Devil Red (8 page)

19

Marvin gave us some contact information for people we might want to talk to, and I folded that up and put it in my coat pocket. We left when his sandwich arrived. We knew when we weren’t wanted.

At my place we fried up some egg sandwiches and sat on the couch and turned so we could look at each other. Leonard had finally taken off the deerstalker, so it was easier to do.

We decided we had to see Mini’s stepdad, Bert. I called the cell number we had for him. The phone rang awhile, but finally he answered.

I told him we were investigating his stepdaughter’s murder, that the mother of Mini’s boyfriend had hired us, and could we meet up with him.

“Can’t we just talk over the phone?” he said.

“I suppose, but we’d rather do it in person.”

“Not anything I can tell you, and since I don’t know you, I ain’t wantin’ you to come out to the house.”

“Okay.”

“I’ve had threats.”

“Threats?” I asked.

“That’s all I’ll say about it.”

“Look, I don’t know about the threats, but we’re on the up-and-up. What say we meet someplace public? We’ll buy you lunch.”

“Made a sandwich already.”

“Well,” I said, “how about just meeting you in town?”

He was silent for so long I thought the connection was broken. But just when I was about to give up, he said, “I’m going out to the auction barn, catch me there.”

“Not sure what you look like.”

“Call my goddamn cell, man. Use your head. When you get there, call me.”

On the way out to the auction barn, I said, “He sounds paranoid.”

“Doesn’t mean someone’s not after him,” Leonard said.

“Take off the hat, Leonard. Where we’re going is cowboy country. You going in there looking like that, you’re asking for trouble. Only thing missing is a purse.”

“This is anything but effeminate,” he said. “In Merry Ole England they wore these to hunt deer. Real men. Real guns. Real deer. And this hat.”

“Deer probably laughed themselves to death.”

When we got out to the auction barn, the parking lot was full of pickups and trailers and everything smelled like animal shit; it was so thick you almost had to climb over the reek to get to the auction barn.

Inside, the place looked like an ad for chewing tobacco and blue jeans. Cowboy hats floated on the crowd, and there was a lot of crowd. Last time I’d seen that many people was in a rerun of
The Ten Commandments
. Who knew cows were that exciting. The animal crap smell was now so intense I felt I needed mountaineer equipment to scale it.

We started moving in among them, and as we went, Leonard pulled the deerstalker out of his back pocket, unfolded it, and popped it out like a wet towel and put it on.

“You sonofabitch,” I said.

20

As we rambled through the crowd, a tall cowboy with a hatband full of toothpicks watched Leonard pass with open curiosity. I was right behind Leonard. I said to the cowboy, “He’s working a child’s party after this.”

The cowboy looked at me and nodded, like that explained everything.

We found a spot with a break in people, and went there. I took out my cell and called.

“Yeah,” Bert said.

“This is Hap Collins. I spoke to you earlier.”

“What about?”

I was more than a little certain now that Bert was not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

“Your stepdaughter. You told me to call.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m over by the door. Too many people in there, and hot.”

“Okay,” I said. “Meet you there. What’s your description?”

“What’s yours?”

“There’s two of us. I’m about six foot with brown hair, stocky. The guy with me is black—”

“Black?” He seemed surprised.

“Yeah. There’s a whole race of them. He’s just one of them.”

“Black, huh.”

“Now and always.”

There were actually a few black cowboys scattered about the barn, but they had on the proper duds. I said, “You’ll know us because he’s bigger than me and has gray at the temples. Oh yeah, he’s got on a funny hat.”

“Hey,” Leonard said.

21

It was hot in the auction barn, and it felt good to come out into the open air. There were a number of men and women in cowboy hats and gimme caps out there, and a few of them were smoking cigarettes. One was wiping cow shit off his boots, scraping them over the edge of a concrete step.

That guy, the shit scraper, turned and looked at us. He smiled when he saw Leonard. I had a suspicion he was Bert. He was tall and strong-looking in a working man sort of way; had long muscles and a face that had seen too much sun, and maybe too many fists.

“Damn, man, that is the ugliest goddamn hat I ever seen,” Bert said, coming over, pushing his cowboy hat back on his head. “You just wear that to crap in?”

I thought, Bert, my man, you are taking your life into your own hands. Leonard stood there with his hands in front of him, right folded over left, at his belt buckle. That was how he stood when he wanted to look casual but was ready to knock your head off.

Leonard said, “Naw, I crap in cowboy hats. This I keep clean.”

