“Amen,” Jim Bob said.
“And he did some bible-thumpin’ too,” Charlie said.
“Way I remember it,” Jim Bob said, “bible-thumpin’ is like an automatic two strikes.”
“With an extra penalty,” Leonard said.
“Looks to me like there isn’t anything I can add here,” Charlie said. “I can harass King if you want to give me the videotape on the grease stealin’. He might readily cop to that part. We could maybe nail him on that.”
“I like the idea of puttin’ him in for the worst of it,” Leonard said.
Jim Bob nodded. “Me too.”
I nodded as well. “Can you give us a little more space?”
“Hell,” Charlie said. “I haven’t give you dudes anything but space. But, yeah. A little. Y’all got a beer?”
“Aren’t you on duty?” I said.
“Yeah,” Charlie said, “but I’ll take my badge off and close my eyes while I drink.”
“That’ll work,” Leonard said. “Let’s go inside.”
Charlie actually had three beers and kept going out on the front porch to smoke cigarettes. On his last trip to the porch I joined him, said, “Tell me the bitter.”
He looked off at the heavens, which had changed. The sun had fallen behind some darkening clouds and the sky itself had lost its milky blue look and had clabbered. Everything was still.
“Tornado weather,” Charlie said.
“The bitter?” I said.
Charlie took a deep drag on his smoke, said, “All right. You know, all this stuff ’tween me and Amy about cigarettes? The sex?”
“Sure.”
“It ain’t the cigarettes.”
“What is it?”
“She just don’t want to make love to me. She’s foolin’ around.”
“You got proof, or you feeling paranoid?”
“Proof.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Yeah. Me too.”
“You’re absolutely sure?”
“Yep.”
“What you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet. Somethin’.”
“Nothing stupid, I hope?”
“You mean like shoot them?”
“Like that, yeah.”
“Naw, that ain’t my speed, bud. I might even could forgive her, you know.”
“You confronted her?”
“Not yet… Hap, I got to tell you, this whole cop business – I’ve about had it.”
“That’s the beer talkin’,” I said.
“Naw, it ain’t the beer,” Charlie said. “It’s me. Listen, you guys told me about King Arthur, but there’s stuff you haven’t told me. I’d do that now.”
I gave him the short version of Big Man Mountain and the ball-stimulator incident.
“You tellin’ me Jim Bob killed those two bastards right out?” Charlie said.
“Looked dead to me.”
“Guess I gotta find some reason to check that cabin out.”
“He was just tryin’ to protect me, Charlie. He burst in there like he did to keep me from going the way Raul went. He didn’t have a choice but to shoot them.”
“He came there to shoot ’em, Hap, you know that. That ’lectricity, it make your pecker stand out?”
“I tell you about how my life was threatened, I nearly died, and you want to know that?”
“Well, yeah.”
“I think it made it curl up,” I said. “Actually, I wasn’t thinking about which direction it was going. It hurt too bad. What do you know about Big Man?”
“He’s had him some arrests,” Charlie said. “Quit wrestlin’ – rather, they threw him out – a while ago. He’s been in some shitty business. He worked for King a while. Word is they split early. Big Man didn’t like takin’ orders way King gave ’em. It wasn’t a conflict in morals, it was two assholes bumpin’ together and not likin’ it. Story on Big Man is he starts a job, he finishes it. But when he finished for King last time, he didn’t sign on again. Who knows, maybe he’s had a change of heart. Or a need for money.”
“So you really don’t know if he’s working for King?”
“Not last time I heard,” Charlie said, lighting a cigarette. “But things change, man. Look at Hanson. Christ, my marriage.”
“You know the guy?”
“Yeah, and I hate to say it. It’s so goddamn insultin’. It’s our goddamn insurance agent. Anybody would fuck an insurance agent, they got to be low. Sonofabitch don’t buy at Kmart or Wal-Mart. Them suits he wears, they’re tailor-made. Got him a razor cut. And you know what?”
“What?”
“Motherfucker smokes. And he’s gettin’ her pussy, and he smokes. Fuckin’ cigars, no less. Now ain’t that some shit?”
I smiled, and Charlie tried to smile, but it wasn’t working.
“Tornado weather,” Charlie said.
“You said that.”
“Warnings are out. Been out all day. Things scare me to death. Can’t stand the thought of them. You think I ought to let Amy go?”
“You’re asking me about women?” I said. “You got to be desperate.”
“You’re right,” Charlie said. “I forgot, you’re like a number-one fuck-up in that department.”
“Things are kind of better, now,” I said. I told him about Brett, and about how Big Man had threatened her, what we were doin’ about it.
“You could be fixin’ yourself up for worse business,” Charlie said.
“You going to put a twenty-four-hour guard on her house for me?” I asked.
“You know I can’t,” Charlie said. “More I pay attention to you guys, even tryin’ to help, just makes it worse. Past business has made it so the chief would just as soon throw you boys to the dogs.”
“Brett isn’t part of that.”
“I know. But the chief isn’t going to let me put a twenty-four-hour guard on anybody. I do, I got to tell him why. Then I got to tell him Jim Bob blew two guys away, and that connects to you and Leonard. Fact is, I ought to do something about Jim Bob zeroin’ them guys, but it just ain’t in me, man. I don’t give a shit. The one with the pock face, I know who he is. He’s done everything from robbery to murder to fuckin’ little girls. One of them his own eleven-year-old daughter. If you can call givin’ sperm to an egg makin’ you a father. Hard for me to lose much sleep on that sonofabitch it’s him. It ain’t him, it’s one just like him. I don’t know the black guy, but I figure he’s a member of the same platoon. I got some off-duty time comin’ up, though. I can help you watch your girlfriend then. Next week, all week.”
“Charlie, I was you, I’d use that time to talk to my wife. I don’t know much, but could be she’s not getting what she wants at home, and I’m not talkin’ about sex.”
“Could be lots of things, Hap. And I don’t know what any of them are. I think maybe I got to confront her. She’s in love with this guy, not me, then she ought to go on. I want her to go on. But it has to do with me, I ain’t doin’ somethin’ just right and can start doin’ it way she needs, we might can work stuff out.”
“I certainly hope so,” I said.
“’Course, she could just be an asshole.”
“There is that.”
Leonard came out on the porch. “What you guys doin’? Come back in. Have a beer.”
