hanging by a strip of bloody skin.
“What’s that in his ass?” Leonard asked.
“Barbed wire,” Jim Bob said. “And you can be certain it wasn’t no fencin’ accident. I bet whoever stuck it up there didn’t even grease it.”
“You know who stuck it up there?” I said. “You see the size of those prints? Way that back door was opened?”
“Yeah,” Jim Bob said. “Big Man Mountain.”
“So maybe you’re wrong a second time,” Leonard said. “Looks like Big Man and Pierre weren’t in cahoots.”
“I think the word welsher carved into Pierre’s head explains a few things,” Jim Bob said.
“Explain them to us somewhere else,” I said. “I’ve had about all this I can take.”
We returned to the living room. The air was considerably better in there. Jim Bob said, “I think Pierre made some kind of financial arrangement with Big Man, and Pierre didn’t deliver, and Big Man took it personal. Figure Pierre was in here with his fist up this guy’s ass and Big Man came in and gave them a surprise party. A noise maker for the lover, and a bag of games for Pierre himself. I think toward the end there, it didn’t have nothing to do with money. Big Man had a mission in mind, and it was supposed to end with Pierre dying slowly and badly. And that’s just the way it went. Let’s finish looking.”
We checked another bedroom. It was full of shelves, and on the shelves were rows and rows of videotapes. Jim Bob took a couple of them down, went back to the bedroom with the body and the VCR. Reluctantly, we followed. Jim Bob played a bit of each video.
“Jesus,” Leonard said. “This shit is worse than the ones we got.”
“Later stuff is my guess,” Jim Bob said. “Fucks like this, they start out doin’ a little rough stuff, then they build on it. Pretty soon, it’s beyond a few bites and pinches and ass whippin’s. It steps over into torture. You’ll note, the park isn’t the background for these. More seclusion. More time to make the kind of videos Pierre wanted to make, wanted to sell.”
Jim Bob returned the videos to the shelves. We finished off our little escapade by looking in the garage. No car, but there was a motorcycle. It looked as if Big Man had traded out with Pierre, leaving his bike and taking Pierre’s car.
We left out of there and drove away. It was a hot day now and the car’s air conditioner was off, but I felt a chill anyway.
We stopped at a self-service gas station, threw away the gloves we’d used. I called the police department with a little tip about a house with two dead bodies in it. Before they could ask any questions, I hung up.
I went out to the car. Jim Bob had his hat pushed way back on his forehead and was pumping gas into his car’s tank and Leonard was using Bissinggame’s leisure-suit jacket to clean bugs off the windshield.
I leaned against the car. I kept hearing those damn flies and smelling that stench, seeing that face that wasn’t a face. Poor bastard. Worse yet, he hadn’t even had the taste to wear decent jockey shorts. Who the fuck made them zebra-striped briefs anyway? There ought to be a law against that kind of shit. That and leisure suits.
Leonard trash-canned the suit, came over, leaned next to me. “You know, you dampen that material, it makes a pretty good swipe.”
“Neat,” I said.
“How you doin’, man?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yeah, me neither,” Leonard said. “Lot has changed in a short time. I don’t know how I feel about anything. Poor old Leon.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Clinton is gonna be seriously fucked up.”
“Yeah.”
“Poor Ella.”
“Yep,” Leonard said. “Poor Ella. Know what I think?”
“What?”
“I think the worst is over.”
“You’re talkin’ about our lives,” I said. “Seems to me you’re being foolishly optimistic. Every time we turn around, we’re openin’ up a can of worms.”
Leonard clapped me on the shoulder. “It’s all right, man. We’re both gonna be all right. Big Man had a falling-out with Pierre, took care of Pierre, so Pierre’s no longer a problem. Big Man won’t have any interest in us now. It’s just a matter of time before the law runs him aground. Guy looks like that can’t hide forever. As for King, well, we turn in the tapes to Charlie, and let Charlie sort stuff out. We’ve done all we can do.”
“Reckon so,” I said.
“You know, today’s been different.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“No, I mean it’s been me keepin’ you from goin’ off half-cocked. Usually, it’s the other way around.”
“That’s what’s bothering me,” I said. “I came within an inch of killing a man for no reason other than anger and suspicion. One squeeze of the trigger, I’d have been no better than Big Man, Pierre, or the rest.”
“On your worst day, you’re better than all of them,” Leonard said. “You’d killed King, it wouldn’t have hurt my feelin’s.”
“Leonard, sometimes you scare me.”
Jim Bob went inside to pay for the gas.
I said, “He doesn’t seem particularly perturbed, does he?”
“I have a feeling that weird fuck has seen more bodies and strange shit than we have, Hap.”
“All I know is I feel like my life has been poisoned. I come home from a shitty job, get bit by a rabid squirrel, find out my insurance policy sucks the dog dick and my best friend is accused of murder.”
Leonard nodded. “I know. One day I’m living with this guy I love, next thing I know he’s run off with a grease ball, then Raul’s killed, and I find out he was a grease ball himself. It’s pretty disconcerting. I thought I could choose my men better than that.”
“Considering my fuck-ups with women, I can’t say much,” I said.
“You’re right,” Leonard said. “You can’t.”
“I think Brett might be different. I want to believe she is. I want to believe I’m different. That I’ve changed. That I’m not quite so stupid.”
“Well,” Leonard said, “Brett strikes me as one hell of a lady. As for you, howsabout we not hope for too much?”
30
Couple days later, as reinforcement, I phoned Charlie and told him most of what I knew, holding very little back. The cops had already been to Pierre’s and had found the videos. There were videos without face bars on them as well, so most of the people involved in the sorry business could be identified.
“I want to thank you and Leonard for the stuff you stuck in my mailbox, Hap.”
“What stuff?”
Charlie laughed. “All right. Play it that way. But some helpful sonofabitch put two videos and a notebook full of coded phone numbers in there. One video is about grease, the other is about sex and violence.”
“Does it help any?”
“Doesn’t hurt. Fact is, this is one time where an entire ring of assholes is gonna get nailed. A few of the bikers involved won’t get pinned, ’cause there ain’t enough proof, but there’s a string of video-store owners right now whose assholes are suckin’ wind. I hate to give you any fuckin’ credit, but you and Leonard can be proud of yourselves on this one.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but at what price?”