Bert and Leonard looked at each other. Bert looked like a tough hombre. Thing was, though, Leonard was a tough hombre.

I said, “Bert, we’re just trying to find out who killed your daughter.”

“Stepdaughter,” he said. “Could have been anybody.”

“So no idea?”

“I got an idea.”

“And?” Leonard said.

“Keeping it to myself.”

“You tell the cops what you thought?” Leonard asked.

“Nope.”

“Why not?” I said.

“Didn’t care for Mini much. A real weird one and a bitch. Don’t like her mother much now. Left her money to the daughter, then to a bunch of fuckin’ cats. How about that? Cats. What the fuck are cat’s gonna buy?”

“Cat toys,” Leonard said.

Bert gave Leonard a look.

“And there’s catnip,” Leonard said.

“Listen, I don’t really care I talk to you guys or not,” Bert said.

“What if there was money in it?” I said. I wasn’t sure where I was going with that, but I had a hunch Mrs. Christopher might be willing to put out a few dollars for information.

“That depends,” I said.

“On what?” Bert said.

“The quality of the information,” Leonard said, just like he knew what I was thinking. And he probably did.

“Well, money talks, and bullshit walks,” Bert said. “You two don’t exactly look like fucking Fort Knox.”

“We’re not talking about our money,” I said.

“How much of the other fella’s money, then?”

“Again, that depends,” I said.

Bert let that run through his head, which I considered was an easy task.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I got a feeling I say too much I might get in trouble.”

“With who?” I said.

“That’s my business.”

I could see he was actually nervous, but was waffling on the matter.

“How about I give you a card,” I said, “and you call us if you change your mind. This offer is short-term.”

“How short-term?” he asked.

“How about tomorrow morning,” Leonard said.

“I think you’d take it two weeks from now,” he said.

“And I think you don’t know us too well,” Leonard said.

I took out my wallet and opened it up and took out a card. I gave it to him.

He looked at it, then at me. “Hanson Investigations. Well, if you’re Hap Collins, then you must be Hanson.”

“Nope,” Leonard said. “We work for Hanson.”

“You change your mind, call us,” I said.

Bert turned the card around and around in his hands. He was giving it serious thought. Finally he put the card in his shirt pocket. He said, “I’ll consider on it.”

And then he turned and walked away, across the parking lot. We watched until he got in a black truck so old I didn’t know what decade it was from. He cranked it, and we kept watching while it coughed smoke and rattled away like something broken tumbling downhill.

“You have cards?” Leonard said. “I don’t have any cards.”

“Marvin gave them to me.”

“He didn’t give me any.”

“He told me to tell you we would share.”

“How are you sharing if you’re carrying the cards and I don’t have any?”

“I’ll share for the both of us,” I said.

Driving back to my place, I said, “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Leonard said. “He’s an odd one. He’s either paranoid, or has delusions of his own importance, or he knows something and he didn’t tell us. And what he knows he’s trying to turn into money. Maybe with someone else, and us, but the someone else may be someone he shouldn’t have messed with. I think he may actually have been afraid. He was acting tough, but—”

“He was overacting,” I said.

“Yep, we ought to know. We do it all the time.”

22

Back home, upstairs in the bedroom, I called Brett on my cell. She answered on the first ring.

“So, just sitting around waiting for me to call?” I said.

“Actually,” she said, “I’m sitting around in case my boyfriend calls.”

“Is he handsome?”

“Not particularly, but he looks great by phone.”

“Is he hung?”

“Nope, but I can dream.”

“This boyfriend, would he be me?”

“He would.”

“Thanks for lifting my spirits.”

“You know I love you, even with all your deficiencies.”

“How are things?”

“Well, pretty good for a small-blown crisis, but it’s the same crisis,” Brett said. “The one where my daughter is leading a screwed-up life, but pretends she wants to change and tells me all her woes, then goes right back to doing what she’s always done, being who she always was and is. A whore who drinks too much and buys her clothes at expensive stores in Houston, and her underwear at Wal-Mart.”

“And you’re thinking it’s your fault?”

“Some of it is my fault. Except for the Wal-Mart underwear … Oh, hell. Who am I talking to? You know I buy mine there too.”

“Your ex had a little to do with Tillie’s problems.”

“True, but I didn’t have to set his head on fire. I think it set a bad example.”

“Maybe a little,” I said.

“Are you doing okay in the private detective business?”

