the dumbbell for an eight-inch carving knife. I checked the front window again, just in time to see the Dodge barrel up the driveway in a cloud of dust.