'Dead.'
'Hell, I'm sorry.'
'I ain't. I been meaning to sack up that shit of hers for years, throw it out, but I just ain't had the time. Ain't got no milk, want some sugar in yours?'
'Just black,' I said.
'Way I like my women,' he said. He brought the coffee in, said, 'Sit up, man, I got to have some room. Sides, I got a program to watch. I like the noon news. I like to know who's killin' who.'
'I'm injured here.'
'Sit up anyway.'
I managed myself to a sitting position, slid down to the far end of the couch and took the coffee he was offering me. 'Thanks,' I said.
'Don't make nothing of it. I was gonna fix me some anyway.'
Bacon turned on the television, adjusted the rabbit ears for a while, did everything with them except tie them in a knot, but he didn't get a picture. Just snow.
'Shit,' he said, and turned off the set. 'Guess we got to talk.'
'Do you think Jackson Brown did it? Hung the fella in the jail?'
'Bobby Joe? If ever anybody needed hangin', it was that sonofabitch.'
'He's certainly popular around here. I haven't talked to anyone liked him.'
'Nothing to like. I enjoyed puttin' him down.'
'Come again.'
'I buried that fool. Dug the hole for him, anyway. I do back-hoe work, I'm asked. Make a little on the side, digging ditches, sewer lines, and graves. Gotta stay on top of stuff, you gonna make ends meet.'
Now I knew what kind of machinery was under the tarp.
'Well, do you think Brown did it?'
'He may not have done it himself, but he probably behind it, 'cause I don't think Bobby Joe hung himself. I think he con that white sonofabitch down here with that music business, thinking he gonna get big money out of him, then Bobby Joe got drunk, and didn't think it through, decided to go for the short change. Just killed him for what he had in his wallet. Bobby Joe like that. Mean as ass rash. He might just thought it would be funny to see that peckerwood squirm. You know how they found that white man?'
'No.'
'Hung by his heels from a tree with his throat cut.'
'Damn. Taking another angle on the subject, thing we came here for, Bacon, reason we ended up takin' this beatin', is we're trying to find a woman.'
'What man ain't?'
'A certain woman. Named Florida. Good-lookin' young black woman, came here not long back? You saw her, you'd remember her.'
'That black fox? Shoot, she here fifteen minutes, everyone knew it. Every hard dick in niggertown was after her, and the peckerwoods was watchin' too. I was still able to trot, I'd have been after her.'
'She was interested in the Soothe case. She was here to look into it. Do you know what happened to her?'
'She a fool. Come down this side of town talking about how she wanted to maintain Bobby Joe Soothe's legacy, like he had one. It was ole L.C. had the legacy. Bobby Joe could pick a guitar some, but he was a scum hole, and a scum hole don't deserve no legacy, 'sides that hole I dug for 'm. If'n he'd a takin' up preachin', he'd have been the perfect villain. As was, he once cut up his nephew.'
'I heard that story.'
'Hear about the German shepherd?'
'Yeah.'
'Well, that ain't true. That ole dog was part collie.'
'I don't suppose you caught the dog's name?'
'Ralph. Tell you another one. Bobby Joe, he goin' to one of the joints, and he stepped in some cat shit by the door. Fella owns the joint, he got all kinds of cats. Don't really take good care of 'em none. Just lets 'em run wild. Throws a little food out the back, and well, them cats ain't spayed, and next to a rat and rabbit, ain't nothing likes to fuck better'n a cat. So they always makin' baby cats. Cat shit all over that place. Bobby Joe, he did his drinkin' there 'cause everyone was scared of him, and he liked that. He liked to go a place where people was afraid of him. Made him feel like a big dick. Anyways, he steps in this cat shit, and you know what he does?'
'I can't even begin to guess.'
'He goes in and gets him a beer mug, and he scoops up some cat crap with it, then he comes in and makes the owner buy himself a beer. You know, take money out of his own pocket and put it in the register.'
'Least he gets the money back,' I said.
'That's right. Who says life ain't fair. Well, Bobby Joe makes this owner, Tiny Joe Timpson, called that 'cause he's big as a bear standing on a block of wood, makes this guy pour that beer on top of the cat shit, and drink it. And Bobby Joe, he ain't no big guy. Ain't no midget, but ain't no big guy either. That Tiny, he done killed six folks