“Well, I’m in it. And there’s supposed to be a big check at the end of the rainbow, and me and Leonard got to hear some neat stuff about vampires, devil heads, a dog-eaten body, and a white trash winning the lottery and getting hit by a train. Oh, and a bunch of cats inherited the lottery money.”

“Say what?”

I told her all that I had learned.

When I finished, Brett said, “That’s some weird stuff.”

“You think? When are you coming home?”

“Tomorrow. I’ll be home by noon.”

“Really?”

“I just made up my mind. Tillie was the same before I got here, and she’ll be the same after I leave.”

“How is the prostitute business?”

“Booming. One of her johns asked me if I wanted to pull a mother and daughter.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah, I made three hundred dollars and there was a pony involved.”

“Is that all you made? The pony factor alone was worth three hundred.”

23

Leonard was about his business that night, which I thought might be trying to call John and talk him into coming back. I figured Leonard was close to the end of his rope on that. He was sticking with John better than anyone before, but I knew him well enough to know he had a destination in mind, and once he arrived there, if John came back to him bare-ass naked swinging his dick, Leonard wouldn’t be interested anymore. Once he cut you loose, he cut you loose.

Me, I pined over everything, worried about everything. I was worrying now. I was worrying that Bert wouldn’t call. I was thinking if he did, he wouldn’t know anything and that he would just try to work us for money. I was thinking me promising money was stupid. I was thinking I could dip into my savings and come up with a few thousand, if I had to, but I didn’t want to, and I didn’t want to spend the client’s money either.

I was also thinking Bert was just a dumb goober with a brain full of imaginary foes. A man shot down by disappointment, thinking about those cats with his dead wife’s lottery money, as if they actually held it in their little furry paws.

I went upstairs and crawled into bed with nothing on but my underwear and read from a good book until midnight. Then I put the book down with only one chapter to go.

I put it down because I was thinking about things that had come at me sideways, out of the past. I don’t know what sent them to the forefront, but this sort of thing had been happening for a while. All I could think about when things got quiet was the violence I had done in my life, or been around. Gunfire and fistfights, blood and gray matter splattered on the wall. The way it hit me right then, it was like I had looked in the wrong direction while crossing a road and had been hit by a truck.

I found that I was even breathing rapidly.

I twisted so I could sit on the bed and put my feet on the floor. I took some deep breaths. I tried to imagine encasing my thoughts in a dark balloon and letting it float away.

I had to float a lot of balloons.

After a little while, I felt better. I decided to take a hot shower and stand and soak the back of my neck for a while. I did that, and when I came out, toweling off, I checked the clock for the time. It was late.

I looked at my cell lying on the nightstand.

I had missed two calls.

I checked.

They were from Bert.

24

There was a message on the cell.

“Hey, this is Bert. Saw you and the colored guy with the silly hat at the auction barn, today, remember?” the message started, like maybe we wouldn’t remember him. “Give me a call, you got some money. I got something for you.”

I called his number.

Nothing.

I left a message.

I had missed his call by only a few minutes. Where the hell was he?

I finished drying off and crawled back into bed and picked up my book. I read only a page or two before I called him again.

Nothing.

I finally turned in and went to sleep, and in the middle of the night I woke up thinking about Bert’s call. There was no reason to suspect anything odd, anything foul. He had called and left a message, and I had called back and left one, and that was it, but I couldn’t get the paranoid feeling out of my head that something was wrong.

He hadn’t said anything particularly suspicious in his call, but I had detected a worried tone in his voice. Or had I? Maybe I was projecting.

I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but that didn’t work.

I turned on the light by the bed and tried to read some more, but my mind wouldn’t focus on the words. I got up and dressed and drove over to Camp Rapture and the address I had for Bert. It was about a forty-five-minute drive.

His place was off the main road and over a cattle guard, down a drive that was little more than a crease in a pasture. As I turned into the long drive, a car nearly sideswiped me, and was gone.

I couldn’t tell much about the car, but I thought it was some kind of SUV. All I had seen was lights, and the blur of a passing vehicle. It could have been any dark color.

I drove on cautiously, came to where he lived, which was a green-and-white trailer up on blocks in a little grown-up yard next to a creek on one side, an aluminum outbuilding with the door missing on the other side. I could see a lawn mower in there and what looked like an automobile engine up on sawhorses.

Bert’s trailer didn’t look as if it had been new when it was new. His pickup was in the yard. The closest house around, another mobile home up the road, wasn’t close at all. Maybe half a mile. It was a lonely kind of place.

