I said, “They let us off easy as they did, I guess they feel certain we didn’t do it? You talked to them. Do they have any idea who did it?”
“No. They sort of like your blond friend for it, but they don’t sound real convinced. I speak damn good Spanish, amigo, and believe me I quizzed them. I’m always curious, even if it isn’t any of my business. Especially if it isn’t any of my business. They just think you guys are gringo assholes down there for Mexican poontang. They think Beatrice was whoring. Did you know she was a call girl?”
“What?”
“That’s right. An expensive one. Or at least had been.”
“Are you positive?”
“According to them. They say they knew her. But, keep in mind, those boys might lie to an old cowboy.”
“Drugstore cowboy.”
“Hogs may not be cattle, but they got to be tended to.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Really, hogs are a lot of work.”
“I mean about Beatrice.”
“Oh, well, as I said, that’s what I was told. Said she usually worked pretty high-end, but in the last few years they hadn’t heard from her. Then this. They think she tried to pull a trick, pick up a little extra, got the wrong man, someone who wanted more than a ride in the tunnel, and he did her in.”
“Did they say why?”
“Because he wanted to. Bad hombre.”
“So they don’t really think Billy did it?”
“Being honest, I’m not sure what they think.”
“Yeah, they were fairly inscrutable.”
“I hate to perpetuate a stereotype, but those fellas were about as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. Enough money and they’d think Walt Disney did it.”
“He’s dead.”
“See what I mean.”
“I guess it could have happened that way. But it would have been just what Beatrice feared. This Juan Miguel.”
“Yeah. It could have been revenge against her father.”
“What I’d like to know is where in hell was Ferdinand.”
“The police would like to know too. That way they could pistol-whip him and have him explain a few things. I reckon you guys weren’t Americans, you’d have gotten the bad end of a rubber hose. Irritating the American consulate, though, is not something they like. Pees in the tourist water.”
“Ferdinand took off? That seems odd, considering what happened to his daughter.”
“Maybe he could see the handwriting on the wall, Hap. He knew this Juan Miguel would want him next, and him being killed wasn’t going to bring his daughter back, so he took off in his boat.”
I stewed over these revelations the rest of the way to Houston. At the airport, we caught a shuttle to airport parking. We rode back to LaBorde in Jim Bob’s near-thirty-year-old, blood-red Cadillac, festooned with curb feelers. Inside, fuzzy dice and baby shoes dangled from the mirror, and on the windshield were silhouettes of dogs and people with slash marks through them.
“You fix this car up like this?” Leonard said. “Or is it some kind of punishment you got to bear?”
“This sonofabitch can outrun the Concorde,” Jim Bob said.
“But does it stay on the ground?” Leonard asked.
“Sometimes,” Jim Bob said.
“Jim Bob,” Leonard said. “Thy middle name is class.”
“Veil ride down with you guys?” I asked.
“Nope,” Charlie said. “I called him, and he just sort of showed up at the jailhouse in Mexico. How long you known that guy?”
“Long enough,” I said. “I don’t see him that often, but trust me, he’s aces with me.”
“Seems it’s the same with him,” Charlie said. “I called him like you said, said you were in trouble, and he didn’t even wait to find out what kind of trouble. He said, Yes, and where is he?”
“He’s kind of an asshole, actually,” Leonard said. “But he’s an asshole worth having on your side.”
“You’re an asshole,” Charlie said.
“I know,” Leonard said.
“You too,” Charlie said to me.
“I know.”
“Don’t even say it, Charlie,” Jim Bob said.
21
We arrived in LaBorde just after dark, dropped Leonard off at John’s house. When John opened the door he let out a yell. They embraced. With his arm around John’s shoulders, Leonard turned and waved at us. John waved too. As they went inside a shape low to the ground came out of the dark, waddled into the light.
Bob the armadillo. The critter followed them inside while Leonard held the door open.
“Now that’s weird,” Jim Bob said.
“His name is Bob,” I said. “He likes vanilla cookies, slow walks in the rain, and he doesn’t carry leprosy like many armadillos.”
Through the open door I could see warm yellow light and there was the sound of classical music playing.
Leonard closed the door.
I rolled up the window and we rode on.
My place was dark as a hit man’s plans. Even in the dead of summer, it looked cold. When I got out of the car – the Red Bitch, Jim Bob called it – I could smell the stench of charred wood from the apartment below. Upstairs, where I lived, seemed like the place where a body ought to be laid out on a cooling board. My pickup was parked in the yard. No one had stolen it. No insurance money for me. No new transportation. Just this piece of shit.
“You guys don’t stay up too late watching movies and spitting water,” I said.
“Piss off,” Charlie said, rolled up his window, and away they went.
He may have quit smoking, but late at night, or when he was tired, he grew kind of irritable.
I didn’t have my key. I realized it when I was halfway up the stairs. No problem. I trooped downstairs, found the spare I keep in a metal box under a brick, went up, unlocked my door, and went inside.
The place smelled stale as an old maid’s closet.
I turned on the light.
No dog jumped up to greet me.
Brett didn’t come out of the back room in a negligee.
A small spider scrabbled across the floor, perhaps in greeting.
I stepped on it.
A few roaches were scuttling about in the kitchen. Making a sandwich perhaps.
I sat down at my kitchen table.
I got up and locked the door.
I sat down at the table again.
A roach darted out of the corner, stopped about three feet away. Perhaps he thought this was his home now and I was an intruder. He finally got tired of trying to stare me down, rushed away.
I noticed there were rat turds next to the refrigerator. I wondered if rats would use a sandbox like a cat. I wondered if I could train them. It was nice to know these were just average-sized rats. Not like the ones in the Mexican jail that could be saddled.
At least I hoped they were average size. Maybe the Mexican rats had flown in with us, ridden in Jim Bob’s
