“Before you say that,” Jim Bob said, “understand exactly what you’re into. You’re helping plot a murder. We’re going to kill a man and you are an accessory to the deed. You don’t get caught, you got to go through life living with it. Think you can?”
“I don’t like the idea,” I said, “but if I went away now I’d still know you were going to do it, and my knowing is just as bad. I’m going to end up living with it one way or another.”
“I just want it understood,” Russel said, “that when it comes to Freddy, I do the shooting, Jim Bob.”
“No promises,” Jim Bob said. “Looks like Freddy is going to give me a ventilator shaft, I’m taking him out. I’ll do my best to do it your way, but I’m not putting my head on the block. I don’t go that far for anyone. Thing is we’re going to do it, and that’s enough.”
“When do we start?” I asked.
“Tomorrow morning,” Jim Bob said. “Early.”
37
Next morning, well before light, Jim Bob and Russel drove away in the pickup. I stayed around the house and killed time. I had an early breakfast of fried eggs and burned toast and too-strong coffee. Later, about eight, I had a muffin and a glass of milk. Before noon I drank a beer. At noon, I ate a sandwich. I had some iced tea. I watched television; about half of a monster movie where irritated puppets were destroying a cardboard city. Where were The Three Stooges when you really needed them?
I was as nervous as a witch during the Inquisition. I wanted to go home. I wanted to see my wife and son. I wanted to go fishing.
I went over and sat by the phone and looked at it.
It wasn’t intimidated. It didn’t ring. I stopped looking at it. I picked up a magazine about hog raising and read about ear mites in the South; they seemed to be a problem, but nothing that couldn’t be defeated. I wondered if Jim Bob’s hogs had ear mites. I wondered what the hogs thought about it if they did. I even tried to see the ear mite’s side of it. The phone still didn’t ring. It knew I was really watching it out of the corner of my eye. A watched phone never boils, or something like that.
I went upstairs, not to snoop, but because I had to do something. I was about ready to crawl along the wall like Spider Man. The door to Jim Bob’s room was open and I went in there. There was a big table with a computer on it and some computer manuals. There was a row of books next to his bed. The books were all Westerns, Louis L’Amour and T.V. Olsen. There was a shotgun on a deer-antler gun rack over the bed. I went over and tested the tips of the antlers with my finger. Not that sharp. That was all right. I wasn’t that sharp either. I was involved in a plot to kill a man I didn’t know and had never so much as spoken to. There was already one man dead by my hand, and I didn’t even know his name.
On top of the chest of drawers I found a Trojan rubber in its wrapper, some keys, change and a stack of magazines. Playboy, Penthouse, Gallery, and some real sleazoid types. I looked through them. I looked through the sleazoid types a couple of times. Maybe it was three times.
I sang “Home on the Range” and went downstairs.
The phone rang.
It was a siding salesman. I told him no and hung up. I looked at the phone a little while. But not long. I had learned my lesson. I had another beer and went to the bathroom.
The phone rang, of course.
I got my pants snapped and zipped without tearing off any important parts of my person, and answered it on the third ring.
“We’d like one of them pepperoni pizzas, all the goddamn fixings, only cut them little fishes off of it. They make me want to throw up.”
“That’s funny, Jim Bob.”
“Ain’t it. Well, we’re over here across from The Caravan Video Store, and from the looks of things, Freddy owns it. Maybe the feds set him up with it.”
“Would they do that?”
“Oh yeah. They owe him. Don’t that take the rag off the bush, though? They take this scumbag and set him up in business and he pretty well does what he wants so the feds don’t have to look stupid. You don’t see them sonofabitches doing stuff like that for the honest man, do you?”
“He been there all day?”
“Mex came by and got him about six-thirty this morning, drove him to work, and even drove him to the Pizza Hut for lunch. You know, they done got the dents out of that Chevy Nova.”
“That’s all you found out?”
“He likes pepperoni pizza.”
“Great.”
“What’s to find out in one day? I doubt there’s going to be that many astounding revelations anyway. Best we can hope for is just get his pattern down and know when to hit him. If we can do it without the Mex around, all the better. Right now it looks like the sonofabitch shares the same pair of shoes with him.”
“Yeah, well… Guess I’m just bored.”
“Jack off. That’s what I do when I’m bored. It can liven up the dullest of days. Go upstairs and read some of them fuckbooks on my dresser.”
“I did.”
“They’ll put a tire tool in your pants, won’t they?”
“I don’t want a tire tool in my pants.”
“You sound a little bit on the cranky side, Dane. Maybe you ought to have you some milk and cookies, crank the living room air conditioner to high, stretch out on the couch there and take you a nap. We probably won’t need you at all today, so unwind.”
“Easier said than done. You’re about out of beer by the way. You want some more, you better bring some home.”
“What about bread and milk, honey? Do we need that?”
“Ha, ha.”
I hung up and went into the kitchen to look for the milk and cookies. I found the milk, but no cookies. I drank the milk, turned the air conditioner on high and stretched out on the couch for a nap. But it didn’t seem right without the cookies.
38
Next day Jim Bob and I went in the Rambler and Russel stayed home. I pitied him. I hoped he enjoyed reading about ear mites more than I did.
Freddy’s schedule was pretty much like it was the day before. We got into Houston and over to the residential area where he lived about six-ten. We parked in the lot of a Safeway store across from where the highway met the street that led out from the subdivision.
At exactly six-thirty-five, the Nova with the Mexican driving came up the street and turned right on the highway. We followed discreetly in the Rambler. There was no air-conditioning in the Rambler, and by seven it was already a little warm. We followed the Nova through some heavy traffic, but Jim Bob never lost sight of it. I noticed that the Nova had all its windows rolled up. Air-conditioning. I liked that. Here we were, the good guys, and we had a hot Rambler. Worse than that, the bad guy had his own driver and a video store somehow provided him by the FBI. It helped with his hobby, which was taking videos of women being fucked and murdered by himself and the Mexican. He probably had all the major credit cards.
The Nova went out of the main of Houston and onto Highway 59 North, and finally came to a section that had once been thick with tits-and-ass joints, but was now only a few topless lounges and cheap eateries, mobile homes