I sat in my car for a moment, then reached over and opened the glove box and got my .38 Super out of there, along with gloves and a little pocket flashlight. I mention it was a Super because if I don’t Leonard always says something like “They don’t actually make thirty-eights in automatic.” And I always think if they don’t, then why do they call it a .38 with a word behind it? Shouldn’t he know I’m talking about a .38 Super? Gun fanatics make my ass tired.

This was the sort of thing I thought about when I didn’t want to think about doing what I was about to do, because I knew it was stupid, more stupid than Leonard wanting me to say Super on the end of .38. But it settled the nerves. I figured whoever was in the SUV was long gone, and if they were someone I should worry about, that worry was doing seventy-five miles an hour down a dark road. I hoped.

I looked back that way. No lights. No shapes in the dark. Just lots of empty pasture. I didn’t see any cows. Maybe Bert was planning to go into that business. Or maybe he had been in that business, but no more. Maybe he just liked cows, and that’s why he hung out at the auction barn.

I stepped out of the car, put the gun and flashlight in my coat pocket, and pulled on the gloves. I walked up to the front door. A cement block served as a footstep. I stepped up on it, tried to look through the little diamond-shaped glass on the door, but it was designed for looks, not use. It was opaque. It was certainly nice that a fine wood-and-aluminum rectangle like a mobile home had so much class about its door window. Inside, maybe there was a chandelier over a coffee table.

I knocked, lightly at first, and then more briskly. I went around the trailer to the back. There was a rickety, weathered porch there. I went up on it and knocked again. My knock echoed through the trailer and then the noise died like a ball that had quit bouncing. I walked around the trailer and tried to look in the windows, but all the curtains were drawn, and I had to stand on my tiptoes to look at them.

I could hear the air conditioner that poked out of the bedroom window humming, which, considering we were on the edge of winter, seemed unnecessary.

I went to the front door again, thought about trying to jimmy it, but couldn’t see any future in that, other than a visit to the Camp Rapture jail.

Then I thought, What the hell, and tried the doorknob.

It was unlocked.

I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. I looked at the edge of the door frame, near the lock. The wood was cracked there. It was the kind of thing a professional could do in a second, and almost soundlessly. The hair on the back of my neck stood up like brush bristles.

I opened the door and hoped what I smelled was a rat in the wall, but I had smelled that before and I knew what it was. It wasn’t old death. It was the smell of fresh blood and excrement, the common result of violent death.

The thing to do was to call the police and not go inside. So I didn’t call them and went inside. That was my style. I put my right hand in my coat pocket to keep the gun warm, and used my other to flash the light around, but otherwise, I stayed where I was, sniffing that stink, half-expecting someone to pop out at me.

There was a very large and nice television in the front room, and it took up most of it. There was a painting of dogs on the wall playing poker. Someone had to have one. I spent more time admiring it than it deserved. The place was so small, living there might require acrobatics. I kept looking at that painting of the dogs playing poker in the light of my flash. Anything to keep me from going back there where the stench was coming from. The air conditioner hummed and it was cold enough to be uncomfortable.

Finally, I pulled my feet loose and started walking. There was a bedroom in the rear of the trailer, and the door to it was open. I went inside. I bounced the light around. It looked as if it had been hit by a small tornado. Drawers were emptied on the floor, on the bed. Under some of the stuff on the bed was a heap that seemed to be the source of the smell.

Since no vampires seemed to be lurking in the shadows, I put the gun in my pocket and took out my flash and turned it on, shined it on the bed. I took hold of the edge of the covers topping the heap and moved them.

A body was underneath, not sleeping. I pulled my T-shirt up over my nose, but it didn’t help much; that blood and excrement smell was stout. The body lay on its back and it was nude and dark and bloody. I moved the flash over it carefully.

It was, as I expected, Bert.

There was a hole in the forehead. The bedsheets behind the head were thick with dark, drying blood. In the beam of my light it looked as if the victim had leaked black wax. His hands were stretched out and held with rope. The rope had been pulled down on both sides of the bed and tied to the bed rail. His feet were tied off at the end of the bed in the same way.

I moved the beam down his bare chest, down to the groin. There was something there that looked like the remains of a penis, because it had been worked over with something sharp. You might call it a major circumcision.

A cockroach crawled out from under the body and scuttled over the sheet, proving Bert wasn’t much of a housekeeper or the killers had brought their own roaches. Between his legs, about calf level, there was a design drawn on the sheets in dried blood.

A devil’s head.