too much money. Even for a good-looking ass like hers.”
“So you had some ideas?” Leonard said.
“Yeah. I said, you do what I like. What I say for three days, and we fish too, I’ll pay off the bill.”
“How much is the bill?” I asked.
“Seventy-five or eighty thousand. It wasn’t an exact figure.”
I looked at Leonard. “You were actually going to pay her that much?”
“I figured I ought to fuck her old man too, for that price. Not that I wanted to, understand me.”
“You have that kind of money?”
“Out the ass. That’s no money to me.”
“Are you going to pay her anything now?”
“I don’t know. Probably not.”
“So why are we hearing all this?” I asked.
“Because I can’t find her and the deal’s off. I’m giving the old man the money for the fishing trip. One day, but that’s it. She threw me out last night, wouldn’t answer her door this morning. I thought she was here.”
“What would you care?” I said. “You were thinking about not paying the money. Right?”
“I don’t like losing tail to someone else,” Billy said. “Especially someone made me look like an asshole. And I’ve spent money on her, put her up in that hotel. She thinks I’m going to pay for today, her not letting me in like that, not answering the door, she can kiss my ass.”
“No one had to work hard to make you look like an asshole,” Leonard said. “You were riding high there, my man. And understand you’re getting this from the smartest nigger in the world.”
“Smartest nigger in the world?” Billy said.
Leonard leaped off the bed, slapped Billy so hard it knocked him off the chair.
“I can say that,” Leonard said. “You can’t. How’d you vote last presidential election?”
“What?” Billy said, afraid to get off the floor.
“You heard me. You vote Republican or Democrat? And don’t tell me what you think I want to hear.”
“Republican.”
“That saves you one whack,” Leonard said.
“But it makes me want to hit you,” I said. “Both of you.”
“Look,” Billy said. “I’m through with all this. I’ll give her father the money, be on my way.”
“I don’t trust you to give anyone anything,” I said. “And I think we should walk over to where Beatrice is, try that knock again.”
We spent a little while cleaning Billy up. We even let him take off his shirt and rinse the blood out. We decided he could have his gun back. Without the ammunition.
Leonard said, “Don’t let me see you pull that again, even if it’s just to scratch your ass. You hear?”
“I hear,” Billy said.
We walked over to the hotel where Beatrice was staying. It was a pretty good walk, took about thirty minutes.
We tried the phone in the lobby, but she didn’t answer. The elevator was broken. We walked upstairs and Billy showed us the room. He knocked.
No answer.
I knocked and called her name.
No answer.
I beat on the door.
Still no answer.
Billy took a turn hammering on the door. “Wake up, you cunt,” he said.
I touched his arm gently. “Don’t say that.”
“I was kind of expecting a guy to answer in his drawers,” Leonard said. “I figured she got rid of both you bastards and got someone else.”
“A guy in his drawers, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Or, if your luck was in, without them.”
“Don’t tease me, Hap.”
“Are you…?” Billy said to Leonard.
“Careful,” Leonard said.
“But you beat me up.”
“And quite handily, I thought.”
Billy dropped his head. It hadn’t been his last two days. Lost his girl. Lost his fish. Got his ass beat by a queer. Several times.
I went downstairs, told the man in charge I couldn’t wake the lady. He understood enough English to get the idea I wanted him to unlock her door, but he wouldn’t do it. I offered him twenty-five dollars to check and see she was all right, but he wouldn’t do that either. So much for Mexican corruption.
I went back upstairs and knocked again. I looked at Leonard. He said, “Enough of this using our brains and politeness. I suggest we resort to good old East Texas brawn and assholism. Stand back.”
He jumped at the door.
He hit it solid and hard. So hard it knocked him backward on his ass. He got up, said, “Let’s do it together.”
“She could already be at the dock,” I said.
“Good thought,” Leonard said. “Glad you came up with that. Maybe a minute or two earlier would have been better.”
“You’re supposed to go out again,” I said. “Right, Billy Boy?”
“Well, yeah. But I told her I wasn’t going out today. Not after last night. I told her that when she threw me out.”
“Maybe she just left and went home,” I said.
“Fuck it,” Leonard said.
“What the hell,” I said.
We hit the door with our shoulders, splintered it at the frame. We hit it two more times before it fell in. Even though it was morning, the curtains were drawn and it was dark in there. I switched on the light. There was a hallway, a bathroom on the left, and at the end of the hallway, on the left, was the bed.
Beatrice was on it. Her mouth was stuffed with something and her bikini top had been used to strap whatever was in her mouth firmly in place. Her throat was cut, wide and deep. Her head hung off the bed. Blood had dripped into her hair and some of it hung in ropy strings across the sheets where it had dried. Her face had been cut on. Someone had taken an axe or a machete to her as well. Her hands and feet were chopped off. The nubs of bone were clean, so the blade had been sharp and the blows had been swift.
There was a chair by the desk in the room, and there were four deep slashes in the seat of it; it had been used to prop up Beatrice’s hands and feet for chopping. There were sprays of blood on the chair and on the wall near it. I didn’t see her hands or feet lying around anywhere.
On the floor by the bed were a couple of knotted rubbers. They might have belonged to her tormentors or to Billy. Right then it didn’t seem to matter.
“One goddamned thing,” Billy said. “It wasn’t suicide.”
I turned to hit him, but Leonard was too quick. There was a sound like someone cracking a stick over their knee, and Billy flew back against the wall, hit his head against it hard enough to dent the sheetrock. His ragdoll body nodded to the left, collapsed to the floor.
“I was just made to hit that motherfucker,” Leonard said.
I went quickly into the bathroom and splashed my face with water. I felt Leonard’s arm on my shoulders.
“Easy, man,” he said.
I raised up, moved away from the sink, then Leonard was splashing water on his face. “Goddamn,” he said.
I looked where he was looking. The tub. In it were Beatrice’s hands and feet.
