Inside there were rows and rows of videos. There was a little thin guy behind the counter. He was wearing a white suit that looked ten years old. It had gone slightly yellow, and was more yellow still under the arms. He had on a white shirt with it and no tie. He needed a shave.
There wasn’t much to see. The usual videos. No section for snuff films. I was about to leave, when a door opened at the back behind the counter, and Freddy came out. I felt tension beating its wings in my stomach.
He had on a very expensive gray suit and it was cut to hide his belly and it did the job well. He had on a gray tie with little blue stripes in it and there was some kind of gold designed tie tac stuck through it and into his dark shirt. I bet his shoes were shiny. He and Price could have competed for best dressed.
I couldn’t help myself. I went over to the counter and looked right at Freddy. I said, “Have you got Murmur of the Heart? It’s a French film.”
“We don’t carry nothing foreign but the Jap and Mex stuff,” the skinny guy answered for him. “People go for the Jap stuff. Lots of action, all that swords and kicking and jumping stuff.”
Freddy smiled at me, and damned if it wasn’t a nice smile. He was a nice looking guy when he wasn’t raping and killing someone. It gave me a chill. He looked so normal. The kind of guy that might coach your kid in football or teach social studies. “That’s right, mister,” he said. “Only Japanese and Mexican films. The rest are American and maybe some British.”
“We got Limey films?” the thin guy said.
Freddy looked at him and smiled. It was, as I said, a nice smile, but I could recall seeing it on his face the moment before he shot that girl and licked her blood from the wound. “These are modern times,” Freddy said to the thin guy. “I’d prefer you not use offensive terms like Jap and Limey if you’re going to work for me. Okay?”
“Sure,” the thin man said. “I didn’t mean nothing by it, really.” He seemed desperate to convince.
“I’m sure you didn’t,” Freddy said, “but I’d prefer not to hear those kind of racist remarks in my presence, customers or no customers.”
Freddy smiled at me, and I found I couldn’t quit staring. I was looking for some sign of the beast, something that would alert me to his madness or meanness, or whatever you call the bile in a man like Freddy, but all I saw was a regular human being. He wasn’t the sort of guy the movies would pick to play the kind of guy he was; he was more the kind to be typecast as a film hero’s best buddy.
“Well, thanks anyway,” I said.
“Maybe next time,” Freddy said. “We intend to expand our line.”
I nodded and started out, and even though the air-conditioning in there worked quite well, before I could get outside, sweat beads had formed on my forehead and my palms had turned sticky.
· · ·
We got our place back at the station, and about fifteen minutes later the Mexican returned and parked behind the video store again. He’d probably gone out for a 7-Eleven Slurpee.
At exactly seven o’clock, the video store closed and the Nova drove out, and behind it came the gray Vette with the thin, white-suited man driving it. I could see now that the Vette needed lots of body work. They turned the same direction onto the highway, with the Nova leading, and we fell in behind them, and on the other side of town the Vette honked at the Nova and veered off. The Nova didn’t honk back.
We followed the Nova across town and back to Freddy’s place. The Mexican was great with traffic. He handled the Chevy like a golf cart, weaving in and out of cars expertly.
They reached the subdivision where Freddy lived at five minutes to eight. We didn’t follow them in. We drove on past and turned around and drove home.
39
When we got back to Jim Bob’s place late that evening, Russel met me at the door with, “Your wife called.”
“Oh,” I said. “What did she say?”
“She didn’t want to talk to me, as you can imagine. Wouldn’t have, if she hadn’t had to. She asked you to call her after five.”
It was, of course, well after five then. I said, “Jim Bob, can I drive the Rambler to the store? I’d prefer to use the pay phone.”
Take the truck and use the goddamn air-conditioning. This heat has damn near made me sick. Hell, take the Red Bitch if you want.”
“The truck is fine.”
I drove over to the store and got some change and called Ann. She answered on the first ring.
“How are you?” she asked.
“I’m fine.”
“Come home.”
“I can’t. Not quite yet.”
“You’ve got to.”
“Is Jordan okay?”
“He’s fine. It’s me that isn’t okay. Come home. Quit playing cops and robbers and come home.”
“This is serious, Ann.”
“All the more reason to come home. Haven’t you played this out enough? Who cares who you shot? He had it coming. As for it not being Freddy, that’s Russel’s problem.”
“We’ve been through this.”
“And you’ve had your fun. Come home.”
“Things have changed. It’s a lot worse than we thought.”
Silence.
“It’s seems that Freddy is into some really bad stuff.”
“What do you expect from an organized crime informer?”
“Really bad stuff, Ann.” And I told her all that we had found out and what Russel and Jim Bob were planning. “And I’m going to help them do it. I thought at first I was just going to go along for part of the ride, but I can’t. When I saw Freddy today, I knew I had to go all the way.”
“It’s not your place to do anything about it.”
“Whose place is it? The law? They won’t touch him. Not unless he gets totally out of hand, and even then as long as it’s Mexicans they won’t bother. They want to keep their reputation intact.”
“Then let Jim Bob and Russel do it. They want to do it and they know how. You’re not a gunfighter.”
“I can’t just let them do something like that and pretend I’m not part of it because I didn’t pull the trigger. I’ve got to go in there with them, back their play.”
“Back their play. Jesus, will you listen to yourself, Richard. Back their play. That’s gangster talk.”
“Westerns.”
“I don’t give a damn. It’s childish. It’s vigilante.”
“There’s nothing childish about it, unless you want to include the little whore he killed. She was childish. About fifteen, I think. Maybe younger. That’s a good age for him. He can trick them easier, less experience. Even if they are whores. And I don’t give a fuck if it’s vigilante. I’d be glad to let the law do it, but they don’t want to.”
“Richard. I love you. But I’m not going to sit around here and wonder if you’re dead in some ditch somewhere. You come home now, or don’t come home. When it’s over, if you’re okay you tell me, but you don’t come home. Ever.”
“Ann-”
She hung up.
· · ·
I drove back to Jim Bob’s, my stomach feeling like an empty pot. Maybe, like Russel, there was a hole in me and my soul was oozing out.
But I knew any attempt to talk myself out of what I was planning to do would be useless. This sense of honor I carried was a blind thing. It didn’t deal in common sense. It was made up of something I heard my dad say once,
